People mowing the lawn. The sweet sounds of birds chirping, children laughing, and the hissing as teens wiz by on their hoverboards. Others planting beautiful flowers with all different, vibrant colors. Life is good for all that are living, but I always felt that it could be something more. Life, in all its beauty felt kind of plain to me...or boring. I usually thought that life should change, but not to this extent. At the same time, I guess I couldn’t help myself.
The next Tuesday would be the most life changing event in history, for me and generations beyond, but not in a good way.
My name is Luke, and I was walking home that Tuesday with my friends Masky, Clever, and Tornaido. We all lived in the wonderful Town of Potter where everyone’s joyous. As the clock struck 3:02, the ground seemed to jolt. That moment I looked at my buddy Tornaido as his beats dropped from his head and broke on the concrete. “Darn!!” He shouted, “Those were $200 dollars!”
As he began to pick up the broken red plastic shards, we started to see gross looking green gas float by. The local boy, Randy, saw it from his house so he ran out. Not just out, but right into the disgusting cloud.
“Hey guys look at this!” He called to us. “Isn’t this nuts! What the heck is this stuff?”
“Randal, I do not think that is a good idea, it might not be safe to breath….. Randy?”
We lost sight of him within the greenness. A minute goes by and the cloud clears. We look at Randy and call him over. He didn’t respond though. We call again, and he still didn’t respond so we tapped his shoulder. He looked confused. Like he couldn’t understand what we were saying.
I pull my phone out and point at it. He gets his phone out and I shoot him a text.
What’s wrong??
I don’t know. I can’t hear you guys and everything looks really blurry.
We took him home, and tell his mother all about what happened. She pats his back and tells us that they are going to see the doctor tomorrow.

The next day

We enter the school building. The first thing I see is Ms. Jacobs crying and she was talking on the phone with somebody.
Later in the day we were informed that Randy passed over night. Kids that are close to Randy’s siblings tell us that he looked purple and he was up all night throwing up. His little sister Molly wasn’t talking at all, so I asked her older brother Jeff and he said,
“Yeah he was purple all right, and at like One in the morning he just burst.”
“What do you mean burst??”
“He got up and just started to throw up and he kept going until….there was nothing left to puke….so he vomited his heart out on the wall…. And..” sniffle sniffle
Jeff began to cry again and he just walked away. I felt terrible. Was it the gas cloud?? I began to wonder.

Later that week

I haven't seen Jeff or Molly at school for a few days so I stopped at their house and it was trashed. Blood was all over the walls. I walked into the kitchen and saw Randy’s mom’s cold lifeless body on the floor. Flies picking at her shriveled eye balls. I could see her whole skull. Her skin was a sickening purple and it looked like it had been peeled and flaked off.
“Ahhh!”
I was terrified. I began to back up slowly.  I hit something with my foot. I figured was a soccer ball. I heard the sound of it roll past my leg. I looked down and it was Molly’s little rotted out, stomach-churning head covered in blood and detached from her body which I saw in the living room. On my way out, I bumped into a large beefy man, around 6’5” and he had blond hair and huge sunglasses.
“What are you doing in here kid,” he said with a stern voice.
“This was my friends house.” I said teary. “But I was just leaving… Who are you.”
He didn’t answer, I peaked around him and saw this huge black van that said Waste Management in big letters on the side. I said, “Excuse me.” As I began to walk past him.
But he grabbed me by my wrist and said, “DO you know if anyone else has been to this house recently?!?!?”
“No I don’t think so..” I said cowardly. “My arm hurts can you please let go… what are you doing…. Where are you taking me?!?!”  I whimpered. He began to drag me by my arm…. He slid open the van door and through me in. “HELP HELP!!!” I screamed! “HELP ME SOMEBODY!”
“Kid you gotta be quiet!.... You know too much I’m sorry…”
“HELP!!!!!!!”
Foomp!!! He decked me across the face so hard it knocked me clean out.

When I woke up I was chained to a surveying table in a cold warehouse. I struggled to get my arms free, but wasted my energy.

An hour or two later, I saw a man in a lab coat walk near me.
“What do you guys want with me?” I said as tears rushed down my cheeks.
“There is a virus going around due to toxic waste in the air… The virus we tested and found to be extremely deadly and highly contagious…. Because you went into that house you could have gotten it yourself…. Do you feel weird at all?? Blurred vision? Can you hear me okay??”
“Yes I can hear just fine, I see clearly, and I feel okay. Doesn’t that mean I am okay? And don’t you think these chains are a little drastic???”
“Well it doesn’t mean you’re okay, because the virus takes effect at different times for all people… And no, the chains are not extreme in anyway, because the virus can possibly make you lose your mind…. We don’t know, you could kill us all before you die.”
“What do you mean die?”
“Well if you have the virus.. I can assure you that there is a 95.3% chance…. On top of that we can’t risk you escaping. You could contaminate the whole town.. Maybe even the whole world, this virus can spread up to 100 people faster than you can say virus in a highly populated area.. All our test results had the same conclusion… We tried rats, monkeys, birds, fish, you name it. It’s interesting because even being different species it affects all of them the same, death. Some took longer than others but each ended up dying eventually.”

