I crash through six floors in total until Gravitas loses direct sight of me, not just the poor light conditions in the hole I’ve made, but from the various hotel guests whose stays I’ve interrupted now peering down from above. The release of the gravity field comes like a giant hand unclutching me, and knowing Loren remains above and at these bastards’ mercy, I quickly dust myself off, note my suit repairing itself, and shoulder-barge the closest doorway.
It’s only a few long strides to the stairwell and then I rocket upwards, or perhaps I should put that a little less cinematically given my speed isn’t what it used to be. I almost feel I should be grateful to retain any powers at all given how wide open I left myself. I throw open the door at the end of the hallway and remember the Mafiosos left two goons lingering outside Loren’s room.
Leech has given them the order that it’s OK to dose themselves up. Or this is what I presume when both goons start swelling up and busting out of their Hugo Boss suits, one red and warty and fanged and with huge bat wings unfolding from his back, the other mottled green and ram-horned and his legs twisting fawn-like the wrong way around.
“Hang on,” I say really just for my own benefit. “You guys don’t look like supers. You look like fucking demons.”
The hellish pair lope towards me like hounds off the chain, but Leech steps into the hallway in their wake, laughing almost good naturedly at my consternation.
“You’re not as stupid as you look, ass-clown.”
“It’s Zephyr to you,” I say.
Connections start flowering inside my panicked brain – demons, supers, Gravitas, the Cosa Nostra, and Twilight – but there is too much good old surviving to be done to worry about any of that right now.
With Leech still making good with half my powers, the best I can do at the first rush is to jump up, punching my fists into the ceiling and grabbing hold so I can swing my boots up and into the green one, propelling him into his ruddy partner. A traffic jam in the hotel corridor isn’t exactly a resolution though. I drop down, grab the red one by the stubs of his elongated, thorn-covered wings, and hurl him as hard as I can into the opposite door, battering-ramming it down to reveal a terrified Japanese businessman in enormous white y-fronts. Meanwhile, the green one slashes me with his claws, shredding the front of my costume and drawing blood, but a couple of quick uppercuts stuns the monster into abeyance and I put it in a headlock, twisting to use centrifugal force where main strength alone has failed, twisting and again hurling this miscreant, misplaced supernatural creature back at Leech.
“Gravvy, get him,” the drug dealer squeaks.
This time I am quicker. I streak forward instead of away, surprising the slightly well-padded gravity controller by slipping past Leech to plant a wholesome haymaker upside Gravitas’ head. As I know from past experience, the villain doesn’t have much to protect him from direct harm, though I’m disappointed that as he stumbles close to Loren, she fails to back me up and do anything as useful as smash a vase over the asshole’s head.
“I’ve got to do everything myself, by the look of it.”
“Joe, you’ve got to stop!” Loren yells. “I called Leech.”
And stop I do. In incredulity. My scowl blazes like a searchlight as I angle my face on hers, eyes bulging out in rage.
“You fucking called these guys?”
“That’s what she said, Zephyr,” Leech says behind me.
He saunters back into the room like a guy without a care in the world.
“I’m sorry, Joe . . . I mean, Zephyr,” Loren says. “I really need the Glow. These guys . . . these guys are the only ones who have it.”
“Yeah. Why is that, exactly?”
Now I turn my spotlight on Leech, but the cocky little prick doesn’t give a shit about me or my imposing stance.
“I know who you are, Zephyr,” he says. “And you’re nothing but a bug. And we zap bugs.”
He lifts his hand and somehow, yes, the lightning bolt takes me by surprise.
*
THE CHARGE LIFTS me off my feet at the same moment the red and the green pour furiously back into the hotel room, literally shouldering Leech aside to get at me.
