A few days ago, Adam Gainsburg concluded that he could revive things. Looking back, he wouldn't be able to tell you how he arrived at that conclusion; it simply clicked with him one day as he was walking home from school. He would always take the backroads through Shadowbrook Canyon, from Shadowbrook Middle School to the small trailer home his Dad owned...

Scratch that, Dad was never around (he couldn't remember the last time they'd had a conversation, let alone a meal together). The dingy trailer home was essentially Adam's.

Adam preferred the narrow dirt path along the main road for the simple reason that he liked his solitude. He didn't much care for any of the kids his age in Shadowbrook Middle School, except for maybe Helen, and she lived on the other side of the school, so there was never an option for them to walk home together. That was just fine by Adam; the last thing he wanted to do was take her back to his ugly little trailer home. No one ever took the narrow dirt path, and Adam loved that.

He didn't see the dead cat at first; it was the strong odor that drew his attention, something he'd never smelled before. It smelled sweet, but far from the pleasant kind that he found with fruits or various cakes and pastries...it smelled foul and wrong, and that's what piqued his curiosity. It was overbearing, and that told him that it was close. It took him a while to see the four small paws sticking out from the dry bushes to his right. Adam scanned his surroundings and fetched the biggest branch he could find, then he carefully pushed the bushes apart to reveal the small orange cat. The maggots scurried around and over the large gash across its belly, over the burgundy colored intestines that spilled out onto the dirt without a care in the world.

Adam felt a tingle surge through the hand that wasn't holding the branch, small pulses that rippled throughout each fingertip on his left hand. He wasn't grossed out by the sight of the dead cat or the maggots; he was intrigued. He had the urge to touch the cat, because something deep down told him that he could help it, cure it. On any other given day, he would have known that the idea was absurd, but not right now.

He brought himself into a squatting position and closed the distance between his left hand and the cat's corpse. The surge through his fingertips intensified, and he could have sworn that there was a glow emitting from his fingers...but it could have been a trick of the setting sun. As his hand neared the cat's gaping wound, the maggots started to swarm away, frantically and clumsily over one another before clearing off the cat's body and disappearing into the bushes, away from Adam. The next thing to move was the intestines, the long strands rolled over one another as chunks of inside retreated back into the cat's body. The color of dried blood, the burgundy he'd seen just moments ago, followed with an almost natural flow. The large gash began to close, sealing up the cat's insides, sewing him back together again. And then there was a twitch in its paws, and the cat surged back to life, rolling onto its paws as though it were waking up from a nap, and not being a corpse.

That's how Adam learned he had special powers. That's when he knew he had the powers of the gods. And later that evening, he realized that he wanted to try his special powers on a human being.

"When did you get a cat?" Helen asked as they stood at the front steps of Adam's trailer. "You never mentioned that you had a cat...feels like the kind of thing you would mention."

"He's new," Adam said. "I found him on the way home on Tuesday, and he just kind of followed me. I called him Mr. Maggot."

Helen Croft wore thick glasses. The kind that made her green eyes look super big like a cartoon character. Her big cartoonish eyes narrowed, and her lips scrunched up. "Your Dad is fine with a random cat following you around? My parents freak out about unwanted animals all the time."

Adam considered telling her that he hadn't seen his Dad in months, but he simply told her that he was just fine with having a cat around. Helen didn't question it, and maybe it had to do with the fact that he lived in a trailer home.

"So..." Helen started, she shifted from her left foot to her right. "Why did you want to come study at your house and not stay at the school?"

Her big cartoon eyes were scanning Adam's place of living, and he could sense the unease coursing through Helen almost as strongly as he could feel the ability to revive through his fingertips two days prior. He was losing her; his entire plan to get her back here was flimsy from the get-go, and he could practically see her walking back down the path to her own house in just a few moments.

"Okay fine. I didn't ask you to come over here to study, not really." Mr. Maggot purred and coiled around his right leg. He was hungry...or at least that's what Adam figured. "I mean. We can still study, but that would have to be later."

"What do you mean later?" Helen asked, her eyes narrowing once more. If she continued to do that, her eyes would get stuck like that (an urban legend he knew to be untrue, but one his Mom would always tell him long before she abandoned him and Dad).

"Helen. This is going to sound insane, but I didn't just find Mr. Maggot. A few days ago, I found him on the side of the road...dead, with a bunch of Maggots on him-"

"And that's why he's called Mr. Maggot." Helen's tone was flat.

