Mostly Hero

by Anna Burns

  ANNA BURNS

  Mostly Hero

  Also by Anna Burns

  No Bones

  Little Constructions

  © 2014 Anna Burns

  Anna Burns has asserted her rights in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  Published by eBookPartnership.com

  First published in eBook format in 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-78301-492-7

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.

  All names, characters, places, organisations, businesses and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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  Mostly Hero

  ANNA BURNS

  The villains from downtown eastside put a magic spell on femme fatale so that she would kill superhero whilst under the influence of this magic spell. She would be totally insensible of doing so. The villains considered this plan delicious and foolproof, but it wasn’t entirely foolproof because the evil wizards from whom they had purchased it said it was a new spell, not as yet perfected, therefore not entirely reliable. They could guarantee that whosoever was under it would experience an irresistible urge to kill the person they were programmed to kill. It was just they might not try to kill this person all the time. The villains did calculations and decided there was a good enough percentage of chances that she might kill him more than a percentage of chances that she might forget to kill him. So yes, delicious and almost foolproof. What made it especially exquisite for the villains was that immediately this woman killed her lover she would come to and realise what she’d done. She would scream, be maddened, be heart-broken, be broken - then she’d be arrested and have to go to the jail. Even this though, wasn’t the main deliciousness. This femme fatale was small fry in the eyes of these villains. What would be truly massively orgasmic was that hero would be taken by surprise. Ordinarily it was very hard to take him by that - owing to his training and superpowers and so forth. But in this case he’d be off guard, perhaps at home, perhaps partially undressed, perhaps doing something domestic, making coffee perhaps in his kitchen, all the while pondering the magnificence of his woman with his underbelly receptive and exposed. Dumbfounded, he’d be astonished that here, after all these years, he’d managed at last to let someone get close to him. He’d turn to say as much to his very own femme fatale who at that moment would be tiptoeing up behind him. Then he’d look dumbfounded in a completely different way because it would be at that moment she’d plunge the daggers in. That would be the end of him, laughed the villains, and effectively it would be the end of her also, at least as a happy woman - so far as femmes fatales could be said to be happy women. So they rubbed their hands in glee, these villains, and purchased the spell and brought it home to their downtown eastside residence where, in the rarefied atmosphere required for spells, they performed the ritual by doing exactly what it said on the tin. After that, and barely able to contain themselves, they sat back to await happy results and consequences, certain in the knowledge that with superhero out of way all their dreams of world domination could now - in a permanent sense - come true.

  Now, these villains were brainboxes of the highest order, possessed of enormous IQs and phenomenal powers of resilience at taking over the globe periodically, dominating it briefly, before superhero, just as periodically, swooped in and snatched it back. For all this though, here was a case of great brains not really connecting to anything because in spite of what any small child with an action adventure comic book could easily have pointed out to them, in believing superhero could never suspect dirty dealings coming from this woman, the villains proved themselves quite, quite wrong. They seemed incapable of grasping that their enemy, this strong silent hero, had a fundamental, stereotypical problem with trusting anybody, which wasn’t exactly a character trait he had been born with, but was congenital in the figurative sense in that he very nearly had. Of course, of everybody of whom this particular hero was suspicious, he was most suspicious of femme fatale, of this woman he was in love with. Even before he discovered she had a spell on her he was distrustful of her. He didn’t want to be, but that’s just how it goes. Forty times since the spell had been put on, she had attempted his life with shovings in front of traffic, trippings at top of staircases, spur of the moment poisonings, opportune blunt instruments, improvised pointy objects, plus of course mowing him down in her car. It had got to the point where every time she was in the vicinity, superhero was poised and on alert to counter her, and every time she wasn’t in the vicinity, he was poised and on alert to counter her as well.

