by C. T. Phipps
“No,” Diabloman said. “That is Rule Three. Never trust another supervillain. Rule Number One is you must never kill a superhero.”
“What?” Cindy asked, staring at Diabloman in shock. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No,” Diabloman replied. “If you kill a supervillain you will receive respect and praise. Better still, you will receive fear. If you kill a superhero you will receive condemnation and hatred. Every superhero in the world will consider it their personal duty to bring you to justice. Very often, you will not be taken alive, even by the greatest paragons amongst them. Believe me, I speak from experience on this.”
“Is that why supervillains leave superheroes in easily escapable death traps?” I was only half-joking.
“Yes,” Diabloman said, without irony.
Cindy was, however, still focused on my earlier words. “Hold on, back to this murder every other supervillain thing. Does this include the cute sexy ones?”
Looking in my rear view mirror, I saw her clutch her hair bunches and give me a pearly white smile.
Smirking at her transparent attempts to manipulate me, I said, “I don’t know. I’ll have to run that by my wife. I’m sure she’ll ask me to spare one or two of them in the future.”
“Eesh.” Cindy blanched.
“Anything else?” I said, driving through the dark and dingy streets of Falconcrest City.
“You will need to spend most of the money you acquired on this heist,” Diabloman said.
“What?” I was tempted to hit the brakes. I’d been envisioning a certain amount of financial security from this point on.
“To be a supervillain, you must command respect from your henchmen. For that, you must display the wealth they are expected to have. You must be flashy and theatrical in a way which intimidates and inspires others to want to be around you.”
“Uh-huh”
Cindy nodded, understanding. “It’s why gangsters wear lots of gold rings and necklaces. I learned that in Super-Criminal Psychology 101.”
I looked at Cindy in the rear view mirror. “You took that too?”
“It was one of my electives,” Cindy said. “Didn’t you switch out and get your Master’s degree in History?”
“Yes. I thought it would be more useful than it’s turned out to be. At least it’s still useful as hypothetical toilet paper.”
Diabloman ignored Cindy’s digression. “In order to maintain cooperation from authorities, you must spread around the wealth. I haven’t even mentioned the equipment costs. Freeze rays and giant robot labs do not pay for themselves.”
“Well that, at least, makes sense,” I said, thinking about his words for a second. “So, what you’re telling me is as soon as I make a fortune due to super-crime, I’m going to end up blowing it?”
“Yes. It is the vicious cycle we exist in,” Diabloman replied, giving a heavy sigh. “You will be required to make even bigger scores in order to break even.”
“Then why am I doing it?” I asked the obvious question.
“To gain respect. A supervillain without respect does not live very long. Other villains will attack you, target your loved ones, and eliminate your henchmen.” Diabloman’s voice had a grave authoritativeness which reminded me of my grandfather.
I wasn’t looking forward to explaining that to my wife. ‘I’m sorry, Honey, I stole six million dollars in cash but we’re still having trouble paying the bills’ was going to go over like a ton of bricks.
“You could always retire.”
“You be quiet!”
“What?” Cindy asked.
“Not you!” I said, almost getting sideswiped by a car running a red light. Talking with the forces in my head and driving was difficult.
“He’s talking to his magical cloak,” Diabloman said. “It belonged to the Nightwalker and is haunted by the spirits of all previous bearers.”
“It is?”
“That would have been part of the orientation. You know if you’d bothered listen to me for more than a few minutes.”
“You bear a heavy curse.” Diabloman spoke with a sage-like tone. “Being a supervillain will exact a heavy toll on you as well, but not as much as the Reaper’s Cloak shall.”
“You seem to know a lot about this.”
“Yes,” Diabloman said. “I researched the Nightwalker for a decade before I made my move against him.”
“And you still weren’t able to beat him,” Cindy said. It was amazing, she’d actually lost tact since her high school years.
Diabloman, in an instant, had his hands around her neck.
Merciless, may I break her neck?”
“No.”
Cynthia wasn’t afraid. “Try it, Buster.”
“No killing each other.”
“All right,” they both said at once.
“You are all insane.”
“Probably,” I said. “So, Diablo, Cindy, can you hook me up with a guy who can set me up with a lair? Maybe someone I can talk to about getting a better Merciless Mobile?”
“Please don’t call it that,” Cindy said. “It’s bad enough I’m traveling in a minivan. You don’t have to make it worse by giving it a name.”
“No promises.”
“I know someone who might be able to help you.” Diabloman rubbed his chin. “Just a note, with the recent influx of supervillains into the city with the Nightwalker’s death, it will be difficult to get the usual haunts.”
“Usual haunts?” I asked, not having a clue as to what they were talking about.
“Amusement parks, toy factories, and so on. Abandoned warehouses are the pits, though,” Cindy said. “Let’s not get one of those. We should start a new trend of supervillains in luxury high-rises with live-in models.”
“Man,” I said, sighing. “Who knew being a supervillain was so damn complicated?”
“Everyone,” Cindy said.
“It is a rather well-known bit of truth,” Diabloman replied.
“Yes.”
