Normalized (The Complete Quartet)

by David Bussell

  I opened the door to the gym and took a smack of rancid man sweat to the nose – a stubborn, cloying bouquet that smelled worse than Mimix’s nut butter after a hot yoga sesh. The steroid junkies inside clocked my entrance and paused mid-pump to ogle. The size of those no-necks! All juiced up on bovine hormones and so full of Creatine you could have milked their nipples for protein shake. Never mind them though, I thought. Focus. Carbo-load those abs, max out them shreds and reach through the glutes![58]

  The gym instructor – a spray tanned twink in a scoop-neck vest – handed me an application form like he didn’t know damned well who I was. After I’d finished scribbling down my details he took back the form and asked me what my fitness goals were. I leaned over the counter and told him to mind his beeswax.

  “Just hurry up and give me my card, dude. Captain Might keeps it tight.”

  Bullsh*t of course – I looked like a life raft someone had pulled the cord on. Still, I couldn’t afford to look weak in front of the natives.

  The instructor continued to give me the third degree regardless. “Can I ask how you feel about your weight, sir?”

  “I guess maybe I could stand to lose a little,” I conceded.

  “No,” he said, looking me up and down and shaking his head, “weight is not something you need to worry about.”

  I was beginning to re-evaluate my opinion of the guy until he added, “Sir, what you need to worry about is fat.”

  Snooty goddamned gym bunny. I was about to give him a sizeable piece of my mind when Strong-Man strutted onto the scene. Strong-Man, in case you forgot, was the Murder Circus’ resident tough guy; a two-ton slab of muscle with a carnival moustache and a leopard print toga who could suck a ham through a drinking straw. The guy is major swole – ripped like a Korean DVD – and he wasn’t running in the other direction like he was when I caught him and his crew in that back alley.

  “Har! Har!” he mocked. “You have gone soft, puny man.”

  “Put a sock in it,” I said, and added a witty rejoinder that really was top notch.

  “Why don’t you show me what you are made of, Captain?” he dared, pointing to a barbell that looked heavier than a narcoleptic’s eyelids.

  “Thanks,” I said, “but I’d rather not have a body that looks like a condom stuffed full of walnuts – no offence.”

  It was a solid punch below his intellect but some guys just don’t know when they’re beat.

  “Sounds like coward talk to me,” he said.

  God no, not the C word. The other juicers started to crowd around, eager to hear my comeback. It was turning into a real situation. Lucky for me, the twink instructor saved my ass by telling me I wasn’t allowed to touch the weights until I’d been “inducted,” so Strong-Man’s challenge was nixed. Wow. You’d think the guy who once shut down an earthquake by wrestling the planet’s tectonic plates back together might cut the line on gym formalities, but thank Christ for red tape.[59]

  February 11th

  So what happened? Well, imagine the absolute worst thing in the world. Got that? Now tell me, did you imagine being in front of a live audience, letting slip a fart the size of a child then having a massive rectal prolapse? Did you imagine your innards exploding out of you like you were a can of defective silly string? Because if you didn’t I’d sincerely love to know what you did imagine!

  The doc that attended to my injury told me not to worry – that everything was going to be fine. I’d say he was a little off the mark on that. I don’t have a dictionary to hand but I’m pretty sure “fine” doesn’t look like my ass does right now. Man, I feel like I played rodeo on the wrong end of a rhino.

  No way I’ll live this down. How am I meant to face my public again after I turned into the goddamned human yo-yo? Worst part is I did it to myself. I wasn’t flirting with disaster back at that gym, I was sticking a diamond ring on its finger. I wanted to prove the world wrong in the worst possible way, and that’s exactly what I got.

  While I was under observation the doc ran my blood work. The results were not good. My superpowers were gone. Extinct. Never coming back. All I could do now was sit tight and pop Vicodin into my face hole until I adjusted to my new circumstances. Until I started to feel “normal.”