  8 hours later

I woke up hungry. Still chained to the table. I was cold because of being in the warehouse for so long. I began to feel really weird but at the same time, I felt better than ever. I felt like getting up and running. Running for long periods of time with no breaks in between. I felt like jumping off high buildings and doing summer salts to the ground. But why? As curious as I was I looked around me. I looked down and saw my toes. They weren’t just my normal toes, they were purple. Just like how Randy was described and how his mother’s and sister’s corpse looked.

The man in the lab coat walked in. “Oh boy, look at you…. I guess my team was right after all.”
“I may be purple, but I can see you clearer than ever, and can hear you better than I could ever hear anyone. I don’t know what is wrong with me. But I can hear everything. I hear people outside for crying out loud….So whatever you do you better be darn sure because I might not have the full virus by any means…... And if it is a new virus, then how could you tell if I even have it now? I may look purple, because I haven’t eaten in a long time, and because I have been stuck in this cold lab or warehouse.. err .. whatever it is for like two days!!”
I shouted at him, angry and confused. My skin burned, and my eyes felt as they were sticking out of my head. I began to see through objects. I looked around, and could see through the walls to the outside. And I could hear voices all around me. I don’t know what was happening to me.

Later a man came in from the other room with a syringe. He took my blood, and then walked back into the other room. Exhausted by all the stress and the pain I felt from the changes to my body, I fell asleep.

I woke up to the voices of the man who took my blood and a few other people.

“Jerry, Mike, Leslie. Get over hear!”
“What Todd?”
“The test results from the kid’s blood came back.”
“Yeah”
“His DNA structure is completely different…...For some reason, the virus is making him stronger….. He is dying, but at an extremely slow rate compared to the other subjects….. I think he may be the one… He may be the cure!... His white blood cells are not only fighting the virus… but manipulating it… His cells take the virus and incorporate it into his DNA. It’s turning him into a living virus. We can use this kids DNA to make a cure. A cure for the entire world. We’ll make billions of dollars.. The world won’t be freed of the virus… But each and every human will be apart of it, living an eternity of harmony and a symbiotic relationship between the humans and the virus!! Now all we have to do is dissect the kid and see how this all plays out. We will kill him once we have figured it out. And put his DNA in a capsule which we will use to nuke the world with. As a result, contaminating the world with his DNA and solving the epidemic.”
“I will prepare the capsule sir.” said the other man in the room.

I looked at the guy leading the operation and noticed something extremely weird. I used my new gained ability from the virus, my super sight which I used to look closer at him. There was something odd about him that I never noticed before now. Something that really struck me now that I couldn’t put my finger on. He walked closer to me, and I began to have killer head pain. And my brain rushed through photos of what looked to be him as a little kid playing. Except those were my memories of being a little kid playing.
My mind rushed through pictures of him growing older and becoming an adult. Pictures of him testing something on himself, and then putting it in the air. Pictures of him growing old, purple, but stronger. Watching the world crumble before his own fingertips. Explosion, death, destruction. The world being the virus. I felt a weird tingly sensation in my mind. I found the recurring pattern in the evolution of humanity. The evolution of the virus, how it began. A boy living a plain life, wanting more. Finally getting what he wanted, and realising that it is not at all what he wanted, not what he should had wished for.
After that mental trip. I knew what to do. I knew how to change it all. With my new strength, I began to struggle in the chains again. Except this time I was successful. I was able to loosen the chains enough to slip out. I started to run but, the man I was attached, that gave me those pictures in my head saw me.
“Hey!” He yelled. He ran up to me and grabbed my arm. I looked at his shirt and it had a name tag Hello my name is Luke it said on it. He held my arm tighter, and took his 9mm out and put it to my head.
“I know you know me. And I know you know you can’t pull that trigger.” I told him.
He had a Switchblade on his belt that I saw earlier. I slowly slid it off from his belt when he was focused at his gun pointed at me. I clicked the blade openand shanked him through his left eye.
“AHHHHHHGH!!! AHHHHH!!” He screamed, backed up and dropped his gun…. I dove for the gun, and when he was still disoriented I picked it up and shot him in the stomach, He fell on the floor. Holding his gut… I shot him one more time in the face which killed him instantly.. The others ran out from the other room after the second shot, as I ran outside the warehouse.

I began to remember dying alone, the first time with the virus. I then remember the second time trying to stop it over and over again. I remember losing my family to it, losing my friends to it, and losing my life to it. I remember when I was 35 years old, trying to stop it before it even started, trying to find a cure, when I was it the entire time. I looked at the warehouse one last time. I held the 9mm upto my head and unloaded it into my skull. 3 bullets buried in my brain. My corps hit the ground hard. But I didn’t feel anything.
I envisioned a world without pain, without heartbreak, and most of all without the virus… and its creator.