by Alex Ziebart
“Go ahead.” Bernice lit her cigarette and took a drag. “I’m always up for talking business.”
“It’s about my new job.”
Kristen told her everything. It didn’t take as long as she thought it would; Bernice’s cigarette was only half gone by the time she was done. Her cigarettes were as reliable as an hourglass.
“Gotta admit, I’m surprised.” Bernice blew smoke from the side of her mouth. “You usually don’t take shit from anybody. Why start now? Why’s Jane special? If your boss is jerking you around, you put your foot down. That’s not the best idea when you’re easily replaced, but if you’re a specialist, you can get away with it. You know Tara, right? The girl that fixes up the arcade machines for us? I don’t know anybody else who can do that job like she does. I can give her a pile of scrap I got off the Internet for ten bucks and she can turn it into a mint. If she needs something from me, I’m gonna do it. I don’t care what it is. If I lose her, that’s game over. But if Jack gives me shit? He’s out. Anybody can work a cash register.”
“So you don’t think I should quit?”
“Not before trying to fix the problem. You obviously have a skill she needs. If you ask her questions and she won’t give you answers, you ask again. You don’t do shit for her until she does what you need her to do. If she never does it, then you do your own thing.”
Kristen glanced skyward. “That’s the problem. Emma needs a place, and I need the money. Walking away isn’t an option.”
“Think a little.”
“What?”
Bernice waved her cigarette toward the Otherworlds sign. “You’re an honest-to-god… what you are. I own half of that. Technically three-quarters, but whatever.”
“So what, I become your mascot or something?”
Bernice dropped her cigarette and rubbed it out with the toe of her shoe. “Honey, step into my office.”
Kristen followed Bernice inside. Jack stood at the register, busy with a customer. He offered Kristen a sheepish glance, and she pointedly looked away. Bernice led her across the store and through the Employees Only doors, back into the corner of the loaded storeroom where two desks faced one another, a double-sided bulletin board separating them. Pictures of barely-clothed superheroines covered Joel's side of the board. Bernice's side wasn't any different. Bernice sat at her desk, riffled through a stack of comics and magazines, and moved one to the top. She folded her arms over it to hide the cover. “You know how I feel about Kerplow Comics, right?”
“They have the worst name in the world?”
“Yeah, that’s true. But I don’t think you understand how much I hate them. They’re vultures. Total vultures. They still sell at ninety-nine cents. You know how? They sucker people into doing work for free. They get writers and artists who’ll do their job for exposure, and make those people think they’ll get to move on to something better. They’re just screwing people. And their stories? They pull that straight-from-the-headlines stuff. They have the corniest characters ever and just switch them in for real people on the news. And they sell like crazy because they’re cheap. Parents think they’re doing their kids a solid by taking them to a comic shop, freak out because a comic costs five bucks, and buy them the ninety-nine cent trash instead.”
“Don’t you sell them here?”
“Yeah, I sell them.” Bernice shrugged. “We’re running a business. Sometimes you have to check your morals at the door.”
Kristen’s lip curled. “But if you sell them, you’re just perpetuating it, right? I mean, if they weren’t on the shelves…”
“Then parents would walk out of the place, their kids would leave crying with nothing, and they’d never come back. I’ll take a penny profit over someone walking out with empty hands.” Bernice shook her head. “Don’t distract me, alright? Here, look.”
Kristen watched closely as Bernice unveiled the Kerplow! Comic. Emblazoned on the cover were the words CREAM CITY CRUSADER in Impact font. A busty woman in a black spandex catsuit stood atop a skyscraper, posed in a way that managed to show off her rear and her chest simultaneously.
“Why did they make me a redhead?”
Bernice eyed her. “That’s your only problem with this?”
“Well, no.” Kristen pushed Bernice’s arm down by the wrist, hiding the cover from her own sight. She hoped if she couldn’t see it, it would stop being real. “Can they do that? They can’t, right? You can’t just put a real person on your book cover. Right?”
