by Gann, Myles
“Of what?” He looked up while checking his angered voice. The Cincinnati skyline faced him back, staring him level with the lights of man and the uneasy breath of a busying population.
‘That their lives rest in our hands.’
Caleb released his fists at his side, and he was suddenly above the city; imagination flew him around it. Through the driving fathers and mothers, the baby seats and older children electronically enthralled, around to a dirty street musician, old but full of zeal and passion, overtop a couple walking hand in hand. All the winds brought him the smells of the city through the filter of metal skyscrapers and bronze statues flowing still against the idea of the truest man or the truest building. They never tried to be what they were or struggle to aspire; they simply were already the truest forms of themselves, neither content nor conceited. Caleb suddenly knew that his power was wrong. He had forgotten, somewhere, how to find the truest form of the world. “I truly hope not.”
A big breath filled Caleb’s body with power before a quick jump sent him flying closer to the city. His feet took him down darkened back streets at half-speed for seconds, soon leading him to downtown, blocks from the very center of it all. Slowing, he saw how vibrantly active it truly was. The movement multiplied so swiftly that his mind was nearly overloaded, feeling the sluggish weights of the asylum still being shaken from his wits. His head swiveled between crowds like a security camera; his eyes caught a reflective store front, causing him to repulse slightly. Three weeks of growth and grime stared at him more than his eyes; his clothes were losing any shade of white while his neck had a cheap, dirty tan. He couldn’t imagine the smell emanating from his sullied shell.
“Hey! Glow boy!”
Caleb indirectly looked behind him using the window’s reflection, and spotted the waving black man about a hundred feet back, but coming no closer. ‘He looks familiar.’
‘Think about the night I came out in full.’
His mind mended broken sinews of fleeting memories from that night, and he turned quickly. ‘The old man?’
‘The blind man that can see you. Be smart, boy.’
‘I saw his eye sockets. They’re empty.’
‘Still. Wariness is our ally amongst crowds. Especially with name shouting.’
‘He doesn’t even know my real name. Keep your head and your eyes open if you’re that worried.’
Caleb slowly meandered through indomitable paths towards the obviously aged man. Twenty years had torn at him like a hurricane. His long dreadlocks were nearly white with salted age while his forehead was massively creased from seven-thousand passionately blended tales of sorrow and discovery. His hand extended, much as his degraded state extended to his clothes, rags and torn tunics that revealed the most well-hidden of clandestine caverns. His feet were torn to shreds beneath the sides of his decade-long jeans that scraped the pavement with limp bolts. His leather jacket looked relatively new. The cheap sunglasses still shaded his ocular deprivation, although missing chips in the lenses would become troublesome to that effect soon. Caleb shook his hand slowly, making sure to take his observations along as his mind calculated their first exchange. “Never thought I’d see you again, Glowstick.”
‘Why does he comfort me?’ “I know the feeling. How did you wander all the way here?”
‘You’re a fool in need of comforting. You’re growing tired of your own face cast in blue being the only one you see.’ “Aw, c’mon man. If I’m alive, I’m movin’! Whole bunch of us Oregon-trailed it down last year because of them New York winters. They’re murder on these holes, ya know?”
Without giving them a second look, Caleb could imagine. ‘Exhuming excrement faster is a sad case for holes against the cons of frostbitten—albeit already evolutionarily useless—man bits.’ Caleb smiled, knowing full-well that his graphic imagination was going to get him into trouble one day. “I can guess. Why not just get a whole set of new clothes? Kinda cuts the problem off at the root that way….”
“Ain’t exactly a Hobo-Depot on every corner, kid.” They both smirked a bit.
‘What are you doing?’
‘What?’
‘That…. That! You’re empathetic towards him?’
‘I’m not sure. I feel what he’s talking about.’
‘Neither of us were feeling a thing a second ago.’
‘Emotions aren’t as predictable as power bursts.’
