Big Superhero Action Page 3

  7

  Nothing ever changed.

  “Guess what, AXIS faggot. It doesn’t get better.”

  Waiting outside the private school for the limo, Chase kept his head down, his arms folded. Again Finley and his two droogs were giving him crap. Where was the limo?

  “You’re both gay and a fucking AXIS nerd.”

  “Cock-blowing faggot.”

  “You probably gave Kieran AIDS”

  Chase said, “Oh fuck you.”

  “Fuuuuck you!” Finley mocked him.

  The droogs echoed “Fuck yooouuu!”

  “Chase speaks. Like you got any balls, faggot. You got a pussy.”

  Finley slapped his face. Cheek stinging, Chase stood there arms folded. This was it. It was too late for the limo to show up now.

  “Look, he’s gonna cry. AXIS guys are fags.”

  “Then cry like an AXIS faggot, faggot.”

  Chase started walking away. They followed him. By now more kids were watching, having fun with the fag. Somebody kicked him in the pants. Another slap to the back of his head.

  “Think he might kill himself after this?”

  “Then the TV news comes here and shit. Stars might show up here then they do videos for gay kids.”

  “Cool. Kill yourself, little faggot. Go fucking kill yourself.”

  Just like that it became all too clear. There would be no stillness again until this was dealt with. Chase could not always hide in his warm bubble. Not every kid like him had his stillness. They needed the protection he did not need. Finley was crossing the flavor horizon and Chase was drawing them all into his world.

  Chase decided to turn on his iPod, hit PLAY, talk to the music. He pencil-diagrammed the move. Turn, with both hands grab Finley by the shirt just as his feet left the ground and he took to the air straight up taking Finley with him. Finley would shriek, grab onto him but his weight would drop him down his shirt, have him hanging bare-bellied. He would take Finley up ten, twenty, thirty feet in the air. Then he would raise one foot and Sparta-boot Finley in the chest. Finley would plunge screaming thirty feet to the cement. Two broken legs at least.

  Chase stopped, touched the iPod button.

  The kids started screaming.

  Chase turned to look. The droogs of Finley and the other kids were shrieking and bolting anywhere that was else. Finley was pinned to the ground by a blue dragon standing over him barking with blue-flaming fangs three inches from his face.

  There was a woman with a bespectacled face of British ivory, long periwinkle hair in locks. She was in a white shawl over a blue crushed velvet dress that reached pointy-toed white stiletto boots. The woman yelled after the kids, “Nobody fucks with Chase! Fuck with Chase, you die!” The woman had a British accent.

  Chase stopped and watched what was happening. This was a superhero sighting up closer he’d ever experienced. The blue dragon was a hypno-projection.

  The woman looked down at Finley. She said to him, “Nobody fucks with Chase. You fuck with Chase, you die. Say it.”

  Finley said, “Nobody fucks with Chase. You fuck with Chase, you die.”

  “I didn’t hear you.”

  “Nobody fucks with Chase. You fuck with Chase, you die,” he repeated.

  “Say it like you mean it!”

  “Nobody fucks with Chase! You fuck with Chase, you die!”

  The blue dragon backed off from Finley. Finley sprang to his feet, bolted.

  “My lawyer will fuck you up!” he yelled back.

  The dragon took off, strafed him, the boy ran faster, the dragon above him. The blue dragon vanished. Finley kept running until he was out of sight.

  The woman turned to Chase, said, “I apologize for the horrible language.”

  Chase was speechless.

  The woman said, “I am Her Blue Majesty.”

  Chase said, “I am Chase Hayward Juniper.”

  She ran a hand through Chase’s hair.

  “You’re a beautiful boy,” she said. “With a beautiful name.”

  “Thank you for the help,” he said about to cry. He was like the biggest girl but that couldn’t be helped. He was on an emotional seesaw somewhere between arousal and an anxiety attack.

  She squatted before him, took him in her arms. He held onto her tightly. He got over the tears quickly and was enjoying the closeness and touch of a beautiful woman. He heard her voice behind him.

  “I will always protect you from the OSD,” she said. “You have superpowers.”

  “You know that? How?”

  “We have a special connection. It’s a psychic connection. I have a psychic sense that led me to you. My psychic sense tells me much about you, Chase.”

  “Really? Like what?”

  She pulled back, gave him a deep gaze. She was so beautiful.

  “This is weirdness but it’s good weirdness,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “We need to heal your alienation. Agreed?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “We need to be together to do this,” she said. “We have a special connection. Have you ever felt it? Have you ever felt me?”

  Chase tried to think. Was she a stranger like they always warn you about? Strangers were men, though, not beautiful women. Beautiful women don’t hang around schools looking for little boys. They don’t rescue you from assholes. This was more like a dream.

  “Is this like a dream to you?” she said.

  Chase nodded.

  “You’re inside our connection,” she said. “It’s only us now. All we have is each other. Please help me. Be with me. We have to heal the dark place together.”

  “Dark place?”

  “The source of our suffering. It is all psychic. It is like a storm over us. All of a sudden. We need more time together. Now. Come with me.”

  She leaned forward, kissed his lips.

  “Be with me?” she asked.

  “But…I’m really gay.”

  “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 hai
r. 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?”

  8

  That 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.

  9

  Chase 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.