“What can you do about it? Sue them? First, you’d have to identify yourself to go to court. Second, you never actually picked some kind of hero name. And they did make her a redhead. You don’t have red hair. It’s not you. It’s not the woman on the news. As far as the law goes, it’s their original character. And they’re going to make bank off of it.”
Kristen grabbed the chair from Joel’s desk and wheeled it over. She fell into it. “That footage was only on TV yesterday. How fast do they work?”
Bernice threw the comic facedown onto the desk. “That was your third appearance. They’ve probably been working on this since the first time you showed up. You gave them months to do it. You’re in the headlines—now you’re in their book. People are going to eat it up. I won’t be able to keep it in stock. And they’re going to sell posters. And toys. And you can bet your sweet ass that your sweet ass will be on every single cover because these people aren’t satisfied with the T or the A. They need both.”
Kristen stared at an advertisement on the back of the comic book—some video game she’d never heard of before. She wanted to laugh, but it wouldn’t come out. “Someone is seriously going to make money off of me?”
“A lot of it.”
“And I can’t do anything about it?”
Bernice broke into a Cheshire smile. “Honey, you know I always have a plan. Have you ever heard of a guy named Harold Kleczka?”
Kristen wrinkled her nose. “I think there’s a funeral home with his name on it.”
“Different guy.” Bernice paused. “I think so, anyway. Nah, Harry makes his own comics. Writer, artist, editor, printer—the whole thing. He’s old as hell. He’s been doing this since he was a teenager during the forties. He consigns his books with us, and keeps talking about how they’ll make him rich someday so he can buy his grandkids a house.”
“Is his stuff any good?”
“They’re terrible. And they don’t sell for shit. Honestly, I think he loses money printing them. I don’t know how he still does it.” She shuffled through her stack of books and pulled out another. She passed it to Kristen, who leafed through its pages while she listened. “He never grew out of the wacky phase. We’re talking dudes with stereos for a head. I don’t really know my history, but this guy says Milwaukee used to be the big time, and he thought it’d always be like that. In his books, Milwaukee and Chicago grew so big they became one place, the Milwaukee-Chicago Metropolitan. The worst part is he shortens it down to MCM, like it’s LA or NYC or something.”
Kristen grimaced at a page: a full-page splash of a hairy man in a loincloth wielding a two-handed sword, riding a sea monster while decapitating it. In the background, a modern city skyline rose into the clouds. “This is supposed to be a superhero comic? Seems a little more Conan the Barbarian.”
“Harry calls that guy The Rhinelander. Every character he has is themed around something local. Rhinelander’s a town up north, I guess. And it’s German. So that guy’s supposed to be German. Or Germanic, I guess.”
“Well…” Kristen flipped through the pages again. “Considering he’s an old guy, at least it isn’t a Nazi?”
“The Rhinelander fights a lot of Nazis.”
“Figures. What does hairy-man-with-big-sword have to do with me again?”
Bernice snatched the book back and tossed it onto her desk. “What’s in his books doesn’t matter. What matters are his trademarks. Trademarks are solid-fucking-gold in this business, because all the good names are taken already. A trademark
might as well last forever. That’s why new indie comics usually have characters with terrible names, or they drop the hero thing and just give them a real name. Joe Blow instead of Super Badass. But nobody wants superhero comics for Joe Blow. They want Super Badass. That’s just what the genre is, you know?”
Kristen nodded. “So I have to start wearing a loincloth so this old guy can buy his kids a house?”
Bernice chewed on her lip. Her gaze traveled up and down Kristen’s body with exaggerated infatuation. “Is the loincloth out of the question?”
“Do you really want to start trouble with the lady who can rip a car apart?”
Bernice coughed a laugh. “Nah, guess not. Anyway, there’s gotta be something in all of his awful books that sounds good. Nothing matters but the name. Bad costume? We can change it. Bad story? Doesn’t matter. You pick what you want and we ask him to give us the name.”
