He determined he was a Spark, one of the dozens of super-powered individuals who had appeared all over the globe in the past month, but his power was pheromones. He noticed a peculiar odor his skin gave off. It wasn’t offensive or pleasant. It was sweet but also it reminded him of patchouli–from his hippy college days. The scent triggered some sort of primal mating instinct of anyone who could smell it–everyone within fifty feet–unless it was a windy day. He remembered having to run ten blocks to avoid a horny mob on a particularly breezy afternoon.
This power, this dream of every man who had ever seen a pornographic movie and wished women would want to fuck them the moment she laid eyes on him, had ruined his life. Terry had taken to the woods on northern Canada. He had found a currently unused hunting lodge and was waiting for death. The AIDS (and the dozen other STDS he had) were certainly going to kill him, especially since he couldn’t afford or see a doctor to get the life-saving medicines he needed. At least he would live his final days alone and in peace. The cabin had no electricity or wi-fi, so he had only a stack of books to read and a typewriter to write the great American novel he always wanted to write.
He was at peace.
Then he saw it. A bear walked by the window. It just strolled by, but it was looking at him. It paced back still eyeing him. He ran to the back of the one-room cabin and grabbed the shotgun that came with the unused cabin. Out the back window, he saw another bear. Two. A third.
Scratch, scratch. The sound of claws on the door. Then the door and the front of the house creaked and buckled a bit. He imagined the big black bear testing the portal. It was only a matter of time before it yielded.
“This is how it ends,” Terry thought. “Fucked to death by bears.”