Big Superhero Action (4 page)

“Even a gay male has a mother he secretly wants to fuck. Yours died heroically in space. The universe provides.”

She kissed his lips, his forehead, ran her fingers through his smooth blonde bangs.

“I want to be here for you always,” she told him. “I want to protect you from the OSD who would target you. And laugh at you. And make you suffer. I want to make them all go away. And be with you forever.”

“Really?”

“You have many demons for a young boy. I want to exorcize your demons and make you free of them and free of fear. You spend your life unhappy. Your demons make you unhappy. They make you uncomfortable in your skin. They make you afraid of others and prefer to be alone because other people make you feel bad about yourself. And you are afraid. Do you ever feel that something is beginning in you deeper than you can even feel yet? Where you can look at yourself and see yourself for what you are? You are reaching an age where you are at the very dawn of self-awareness.”

So far she totally got him wrong. But she was too spectacular to walk away from. She held him closer, took his hand, placed it on her breast.

“I’m here to guide you with love.”

She had a Gulfstream 6. She took him high over Brutalia. Sitting with her, he saw her legs above the boots. The boots almost reached her knees and the dress was pulled back so that her legs showed. Her legs glowed pale through dark blue silk stockings. The stockings had a texture he could see, feel with his vision. He wanted to see more.

She had him touch her breast. It was covered by the velvet dress. The dress was tight across her large breasts, turning them into a beautiful rack; he had been wanting to touch them since he first saw her. Touching the breast felt good. It was soft and warm. Kissing it was better. The way it pressed his face and lips…it felt the way he felt about boys. This was the first female who made him feel that way.

He was feeling what he wanted to feel now. He wanted to feel it deeply and feel more of it. It was scary. But he couldn’t resist it.

Then she took him by the hair. She said, “Even twinks like boobs, huh? Boobs are fun.”

Now when she talked the British accent was gone.

“Let’s make it simple. You’re a captive of the OSD. Sit still. Or die quickly.”

The New Age love fest was over. That was what happened when you tried to feel too deeply, you got in too deep then it turned dangerous. People were dangerous. Women were dangerous. Everyone was dangerous and they all wanted to hurt him. She didn’t speak to him again and he stayed silent in return.

She left the cabin. He turned on his super-feminine hearing, heard her on her phone. She said, “I have the key. Where’s the door?”

T
hat night the Blue Boss Mustang crashed through the fence of Dwight Vink’s body shop. It exo-formed into the Blue Boss, who walked among the auto bodies, picked up two voices from the garage, followed them. In the office he saw Dwight Vink and the big guy now identified as Sonny Ditlow. The Blue Boss drew the big blue gun, stepped inside. Their heads turned his way.

Dwight said, “Look, man, I just found the shit out. I’m not involved.”

Sonny Ditlow grabbed Dwight, whipped-out a hunting knife, put the blade to Dwight’s throat.

“Give me the gun,” Ditlow said.

The Blue Boss aimed the gun at his face.

Ditlow said, “I’ll slit his throat.”

The Blue Boss said, “Fuck him.”

The hunting knife drew blood. Dwight stood there, his head awkwardly crooked inside Ditlow’s big arm, staring at the Blue Boss for help. Ditlow looked like it was all he could handle concentrating on the hunting knife.

“Sonny Ditlow. Tell me why you did it.”

“Fuck you.”

“You want to tell someone, tell me.”

“You couldn’t handle it.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“Fuck you.”

“Then I’ll tell you,” the Blue Boss said. “You worked as an airport security asshole, reading comic books, hassling men, strip searching women. One got you fired. You hate women. You spend your time in strip clubs. You targeted strippers. You went to the Customizers, ordered eight strippers dead. You would take the credit, become a three-namer, go out with cyanide on the Internet.”

Ditlow’s pupils took the shape of skulls. Pure OSD.

“Who are The Customizers?”

“The Customizers never let me or anyone else have direct access to them. Even if I knew anything and told you, you still couldn’t stop The Customizers. The Customizers are unstoppable.”

Ditlow began stepping sideways with Dwight, drawing more blood with the hunting knife until it dripped down Dwight’s t-shirt. The Blue Boss followed him with the gun then stopped and carefully aimed at the drop of sweat rolling down the center of Ditlow’s forehead.