“You think he’ll just hand it over? If he’s been doing this for years…”
“He’s been doing this for years, and he’s broke as a joke. We’ll give him a cut.” Bernice swiveled in her chair to face Kristen fully. “Look, they’ve been riding this local-girl thing the whole time. Maiden Milwaukee, all of that. You can actually do what this guy’s been trying to do. Everybody in town will line up to buy your comic just because it’s about you. And if it’s good, people from every town will want it. We keep running with the local-girl thing. We find a decent writer here in town. Artists, too. They’ll eat it up.”
Suddenly drawn to them, Kristen’s gaze drifted to the scantily clad super-women on Bernice’s bulletin board. Women with deep cleavage, leggy in their miniskirts, come-hither eyes beckoning the viewer into the bedroom. All had immaculate hair and battle damage only in places where a ripped costume would reveal more supple skin. Kristen tried to recall an old conversation with Bernice.
When a little girl comes into my shop and can find something they can identify with, I love that. But when I'm by myself and want to chill out, all I want is badass chicks in lingerie.
Was that what it was all about? Kristen wondered. While she didn’t wear lingerie, form-fitting clothes on her figure was close enough. It had certainly gotten Joel’s attention. And Jane’s boss—whoever he was—had decided to release footage from Temple, placing her right in front of everyone’s eyes. Was she their mascot because she was fighting for the right thing, or because she had the right appeal?
What had she actually done? She’d made a few token appearances and handled situations the authorities could have managed without her. Her alter ego had garnered overnight fame for nothing. Now, Bernice was talking merchandising and monetizing. Was it possible to be an instant sell-out? Merchandising didn’t seem heroic. Then again, she’d never read a comic where the hero’s likeness was being stolen in a shady licensing scheme. Stolen-likeness plots were usually more sinister.
Kristen could swear she felt a physical click in her mind.
They’re changelings, Kris. Not werewolves. Their blood can assimilate the blood of other living things. When that happens, they can take the form of anything they’ve assimilated.
She put a hand to her stomach.
Bernice cocked her head, eyes narrow. “If you’re going to throw up, don’t aim for the merchandise, okay?”
Kristen ran from the office, her words a jumble as she tried to get them all out at once. “Gotta make a phone call, will be back later, everything’s fine, don’t worry, bye!”
The moment Kristen burst through the Employees Only door into the store proper, she forced herself to walk. She felt the strength in her gut, and with her sudden tension, she couldn’t find the speed setting between walk and I belong on a highway. Jack opened his mouth to say something, but she held up a hand to silence him.
Outside, she jumped into the sedan and popped the glovebox, plucking the phone Jane had given her from its posh depths. She dialed as fast as her fingers would move. Jane answered on the second ring.
“Hello?”
“Hey. It’s Kris.”
“Hey!”
“...hey? I think we did that part already.”
“How’re you feeling? Ready to talk?”
“Uh, yeah.”
Chapter 5
“You'll keep an eye out? That's it?” Kristen's voice grew louder. “Are you serious? You don't have anything else you can say?”
“Hey, keep it down a bit, alright?” Jane flipped a burger. “I know you're freaked out. You have that right. But there isn't a lot we can do right now.”
They'd gathered in a public park and claimed a picnic table. Jane hadn't wasted any time setting up a grill and stoking charcoal. How she'd managed to bring along a full-size grill and a cooler on a Harley, Kristen could only guess. Though the park was full—families with their children out in force on a warm summer day—everyone gave them a wide berth. Smoke from the grill kept them at bay as if they were mosquitoes.
Kristen slammed an open palm on the picnic table. “You’re acting like this is no big deal. Something could be wearing my face. That’s messed up!”
Jane stooped over and reached into the cooler. She tossed a bottle of water to Kristen, who caught it with ease, then pulled out a pack of bacon. Tearing it open, she slapped a few thick slices on the grill with a sizzle. She pushed her sunglasses up onto her head to avoid dirtying them with popping grease. “That’s not how it is. I know it’s a big deal. In fact, it’s a serious problem, but not one we can fix right now. I know Milwaukee isn’t LA or Shanghai, but it’s still a city. If one of the Sea People can become you—and we’re not sure anyone survived that warehouse—we won’t know until they turn up. Taking faces is what they do. They could be anyone. Even if every single person I know was walking the streets looking for them, we wouldn’t find them. But when they show up, we’ll deal with it. I promise.”
