True Heroes

by Gann, Myles

  “Time for the grand finale.” Caleb pushed upwards at random points of his power to break the ice into manageable sections and lifted himself from the water. He hovered above the shore line, noticing Carol’s widening eyes as his own took some extra time to adjust to the darkening sky. His hand clenched slightly to lift five separate pieces of medium sized slabs above the lake and rearranged them to form a makeshift ball around his floating form. Once his concentration had achieved that, Caleb thrust some of his energy through the cracks of the ragged ball and expanded the energy to fill the entire hollow space. The sun completely below the horizon line now, Caleb’s ice ball was now glowing like a star directly above the ground, a blue mass that was so bright you could no longer tell its original form. He toned it back a bit when he saw Carol trying to cover her eyes and began to rotate it slightly as bright blue planet. “Do you see what I am? Do you see what I’ve made myself into?”

  Carol began to stammer as her mind was obviously not ready for any sort of question. “Um, a-um a fire?”

  “No, an entire world. My entire world is what I am trying to embody. With you around, my world shines this brightly all the time, day or night. With you around, my world can keep on spinning and shining light into the deepest and darkest parts of any problem I face. This world is completely different from the world outside but, in a lot of ways, they depend on each other. My world would be linear and cumbersome without the outside, and the outside would be a much more dangerous place without me guarding it. You’re my bridge. You keep me connected to the outside world and you give the outside a world a chance at true, divine peace. Without you,” Caleb let the ice crash to the water below and closed his eyes, “my world would end.”

  He landed softly, burning foot holes in the snow, and walked closer to her, his power still flush about his body against the blackened skyline, until he was within arm’s length. Carol looked him up and down and very slowly lifted her arm to his chest. Her soft hand pushed against Caleb’s chest—the smooth contours of her touch mixed with her natural warmth made the contact seem especially encompassing and relaxing—and smiled a little in place of stumbling over her own words. “Caleb…this is…this is incredible. This is more than I ever thought you could do.”

  He smiled at her almost dizzy-eyed look. “I can do a lot more than that.”

  “What is all this?”

  “This is the power I told you about. It’s a combination of genetic disorders, most of which affect the adrenal glands and electrical output of my brain. My body is made more conductive of energy, which is also in surplus throughout. All in all, this blue aura you see is nothing but my body generating energies. You have this to thank for saving your life.”

  She’d been pushing his chest every so often as he spoke, as if comparing this action from when she did it when he wasn’t powered, and now seemed more curious than impressed over the show he’d just put on for her. Carol’s hand ran across his bare skin. “Too much,” he thought aloud while keeping his mind’s voice quiet. The hand created a blue static discharge as it pushed and crawled around his midsection. Either knee buckled slightly under the feeling and he had to regain his balance, much to Carol’s delight. “Glad I excite you so much. You’re a lot more sensitive now, and I already know from past experiences that you’re a lot stronger too. How does it work though? Like, how do you control it?”

  “It is linked to my emotional state. Back when you were almost struck by that car, I couldn’t control when it emerged and it was just my instincts that really saved you. Now, I can ignite my power with a small release of adrenaline, or a larger one if I want more. I can direct it out of certain body parts,” he began to wave his power and flux his aura in, out, and around them both, “and I can make it so light that other people don’t notice its presence.” He pulled back until the slight distortion was clear and completely opaque. “Such as this.”

  “That’s initiating it though. I mean how do you control it?”

  His empowered brain pondered this question for a minute. “I suppose I control it as well as I control my emotions.”

  Carol smiled. “Well, I guess not even your power can resist me.” Her hand ran from his cheek to his shoulders, each measure of friction bringing more electrifying power from the field, she eventually grabbing onto his shirt and pulling him to the snow. They landed with a thud, side by side, without losing their eye contact. “Is it like a muscle where the more you work it out the stronger it gets? Or is it set with some sort of limit?”

  “It’s been growing every single time I’ve ever used it. Once I push it out and practice at the very limits I can push, my power always seems to come back a little stronger after a day of rest. So, it’s almost exactly like working out your muscles.” Caleb rolled onto his back and placed his hands behind his head. “It’s such a weird feeling: having all my power out at once.”

  “How so?”

  A fallen bunch of twigs a few feet away quickly scooped from the ground under his extended will and brought them to hover over his body. “I’ve improved my power tenfold in a little under a year. At this rate, who knows how far I’ll eventually reach out and how much power I’ll accumulate. No matter how I use it, it’ll just build and spread until the world won’t be big enough. I’m like a baby in a crib filled with toys. Eventually I’ll grow so large that the crib will no longer be big enough for me. Then, I’ll have everything I need to make sure nobody is ever hurt again.”

  Carol sat her head on her hand in an interested posture. “What about those toys? Are those us? Because that paints a rather bleak picture of what you think about human life….”

