[ WP ] For the first time ever , a person is born with a genuine superpower . They proceed to live out their entire life without noticing or realizing it .

Pain. Crippling, bone-shattering pain coursed through her body as her eight year old brother wearily walked into the kitchen. His army green hoodie covered unbrushed auburn hair and the hood's shadow fell over the front of his nose as he stared emptily at the floor. Alexis did n't see him, as her back was turned. She did n't hear him, as he wore socks that morning. But she felt an extraordinary sharpness inside her veins that pulled at and twisted her vital organs. Alexis fell to the ground but not before her brother caught her head just before it crashed against the white tile floor. 
 
 `` Thank you, Sean,'' she managed to whisper. She could see his eyes - their greying green iris against a lightning storm of red surrounding frozen, constricted pupils. She then noticed a fresh scrape along his left cheek. Instinctively she touched it with her right thumb, guiding her hand smoothly through his hair beside his ear. He did n't flinch. It was n't the first time she had seen this face on her little brother. 
 
 This was n't the first time she had felt her insides storm like that either. It was actually rather common for her long before Sean was born. When she was an infant, her mother recounted how she would take Alexis to a restaurant or the movies in a stroller and at some point, without warning or apparent cause, Alexis would schizophrenically shift from being the happiest child in the world to suddenly writhing in agony. 
 
 Her mother was convinced it was some form of cancer, but the doctors were baffled. Repeated blood tests came back normal, MRI results returned negative time after time, for years. Some doctors suggested she may be allergic to certain people, as it was always worst in crowded places ( e.g., subways, restaurants, shopping malls ). Other physicians suggested she had some psychological disorder ( e.g., Somatization disorder ). Nothing seemed to make sense. Nobody seemed to understand her pain - what it was or why it happened. 
 
 Alexis moved out of her parents' home in the city at 22, against the protests of her mother and brother, to the residence hall of a small college in the midwest. She had always loved the countryside - the quiet stillness of dawn and the rustling leaves of corn stalks in the wind. She did n't hurt so much in the country. 
 
 Alexis kept to herself, trying to avoid people as much as possible, but of course she had classes to attend. Fortunately, she was able to endure each class without incident... except one. There was one class that boiled her insides every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 10:00am - Professor Morgan's Macroeconomics. Like clockwork, three times a week, she would take her seat and her heart would sink into her stomach, the walls would dance around her, and the charts of supply and demand put up by the professor would swim through the whiteboard aquarium nonsensically. 
 
 As the semester carried on, it did not get better. She did not know that her pain would remain so long as Professor Morgan continued weeping every night for the son he had lost at the semester's start. 
 
 Two years into her time at the college, Alexis received a phone call from a now 18 year-old Sean. He told it to her guarded but frankly: 
 `` Lex, I do n't know how to tell you this... mom and I reported dad.'' 
 
 `` Fuck,'' she replied. 
 
 `` Mom caught him with the neighbor's kid. It was just like what he would do to me.'' 
 
 `` Fuck. I'm so sorry Sean. That fucking asshole, I hope he gets railed in prison.'' 
 
 `` Yeah...'' 
 
 `` I know he never did that to me, but I understand how painful that was for you.'' 
 
 `` I know you do. Thanks.'' 
 
 
 