The gun fired deep-blue crowd control cells set to paralysis. They locked Ditlow in a rictus that dropped him. He tried to get back up, dropped twitching. The twitching stilled until he looked like a snapshot of Sonny Ditlow. He would be unable to operate a muscle for two hours. The police would have to carry him like an oversized wall poster, slide him into the rear seat of the squad car.

Dwight turned to the Blue Boss, said, “That was about fuc—”

He was shot with a purple shot from a palm shooter. That one would knock him out for one hour.

The Mustang peeled streets for ten miles, skidded to a halt in front of Dom’s Italian restaurant, an OSD front. The Blue Boss exo-formed at the curb, walked in.

Tony Bennett was singing. The Blue Boss strode through the dining room to the table where Man Mafia sat like a one-man Lord’s Supper, sipping red wine. Man Mafia was a formidable monster of black exoframe. His face screen shuffled thirty different black & white mug shots to create a mash-up of organized criminality. The exoframe made him a walking cemetery carrying the cremains of the heads of the New York five families in a translucent layer. That was the myth at least. His superpower was rapid self-cloning. This one was Man Mafia 3.

The Blue Boss greeted him. “The one-man mafia.”

Mafia 3 responded with an emotionally numb delivery. “The one-man police force.”

“This place reminds me of a great movie.”

“This is a replica of the restaurant in
The Godfather
where Michael Corleone took out Solozzo and McCluskey.”

“Okay. I see it now.”

“The OSD is stylistically indulgent.”

“Modern toilets?”

“Yes.”

“A little inauthentic, isn’t it?”

“It’s not a museum. The dining room is enough.”

“And the exterior.”

“Right. Exact replica.”

The Blue Boss: “A clone inside a clone.”

“You figured it out.”

“It took a few but I did.”

“Good work.”

“Ask me why I’m here.”

“You are here for what reason?”

“I found Sonny Ditlow.”

“Who is Sonny Ditlow?”

“One of your customers.”

“I forgot his name. Sonny Ditlow. Okay, you found Sonny Ditlow.”

“You can come with me now or wait for the SWAT team.”

“I’ll take the SWAT team.”

“You have the option of making your statement to me. This is your Super Bowl commercial. As always this is going out to every news outlet and law enforcement agency in the country.”

Mafia 3 said, “Why not?”

The Blue Boss switched on the chest-mounted body-cam. Mafia 3 appeared in a medium close-up. He took a sip of red wine. With two fingers he gestured for a tighter close-up of his face. His emotionally numb monotone delivery extending into a drone, he made his statement.

“This is business. You know how much psycho energy there is out there in America? Do you know how much there is out there waiting to be tapped into? It’s a growth industry. Do you know how many people want to be serial killers today? Want to be a serial killer but don’t have the time or the talent? Come to the Customizers. The Customizers create an impressive series of kills for you to claim the credit for. All you have to do is go through with the suicide–we even provide the cyanide—and your statement is made. The Customizers will make your statement. You can customize your targets. The Customizers will leave you with a three-name name of eternal infamy. We are branding homicide. The Customizers are the future of murder.”

The Blue Boss switched off his chest, said, “That was a long one. You had a lot to say.”

“I can say more if you want. Man Mafia needs no deniability.”

“Since there are twelve more of you.”

“How close is the SWAT team?”

The Blue Boss said, “You won’t be needing this tonight.” He picked up the wine bottle, tossed it into the air behind him. It landed with a smash of vin rose.

“Now that’s just harassment.”

“Sue the city.”

“One more question,” Mafia 3 said.

“What?”

“How do you plan to leave here alive?”

Mafia 3 raised one arm, an exoframe chamber rose a small arms missile that aimed itself, blasted the Blue Boss through the front wall.

The Blue Boss raised an arm, fired a missile that leveled Dom’s and fireballed the adjoining storefronts. Two stories landed on him. Mafia 3 was on his back looking like a blasted flaming Buzz Lightyear, parts of him littering the wreckage.

Blasted, shattered, without long to live, the Blue Boss exo-formed into a wrecked blue Mustang that surfaced through the flaming wreckage. Rumbling heavily, the Mustang trailed smoke past ten arriving vans bringing 42 BPD assault rifle-armed officers in flak jackets. The Blue Boss’ super power was mind control over the policemen of Brutalia. They obeyed him as they would the God of Police.

