The Midlife Crisis of Commander Invincible: A Novel (Yellow Shoe Fiction)

by Neil Connelly

  I feel a strange urge to join him, to raise my voice to the god of superheroes and seek absolution and guidance. But I’m afraid he might think I was mocking him. So I wait in silence. When Bone rises, he thanks me and says, “So out front, then?”

  I nod, and we start down the aisle together. “Gypsy’s out there. Don’t think it’s a trap. I’ll tell her to stay out of it, and if you beat me, to let you go.”

  He regards my face in the shadows. “I miss the old ways.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Best of three falls?” he asks.

  I tell him, “I’m too old for three falls.”

  We smile together, and it seems like maybe we’ll laugh even. The door is just ahead, and it feels impossible that we’re about to engage in combat. More likely, we’ll head for a neighborhood bar, share a pitcher and shoot pool and fill the jukebox with quarters. I even find myself wondering if a drunk and friendly Bone might not simply volunteer what he knows about King Chaos. But then comes the faint whistling sound, growing louder, and soon the piercing shriek resembles what you hear on the wrong end of an incoming mortar. I raise my eyes to the circular stained glass window over the choir loft just in time to see it shatter. Shards rain down on us, and I cover my face with an arm. When I look again, Titan is blocking our path, arms crossed, feet set. He’s in full hero pose. “Bone Crusher! You’re coming with me!”

  Bone charges, catching Titan under the arms like a linebacker. He drives him back, and they crash through the wooden doors, spilling outside. I run out and find them upside down on the stone steps, Bone kneeling on Titan’s stomach with both hands digging into his throat. Titan punches him in the ribs, but it seems to have little effect. I rush past Gypsy and leap onto Bone’s back, slide my arms around his neck hoping to slip in a choke hold of my own. Over Bone’s shoulder I can see Titan’s face, upside down and turning red. Bone is managing to bang Titan’s head into the stone steps without releasing his grip on his throat. Titan’s eyes bulge. Inside my forearm lock, Bone’s neck is like the trunk of a tree. I’m not even sure he knows I’m trying to cut off his air supply. Then I hear him gasp once, and he shrugs his shoulders, so I know I’m at least providing an annoyance.

  My right side lights up with a burning sensation, and I turn to see Clyde standing with Deb and Gypsy up against the black metal gate. His hands are open, and starbursts sizzle from his glowing palms. He’s bathing the three of us in a storm of them. Next to All-Star, I see the Blue Bloodhound, complete with his ridiculous long-nosed mask. I hide my face beside Bone’s, then sink my teeth into his ear, tug, try to pull tighter on his neck. Nothing’s distracting him, but I swear his breathing is growing more shallow.

  Below us, Titan’s eyes have closed.

  “Vincent,” Debbie yells, “get clear!”

  I turn and see my wife holding her palms up, a glowing ball of flame between them. “Hit us all!” I shout. Bone’s face turns to her. She and I lock eyes for a second, and the fireball swims and spins in the air, then she pulls her arms in and pushes out, like she’s heaving a basketball. There’s a bright flash of heat, a burst of sound, and we tumble sideways on the steps. We end up with me on my back and Bone atop me, both of us facing skyward. We’re smoldering, and the air smells like singed hair. Titan is fifteen feet away, very still. I’ve still got Bone in that choke hold, and now I’m sure I’m doing some good. His massive fists flail, punching holes into the stone steps on either side of us, and he tries to reach back for my head, but I keep it tucked in tight to his. Clyde tries to come in close, probably to try to laser him at point-blank range, but he can’t get past Bone’s kicking legs and swinging arms. The beams he blasts Bone with only seem to be making him more angry. Remarkably, Deb’s already recharged. She’s yelling for me to get clear and glowing with energy, brighter than I’ve ever seen her before. If I release Bone, though, he’ll come up swinging and could really do some damage. A few lucky shots could topple the whole church. I can’t let him go, but my adrenaline boost is fading, and when Bone finally settles down enough to grasp my forearm with both his hands, there’s only so long I can hold on. My eyes fix on the rising steeple and follow it downward, to the alcove with the one-handed Christ.

