by Paul Tobin
Let me just go ahead and state outright that Siren and I have a history. I know that she’s evil. I know she’s done some horrible things. I know that I’m supposed to be a hero, despite how I’ve done some horrible things. Well, to air it out, Siren is one of those horrible things I’ve done. Consider it this way, all the internet porn that’s ever been shown, all the strippers you’ve ever seen, all the women you’ve spied at odd moments, random beauties straightening a garter or twirling a finger through her hair… consider that to be level one. Having actual, real sex with one of these women, when you separate the pretenders from what’s real, when all of your senses are engaged, when everything is perfectly focused, that’s level two.
And then there’s nasty, let’s-feel-ashamed-about-this-later-but-not-right-now sex with one of those beautiful women. And that’s level three.
Just being around Siren is level five.
Unless you’re a superhuman, you couldn’t live through level six or seven. Having sex with Siren is section eight. Wait. Level eight. I meant level eight, of course.
For who she is, she dresses remarkably conservative. She doesn’t prance around in a bikini anymore (like she did in the beginning) or the slutty dress (like when she was first teaming up with Eleventh Hour) or the latex outfit (as when she first started sleeping with Octagon) or the Japanese cosplay outfits (which she once changed as often as she cuckolded Octagon) or anything of that type anymore. These days, it’s a simple dress in the 1920’s “flapper” style. It has a lot of beads. They move with her. They fall off a lot. You can find the individual beads online, scavenged from her appearances, scooped up by an army of amorous vultures. It seems like it would be something that’s easy to fake; they’re just small glass beads, after all. But, if you’ve ever held one… you know. Absolutely. The beads retain a sense of her perfume and her scent, and even touching one of the beads is a private affair.
They’re not cheap.
“You going to say anything else?” Siren asked me. I wanted to say something else. I really did. Maybe I wanted to say something impressive, or maybe I wanted to say that it wasn’t going to work on me this time… that if she came any closer I would turn not into a puddle, but a knife, one that would slice her in half. But with her so near, my voice seemed to be gone, and the walls and everything else were gone as well, or at least far past my range of focus. I wanted to lean on one of the walls, use it to catch my breath, but I couldn’t find anything. I wanted to quit sweating. I was aware that I looked ridiculous, with my costume torn and stained. Siren moved protectively in front of Octagon, who was laughing, not with insanity, but pleasure. He reached into that damn costume of his and took out a vial of green fluid. I knew what it was; he’d once distilled an essence of my blood, and could use it to heal. Siren, back in the past when we were having our fling, had told me that the process was incredibly expensive. As Octagon emptied the vial onto his arm, and as the bones began to knit back together, he was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. Maybe millions. I remembered Siren telling me about the process involved, why the costs were so high, remembered her winding one of her hairs around her finger as she spoke, then plucking the hair from her head (she had long brunette hair, at the time) and wrapping the other end of the hair around her toe. The second smallest toe on her left foot. Around and around and around. Linking her toe and her finger. We’d been in the Philippines, I think. Or maybe Japan? Brazil? It doesn’t matter. It was the second smallest toe on her left foot.
Octagon was standing again, watching the interplay between myself and Siren, maybe smiling, maybe not. Behind the costume, whatever was happening behind his mask, it was hard to say. It’s interesting to understand that the man is the greatest foe I’ve ever faced, responsible for some of my worst defeats, my narrowest escapes, but I still don’t know his real name, or what he looks like. It’s entirely possible that I pass him by on the streets, multiple times, every day of my life. It isn’t fair.
“Was the kid even real?” I asked him. “The one that was kidnapped? Was there ever a kid at all?”
“There was,” Octagon said. “We set him free the moment you walked into the warehouse. He’d served his part.”
“You set him free?”
“Yes.” This was from Siren. It proved it, beyond any doubt. Siren never lies to a man. That’s how incredibly cruel she can be. Lots of men think that women should tell the truth, explain their feelings. These men should use their wishes more wisely.
