Superheroes in Prose: The 1-4 Collection

by Paris, Sevan

  Then there’s the whole cracking the planet open thing. That might be a danger too.

  Reagan slowly spins her mug. “What’s it saying?”

  “How can you tell I’m talking to it?”

  “You do this weird shifty thing with your eyes.”

  That’s just him.

  My hand goes right to my eye.

  “I used to just think something was wrong and didn’t want to say anything.”

  “Did you know about this, M?”

  Can we please focus on the matter at hand?

  “You’re doing it again.”

  I sigh and lower my hand. “M says we can show you how to use—how to control your powers and how to keep the others from tracking your radiation.”

  “ ‘My radiation’ ” … God, that’s so weird to say. “How come they haven’t tracked me already?”

  I’ve been wondering that as well. My best hypothesis at this point is they simply don’t know to look for it yet.

  “My best guess? They don’t know what to look for yet?”

  Why you little …

  Reagan raises an eyebrow. “Your best guess?”

  I can’t help but laugh. “Guess I need to work on that eye thing.”

  “Or not, it’s kinda …”

  Cute? Is she going to say cute?

  “It’s like it makes people not want to be around you. Which I think is a good thing, y’know with trying to hide the fact that you’re an illegal Super and all.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s … good.”

  “So when do we start the training thing?”

  “How about right here, right now?”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, why not? There’s nobody here—we’ve got the whole place to ourselves. And we’ll need to start small anyway, so there isn’t like there is a danger of us messing up the store. And it’ll be a while before the rain stops.”

  “Cool—but there’s just one thing I gotta know first. Where do these powers—or this life form thingy come from anyway?”

  I point up.

  The corner of her mouth rises, dimpling the freckles in her left cheek. “The roof of the coffee shop?”

  “Higher.”

  She gives me a melodramatic look, all playful like. “God?”

  “Lower.”

  “ …. Space?”

  I nod.

  “SHUT UP!”

  ***

  Reagan cuts into another piece of raspberry cheesecake. “So, let me get this straight,” she barely manages to say through a mouthful of food. “You actually have this alien thing kind of living inside you?”

  I nod and scoop another mound of vanilla ice cream onto my brownie. “Uh-huh.” After the big reveal, we decided to raid the bake case of the coffee shop. She sits on the counter, and I lean against it, lightly kicking a chunk of wood that showed up out of nowhere a couple of months ago. It’s the same color pattern as our wooden benches, and appears burnt at the edges. I use it a lot to prop the front door open, so I never saw a reason to throw the mystery wood away.

  I resent being called a ‘thing.’

  “And it’s been living there for six months?”

  “Going on seven.” I toss the ice cream back in the freezer.

  “So how did it find you? I mean how did you two …” she interlaces her fingers.

  That gesture is inappropriate on so many levels.

  “The same way you did, I guess. It just found me and joined.” I take the first bite, not really noticing the taste.

  So, I AM an‘it’ now? If anything, you two are the ‘its.’ I’m not even corporeal.

  “And your guy has never spoken with you? Never said anything?”

  “Let’s see … huh—alien voice inside my head telling me to do stuff,” she clucks her tongue, “nope, can’t say any of that’s been going on.” She forks a piece of my brownie and I hope my cheeks aren’t as red as they feel.

  I can get him to talk.

  Now, I hope my cheeks aren’t as pale as they feel.

  I gently place the fork on my saucer, incapable of finishing. “M says he can … convince him to talk.”

  Reagan slides the saucer to herself. “That’s not very reassuring.”

  “He’s not the reassuring type.”

  Very well, how’s this: In order to train her properly, I will need to join my consciousness with hers to ‘wake up’ the entity inside her, which I assure you, Gabe, whatever has happened—the entity will wake up on its own accord eventually. If that should happen and they can’t be fortunate enough to muddle through the process of learning their powers as we did—the results could be less than pleasant.

  I relay everything to Reagan.