  “Gypsy!” I manage to yell, hoping she can read my mind from this distance. Whether she uses her powers or just follows my eyes, she understands. As she begins to contort her fingers, summoning a spell, I hear her voice in my head. This will hurt. Are you sure?

  I think back, Drop that fucker.

  Thirty feet above us, the statue begins to wobble. Below the sandaled feet, a crack appears, and for an instant it seems like Christ is walking toward us. Bone stops flailing and says, “Shitfire.” He tries to roll free, but I hold him tight, and a two-ton Jesus drops down on us both.

  When I come to, covered in rubble, my forearms are still wrapped around Bone’s neck. The other heroes are clearing the chunks of rock off us, like a rescue team after an earthquake. Bone’s gone limp. I crawl out from underneath him and see that he’s groggy as hell, but still conscious. “Son of a bitch, Commander,” he says.

  “I didn’t know they were out here.”

  Clyde kneels with a syringe, eyes on Bone’s veiny neck. This is standard procedure in the new era—doping up the villain till we get him transported to a secure holding cell. I hold up a hand and say to Bone, “Tell me where King Chaos is.”

  Clyde looks shocked, but waits with the needle.

  Bone’s eyes focus a bit, and I know he heard the question. “Gypsy,” I shout. She’s still kneeling over Titan. “I need you now.”

  Clyde says, “What’s going on here, exactly?”

  I slap Bone across his cheek. “Come on. You don’t need to say anything, just think it. Picture it. Where’s King Chaos?”

  Bone blinks and pushes his bloodied tongue out between his lips, tastes his own blood. “That’s why you came after me? You want to know about freaking Chaos?”

  “Just tell me,” I say. “Where is he?”

  Bone tries to spit, but the blood only slips onto his dusty cheek. Then he grins. “It matters that much to you? Then I’m happy to tell you. Last time I saw that crazy bastard he was talking about India. Maybe Kuala Lumpur. This was eight, nine years ago. By now he could be anywhere.”

  The grin cracks into a full-blown smile, and he raises his eyebrows at me, satisfied that though he lost the fight, he deprived me of what I wanted most. Clyde steps in and jabs the needle into Bone’s neck, depresses the plunger, and drops him into unconsciousness.

  I step away, glance up to the empty alcove where Christ once stood. Deb and Gypsy come along beside me, but I don’t need the psychic to tell me that Bone spoke the spiteful truth. Chaos is gone. All this has been for nothing.

  TWELVE

  Ending a Century of Violence. A Show of Good Faith. The Difference between Incarceration and Atonement. Resurrection within Our Lifetime. Unfinished Business.

  The morning of my fortieth birthday, I’m lying in bed awake, waiting for the sun to rise. The space next to me, where Debbie should be, is empty, and I’ve been reminded of the months after Sheila and I called it quits, how I hated sleeping alone again. I’m hoping that soon Nate will wake up, and the two of us can spend the morning on the couch watching cartoons. In the hours since I woke, I’ve laid here trying to deny that at middle age, I am on the verge of becoming the thing I most feared—a man without ambition, direction, or purpose. But it’s impossible now, with the Chaos Plan in shambles, not to tally up the first half of my life and draw some conclusions. In my two decades as a grown man, I’ve racked up one failed career as a second-rate hero, one ruined marriage, one on shaky ground, one son embarrassed by me, one too young to know better. That I am a failure strikes me as more of a statement of objective fact than a judgment.

  I simply can’t bear being alone with myself any longer, and I flip back the covers, swing my feet to the floor. My head pounds from last night’s battle. I think of the Zone in my bathroo
m, then remember I destroyed it on a better impulse I now regret. When I stand, my back aches, and a wave of dizziness nearly topples me. I wonder again how long I have until my recuperative powers disappear entirely.