“Yeah, like that’ll help. I’ve already been on the news three times. If someone else starts screwing around with my face, that’ll be on the news, too. What if they kill someone? I’m a nerd, I watch TV. I know how this stuff works.”
Jane flipped the other burger. “Then we’ll make sure you’re the one who deals with the imposter. We’ll make sure there’s footage, and we’ll make sure that makes the news, too. Why don’t we talk about something we can actually resolve?”
“Like what?” Kristen snapped.
“Whether or not you’re going to work with us.”
“If you want me on board, a good first step is telling me who you are.” Kristen waved her water bottle as she spoke. “And don’t tell me you already told me. I know your name is Jane and you work for Temple. I’m not even sure if I believe your name is actually Jane. Let me guess—your last name is Doe?”
Jane took a Ziploc bag of sliced cheddar from her cooler and laid slices on the browning burgers. “Miller, actually. Let me start by saying I’m sorry. You’re right, our intro wasn’t the best, but it never is. Temple has been doing what it does for a long time, and there’s still no accepted method of making first contact with someone. There’s no good way to do it. When you tell someone you know they’re gifted—gifted the way you’re gifted—it scares them. It makes them feel backed into a corner.”
Kristen threw her arms out with the bottle still in-hand. “Well, yeah. You literally backed me into a corner.”
“Because if it’s going to happen anyway, you might as well do it. When you’re in a corner, you’re going to throw punches, but at least you can’t go anywhere. You’ll listen to what we have to say. There are more friendly methods, but they tend to be worse in the end.”
“Worse how?”
“Let’s pretend I’d made first contact with you in a bar. I introduced myself, we hung out, we became good friends. After a month or two, when you started to trust me, I’d tell you what I actually wanted. That’s one hell of a betrayal. It’s cruel.”
Kristen rolled her bottle in her hands, elbows on the table. “Okay. Fair enough.”
Jane plated the ha
mburgers on paper plates and set one before Kristen. She sat on the bench across from her. “And it isn’t uncommon for someone to stay in denial their whole lives. Our culture trains us so thoroughly to believe that this kind of thing can’t exist that even when we see it, we deny it. If you feel like this is all a dream, or you’re the star of a modern Truman Show, you aren’t alone. But the choice is simple: accept it and use your gift, or deny it and live without it.”
Kristen took solace in that: she wasn’t alone in the dream. Still, she shook her head. “It really isn’t that simple.”
“It is, though. Do or don’t. If you can’t shake the feeling it’s a dream, maybe walking away is the best thing for you. If you can get over it, then you can do this.”
She picked up her burger, but didn’t take a bite. “That isn’t the biggest hurdle here. You’re asking me to work for people I don’t know anything about. A bank? Seriously? Is this some kind of shadow government agency thing?”
Jane shook her head. “Not at all. When my boss hired me, he put it like this: governments don’t last long enough to do what we do. We deal with long-term issues. I mean seriously long-term. Temple, in its current form, has been doing what it does since the Crusades. This is going to sound absurd, but it’s true: the longest-lasting continuous government in the world is the United States of America. The USA is less than two hundred and fifty years old. When dealing with delicate issues that require global reach, governments just aren’t up to the task. More, the unfortunate truth is that in our world, wealth is the ultimate power. Money alone can’t solve all problems, but I guarantee that money helps grease the wheels. The moneylender is the most powerful person in the world. It’s always been that way.”
Kristen finally took a bite of her burger and spoke with a full mouth. “But what does Temple actually do? Besides the bank stuff.”
“Put simply? We protect people.” Jane reached across the table and moved Kristen’s plate aside. So many names and symbols had been carved onto that table's weathered surface over the years, it was impossible to make sense of any but one. Jane tapped a finger on a single carving: a Venn diagram with three circles, its overlapping parts forming a flower with three thin petals. “See this here? This is the same table Michael used when he brought me into the fold. He put that there. That’s how he sees our existence. Not one world, but three.”