Chronicles of Jonathan Tibbs 1: The Never Hero by T. Ellery Hodges

returned slowly, drifting in from somewhere that language had not existed, becoming comprehensible words again.
    “Shit! Shit!” Paige yelled.
    He felt her hands drawn back from his chest in surprise as she swore. He became aware that he was on the floor again, staring up at her wide eyes. He could hear the television still playing in the background. His roommates were surrounding him, Paige still on her knees at his right, Collin standing above his head and Hayden to his left. All staring with their mouths hanging open, but they weren’t looking at his face. They stared at his chest as though he had an armed hydrogen bomb ticking away on his torso.
    “What happened?” Jonathan asked.
    No one responded.
    “Guys!” he yelled.
    They snapped out of their trance and shut their mouths, looking him in the eye.
    “Jonathan, your chest,” Paige whispered, bringing her fingers to her mouth in worry.
    Slowly he propped himself on to his elbows and looked down. His chest was flickering, and as he watched in panic, it suddenly became alive with light.
    It hadn’t just kicked on abruptly. Like a halogen bulb, it had worked its way to full illumination. The light seemed organic, glowing red-orange from beneath the skin and submerged in the muscle tissues over his rib cage. He could see it through his shirt like neon lights had been surgically implanted inside his chest.
    His hands moved to touch the light, but then he stopped, unsure if it was wise to touch them. Instead, he reached up and slowly lifted the collar of his shirt.
    Three lines ran over his front and around his back. Two of the lines, one on each side of his torso, followed parallel to his arms from his shoulder down to his hip. These two lines were intercepted by the third, running perpendicular to his arms across his chest. The third line reached around from his back. It appeared to start at one lat muscle, crossed over his chest, and terminated in the muscle on the opposite side.
    The lines looked like liquid energy running through him.
    “What the hell is it?” Collin asked.
    Only one thought occurred to Jonathan.
    This shouldn’t be possible .
    How could all of those tests they ran at the hospital have missed something like this in his chest cavity? Jonathan didn’t know what to do. He laid his head back down on the kitchen floor trying to think. His roommates, seeming to fear he was about to go catatonic again, tried to think for him.
    “Call an ambulance,” Hayden said.
    “What the hell for?” Collin asked. “Whatever that thing is the doctors don’t have an ointment for it.”
    “Well, what the hell else are we gonna do?” said Hayden.
    “Why don’t you try praying?” Collin snapped back.
    While they began bickering, Paige came to her senses, finally taking her hand from her mouth.
    “Jonathan,” she said softly. “Does it hurt?”
    His attention shifted to her when the concern in her voice registered. It was hard to gauge exactly what he felt given the circumstance, but he wasn’t in pain any longer.
    “No. I mean, there was a terrible pain before, worse than anything I’ve ever felt. Like I was being cremated and I couldn’t move. But it stopped right before this came on,” he said, pointing at his chest. “I feel normal. I’m—”
    He realized then that something wasn’t normal.
    “Wait—” Jonathan paused.
    Collin and Hayden, seeing that something was developing, became silent.
    “There’s something tugging at my attention,” he said, then shook his head. “No, it’s not tugging. It’s strange. I can’t… I can’t not notice it.”
    Jonathan looked up at them, but he could tell by their expressions that he wasn’t making any sense.
    He realized it had been there for a while now on the outskirts of his awareness. He hadn’t been paying attention to it. It didn’t feel unnatural, so it hadn’t stuck out at first, like choosing not to ignore the sound of the television while trying to study. It seemed as though he