  “Can I trust it?”

  My pause answers her question.

  “Okay…” she slides off the counter. “I wanna hear its story first. I wanna hear about where he comes from, what his people are like, and why he’s here. Every detail—no omissions.”

  Now, it’s my turn to look out the window and back to my plate. “I don’t know his story—not all of it. He won’t tell me.”

  “Why not?”

  “He says it’ll freak me out.”

  “Can’t you force him—coax him somehow?”

  She does know I can hear her, right?

  “Probably …”

  You most assuredly cannot.

  “ … if I have something he wants.” I look at Reagan. She places her fork back on the saucer and slowly thumbs the corner of her mouth.

  My, you are a conniving one, Gabe. I would be proud if this wasn’t at my expense.

  “Okay,” Reagan says. She slides across the counter and places her hands on my cheeks—I feel funny things happen in my stomach. “M, tell us your story and I’ll let you—I’LL LET YOU INSIDE MY HEAD! BUT IT’S THE ONLY WAY!”

  I gently grab her wrists.

  “What’s wrong?” she says.

  “You don’t have to shout. He can hear you.”

  “Oh.”

  ***

  I’m not sure what I was expecting when I came to the coffee shop to speak with Gabe Garrison. On the one hand, he’s always acted weird, but kind of in a cute way. Not an “I want to date him kind of cute,” but y’know, puppy dog cute.

  All I did know was I needed answers. For the past two months, my life’s been way too freaky to deal.

  Gabe’s eye’s dart away, like he’s reading something out of the corner of his eye. He’s talking to it … him—that life form thing that’s inside him.

  Just like the one that’s apparently inside me.

  “What is it?” I ask after waiting a lifetime.

  “He wants to tell you … personally.”

  “I already said I’m not letting him in my brain until after.” God, (again) that’s so weird to say.

  “No, I mean, he can take over my body and tell you.”

  “You mean, like, with your mouth?”

  “I mean like with my mouth.”

  “Okay … well, that will make for an awkward moment, but, sure I’ll do it.”

  Gabe backs away from the counter. “It’s not that—I’m not sure if I want to do it! I didn’t even know he could do this! And, I—it’s just weird. Why haven’t you told me you could do this before?”

  “Do what?” I wait for an answer, only to realize he wasn’t talking to me, but to M. Gabe, please do this. I need this. Please—please—PLEASE!

  Gabe turns and I can see doubt in his eyes. No, not doubt—fear.

  “Hey,” I cross the room to him, “It’s okay. He’s not going to do anything to me … or to you. He needs answers from me, right?”

  Gabe lets go of a breath I didn’t even know he was holding. “I just don’t trust him. He doesn’t always tell me everything. In fact, he makes it a point to not tell me everything.”

  I give them a few minutes to ‘talk’ to each other. Gabe paces around the bookstore, occasionally making gestures with his hands as if he were talking to a per
son directly in front of him.

  He turns and faces me, chest heaving. “He says ‘the need to tell you never came up, Gabriel. And this is the way I want to do it to make sure your poor attempts at articulation don’t cause the female to misinterpret … THAT IS TOO WHAT YOU SAID!”

  I grab his hand in both of mine. His eyes stop shifting and he looks right at me. “Maybe this will help us both deal … like, come to terms or something. And don’t you think we deserve to know what’s going on? About everything? If he’s hiding something at this point—couldn’t there be a major reason for it … like something-that’s-gonna-get-you-killed kind of major?”

  Gabe straightens his back and gives me half a nod.

  “You’re right.” he says, barely above a whisper. “We need to know. We deserve to know. I just—we can’t trust him, Reagan. We can’t trust what he says … so what would be the point of giving him this much freedom?”

  “This will be a chance for him to come clean. And if I suspect any B.S., I’m not gonna let him anywhere near me.”

