Enhanced

by Cosca, Paul

  When I touched it...man, I don’t...I don’t think about this too often.

  Or maybe I do, but only in dreams. When I touched it I heard this awful sound. But the sound wasn’t in my ears...it was in my head. It was a scream. From...whatever it was that had fallen from the sky. They screamed inside my brain, and they were terrified. There was so much sadness and confusion. I was crying as all their thoughts and feelings crossed my brain. Everything they’d known had changed and was ending. They were lost and dying.

  Finally, I broke away and ran. I didn’t even grab my bike. I ran over a mile, all the way back home. At night...I can hear it when I dream. Those screams. Man, I should have stayed. They just needed help, and I was the one they called out to. As long as I live I’ll never forget that.

  For years and years I thought I was crazy. Things appearing out of nowhere. Voices in my head. I thought if I ever told anyone, they’d lock me up in the nuthouse. But I guess after The Invasion, we’re all a little crazy, aren’t we?

  THE LINES WE CROSS

  June 4th, 1999

  Today I am Lowell, Massachusetts, sitting in the lovely, mid-century home of Heather Bretton. The home is well appointed, with very high end furniture in the front parlor (though it looks like a room that is only used once or twice a year). The kitchen we sit in is much less formal, decorated with pictures of her family. Her kids look more like her than they do her husband, but the whole family looks incredibly happy in the photos (though don’t families always look happy in photos?). She has three adorable children, two girls and a boy. Her husband Michael is out of town, as he is the regional manager for a large chain of department stores. Overall, this is the kind of home that carries the lovely, elegant charm of the Northeast that seems as far away from the glitz and glamour of fame as it possibly could be.

  HEATHER: When you hear about someone who’s the daughter of a famous superhero, this probably isn’t the house you’d imagine, is it? Or the life you’d imagine. Good. That wasn’t necessarily the goal...it least it wasn’t always that way. But nowadays it feels right.

  That’s not to say I didn’t or don’t love my mother. She was a truly amazing woman. I’d be honored to be compared with her, because she was such a fascinating person. But she’s also a cautionary tale, isn’t she? She’s the story they tell others. “See, this is what you don’t do.” I’d be foolish not to see that.

  My mother, Ruth Kells, grew up in the Northwest, near Seattle. Her father was a soldier and they’d had a tough time conceiving, so my mother was something of a miracle baby. They treasured her. Really, they spoiled her. My grandmother came from old money, and they lavished their daughter with it. Gave her everything she ever wanted, and she turned out to be the princess they were looking for. She was beautiful, intelligent, athletic. She was skilled at everything she ever tried. Dancing, horseback riding, skiing, tennis. She could have made money doing any of that. But it was fighting that most intrigued

  her. Seattle was one of the first places in the country that had a Judo studio, and she begged my grandparents to join.

  I think what she loved about it was people underestimating her. She was lithe and petite and not very tall, but she could easily take on men twice her size and put them on the ground. She enjoyed sparring with men most of all. And beating them. She could be cruel to those that she thought were beneath her. And in her eyes, that was just about everyone.

  But she craved more. Craved variety, all the time. She flew through high school and got into Harvard for pre-med. And it was there that she had her revelation.

  It was a long time before my mother told me any of this. I came home from a bad date when I was fourteen and found her deeply drunk. She handed me a glass of red wine, my first drink, and she laid out her whole story. I’d heard bits and pieces, but never the full thing. Hearing it made me love her more and hate her more at the same time.

  She’d been in school almost a full year when she went to a party to blow off some steam. It was one of the fraternity parties, one of the rowdier ones, and probably not the kind of place she should have been. But that never concerned her. For my mother, doors were never closed. She just kept walking and assumed it would all fall into place. Very often she was right.

  At the party, she met a guy. Or rather, he met her. She was never the type to go out and try to meet people, especially men. If someone intrigued her, she let them know it. But she was so beautiful and so confident that she had men throwing pick-up lines at her wherever she went.

  The guy was clean cut, and was already drunk by the time she got there. He tried throwing his arms around her but she laughed it off. He tried approaching her again and again that night and was rejected. And when she left the party, he followed. He called to her. Asked her to stop. And when she did, he looked her right in the eyes and told her, sincerely, how beautiful she

  was and how much he wanted to be with her. She laughed.

  My mother could be cruel. I’ve said that. She had very little regard for those who didn’t instantly intrigue her. So she laughed in his face and turned to walk away, and he grabbed her.

  My mother...like me...like my children, was Enhanced. The good she got from it were reflexes much faster than those around her. It’s why she excelled at Judo. And it’s why when she saw the man’s fist heading toward her, he never stood a chance of hitting her. In a flash, he was face down on the ground, nose broken and shoulder dislocated. She left him there, bleeding and crying on the sidewalk. And the rush of it planted a seed in her mind.