The Mustang rumbled and smoked its way downtown to the KM Building, into the secret entrance of the secret underground garage where in a heap of metal the Blue Boss died.

The Carousel checked the Blue Boss rack, saw it dark until the third Tuesday of the following month.

C
hase looked at his situation. He had been kidnapped by an agent of the OSD. It looked like a spare guest room. It had a bed and a window that seemed to hang over the city. The walk-in closet was empty. The central a/c made it feel like a meat locker. He would be passive and wait for whatever happened. But the world wouldn’t let him. The world wouldn’t leave him alone. It wanted to kill him. It wanted to kill everything. It wouldn’t let him be nice anymore.

She had taken his backpack and cell phone, taken his iPod, put them on the wet bar in the den. There was the landing pad, the outdoor deck, the sliding doors that led to the den, then a living room, then a hallway where the bedrooms were. If he could get out of the locked bedroom, he could run through the hallway, through the living room, grab his iPod off the wet bar and then run through the doors to the deck. That was how he could escape.

Unless the blue dragon stopped him. The blue dragon would destroy him. Even if it was only a hypnotic mirage.

If he told her he had to use the bathroom, she would let him out. Then she’d wait outside the door until he finished to take him back to the room. He’d need to use something inside the bathroom to get past her.

Chase knocked.

It was two minutes of knocking until she opened the door.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” he said.

She gave him a long silent stare, not angry, just blank-faced.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

She took his hand and took him down the hallway. The door was open. She turned on the light.

“Do what you gotta do,” she said.

Chase held onto her hand. She looked surprised.

“I think you’re beautiful,” he had to say to her before he let go her hand.

Now she looked more surprised. She gave his shoulder a little squeeze.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Fifteen.”

“That’s about right.”

“What’s that mean?”

“If this is your both first and your last jerkoff, make it a good one.”

She went outside, closed the door.

Chase ran water. He needed a moment to get the right music in his head. The music had to give him strong lift right away and get him out of range in seconds.

Chase took the towel, it was damp, spread it in front of him. His heart was pounding like a jackhammer. He couldn’t do it. He’d never pull it off. He wasn’t fast enough. He couldn’t do it. But he had to try.

He opened the door. She was standing at the wall next to the door. She wasn’t watching the door. With the opening of the door, her attention turned toward the bathroom, her look turning toward him…seeing him…seeing the towel he held between his hands, his arms stretching it out between them…

He hurled the towel up and over her head, bolted the other way. The hardwood floor was smooth and slippery. He ran the length of the shadowed hallway, burst into the daylight at the end of it, made it to the living room, bolted toward the den. She would’ve had the towel off her face by then, would now be coming after him, right behind him.

Chase kept bolting, hit the den, veered toward the wet bar. He left the backpack, grabbed the iPod, grabbed a champagne bottle from an ice bucket, bounced off the wet bar hurtling toward the sliding doors where it was almost dark. He made it to the doors, plunged through the slot between them.

He had the iPod on and playing. The Carpenters. The piano that opened “Close to You.” Then the vocal began. It took a moment. The strings came in. Chase’s feet left and he took off into the air, flew. The blue dragons took off after him. On the deck Her Blue Majesty held a Tec-9 automatic rifle, fired at him. The blue dragons puked blue fireballs at him.

H
is senses surrounded him. The smell of himself hit him in the face. The sores on his feet stung. Bushy hair beaded up to his earlobes, surrounded his mouth. He was too long unwashed for the dirt to reach any recent layers of dirt, any clothing in contact with his joints and the parts of his body that hinged long worn away. His fingernails looked like grimy plastic spoons. He wrapped his head around his head. Then unwrapped it. Then wrapped it again. It was like when he was balling in the Army. Back when he drove Army tanks in North Carolina before they discharged his ass on a medical. Years later he took a Greyhound to Brutalia to see God but he fell off the map. Sometimes you could hear God inside the sidewalks. The city was good because you could find shelters and have them to yourself almost. They all had a clear white neon cross in front. There was a lot of city too and lots of places to put down where you could have a city block to yourself, be the only bum. You could always find food anywhere, the dumpster diving was good and the food never got cold. But there were more bums coming to Brutalia trying to turn it into New York and shit.