‘No…,’ his power went into some thought as Caleb was slapped suddenly with several awkward glances, then a scornful one. A middle-aged couple—‘Business casual, matching, high-end leather pouches, her bag from Coach, his from Brookstone,’—seemed both curious and horribly offended, respectively, by the drab Caleb and shabby hobo. Caleb continued to look around, noticing more and more the stares, feeling the pressure of them all as he hadn’t for nearly forty years.
“Why you keep looking around?”
Caleb spun back around, processing something like annoyance but not feeling it. “Blind man can see after all?”
He gently pushed down his ageless glasses, revealing again the empty sockets that stuck with Caleb so heavily. His voice carried the curiosity in his mind to Caleb’s ears. “I don’t see anything. Not sure why I can see you, but boy do I ever. I ain’t always been like this, ya know? Me and my brother went playing by a beehive one day…boy oh boy was I allergic! Like a snake bit me…. Docs had to take out both my eyes to keep the poison from spreading into my body. That’s the only place they stung me, though, was my eyes…but having eyes ain’t the only way to see things, ya know? Some other blindy, older than me I remember, told me blind people can’t see what don’t matter.”
‘Touching,’ his power scorned.
Caleb kept looking around until the man spoke again. “Fill in the holes. Whatcha looking at?”
“People…,” Caleb continued in a more hushed voice, “People always stare at me. Just a quirk I’ve always had. I’m the elephant in every room, especially when I’m with such colorful company.”
The old dragger’s cackle broke through the crowds and brought more attention to them. “You learn real quick that being this way ain’t about them. I made my choice and made it well, ain’t they’re business why I’m here.”
“You made a good choice to be this way?”
“Never said that, just said I made the choice well. Learn English, kid.”
‘And the homeless manger scores a point,’ his power mocked.
“Right.”
“Why they look at you, Glowstick?”
“Same reason you do I’d imagine.”
“No coincidence?”
“Coincidence is a synonym for being afraid of truth.”
“Glowstick, I promise they ain’t seeing you like I do. Not with them gooey balls in their heads. You should take a needle to them and feel your inner eyes instead.”
“Or a broach,” he muttered. “I think I know what you mean.” Caleb brushed off a few residual stares and leaned against the small column behind him. “You seem abnormally aware for a—”
“I said, close your eyes and see what’s really important.”
Caleb swallowed his pride slightly. The man’s dark eyelids closed, prompting Caleb to mimic as he released a tiny bit of power to avoid any unearthing stares. “You getting taller on me, Glowstick?”
“No. What do you see?”
His power cast itself enough to be able to wander through human traffic, to meander through abhorred waves. It randomly looked over shoulders or travelled shortly with groups of teens, seeming more curious than angry or vengeful, lightly opening shopping bags or gently brushing hair away from open, beaming faces. ‘What are you doing?’
In the clear dome of these people’s transit station, only Caleb heard the echo of his power’s coo. ‘Sizing up my prey. No use in killing if you can’t find something good to take away first.’
‘How’s that little search going?’
His power swung around with a wild grin, ‘Swimmingly.’
/>
“Did you see that?”
One eye opened to glance at his homeless companion before he refocused and spread his power a slight farther. It combed the outskirts of the square, the dancing waves going unseen for the sake of focus, his power’s eye looked beyond the boundaries of his extending cage. Nearing half of his opaque maximum, Caleb saw something green in the distance. It didn’t bounce like a wave nor did it hang like a light: a dim torch that didn’t flicker. Caleb felt his energy welling too high. ‘Anymore and everyone will see.’ His eyes snapped open. “See it.”
Immediately nervous, Caleb retracted Power a bit before moving quickly through the crowd. ‘Military so soon?’
His power stood at attention in his mind, readily available. ‘No, they’d be much louder, and our trail was harder to follow than that. Red tape alone gives us another two weeks.’
Caleb swallowed as his pace quickened. ‘Someone else like me?’
‘That’s even more improbable…and why we should be nervous.’