  She always knew that she was a step or two ahead of everyone else. There are many people who feel this way out of arrogance. It’s much worse in people that actually are better. She couldn’t relate to people because she operated on a different level than they did. What she really wanted was for others to acknowledge how much better she was than them. As a regular person, that was nearly impossible. When someone outperforms us at work or school, most of us just do our best to cut that other person down. We don’t look up to our peers very often. Even celebrities are watched, if only to see when they fall. Look at television. Look at the magazine racks at the supermarket. Society thrives on watching those giants tumble. But back then, there was one group of people that were admired for their abilities, even feared: superheroes.

  My mother never read comic books or watched those kinds of movies. She had no interest in superheroes from a recreational standpoint, but she kept up with the news enough to know that the superhero class was a kind of celebrity that was different than the rest. They were American gods. The more she thought about it, the more she craved that kind of attention.

  She got some money from my grandparents and sat down with a seamstress to build a costume. Many heroes were running around in those

  days in homemade outfits, but that was not her style. The costume was form fitting and sensuous. She had no interest in hiding who she was…quite the opposite in fact, so she had no mask. And she never believed that anyone would have the audacity to harm her, so it was built for looks, not protection. The outfit was white, with black accents on the boots and gloves. Plunging neckline, cutouts in the back, and skin tight. She wanted to be noticed, and she certainly was.

  She studied the habits of superheroes from the news, then went into Boston to look for prey. Boston may not be as dangerous as Detroit and New York, but there’s plenty of crime in the city. Besides, my mother wasn’t necessarily interested in catching violent criminals. Too many variables. She worked in the shadows and on rooftops, even sometimes walking right down the street, though this seemed to get her catcalls more than anything else. Working late at night, she’d catch people in the act of petty crimes somewhat often, sometimes twice a week. She carried rope and learned how to tie solid knots, and simply tied people up and waited for the police to come collect them.

  It wasn’t long before the press caught wind of the beautiful female superhero stalking the streets. They caught plenty of pictures of her, but she refused to speak to them. No
t a word. That may seem strange for someone trying to get famous, but it was actually a brilliant piece of marketing. Because she wouldn’t talk, she became a mystery. And mystery sells. She did her work and held her tongue, and by the end of the summer, the national headlines came calling. Then she was ready to break her silence.

  On October 9th, 1964, my mother appeared on the Jack Paar Program on NBC, giving the first network television interview with a superhero. It was remarkable for a lot of reasons, including the fact that she made no attempt to hide her appearance or even her name. For the interview she wore the most beautiful dress...I admit I still go back and watch the tape

  of that interview sometimes. That was my mother in her prime. Her prime of beauty. Her prime of arrogance. She was foolish and naive, but she was also wonderful.

  Later on in the episode she came out in her superhero costume as White Spider, in a friendly sparring session with Muhammad Ali. My mother stands defiant in front of that huge man, even though he stood almost a foot taller than she did. They trade a few jokes, then he throws a half-hearted punch. In a flash she’s tossed him over her hip and he’s ended up on the floor. With that, she became an official sensation.

  She appeared on a number of television shows and ended up on the covers of magazines, but she didn’t let go of crime fighting. What had started as a means to an end turned into a real thrill for her. She didn’t care about justice; she cared about the high she’d get. It was always interesting for her. She hunted in Boston and New York, but it became more difficult as she became more famous. She spent as much time signing autographs as she did catching criminals.

  It was in New York that she made her first serious mistake. She caught a drug dealer selling cocaine to a kid and she put the screws to him. For the first time in her life, some sense of justice seemed to flare up in her. She got it in her head to bring down this organization that would dare to deal drugs to children. She didn’t think for a moment about the long term implications but...that’s why people loved my mother. She lived in the moment. She stuck around in New York for a month, hunting drug pushers in Harlem and Central Park and was very successful.

  One night she caught a break and found a drug dealer who, under a little duress, gave her the name of a warehouse where a lot of drugs and money were kept. To make a long story short, my mother did two things right that night. Before she went in there she called the cops, and while she was in there she pushed over a storage locker that housed all the guns. Other than

  that, she waltzed in there expecting her charm and reflexes to keep her safe. While she put up a good fight, there were over two dozen men in there, and she left with a broken nose and a bunch of cracked ribs for her trouble. But the cops busted in before anyone could really hurt her, and the media gobbled it up. Twenty-five criminals and a half-million dollars’ worth of drugs went off the streets that night. She thought she’d done something great. And she had...but she’d done something stupid, too.

  She got a phone call when she got back to Boston. The man on the line told her if she ever stepped foot in New York again, she’d be sorry. My mother, shortsighted as she was, reacted by going straight to New York and spending a week tying up drug dealers. She figured since she’d been warned, she’d send a warning right back. But to her it was a game. To them, it was war.

  Heather sighs deeply. She takes a moment to grab the kettle off the stove where it had been whistling. She pours us each a cup of tea.

  My mother was the most amazing woman I’ve ever known. But I couldn’t...I still can’t understand the way she never saw the big picture. She put herself in situations without ever thinking about the consequences. She figured she could just go through life without her or anyone she loved ever getting hurt. And when she got back to Boston, she got another phone call. Not from the men in New York though. This call came from Seattle.

  Heather takes a sip of her tea. A long moment passes, and a look of disgust crosses her face. She exhales again, and that look is replaced by one of great weariness.

