Late

Carson Cramer and Jake Caster have been best friends since high school. Now a rising tv anchor and a successful comic book artist, they’ve found that some things change, and some remain very much the same. What Jake isn’t telling Carson: that car accident in high school triggered his super powers, which he now uses for good under the name Phantom. What neither of them know: that same car accident in high school turned Carson into a split-personality superhuman, and the other personality with all the powers is evil. This story was to fill an object prompt. I had to use seven of the following ten items: lighter, ring, light bulb, hamster wheel, giant salad, lipstick, potted plant, boxers, vw beetle, stick

–

They were already going to be ten minutes late, so Carson Cramer didn’t bother to knock on the door until he was already halfway into the apartment. “Get a move on!” he shouted across the living room. “We’re already late!”

“Well, I hate you,” Jake Caster’s voice called back. He appeared from the direction of his bedroom, looking every inch the lazing artist that he was. He’d just pulled a shirt over his head, leaving his hair rumpled, and his belt wasn’t even fastened around his waist yet. Carson pointedly looked away; eleven thirty in the morning was too early to be confronted with even a glimpse of his best friend’s boxers. He kept his eyes on the withered potted plant that Spook used as a scratching post until the sounds of metal and leather subsided and it was safe to look again without too much mental scarring.

Clothes intact, Jake still looked like he’d crawled out of a comic-lined hole in the ground moments before. Carson shook his head in despair. “How are you just getting out of bed? It’s nearly noon!”

“Had a late night.” Jake brushed past him to check his hair in the mirror by the door. After a moment of consideration, he just ruffled his hands through it to make the mess look more intentional, and then bent down to gather up two matching shoes. He settled on the edge of his ratty old couch—the one that Carson constantly offered to replace with something that wouldn’t scare a woman away if Jake ever brought one home—and started to untangle the laces. His movements were a little stiff, and he held himself a bit to one side, like his left leg was hurting him.

Carson knew he had worry lines forming on his face, and didn’t quite manage to wipe them away before Jake glanced up and caught the expression. “Bad workout.”

It was a lie, and they both knew it—they had too much practice reading each other to get away with stuff like that, which was part of the reason this friendship was probably deeply unhealthy to Carson’s mental health. Before he could ask, Jake looked back down again and sighed, “Remind me again why Springfield’s most eligible televised bachelor can’t find a date to a stupid company picnic?”

“It’s the annual ‘Green Peace’ auction,” Carson corrected. “And shut it. You’re not exactly my first choice as a plus one, thank you very much.”

Jake tilted to his feet and stifled a yawn. “With sweet talk like that, no wonder.” He grabbed up his keys from their tray on the counter, adjusted the satchel magically on his shoulder, and made a grand gesture towards the door. “After you.”

And despite himself, Carson smiled. He’d never admit it, but they hadn’t seen much of each other lately, and he’d missed it. Jake had been holed up trying to meet his next deadline, and Carson was fronting the myriad charity events and PR appearances that the station put on every summer.

Besides, it was worth the whole exercise to see Jake’s face when they got to the car.

“What is it?”

“A Volkswagen,” Carson said unhelpfully. He grinned hugely at Jake’s alarm and slapped him on the shoulder. “Oh, don’t look like that. It’s not a bloody Flinstones car. It’s a classic.”

As a matter of fact the thing was a death trap on wheels, but there was a certain charm to the old VW Beetles that made it seem like part of the experience. Or so Elizabeth had insisted, when she signed Carson up to drive it to the auction since no one else would dare. This one tried its best, sitting there in the sun all painted with blue and yellow flowers. He had to admit, the advert people at the station knew how to promote a theme; this thing screamed “Peace, Love and Go Green” better than any poster.

It took them a few minutes to wedge themselves in. The car was barely big enough to hold the two of them, and Jake had to throw his satchel in the back next to Carson’s bag. Jake contorted his arm in an attempt to grab his seatbelt. “So how did you end up with the death trap on wheels, exactly?”

Carson gave him a look, despite thinking the exact same thing himself two minutes ago. “I’m the only anchor in the station who can drive a bloody manual without a diagram.” He gestured at the long black stick between them, stuck out at an odd angle like some kind of antenna. “Alright, let’s get a move on.”

The car started with great reluctance, grumbling and grinding into life like an old woman roused from sleep. It took some yanking on the wheel to get it away from the curb and drifting down the street. They were halfway to the park before the engine rumbled into something more like a purr, and the teeth-knocking shakes just became strong vibrations. Carson let up on the clutch a little and tried to pretend he’d done it on purpose. “There. Walk in the park.”

Jake laughed and rolled down the window. “Remember the first time we tried to drive a stick? When Mr. Jackson said that we could have the Impala for ten dollars if we could drive it down the street and back without stalling?”

Carson smiled at the memory. That car had barely lasted them the summer, between Carson’s part-time job at the paper and Jake’s ill-fated career as a hot dog vendor. It had blown out on them half way out to the lake just before school started, and they’d had to walk five miles in the dark before they found someone to give them a lift home. He could still remember the warm summer air, the smell of pine trees, the exhilarating feeling of being on their own, with no adults in sight to help.

“Wasn’t all bad, I suppose. At least it finally convinced Mum to buy me–”

He stopped dead, right in the middle of the sentence, because the air had just gone out of his lungs.

Buy me that green mustang, he would have finished. The mustang that Carson had been so proud of, the one he’d shined up to take Laurie Holstrum to senior prom. The one that Jake had driven them home in, after they’d both been dumped. The one he’d fallen asleep in, oblivious, only to wake to a bright, terrible noise, and the world turning upside down as the other car hit them head-on and spun them off the road, Jake’s scream ringing in his ears.

They’d never talked about it. Not once in the decade since it happened. He glanced over; Jake was fiddling with the cigarette lighter, ducked down so Carson’s couldn’t catch his eyes.

Jake had never driven a car with Carson in it, since then. Had barely driven one at all, really. They’d never talked about it. They’d never talked about a lot of things. He’d never really noticed why.

They were only three blocks from the park. Carson pulled the car over and turned it off. The sudden silence rang in his ears; the vibrations cutting out finally made Jake look up, finger resting on the lip of the lighter like he was thinking about testing it. It took a long time for their eyes to meet, and even then, Carson couldn’t find the words.

Because it was Jake right next to him now, just like he’s always been since the minute they met. And Carson should have been driving, and neither of them had been hurt. Well. That wasn’t quite true, was it. The words died on impact still rang in Carson’s ears, and he hadn’t even been awake for the collision with that poor sod in the other car.

Sometime in the minutes Carson had been staring into the middle distance, Jake had looked away again, this time out the window. He was trying hard to pretend nothing was wrong, and it made Carson’s chest squeeze a little.

This was ridiculous. They were two grown men in the middle of a summer day, angsting silently about something that’d happened twelve years ago, in another car entirely.

Well, what did he expect, really? They’d never grown up in any good ways, either.

Carson reached out and put a hand on Jake’s shoulder. He left it there, patiently, until Jake managed to look at him again.

“We’re gonna be late,” the other man pointed out, voice not quite steady.

“We’ll blame the car.” Carson didn’t know how to say it, any of it. He’d never been good with words that weren’t scripted for him. So he did the only thing he could think of. He tugged the key out of the ignition, twirled it on its ring, and then silently held it out to his passenger.

Jake’s eyes widened. “No. No, seriously, don’t–”

“You’re driving,” Carson told him, and got out of the car.

Jake got out too. They stood there glaring at each other over the yellow roof of the Beetle, Carson trying to be calm and Jake’s knuckles turning white around the keyring. A car whipped past, and the sound started them out of their showdown.

Finally, Jake took a deep breath and rested his hands on the top of the car like a sign of surrender. “Tell me one good reason why I should do this.”

