by Lucia Ashta
“Are you done yet?” G asked.
“Hell no, I’m not done yet. I’m just getting started. I’m sick of caring what I say and I’m sick of this life. I’ve been over it, from every direction, with Z. I want to die. Since I can’t die by normal means, I want one of you—hell, all of you can join in on the party—to kill me. I want this curse to end, and there’s nothing any of you can say to talk me out of it. Just ask Z.”
Several appalled stares turned toward Zedekiah. “He’s right,” he said in defeat. “I’ve been trying to talk some sense into him for a while, and no matter what I say, he won’t listen or change his mind.”
“But,” one of the others, Demetrius, sputtered, “but this is no accident. We’re made this way for a reason, a good one, an important one.”
“I already tried,” Z said, “Trust me. I made all the arguments, all the reasons I believe we’re blessed with these powers. He thinks them a curse.”
That shocked Demetrius into silence. But it’d take a lot more than that to keep Germaine quiet. “I might not agree with Z’s belief that God purposefully bestowed these powers on us, but that doesn’t mean I’d kill you, no matter what you think. None of us will.”
“Oh, come on.” I realized G and the rest of them had only just joined the conversation, but I felt like I’d been spinning my wheels for an eternity. “What do you care? You’ve never even liked me. Not even when we were monks in the Brotherhood, not even then. You haven’t liked me for century after century. Don’t you want to see me gone?”
G appeared to be tossing the idea around, sliding his jaw back and forth a few times. “Whether I like you or not isn’t the point. I’m not going to kill you because I don’t kill for the sake of killing. And neither do any of the others. We’re superheroes. Heroes. Not villains. We don’t just kill. That’s murder.”
“Well, then this’ll be easy for you. I’m not just a villain, I’m a supervillain. So kill away.”
G made the universal expression of this-fool’s-got-to-be-kidding-me, lips turned downward in a scowl. “Just ‘cause you say you’re a villain or a supervillain,” he said, adding air quotes around supervillain, “doesn’t mean you are one. This is silly.”
I looked to the others. Even Z hung back with a timid face that indicated that none of them planned on interfering. They’d let Germaine deal with me, because they all looked as if they agreed with him.
Righteous anger swelled within me. “I can be whosoever I damn well say I am. And if I say that I’m a supervillain named the Unkillable Killer, then I damn well am. You’re not the boss of me.” Yes, I realized that my arguments were exemplifying remarkable immaturity, but I was too flustered to do better. Why did it have to be this difficult? Couldn’t they just do as I asked and put an end to my misery?
“Wow, Nic, what the hell’s gotten into you?” G said.
“Ugh.” I threw my hands in the air. “Why don’t you ask Z-Man over here once I’m gone, because he and I’ve been over it too many times already.” Again I was being unfair to Z, who’d only tried to be a friend to me. But maybe it was better this way. It’s always easier to destroy something you don’t care about.
“And where exactly are you going?”
“To wreak havoc upon the world. I’ll destroy in exemplary supervillain style until one of you steps up and kills me.”
“As if you’ve ever done anything exemplary in your life.”
I blinked, shocked that G would be so blatantly mean. His words rattled me out of my reckless abandon long enough to address the others. Not him. I was done with him.
“Look,” I said and smiled sadly. “I realize this isn’t something any of you want to do.” My tone softened as I saw beyond the superhero façades to the men who’d been friends to me for longer than friendships were supposed to last. “But I promise you, killing me will be mercy. I can’t carry on living this life that never ends, filled with loss and emptiness.”
Looks of understanding crossed the faces of a few of them. I turned pleading eyes on them, uncaring anymore whether my actions were strong and worthy of the powers bestowed upon me. “Please.”
Not one of my friends would respond to my searching gaze when G barked behind me, “No one’s going to kill you. You’ll just need to learn to get over your jealousies and sense of inferiority and do the best you can with what you’ve been given. For better or worse, you’re a superhero, not a supervillain. Deal with it.”