  On Earth 1.7, I found my doppelganger, and he had no special abilities at all. That Vincent Shepherd had married a woman named Cindy I don’t even remember meeting. They had toddler triplets—Casie, Carol, and Jessica—and he sold ads for a radio station in Maryland. I’d tracked him down in hopes that he could help me get back to the right dimension, spied on him from the safety of a bridge a quarter-mile from his suburban home. As I watched him mow his lawn, sweat, run a hose into a faded plastic pool, sip at a beer while sitting on the edge of a deck in need of cleaning, I realized he’d be no help at all. I never spoke to that version of me, so I can’t say for sure if I was more content in that universe. Maybe he dreaded his crummy job and dreamed of saving the world. But from a distance, my ultrahearing heard him calling out his laughing daughters’ names as they splashed in a few inches of cool water, and he seemed happy. Maybe, from a distance, everybody does.

  I sneak into Nate’s room, fully expecting him to wake at the hinge’s squeak. He is a light sleeper. But today, he doesn’t shift as I cross the floor. The curtained window allows morning light to filter in. I stand over his bed and look down upon him, twisted in his blankets, at peace. As I often do at times like this, I wonder about the life he has ahead of him, the long stretches of challenges and disappointments, of triumphs and defeats. I wonder what role he will let me play.

  He may be the only reason I have left to live. This, I realize, is an unfair burden on the boy, and something he can never know.

  “Pssst,” I hear from behind me. When I turn, I see Ecklar’s green head leaning through the open door.

  I tiptoe into the living room, closing Nate’s door behind me. My alien friend follows me to the far table, where we sit and speak in hushed tones. He tells me, “They want you down at St. Clementine’s.”

  “They who?” I ask.

  “Clyde is the one who called. But I could hear Deborah in the background.”

  “Is Arthur all right?”

  Ecklar nods. “Gypsy’s healing spell is working wonders. He’ll be laid up a day or two, but he’ll be right as rain.”

  I can’t imagine what Clyde would want with me. But if Ecklar knew, he’d have told me already. He says, “I’ll keep an eye on Nathan. I just have computer files to back up this morning. Information I want to take with me. He can help.”

  I picture an Andromedan rescue ship floating through hyperspace. “The vortex is nearly open, isn’t it?”

  He blinks at me and smiles. “The radiation is intensifying. It could be any time now, I think.”

  I imagine the HALO without my friend. “Ecklar,” I ask, “what will you do when you get back?”

  A thin finger rises to his chin and taps. “Spend time with my family. Then return to work, find a way to serve my people. I have learned much in my time here.”

  “Will the war with the Malkovians still be going on?”

  “I hope not. But it is likely. A century of violence won’t be brought to an end easily.”

  I nod, think about my son in the room behind me. The rooftop notion that he may better off without me—that his life would be a better one fatherless—returns. Alongside it, I feel the swelling under my breastplate of being engaged in a war with a race of deadly aliens. Ecklar has described the Malkovians as ruthless—huge reptilians with advanced technology and a taste for flesh. Evil. I tell Ecklar, “I’m handy in a fight, you know.”

  His huge eyes aim at me, unblinking. “What are you proposing?”

  “I could come with you,” I say. “These Malkovians have never seen a man who can fly. At the zoo, you looked just fine in the old battle suit. The two of us, we could raise a little hell, eh?”

  Ecklar looks frightened by what I’m saying. “The vortex is unstable, Vincent. It won’t function like a permanent bridge. It is possible, even likely, that you would never be able to return.”

  “That might not be the worst thing.”

  Ecklar doesn’t speak for almost a minute. I wonder if this man, ripped away from his three wives and seventeen kids by an accident, is weighing the morality of helping me ditch my family. Finally, he says, “I searched through all the available databases and didn’t have any luck with Kuala Lumpur. No reports of unusual criminal activities or suspicious phenomena. If Chaos is there, he’s buried deep.”

  “Chaos wouldn’t stay in one place this long. I doubt he’d even tell Bone the truth about his plans. Why would he?”

  Ecklar shrugs his thin shoulders.

  “I guess I’ll head down to the hospital.”

  As we move through the living room, Ecklar says, “Vincent. You are my naddeo, and I am forever in your debt. I am honor bound to protect your life, even from you. Leaving Earth would be an act of surrender and disgrace. You would come to hate yourself for abandoning your family or change into the kind of man who does such things and accepts them. Neither outcome is worthy of you. I can’t endorse such destructive behavior.”

