Coiled menace, she advances in my body with a serpentine gait, costume absorbing light out of the gloomy air as I only manage to balance precariously in place, cogent to our mutual strife. I am a mess and Zephyr’s powers are down.
The fist catches me in the stomach and I go to my knees prettily, aware of a Zephyr-shaped shadow looming above. Drenched in pathos, all I can do is stretch out one vinyl-clad hand which Zephyr kicks away in disdain before he then mercifully backs off.
“You continue to surprise me, Joe,” Matrioshka says with my voice. “You might just remain interesting yet.”
“If I catch you, I’m gonna kill you.”
“Kill me, you kill yourself,” s/he says.
“I’ll . . . make this right somehow,” I say. “Fuck!”
Overwhelmed by the enormity of it all, I can only get on hands and knees and watch Matrioshka backing away, powers still clearly depleted as she turns and breaks into a jog disappearing into the farther recesses of the deserted warehouse.
Only it doesn’t stay deserted for long.
*
TWO POLICE CRUISERS pull in through the far bank of roller doors, lights blazing and sirens whooping like the souls of madmen prisoned within sorcerous jars. Three cops leap out and two of them tote shotguns and for the fucking life of me I can barely stand on two feet.
“Hold it right there, lady,” the lead cop bawls.
Lady. The hilarious fucking absurdity of my situation descends to nearly suffocate me in a barrage of my own idiot laughter, but it’s gone before it can arise, dry retchingly crushed under the behemoth weight of utter futility.
Yet I didn’t get to be me just by picking it out of the bottom of a cereal packet. The selfsame mindless zest for existence that served me well through twenty years in the superhero business came with me from the old house to the new, and for the moment, I know all I have in front of me is surviving the next five minutes and remaining free before I have to confront any of the greater ontological nightmares into which I am so freshly thrust.
The cops yell a couple more things. They want to know where Zephyr went. They want to know my name. A couple look like they’re curious about my bra size. Meanwhile, I straighten on shaky legs and lift my hands in an imitation of the obedience they crave, barely present as I delve within to explore the psychic triggers of Cusp’s powers that I don’t know now if she ever really understood and I’m sure as fuck I can’t work out within the tight timeframe allotted.
But there is something there – my mental probing leaping back like I’ve disturbed some serpent sleeping at the bottom of the darkened basket of my Being. And I feel its coils wrap around the narrow wrist I must for now call my own, and unlike the light I was hoping to charm forth, forward comes instead the darkness.
*
THE DARKNESS SPRAYS from Cusp’s gloved palm like a living thing, encasing the police in a bizarre, bio-psychic plasm that wrenches guns from hands and covers faces and sunlight-loving eyes before they can fire. Making a fist gives me a delusion of control as I retract that selfsame darkforce and hurl its trove of goodies in the farthest reaches of the warehouse.
Disarmed, the cops look shocked beyond words, but a fourth cop now leaps from her hiding place to heft a standard issue Glock that barks rounds at me I could trust wouldn’t seriously harm Zephyr, but which I’m pungently more aware could spell my doom if I dare tarry now. Borne from that anti-death wish, I leap into the air and forces propel me into the inner struts of the huge warehouse roof, shrouding myself in a cloak of shadows with another gesture from my svelte right hand.
I do not have a damned clue how these powers work, but I will make them mine even if they kill me – though it already looks like others are lining up to do just that.
Cusp had the minor level heightened strength and resilience common to many energy wielders, and though its nothing like the scale I’m accustomed to, beggars can’t be choosers right now. I punch out a metal pane and then hurriedly do the crouch thing from my perch, invisible coils and helixes beneath me, a gyre of mysteriously élan centrifugal force that shoots me like an arrow from a bow into the dying afternoon light. A pair of Kevlar-clad and helmeted SWAT troopers playing ninja on the rooftop lose their holds at my eruption. In the warehouse itself, the hesitant cops fire a few rounds which fail to track me. I flit away from them nimble as a sparrow at dawn, transferrable skills at play no matter the origin of Cusp’s mysterious powers.
