Big Superhero Action (20 page)

A high school gym converted into the setting of a high-school prom. Teenagers in formal wear, prom decor, dance music pounding in the background.

January Kosinski stood by the bleachers. She was in a satin prom dress and heels. She turned toward the bleachers. She looked under them.

A naked girl in a tiara was crouched under the bleachers.

January asked her “Are you okay?”

“Please don’t hurt me.”

“Are you–”

“–Please don’t hurt me!”

“I won’t hurt you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. What are you doing in there?”

“They took my clothes.”

“Who?”

“The girls.”

“What girls?”

“The girls in school. They jumped me and took off my clothes and left me naked.”

“Oh no. That’s terrible. Why?”

“They hate me. Everybody hates me.”

“I’ll get something for you to put on. Then we’ll get you out of there. Okay?”

“Do you mean that?”

“Of course.”

“Please help me.”

“I will. Hold on.”

January looked around, spotted a trash can. She pulled out the plastic liner, emptied a few paper cups, returned to the bleachers.

She came out with the girl wrapped in dark green plastic.

The girl said, “I gotta use the girls’ room.”

Girls’ room. Tile walls and floor, hearts scrawled on the walls. Vacant. Music from the prom through the walls. The door opened, the two entered.

The girl went into one of the stalls. She said, “I’m George.”

“I’m January.”

“That’s a beautiful name.”

“Thanks.”

George came out. She soaped and washed her hands, the plastic slipping from her nudity. Surrounding her navel was a circular tattoo. She looked for paper towels. Zero. She wiped her hands on her naked hips.

She looked at January. “You rescued me.”

January shrugged.

“You’re the only person who was ever nice to me.”

“The only one?”

“Yeah.”

“Glad to help.”

“There’s always something in the girls room.”

George reached into a trash can, pulled out a pair of frowsy white pumps from maybe 1966. She stood on one leg, put on the shoes. She turned to January, smiled beaming.

January was watching her with a new wonder, genuine feeling touched with surprise.

“I’d take you to the prom,” January said quietly.

George blushed, turned away. “January.”

“I would.”

“You would?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’d go with you.”

“You would?”

“Yeah. Not to say I’m something special, just … I would.”

“I’d dance with you.”

George giggled. “Really?”

“Yes. And I’d kiss you in front of everybody.”

“Ohh January … “

“You are sweet and harmless and you’d never laugh at anyone.”

“I never had the chance … but I guess I still couldn’t.”

“Who wouldn’t want to be your girlfriend?”

A spotlight beamed on above them, cast the two in golden glow. January leaned forward, kissed George on the lips. January took George in her arms and the music swept them into a rapturous kiss, rose then fell as the spotlight dimmed to pink starlight.

He opened his eyes. Blood was everywhere. The Corpus was sculpting a penis onto his body. The Halo’s. The Corpus hovered, a statue in motion, his hands parting flesh, fingers delicately moving veins that were now a spill in mid-air suspended above exposed organs. There were only sensations too complex for the human brain to process. The Corpus had fingers that wove the nerves into places where they set off the perfect dots of light along his brain stem until it became a Paris of lights.

D
arkness dragging him, Chase awoke again. It was a black vinyl dentist’s chair except his wrists were Velcro-tied to the armrests. They had him wearing only a black towel wrapping his hips. Something round and cold had been placed inside his right ear.

“You’re fading from fatigue,” Xoir said. Again her aristocratic face appeared above him. Her fragrance was a subtle blend of shades of black, an undersea garden of black stones at the bottom of a black sea. Her thumb softly touched his chin. “From lack of food for one week. Refusing to eat serves no purpose. The OSD doesn’t respond to hunger strikes. All you’re doing is making that beautiful body thinner. Refusing to talk is also pointless. We can read your brain.”

He would only speak to her, not the Doctor. “What’s in my ear?”

“That’s a neuropedix ball.”

“What is that?”

“It collects raw data.”

Xoir pulled the strap from one wrist, the other. He was too weak to move anyway. Her hand went through his hair. High above his closing eyelids her gentle hand felt good.