A copier came to life in the corner. It spit out paper after paper, each of them an image of a solitary portion of Macabre’s body, in the nude, and then also images of his clothing, alone. The images of his body wafted into a small funnel cloud of paper, and when the winds were settled he was standing there, naked, and in the kind of state you’d expect a man to be in whenever Siren was around. It was embarrassing, but he didn’t care. He’s a magician, accustomed to the stage.
Siren raised an eyebrow to him.
He said, “Duh, lady,” and then plucked the images of his clothing from the air, where they’d lined up in order. He merely touched the pages to his body, and then he was wearing that particular piece of clothing. I enjoyed the show, or to be more specific I enjoyed the length of the show. It was giving me a chance to catch my breath, or would have been, if Siren hadn’t been stealing it away. She was twirling her toes on the carpet, grabbing at the shag with her toes, pulling the strands left, right, all around.
Octagon said, “Reaver, you’ve interfered with my plans for the last time. I mean to rule this world, to show them all that I am the only king to beseech, the only power to fear, the only star in the sky.”
I said, “Shit.” He didn’t usually talk that way. He usually talks like a normal guy. This was completely overboard. Laser Beast came in through the same window where I’d arrived. I’d been tossed in by a hurricane, booted by a block of ice. He came in riding Tempest’s softest winds, and she came along shortly after. When she’s calling on the storms, she tends to go naked. She’d have been the most alluring woman in the room, if she’d been anywhere else on Earth.
“Eleventh Hour,” said Octagon, gesturing to me with that little flip of a hand that reminds me of a game show hostess, “… I present to you, Reaver, the last of the heroes of the spill, the last of the hurdles to leap.” The Heroes of the Spill. I’d heard it said that way before. I tried to remember where. Some website, I think. It referred to how my powers were born. My origin story, if you will.
“Spill this!” I yelled, and I leapt at Octagon, and the dumb son of a bitch still wasn’t ready for my speed, wasn’t ready for me to be game despite all the beating I’d taken, and because he wanted to gloat, because he wanted to be a showoff, he’d assembled Eleventh Hour in the room along with me, in a space where they would have trouble maneuvering, and I could hit any damn thing and any damn one I wanted, and I knew what was going to happen, knew how they’d react once I started snapping necks, when they found out that just because I have a goddamn Presidential certificate doesn’t mean I have to play by any pretty book of rules.
But Siren stepped in the way.
And there’s not a man who could punch her.
I’m definitely a man.
And I stopped cold.
Laser Beast shot me in my back. It came out through my chest. Tempest sucked all the air away from my lungs. Siren touched me on my shoulder. Macabre put his fist on that photo-copier and ran off a hundred images of his knuckles, released them into the air, where they swarmed me like bees, punching, punching, a hundred punches, and all I could think of was Siren’s touch on my shoulder. I tried to see where she was, needed to know what she was doing, wanted her to touch me again, was screaming at myself for being so dumb, and Laser Beast shot me again even as I was lifting him up, smashing him into somebody’s desk, destroying the mahogany, sending pencils and pens flying, ramming a computer monitor down onto his head, racing around the room, getting weaker and weaker, shorter of breath, no damn air, sear
ching for Tempest, finding her near the ceiling, leaping up to grab her, holding her by her left foot, thinking of Siren’s left toe, trying to climb the flying naked Tempest, crunching her ankle in my grasp while being shot through my stomach with another laser, this one from Octagon, who was circling my efforts to stay alive, with him holding a futuristic laser pistol and staying at the fringes of the battle, me yelling about Paladin, about Kid Crater, wishing I could catch my breath, nearly encased in ice, shrugging free of the freeze, sending fragments around the room, one of them striking Macabre, who cursed in anger and transformed the various shards of ice into tiny spear-wielding snowmen, sending them against me, stabbing and tripping, and Octagon was circling, firing with his laser pistol, so damn calm, me with no fucking breath and Siren was singing, singing, singing and Laser Beast put another blast through my chest and…
… it
… hurt
… so
… bad.