I rebound off the wall near the door to the toilet and grab the door handle and wrench the whole damned thing off its hinges, turning and slamming it like a massive shield into my two attackers. For a moment there’s an almost comical scene of these hellish minions pressing against the splintering laminate while I’m slowly edged back towards the porcelain throne room. Before my strength can buckle completely, I slide the door aside and smash one end of it across the red one’s black, bug-eyed head. The demon careens off staggering towards Loren’s bed and she gives a squeal like any sensible woman might in nearly brushing up against someone resembling a giant insect, though with her powers spent, the best she can use is harsh language.
Me on the other hand, pressed back into the little boy’s room, I wrench the ceramic cistern from the floor and smash it into the green one’s fanged, gaping maw. That doesn’t stop the prick piledriving me into the tiled wall behind where the missing toilet now spews water, and after a crunching noise that I am relieved to discover isn’t my ribcage but the wall giving way, we plunge backwards into the dark and what I distressingly hope is another unoccupied room only to find a naked businessman and his exhausted paramour leaping from post-beast-with-two-backs exhaustion, the woman a doe-eyed lass of about fifty despite the scraps of school uniform she wears to good effect, drooping breasts swinging akimbo as she shows she really did have a great set of lungs once as my feral pursuer and I plunge into the room, the scream nearly deafening, the light from Loren’s bathroom casting us like an Indonesian puppet show come to diabolic life as I manage to get an arm around the green monster’s neck, half-riding him as he flips me over and into the armoire, smashing another television as I flail, take out the phone and smash the mirror before getting to my scrambling feet in time to get taken out by the mad bastard’s rush once more, feet entirely slipping free of the carpet this time as he half-carries, half-throws me into the front door on the opposing side of the room and I crash through with a splintering oomph and emerge into electric light again, another one of these jaded busboys not so jaded now as he abandons the dinner cart he was pushing to go freak out at the other end of the hallway as yours truly tries to manage some kind of superhero style in front of my adoring public, getting to my feet like a gentleman drunk just in time for the hell-hound to smash his jolly green fist into the side of my head, which rebounds off a fortunately cheap wooden doorframe, another casualty in our tête-à-tête.
“You fuckers don’t give up, do you?”
The monster man roars at me and reaches down and picks me up and I have this brief moment as I am hauled far enough above the creature’s slimy armpits that I kick in the ceiling panels and smash a fluorescent light, gas pluming down on us, where I think maybe this is all some kind of violent perverse dream – but then he throws me hard down on the floor and straddles my back, grinding my face into the carpet with enough force that it releases the cigarette smell of its ancestry back from the time before such bans came into place, and that’s when I remember this is all too real and if I want to do something about saving myself from what feels like impending demonic sodomy, I’d better get on with it, because it doesn’t look like there’s any cavalry coming any time soon.
Zephyr 16.13 (Coda)
IT IS A struggle to get up from beneath my infernal ass-whooping, but after a few seconds I elbow the slavering beastie in the side of the head, loop a leg over his shoulder and apply a floor throw that tilts him over me. Unfortunately, my strength isn’t what it could be and the move, designed to hurl him down the hallway, instead just lets him land more fully on top of me, effectively inviting him to body slam me like we’re the comedic half-time entertainment in some billionaire’s WWF-inspired fantasy.
I slip from between the demon’s legs, and since I happen to be passing by, I notice a bodily projection that look
s like four green bread rolls trying to pass themselves off as something other than demonic privates, so I grab the little bastards and squeeze, and demon or no demon, the marauding Mafioso gives a shattering yell that promises nosebleeds to almost everyone on the hotel floor. He then mercifully slumps into unconsciousness.
Just in time for his playmate to pour back into the scene. And I am up and actually running for a moment as I try to strategize my defense. The red guy’s having none of it. He flaps his fucking bat wings and swoops after me and I turn and give a burst of static that feels utterly pathetic to me, but at least has a discouraging effect on the demon, who explodes backwards shrieking and covering his face. I seize my chance, slamming my fist down on his chest that feels like a carapace, warding off an instinctual grab for my face and getting that arm in a lock and twisting, like my fight against the Crimson Cowl, having to use my smarts where my strength has abandoned me.