  Normal? Who the hell wants “normal”? When Type Negative showed up last year to drown us in a tidal wave of blood, was it “normal” that stopped this city looking like Venice reimagined by Stephen King? Or how about when Pablo Kickasso brought those Guggenheim sculptures to life and sent them marauding down Fifth Avenue? Was it “normal” that saved the day?

  I can’t believe I ended up this way; shot down in my prime. I was king of the castle, number one on the call sheet – now look at me. I could take a header out of the window, I really could. I mean, if I can’t be the greatest man who ever lived then what’s the point? I don’t mean to sound dramatic here, but the way I feel right now it’s like God unzipped his fly and pissed out the sun.

  February 12th

  Rumbled. My story exposed. Front page news. I got wind of the leak after a nurse switched on the hospital room TV and I saw my picture up on the screen. Rex Kettner was reporting alongside the photo, which had me on a gurney being wheeled out of Powerhouse and loaded into the back of an ambulance. The accompanying headline read ‘You’ll Believe a Man Can’t Fly.’ God help me, if I ever get my hands on Rex Kettner I’m going to push his face through a harp.[60]

  Mom stopped by with a bag of grapes and a head full of worry. She’d brought Birdy with her too. I was surprised he had the neck to show himself after what he’d done to me, but even more surprised when I saw who he’d brought with him.

  There she was, my very own Florence Nightingale, Doctor Love. Boy, was I ever glad to see her. Although... did therapists usually make hospital calls I wondered? Then Birdy dropped the bomb.

  “You’ve met my girlfriend obviously...”

  Remember that gal my brother mentioned at Thanksgiving – the braniac he met through work? The one Mom thought he was making up? Doctor Love the whole time.

  All the pieces came tumbling into place. Birdy’s decision to take me down at C.H.A.M.P hadn’t been some spur of the moment thing, it had started the day he sent Love my way. She wasn’t my therapist, she was my brother’s spy! No wonder he knew I’d lost my superpowers; everything I’d told that hussy had gone straight in his ear. Every confession, every secret, every stinking moment of weakness. So much for the circle of trust – Doctor Love made a goddamned toilet seat out of the circle!

  Worse than that, they’d stopped by my hospital bed just to gloat. Just to rub their victory in my face knowing I couldn’t fight back in front of Mom. Honestly, it’d break her heart to know the boy she’d raised. Those asswipes. I wanted to scream a hole in them but I couldn’t even raise my voice for fear of my backside unravelling again. Instead I had to lie there and take it while they feigned sympathy and gave me the old, “How you doing?” flannel. The nerve. How am I doing? I’m busted to sh*t, I’ve lost the respect of the entire planet and my therapist turned out to be a goddamned double agent. I’m sunshine personified!

  February 14th

  Valentine’s Day

  Valentine’s with my Mom. It’s like a dream come true. The kind where you’re fighting for your last breath as you’re sucked under a pool of quicksand.

  Mom made the suggestion that I convalesce at her place once the hospital discharged me, and the suggestion was mandatory. After all, this here was a situation she’d fantasized about forever. There’d be no more punching comets out of the sky or bouncing iron girders off of my head or any of that nonsense; not now my invincibility was gone. Oh happy day! Break out the cotton wool! I was her baby boy again, feeble as the day I was born, and I was in for the mothering of a lifetime.

  Truly this was Mom’s time to shine. I’m telling you, the old gal’s never been happier – tending and fussing and stuffing me with so much food it’s like she mistook me for Africa. Can you believe she even tried cheer
ing me up with a joke this morning? Chuckling (my mother, CHUCKLING!), she jabbed a finger at my temporary wheelchair and told me, “At least you will not be losing any games of musical chairs.”

  Laugh? I nearly did.

  “What is matter with you?” she asked, sensing my unhappiness. “Is this about fight with your brother?”

  What did she know about that? Had Birdy gotten to her already? F*ck that noise, it was time she heard the real story.