And I was down. No memory of falling. No memory of giving up. But I had. Eleventh Hour was gathered around. Staring down at me. Siren was handing Tempest that vial of green liquid. She was rubbing it on her ankle… the one I’d crushed. At least I’d cost them a few hundred thousand dollars. Maybe a million.
Octagon put his strange laser pistol to my head.
“Prepare to die!” he said. He added in that laugh. The one we’ve all heard in the movies.
I said, “How long?”
There was a pause. Octagon’s eyes narrowed. I couldn’t see it happening, but I could feel that it was true. Of course, I was also feeling my ribs inside my stomach, shards of them inside my lungs, so my mental frame wasn’t quite at the top of my game.
“What?” Octagon asked.
“How long are you going to give me to prepare?” I asked. There were things I needed to do. Things I hadn’t realized until just that moment.
“I don’t… understand,” Octagon said. His pistol was wavering. He looked to the others. Siren shrugged. Macabre was inscrutable. Tempest looked mad, frowning, chewing on her hair in that childlike manner of hers. Laser Beast was growling, lowering his head, baring his fangs.
I said, “You win. I want to prepare to die. There are still a few things I need to do. A couple loose ends. Fact is, fuck all this shit. I’m tired of being an asshole that’s the last bastion of goodness in this world. I give it all up. I’m exhausted by the dance.” I was getting back to my feet. They all made room. Even Laser Beast.
“Give me a month to close the books, and then put that gun back to my head,” I told Octagon. “You said I could prepare to die. Give me a month.”
I looked into his mask, but his eyes weren’t visible. We were about the same height. He smelled like blood. I looked for any sort of emotion past his mask, but there wasn’t anything to see. Only blackness. Not even shapes. Still, in that blackness, I could feel his wheels spinning, calculating, deciding. Siren was standing behind him. It didn’t look like she cared one way or the other. It hurt to know that she was being honest about it.
Octagon took a deep breath.
His gun went down to his side.
“Two weeks,” he said.
CHAPTER THREE
My brother Tom was sixteen years old when he started working at the Mighty Convenient convenience store, a small chain of Oregon stores spawned off the proceeds of a larger chain of auto dealerships. Tom, of course, was besieged by friends to let them buy booze, even though they were underage. Tom never gave in. Not once. Not through all the bribes of money or pussy. They didn’t faze him. He even had the Gorner Twins (they always capitalized “Twins,” so I’m doing it here as well) say they’d make a three-way sandwich of him. He’d turned them down. They’d walked around in a collective daze for hours, their world turned upside down, until they’d decided that Tom must be gay.
But he wasn’t. He was a hero, and he’d told me that he’d made a promise to Vic Davis (the store owner, who died of a heart attack just a year ago, victim of business stress, but I should point out that hoboes can die of stress, too, so if it’s going to happen you might as well be a millionaire) that he would never sell alcohol to anyone underage. Tom made that vow, and Tom held to it.
That said, he often shoplifted beer for himself, and for me, and a couple of times for pussy (he once said he’d be gay as soon as he ran out of pussy, but not before) and one day he got me drunk enough to challenge him in a race (Tom was the district’s track champion at the time) with a bet involved. If I won the race, he’d have to steal a six-pack a week for me, and I could choose the beer. If he won, he’d get to drive through town in the old Lincoln our Uncle Buzz had sold him, and I’d have to ride on the top of it, with Tom driving slow, and me wearing nothing but my underwear.
So it came to pass that I was on the roof of that Lincoln and Tom was driving through Greenway at a steady pace of fifteen miles per hour. I was wearing whitey tighties, not the underwear I’d wanted to choose (I had a pair of boxers that weren’t much different than swim trunks, and I could have claimed them as such to any shocked witnesses) but Tom had pointed out that if he’d lost the bet, then I would have been able to choose the beer, so it was only fair to let him choose the underwear.
That was a reasonable point.
Tom usually had reasonable points.
Tom taught me a lot about doing the right thing, and how sometimes it was hard to do.
