Some people say your life flashes before your eyes when you're about to die.
For me? It was the smell of burnt coffee and the sound of a bus engine grinding way too loud outside my apartment window.
I wish I could tell you I was some badass Navy SEAL, a secret agent. But no — I was just me.
An average, rent-paying, caffeine-addicted twenty-six-year-old whose most dangerous adventure was trying to assemble IKEA furniture without breaking it.
I lived in a shoebox apartment that could generously be described as "cozy" if you ignored the peeling paint and the fact that my neighbor's Wi-Fi name was RatHotel-5G.
My job?
Customer service rep for an online tech store.
My main skills were typing at inhuman speeds and pretending not to hear the insults customers muttered before hanging up.
And yet, despite all that… I dreamed big. I'd grown up watching Superman, Batman, Spider-Man — the whole roster of impossible heroes.
I knew every origin story, every weakness, every arc that made them human. I'd joke with friends that if I ever got powers, I'd be smart enough not to pull a Man of Steel and level half the city in a fight.
But deep down, I knew that was all fantasy. In the real world, people didn't get powers.
They just… lived. And then they died.
I didn't think my turn would come so soon.
It started like any other Thursday.
I grabbed my cheap travel mug, filled it with coffee that could strip paint, and rushed out the door with half a slice of toast in my mouth.
The city was its usual mess: buses groaning, street vendors yelling, and somewhere in the distance, a car alarm crying for help no one would give.
I was halfway to the subway when I heard it — that sound.
Not thunder, not an explosion, but something… heavier.
Like the air itself was tearing.
People stopped mid-step.
A few craned their necks upward.
The sky had a scar.
That's the only way I can describe it — a long, jagged tear glowing white-hot, pulsing like it was alive. It wasn't wide enough to see through, but it was wrong.
The kind of wrong that makes your stomach twist before your brain catches up.
And then… something fell out of it.
It was fast.
Too fast.
All I caught was the glint of metal and the realization that it was headed straight for the street I was on.
Instinct said run, but before I could even turn, there was this deafening roar and the world went white.
When my vision snapped back, I was on the ground. Ears ringing. My mouth tasted like copper.
People were screaming — some running away, others frozen, pointing. I looked up just in time to see the thing that had fallen.
It was a satellite.
Or what was left of one. Charred, jagged, still smoking.
Easily the size of a van. It had hit a building, tearing chunks of concrete like paper, and now it was tipping forward… right toward a little girl standing frozen in the crosswalk.
She couldn't have been older than eight. Pink backpack.
Shoes that lit up when she moved — except she wasn't moving.
I didn't think.
I just went.
Legs pumping, lungs burning, I closed the distance and shoved her hard, sending her sprawling onto the sidewalk.
She started crying, but she was safe.
I wasn't.
I remember looking up, the shadow of the falling wreck blotting out the light.
And in that frozen heartbeat, my brain threw me one last cruel gift — the thought that I'd finally done something heroic. Then the satellite came down.
Pain.
That's what I expected.
Agony, bones breaking, flesh tearing.
But instead, it was… nothing.
Like someone had flipped a switch and unplugged me from reality.
One second I was there, the next… I wasn't.
And then there was only darkness.
Not the peaceful, sleepy kind. No, this was the kind of darkness that felt endless.
Weightless.
Like I was floating in the space between thoughts.
I tried to move.
Nothing.
I tried to speak.
No sound.
Just the cold, endless void.
That's when I realized: I was dead.