  Her parents, my grandparents, were killed in a house fire. The cause of the fire was still under investigation, but my mother didn’t need anyone to tell her what she already knew. She’d baited the bear and now she had to deal with the consequences. For the first time in her life, her plans crashed down around her. She packed up and left the east coast. As far as I know, she never went back.

  I’m sorry...I guess It’s a stupid thing to get upset about. She didn’t mean to get them killed. For god’s sake, she was actually trying to do something good. She was just...she couldn’t get the hint. What others thought and felt didn’t matter to her. She thought she was untouchable. But still...it’s hard not to feel like she robbed my grandparents from me.

  Her parents left her the money, of course. The will gave her the house too, but she had the remains demolished and had a new one built. She dropped out of the limelight, her insulated world all but shattered, and then she had me. I never met my father. He was such a non-entity that it didn’t even occur to me to ask about him till I was eight. Having me was just like everything else for her. She knew what she wanted, and the ancillary details were unimportant. She wanted a child, not a husband or some man to cling to her. I’m not even sure if she really knew who he was.

  Until I was thirteen we lived a quiet, surprisingly low-key life together outside of Seattle. But the year I became a teenager, The Invasion happened. The backlash against Enhanced, especially Enhanced superheroes, was intense. In my mother’s eyes, this was the equivalent of someone trying to close a door on her, even if she had retired. A closed door was something my mother could not abide. She’d never lost her crime-fighting physique, so she decided to move us down to Los Angeles to reestablish herself.

  After six months of grabbing up purse snatchers and petty thieves, which was already illegal by that point, she was back in the spotlight. While most heroes shied away after The Invasion, she thrust herself into the public eye, daring anyone to tell her “no”. No one did. It was Los Angeles, after all. A town where nobody says “no”. She was back on TV and magazine covers within a year. Time even did a story on her, and she was awfully proud of that one. The late night shows loved her. The fashion magazines wanted her. She was even a regular on Hollywood Squares for a while. But that was fine with me. The more she did all that, the less she was out on the street fighting

  crime. I figured in Hollywood, she’d be safe.

  Though I guess “safe” is a little subjective. There is a lot about that lifestyle, at least back then, that I don’t like to think about too much. There were a lot of parties, some of them at our house. A lot of drugs and liquor. Men who looked both sad and horrible when they learned I was fourteen. And in the middle of all of it was her. Always in black and white. Some of the costumes had a stylish spider right over her breasts. Attracting attention, pulling the whole world into her web. She never dressed down. Never shunned the attention. And it was that attitude that ended it all.

  It was September. The fifth. I was fifteen then, and school was back in. It was just a Wednesday. Nothing particular. Nothing special. I got ready for school, made myself lunch. She was reading a magazine, drinking coffee through a straw so it wouldn’t stain her teeth. I wish I could say we sat down that morning and talked. I wish I could say she gave me some great motherly advice, or that I gave her a big hug before I left. But my mind was elsewhere and so was hers. I didn’t even let her know I was going. Just walked out the door and hopped on the bus.

  I heard the news right around lunch time. The only thing I remember about school that day is sitting in the principal’s office feeling numb. I remember staring down at my sweater and wondering why I’d picked such an ugly color for that day. It was bright orange and didn’t match my shoes at all. I remember thinking my mother would never have worn something like that. But then, she’d never have to make those kinds of decisions again. The principal told me that there’d been some kind of incident, but wouldn’t tell me anything else
. A police officer came and picked me up. They took me to the LA County morgue.

  They didn’t want to show me. They kept on asking me if there was someone else they could call, but there wasn’t. And even if there was, I wouldn’t have called them. She was my mother. If they needed someone to

  identify the body, I didn’t want it to be an agent or a producer or someone she might have been sleeping with. So they lifted the sheet and I saw her. She spent her whole life looking away from her problems. I knew right then I didn’t want to make her mistake.

  Her skin was naturally fair, though she’d gotten some color since we’d moved down. But right then, her skin was blue. One half of her face was still pristine. She still even had some makeup, though it was smudged. The other half of her face was a mess. Her lip was cut open. The eye on that side was just a gory blob. The ear on that side was missing, too. I pulled the sheet down further, needing to see what had been done to her. Her neck had little cuts, but there were deep gouges in her chest. One of her breasts was a mangled mess. In all, she’d been stabbed over thirty times.

  The police already had a man in custody. When they’d found her, he’d been sitting over the body, knife still in his hand. He did not resist. He’d completed what he set out to do.

  I wanted to stay in Los Angeles for the trial. I would have followed that son of a bitch all the way to the electric chair, or whatever they used back then. I would have thrown the switch myself. But with no one to take care of me, I had to move back to the house in Seattle. My mother’s cousin became my guardian.

  I was able to keep up with the trial though. He was a fan. The man who did it. He was a fan of my mother. He’d written her hundreds of letters but never heard back. In truth, she never opened fan mail. His apartment was plastered with pictures of her. Hundreds and hundreds of pictures. He had tapes of every appearance she’d made on television. He’d planned to meet her and make her his. Forever.