I’m not telling this story because I think anyone needs to know about me, age fifteen, in my underwear. I won’t go into how the town’s only law enforcement, Officer Horwitz, pulling up alongside us, had asked Tom to explain to him “what the shitting Christ” was going on, and had then laughed and said, “Carry on, boys. Carry on.”
There’s no reason to relate how Gus Ferkins, who owned the antique store and was rumored to possess a set of George Washington’s dentures, took pictures of me that he put on his website along with close-ups of Boy Scout parades he’d attended over the years.
There’s no reason to talk about how Judy, Tom’s girlfriend, came out of her house when Tom started honking his horn, and she got into the car for the rest of the trip, laughing her ass off, talking about my chicken legs, and had once poked up her head to say, “Best not peer down here for a bit. I’m gonna give Tom a handjob.”
There doesn’t need to be a long memoriam of how Trinity, the Claremunns' Rottweiler, had run alongside the car for three blocks, savagely barking, furious for some reason, trying to jump up onto the car and bite my legs while I was screaming for Tom to go faster, and Tom said he wouldn’t, that he couldn’t, because he’d once promised Dad (I later found out this was true) that he’d never drive faster than ten miles per hour when he was getting a handjob. Trinity, the Rottweiler, was named after the father, the son, and the Holy Ghost. The Claremunns were religious as all hell. Maybe their dog was, too. Maybe he thought my chicken legs and white skin were an abomination in the eyes of the Lord, and his teeth were trying to dish out some saliva-covered penance. Trinity later died during the sixty-seventh annual Greenway Glory Days, a parade and festival held every August 2nd, when he was kicked to death by a horse that hadn’t liked him barking. I wish I’d had that option.
Anyway, none of this is important. What’s important is that I’d done a damn dumb thing the night before, not only making the bet, but, when drunk as a porn star in a girls’ locker room, I’d mentioned the color of Adele Layton’s eyes.
So, of course, Tom had to drive the Lincoln straight past her house, honking his horn, circling the block, and eventually she came walking out with a puzzled look on her face, carrying a doll that she’d been mending for her youngest cousin, sewing eyes back into place, but I hadn’t known about that at the time, had only known that she was carrying a doll, looking like a child, looking puzzled. Tom parked the Lincoln along the curb. I wondered if that meant the drive was officially over. If so, I could bolt. Of course it was a little late for that.
“Tom?” Adele said, looking in at him. I was hoping the handjob
was over and he was zipped up. It was hard to tell how Tom would approach any situation. He has always had a differing sense of propriety.
“Hey, Adele,” he said. “I got my brother up on the roof. He’s in his underwear.”
“I did note that,” she told him. She looked up to me and said, “Hi, Steve.”
Tom said, “Last night he got drunk and started talking about your eyes. Jesus, you should have heard the poetry. It was plain horrible. I was thinking of punching him unconscious.”
“Is that so?” she said. She was looking to me. I was about four inches tall. Shrinking fast.
“I think he wants to get into your pants,” Tom said. Adele gave a small jump. I was three inches tall.
“Say that again?” Adele said, frowning to my brother.
He said, “I. Think. Steve. Wants. To. Get.” Each word was nearly a shout. I had to get in there and put an end to it.
I said, “I only said I wanted to go out with her. I like her! I don’t need handjobs all the damn time like you do!”
Judy, unseen from below, said, “It’s not all the damn time! I’m not a whore! It’s like… maybe twice a day!”
Tom said, “Maybe I should keep quiet? Is this one of those times when I should keep quiet? Hey… Steve?” He knocked on the roof of the car. I could feel it in my chest, where my heart couldn’t decide between two hundred beats a minute, or none at all. I felt about two inches tall. Dwarfed by my underwear.
“Hey, Steve,” Tom said. “Let me know if I should be quiet now.”
“You should be quiet, now,” Adele told him, then she should looked up to me, met my eyes, and said, “No handjobs, and you’ll have to dress a bit more formal, but, yeah… we can go out.” She didn’t say another word, just walked back into the house, carrying that doll, looking back over her shoulder, smiling, a little.