We Can Save Us All

by Adam Nemett

  The wall of Nassau Hall went blank. Everyone in the USV went still, even Ultraviolet.

  Business-Man knew this was the cue.

  He froze stiff.

  Took a deep breath.

  When the projector light popped back on, it was now a spotlight aimed up toward the zenith of Nassau Hall, and in this spotlight stood a singular figure, balanced on the roof’s peak, decked in the unmistakable attire of a USV superhero.

  Dark pirate boots. Formfitting white leggings. A royal-blue captain’s jacket, its high collar embroidered with yellow trim and long tuxedo tails. On top, a wide blue Napoleon-style hat with the USV’s trademark Ø insignia at its center. Her long hair was dyed white. It crisscrossed along her upper lip, hanging down off her face like a handlebar mustache.

  Beneath her, projected on the peak of the wall, was her name.

  And the crowd went silent. The name needed no elucidation.

  CAP’N CUNT.

  David saw her breathing up there, poised on the brink of that building. Flames danced shadows on her body. She held a plastic scabbard in one hand, pointed to the heavens as if preparing to give a signal to charge; in the other hand, an oversized Flavor Flav clock. Amid the silence and the crackling of the fire, Cap’n Cunt let loose a screech so prolonged and agonized and triumphant that one might have mistaken her for a witch being burned at the stake and enjoying it.

  David always knew she had this fire in her belly.

  And then the infamous Cap’n Cunt took a step off the ledge and jumped to her legend.

  The gathering gasped as her body tipped off the apex, leaning headfirst toward the flames.

  David shuddered as her body contorted, a marionette caught in its own strings.

  He held his breath as she flew across empty sky between the Nassau roof and Ultraviolet’s oak tree on the opposite end of the blaze.

  He rose up as her body grazed the flames and she cast down the huge clock into its inferno.

  And when Cap’n Cunt landed in the limbs of the oak, gobbled up into Ultraviolet’s straitjacket, the collective exhale was so palpable that David worried they’d blown out the bonfire like a birthday cake, for he had closed his eyes and made a wish and it had inexplicably come true.

  A double take revealed the near-invisible zip line strung from the roof of Nassau Hall to the trunk of the oak tree. After Cap’n Cunt flew along this wire, Ultraviolet tamped out the minor flames that had singed her coattails. He unfastened the harness camouflaged across her ample chest. The crowd did not linger long on this intimate groping—though David kept a close eye—because a surge of sound and imagery brought everyone’s attention back to the projection. Clocks chiming, ringing, beeping, clanging. At breakneck speed, digital and analog timepieces shuffled through. And finally, Ultraviolet’s NIST atomic clock, running rapid-fire beside the phrase: LET’S KILL SOME TIME.

  Wristwatches and cell phones were shed. Alarm clocks and calendars burned to cinders. Could they have ripped the sun and moon and constellations whereby the ancients judged their eras, David was certain the heavens, too, would have been emptied, left blank and black.

  Orange flames suddenly mixed with flickering red and blue. Police. But they didn’t get far. As the mechanics of time were being thrown off, so were the students’ clothes.

  As Ultraviolet and newly anointed Cap’n Cunt descended from their perch in the treetop via a painter’s ladder, three girls scurried up it, breasts exposed, arms cradling what appeared to be laundry. Edging themselves out on the same wide tree branch that Cap’n Cunt had just made famous, these girls flung their clothing into the blaze, catalyzing the horde to do the same. Shirts and pants were easily strewn, and the bravest stripped down to their barest essence. They danced.

  It was a perfect moment. David got back to business.

  He sprinted to his garbage bags by the base of the tree and dumped out hundreds of gray masks with eye- and nostril-holes, but no mouth, and the USV divvied out this bulk buy. Pulling elastic straps over their heads, the students transformed into a homogeneous horde, hiding their faces as they exposed their bodies. With Echo’s music blasting, the gathering realized its tribalism. Business-Man, too, was ready to bare some flesh. But he feared for the safety of László’s blazer and, anyway, the firemen began to unleash. They made liberal use of water cannons, aiming at the fire but allowing their stream to smack many Princeton student bodies. The scalding cold shocked Business-Man into something approaching sobriety. He ran with the others into the night, a smile on his face.