  He flicked the sticks into the nearby tree line and actually smirked a bit. “Yes, the humans are the toys, but they’re not play things. I have no business ever claiming right to anyone’s life, but we are all confined by that crib. The only reason I use toys in an analogous fashion to humans is because toys can never grow. They are always trapped wherever they’re set, doomed to never walk on their own. Even if I am bigger than the toys, we are still all within those bars. Those boundaries don’t matter; all that matters are our interactions. All that matters is life. Without life, there’s no action or reaction and everything stops. That’s a hell I never want to know. If I do grow-up, so to speak, I can have the power to maybe take all the toys with me. Perhaps save the toys from the inevitable and fateful clash between time and the crib. Save everyone from the warping, wooden prison and the trash can.”

  His power began to feel strained so he let it drop back within himself. Caleb instantly began to breathe hard as Carol took his hand and seemed to be carefully considering her reaction. After calming his lungs and heart to a reasonable level, they made eye contact once again, she finally speaking. “Well, baby, it sounds like you already know exactly what side you want to be on. I just want you to listen to this one bit of advice: babies don’t hang around with the same toys once they outgrow their cribs.”

  ‘She thinks I’m talking about us. No, no, Carol I’m not don’t think that please….’ “You’re not a toy. You’ve grown and changed with me over the years and I refuse to let either of us grow without the other ever again. You asked me when we would ever have time for each other before.” He paused and took a deep breath to alleviate the distress of his lungs. “Since time stands still when we’re together, I have an eternity to devote only to you.”

  Carol finally smiled the smile he’d wanted all along before they rolled around in the snow for an endless time over an endless space. Further down the river that emptied into the lake they lain, two children that were playing on the ice fell through and froze to death with no one around to save them.

  - - -

  Caleb drove as slowly as he could toward his house with Carol lapsed into slumber in the passenger’s seat. He glanced and smiled at her dreamy face as a slight sadness took him. ‘Don’t even taint a day this happy with unwarranted sadness. This is one of those days the rain can’t touch, one that makes the blackest night
seem cheery and peaceful. I know who I am now, and I didn’t need my power to reach it. I can be divine without my power…. Maybe I wasn’t in love until today. Even before, I never felt this strongly around Carol for this long a time. Maybe all the walls are finally down. Maybe we’re finally free.’

  He made the final turn into his driveway and gently cut the engine. The sudden lack of noise caused her to flinch out of sleep, rolling her over seatbelt locks and the shifter to grab his arm, and sending his hands through her prim hair. Darkness caught his attention emanating from his house; ‘Unusual for Mom not be home on any given night. No car in the driveway could be a hint, or totally unrelated information. Which side of that fence will I fall on…?’

  “And how was your day?”

  Caleb smiled at the woozy voice of his girl. “It was one I’ll never forget. How about yours?”

  She opened her eyes and looked up into his smile. “It was a day I wish I could bottle and save forever. It was an infinite day; there was no beginning happiness or end happiness. It was just plain happy. Almost perfect even.”

  Caleb smiled as deeply as he could. ‘Maybe this is the only power I need in my life to survive.’

  “Is it okay if I come inside?”

  A nervous smirk came to his face and their eye contact was broken just so he could regain thoughts, but that separation didn’t last or help. The next time their eyes met, they hooked together with their faces and lips bonding continuously. Millions of scenarios and thoughts ran through his mind at intangible, phenomenal speeds. Caleb smiled coyly with their momentary break, clutching at his lowest hanging bit of wit for his response—

  A loud succession of bangs ripped through the night around them. He instinctively pulled Carol’s head down below any sort of line of fire. ‘Gunshot.’

  “Stay in the car and keep down. I’ll be right back,” Caleb said as he got out and quickly slipped into his power. He was nearly at a loss at first but his desperation intensified his rising aura. Looking through empowered eyes, he saw the faint traces of sound waves the gun had created and traced to its origin. His neighbor’s backyard was in front of him in an instant. “The Stogs. Not like it matters.” His heart plummeted—even through his power—as he quickly stopped in a shadow beside the yard. Analyzing the scene, he saw Mrs. Stog huddled in fear, a younger looking man clutching her and a woman around the man’s age, and someone in a crippled position on the grass with their head turned away and a spreading pool of blood beneath. Fully emerging into the lighted area, he drew back his power and slowly walked up. “Mrs. Stog? What the hell—”

  “That man had no business doing that to her! Didn’t have any business being here in the first place! Charles, go call the police.” That last comment spurred the huddled man into action. Once he was out of sight, Mrs. Stog turned towards Caleb and said, “Your father already took off after him. That way!” Her finger went up, but Caleb hadn’t noticed as he just now reached the body. A numbing sensation took his focus as he carefully reached over and pulled at the dead shoulder, instantly feeling cold stabs run his spine. He didn’t move anymore; he didn’t have to breathe or flinch or walk to see the identity of the dead woman. It was his own blood that ran and soaked the grass beneath his feet, his own name fallen and crumpled like a dead heap of skin, his own hair sprawled across grass and patio steps. His own mother’s eyes stared at nothing and looked as empty as the pit in her chest.

  Caleb reeled but didn’t fall. His feet stayed beneath him, but he didn’t feel as though he had a torso anymore. It felt as though his body was disconnected and cumbersome, like he didn’t need his limbs or head or chest and they could just float away. Suddenly, his mind grasped the direction his old neighbor had pointed and disconnected feet began to march. Strides took their time at first until he was out of sight from the horrified neighbors, then they began to move. Caleb’s body, legs, and head moved with them just out of principal and habit. His eyes moved downwards to see footprints in the snow and his legs quickened their pace with each pump. More and more power emerged from his core and separated parts until he was fully submerged and focusing intently over every new angle from every furthering step.