  I told Mom exactly how things had gone down – how Birdy had horned me out of my job. Try as I might I couldn’t get a rise out of her though. She kept her gear in neutral – no sibling favorites she said – the mom party line. I got her to admit that she wasn’t crazy about the way Birdy had handled things, but she said as far as letting people know I’d lost my superpowers, he did have a point. I’m sorry, but if that kid has a point it’s a goddamned stubby one.

  If I could only get Dad to weigh in on this. He always was the voice of reason. The voice of a lot of things actually. After he lost his police job (and before his accident) he found work as a voice actor; commercials, movie previews, train platform announcements, you name it. Beautiful delivery he had – rich, manly and smoky – like he’d scorched his vocal chords saving too many kittens from house fires. Truth told, he owed his baritone to his fondness for cigarettes. Dad was a social smoker – he was social about thirty times a day in fact. Thankfully it’s a habit I never picked up, although I do keep his Zippo lighter as a memento to this day. I went looking for it after his funeral and found it in an old shoebox along with a talking greeting card he lent his pipes to one time. For years I’d open and close that card so I could listen to him sing me Happy Birthday. Got me through some tough times that thing did, at least until the batteries ran down. After that he started sounding like he had a mental condition, so I put him back in his box and that was that. No more Dad.

  March 2nd

  When I saw a C.H.A.M.P number show up on my caller ID this morning I figured I had a cape-between-the-legs apology coming my way. Instead it was the station mailroom calling to let me know that the Might Mites – my so-called fan club – had begun swamping them with returned membership badges and subscription refund demands.

  I couldn’t believe it. The Might Mites were my most hardcore devotees! Boy, those kids were the limit. ‘O Captain, my Captain!’ they’d yell as they spotted me in a restaurant and jumped on my table, sending the condiments flying everywhere. Seems those days were done though – at least since their idol stopped being able to play tug o’ war with a fleet of tanks. I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised – the Might Mites never really cared about who I was, only what I could do. Test them on my superpowers and they’d reel off a list that’d give you an aneurism, but ask them about Captain Might the man and they’d shoot you a look like a hand reached down from the sky and snatched away the horizon.

  The mailroom told me the membership badges and letters needed removing from the premises immediately – the hate mail too. Apparently I’d received so many letters of complaint that the sack containing them had become was denser than a collapsed star. F*cking fair-weather fanboys. Even my grown-up followers were disowning me![61]

  After that, things really snowballed. First my agent got in touch to let me know that Nike had handed their sneakers endorsement deal to Doubletime. An hour later I got the message that Red Bull wanted out of the Captain Might business to pursue someone better suited to their ‘Gives you wings’ campaign. Worst of all, I was failing as a brand ambassador for my own cologne, which had started clogging supermarket shelves nationwide.[62]

  Right now the only brand interested in making money off my name is Depends, the adult diaper company. I know that for a fact because I had their people arrive on my doorstep offering a deal just now, and before I could send them packing they managed to barge in and set up an easel. Quick as a flash a rep plopped down a mood board showing a Photoshop of yours truly dressed in disposable underwear alongside the slogan ‘When the bottom falls out of your world, don’t let the world fall out of your bottom.’

  So that was my day.

  March 3rd

  I needed to talk with my P.R. guy and have him figure out a way to overhaul my image. If anyone could get me back on track it was Jules. Sure, he crapped the bed with the whole C.H.O.M.P thing, but when my man’s doing his job he’s got me covered like Teflon. Hell, that story Rex Kettner broke about me kicking a baby into the big black? He disappeared that story like a ninja in a power cut.

  I’d been trying to get Jules on the phone for a while but he hadn’t been returning my calls. It was really starting to chap my ass. Still, I told myself he was probably busy managing the indiscretions of another client. The Inevitable Bulk most likely, who’d just wrecked half the East Village when he decided he wanted in on the parkour craze.

