This is a Melissa Burgross (from When the Walls Fall Down and The Course of Time) story that occurs in Marvel's world and not the alternate plane where M'lissa lives.

Disclaimer: The universe belongs to Marvel, not me. Melissa is mine and anyone can have her parents and neighbors.

    Her world ended with an almost audible crash that was like the shattering of glass. The crash was followed by a scream ripped from the heavens itself. Nothing would ever be the same.

***

    Melissa sat in front of her parent's bay window; her eyes focused on the world around her. There was nothing out there anymore. She couldn't feel, she couldn't hear, and she couldn't see. Her life was just...empty. A tear trickled out of her left eye. It was a horrible way to live. Deaf and blind without the ability to touch or feel anything.

    "Melissa? M'lissa," her mother called from the kitchen. Where was her daughter? It wasn't like her to be late for anything. Not like her at all.

    "What Momma?" Melissa questioned and her voice was a pale shade of the sweet, ringing bell it had been.

    "Don't you want any dinner?"

    "No, Momma, I don't want any."

    "Okay."

    Then the silence settled upon her again. It was like a thick, dark cloud over her mind.

    Had it been so long since she had last lived without the constant chatter and perception of other people's worlds? Was she doomed to death and this feeling of being so utterly alone?

***

    Melissa stood in her room gazing at her reflection in the small mirror. She looked the same. Same green eyes, eyes that were now glazed over and had dark circles under them, same light brown hair, hair that was now tangled, and the same sharp face, a face that was now streaked with tear tracks.

    As she ran a hand through her hair and sat down, she thought that life *wasn't* supposed to be like this. Not her life. She had been gifted, special, and now she was just ordinary and very alone. She had never been so alone.

    Even when Xavier had put the blocks in her head, she really hadn't felt alone. There had always been something, a small murmur or sigh, that slipped in through the cracks of the wall around her mind.

    But now that was gone.

    There was no sound, not even the gentle hum of her sleeping town. No, not *her* town. No longer hers. They had woken up. Every one of her people had opened their eyes and realized the clarity in their minds even as Melissa lay screaming on her kitchen floor.

    Had it really only been three days since she had lost her world? Yes, Melissa could remember the incident clearly. First, there had been the sound of shattering glass. (A sound that she mistook as the death of one of her people.) Then the pain had started. A pain that tore the roots of her power out of the town's minds. Pain that crippled her, killed her. The world had gone black after that. And all she could remember after the overwhelming pain was the blood and her screams echoing off the tile kitchen walls.

    Tears streamed down Melissa's cheeks again. She *wanted* to feel her world living, breathing around her. She lived for the different ways people saw the world.

    But now she was just an empty shell. An empty, useless shell of a girl who could no longer see or hear or feel. It was horrible.

***

    The rumors started. They flowed down the gossip lines of the town until everyone knew, until everyone was talking about "insane little Melissa Burgross".

    But Melissa could not hear them. She *wanted* to hear them. Insults were better than this awful silence that was threatening to drive her insane.

    Suzy Parker ran by her window. The little girl looked up, brushing strands of lazy dark red hair from her eyes. Then she gave a startled cry, "It's the witch. It's the mutie witch!"

    Melissa only stared at the girl with clouded green eyes. She remembered Suzy's sight. The girl was very good at memorizing shapes and colors and pictures. Suzy lived to capture a beautiful thing in her mind. And only Melissa and Suzy knew the wonders that the child had caught so far.

    So, as the child ran away, a stray smile passed over Melissa's face. She could no longer see, hear, or feel. Now she was deaf and blind but her memory did live on. Every person in the town lived on in her head, in her mind. Her world was still there; it had just gotten buried.

    As her eyes stared inward instead of outward and the music on the radio faded to the recorded voices of her town, Melissa's smile grew wider, bigger.

***

Ten years later:

    Mrs. Burgross entered her daughter's room to hook up the bag of food. One of her wrinkled hands brushed a few stray light brown hairs from Melissa's cheek. The doctors couldn't explain what was wrong with her. All they would tell her was that Melissa had pulled away from the outside world to live deep inside her own head. Mrs. Burgross shook her head and muttered, "I knew I shouldn't have ever taken her out of the institution." Then she left the room with a small sigh.

***

    A smile played across the face of young Suzy Parker. She had found a beautiful blue flower to show Melissa. Maybe today they would see a rainbow. Suzy looked around her and thanked God that her world was so perfect. And then, because it seemed right, she thanked Melissa too.

The End