Zedekiah was at least a thousand times better at delivering pep talks than Germaine, who did a good job of reminding me of the things I wouldn’t miss once I was finally gone from this world.
“Go to hell, G,” I said, hoping I’d beat him there. And then, with a final look of appreciation toward the other nine I considered friends to differing degrees, I took off in flight.
They’d follow me. They’d have to once they realized what I intended on doing.
I peeked over my shoulder before they could diminish into specks. Even from fifty feet up, I could make out the confused and hesitant looks they shared.
I didn’t have to go far to find a group of people large enough to cause the kind of mayhem that would bring my friends chasing after me. In under a minute, I spotted a park dotted with people and picnic tables. When I flew downward, I made out a sign that said Millen Family Reunion. “Perfect,” I said to myself. “That’ll tug on their heartstrings for sure.” Wiping out a whole bloodline? Yeah, that was the kind of thing my friends, who’d been around long enough to see many bloodlines diminish into extinction, wouldn’t be able to stand.
I hovered in the air out of sight of the unlucky Millen descendants until my friends caught up. After all, this would be a show for them. The wind whipped at my unaerodynamic hipster outfit, rattling my jeans violently against my thighs.
As soon as I spotted specks of indigo and neon green, leading eight other colorful specks behind them, I began. Below, families, including children, milled around playground equipment. It wouldn’t be my moment of shining glory. Why couldn’t they just have done as I asked?
My brothers were gaining on me. I’d hesitated enough already. I looked below to the park but made my eyes go hazy so they wouldn’t focus on any one thing in particular. The individual faces of the Millen family were a blur to me, and I hoped they’d remain that way.
The wind whipped loudly in my ears as I accepted the understanding that it was now or never. I felt a tug of something that wanted to burgeon into emotion in my dead heart. I wouldn’t allow it.
I flew low enough that I was within range of my powers, but not so low that the members of the Millen family could make out my face. Not that they’d recognize me since I wasn’t wearing my Super Dough Man outfit, but I didn’t want to take any chances. At some point, certainly someone would recognize me since nothing about my suit shielded my face from view—but then, I’d been thinking that for ages. I didn’t want to cast a shadow over the centuries I’d dedicated myself to doing good with this day’s actions.
I was only doing this because I had to. I couldn’t go to sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow to the same hellish pattern. I’d surely shatter, and then my desperation might truly convert me into something my friends were right in thinking I wasn’t.
“Showtime,” I said, finding no joy in swinging my arms out to the side, picking up the picnic tables lined next to each other far below and tossing them, like an angry, vengeful god. Screams split the air as bowls and platters converted into projectiles. The Millen family scattered while the containers shattered and thumped and the picnic tables flattened the slowest of them.
Before the Millens had a chance to recover, I uprooted old, thick trees and hovered them in the air for dramatic effect. I was rewarded with a fresh round of panicked screams and seeing my superhero friends spring into action.
I let the trees drop, aware that I had to move quickly now. I wasn’t any stronger than the others and there were ten of them and one of me.
I lifted the ground beneat
h the Millens, who couldn’t run fast enough to escape my super-powered reach. Thick grass quivered and parted to reveal yawning earth, which threatened to swallow all of them.
I parted my hands wider and the earth trembled. A gap sucked a few Millens down, my colored friends racing toward them.
I pretended to pinch a swing set in one hand and climbing equipment with the other. I pulled. The playground equipment hemmed and hawed, complaining with a loud, prolonged, rusty squeak.
Generations of Millens expressed themselves in one continuous chorus of fright as I floated the equipment above their heads. Those that had fallen scrambled to get out of the way, but the upturned earth prevented it.
There was no escaping me.
I released the etheric grip I held on the equipment. It sunk to the torn earth like a leaden weight.
But then there was little more damage I could do here without harming the complete Millen family beyond repair. I jetted away, hoping to force my friends to scramble to keep up with my destruction.