  He felt amazing! He felt like Mathias probably felt all the time. Somehow, Business-Man ended up huddled behind a statue of Albert Einstein. He was giddy with laughter when he discovered Ugs, slumped against a tree trunk, smoking and shaking, clearly in a very unhappy place.

  Business-Man cried something like: “All our earthly possessions are burned! We’re free to bask in the unencumbered nowness! Isn’t that great?”

  And Ugs said, “Um, no.” Business-Man sat down beside him. “Tomorrow morning,” he explained, “you’re gonna see a couple hundred kids sifting through these ashes, trying to find whatever it is they’ve burned. And when they don’t find it, they’ll just buy new fucking shit.”

  “But everything’s lost, gone, razed to the ground! It’s a new era!”

  “Sometimes when you burn a good thing,” said Ugs, “an evil thing rises from the ashes.”

  “Like a phoenix!” Business-Man cried triumphantly, not really listening.

  “No,” said Dr. Ugs, poking at the eyeholes of his mask. “Like religion.”

  ii.

  Six nipples danced in Christopher Walken’s rearview. Three girls in the backseat wearing blindfolds beneath those blank gray USV masks. Topless, with capes. David had on his infrared goggles, and though they made things dark they also made it easier to stare. Haley drove, tearing away from campus at forceful yet inconspicuous speed. David was crammed and balanced in the middle of the front seat, next to Haley, his arm pressed snug against her velvety blue Cap’n Cunt shoulder pads, his eyes pulled to her hair, dyed white, so sexy and severe against her super-red lips.

  On the other side, sitting shotgun, was Mathias. He hunched. Thumbed his temple. Stared out the window. David could almost hear him thinking.

  “Take those goggles off,” Haley muttered at David. “I don’t want to get stopped.” She signaled and sped into a turn. “And see if you can find a towel or something for the titty trio.”

  David offered the girls his grandpa László’s blazer. They draped it over themselves, huddling beneath it together, stifling giggles.

  Unlike the USV’s misfire at Forbes, this homecoming bonfire spectacle reached a massive, organic, orgiastic crescendo and they’d tapped out before things went bad. They’d achieved something collective and, he’d dare say, pure.

  When the firemen started hosing, the core USVers had run to their cars. Haley, Mathias, and David in the Buick. Lee, Owen, and Fu in the van with the gear. It was a rash decision to include the three new girls. They’d swarmed the car like rabid groupies, half naked and fresh from the fire hose.

  “Haley, oh my god, you are a fucking amazon,” said one of them, a petite girl full of energy and compliments, her breasts small and areolas large. “I swear, I’ve never seen anything—”

  David recognized them as the girls from the oak tree, sorority sisters who took the initiative to climb up there and burn their clothes, spurring the whole crowd to nudify themselves. He loved their moxie immediately, as well as other things, and realized that they were still feeling the effects of the drug gumbo vaporized in the pyre.

  “Wait!” A lilting blonde jogged up to the car. “You guys! I can’t find my shoes. Or pants!”

  “You burned them!” said the short one. “Just get in!”

  “Let’s go!” screamed Owen, honking and starting the MaxMobile ignition behind them.

  “Hold!” said Mathias. “Tell me your majors. Or what you want to be when you grow up.”
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  They answered in order: architecture, psychology, premed. These were solid gaps to fill. But Mathias’s vetting process had certainly been streamlined compared with a few months ago.

  “Okay, girls, two rules,” David shouted out the door. “First, give me your cell phones.”

  “Dude,” said the blonde. “We burned them.”

  “Good, great. Second, we have to blindfold you.” Seemed like a good idea. Probably pointless, but no sense in disclosing The Egg’s location yet.

  “Fine!” they screamed, clamoring into the back.

  “Third,” barked Mathias. Then softer, “If you come back with us… you don’t go home tonight. No rides anywhere. Once we’re in, we’re all in for good. Got me?”

  “Fourth,” Haley shot at the guys. “Nobody’s hooking up with anyone. Got me?”

  Mathias shrugged. The girls had gotten in. And they never really got out again.