  So, happy times. They had arranged on the town’s courthouse steps at eight that morning to meet for lunch at noon and he had said, ‘Now don’t be late, femme. I have some saving of the world appointments later on to attend to.’ And she had said, ‘Well, don’t you be late either. I have equally important things to do too.’ At this, she whipped a pistol from her bag and tried to shoot him in the head with it. He managed to snap it out of her hand just in time. Then she tried to push him down the remainder of the court steps from the spot where they were standing. Then they got into a tussle from which she came to, thinking they were embracing. Fully and at once she embraced her lover back. Then she kissed him on the lips. Then she kissed again because the first kiss had been lovely. Then she smoothed down her dress and said, ‘Now remember, I mean it, hero, don’t be late. I too, have urgent things - and for goodness sake. It’s eight in the morning. Put that gun away.’ With that she went off to the store to pick out another dress, this time to wear to this lunch with hero - and a new dress calls for a new hat and a new dress calls for new furniture and soft, decorative finishings and wholesome re-jiggings generally of her apartment, which in itself calls for a new handbag and because a new dress demands gloves she got gloves, then she paid a visit to the haberdasher then to the hardware store. After that, it was a consultation with the chloroform expert, then a therapist to chat through unconscious motivation with and - because the dress also called for it - a visit to the art gallery to purchase art. Finally she gave a donation to charity equal to ten percent of all she’d just spent money on. So yes, a new dress calls for everything and, that done, she went to spend the remainder of these hours before lunch with a relative on her father’s side: her dear little, sweet little, out-of-time, eccentric great aunt.

  Now, Great Aunt was a villain in her own right and all that sweetness - terribly sweet, painfully sweet, terribly, terribly - was camouflage. Superhero, who had dossiers on everybody, was well aware of that. Great Aunt, for her part, had a dossier on him also. However, she had nothing to do with the spell placed upon her great niece to kill him. Nor was she aware there even was such a spell. She hadn’t been informed either - though soon she would be by the men of her employ - that the villains from downtown eastside were hatching a fresh plot to take over the world again, which was why they were in a hurry to get superhero out of the way. Great Aunt didn’t have any deep-seated personal or tribal grievance against her great niece’s dating superhero. Indeed she’d been young herself once and could well appreciate what a heady mix fatality and superhumanness was. It was just that things might become st
rained between her and little niece should Great Aunt - who was herself planning to take over the world again - have to destroy superhero in the process. It had been a while since she had taken over the world but her reasoning went that, as she was getting on and had not further for this world, she might as well take it over one more time before she left. On the four glorious occasions during her career when she did take it over - at age twenty-one, at age twenty-five, at age twenty-eight, at age sixty-four - she’d managed to hold on to it far longer than had all other villains and hadn’t been destroyed either when the hero of the hour had swooped in to defeat her and grab it back. She was confident moreover in having another go and that was why checking whether the killing of superhero might have an adverse effect upon her niece was one of the reasons she was delighted when this niece showed unexpectedly at her door.

  Aunt lived in a skyscraper of three hundred and ninety floors, a building of many secret passages, of covert entrances and exits, and for the last twenty years she had not left this building, overseeing all events from Mission Control downstairs. At age eighty-two still she put her foot down and insisted on living alone (apart from her staff) in the whole convoluted complex. This was one reason femme found her aunt sprightly and eccentric, though if she really knew her aunt the way superhero knew her aunt, femme would understand that ‘eccentric’ was entirely insufficient a word. Femme had been told, indeed warned by her family at puberty, to beware, to watch out, to be cautious, of a strain of morbid, unwholesome femme fatality that ran through most of the female side of the family, but she hadn’t been told that an aberrant, over-reaching villainy gene tended to pop up now and again as well. She herself hadn’t displayed any femme fatality of note until of late when this spell, of which also she was unaware, had been placed upon her. Indeed she considered herself the antithesis of the femme fatale - the good girl, the non-threatening girl, the cute-kid-next-door girl - thinking she’d escaped any soulless generational legacy of false glamour, dirty money and of men of power but dubious morality mattering more to her than anything else mattering more to her; believing too, that the unhappy fretful fatale gene had been recessed in her. She had no suspicions either concerning dastardliness and her great aunt. That was exactly as Great Aunt liked it. And now here was femme, come to visit this skaty, forgetful, elderly relative, which proved an occasion for this razor sharp genius to find out definitively if this child was in love with this hero or not.