*
FOR TWENTY MINDLESS minutes I shoot across the city, thoughts little more than a swarm of bees in a shaken jar. I think about my previous trajectory – of a lifetime ago now, in some terms – but I’m aghast to think of turning up to Twilight’s abode given my current predicament and my current garb, especially with the history between him, Cusp and me. It might be more than the big lug could handle and more than I can bear, and already I’m as close to the edge of sanity as I may have ever flirted. I can barely function and barely believe the surreal turn of what’s happened to me. Like on remote, my path takes me back to my dot-com offices, me forcing myself through the black plastic curtain like some weirdly realized counter-intuitive metaphor for the unbirthing I wish I could achieve.
I totter on my stupid heels into the unlit corporate suite. Now some measure of safety’s assured me, my teetering pile of unaddressed emotions collapses with me beneath them. I cuss and growl prettily as I wrestle off the above-the-knee boots and hurl one, then the other across the half-empty office, catching sight of myself reflected in the darkened windows with mascara running down my cheeks and Cusp’s wickedly peaked cat-mask dangling beneath my trembling lip as I sob, finding vinyl above-the-elbow gloves aren’t a great absorbent when it comes to tears and drool, not sure I can blame my new hormones alone for the outpouring that soon sees me kneeling prostate in the middle of the too-new-to-be-scuffed carpet, green hair like spider-web clinging to my shoulders and arms, chest heaving as I cry at the fresh tidal wave of loss flooding out all the other tragedies it dislodges to the surface.
Holland did not deserve this – and nor do I. Or at least I don’t believe I do. Yet for now my thoughts are with the bright, buxom, breath-taking beauty I knew whose essence I now know was snuffed out by Matrioshka without a second thought. And I also have to accept those heady moments of the past few days were just yet more fiction to throw on the bonfire of my vanity as I accept whatever spark lingered between Holland and I, it was expunged along with her life-force back in Afghanistan. There was no late-in-the-day resurgence of the spark of passion I thought was between us when we met again, powerless and lost in the city the year before.
The woman I knew is gone, and so to that landless grave goes another who could have and should have marked my life with growth and goodness and joy. It is not the world which is poorer for that loss, but my soul which seems to darken yet further with the implied karmic blame for yet another life transfigured by disaster.
After a time, the sadness gives way to anger and I look around at the empty shell of a life that now lacks a body to inhabit it and the loathing and scorn and anger and humiliation and the out-and-out powerlessness of the situation overwhelms me, and then pretty much everything is cactus as I smash anything and everything I can, and what evades me I use to destroy anything else left.
Finally spent, I drop to my knees again, wracked by sobs and white-hot tears, my right arm clothed to the shoulder in living darkness.
And it occurs to me I am yet to see any light.
*
LATER, I TURN the bar fridge upright and dig out the last few pop tarts and eat them cold, crouched in the ruins of my life up until this point, a feral child making do in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. I pull off the ridiculous gloves and the mask, leaving me in what resembles a one-piece swimsuit designed by a cabal of pornographers working to specs from the Spanish Inquisition. Exhausted, I collapse on the bed and twist myself in the sheets that still smell of the sex it’s clear now I had with myself.
Zephyr 20.9 “Int
o This Crawling Chaos”
DAYLIGHT AND THE palpitations of the city echoing through the lonely corporate office wake me, the black plastic cover to my hideaway flapping loose like the flag of an S&M pirate ship in the strong easterly gale that pelts the morning outside with hail and about ten inches of rain. Exhausted still and groggy, I am numb even to the disorientation that comes with having swapped bodies, any sort of nascent dream-wishes from during the night that I might awaken to find this was all a bad dream or has mysteriously reversed now not even rising from the depths of my unconscious as I stare at the shambles I have wrought with an alcoholic’s gaze, however much it might fall from a supermodel’s face.
