WHAT IS THE POINT OF POWER: (WWE, 1/30/13, Family & Friend Fiction) prompt

What's the challenge? Tell your family or friends that you want to write a short story about them.  Tell them they should have super powers and they don't need to be human.  Tell them they can be anything that comes to their minds.  Then write a story involving their characters.

WHAT IS THE POINT OF POWER

© 2013 BY David Wainland

They gave us powers, and then told us to be careful how we used them.

Mine is the weaker of the two.  I am a Super Empathetic, able to read emotions. That’s almost as good as reading minds. It goes far beyond reading body language and it made me a damn good cop, a crooked one, still, I am damn good at it. My wife, on the other hand, is a Sleeper. She can pass within inches of another person and go unnoticed, unseen. No, she’s not invisible, but she has the ability to distract, cloak and otherwise pass as though she was never there. Others, if she chooses, sleep walk through the moments of contact. Our riches grew. There is not a bank we cannot rob or a plan to capture us I cannot sense.

Once we discovered how to use these gifts we came to a unanimous conclusion.

“What’s the point of power if you can’t abuse it,” and abuse it we did.

If they ever come back, I doubt if they will, we’ll have a lot of things to answer for.

*****

I was wrong, they came back.

They are angry.

“The two of you have wasted your talents. You were given these extraordinary powers to be a force of good in the world. Instead, you corrupted them, causing waves of dismay throughout the intelligent universe. Truly Earth is not ready yet for such things.”

“We can change,” cried my wife. “We can use these for good. Please don’t take them away.”

“There is no fear of that,” they said in unison. “Once given we cannot take the powers back.”

I could sense the dismay and their anguish. They could do nothing.

“No, there is something we can do,” they said as if reading my mind and perhaps they were. We can reverse the polarity. Instead of receiving empathy you will project immense guilt. For your wife, she will never walk unnoticed. Her every move will be observed. She will be treated as a pariah.”

We went to my department and confessed every crime we ever committed.  We were sentenced to life in prison where I spend my days crying and screaming out through the bars. “We’re all guilty, I’m guilty, you’re guilty…,” to a chorus of venomous threats from my fellow prisoners.

My wife is in another prison where dozens of eyes focus on her every day. She is under suicide watch and will be until she dies.