  Femme was buzzed in and took the spacious service lift to the penthouse, which was Great Aunt’s living quarters. She had to take the service lift because there used to be a proper lift but Great Aunt said that one middle of the night it had disappeared. Nobody could draw the old lady further on this and if it hadn’t been for the fact the lift did indeed appear missing, they would have considered poor Aunty senile by now. But missing it was, with visitors required to use the stairs - of which there were a million - or the service lift which was cranky and rattling and twelve minutes slower than had been the proper lift, even if in the end it got the job done. At lift’s end, in the penthouse, femme crossed the hallway and stepped into the Contemplation Room where she found her aunt, as often she found her aunt, sitting in her dressing gown in a pool of her own tears. Not unusual. The old lady watched TV in the Contemplation Room, mostly an intermingling of film noir, Hollywood gothic and of comic-book fantasy action films - anything, provided it had serious contending villains in it - crying unashamedly too, at all parts where any villain got killed. Also, she shouted encouragement or disapproval at the characters in these films, depending on whether it was a hero or a villain presenting. If she were to make moving-pictures of heroes and villains, she thought, all good guys would die horrible deaths.

  And now, lovely. Her great niece had come to visit. ‘Come in, little chicken,’ she cried in a wavering, terribly sweet voice. ‘I can’t come to you because I’m old and extremely moved by this sad part of the movie. But it’s beautiful to see you. Come in and see me, but give me a moment till I blow my nose and set myself right.’ After dabbing her eyes and muting the TV, Great Aunt struggled in a tottering fashion out of her comfy little old lady armchair. She hugged her great niece genuinely and great-heartedly, saying, ‘Oh, I’m a susceptible, useless old biddy’, with femme returning the hug and chiding her relative, saying she didn’t think it was good for Great Aunt to be breaking her heart with these films, especially at her age and especially so young in the day. Great Aunt was barely listening. Already, while hugging, she had re-pressed the remote and switched channels, this time to the Alarming Breaking News Network Exclamation Marks!!!!!! Channel where, in a newsflash, she updated herself on the court case involving the latest villain defeated by superhero whilst trying to take over the world that very week.

  ‘I met that man’s grandmother once,’ she said, and on the TV was a clip of the ex-world dominator currently in custody - also of hero, being interviewed by other media a few feet away. Femme disengaged from the hug and turned to look at the screen also. She mistook Great Aunt’s remark to be a reference to the nefarious world dominator and exclaimed, ‘You met this villain’s grandmother!’ and Great Aunt nodded and said, ‘Used to know his grandfather too.’ ‘Sadly, he died,’ she continued, ‘with his death occurring many years before I met the grandmother. So yes, met her - and the mother, and the immediate family, and the extended family, and the staff, the bodyguards, the guard dogs, the affiliates, the associates. I met the whole caboodle of this man’s grandmother.’ What Great Aunt didn’t add was that the occasion on which she had met all these people had been the same occasion - some twenty years earlier - when she had had all of them killed. ‘Except him,’ she said, indicating the TV. ‘He had been a boy at the time and had been sent out of the country for safe-keeping.’ She sighed. ‘My, but what a busy day that day had been.’ After a pause she pulled herself away from memories of summary, merciless and successful executions and said, ‘Enough of me, little human remedy. Tell me of yourself and of all you’ve been up to. What of this young man your cousin Freddie informs me you’re stepping out with these days?’

  Femme was horrified. Though unguarded, social and chatty about most things, never, no, never, not ever, did she speak of men she stepped out with. Nor men she would like to step out with. Nor men she thought about. Nor desire. Nor love. Nor sex. Not even with Great Aunt, whose mind was like a sieve and so wouldn’t retain anything anyway, and who, being an old maid virgin, wouldn’t understand anyway, and who besides wasn’t further for this world - no matter she was sounding strangely girlish at this point. So no. Out of the question. The topic of men was too private a topic, too delicate a topic, too sensitive a topic, most especially not for light banter conversation. Immediately she became reluctant, or coy, or dismissive, or evasive, or deceitful or, more certainly, all of that.