A few minutes away, I spotted a car dealership. Even from a hundred feet up, the new cars sparkled and glimmered their enticements. New is better. It didn’t matter that the planet was littered with new things people didn’t truly need. People craved that new-car smell like a drug.
Here, I could enjoy the havoc. I didn’t have to hold back when no people would be directly harmed. I’d make my point with color and shine.
Again I hovered, hoping to be out of sight of the omnipresent cameras that made evasion nearly impossible during this century.
Double handed, palms pointed upward, I motioned as if I were scooping cars from below. I lifted the cars so high that I could read their outrageous price stickers, and from there I released my invisible grip. The cars spun in a free fall until they crashed atop the cars that remained in the lot. The sound of crunching metal was so loud that I thought it would surely carry to the next county.
I picked up a couple more cars and let them drop like bombs before people ran out of the car dealership building, looked up, and ran back inside. By then, Germaine, Zedekiah, and Demetrius were on trajectory to intercept me. Presumably, they left the others behind to deal with the fallout of my actions in the park.
I picked up two more cars and flung them. Another two. Then four. After I grabbed two more, the car lot looked like a giant had a temper tantrum that he took out on his toy cars.
“Enough, Nico!” Germaine’s commanding voice cut the air.
I plastered a smug look on my face, turned toward him, and let my hands drop. “Oops,” I said to the chorus of metal and plastic crunching in a violent death below.
Zedekiah flew right up to me, his cape flapping in the wind. He hovered while he spoke, as if we still stood in the crop field, as if he’d listened to me and avoided all this unnecessary destruction. “This isn’t you, my friend. Stop what you’re doing.”
Defiantly, I raised two more cars and didn’t even look below as I hurled them in opposite directions.
“Nic,” Z said, and his sad voice would have crushed my heart had it worked like a normal person’s. “Please don’t do this.”
“I told you. I don’t have any other choice.” I was surprised to hear that my voice, too, was sad. “I have to take a stand and this is it. I can’t wake up tomorrow and still be here. I just can’t.” My voice cracked, and I looked at Demetrius (known to the world’s populace as Super Deelish), who hovered behind the superheroes clad in neon green and indigo. Something in his eyes gave me renewed hope. Was it resignation? That they’d have to kill me after all?
I smiled maniacally, hoping to cement their image of me as the deranged superhero turned supervillain that they had the obligation to rid the world of. “I’m a menace,” I announced to the three of them, “and I’ll continue to be one until you end me.”
G-Man whipped around in front of me. “End you,” he muttered. “I’d like to end you right now, you freaking moron.”
“Then do it,” I challenged.
“I won’t kill you, if that’s what you mean, you crazy bastard,” he snarled. “But I will make you stop this.”
I slid my palms across the air, imagining myself scooping up whole rows of cars across each hand and forearm. I didn’t have to look down to verify that what I imagined was happening. It always did. All except for the escape from the repetitive, groundhog day torment I’d prayed for throughout centuries.
“And how will you make me stop?” I asked.
While I held G-Man’s enraged stare, I slid my forearms downward. Z-Man and Super Deelish zipped out of sight to try to catch some of the cars. But not even they could catch all of them in time. An eardrum-shattering noise confirmed it.
“I’ll keep going until you stop me, G,” I said. “The only way to stop me is to kill me.”
G-Man growled and crossed his neon-green outfitted arms across his chest. It was a comical sight, one I had no desire to point out to him them. I wanted him to kill me, not make me suffer more, and currently, his expression reminded me of that of an enraged bull during a bullfight.
“There are other ways to stop you,” G-Man threatened.
“Perhaps.” I tried not to let the fear I felt betray me. I kept my face expressionless, I hoped. I had no desire to end up confined in whatever contraption Germaine could dream up for me. There were fates worse than this endless loop of a life. “But none of you want the hassle. It’ll keep you from fulfilling your duties as superheroes. It’ll be a headache none of you need. And I don’t want to be a problem to you or anyone else. I just want to die and be done with this all. Is that really so hard to understand?”