Carson thought carefully about that. Because you’re my best friend and I trust you seemed the obvious answer. Maybe It wasn’t your fault or I’m sorry I fell asleep and left you alone. Maybe most of all, I’m sorry, because if one of us had to kill someone, even by accident, it bloody well should have been me.

But Jake knew all that, didn’t he? Surely, after all this time, he knew. Carson just had to remind him.

“I’ve been told,” he said slowly, “That they’re going to throw Elizabeth into a giant salad as part of the Go Green demonstration.”

Jake stared at him, and then all at once he smiled. “Yeah. Alright.” Carson breathed a sigh of relief. That had gotten more touchy-feely than he ever wanted to be again, and they hadn’t even talked about it.

They got back into the car, positions reversed, and Carson took a deep breath in unison with Jake as the key turned and the car started.

Jake looked over at him, just once, and gave something like a smile again. “Don’t fall asleep on me, alright?”

“No,” Carson agreed, far more seriously than either of them needed. He cleared his throat again. “Not likely, in this death trap.”

“I told you!” Jake glanced at the mirrors and took another breath. “Alright,” he said, mostly to himself. “Moving on.”

Carson barely hid his grin, and settled back into his seat as they pulled back out into the street.

They ended up being thirty minutes late. Carson couldn’t find it in himself to care.

 

 

The Paper Man

The whiteness stretches before him, a plain square with sharp corners that seem far away. He breezes over the expanse expectant, looking for some change in the landscape, some variance that he can call inspiration. He finds none, and so he starts without it.

Color, he decides, thinking of necessities. “A great blue sky that stretches overhead.” That looks better, but now the ground is far too empty. “A rolling, green hill, dotted with bright wildflowers.” He looks at this new view with satisfaction for a moment; the hard corners and edges have practically disappeared. Still, something missing.

Movement, he realizes. “A rustling wind that sweeps the grass, and clouds that scuttle overhead and race their shadows on the hills.” It is so, and now the expanse, once white and barren, seems alive. He takes a breath of the clean air, tasting it, and finds himself unfulfilled. There is nothing in it.

Presence, he thinks, and this is the hard part. “A city,” he allows, after much deliberation. “With tall gray buildings and narrow streets, that houses a press of people that live gray, narrow, hustling lives.” This changes things, and already the energy of his view has shifted, so he says, “Perhaps some rain, then. A cloudy day, close overhead so they don’t realize what they’re missing.” The atmosphere is thicker, at least. But now what?

Focus, he tells himself sternly. “In the third-highest building, on the sixteenth floor, there is a a smallish, gray, quiet room, inhabited in practice but not in spirit.” He finds himself within its walls and looks around him thoughfully. “A bed, a chair, a table, a desk,” he provides as furnishings. “A wall of books. The kind a man buys thinking he should read them—classics, poetry, philosophy—but never does because he has convinced himself he would never understand them.” That adds something, and he considers what to do next.

The Man, he knows, is the next requirement, but the gap waiting to be filled in with this person’s qualities doesn’t particularly impress him. “Maybe a woman instead, with quiet hands and eyes that have turned gray from always seeing it.” No, she seems shallow there, a cardboard cut-out in the room. He waves her away and tries again. “A man, uneasy without knowing why, hunched into his chair by the desk, sleepless and restless beneath the gray sky.” Yes, that’s much better.

Substance, he declares. “A typewriter before him” it appears accordingly, “whirring tiredly, unsympathetic to his slow attempts at forming letters, words, thoughts, ideas. The Man struggles with the black machine in the gray room, fruitless to articulate the bright wheeling ideas to move and change his sight.”

Who is this? He asks himself out of habit, and the answer unnerves him. You, of course.

Whose life is this? He wonders, and answers himself. Mine.

He blinks and shakes his head and looks down at the product of his morning. No good, of course—depressing, unoriginal, too real for him to use. He picks up the sharp corners heavy with mentality, brings them together. He crumples city, sky, earth, room, man into a compact ball, thinking somberly of regret and arcaneness. It sails through the air, this balled-up world, and lands in the graveyard of its fellows, rejected.

Inspiration, he sighs wistfully, longingly. He settles the pen in his hand and leans in again, searching the sharp-cornered white expanse for something other than himself.

A Golden Ring

This was originally a Christmas thing, but it only got finished now. Eugene has a lovely and complicated back story, and this is about as candid as he ever gets about it–mostly because he’s in a room by himself. In any case, it’s rather melencholy, but I think it’s a lovely side of Springfield’s take-no-guff barber that may start appearing occasionally.

-

Eugene Bud almost never went into his attic. For good reason, really. The place was dark and full of dust and boxes and old memories that he was more than happy to avoid. This was the first time in years he’d even swung open the heavy trap door and climbed up into the cramped little space to brave the stacks and piles of his former life. He’d only been looking for Christmas decorations to begin with—there was a box or two of garlands and colored lights buried somewhere in here that he hadn’t used in years.

Normally he wouldn’t have bothered at all, but the barber had promised himself that he was going to make the effort this year—to make Christmas actually be Christmas, instead of just another day. Instead of that day twenty years ago. It was the first time since he’d moved to Springfield fifteen years ago that Eugene could look forward to the holiday season without the old familiar pain of regret lingering in his chest. That called for garlands, and holly, and even a tree with those annoying permanently-tangled strings of lights.

He was feeling downright jolly; he decided to capitalize on the emotion before reality reasserted itself. And so Eugene found himself on his knees in the attic, Christmas only a week away, sneezing furiously every five seconds as the floating dust permeated his walrus mustache. He’d forgotten that half of these boxes were even up here. Some of them—the ones that had gone from house to house and storage facility to storage facility as he moved with the CIA—weren’t even labeled. It made looking for a specific item more like a life-history scavenger hunt than anything else.

Eugene was fairly sure that he was looking for two boxes labeled “Christmas” in his own handwriting. Or maybe “Holiday Stuff”? No, he was pretty sure it was “Christmas Stuff”. Or had he just labeled it “Decorations”, stupidly figuring that his older self would be able to figure it out if it was that important? To additionally complicate matters, there had been a couple moves back in his thirties when Eugene had intentionally mislabeled boxes to throw off whatever foreign country had been watching him at the time. Looking at the results of that deception now before him, he marveled at his own stupidity. The only person he’d managed to confuse was himself.

He grunted as he removed a small box labeled “pocket watches” from the middle of a leaning stack, and wondered what the heck that had been code for. On inspection, it turned out to be a box full of old cassette tapes that, if he remembered their contents correctly, weren’t supposed to exist at all. With a thoughtful noise, he closed the box again and put it behind him in the “already been examined” stack.

After a few moments of further shuffling, he finally caught sight of a box in the back corner with his handwriting on it. He couldn’t quite make out the label, but there was definitely a C in it. He yanked it out with more force than necessary—it turned out to be small, a shoebox, and the label was wrong. For a long second, Eugene stared at the thing in his hands, stunned at its reappearance after all this time.

Not Christmas.

Crista.

Of all the boxes that he’d relabeled, Eugene wondered for a moment why he hadn’t thought to rename this one. He knew the answer, of course. He couldn’t bear the thought. This was the only place—seeing her name like that—well. Of course he couldn’t relabel it.

Almost against his own volition, he gently eased open the box. The contents hadn’t changed, had barely shifted since their internment two decades ago. A passport. A theater program. An official report still in the CIA-stamped envelope, free of the blacked-out streaks of later versions. Two pictures, both faded, and both absolutely precious. He paused at the pictures, looking at his own younger face, next to one that he remembered much better, and loved rather more.

And a ring. A simple, understated, golden ring, still in its small burgundy case. It looked just like he remembered it, and nothing like it. There was so much history here, cupped gently and warmly in the palm of his hand. It was so small, and so impossibly big.