  Eventually, his legs took Caleb to an abandoned parking lot and he stopped wandering. His head looked around—more and more desperate with every passing second as his emotions began to break through the numbness—and noticed, with an almost death-like sensation, that the blacktop had been salted. There was no more trail. Not even his power could identify the one set of prints amongst the hundreds of outlined, wet pairs that spanned the whole of the lot. At once, all of his floated parts clenched, and suddenly came crashing together again. All the pain, loss, misery, and fear brought his body together in a explosion of force, causing an equal and opposite reaction of air and matter. His power leapt from his body like never before; fatigue attempted a safeguard but was blown away by the potency of this externalized bolide. Nothing held him back as the clear distortion leapt up the color scale not by shades but by entire fields of vision.

  Everything was soon bathed in a violet shadow that created longer blackened cuts than the sun at its deepest times. The air that had been around him a second before ran from his pulsing orb in fear as the pavement under his feet exploded. His rage helped the strangling ball of energy to burrow a new hole through the black pavement, the blackness of his inverted heart decimating any other inanimate challengers. Hundreds of pieces flew either into his bubble of energy to be evaporated or dozens of feet away. His bright blue eyes kept up their intensity until his vision had him seeing triple between the fatigue and unfiltered fury ravaging his mind. “You’re screaming…. Nobody can hear! Let me scream!” Caleb fell to his knees in the new pit he’d created for himself, the spherical opening wider than his base with his exhausted power could only chip at a circle the lower he sank. One cracked piece of pavement that had been sent flying came crashing down amongst shrieking alarms and other apocalyptic rain, sticking into the melting pavement around the circle. Its sharp point crept forward with the melting black while its wider section captured the air and aimed the errant echoes of Caleb’s scream back into his tomb.

  Tears started to flow freely from his eyes and onto the half-disintegrated shirt that still barely clung to him. ‘Not strong enough, not strong enough, not strong enough.

  Chapter 4

  Caleb sat in the middle of his own island, expanding and retracting his power over the bed as he would lift a weight over and over, only feeling slightly human again when he was submerged in his personal blue sea. When he couldn’t summon his power, when he couldn’t be surrounded by it, he craved it like a drug. ‘I’m not addicted…as much as I’m not addicted to air. I know if I don’t breathe, there’s pain. My power helps me breathe. Helps me not vomit in disgusted fury with every inhale. That memory suffocates me. My throat can’t open unless I’m asleep or drowning in power…. I can’t scrape the sick of that memory off my esophagus. Even worse, I can’t swallow it. I should leave it. I don’t deserve to breathe. If it wants to suffocate me, then maybe I should. I’ve already failed…all I’m doing is adding another layer of smother to my mouth and nose…. Carol…you’re the only thing making this a hard decision.’

  A powerfully rumbling engine came to a stop outside his house that wasn’t recognizable, but his father was as he emerged from the driver’s side door. He was sporting his expensive leather coat and seemed to have company as he leaned back down to say something to a figure in the passenger’s seat. That figure got out, but Caleb dropped his head in disinterest. ‘He’s home…how do I feel about that again? How do I feel again?’ His power drew back inside for good and all but his natural color faded from his eyes. Leather-soled shoes could be heard clicking and stepping down the wooden hallway until the echoes stopped in front of his door. Caleb didn’t make a move towards the door, even after a soft knock resounded. “Can we talk? I think it’s about time we did.”

  Caleb didn’t respond but his door opened inward anyw
ays. His dad nodded, receiving a nod back, and unbuttoned his jacket while stepping around the toppled stash of notebooks. He laid his jacket over the edge of his Lego statuette of the Eiffel Tower before resuming his usual stance. ‘He really does look like a wall. Even though I know he’s here to talk about something sensitive, he won’t let down his tough demeanor. That’s how he is. Maybe it’s just his body type that made him seem like a morose intimidator instead of whatever he means to portray. He’s pushing forty and could beat me in a foot race and arm wrestling. In fair matches at least. Whatever his job was, it couldn’t involve much human to human interaction. Did I ever care about these things?’ “About what exactly?”

  He shrugged as if clueless. “How about the fact that your mother is dead, or the fact that you’ve been sitting in an empty house for nine days now instead of going to school, or the weather? I’ll let you pick.”

  All the bitterness Caleb had been containing and pushing away suddenly came to the surface. “Seems to me like none of those things are any of your business.”

  “How is your future and my wife’s death none of my business? No matter what’s happened, I’m still her husband and still your father.”

  Caleb’s eyes looked into his father’s with as pointed a glare as he could muster. “When have you been around to support or care about either of those things?”

  The calm, flat line of his father’s lips broke for a second. ‘He’s trying to warn me not to question the level of his devotion.’ After wiping at his short beard, he calmed. “I loved her so much more than you ever have the right to question, Caleb. Between you and her, I had the love of the entire world in the same house.”