“So far we know the source of your superpower is music. I know of another like that, his source is one specific song. Yours?”

Chase kept his mouth shut. The darkness kept dragging him away. His eyes closed again.

“I’ll give you something to perk you up. Then we’ll figure out the superhero you are.”

“I’m not a superhero.”

“You said you wanted to kill Dr. Playground.”

“I want to kill you too.”

“That will take a superhero. A really good one.”

“Even if I was…I couldn’t. You’d kill me instead.”

“Believe in yourself.”

“Now you sound like a Disney movie.”

“Just being ironic.” She caressed his cheek. Her hand went away. Something tiny was stuck to his cheek.

He said, “What’s that?”

“That will perk you up.”

“Don’t perk me up. Let me die.”

“Suicide by starvation, yes?”

His heart stabbed him. “Kieran…Kieran’s family…”

“So you would end your life at fifteen?”

“I only fuck things up.”

“How?”

“I could have saved Kieran. I could’ve talked to the Doctor. I could’ve handled him, been cooperative. I could’ve begged for Kieran’s life. I could’ve blown the Doctor. I would blow him now if it would bring Kieran back. But I had to give him shit. I had to play superhero. When I should have been thinking how to save Kieran, I was thinking with my mask. I’m a dumb asshole who fucked it all up.”

Xoir’s hand lightly backhanded his other cheek.

“Don’t be insulting,” she said. “You are not responsible for Kieran’s death. We are. The OSD kills someone on this planet every day.”

He turned away from her wanting to hide under the towel. He drew up his knees, folded his arms, tried to crush his narrow chest between his arms and knees. His bangs fell into his face. He waited for the sky to fall on him. The sky did not fall on him. It was true. He let himself fall instead. He let go and fell backwards into the sky. The guilt wasn’t there now. It was the feeling of having a building removed from your chest. It was realizing it would be fifty years before you had to quit any of your bad habits. It was being in the electric chair and being pardoned just before they turned the switch. It was the feeling of letting himself live. Reality didn’t have to be tragic. It was a world of shit made pointless and hopeless by impossible forces. But it wasn’t his fault.

Whatever that shit was Xoir gave him, it was stronger than Red Bull. Chase sat up. The darkness had cleared from his head. He swung his feet over the floor. He paid for the movement when hunger stabbed his insides like a samurai sword.

“Yeah,” he said. “I get that, you evil fucks.”

“So what does Chase do now?”

Xoir went to her black handbag, took out his black mask. She went to him, expertly put it on his face. “What you do is get better at what you do. Make up for your weak moments. And continue.”

She made it sound easy. She had no idea. The Kid in the Picture got off the chair. Xoir was taller. Everyone was taller than him.

He said, “Is that what you do?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll try it.”

“You could take to the air right now, couldn’t you?”

“No.”

“You need something?”

“Yes.”

“Something you carry?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“Music,” she said. “We’re all in this discovery process together. You need the answers too.”

She was right. Fuck it. “It’s music,” he admitted.

“Okay. Good. We will explore this.”

“Are you smart enough?”

“I have a lab coat and eyeglasses.”

“If I live through this I’m still Team AXIS. Fuck the OSD.”

“And after the OSD has found the key, we will dispose of your lifeless body.”

“Being ironic again?”

“No.”

“Then this will be a temporary joint operation between The Kid in the Picture and the OSD.”

Xoir switched on a tiny toothpaste commercial smile, said, “Steak or lobster?”

T
ime and the world were outside her mouth waiting for Mafia 13 to come out but he was never coming out. Remy Rocco was his escape route, his hiding place, his faraway pink island. Her oral technique was at the level where her tongue was made by Ferrari.

After the checkered flag, lying naked on the bed, Mafia 13 lit the cannabis in the bowl of a little glass pipe.

Remy said, “
Mister sex-and-drugs
tonight.”

“Yeah.”

“Even when you relax you never relax. What is it now?”

“My nerves.”

“What else?”

“Trouble,” he said.

“Trouble?”

“Yeah.”