Too many thoughts. Too many memories. Too many things he tried not to think about when it got dark in the middle of the night.

Eugene reached out a gentle finger and traced her face, her familiar smile, the light in her eyes that no camera could quite catch. He smiled back at her, and there was a real relief in being able to do that in the daylight. He didn’t crack in half—he just ached a little, partly from sitting on the floor and partly from looking at his past, and that was alright.

“I miss you,” he murmured, daring to say it. He felt the ring in his hand for a few moments more, before finally putting it back into its box. He moved to return it to its resting place, but he aborted the motion halfway through. It ended up in his pocket instead, a warm and alien weight that was nevertheless comforting. Then he put everything else carefully back in the shoebox, closed it carefully, and returned it to its place in the back corner.

The Christmas spirit had completely deserted him, but it had been replaced by a kind of wholeness in his chest that was a different thing entirely. Different, but…good. The lights and the tinsel could wait another year. He had some memories to sort through properly.

Eugene creaked himself up to his feet and brushed the dust from his knees, his hair, huffed it from his mustache. It fell like snow on the towers of boxes, and for a moment he saw old gray close-stacked buildings arranged around a square, under the Christmas sky.

Then real life reasserted itself again. Eugene snorted softly at himself and went back downstairs.

His hand rested gently over the bulge in his pocket for the rest of the night, and he didn’t try to stop it.

Tomorrow

“They’re wings!“

Cara circled around the elaborate contraption before her, her breath tight in her chest, held by excitement. Wings! All rusty metal and canvas-colored polyplastics, but still, she could see them, see the beauty of them amidst the grime and the grease and the ropes stretched taut, holding them upright from either side. The dull red-gold light fell through the polyplastic membranes where they tapered into points six feet above her, leaving a fluttery feeling in her heart and a crimson stain of light across her face.

“They’re not quite finished yet,” Matthias warned her from his place in the corner, propped back on his three-legged chair. She dragged her eyes from the beautiful mass of bolts and careful wires before her and turned to glare at him, having to guess at his expression because his whole upper half was swathed in the shadow creeping down the wall as the sun set below the rim of the half-dissolved ceiling high above them. Cara’s hands found her hips in a familiar defiant gesture–the one that always made Matt sigh and tip forward in his chair. His face came into view all at once, a bizarre mix of hard angles and definitive shadows slashing across the planes of his face in the dust-red light of the fading day. His hands and arms were streaked and smudged with oil, and she knew that he had probably been here for days, playing and prodding and bending those beautiful, spectacular wings into shape again, just because he knew she’d like them. Because all she’d ever wanted to do, for as long as she could think or speak, was fly away from here, just for a split second, on wings that flashed and glimmered in the sunlight.

“There are still a few things that need working on,” he said again, suppression in his tone. Cara bristled.

His cautious practicality, usually accepted with reluctant quietness from his companion, felt as dark and out of touch as the shadows streaking across the room behind Cara’s steadfast pose. She refused to let him talk her out of this today. Especially when she knew that he’d done all this for her, and he had brought her here to make sure she saw them. Instead of answering, she turned again to watch the sunlight play across the half-burnished metal clasps where the shoulders of the harness met the ultra-light material of the wingspan on either side.  “Wings,” she breathed again, reverently. It was so perfect that she knew this memory would be shiny around the edges, and the hope in her throat was so hard that it hurt to swallow.

She felt Matthias rustle to his feet behind her, his feet making no noise on the hard floor because there wasn’t enough of him left to even disturb the coating of metal shavings covering everything in sight. He came to stand beside her and for a moment the two of them were silent, just staring at the remarkable flying contraption as the world began to darken outside, the cool night air wafting in from above and all around. Too many cracks and holes in the doors and windows and walls to repair in here, of course. But Matt had managed to rig up a few lights along the walls, and Cara could hear the metallic hum as they blinked on, one by one, in preparation of the coming dark cycle. She turned to look at him when the one directly above his head on the far wall didn’t turn on. He gave a sigh, and his thin shoulders seemed to collapse in on themselves like an old spring.

Broken, of course. Cara couldn’t remember a time when something in the world wasn’t broken, wasn’t falling apart before her eyes. Even Matthias, who looked less substantial every time she looked at him, like he was wisping away in his own genius, getting picked apart by his own sky-high longings for things (for people?) that Cara never asked about, because she knew that she wouldn’t get an answer. She didn’t want one. Everyone was broken, and everything was falling apart litlte by little before her eyes, fading away with the last remnants of the day. It seemed silly–superficial, a word that Matt had just taught her last week–to draw attention to the fact that the pieces of their world were turning slowly into dust.

“From dust we came, and to dust we will return,” she murmured to herself, because the words were hard to keep inside her head, where they’d been bouncing around ever since Matthias read them to her, years and years ago. She could feel his concerned gaze trace her face, but she ignored him, staring at the wings again. They reflected silver now, the faint white lights on the walls turning the membranes and the hard lining of the metal the same color as the stars that shimmered outside the atmospheric veil on clearer nights.

She turned her head to face him, and her voice was firm and full of a kind of fierce joy that she hadn’t felt once in her whole life, before seeing the wings. “I’m using them.”

He gave another one of his long sighs, and Cara thought she could see the metal shavings fall off the sound like a cloud of resignation. “Tomorrow, Cara. Please? I have to finish them. We’ll try them in the morning.”

The thought of waiting another second–of being stuck here, both feet on the slowly turning, quickly crumbling earth when the sky and the stars and the dream of her life waited above her–was nearly her undoing. For a long moment she could see it in her mind’s eye, as she rushed past him and buckled herself into the harness. She could feel the singing adrenaline in her veins, the rushing in her head as she grasped that control with her left hand and pushed the green button at its tip. She felt the wind rush against her face and heard herself laugh with delight, Matthias’ panicked yell erased in the beautiful, stunning sound of the polyplastics charging and her feet leaving the ground and the sky opening up above her like the only gift she had ever been given in her life.

Flying.

But then her eyes cleared, and she was looking at Matt’s worried face again, and she felt her heart beating strongly in her chest. She wondered, for the first time, why Matthias did these things for her. He didn’t want the wings for himself, had never even considered it. He only wanted to watch her taking off, and know that he was the one to put the last bolts and the fiddly pieces in place. The understanding weighed her down, grounded her, and when she looked at the wings again, she could brace herself against their pull.

“Tomorrow?” she asked him, her voice hesitant and hopeful and a hundred other things she wished it wasn’t. “You promise? Tomorrow they’ll be ready?”

The smile in his eyes was new to her, but the affectionate tone in his voice was all familiar memory. “I promise, Cara. Tomorrow, you can fly.”

Bargain Shopping

Ian Rollands is working on his masters in sociology at community college, works part-time for Eugene Bud at the barber shop, and spends his free time doing homework and swimming. He is also a superhero. As Ambush, he has the ability to duplicate himself. This story takes place early on in his supercareer.

–

He’d never been able to say no to a sale.

He could blame his mother for that, really. She’d brought him up with a love of bargain shopping, yard sales, and thrift stores. It had been necessary for them, really: living with little meant learning to spend little. But even though they hadn’t always had everything they needed, they had always had a sense of class that was miraculously supported by extremely savvy purchases. Bargain shopping was a great ally. Still, he also knew full well that bargain shopping often meant stupid shopping.

With a heavy sigh, Ian Rollands leaned back in his desk chair and clicked through the catalog again.

See, that was the problem with buying things cheap: you started buying things because they were cheap. Walk into a thrift store with no clear purpose or intention, and you came out with stained glass fish and broken wind chimes. Ian’s mother had taught him how to avoid the trap that so many people fell into when confronted with inexpensive items. Know your goal, achieve the goal, and leave as soon as possible.

The motto worked pretty well for superwork, too. Ian had muttered the words to himself more than once when stopping a bank robbery.