His tensed body came to an alleyway across the street from the fire, careful to keep his power checked and his senses open. The drop in societal standards seemed a bit heavy for only being a mile from the square. Broken benches and boarded windows three floors up littered the landscape. A few hood rats crowded a stoop on his side of the street, most of which pointed and mocked to something. His eyes followed the fingers, and felt his head instinctively cock to the side as a huge carrot was dancing and saying something under one of the three working street lamps. “Eat organic!” Over and over a woman’s high voice spouted the same thing, a piece of paper being thrust to nobody in the area. An orange, feminine face stuck out just beneath the leafy top of the vegetable outfit. He quickly covered his eyes with power for a moment, confirming that she was the green flame, no longer a vague torch but a cajoling, singular ember that would surely light the darkened street if it could be seen.
Caleb stood and nearly relaxed out of his crouch before casually walking into his curiosity’s trap. Power retained its guard, passively taking note of the violent stares and unjustified names being whispered from the shadowed stoop as Caleb hopped the curb. The carrot ceased dancing when it caught a glance of him, her arms finishing one final twirl before her right jutted out and her left fell limp. Without looking from her feet, she began to speak. “Hello, sir. Are you tired of stuffing processed junk down…?”
Caleb dropped her voice from his senses for a few moments. His attention ran into his power’s curiosity. It paced around her, staring into her green smolder like an all-seeing globe. He could feel his power’s confusion as his head filled with its voice. ‘Do you have an explanation?’
Its head hung next to Caleb in obvious defeat.
“…would you like this coupon to help start you on your path to a healthier diet?”
Caleb pulled himself into one again while feeling nearly invested in her. The carrot’s outstretched hand and down-turned head spoke to him; ‘Tensed shoulders, one foot slid carefully behind the other, shy but not defenseless, at least not in her mind. Been ages since I could read someone new. What’s that in the air? She’s nervous. Calm her.’ He gently reached out, taking the coupon between two fingers and smiling. “How much are they paying you to do this?”
Her bowed head shook with a chuckle. “They don’t.”
“So you volunteer, are insane, or have a carrot and health-food fetish. Quite an interesting choice for me to make now. Do I label you as nice, crazy, or obsessive?” Her body became relaxed until Caleb shifted slightly, which caused her hands to tense tightly. “Don’t worry I’m not going to hurt you.”
“You couldn’t if you tried, sir.” Her spunk confused and surprised him. His lips instinctively smiled to save face while turning around, sure the conversation had died. “You don’t look like everyone else in this part of town.”
Caleb half-turned back to her. “What part? We’re ten seconds from downtown, and you haven’t looked above my shins.”
“Fountain Square is two miles away, and you have dirty running shoes with plenty of rubber still on the bottom, which means you stopped caring recently. Wind breaker pants say comfort for someone moving fast and with no tears or wear really. Your hands aren’t rough enough to be from the streets, either. Apathetic, sheltered, runner.”
His impression showed no physical sentiment. “If you look up, you’ll see a different story I think.”
“Don’t take it personally. I’m just not very…personable.”
“I think the word is shy.”
“No…I’m just not good around…people.”
“Well, I think you’re friendly for trying at least.”
She let her foot swing and began mumbling under her breath, immature actions highlighted by her orange stockings. “I am…I guess, but I don’t know you and I’m like this when I don’t know someone.”
“Fair enough.” He swung around completely and leaned on half a bench, slightly amused at her change in mood. ‘The gang has taken notice of us, Caleb.’
‘Good for them.’ “I’m genetically predispositioned to be shy. People have never freaked me out, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve got Asperger’s Syndrome.”
She leaned her head upwards a little, her eyes appearing to view as far as his abdomen before going back to his feet. “You have it?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“I have it too.”
Caleb laughed and scratched at his filthy scalp.
‘Small world, and unless you want a pile of dead bodies next to it I suggest we wrap this up. They’re pondering which one will be mugged first.’
“There’s no way you could have it.”