It turns out the demon’s seemingly pretty comfortable with me bending his arm back at the elbow joint though, so I channel as much charge into the hold as I can, lighting the fucker up, then snapping the limb backwards with all I’ve got.
The demon lets loose with an ear-splitting scream.
“Now you can fucking yell, punk,” I say and kick him between the legs.
Applause sounds behind me, slow and dripping with sarcasm.
Leech and a revived Gravitas stand in the corridor, Loren shadowing them with one pathetic hand clutching her opposite arm like she’s just a wallflower at this particular after-party.
“Tell me who gave you a pair of pet demons as muscle?” I ask in-between breaths.
“I don’t think you need to ask that,” Leech says.
“There’s no way Twilight would use his powers in a criminal operation. Not directly,” I say.
“You should take some time to analyze that statement,” Leech says. “You know, turn it over and over like one of them fuckin’ Rubik’s Cubes. Then you might have an answer to your puzzle.”
I shake my head at him, a sour taste filling my mouth not entirely my chagrin but actually bile I keep bringing up following the battering I just took. I switch my gaze to Loren, but she avoids my rebuke.
“You’re cool with this?”
She looks away. Leech checks her reaction too and laughs.
“Honey hasn’t got any money,” he says. “But there’s other ways to pay.”
“Fuck you, Leech, however aptly named you are,” I say to him while looking pleadingly at her, but my lost love just won’t meet my fucking gaze.
“C’mon, baby,” Leech says and puts that pederastic arm around her, shielding and at the same time leading her away.
“Stop,” I say, growling to myself. “How much does this shit cost?”
“The Glow?”
I nod and Leech bares those slimy teeth again and says, “Hundred bucks a pop. You want some?”
“No. Give her a line of credit. One dose a day. I’ll pay.”
“Pay with what, faggot?” Leech says. “You’re not sucking my dick.”
“Put your dick in my mouth and you’ll have to fish through my shit to find it, asshole,” I tell him, getting angry again already and ready to forget my most recent near-death experience for a chance to watch him in pain.
No one seems to give a fuck about these unconscious demons in the hallway. It’s just me and Leech facing off like a pair of old time gunfighters, me pretty sure he can draw on half my powers still. I’m hoping against hope that that shit is going to wear off – and soon. It’s been a long day and I’m already sick of being at such a low ebb.
Just as quickly, Leech gives another of these furtive laughs and nods, backing off.
“One taste a day,” he says. “You’re a lucky lady, honey. You must be special to the Zee-man, huh?”
He gives that hyena laugh again, moving off after throwing a clear packet at Loren with all the disdain she might possibly deserve, then swiveling back at me.
“We know where to find you, Zephyr. You kinda stick out in that faggy costume. The meter’s running. Make sure you can pay.” He snaps his fingers. “C’mon, Gravvy. Let’s go get some chow mein.”
And they move back through the ruined hotel room as the first police start pouring into the place and the green demon sits up, coughs once, and dissolves into an ever worsening pile of putrid goo.