  I sigh but can’t think of anything to say. His logic, as always, is irrefutable. But that doesn’t mean I’m not still thinking about going with him. We reach my door. I say, “I appreciate your honesty.”

  “Indeed,” he says, still sensing I’m not convinced. Then a slim smile appears on his lipless mouth. “I almost forgot—happy birthday.”

  Because it’s overcast, threatening rain, and I’m tired as hell with no coffee, I swipe a hovercar and fly down to St. Clementine’s. I float past the helipad, leave it clear in case they have a genuine emergency, and land on the upper deck of the parking garage. I wander through the hallways, which seem unusually busy for this early in the morning. After I finally locate an elevator, I step inside and press the button below the one reading “street level.” This should bring me to the subterranean floor we constructed for superheroic medical cases. The elevator doesn’t move for a minute, and I see the security camera in the corner narrow its eye at me. With a jolt, the elevator begins its descent. When it stops and the doors split open, Debbie is waiting for me, and she greets me with a hug. “Did you sleep?” she asks.

  “Yeah,” I say. No reason to tell the truth. “What’s wrong with Bone?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” she says as she leads me down the hallway. “He’s recovering just fine. Doctors say he’s stabilized and will be OK to move by tonight. We’ll take him to Megajail to await trial. But we had an earlymorning visitor, and we’re not quite sure what to do with him.”

  Deb doesn’t offer anything else about the mystery guest, and I don’t push. It’s enough that she’s holding my hand, a signal I’m not quite sure how to interpret. I wonder how she would feel if I told her I was considering leaving not just our marriage but the planet. This isn’t because I don’t love my wife. I just can’t figure out how to do it right.

  We round a corner, and she opens a door to a conference room. Clyde turns from a row of three television monitors, but does not greet me. On the far left screen, I see Arthur asleep, Gypsy sitting at his side. The middle monitor shows Bone Crusher in a bed, groggy but awake. I can’t help but notice the IV drip and the thick chains attached to his wrists. God only knows what kind of sedation he’s under. On the last screen a figure sits in a straight-backed chair before an empty table. Just as I recognize the top hat he’s wearing, Clyde speaks. “It’s your pal, Magus.”

  Magus looks up into the camera and smiles. He knows I have arrived.

  “What’s he doing here?” I ask.

  Deb says, “Apparently, he was the one call Bone decided to make when he came to this morning. Claims to be his spiritual advisor.”

  “Yeah,” Clyde says. “And I’m the Easter Bunny.”

  “He could be telling the truth,” I offer. “The other night Magus told me he’s doing some work along those lines.”

  “And you see this as mere
coincidence? Him showing up at a secret Guardian function while we happen to be running surveillance on one of his former partners in crime?”

  “They never worked together,” I say.

  “Not that you know of,” Clyde counters.

  Deb shrugs. “The old guy seems harmless to me.”

  “I don’t buy any of this,” Clyde says. “We let him in there, he could magic up some escape.”

  “According to his files,” Deb says, “by himself he’s only capable of garden-variety illusions and tricks. He’s no threat without his wand, which was confiscated when he was arrested back in ’88. The computer says we’ve got that under lock and key in the Vault.”

  “Those files may not be entirely accurate,” Clyde says. “His powers may have changed. This is too risky.”

  Deb says, “We refuse to let him see counsel he’s requested, the whole case could blow up later on. You know the rules.”

  “A spiritual advisor isn’t the same as a lawyer.”

  “That’s something you’re certain of?” I ask.

  Even Clyde can recognize when he’s out of his depth. Everything we do nowadays has six layers of oversight. Panels and subcommittees review all our actions. To reassert his authority, he gives me a command. “Go in there and find out what the hell his story is. I’ll call DA Repka and see what’s keeping her.”

  “Anything you say, boss.”

  When I step inside the room, Magus rises from his chair on shaky legs. He removes his hat and extends an open hand, frail and not quite trembling, across the table. “Good to see you again so soon, Vincent.”

  We shake. “Guess we’re just lucky.”

  He takes his seat, smiling, and says, “I think you know I don’t believe in luck.”

  I sit across from him. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “I wasn’t offended, dear boy.”