His eyes reset, and found her orange cheek shining back at him instead of the leafy top. Her eyes were safely averted to the brick wall as Caleb looked on. “I didn’t say anything that coul—”
“Your face….” As she continued to respond, Caleb zoomed into her actions. Every eye roll and anxious hand motion nearly delighted him in its execution. ‘Something about her seems off. The world’s dull compared to this orange lass.’ “And a head scratch almost always indicates a lie, but your smile afterwards implies there was something ironic about my response, and that’s because you have the same social problems, but I think you’re lying to make me feel better.”
“Ha! You glanced at the side of my face and think you can tell if I’m lying already?”
She sighed heavily. “All right, I can’t tell for sure if I don’t look right at you.”
“Aha, at least you’re truthful. Guess there’s only one way to find out then isn’t there?”
Caleb felt a sharp jab to the kidney and saw a shadow walk up from behind the girl. “Drop the wallet and goodies on the sidewalk and everyone gets away healthy tonight brother.”
‘Where were you on that one?’
‘I was…distracted,’ his power snapped. ‘Still, they’re no problem. I’ll even let you handle them.’
“You’re a peach.” Caleb pushed past his power’s lapse and fell into his rich subconscious. His right arm tensed as his hips turned fully into the pressure, his forearm smacking away the object imprinting his kidney. His left arm followed and snatched the small man by the collar, quickly tossing him ten feet onto the sidewalk. A small readying noise of a knife sounded as he brought his body back to the front. He took a stride and a half—‘Move –no, power deflect –can’t keep secret safe –faster, move, snatch feet –weapon –no, too much movement –forearm –forearm block, go from there, yeah yeah.’—and synchronized himself to the man’s knife swing. It came within his reach too quickly for the man to adjust and the blade was knocked away by Caleb’s forearm, the metal bending against the brick. He paused for a few seconds, considering his merciful options, but had the decision taken from him. The carrot took the cowering teen’s arm, twisted, and expertly slammed his fearful face into the wall. Caleb emerged from his power in time to watch her slam him again
and hip-lock him to the pavement.
Both attackers moaned from their backs as Caleb stood straight and smiled; the carrot, a few strands of hazel hair sticking out from under her costume, looked a little befuddled. Her hands quickly went to her face as blinders for a horse, causing Caleb to be concerned. “Are you hurt?” His standard question received no response, worrying him more. ‘You knocked the knife away. Perhaps he got her a little but she’s fine.’
“…it’s fine….”
She began whispering too softly for Caleb to hear with his own ear. ‘Maybe I should lift her head, check for myself?’
‘Touching an Asperger’s patient: yeah, great idea. Be smart. Why are you so concerned?’
He dropped down to a knee, trying to look into her tightly closed, downturned eyes to see what was wrong, his ears inadvertently catching her whispers more clearly, “Their faces are fine. Two eyes to see, a nose to smell, teeth to smile. It’s all there.”
Caleb’s demeanor turned playful to alleviate her mood. “Actually, you knocked the crap out of his face. Looks pretty bloody—”
“No! His face is fine!”
Her shouts were directly to his face as her hands shoved at his chest before going back to blinding the world. He backed away, his power activating and controlling his march away. ‘You’ve had enough fun for one night.’ His body churned slowly around the corner from the dancing carrot, soon finding the distance between them too far to traverse.
---
“Twenty-eight…twenty-nine…thirty.”
The weighted bar, simulating two-hundred-and-twenty-five pounds of weight, heavily clanged to the steel holder. Powdered hands, merely seconds later, seized a different bar, situated and anchored to seven-hundred-and-seventy-pounds, and pulled it to their owner’s hips. The man began his count again until his muscles begged for relief ten repetitions later; he did not oblige them.
His exercises brought him quickly under a spotlight, white-coated men focusing on the smallest peaks and largest lulls on the black pad as he lifted the weighted set for a final time. The few sitting men inside the room above ran their muttered opinions around the table until a shadowed figure leaned forward. “Good enough?”