"Right. But I brought him back to life, Helen. I warded off the unwanted pests, put his insides back inside, and a few seconds later, he was back to life, good as new. I got him because I revived him."

Helen Croft was an outcast. Why else would she be hanging out with someone like Adam Gainsburg, but that didn't mean she was an idiot, far from it in fact. She was one of the smartest kids in Mrs. Carlson's English class, and that probably had a lot to do with her being an outcast. When Adam finished his weirdo confession, her eyes didn't narrow, but they widened. She knew in that moment why Adam had her come over.

Adam clumsily reached into his backpack and retrieved the large butcher knife that he'd swiped from his kitchen. Crinkled up papers and a few pencils spilled out onto the dirt. "Now hear me out, Helen. I know it sounds insane, but again. I wouldn't have Mr. Maggot if it weren't for my new powers. I'm pretty sure I can revive human beings. I'm pretty sure I can revive you."

Helen heard what he'd said but had zero interest. She spun around on her heels and made a mad dash for the singular dirt path that they'd taken to get here. She slouched her arms backward and let her backpack slide off her arms; movement was her primary focus.

"Helen! Come back here!" Adam wailed. Mr. Maggot let out a high-pitched meow and darted away from Adam, off into the bushes behind them as though he'd sensed his new owner was a lunatic. Adam darted forward, stumbling over Helen's backpack for a brief moment before regaining his footing as he came to the narrow path. Helen wasn't a fast runner, and it didn't take Adam long to realize that. His lungs heaved, and his legs burned, but he was narrowing the distance between them with ease. He made a mad lunge and collided with Helen's back, with the brute finesse of a football player.

Helen's scream was cut off by the road, their bodies slid across, kicking up a plume of dirt and dust. Adam could feel Helen's stomach heave in and out as she struggled to pull in air, as she began to cough from the unwanted consumption of the earth. She started to scream, and it made Adam's ears ring so much to the point that he nearly dropped his knife. Adam crawled forward, pinning both of Helen's arms down.

"Helen! Calm down," Adam pleaded. She was much more difficult to pin down than he'd anticipated. Her forearms and legs kept flailing around. "Let me kill you, Helen Croft, let me do that so I can bring you back to life."

Helen had lost her glasses at some point during their scuffle, and at some point they'd broken them. They were off to Helen's right in two sad-looking pieces. Her eyes looked so weird when they weren't magnified; it was weird to see her look normal. Eventually, she stopped flailing around like a weird fish, and her breathing returned to normal. Her green eyes locked onto his, her jaw was so clenched that he could see the veins pulse throughout her neck. That was a good thing; it felt like they were presenting themselves for Adam.

"Helen," he was still trying to catch his breath. "Please trust me. Do you trust me? I know I can bring you back to life, and there won't even be any scars, because there aren't any on Mr. Maggot. Let me kill you...Can you trust me?"

Helen's jaw relaxed, but she was trembling like a leaf; her eyes didn't leave his gaze. "I trust you."

Adam pressed the blade of the knife to her throat, watched as the skin threatened to break, then he moved the blade along her throat with a finesse that surprised even himself. He watched a single vein pulse against the knife. Now he started to tremble; it rippled throughout his body. He tightened his grip around the handle of the knife so much that his palm hurt. He took a deep breath, his eyes not leaving Helen's...

Then he felt a surge of pain ripple throughout his crotch. It was unreal, unlike anything he'd ever felt before. It blossomed from his testicles at a radiant speed, it caused his stomach to hurt, and it even gave him a headache. He barely had the time to register that the impact had come from Helen's knee, and then he felt a tremendous pain erupt from his neck.

Adam collapsed backwards; he didn't know what to tend to first, the pain in his crotch, or the much worse pain in his neck. A warm liquid washed down his right shoulder. He blinked his eyes, but he could barely see. He could see Helen for one second, then she was a blur. He watched dumbly as she fetched what looked like one side of her glasses and put them back on her face. Adam wrestled with the item in his throat, but it took him a while. He ripped whatever it was from his neck and glanced at it. It was the other half of Helen's glasses.

Adam fell over, onto the dirt, and his blood. He tried to talk, but he couldn't say a word; he couldn't even catch a breath. He tried to find the surge in his left hand again, but he couldn't feel anything besides the gaping wound in his throat. Adam lay there in the dirt, struggling to heal his own fatal wound. He could barely hear Helen as she continued to run.

And then there was darkness, and nothing more.