I was about to respond to them all with a rather stinging bit of sarcasm when I suddenly felt like my chest was about to explode. I had to pull over and park the car, my breath became ragged as I had to labor for every breath.
“Gary, are you having a heart attack?” Cindy sounded concerned, which was surprising. Since reuniting with her earlier today, I’d been under the impression she’d ingested the supervillain Kool-Aid wholeheartedly.
“I don’t know... I’ve never had one before,” I said, coughing.
“You’re not having a heart attack. Believe me, I would know. Your death is marked on the Grim Reaper’s calendar along with everyone else and so far we’ve not been wrong yet.”
“You know my...” I cleared my throat. “My death date?”
“Do you want to know it?”
“No!” I shouted at Cloak. “Life is depressing enough without knowing when I’m going to die.”
“Do I even want to know?” Cindy looked at Diabloman.
“No,” Diabloman said. “You do not.”
After a few seconds the pain in my chest receded and my head cleared a bit.
“Okay, what the hell was that?” I asked.
“Bad chili fries?” Cindy asked, looking concerned. “Do you want us to take you to a hospital?”
“Not you.” I waved her away. “I need to work on talking to my magical cloak in private.”
“You detected a spirit. A very old spirit. One of the enemies of the Balance.”
“I need to sit down for the full orientation it seems. I don’t recall ‘having heart attacks around old ghosts’ mentioned amongst the downsides.”
“This falls under ‘you will see dead people,’ Master. Don’t worry. It will become easier over time.”
Looking around to see where this sensation was coming from, I saw a little girl standing across the road. She looked no more than twelve and had long black hair which shined under the streetlights. Her attire was anachronistic, almost Edwardian. She held a single red
balloon in her left hand.
“That’s a ghost?” I asked.
“Who’s a ghost?” Cindy questioned, looking frightened. “Oh God, are we getting haunted like in The Shining? Is it a pair of spooky twin girls?”
“The spooky girl part is right. There’s just one of them, though.” I unbuckled my seat belt. “You guys stay here; I’m going to go investigate.”
“As you wish, Merciless,” Diabloman said. “I shall meditate on my past victories.”
“Uh, sure. Go right ahead.” Stepping out of the car, I asked Cloak, “So, what do I do now?”
“Anything you want. You can sense the dead but you do not have to do anything about them,” Cloak sounded forlorn, as if the problem was too big even for him. “The Lost are a problem far beyond the scope of mere mortals like yourself.”
“How long has she been standing there?” I inquired.
“Decades, in all likelihood.”
“You never did anything about her?”
“There are a lot of ghosts, Gary. Sometimes, they just fall through the cracks.”
That wasn’t a good attitude for a superhero to have.
I liked kids, despite not having any of my own. Seeing a little girl, even a dead one, in distress made me want to help.
Walking across the street, I saw she was staring at a bloodstain on the ground. The child showed no recognition of my presence and stared at the blood with an impassive expression on her face.
“Hello,” I said. “Can you hear me?”
“I’m afraid she’s too far gone into her memories. You would need a name to call to her.”
“Do you know it?”
“I possess many magical powers; omniscience is not one of them. As much as I regret doing so, I advise you to move on. There’s nothing which can be done with your present resources.”
“Screw that.” I pulled out my cellphone and called Mandy. She was the person I could always depend on for information. “Hey, Honey. I need your help for something very important.”
“You’re alive?”
“Yes.”
“Free?”
“Yes.”
“Not fleeing the police?”
“Nope.”
“How about the money?”
“Got it.”
“Thank God. Did you get the yogurt I asked for?”
“I’ll get it, I swear. However, I need you to look up a little girl’s name on the internet. Use your ‘leet’ internet skills to find any references, old time references, to a girl about twelve years old who died on Seventh Street.”
“Why?”
“I’m trying to make contact with her restless spirit,” I answered matter-of-factly.
“Oh, okay.” Mandy took it in stride. “Okay, give me a minute.”
“I know this is a lot to ask. It’s probably imposs—” I started to say.
“Theresa Douglas. The same Douglas family you helped regain its lost heir,” My wife explained. “She was murdered in 1942 by her father as part of some weird murder-suicide pact the Brotherhood of Infamy was involved in. Her mother killed herself a week later.”
“Wow,” I said. “That was fast.”
“I’m magic.”
“That you are. I’ll call you right back after this. The mission went very well and I got some henchmen. I’m only getting like a four hundred thousand dollars fee, though. I’ll also have to spend a lot of my take in order to build up my street cred.”
“What now?”
I was very grateful when the line cut out. I’d forgotten to charge the cellphone battery.
“Oh, I’m going to catch hell for that, later.” I grimaced, staring at the phone. “I’d better call her back on someone else’s cell on the way back. I should also pick up a few dozen roses too.”
“I retract any doubt I may have had about you being a supervillain. You’ve taken part in the murder of half a dozen people and your chief concern is about how your wife is going to react to your phone dying on you.”
“I have my priorities straight.” I put my cellphone up. “It’s why most marriages fail today. People don’t put their spouses first.”
“For once, I have no objections to your words.”
“They have cloak marriage where you’re from?”
“Let’s move on.”