Recognition of my predicament flickered across Germaine’s eyes before he could stash it away.
I waited. Perhaps every one of my friends understood how I felt, even if they didn’t want to admit it, even to themselves.
G-Man studied me.
“Come on, G. Please? It’ll be mercy, I promise.”
He studied me some more. I looked at him head-on, resisting my habit to hide the pain I’d successfully hidden from them for so long. Perhaps that was why they wouldn’t do my will. They thought this had come about suddenly, a phase that would pass. I kept my true heaviness from them, thinking I was sparing them, but now I couldn’t get them to spare me.
When Z-Man and Super Deelish returned to flank G-Man, the three of my friends across from me, Germaine said, “What do you think, guys?”
“You can’t actually be considering killing him,” Demetrius was the first to say.
“Maybe I am,” Germaine said. “It’s not like it really would be murder, not when he’s asking for it.”
On a horrified breath, Demetrius said, “But we save lives, not take them.”
I said, “And my dear D, I assure you that in this case, you’ll be saving me.”
“What do you think, Z?” Germaine asked.
Zedekiah averted his eyes as he said, “I don’t know anymore. Maybe.”
Another shocked gasp. “Well, we certainly can’t even talk about the idea without all of us here,” Demetrius said. “This is a decision we should all make together.”
Germaine didn’t turn to Demetrius or otherwise acknowledge the subtle revolt against his authority. He said, “The rest will arrive soon enough. They know it’s more important that we deal with Nico than the Millen family.”
Demetrius looked at Germaine, askance, suspicious. He’d sounded uncaring about the bloodline I’d almost flattened. I wondered if everything about G-Man, European superhero, was a show. If it was, it mattered little. I hoped I wouldn’t be around to care much longer.
“There are the others,” I said to G-Man, spotting the rainbow of specks headed our way. “You can end this now and be back in Europe before dinnertime.” I was convinced now that he was the only one I needed to persuade.
The seven others arrived and filled in the open spaces, completing a hovering circle of superheroes and one supervillain. I was glad we were beyond the reach of
cameras. If spotters or reporters were able to manage it, this iconic image of my disgrace would be plastered everywhere. And there was enough kicking-a-man-when-he-was-down going on without that.
“I think we should do as he asks,” G-Man said, again talking to the rest of them as if I weren’t there. But this time I didn’t mind. For once, his voice sounded compassionate, as if he’d finally realized that I was asking for this because I needed this relief, not because I was crazy. “Any objections?” he asked.
“Many,” Z-Man said to nods from the rest of them. “But maybe you’re right.” Zedekiah’s voice was so soft that I, with my super hearing, could barely make it out over the whipping wind. “Nic,” my best friend of a very long lifetime said, “are you absolutely sure this is what you want, brother?”
I gulped. Once dead, I hoped I’d end up in a place where I couldn’t miss my friend and his genuine caring. “I’m sure. I’m sorry to ask this of you all, truly I am.” I met everyone’s eyes, even G-Man’s, to show them I meant what I said. “If there were any other way, I’d never put you in this position. But I’ve been debating this for nearly a hundred years. I’ve decided and I won’t change my mind, I’ll only push further into being the Unkillable Killer until you do as my heart needs you to do.”
I sighed and brought my hands to my sides, all pretense of threats gone. “Please, my dear brothers, free me from this cursed torment. I’ll be grateful to you.”
And that’s all I could say. My crushed and pulverized heart was on display. It confirmed this was my truth.
A whole minute passed. Eventually, Zedekiah said, “All right. I’ll do it.”
I was stricken with unforeseen panic because I’d been certain G-Man would do it and spare my best friend. “G, please, you do it.”
I didn’t have to explain. G-Man nodded his understanding. He might be a neon-green prick most of the time, but he wasn’t all bad. None of them were. In my own way, I loved them all, even with a heart no longer capable of the true emotion.