Which led him to his current predicament, really. Because he was a superhero now, and a dang good one, if he did say so himself. And any decent superhero needed a costume. One that could be bought with the barely-existent remains of his paycheck from the barber shop, after things like food and utilities and rent had been accounted for.

That only left him a few options. Cheap options. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, extending the motion to run his fingers through his shaggy blonde hair before staring at the computer screen again, as if hoping that the gaudy purple logo would have changed in the last minute. It hadn’t. It was still there in the corner, rotating and sparkling and looking completely tacky.

“Superquick!Costuming,” he muttered to himself, still slightly incredulous. He could even hear the exclamation mark when he pronounced it. It was bargain shopping at its worst. You could get everything on this site. They offered basic outfits, capes, gloves, utility belts, visors, even a design-and-print logo service. An entire superhero look, available for Ian’s mix-and-match pleasure.

It seemed…wrong, somehow. He’d heard stories about how the great superheroes like Galileo got their suits. Those outfits had been works of love, made by hand, designed specifically for the person wearing them. They became the superhero, and the outside world couldn’t recognize one without the other. Buying pieces of a suit from a bulk company seemed…

Well. Cheap. And depressingly practical. Which was the whole point, really.

Ian wandered aimlessly through the Superquick!Costuming catalog again. The “2 for 1!” heading on the cape section drew his eye for a split second before he hurried on to another page. No capes. He’d been very firm with himself on the subject, because any hero he had ever made fun of had a cape. He had standards. Besides, they would be a pain and a half to replicate accurately. No, he needed something…simpler. More basic.

He went straight past the accessory section, which advertised utility belts, mustaches, and golden halos. Somewhere in the back of his cranium where the remains of his pride lived, he could feel a headache forming.

With a sense of impending resignation, he clicked over to the bodysuit section. The colors of the modeled suits on the first page hurt his eyes. Who wore that color of purple? Especially in spandex? It boggled the mind. He refused to look like Old Glory in his twenties. Apparently, paisleys were in this season. Ian spared a moment to consider the ramifications of killing off a “fashion designer” for the sake of the poor, oppressed, aesthetically-concerned superhero. He could use the catalog as evidential support in court.

It was worth thinking about. But it didn’t solve his current problem. Ian clicked to the next page of basic bodysuits, and the next, feeling more and more frustrated with every pass. Was it always this hard? Had Galileo and Stone and the other great superhero icons of the age had this much trouble finding something in a color they liked? Finally, with a sense of desperation, Ian scrolled down and hit the very last page number in the section.

Two items appeared. One was a bright pink suit with fake abs painted onto it in red. There was a cracked heart design over the chest. Ian stared at it for a moment with the morbid fascination usually reserved for car wrecks and couples fighting in public before his eyes finally slid over to the very last bodysuit item available in the Superquick!Costuming catalog.

Oh. That was…not half bad, actually.

It was black. And that was all, really. Just a black bodysuit. He did a quick scroll through the specifics. Hardened polymer, not spandex. Gloves included. No frills, no logos, no painted abs. Easy to replicate, hard to see in a dark alley, and completely without pretension.

And on sale. It could be his, for only $13.99, plus shipping!

Almost without realizing it, Ian began to smile. Well, it was no stunning fashion statement or anything, but it would do. With a renewed sense of purpose, he returned to the accessory section. Feeling led by a kind of inspiration, he once again clicked to the very last page, and once again found exactly what he was looking for.

He’d need something to cover the eyes. His duplicates’ milky blue gazes had to be covered up for any kind of ruse to be effective. The simple black visor would do just the trick.

With a sense of accomplishment, Ian rushed to place his orders, plugged in his credit information, and bought the two items. The sense of adrenaline stayed with him, as if he’d just beaten someone in a race.

He had a supersuit. It was simplistic, yes, and completely without any distinguishing marks or significant style. But it was efficient, and understated. And…well. Cheap.

It was him.

Sitting there in his tiny little Springfield apartment, listening to the furnace turning on and the traffic outside, feeling cramped and tired and overworked, Ian Rollands became a genuine superhero. He was no superstar, but he’d do the best with what he had, and he’d be good at it. Somehow, he didn’t think that anyone—not even Galileo– could do more than that.

In that moment, Ian Rollands truly became Ambush.

It was time to save the world.

Right after he called his mom and told her about the great deal he’d just gotten. He’d never been able to say no to a sale.

Dreaming, Eyes Open

Some kind of storm was building out on the horizon. She wasn’t sure why there should be a storm at all, really, or even where the horizon ended and the nearness began. But she did know that the huge, massed, yellow-bellied clouds were slowly, oh so slowly, coming towards her. She felt an odd reluctance at the thought, and she deliberately lifted her eyes away from the dull flashes of lightning deep within the belly of the stormy beast.

The view above her was much more pleasant, in any case. She leaned back to settle on the grass and took a deep breath of the warm, sweet air. The sky above her was all dark purple-black, and shiny with stars and galaxies, soft with the velvet of half-formed wishes. It was like looking into a pool of water that never ended, that just consisted of ripples all the way down, deeper and deeper into…something. Or maybe nothing. She thought, for a moment, that maybe it was supposed to be both. Almost despite herself, her eyes twitched to watch the coming thunderheads, just for a second.

It wasn’t fair. She didn’t want to leave this place. Whatever it was. Better than where she’d been before, anyway, of that she was sure.

Where she’d been before was…she didn’t want to think about that, either. Besides, not thinking about it was easier. She couldn’t remember much of it anyway, except for a big blast of light, and a sound almost like a voice. Maybe hers? She wasn’t sure; she’d never heard it. She didn’t really want to know anyway.

Her eyes drifted towards the storm again. It was getting closer; she could feel the first wisps of water in the wind that tugged playfully at the ends of her hair.

A nightmare.

The word wandered through her head and stuck on the big, black-yellow bruise of a cloud moving in from the horizon. Yes, that seemed right. Nightmares, coming to block out the pretty swirl of galaxies and nebulae in the sky that seemed just a breadth away from her outstretched fingertips.

Well. That would make this a dream, then. The idea didn’t disturb her as it probably should have. It did seem a bit like a dream. A good one, at least. Her head lolled back and she watched the stars again. She noted absently that they moved a little; the swirls and whorls of far-off stars and planets glided silently in concentric circles, meshing and moving and somehow never meeting.

Never meeting. Lonely. Secluded and held in warm, comforting blackness, with only the light of other bodies for context and company.

Like her. She understood them, and she wondered if that was part of the dream too, or just part of her.

Maybe this wasn’t her dream at all. Maybe it belonged to someone else entirely. That thought gave her pause for the first time. Maybe the nightmare coming towards her on the wind was there for someone else. Even as she considered this, she knew that it couldn’t be true. It was coming for her, alright. She could feel it, behind her eyes and in the small place in her mind that wondered if she was sleeping or awake.

There was an ominous rumbling in the distance. The sound was more felt than heard. Thunder in her bones, and surely that would wake her up, wouldn’t it? But nothing changed, except that the wind grew colder.

Maybe she really was awake, then. It didn’t matter, in the end. Or maybe it did. Maybe dreams were all there was to begin with anyway.

Maybe she was always asleep. Maybe everyone was.

That must be it, she decided. This could be her dream, and still be someone else’s, everyone else’s, too. It was both.

The storm was nearly on her, now. Somehow, getting up and moving, running, trying to outpace the great outpouring of the dooming clouds never occurred to her. This wasn’t that kind of dream. She looked up at the sky again, but now half of it was covered with the dark gray storm. The thunder grew louder, and the rain began to pelt her face.

She was forced to squint a bit in order to see the stars, now. They were being blotted out, one by one. She wondered if the clusters and galaxies of lights still moved in their vast, tireless circles far above her, or if they ceased to be as soon as they were blocked from her sight.

