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Prose Challenge of the Month #2: Write a story where you wake up as the most intelligent person on Earth. Fifteen entries will be featured in a 500-coin Prose Original Book, whereby each winner will take 5% lifetime royalties. You must purchase the book to discover its authors, who will be determined by objective data (reads, likes, reposts, comments) and by team vote to ensure reader satisfaction. When sharing to social media, please use the hashtags “itslit,” “getlit,” and “ProseChallenge.”

unplugged

i laid on a white hospital bed in a white hospital room. the only color besides the white that consumed the room was the red blood that lay beside me in a bag. a women came over and pulled it from my skin. 

i fell back into the darkness.

i believe it has been just a few days since my last blackout. since the doctor told me i was slowly crumbling into pieces. since the doctor told me i was broken and could never be fixed. since i realized i'd be better off dead.

i started hyperventilating yesterday. i couldn't breathe. i couldn't live anymore. i simply expired. i remember so vividly falling apart right there on the bed, gritting my teeth at the pain that spread through my body. i remember nobody being there for me. i remember all of everything. how i was teased. how i was bullied for being a 'nerd'. how i wasn't average. how i needed to be cured. how i should kill myself. how my parents left me. ashamed. how i had no one. i remember all of everything. so vividly, clearly. 

the doctor said i was dead for a full fifteen minutes. i was dead. i was gone from this world. 

when i came back to life, i remember my heavy breaths, i remember staring at the walls for endless moments in the room, i remember the pain i felt in my head, my body. it pulsed with pain.  i remember being alone.

about three days later i heard the door squeak open. the doctor found me, surprised that i was alive. 

i was still immobile.

but i was alive.

i gasped as the doctor stuck a needle into my head. He pulled up on the syringe, pulling blood from it. i was stuck. 

he left shortly after, and all i could do was watch the white wall, immobile, not average, different, just like me.

he came back a day later. he said it was a miracle. he said i was cured.

but if i was cured, why can't i move?

but if i was cured, why do i still feel this way? 

I woke up with a start. I gazed around in the room that I was in. Brown desk, blue walls, brown bookshelf. I was home. But something felt off. I suddenly felt the itch to do things I wasn't supposed to. Things that nobody was allowed to do until you were 25. 

What was wrong with me? I can't be any different now. I've worked so hard to be average. 

Realizing I had school in just a few hours, I pulled myself up out of my bed and got dressed.

This was going to be a long day.

"What's the answer, Miss.Pierce?" my math teacher asked.

A feeling of ecstasy filled me as I answered.

"23532"

The class laughed at me.

Was I wrong??

"Miss.Pierce, I was asking for number three." he tapped his foot impatiently.

"Sir, I think you calculated wrong." I said unconsciously.

As I gasped at my own words, murmurs filled the room with judgement and fear.

Fear that I wasn't average anymore. 

"Miss.Pierce, detention."

I immediately fired back, "Sorry, just thought that you would've wanted the correct answer." 

What was wrong with me?

As the teacher got even more red, I flushed. I picked up my things and ran out of the room. 

Still I could feel the aroma of judgement around me. People staring, looking, watching for my differences. A thousand eyes surrounding me, driving me to the brink of insanity.