I can hear a panicked policeman on a loudhailer somewhere beyond, though I can’t make out the words and periodically it is bleeped out like by censors as the sirens and honking horns of emergency response vehicles move past. The animal-in-distress vibe of the living city continues, but my heart feels dead to it – like a wrung-out sponge gaffer-taped within my chest, no more capable of feeling or even acting on it than a still life or a yellowing Polaroid stuck there with the imprint of a child’s thumb.
For the longest time I sit on the bed’s edge forlorn, staring out robotically, unmoving, barely really thinking except letting the waves of nothingness lap at the edge of my consciousness and slowly erode my anti-Zen state. The destruction of my private sanctum is metaphoric – hell, metonymic – of my entire existence, and whatever passion fueled my inner tornado the night before and made such hedonism worthwhile, it is a vanished ghost come morning. I sit with my depressing ravens slowly coming home to roost as I sort through the bones of the latest massacre and understand just how genuinely distraught I am for myself.
I really cannot imagine going on.
And for the first time I then realize I need to pee.
*
AT HEART, I am a dude, and the brief walk to the bathroom reawakens a perhaps never truly dormant comprehension that whatever else ails me – and remembering I am alive, and still breathing air, and have powers of a sort – I am trapped in the body of one of the hottest women alive. That short walk is a non-verbal confirmation as I tune out the misery of the past hours and the insistence of Holland’s bladder and listen instead to the delicate algebra of her sashaying hips, her padded footfalls on the crisp boardroom carpet, the heft and sway of her breasts as I maneuver her like a bomber pilot taking one last mission in an unexpected test drive from the open plan bedchamber into the small but well-appointed bathroom designed for the CEO of this company that never bore fruit or maybe it was just lemons.
The fluorescent light blinks on, somehow flattering against all probability as I take in Holland’s bruised lips and sore eyes, the gossamer strands of light green hair a halo with the light reflecting off the faux titanium fixtures.
All I’m wearing again is the PVC cat suit, and with one glance at the mirror and a lazy hand gesture to turn the pressure sensitive shower spray on, I return my enthralled gaze to the vision reflected back at me and eye up the ridiculous yet fantasy-induced costume, chip-nailed fingertips hesitating a moment before confirmed in their purpose.
As steam fills the chamber, I finish the job started the night before and undress.
*
HOURS LATER, IT is time to get dressed, but the intervening hours haven’t thrown up any solution to the barely sensed conundrum of how to appropriately garb this ridiculous body. I cannot say with any authority why a woman of the grace, forthrightness, intelligence and clitoral sensitivity as Holland would willingly squeeze herself into a costume that quite literally crushes her breasts together like a tit-fuck just waiting to happen, but with half a lifetime in the superhero business and now finding myself on the weird-ass end of this eschatological travesty, I am damned if I’m going to let myself be ogled and eye-fucked by any of the masks I know.
That said, Zephyr’s apartment doesn’t exactly lend itself to alternatives.
I wreck the joint all over again in my search, coming up with nothing except a pair of Night Angel’s tiny briefs. With great reluctance I squeeze back into the one-piece and retrieve the long gloves and boots, sitting on the bed’s edge even longer moments contemplating the quantum levels of irony at work here and wondering what gods or spirits or life forms or overseers are jostling into each other to bear first witness to this seemingly never-ending self-imposed ridicule. And then I put the fucking boots on and stand, managing with about an eighty-five per cent success rate to extinguish from my gait the look of still having testicles as I practice pacing the grey carpet like a foal getting in its legs.
It is night beyond. I heard explosions earlier and now the high rises to the west are back-lit by the glow of some new catastrophe that will frankly have to get in the fucking queue right now as this ongoing wardrobe malfunction that is my life takes precedence. As I said, there’s no way in hell I will tack towards Twilight’s island in this state, but that doesn’t mean I’m completely out of options
Thoughts of Tessa re-enter my head for the first time and I nearly disappear into the crazy laugh as I guess we’re both lesbians now. Like father, like daughter. The reality by now is Tessa must be locked away in some FBI holding tank, Siren and God knows who else picking over her – and I don’t even know why. Clearly something is catastrophically amiss in Atlantic City, and between my competing urgent and pressing needs, the wellbeing of the city must be considered too.