For a moment, she wished she knew the answer. Then she would know if this was her dream, or someone else’s.

As the lightning started to crackle overhead, she had one last look at the huge, firefly-twinkling sky of revolving stars, and she had a strange, still feeling that she was looking at herself. Perhaps that was it. Maybe each of those lights, those stars floating up above her just out of reach behind the clouds, were all just girls sitting on hills. Maybe there was someone just like her, staring up and watching as one light in the thousand million grayed out, swallowed by an unseen cloud of nightmares.

In a way, that gave her comfort. At least it meant that someone was watching. Someone, at least, knew her. Even if this was just a dream. She hoped it was going better for the other lights in the sky.

And then the nightmare broke over her in lashing wind and pounding rain, and lightning scorched the sky and hurt her eyes. In the midst of the deluge and the roaring sound, she saw a bright light and heard a horrible sound, and she wondered if this wasn’t the real nightmare after all.

She closed her eyes and curled up in the wet grass, and hugged her knees to her chest and began to rock.

She remembered, now.

“Please,” she whispered, lost in the unhearing clouds and the faraway sky and the strength of the storm. “Please, don’t wake up.”

But it was too late. Because this wasn’t her dream after all, and even as her eyes began to droop, she fought the inevitable long enough to watch the clouds above her dissolve, fade away, blow into the something and the nothing of the starry sky.

And then her eyes closed, and the dream ended.

Somewhere on another hilltop, a boy looking up at the great wheeling of the cosmos saw a tiny little star go out, and wondered why the sight of it made him shiver.

Detention with Mr. Meeps

From the writing prompt, “Louder isn’t always better.”  I loved being able to focus on Oliver. And though he doesn’t appear much in this (in human form, anyway), it was also fun to introduce Lex.

—

The sound of something large and heavy being tipped over made Oliver Meeps pause for a moment outside the classroom door. He waited there for a moment, listening intently to the clamor of voices inside. A male voice was raised in anger and then abruptly cut off; something resembling a girlish scream rang out, and then Oliver heard the familiar sound of someone being tossed into a large wastebasket. This was followed directly by a loud flatulent noise that sounded very much like an angry octopus trying to extricate itself from a mound of paper and pencil shavings.

If Mr. Meeps had learned anything from fifteen years of hero work and another five of substitute teaching, it was that timing was everything. Straightening from leaning on his cane, he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders as best he could, and entered Springfield High’s after-school detention room.

Unsurprisingly, he was immediately greeted by the guilty-looking expressions of six football players. They were all gathered around the industrial-sized trashcan over in the corner, doing a good job of blocking his view of it. The desk directly next to the trashcan was knocked over, and if there hadnt’ been two notebooks scattered like debris around the desk, a worse observer than Oliver would never have known there was a seventh student in the room.

But Oliver was a good observer, and he also had the advantage of being able to physically see the moral character of every individual in the room. He took a moment to indulge in what he privately called the “soul searching” of the room’s occupants. The small balls of color he saw coming from each of the boys all had distinct shades of very guilty purple around the edges. He knew their types well. They weren’t necessarily bad at heart; they were just unruly, disrespectful, and rarely disciplined. A few of them even had the potential to do something quite impactful with their lives, if they picked better friends to associate with.

Still, they’d been caught red-handed, as it were, and for a split second Oliver knew he had their attention. He cleared his throat softly and looked at them over the tops of his glasses with gentle, if not innocent, brown eyes. “Good afternoon, gentlemen.”

They were clearly thrown by his mild manner. Another good thing he’d learned from his many experiences was to keep your voice down. Even after all these years, he could practically hear his mother’s voice murmuring, “Louder isn’t always better, dear. Sometimes the best response is the one they can barely hear.”

Oliver took a few careful steps forward, trying not to rely on his cane even though his hip was twinging painfully from an oncoming storm front. He smiled at them, quite calmly, and reached up to dust an imaginary speck of lint from his hat. “I believe,” he continued in that same even tone, “that you’ve put Mr. Laurence in the trashcan again. And unless I’m very much mistaken, that’s quite against the established detention-time rules. If you’d just remove him, then I won’t have to write you all up another detention.”

One of the boys (Oliver thought he was probably the quarterback) regained his composure and stepped forward. “Oh yeah? How you gonna make us? You’re just a substitute!”

For a moment Oliver very much felt their differences in stature; Meeps himself had always been something of a small man, even before he relied so much on his cane, and the boy before him was a good foot taller, not to mention at least a hundred pounds heavier.

If this had been a question of physical violence, Oliver would have beat a hasty retreat at this point. Fortunately, it wasn’t, and he knew full well that the poor boy had no idea who—or what—he was dealing with. He could tell just by looking at the way the boy’s colors shifted to a kind of gaudy yellow that he was bluffing, and not particularly well. He’d gotten away with this one too many times.

He’d clearly never had to deal with old Mr. M. Oliver smiled up at him without an ounce of trepidation. “Ah, I see. Just a substitute, of course. I can’t really do anything, can I?”

“That’s right,” the boy agreed with a smug look back at his friends. There was a soft popping noise from inside the wastebasket, followed by what sounded like a rat trying to claw its way up a smooth plastic wall.

Oliver nodded agreeably. “So you say. I’m sorry, what was your name?”

“Mayes,” he said proudly, in the same tone that other people used when they’d just won awards. “Billy Mayes.”

“Ah.” Meeps took some satisfaction in knowing he’d been right. “Our school’s famed quarterback, I think I’m correct in saying?”

“That’s right,” he said with a grin. Oliver could literally see his yellow-green arrogance swelling to ridiculous proportions in his chest. Several of the boys still at the trashcan made affirmative noises, and one even stepped forward to slap Billy on the back.

Oliver continued to smile, but now his eyes narrowed a bit. Someone that knew him well would have been wary of the glint that was forming at the back of his gaze. Billy Mayes had picked the wrong day to try and bulldoze the substitute teacher. Especially this substitute teacher. “Alright then, Mr. Mayes. If you can tell me why you have the right to stuff poor Lex into the trashcan, then I suppose I won’t have to give you a detention.”

Billy stared at him blankly for a moment. He was used to substitutes and teachers alike bowing before his superior athletic record. This wasn’t the out he’d been expecting. Still, he made an effort, his face screwing up in concentration until he finally answered, “…Because the guy’s a twerp?”

The noises inside the trashcan promptly ceased. Oliver only saw the tiny ant that appeared on the rim because he was looking for it. He watched the insect for a moment as it made its way to the classroom floor, and then returned his attention to Billy. He took a moment to really consider the boy’s colors; Mayes wasn’t innately evil, but the generally scarlet tones overlaying his character spoke of natural tendencies towards cruelty and domination.

“A twerp. I see.” Oliver paused a moment to consider which tact was best, but in the end, there was really only one option. The boy’s own soul gave Oliver all the information he needed to make his point. With a long sigh, he leaned forward slightly and spoke in a low voice. “You know, Billy, when I look at you, I see a lot of things. An accomplished athlete, a natural leader. You have quite a lot of promise.”

Mayes grinned widely, but Oliver wasn’t finished yet. He looked at the sickly yellow-green color radiating from the boy’s edges and identified it easily for what it was. “I also see someone that feels like he has to impress his friends, because he’s not all sure himself that he’s the kind of man he wants to be.” A petulant flair of bruised-purple color somewhere near the middle of Billy’s chest allowed Oliver to continue, “And I think that at the end of the day, Mr. Mayes, you know full well that you’re not fulfilling your potential. And you’re angry; at yourself, or maybe your parents, or just the world for not giving you the breaks it should have. But shoving fellow students into trashcans is not the way to solve these problems, Billy.”