“What trouble?”

“Don’t ask.”

“The Murder Mouse thing?”

“Yeah.”

Remy took a toke. “How come it’s trouble?”

“Mouse was a problem.”

“How come?”

“There’s a bag of shit that went out. They got theirs. What about our end? There’s a thing out of town Mouse was supp…what am I telling you for? Fuck that fucking JKM. I should put a hit on the freak when he goes inside.”

“It wasn’t JKM who did Mouse,” Remy said. “It was really the Halo.”

“The she-male partner with the crown with him?”

“Uh-huh. I threw up on her after.”

The laugh burst out of Mafia 13, tickled the ceiling. No joke he’d ever heard was as funny as this joke. It put comedians out of business and closed comedy clubs. The laugh peaked then kept coming back for more.

Remy was standing. She was aiming a 9mm handgun at him. Mafia 13 stopped laughing. Mafia 13 stared at her eyes. He was trying to form thoughts. It was hard to think when he was losing his mind.

He said, “Okay, I believe you. The Halo did it.”

She said, “The OSD found you’re the weakest link. So they pulled a femme fatale on you. Sorry about that, Thirteen.”

“What the fuck?”

“You snitched us out at every chance. You dealt behind the OSD’s back. That Murder Mouse shit, that was another backdoor deal. And you are such a schmuck you just now almost told me about it. You are so the weakest of the Mafia clones. They were going to find that out eventually and they did.”

Maybe he could beg her. Kneel and kiss her shoes. There was no problem doing that. He could go through a lifetime supply of lips kissing her feet. When those ran out, he’d get more so he could keep kissing her feet for another lifetime.

Mafia 13 looked at the doorway behind her, the darkness beyond it. Could he run for it? Maybe get on his knees then make a run for it. Except he was afraid to move one naked muscle. Mafia 13 kept watching the darkness, his one way out. It was cool and distant. He watched it form into a masked face. There was a toothpick in the face. The toothpick in his mouth shifted, a futuristic-looking gun in his hand. The masked man aimed it at the back of Remy’s head.

Remy turned with the gun, splattered the emblem on his chest. He dropped the gun. He looked at Remy, rolled his eyes. He hit the floor, went boots-up.

A second man in the same masked outfit came through the door with the same futuristic gun, shot Remy with a red beam that made her glow. She dropped, her body a vibrating blur. He beamed Remy until she was a shimmering corpse. Mafia 13’s fingers plugged his ears, the red beam a red buzz filling his ears. The man kicked her gun under the bed. He stood over the other man’s body. He reached over, plucked the toothpick from the dead man’s dead lips, slipped it between his own lips.

He turned to Mafia 13, pointed the gun at him. Mafia 13 saw his lips moving, speaking to him. Faint sounds through the red buzz. The lips stopped moving. The man’s hand flashed up, cracked Mafia 13’s face like a whip. Just like that, the red buzz was gone. Now his voice was clearer than crystal high-fidelity sound.

“We’re two dead cops with a vendetta. He’s Pound, I’m Flesh. And we’re here for yours.”

Flesh cuffed Mafia 13, took him naked from the apartment and down the elevator. The see-through ghost of Pound caught up to them.

Flesh said to him, “Good work. You got dusted by Linda Lovelace.”

Pound said, “Up yours.”

“First, we blow. Put mileage between us and the crime scene. Then we work it out.”

“Somewhere where we can think.”

They shoved Mafia 13 into a futuristic car, got in, took off.

“No time to waste,” Flesh said to Mafia 13.

From the back seat Pound said, “Talk or we give you to Dr. Playground ourselves.”

Mafia 13’s limited guts started squirming, pushing its green sting against the top of his rectum trying to get out. He clenched himself to hold in his guts. He leaned forward against the ache of his cuffed wrists behind him, mentally easing his guts back down.

Flesh said, “We need a snitch with OSD dope.”

Pound said, “You’re the weakest link. You’re out of options.”

Flesh: “These are your only choices. Snitch… fink… informant… rat… pick one.”

Mafia 13 said, “Rat.”