  ‘Nonsense, Great Aunty!’ She brushed aside her relative’s question with a laugh that was too off-key to be truthful. ‘Freddie’s talking through his hat. The man’s not my young man. I’m just– We’re just– He’s just– We’re dating, casually dating. Not even dating. Acquaintances. We’re getting acquainted. Indeed, we’ve hardly met. I haven’t met him. Don’t know him. Don’t know who it is you’re talking about.’ At this there was lots of shrugging, shaking of head, avoidance of eyes, dismissal of truth and of the fact her desire should come into this, that desire should feature anywhere in this, to be seen to be it. All must be protected. But Great Aunt hadn’t finished the harmless question section yet. For each non-committal answer her niece gave to each non-committal question, Great Aunt had another question up her sleeve. She was determined to discover just how much little ear-ring here knew of her lover’s activities. Did she know, for example, that he was one of the men before her now, in disguise, on the TV? She asked femme what her suitor did for a living and femme, not wanting to fright her aunt by revealing that her boyfriend was a superhero - that he was, indeed, that same hero in disguise on the TV - said, ‘He’s self-employed’, hopi
ng that that would be enough of a newfangled occupation to satisfy her ancient aunty. Great Aunt thought, she knows then. But does she love him or can I kill him? At this point femme went evasive and incoherent again. This ducking and diving went on some more until Great Aunt glanced at the clock and thought, Good Lord, we’ll be here all day. I’m going to have to hypnotise her. So she sat niece down, using a vice-like grip which femme, in her flustered state, did not pick up on. Then Great Aunt sat down also and, ‘Femme,’ she said, leaning forward, ‘what is this man to you?’ Femme opened her mouth, again to perpetuate her usual revelations of nothing and of nobody but this time Great Aunt clicked her fingers in her niece’s face and all pretence of nothing and of nobody disappeared.

  So now femme was under two spells simultaneously. This one, however, was not a spell in trial. This was a spell perfected, which meant she had no choice but to tell all. From that point on it was no longer a case of Great Aunt being unable to get anything out of her niece, but one of it being impossible for anyone but a superpower such as Great Aunt being able to get her to stop. The splurge was instant, one-sided and inclined to favour her own viewpoint entirely. It was also splattered over Great Aunt in femme’s rush to get it out.

  ‘Okay, I can see how it looks,’ she said. ‘The world community would say I was selfish and possessive, given he appears to have all these humanitarian concerns about him, all these missions to defeat villains and to save the world. But he’s hiding behind that job, Aunty. This is no strict, moral code, no high-minded altruism. It’s a huge displacement activity, all to keep any sense of himself - and of other people - and of me - away. He’s terrified of people. Doesn’t like people because he’s terrified of people. That’s why he does “twilight hours”. He’s a twilight zone person, Aunty. Won’t do normal things at normal times. Take lunch for example. He suggested twelve o’clock today which sounds normal, doesn’t it? I agree it sounds normal - but wait till I tell you where we’re meeting. We’re meeting at the edge of a cliff. His idea. I went along because at least he suggested a sane time this time, an hour when normal people have lunch. But we’re meeting at the cliff edge then, soon as we meet, we’re taking his car back to town again. But we’re already in town! Remaining in town and meeting at the restaurant would be too easy or else too much of a commitment for him. That’s why he has to muddy all simplicities up. With him it’s parties of the first part and parties of the second part, but who does that, Aunty? Who does that about lunch? So he doesn’t want me, or else wants me in a twilight way where I’m all right after midnight, where he’ll ring after midnight, or meet me in precarious places if it’s not after midnight. Even then though, he’ll be in disguise. You think his blank, impassive, cerebral-working-process, non-narrative-restricted face is just his public face? Hell no. That’s how he looks all the time. Won’t even present his face as a symbol of nothing because even then, that would be about something. He kills everything, out of fear, stone dead. So yeah, big deal he saves the world. Big deal he’s a great guy - for he is a great guy! he is, Aunty! - but it’s a death he’s living - tying himself in knots, in neckaches, in backaches, in hip-aches, sitting in corners, watching the door, up on the roof, playing the telescope out the window. Anyone would think he was the villain and not the superhero. Why, he’s even jumpy and edgy around me! I don’t like to comment on anybody’s essence because it’s important to be fair, Aunty, and to honour people and not to comment on their essence, but Great Aunt, none of this can make for a happy or a healthy or an expressive man. And that reminds me, another thing - sex.’