The boy stared at him in shock, his arrogance silenced totally by the perceptive little man before him. It was likely nothing he hadn’t heard before, but something in the quiet delivery this time seemed to have hit home. He shook his head a few times, as if trying to dislodge Oliver’s words from his brain.

Meeps looked him squarely in the eye, and though he actively chose not to fully utilize his ability to show the boy his own colors, his words had more or less the same effect as he finished, “One day, Billy, you’re going to have to face yourself in the mirror and decide what your real colors are. Why not start now and make them ones worth looking at?”

Billy stood there a moment longer, clearly thinking hard in the silent room. No one noticed when Oliver glanced down and smiled at the ant now sitting on his left shoe. When he looked back up, he was just in time to catch the moment of decision on Billy’s face as the boy reluctantly turned to the others and said, “Alright, guys. Enough is enough. Let him out.”

The right tackle went to do so, but as he glanced into the trashcan he made a startled noise and jumped back. “Hey, he’s not in here! Where’d the punk go?”

Oliver felt a dangerous shifting by his foot and groaned. “Perhaps, under the circumstances, insults wouldn’t be–”

There was a tremendous popping noise down by the floor, but instead of turning into a raging hippopotamus or an angry bird like Oliver expected, the ant merely transformed into the despondent form of Lex Laurence.

The boy looked up through his fringe of badly-gelled hair and scrambled to his feet, nearly tripping over his far-too-baggy pants. Oliver took a moment to assess the boy’s colors, but they were no different than the other times he’d seen them: angrily embarrassed pink practically lit him up like a neon sign. Without a word, the sullen young man trudged over to his abandoned desk, scooped up his scattered things, and resettled at a spot across the room, glaring daggers at his temporarily-distracted persecutors.

“Right then,” Oliver said softly. “Maybe we should all return to our seats and get on with this detention?”

Amazingly, all seven of his students did exactly as they were told, spreading out to sit in desks again. Most of them stared absently into space, the atmosphere turning thoughtful.

Eventually, though, Billy Mayes broke from his reverie. With just a quick glance at Oliver, he cleared his throat and turned instead to Lex. “Hey, uh…Lex.”

The other boy looked up out of reflex, wincing like he expected a punch. He watched Billy with wary eyes.

But no punches or insults were thrown. With careful motions, Mayes leaned over and held out his hand. “I’m…uh. I’m sorry about the whole…you know, trashcan thing. And the…the locker thing. And the pool thing. It’s not that I don’t like you or anything.” He blinked at hearing those words come out of his mouth and quickly backtracked, “Well, I don’t, but only cuz I’m popular and you’re…well, you, you know?”

To Oliver’s bemusement, Lex nodded as if that made perfect sense.

Billy continued. “It’s just…it’s kind of fun to watch. That animal thing that you do. That’s kind of cool, you know?”

Oliver held his breath for a moment, fully aware that this was as close to an attempt at reconciliation that the quarterback would ever come.

After a long beat of careful study, Lex eventually extended his own hand and gave Billy’s a quick and furtive shake. “…You think it’s cool?”

Billy shrugged. “Kinda, yeah. At least it’s not some stupid power like…like…”

“Like turning people green!” one of the other football players chipped in helpfully.

“Yeah!” Billy agreed, obviously grateful for the help. “Animals are way cooler than turning people colors!”

Oliver smiled and sat back in the teacher’s chair. He knew that, in all likelihood, this moment of inter-clique student harmony wouldn’t last. Boys would be boys, after all. But for now, he took a deep breath, and settled in to watch over the frames of his glasses as the colors in the room shifted to a shade that was almost, but not quite, the blue-gray calm of understanding.

The Sensational Mr. Poplar

From the writing prompt, “Careful, I’ve heard they can sense fear.”  (Saul is a new addition to the Springfield cast of characters, but I quite like him.)

—

“Alright, everyone! It’s time to go home!” Saul Poplar clapped his hands enthusiastically. The sound was mostly lost in the raucous cheering of eighteen second-graders who’d just been told their weekend was in sight. In the ensuing rush of packing up, Saul made his way across the classroom to take his customary station by the back door.

He waited patiently until all eighteen students were lined up, more or less in single-file, all watching him expectantly. Timothy Green was practically standing on his teacher’s toes. The boy bounced a few times until Saul put a hand on his head and firmly anchored him to the ground. “Let’s say thank you one more time to Mr. Cramer for taking a whole day off to come tell us about being a TV personality!”

As one, the students looked over their shoulders to wave enthusiastically at their guest speaker of the day and chorused “Thank you!”

Carson Cramer waved back and beamed at them. “Thank you all for having me! And remember, no matter what Mr. Poplar tells you, being a news anchor is hard work!”

“Because news never stops!” several kids piped in, quite proud that they remembered his catch phrase.

Carson winked at them, which caused several of the girls to giggle, and then turned to start packing up the things he’d brought along to help with his demonstration.

Saul rolled his eyes affectionately, and then he reached for the coats. This had become something of a ritual for him; his empathic sense let him get a bit of a read on each kid’s mood through their possessions, at least since lunchtime when they’d last put their things on. And since the items had been sitting for a few hours, the vibes were mellowed enough that he didn’t get a headache from running across someone’s bad day, either.

He reached out and grabbed Timothy’s hat from its peg. He was completely unsurprised by the pang of sadness that echoed somewhere deep inside his chest as he pulled the hat all the way down to cover the boy’s eyes. Saul put one hand on Timothy’s shoulder for a second and re-straightened the hat with the other. “You did great today, Timothy. You were a big help to Mr. Cramer. I bet your parents would be proud of you.”

Timothy looked up at him and smiled, mind clearly on getting out of the classroom to do all the fun non-school things he had planned. “Thanks, Mr. P.” Saul knew full well that the words wouldn’t make up for Timothy’s need for the parental affection he got so rarely from his often-absent parents. But he felt the boy’s mood lift a little through the hat he still touched. It was something, anyway. Hat now properly adjusted, Timothy dashed off to his weekend.

Saul smiled after him, and then turned to the next student in line. Penny Dabbs looked up at him expectantly, and he smiled. “Hi, Penny. Have a good weekend! Eat a donut for me, alright?” He felt the brown-eyed girl’s pride in being picked as hall-monitor today still lingering in the purple wool of her scarf. Saul bent to be eye-level with her as he tied the scarf into place around her neck. His brow creased with worry; the happy emotions otherwise present were dulled, as they were so often lately, by Penny’s chronic tiredness. He spoke a little softer as he looked her in the eye. “Do your parents know you didn’t sleep very well this week?”

Penny shook her head, unusually silent. Saul nodded in understanding. “Maybe you should tell them.”

“Thanks, Mr. Poplar.” Her smile was small, but genuine. She took her purple hat as he handed it to her and put it on without her usual vigor as she left the classroom.

And so the line went, as Mr. Poplar spent a moment of time with each of his kids on their way out the door. The occasional word of encouragement or gentle reprimand, always spoken at the right time in the right tone, had a marked effect on each student as they left the room. At long last, all the second-graders were gone, the classroom empty except for its teacher and its guest speaker.

With a long sigh, Saul popped his neck and then crossed the room to Carson, pausing to straighten chairs and pick up trash along the way.

His friend watched him with a thoughtful expression, and the Scot’s blue eyes twinkled with something like admiration. “You’re right brilliant with the little ones, Saul. I’ve never seen a herd of seven year olds love someone like they love you. How d’you put up with ‘em every day? I’d go mad if I had your job.”

Saul gave an easy shrug as he reached the other man’s side. The truest answer–that he could read people’s emotions through inanimate objects and thus correctly gage their mood—wasn’t really a viable response. To buy time, he spun on his heel and tossed a wadded ball of construction paper in a perfect three-point shot to the trash can in the far corner of the room. “Ah, they’re great kids. Besides, Career Week gets them all excited. They always behave better when they have speakers to impress.” He reached out his hand. “Thanks again for coming in, Carson. I know you’ve got a million things to do.”

