Half-Second Mark
Chen wants to feel everything.
Prompt: “Anything that gets your blood running is probably worth doing.” – Hunter S. Thompson  
Partially inspired by the awakening process described in Michael Scott’s The Alchemist.
There’s a theme of threes here, for no particular reason.
Word Count: 557

In the forty seconds between the sky and the ground, Chen wonders if this is what flying tastes like.

Yes, tastes. There’s a feeling on his tongue, a new sensation; it prickles at the tip and runs down both sides, buzzing and igniting his mouth – and, subsequently, his entire body – with exhilaration. He thinks briefly that this is the best thing he has ever tasted, and it is that taste that causes him to delay his landing and continue to fall until he almost smacks into the asphalt and kills himself.

Man, that felt good.

On the ground, all the taste of flying has gone away. It’s replaced by the metallic taste of his own blood, which he had almost been able to forget about during his fall. He manages to remind himself that, yes, he was just thrown off a building; yes, he just barely escaped death; and yes, there is a wolf creature that will rip his throat out if he doesn’t move in the next two seconds.

He gets away with only a small scratch on the shoulder. It’s small, but it stings like hellfire and Chen wonders if the new surge of feeling he has is helpful or harmful, as there is heightened fear in addition to the pain. But even that thought is spirited away after half a second, as he stretches his fingers and lets the electricity crackle around his hands. The new taste is ozone, left behind by the little blue lines that travel straight from Chen’s fingers into the heart of the creature; the heart takes one last beat, and the body drops unceremoniously onto the pavement. He’s not terribly fond of the taste the stench of burned flesh leaves in his mouth, but the feeling with which the satisfaction gifts him is overwhelming.

With every step he takes, he imagines himself becoming like a painting. Where drab numbness once resided, vibrant sensations – new smells, new textures, new sounds – immediately overpower the old. The fear is yellow. The frustration is red. The lightning is bluer than the sky above, the monsters are an vomit-esque green, and the car horns of frightened citizens start out a blinding orange and fade into a muted purple. Every touch, scent, and even taste, which surprises him the most, has color. This world of sorcery is suffocating, smothering, stifling, and Chen has never felt more alive.

He’s felt more in a minute, in twelve seconds, in a quarter-second than he has in all his days, months, and years. This painting he’s made just now is more colorful than anything he could have imagined. And even if he’s in mortal danger – and will continue to be, according to the others – there’s nothing he would rather be doing than this, in this moment, in this time, in this half-second of wonder. It’s a new free fall with every little thing he encounters, and the taste changes every time. His blood is pumping harder, faster, and better than ever before. There’s a bit of a throbbing headache that accompanies it, but it only adds to the experience. This brand new experience of having powers is wonderful, and Chen wants to feel every bit of it.

But even that thought, like all the others, only lasts a moment before he is greeted by a new onslaught of sensations.