I slip through the black plastic and launch into the cold night air, focusing to muster whatever this strange diurnal force that Cusp commands to propel me through the sky in the direction of my daughter’s apartment.
*
A SHORT TIME later I land direct on the metal fire escape and clamber through into the unlit living room still much the same as we left it two days earlier except Syzygy now sits by candle light eating a bowl of ramen.
“Oh wow,” she says as she stands up. “I was starting to think no one else was going to show. Where the heck is Tessa’s dad?”
You’d think I would be prepared for this moment, but no. And in the best tradition of deadbeats everywhere, I choose to fudge the answer, giving the black-haired, coltish girl my best indecisive hum.
“I don’t suppose Windsong got away?”
“Are you joking?” Syzygy looks livid, though it’s hard to tell by the weak light. “The government have her. I . . . I freaked. I ran. I really blew it. Do you think she’ll forgive me?”
“How the hell should I know?”
The rebuke is a perhaps much-needed slap to the face, and Syzygy pulls up short and regards me a moment, her expression slowly becoming one I momentarily find hard to read until I realize she is checking me over on the sly.
“What?” I say and show her my vinyl-clad palms.
“I’m sorry, you’re just . . . so beautiful. And I didn’t even know I was into girls until . . . you know, Windsong.”
“OK, stop,” I say. “This is getting weird. I mean, it’s way past weird already. A million fucking light years past weird, but I have to explain some shit to you honey and you’re probably going to blow a fuse or something along the way, OK?”
“Wow, you sound a heck of a lot like Tessa’s dad.”
My jaw – or should I say Holland’s jaw – clacks shut for a millisecond and this astute gesture is followed by reluctant nodding that eventually jackhammers into a resounding yes.
“That’s because I am.”
“What?”
“I’m Zephyr.”
“No, you’re Cusp. It was Cusp, right?”
“This is Cusp’s body. I got . . . I don’t know how to explain it shorthand, but yeah, the shorthand is I’ve been body-jacked.”
“Whoa. What?”
Syzygy holds up a hand and clutches her forehead like she’s about to sneeze. It takes me a moment to realize that wild, wholly inappropriate tittering laughter is welling up somewhere deep within her girlish frame, and when it breaks loose all I can really do is stand there and be the
butt of her hilarity, thoroughly pwned, as the kids on the internet used to say. And as the laughter dies away and then returns a few times, my rueful look transcends into one of impatience and finally I just fucking walk out of the room.
It takes her a few seconds to regain her composure, but my daughter’s fuck buddy follows me into the kitchen to find me finishing off the pickles from the jar.
“I believe you,” Syzygy says.
“Of course you believe me. Why wouldn’t you believe me?”
“Well, it’s a pretty wild tale.”
“Yeah, well . . . we’re superheroes. It’s our stock in trade.”
“You must have a heap of stories you could tell.”
“If we were around the camp fire singing Koom-by-whatever-that-fucking-song is, then maybe yes, but right now we have much bigger things in front of us.”
“But you’re . . . you’re Zephyr,” Syzygy says, star-struck or something, and also ignoring everything I just said. “You fought Ill-Centurion to a standstill, saved president Bush from his own clones. Heck, didn’t I read somewhere you met God or something once?”
“You say ‘heck’ a lot. Where the fuck are you from?”
“– Didn’t you meet God? Is that true?”
“Well, sorta,” I say reluctantly.
At Syzygy’s look I add, “Me and the Sentinels – I guess I should say the Old Sentinels – ran into this crawling chaos-type that we think is the primary creative force in the cosmos people think of when they think of, you know, the Almighty. Or, you know, maybe not. Fuck, I dunno. It was a long time ago.”
“How did you even live to tell the tale?”
Begrudgingly I admit it’s a pretty outlandish story.
“A guy on my team called Skyhawk convinced us the only way to bring this omnipotent power down to our level was to explain he was never going to understand humanity while having all that power, so he or she or whatever the hell you want to call it should, you know, ‘give up the mantle’ and walk a mile in humanity’s shoes or whatever.”
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