Coughing into my fist, I stared at the girl. “Theresa, Theresa Douglas, can you hear me?”
Like a light bulb turning on, she became aware of my presence. “I can’t talk. I’m waiting for my mommy. She was supposed to pick me up here but my father came here instead. He... hurt me.”
I wished I could raise her dad from the grave so I could kill him. “Your mommy.... is waiting for you elsewhere.”
“She is?” Theresa asked. “Where?”
I didn’t know how to talk to a dead child. “Help me out here, Cloak.”
“The Place Beyond.”
I whispered the name in her ear and she nodded. “I saw it…once. It was pretty.”
Theresa faded away. Once she was gone, the bloodstain vanished as well. A clean sensation replaced the cold darkness which I hadn’t even realized I’d been feeling until that moment.
“Will she be all right?” I asked, genuinely concerned.
“As much as anyone who is dead.”
That wasn’t very comforting.
“Merciless... Gary...Thank you.” Cloak’s display of emotion surprised me. He was more than just a magical artifact.
“Don’t mention it.”
I headed back to the car.
Chapter Six
My Motivations for Becoming a Supervillain
Mandy took the whole business regarding my new minions and my intention to spend the majority of my ill-gotten loot on supervillain overhead even better than she did the announcement I was a supervillain. She threatened to divorce me. I also wasn’t allowed to bring any murderers into our house.
Fair enough.
“So, where am I allowed to bring murderers?” I asked, leaning up against the door.
It was close to midnight and the two of us were in the living room. We’d been arguing in a very polite fashion for the better part of an hour. Mandy was sitting in her comfy chair typing on her laptop. I could see the Foundation for World Harmony logo on her webpage from where I stood, which made me think she’d hacked into their database again.
“Did you actually ask me that?” Mandy asked, looking up. She had a pair of reading glasses on and they were sexy as hell.
“Yes.”
“You don’t see anything wrong with that question?” Mandy said.
I pretended to think before responding, “Nope!”
Mandy grumbled, continuing to work on her computer. “I believe you. Which is terrible. What is sparking this whole ‘I want to be a supervillain’ thing? I know you’re taking advantage of an opportunity but tell me what’s at the root.”
“It’s... complicated,” I said. “Lots of children want to grow up to be supervillains. I never gave up the dream.”
“Bullshit. Children also want to be pirates and I don’t see you dressing up like Johnny Depp.”
“Well I—” I started to make a crack.
“Please, Gary,” Mandy interrupted. “Why are you doing this?”
I realized this deserved a serious response. Dropping my flippant attitude, which was hard, I gave her a straight answer. “My brother.”
“Your brother?” Mandy looked surprised.
“Yeah. Remember what I told you?”
“He was the arch-nemesis of the Silver Lightning?” Mandy asked, sounding somewhat impressed. She shouldn’t have been.
“Arch-nemesis may be too strong of a word. The Silver Lightning can turn into living electricity, my brother had a harpoon. There’s not much comparison. I think he should have tried being the nemesis of an aquatically-themed superhero…but yeah, Keith’s the reason.”
Mandy put her computer aside and got up. She walked over to me and placed her hand on my shoulder.
It was warm and made me feel better. “Tell me what you’re thinking.” She knew about Keith’s death but not about how it related to my sudden, from her perspective, desire to become a costumed criminal.
“Sorry,” I said, clenching my teeth at the memory. Even after a decade and a half, discussing my brother’s death was painful. “I keep thinking about how he died. The papers celebrated his death. Celebrated, Mandy. My brother never killed anyone during his decade-long career and they still cheered when some wannabe shot him in the head.”
I still had nightmares about Shoot-Em-Up. I always would. Some things never left you.
“So, you want to be like your brother? Is that it?” Mandy asked, looking at me in disbelief.
“No,” I answered, turning back to her. “I don’t intend to get killed, for instance.”
“I doubt he did, either.”
“Keith never made it to the big time.” I ignored her jibe. “He was a B-list villain for an A-list superhero who I bet doesn’t even remember his name. Still, it was the happiest time of his life. I figure, if I can be the supervillain he wasn’t able to be, I can exorcise his ghost.”
Mandy looked at me with a skeptical expression on her face. “That is the single dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life.”
“Okay, it’s because I want to be rich and famous,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “That better?”
“If people ask, go with that.” I was about to say more when my cellphone rang. Voltaire’s “When You’re Evil” was my ring tone.
“Can you change that to something more upbeat?” Mandy asked, staring at my cellphone. “That creeps me out.”
“Pet Shop Boys’ ‘It’s a Sin’?”
“No.” Mandy rolled her eyes.
“Michael Jackson’s ‘Bad’?” I smirked while suggesting.
Mandy threw up her hands. “Forget it. Answer the damned phone.”
Pulling it out, I asked, “You want to get Chinese food tonight?”
“Sounds good,” Mandy replied, switching gears, “as long as you aren’t going to get evil noodles.”
“No, that would be silly,” I said, answering the phone and putting it to my ear. “Hello?”
There was nothing but an unearthly horrible static on the other line. Then there was a voice which sounded eerily like Mandy’s own. “Gary...zzzzt...Gary...we...bzzt...need—”