  Gabe looks at me, and then at his hand. I squeeze it a little tighter. He slowly nods. “Okay, but I want a backup. I’m sure he can take over my body if I let him, but I’m not sure if he will give it back. And I’m not sure if I can take it back.”

  Gabe disappears to the back room for a few minutes, I hear some clanging like somebody’s going through a locker, and then he comes back holding a Marvin the Martian-looking ray gun. It’s black, about the size of a hair dryer, and has three red rings circling the barrel.

  “Recognize this?” he says. I shake my head.

  “It’s Dr. Villainous’ V-Ray.”

  “You mean the guy they make fun of on Saturday Night Live all the time?”

  Gabe nods. “He was my first bad guy … I kicked his ass.”

  “And you took this as a trophy?”

  “Well, I don’t—I guess, yeah.”

  “And you keep it in your locker at work? Is that safe?”

  Gabe looks over his shoulder, in the direction of the back room. “Well … I keep it under three pairs of dirty boxers. It’s probably the safest place in Prose.”

  “What else do you have in there?”

  “An eyeball from one of Shank’s giant robots, a sentient computer program saved to a thumb drive, and a rock from another planet—I forget the name of it. But there wasn’t enough room for the giant penny.”

  “What?” I say after realizing he expected some sort of response.

  “Never mind, bad joke.”

  “Sorry, all this stuff just has my mind reeling. So what does this thing do?”

  “It, uh, vaporizes stuff.”

  “Vaporizes? Seriously?”

  Gabe fires the gun at the barista counter. A red beam of light circles a syrup bottle behind the counter and it disappears, leaving a puff of smoke and the faint smell of hazelnut. “Seriously.”

  “How long have you had this thing?”

  “Since I beat him seven months ago. M said we needed to take him down fast because of this thing. It, and the other stuff Villainous had, are the only weapons we’ve come across so far that would completely ignore our force field, according to his readings anyway.”

  “So … what does it do to you?”

  His eyes twitch back and forth and he rubs his forehead with the base of his palm. That thing inside him must be yelling at him again.

  He hands the gun to me, hesitates for a moment and then lets go. “I don’t know, but M’s afraid of it and that’s enough for me. I want you to keep it pointed at me—at him—at all times.”

  The gun is heavier than it looks; its metal is cold except for the places Gabe held it. “Gabe, I don’t know that I can—”

  “You’d be surprised what you can do when you have to.”

  I take a breath, but Gabe holds up his hand before I can say anything. “You’re gonna be in danger, Reagan. Serious danger. Not the kind you read about in the Superhero novels, but the kind that gets you killed. M doesn’t like me, he doesn’t like this situation, and he definitely doesn’t like you. I’ve already stopped him from killing you once.”

  A coppery taste coats my mouth. “When?”

  “In the garage stairwell yesterday. He thought you were about to find out what we were.”

  I look from him to the gun.

  “I don’t know how much control I’ll have when he takes over. If he wants you dead and you’ve got nothing to stop him except powers you barely understand—you’re dead. This gun won’t give you a great chance of defending yourself, but it will give you some chance. Whether we deserve to know what’s going on or not, this is the only way I’ll let this thing happen.”

  “Okay … okay.” I hope Gabe doesn’t hear the tremble in my voice.

  “Are you sure you want to do this? Cause if he doesn’t give me my body back, you’re still gonna have to use that thing. I can’t have him out there, unchecked.”

  I look at Gabe—really look at him for the first time. He’s always been that kind of weird, socially awkward, bumbling kid that made you feel better about being you and not somebody like him. He’s never been that person that somebody could turn to for help, that understood things you never even wanted to see and did things nobody should ever have to do. He’s actually talking about dying in the next hour—he’s talking about me killing him in the next hour—and he seems perfectly calm about it. In fact, I think it’s the calmest I’ve ever seen him.

  I give a little nod.

  “I need more than that.”

  I step back and point the gun at him. “I’m ready. How quickly will it—”

  Gabe’s eyes flare like two suns. I think I scream and look away, shielding the flash with my free hand.