Carson clasped the teacher’s hand with a strong grip and a smile. “Ach, it was the least I could do. Besides, this was the easy lot. I have to show a bunch of misbehaving high schoolers around the set on Monday as a reward for some science fair.”

Saul snorted at that mental image. “Careful, I’ve heard they can sense fear.”

The TV anchor shook his head a little as he snapped the final microphone case shut. “In this town, I wouldn’t doubt it. It’d be a right handy skill, though, in my business.” He chuckled to himself. “And probably in yours too, come to think of it.”

There was really no way for Saul to answer that but with a very honest, “Yeah, it really would.” He went over to collect the last two jackets on the pegs. He put on his own jacket and scarf before scooping up Carson’s long gray coat.

He actually had to close his eyes and lean against the wall for a second as a muddled ball of confusion, exhaustion and maybe a little bit of fear expanded from the center of his chest and spread out to leave his fingers tingling. His head hurt for a moment from the echoes of what must have been the killer tension headache Carson had been fighting when he donned his coat this morning.

Saul shook his head firmly and the emotions faded to a dull unease. It all took less than a few seconds, and when he turned and handed Carson his coat, his expression was clear of the emotions he now knew his friend had been feeling all day.

He handed Carson the garmet silently. The other man accepted it with a smile. “Thanks, lad.” He put his cases on a nearby desk to slip it on.

Saul watched him with new attention. Now that he looked for them, he could just see the lines around the other man’s mouth and eyes that told of his suffering through a monster headache that would have made the average person stay home from work. He could see the tiredness in Carson’s frame now, too, a slump to his normally straight shoulders that Saul felt guilty for not noticing before now.

If Saul hadn’t felt the maelstrom of unpleasantness from Carson himself, he would never believe that someone could be in that much turmoil inside and barely show a trace of it to the outside world. How the man managed to pull it off was a mystery. Impulsively, he reached out to straighten Carson’s jacket collar where it stuck up on one side. He took the opportunity to look his friend squarely in the eye. “Hey. You doing okay?”

Carson blinked, genuinely surprised by the worry in Saul’s voice. “Aye, ‘course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”

When he only received a raised eyebrow in response, he sighed, and his shoulders slumped a little more under Saul’s hand. “I’m alright, really. Just haven’t been sleepin’ well, is all. You know how it is. Doctor says it’s just stress, I’ll come through it eventually.” He gave a wry grin and shook his head. “Never can fool you, can I?”

Saul let go of him to button up his own jacket. “Someone’s got to keep you on the straight and narrow. You’re too good at acting for your own good, but I could practically feel that headache from across the room.”

Carson’s mouth twitched into another smile as they headed for the door. “Are you sure you can’t sense things a wee bit after all? Because I could use you as a news story. Saul Poplar, the Sensational Second-Grade Teacher!”

“You must be having a slow news week. You’ll have to try harder than that, my friend.” He let Carson precede him through the door and paused for a second to look over the rows of desks, each one still radiating with the emotions of their occupants. To Saul, it was almost as if his class was still in the room.

The Sensational Second-Grade Teacher. Well, maybe he was. But it wasn’t only because he just happened to be able to feel his student’s emotions through their hats. The thought was a comforting one. With one last look around the room, Mr. Poplar turned off the lights and went to walk Carson to his car.

The classroom stilled, warm and empty, and though he didn’t know it, a vague outline of Saul’s compassion lingered in the doorway long after he was gone.

Leaking

From the writing prompt, “The roof was leaking.” This story is set farther along in the Springfield timeline than most of the others.

It had been raining now for seven days straight. Jean Knockings brushed her hair from her face and stood from the dirt floor she’d been sleeping on. She made her way to the door of the hut and looked out at the steaming jungle. The air was so thick with moisture that it felt like a wet cloth pressed against her skin. The smell of wet animal hide radiated from the walls of the hut; it would make her stomach turn if she hadn’t grown used to it months before.

The roof was leaking. The soft drip drip drip of water hitting the ground behind her played an odd counterpoint to the insistent tap tap tap of the rain beating against the sides of the hut. She knew that if she turned to look, she’d be able to see a puddle of water directly in the middle of the packed dirt floor where the rain was leaking through the hole in the alpaca skin at the pinnacle of the roof.

In a weird way, she envied that skin. The idea of being able to gouge a hole and let all the accumulated pressure in her mind pour out was more than a little appealing. After seven days, she knew this place so well that she could literally see it with her eyes closed. With absolutely perfect recall. There were days when Jean truly hated having this ability to remember everything she saw. Sometimes, she thought forgetting would be easier.

No, she admitted to herself, not sometimes. All the time.

Remembering was hard. Especially on days like this one, in weeks like this one, where she had to sit still and just wait for whatever weather crisis or local custom was currently blocking her path to blow through so she could continue on her quest. She snorted softly to herself. Quest was too civilized a word, though one she liked better. Hunt was more appropriate. A hunt for the man who had done so much damage to so many people. The man that had sent her brother to his death and left his body on the floor.

Doctor Aakil Sarin was out there somewhere, and Jean hated sitting still. After six months of being on his tail—six months of near-misses, of dashed hopes, of travel through so many countries that anyone but her would have lost count—she’d finally tracked him down to Sao Paulo in Brazil. In retrospect she should have come here first; in a lot of ways, this place was the genesis of Sarin’s madness. She supposed that in a way, it probably felt like home to him.

She’d been so close this time. Practically close enough to taste the end of her long and so far fruitless chase. She’d even seen Sarin; seen his eyes widen in recognition, seen him flee across the crowded street and into the waiting cart before she could stop him or even speak. She could see the smug smile on his face with crystal clarity when she closed her eyes, even though she’d only spotted it for a fraction of a second before the cart whisked him off towards the mountains.

The mountains where she was now stuck, waiting for the rain to stop so she could continue on her search once again.

Jean still didn’t know what she was going to do when she caught up with Sarin. What was she supposed to do to the man who’d killed her twin, who’d manipulated them both for so long that she couldn’t ever remember a time when he hadn’t had a hand in their lives?

She remembered once, when she and John were five and John had just stolen yet another of her favorite toys, that their mother had taken Jean in her lap and rocked her softly while she cried. “You have to learn how to forgive and forget, Jean.”

Jean remembered her little girl self staring up into her mother’s eyes with bewilderment. “I can’t forget, Momma. I don’t know how.”

Her mother’s expression had been one of understanding; looking back on it now, knowing what kind of man Mr. Knockings had been, Jean wondered just how much of that was empathy, because then she’d said, “Then you’re gonna have to try twice as hard to forgive people, sweetie. Because if you don’t, you’ll get eaten up on the inside. Sometimes, with John, you just have to let things go, like water out of a sieve. How much can you hold before you burst?”

Jean’s brown eyes refocused absently into the present and she blinked quickly to hold back the tears that threatened. She hadn’t cried since she found John’s body on the floor of his office. Not once in six months. “Now what, Momma?” she whispered to no one. “How can I forgive what I can’t forget?”

So many things engraved forever into her mind’s eye: thirty-two years of life with John forever half a step in front of her, underhanded deals she’d been forced time and time again to concede to, a thousand arguments with her brother that she’d never won. And the look on John’s face, that cocky smile that used to hate so much but that she now missed so much it ached. The look he’d had the very last time she’d seen him alive, when he’d walked out the door after she’d told him that she never wanted to see him again.

Famous last words. Ones that she couldn’t ever erase, now that he was dead.

The last living Knockings looked up and watched as a drop of water collected on the torn piece of skin at the apex of the roof, solidified into a drop, and fell into the puddle on the mud floor. Like water out of a sieve.