  — Ø —

  The psych major, Britt Childress, looked like she was on springs. When they got into the living room, she put on Fu’s tank top and motorcycle helmet, obscuring her moon-shaped face and gathering up a wavy mane of blond hair mixed with streaks of pink. She struck David as a girl who expected someone else’s drugs to be laid out for her everywhere she went. Hers wasn’t an air of entitlement, he decided, so much as an unspoken agreement to repay such kindness with enthusiasm. She’d always keep the party going if there was someone to stay up with her.

  Nyla White, a black girl with long braids, was more wary. There was an air of wholesomeness about her, as if this was maybe the first time she’d ever been to a boy’s house without supervision. She had the kind of eyes that could be sweet and squinty when smiling, steely when serious. She graciously accepted Owen’s oversized camo jacket and focused on browsing the guys’ bookshelves, eventually plucking out a fat photography tome two-handed and curling into the couch next to Owen.

  Zoe Olivares had a prominent, angular nose that took up a good portion of her face but was somehow still cute. She looked like the sorcerer’s apprentice in Lee’s lab coat as she rushed around the kitchen, laying out food, lighting candles, adjusting curtains—swiftly making herself indispensable. Before anyone could stop her, she’d done all their dishes. She talked a lot and made bad jokes that weren’t really jokes—“That’s a lot of soap suds, buds!”—and did this thing with her head as if constantly dancing to a song only she could hear. When she started pulling out drink-making implements and asking about limes, David decided alcohol was the wrong vibe. Instead, he suggested Mathias prepare the Big Bang initiation.

  “Whose house is this?” asked Nyla, the architecture major.

  “It’s not a house,” said Owen. “It is The Egg.”

  iii.

  Haley stood over the bathroom sink of The Egg, looking down at the tiny hair shavings littered around the faucet and balancing on the edge of the drain. The shower was much the same, small curly hairs and longer ones peppering the tub and collecting in corners. Their bathroom was gross, like all boys’ bathrooms. It would have to change. Lots would have to change.

  She was changing, she realized. She heard their voices outside the bathroom door—these new girls, somewhat familiar, mostly strange—who’d inevitably look to her for guidance in this space, especially if they were truly down for the ritual drug experience Mathias was prepping. The old Haley might have respectfully bowed out, or else overdone it, insisting on being the most fucked-up person in the room—a different sort of bowing out—but no, goodbye, old Haley. New Haley’d be expected to play certain roles now. The earth mother, the caretaker. The queen, maybe.

  The boys’ roles were clearer. Mathias was the tip of the spear, and of course he was interesting and volatile and pretty and tall, and all the things her teenage self would’ve gone for. But David was solid and strong, and for her right now? Solid had its own mystery.

  Blink. In her house during winter break, after running into him at the Giant, they’d talked about superpowers. David said he dreamed of being visible. And here he was, behind the scenes again. Maybe he liked it that way. Maybe it was safer. She understood safety. But still.

  Haley remembered being around seven years old, watching that horrible earthquake in Haiti, people trapped under rubble for days and days. The best magic skill, she thought back then, would be to make yourself as small as possible, down to almost nothing, and crawl out through the cracks. She’d never given it much thought before, all this superhero stuff; she wasn’t particularly well versed in that genre. She’d seen Wonder Woman the summer between middle school and high school and loved the idea of Wonder Woman, but the movies never totally did it for her.

  After her first Big Bang, she shared this with David.

  “I know about comic books as much as I know about, say, Islam,” Haley said. She liked the compelling concept of the USV, and the acronym itself would make a cool logo—like USA, but with the last letter flipped upside down—but she needed to get smart on superherodom quickly.

  The timing was perfect: February 4 was opening night for the much-anticipated Marvel-DC crossover Krona: Justice League vs. Avengers, an out-sized blockbuster funded by two major studios, by far the largest budget in Hollywood history (maybe they also anticipated the end times and figured they might as well blow the bank). With a panoply of stars representing nearly all the big-time heroes—anchored by Justice League’s core team of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, the Flash, and Cyborg and the Avengers’ Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hawkeye, Hulk, and Black Widow, plus turns by the X-Men, Spider-Man, Black Panther, Ant-Man, Doctor Strange (Mathias’s favorite), Deadpool, the Fantastic Four, and the Guardians of the Galaxy—it was completely absurd, but nonetheless served as a fitting 180-minute crash course for Haley.