  When I finally got Jules to take my call he told me he’d been meaning to get in touch. He had some bad news he said. Long story short, I was finished at his agency. At least I think that’s what he was getting at – it was hard to make out through the fog of media-speak pumping out of his gas hole. He promised “Vis-à-vis” my situation that he’d “Dumped some serious brain” but that my “Failure to engage with the public’s core paradigm” meant I was “Off trend.” In other words, I’m about as popular as a turd on a wedding cake right now.

  I was thinking on what to do next when I got a call from my publisher. Perfect, I thought, just the folks I wanted to jaw with. What better way to level the playing field than with a carpet of truth bombs? Except my publisher said they were washing their hands of me too. They’d commissioned the chronicle of the All-Conquering American Hero, they said, not some faded glory with a case of the Howard Hughes. In short, they wanted hot sh*t, not lukewarm piss.[63]

  Man, I was stroking out! The deal was inked and they knew it. I phoned my piranha lawyer to have him serve those sons of bitches with a breach of contract notice, but when I got him on the phone he told me he was going through a tunnel and the line went dead. He might have had me fooled too if it weren’t for the fact I’d called his landline.

  March 10th

  Back at Might Heights and out of the wheelchair. It had been weeks since I was home and the contents of the fridge had turned into a science experiment. I took inventory of the larder but all I found there were z-grade canned goods: sausage gumbo, Spaghetti-O’s promoting the 1996 ape-run-amok movie ‘Dunston Checks In’ and something tactfully described as ‘bacon-style pieces.’ The only thing I’d be getting off of that menu was diabetes. I looked for a healthy alternative but all I could find was a carton of almond milk. Yuck. How hard were they squeezing those things to get milk out of them?

  Since when does a guy like me have to take care of his own shopping? Used to be that was someone else’s job, at least before my C.H.A.M.P privileges died on the vine. Now I’m left fending for myself. That’s how it is I guess, one minute you’re all swag, the next you’re buying your own groceries. What a stone cold smack in the mouth for anyone who ever believed in me.

  I owed it to my fans not to get recognized doing everyday people stuff (if I had any fans left), so I dropped by a costume store on the Lower East Side and patched together a cookie-cutter superhero disguise: two parts Evel Kneivel, one part Power Ranger, last part Zorro.[64] And no, the irony of having to dress up like a superhero to keep my real superhero identity secret was not lost on me.

  Suitably camouflaged, I hit up the nearest 7-Eleven and started filling a cart. I did my best to act like part of the crowd, but that’s easier said than done when you’re used to a certain standard of living (ie being treated at all times like Gandhi multiplied by Jesus). I was only dimly aware of there being such a thing as a shopping line, and instinct told me standing in one was dummy business. That’s why I ignored the chumps waiting their turn and cut straight to the checkout to make my purchase. Unfortunately, as fate would have it (and it usually does), I’d chosen to butt in on exactly the wrong person.r />
  It took me a second to recognize who the guy getting up in my face was, then suddenly it hit me. It hit me that I’d hit him. It was Acro-Bat, the Z-List goon from the Murder Circus I’d KO’d during that back alley hold up. What a blast from the past – it felt like a lifetime ago we’d crossed swords. Probably didn’t seem too long ago him though, at least going by the bitch-slap he was still wearing.

  “Captain Might?” he said, with a face like a smacked haddock. So much for camouflage.

  Now here was a situation I did not need. News that Professor D’eath had put me on the failure trail had even made it to the bush leagues by this point, and I had the feeling Acro-Bat wouldn’t be shy about capitalizing on his good fortune. No doubt about it, this 7-Eleven was about to go 9-11.

  Things started out okay – I was totally holding my own despite rolling minus powers – but then I launched a flying kick so vicious I almost tore my taint in half. It gave Acro-Bat just enough of an opening to pull my top over my head, plant a lucky shot on my jaw, then ten more lucky shots in my gut.