Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom.


43. Dying

I don't know why I'm still here. If the world were a logical place, I would have died in that accident, the electricity and the ectoplasm that seared through me were enough to kill an elephant. And in a sense, I did die. A painful, horrible death it was, I can't even begin to describe what it felt like. Like being turned inside out, torn, shredded apart and then put back together again. I remember every second of it.

And I was dead. I mean, really dead. No heartbeat, no breathing, cold. Dead. Yet I was still there, ectoplasm with a form, a memory, a name. The shock of that was actually worse than the physical pain I had suffered moments before. I died. And then I lived again.

To go back to that warm, breathing form that was me was the best that had ever happened to me. I felt ecstatic, high. No drug could ever accomplish what I felt right then. What I still feel when I change back to my 'normal' form, though in a lesser extend. It's great to be alive, to just sit there with your eyes closed, listening to your own heartbeat, pretending to be a normal boy.

Normal being relative, of course. I can shoot ecto beams even in my human form, I can go intangible, invisible whenever I want to in the blink of an eye. But when I really have to go all out, to fight some ghost that is harassing the town, I have to die again.

There's no pain to it, not really, only the memory of pain. Whenever I reach for that other form, that cold form that is also me, I remember how I got to be this way. Every time I change into Danny Phantom, I get electrocuted again in a sense and my body goes cold and lifeless. It is both incredibly scary and incredibly... enticing at the same time. When I'm like that, I can do anything. The power that I hold is incredible. Nobody, not even my friends or sister, know what I'm really capable of, the destruction I could cause. And my powers are still growing.

I live... I die... and then I live again. That's really all there is to it. That's what you see when those two white rings appear around my waist. That's me dying. And then living again.