Zephyr 17.1 “Another Monster”
MY POWERS DON’T come back. Like, ever. I spend the first month hoping against hope in their weakened state my abilities will rekindle better than ever, but in fact the opposite happens. Slowly I start to lose strength and speed, while the ability to control the air and electricity vanishes almost at once. Weeks and weeks go by and others I know can only give pitying looks and nod their heads supportively, like I am going through another abysmal marriage break-up or something. Many of the other supers avoid me or can’t make the time to talk, and I realize I only have myself to blame, forgetting to be gracious to the little people on the way up so they might lend a helping hand on the way down; and I am freaking out inside, losing my mojo as I stop wearing the costume because I don’t have the cred to back it up. I try to do the old Devil’s Advocate routine like for old time’s sake, but I get my ass handed to me by a couple of hop-heads and the injuries don’t heal well. I’m gonna walk funny for the rest of my life, and speaking of which, which ain’t very funny at all, with my powers gone, some of my old wounds seem to re-open. I lose my front teeth spontaneously overnight one day and then I am like an old man or a terminal cancer patient or something. Tessa stops coming to visit. She straightens up and marries the Lark. It is years later, and by now I am living in this enormous old house, like a 2:1 scale replica of an ordinary home and even the furniture is bigger than it should be, so that the dining table and the kitchen chairs are these enormous things I have to climb like a mountain adventurer, the house forever in shadows except for sometimes when there are these strange women just always out of sight who I suspect are the ghosts of my mothers, except eventually I glimpse they are all the women who have perished because of my actions, not just Georgia and Max. The last one is poor young Belle, but she is a cackling crone, prematurely aged herself with her skull distorted from the psychic growth within, laughingly telling me she is all of them.
So yeah, I wake up thanking Christ and all his gal pals this was just another of those god-awful dreams that feel so real, but seem to go on so long it’s like an entire life’s been lived in the course of one evening – whole parallel lives with loves, dramas, crises and deaths to match. And I mourn them accordingly curled in bed.
The city is strangely quiet from my perch on the twelfth floor, though later I discover it is Superbowl Sunday, which explains quite a lot. I spend the morning lost in memories, remembering the time I made an appearance at the playoffs, riding nonsensically in the back of Aquanaut’s customized Cadillac as the crowds waved and we nearly choked on the confetti. I think of the early years married to Beth, struggling just to make ends meet as she tried and failed to study, and Tessa was born, and I was going to quit it all to write a great American novel based on my experiences, but changing all the names and places to protect the innocent. And then even earlier times than that, the Super 8 films of yesteryear playing through my head like those stop-motion comics hastily drawn on the corner of a kid’s flicked-through notebook, not much in the way of details, but a strange kinetic energy as I recall kicking a soccer ball in the back yard of the first house we lived in with Aunt Jane, the big tree in the yard, the tire swing that was so much like a noose I used to sometimes lay awake in strong weather listening to the rope groan like an old man on his deathbed.
Tessa’s call brings me out of my fug. I eat, shit, shower, shave, slide back into the costume and wing my way south as the afternoon sky empties itself like a colostomy bag over the city.
*
“A HUNDRED DOLLARS per day?” Tessa fumes, facing off in the same domino mask I wear as we clutch the laminate table of th
e cheap diner. The bare handful of other customers practically freeze watching us cross swords in the otherwise tedious setting, none of them able to know that in civilian clothes it was our habitual rendezvous for many years, a home away from home nearby the apartment where we once lived as a sometimes happy family, Tessa playing hookey and me indulging her truancy more than I probably should’ve, even though it strengthened the bond between us.
“Keep it down, Windsong,” I say in my best four-color voice, sounding nervous as a waitress with a limp brings apple pie and two servings of cheesecake for me, a spider and a Swiss roll for the girl.
If the woman was half-awake she’d identify us by our menu choices alone, but a sad life of drudgery has seemingly eroded anything remotely close to consciousness.
My daughter eyes me with borderline disdain as I scan about the cheap restaurant and the faces return to their meals and their menus. I harrumph softly.
“It’s the price I’ve got to pay,” I tell her finally. “This is on me, Loren’s –”
“Drug habit?”
“It’s not like any drug this city’s seen before,” I say.
“You can say that again.”
“It’s not like any drug –”
“Ugh, please dad. No bad dad jokes today, OK? I’ve got a splitting headache.”
“You’ve been drinking again,” I say. “Honey, you’re only sixteen –”
“Um, actually I’m seventeen dad, thanks for remembering by the way.”
“It still doesn’t make you old enough to drink.”
“If I am old enough to save our city fathers paying for a new Lyceum, they can spot me a few brewskies,” Tessa says.
“When did this happen?”
“Day before yesterday. Just Manticore and me.”
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