And all at once, Jean’s impressively brilliant mind finally came to the conclusion that maybe–just maybe–forgiveness wasn’t about forgetting at all. Maybe forgiveness was just letting something leak out to puddle on the floor so you could step over it and move on.

For the first time in six months, Jean let herself feel. And as soon as she did, the tears began to fall.

Drip drip drip.

In the middle of a rainstorm in the jungle of Brazil, in a tiny animal-skin hut with a leaking roof, Jean Knockings cried. She cried and cried until she couldn’t breath, until even she had lost count of the tears, and she mourned her brother. She cried for the way John had died, and for the way he’d lived. She cried for the betrayal of their family by Aakil Sarin…and as she finally began to breathe again, she found herself crying for the doctor himself. Because his life was a dark and bitter one, and he’d never had a family, not like she’d had.

When she finally straightened again, the rain hadn’t lessened. But she took a deep breath of the damp air…and smiled. She knew what she’d do now, when she caught up with Sarin.

She’d forgive him. And maybe, someday, she could forgive her brother, too. Because the bitterness and the heartache had spilled out of her a little, like water out of a sieve. Like the leaking roof above her head. Drip drip drip.

Jean didn’t have to forget. She just had to let it go in little drops until she could leave it behind. Maybe, someday, when the pressure in her head had cleared, she might even be able to forgive herself.

She could wait. With a long sigh, Jean sat back down on the dirt floor and watched the rain leak through the roof.

Saturday Morning in the Park

From the writing prompt, “Destroying the world would probably be easier.” This one doesn’t need much explaining, except that these guys are two of my favorite characters ever.

It was nine o’clock on Saturday morning and the weather was beautiful, which meant that Eugene Bud was in the park. He strolled across the grass, dodged a group of kids playing Frisbee, and made his way over to the benches near the gazebo.

The old barber took a deep breath of the early summer air and let it out in a sigh of satisfaction. It was one of those clichéd perfect summer days, with the chirping birds and the light breeze and the sweet smell of grass on the air. And, because it was nine o’clock on a Saturday morning and the weather was beautiful, Oliver Meeps was waiting for him on their normal bench at the northwest corner of the gazebo. The sunlight was cooler here, deflected by the fluttering leaves of a huge old oak tree that was probably as old as Springfield itself.

Eugene lowered himself down across from his friend onto the worn white stone of the bench. “Morning, Oliver.”

The other man tipped his hat cordially, and the sunlight glinted off the rims of his glasses. “Morning, Eugene.” He reached down into the worn satchel at his feet and pulled out a wooden box: chestnut, still glossy and smooth even after years of wear. The well-oiled bronze hinges barely made a sound as the box opened onto the bench between them to reveal a hand-crafted chess set.

The two men looked at the jumble of checkerboard, black-and-white horsemen, chipped castle towers, slender kings and queens. After a long moment of consideration, Oliver looked up expectantly. “It’s the third Saturday, you know.”

Eugene blinked and raised his blue eyes from their scrutiny. “Is it? I could’ve sworn it was only the second.” He shook his head ruefully; the leaf-shaped patterns of light on his hair shifted with the movement. “Alright then. No use letting you get any more of an upper hand. I’ll take the white.”

Oliver smiled and shook his head. “You always do. Going first isn’t always best, you know.” He reached for the black pieces anyway and began to put them in their places with elegant fingers.

Eugene waved him off with the hand not busy arranging his own forces on the board. “If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times. It’s a matter of principle. Who doesn’t want to be the white knight in shining armor?” He picked up one of his knights with a grin and twirled it between his fingers. “Besides,” he continued as he replaced the piece with care back into its alloted square at B-1, “It’s good strategy. Never let the opponent have the first move.”

Their banter was easy and well-rehearsed, really just a verbal precursor to the ensuing game. They both settled in, staring at the board intently. When nothing happened for several minutes, Oliver cleared his throat. “About that first move…”

“I know, I know.” Eugene was already fingering his walrus mustache, a sure sign of intense thought. Finally, he reached out for the horseman he’d displaced earlier and moved it. “Knight to A-3.”

His friend looked impressed. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you lead with the knight before. Feeling the need to change your strategy?”

“Sick of getting beat,” Bud chuckled. “You can only rely on your pawns so long before you’ve gotta accept that just because some moves are traditional doesn’t mean you have to use them.”

“Good advice,” Oliver said with a smile. “They should have you speak up at the school to motivate the kids.” He reached to his own line of pieces. “Still, sometimes traditional is best. Pawn to G-6.”

Oliver’s gaze stayed on the board, already planning two or three moves ahead in anticipation of his friend’s next move. He and Eugene had played this game more than enough to know each other’s strategies and rhythms. It was a challenge to find new attacks that wouldn’t be anticipated. It took Oliver a while to notice that once again, the other man hadn’t moved. He looked over to Bud again to see him still staring into space, and for the first time concern creased his brow, deepening the divot between his eyes. “Gene?”

Eugene’s eyes looked up in surprise at the nickname, rarely used. His bushy white eyebrows raised expectantly. “Yeah?”

“Your turn,” Oliver prompted softly.

“Ah, I’m sorry.” The barber gave a long sigh and rubbed his forehead with two fingers. “Don’t know what’s gotten into me today. I was somewhere else.”

“I could tell,” Meeps said with a soft grin. “Care to share?”

Eugene looked down at the board. His hand reached out and gently touched the top of his G-square knight. “I was just thinking,” he said slowly, in a voice much gentler than the one Oliver was used to hearing from him, “that there’s more pressure on the man that picks the white pieces.”

Philosophy wasn’t an uncommon subject for them, but it normally didn’t appear in conversation until at least the fifth turn. Oliver focused his full attention on the man across from him, the board temporarily forgotten. “How do you mean?”

Bud shrugged, eyes still on the pieces in front of him, though Oliver suspected that his mind’s eye was focused a long way off. “Well, the white knight has a lot to do, doesn’t he? Save the world, rescue the damsel in distress, slay the dragon, defeat the evil king. Seems like a lot of work, doesn’t it?” He paused a moment, then moved the knight into symmetry with its twin. “Knight to H-3.” He pointed to Oliver’s end of the board. “The black knight, though, what’s his job? All he has to do is stop the white knight from doing all that good-guy hero stuff. It’s simpler. Cleaner.”

Oliver weighed his response carefully as he returned his attention to the game. His next move would be predictable, if reliable. He sat back in his seat a bit and looked out over the park. “You’re right, you know,” he remarked thoughtfully. “Destroying the world would probably be easier. Saving it is so much work. Pawn to B-5.”

“I never said ‘easier’, just ‘simpler’,” Eugene noted. “Pawn to B-4. You really think it’d be easier?”

This time it was Oliver who looked away from the game for a long moment. At last, his brown eyes rested on the two pawns, now deadlocked in the middle of the board. He reached out and brushed an imaginary speck of dust off the white one. “It would have to be, wouldn’t it? To save the world, you have to care enough about the people in it to think it’s worth it.”

There was a long moment of silence after that. Both men were pulled in their minds to far-off places: one to a marketplace in Serbia, with a gun in his hand, and the other to a long-gone kitchen table, and the sound of children laughing.

“Harder,” Eugene finally agreed. His voice was a little gruff. “But still right.”

Oliver nodded slowly in agreement, and the two men shared a moment of understanding despite all the things that would never be known or said between them.

Then Eugene cleared his throat and leaned forward. “Alright, enough of that. It’s time for me to kick your scrawny historian behind at chess. Pawn to C-2!”

“It’s my move, you barbarian barber!”

It was nine thirty on Saturday morning and the weather was beautiful. And so Eugene Bud, former CIA agent, and Oliver Meeps, former superhero, were playing chess in the park. Two white knights, chipped and worn around the edges, but still standing firmly in their squares, looking out at the far-off black kings on the horizon.