  She could tell David initially wanted it to be a kind of date—and she was up for it, sure—but it was time for Haley to get to know the rest of the guys, so it morphed into a group hang. Haley and the USV piled into the MaxMobile and headed for the AMC Hamilton multiplex, where every single screen was showing Krona that opening night. The release amounted to a cultural event, a nationwide, decentralized Comic-Con of sorts. Here in Hamilton, hundreds of moviegoers stood in lines and milled around the parking lot in full cosplay. Not just superheroes, either. Haley was disturbed by the middle-aged men in Harry Potter garb, the pre-teen girls in hypersexualized anime outfits, all the fat dudes in faded T-shirts referencing Jedi knights and Sith lords.

  “Promise me just one thing, David,” she whispered as they made their way into the theater.

  “I know what you’re going to say,” he said. “I promise, none of us will grow a ponytail.”

  “That’s all I ask.”

  The movie was insane, and Haley didn’t care much for the cartoony CGI fight scenes, but the plot itself was oddly transfixing. She was stoned, so maybe it was all in her head, but it seemed to map perfectly onto their lives: I mean, Krona(!) is destroying all these universes(!) in his quest to understand the mystery of creation and agrees not to destroy Earth if the heroes fight and best each other in a kind of cross-dimensional scavenger hunt, and they eventually stop fighting and join forces and capture Krona in a damn “cosmic egg”(!).

  After the movie, Haley joined the boys at the nearby Grounds for Sculpture, an outdoor museum seemingly designed for people on drugs. They all took a low dose, bonding them for life.

  During this more cogent and manageable trip, Haley considered the appeal of superheroes. The flawed characters reaching for their idealized selves. The fun visual phenomenon. The subtle commentary on the end of American empire. The apocalyptic danger posed by an outside force, a villainous Other. All of those alien villains were just the climate apocalypse personified, maybe. And from a commercial standpoint, she’d just never understood the insane popularity and ubiquity until she saw it in person. Cosplay was different from Halloween. It was a way of summoning something, of presenting yourself differently to the world. A secret wish made public. It
was playful. It was communal. And, it should be said, with the right body, it was kinda sexy.

  The Krona movie stars were all easy on the eyes, and Haley had taken copious notes on costuming, hair, and makeup. Muscly dudes like Thor, Aquaman, and Black Panther were objectively hot, but her favorite was Ant-Man, the silly, size-shifting comic relief. Shrinking would be a great superpower, Haley maintained. But after you’ve flown across a bonfire on a zip line above a couple thousand tripping people while wearing a pirate outfit? It would be hard for Haley to make herself small ever again.

  She was Cap’n Cunt now. From here on, the only thing to be was larger than life. Blink.

  She left the bathroom and slowly descended the curved set of stairs leading to the living room, where the guys had already lowered the lights and laid out yoga mats and buckets for the girls. This was good.

  “So how does this work?” asked Nyla. “Do we all just like shit our brains out?”

  “Depends,” said Haley. “With the Big Bang, some lie like quiet Buddhas with their eyes open, some strip naked, some scream and yell about seeing Satan and then immediately afterward describe blissful, angelic forms. And some people are barfers.”

  “Oh, I’m definitely going to be a barfer,” said Britt.

  “You’re in a safe space here,” Haley continued. “I’m here to make absolutely sure of that.”

  They asked if Haley was going to join them, and Haley told them she’d take a microdose to accompany them on their journey and bear witness and be a lifeline back, a bridge between worlds.

  Cap’n Cunt passed out the pills. As resident shaman, Ultraviolet launched into a brief speech, towering over the girls who already looked up at him with disciple eyes. The guys bowed their heads respectfully and allowed him to say his peace. Something about respecting The Egg and keeping its mission firmly in mind: The Big Bang explodes upon the universe and sweeps us toward the supercell. Only the heroic pass through the dark neck. Kezepel.