  “Pretty darn quick.” I hear Gabe say, but it isn’t Gabe. The voice is much deeper and confident—but not in a good way. I lower my arm and look at him. His eyes aren’t glowing as brightly, and his body has turned into that starry thing it does—that we both do.

  I can barely see his cheeks rise with a grin through the lights dancing in my eyes. “A lot quicker than you anyway.”

  Chapter Three

  Gabe—scratch that—M stares at his hands. He makes a scissoring motion with his index and middle fingers and seems to be more fascinated by the space between them than the actual fingers.

  I clear my throat.

  He looks up. I can only tell because his pupils are just a little brighter than the flares sitting in his eye sockets. If I hadn’t already seen a similar effect in my own eyes a dozen times when I change, I would probably be freaking out a lot.

  Instead, I’m only freaking out a little.

  “Forgive me … Reagan,” he says my name as if he’s having to force himself to use it instead of something else. “It’s been over ten millennia since I was corporeal; it’s quite … mesmerizing.”

  “Would you like for me to leave you alone with your hands?” I say with a freak-ton more confidence than I feel.

  He laughs—at least I think he does. His jaw moves in a funny way, kind of diagonally back and forth so it’s hard to tell.

  “No, that’s not what I want at all. I want to speak to the you—to the real and far more interesting you, not the dull and boring caffeinated sack of sapienated flesh I see before me.”

  “Why do you want to speak with it so badly?” I stop my foot from rocking and try not to think about the fact that I’m actually talking about the thing—a thinking, at one time breathing and living thing—that’s inside me. I swear, I can even feel it now, worming its way back and forth between my belly and chest, like some super spicy chimichanga. “If I had to guess, I’d say you’re not the type that gets lonely easy.”

  He crosses his legs and eases one elbow onto the back of his bench. “And you would be correct. I could traverse the cosmos from now until the end of eternity and actually consider myself better off having never encountered another being, like myself or otherwise. What compels me to speak with the being residing
within you is self-preservation, plain and simple. I need to know how it came to be here, so that I might know if it poses some sort of threat.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You know what it means. If it means me harm in any way—have no delusions—I will deal with it in any manner I deem necessary.”

  I raise the gun to eye level.

  He jerks his head left as if he’s received an invisible slap.

  M doesn’t say anything to let me know what’s going on. He doesn’t need to: It’s Gabe … he’s trying to come back. Because of me. He wants to protect me. It’s cute in a lame Edward Cullen kind of way.

  He jerks again. “Of course that doesn’t mean hurting her in any permanent way, Gabe,” he says flatly. “But if the entity wishes us harm, it’s safe to assume Reagan would want me to take all necessary steps to prevent said harming, agreed?”

  It takes a second before I realize M’s asking me and not Gabe. I keep quiet anyway.

  “ … I see. Well, at any rate, you can lower the V-Ray. It won’t do you any good. I can take it from you with minimal effort before you even have the chance to—”

  I squeeze the trigger, expecting some sort of kick. Instead, the gun vibrates a little and sends a beam of red energy over his left ear. A chunk about the size of M’s head disappears from the back of his bench. “Oh, I don’t know—think I’ll be quick enough.”

  “Perhaps.” M jerks his head sideways, like Gabe is yelling at him.

  Oh God, what if Gabe’s changed his mind? What if he’s trying to get his body back? “Gabe, we … I have to do this. I need to know what’s going on—where this stuff comes from, and this may be the only way.”

  M visibly relaxes, leans back in his seat and does that weird laugh thing again. “How remarkable. Do you have any idea how much energy I have wasted attempting to persuade Gabe to change the channel from The Office to My Name is Earl? I have employed everything in my meager disposal: reason, bribery, blackmail, and threats—yet, even after countless hours, nothing works. You and your vagina on the other hand, manage to convince him to risk both of your lives at the drop of a hat.”