Crooked Words

by K A Cook

about Misstery Man’s identity.

  Tim and Hannah were no exception.

  “Oh, really?” Tim leant back in his chair, his eyebrows raised. He always had various news websites open in his browser, while he had plastered his cubicle with posters and pages torn from old-school comics and newspaper articles. Darcy used to wonder if he’d spent his childhood daydreaming of becoming a superhero.

  The fascination seemed rather less charming after months of listening to him talk.

  Office conversations hadn’t been so bad, back in the days when superheroes had been new and everyone had been gossiping about the mystery. Who wouldn’t fall in love with the idea of a hero stepping out of the shadows and taking down a knife-wielding attacker? Who wouldn’t sleep just that little bit sounder at night when there was someone watching over the city? Science had brought the comics to life, and who wouldn’t delight in the idea?

  “Did they have anything to say, Hanners … y’know, about who it is?” Tim added no particular weight to the word it, nothing at all that should provoke or inspire a memory, yet Darcy couldn’t help shivering. The words leapt into eir mind as if ey were right back there in the school ground, as if eir tormentors’ hands were still pressed against eir skin. You’re an it, then, Adam Richfield had sneered, surrounded by his cronies; he’d laughed as they pushed em against the shed at the back of the football oval, groping at those body parts they considered evidence to the contrary. Each word had been a biting, venomous cut, and hurt it did—enough that, years later, Darcy could shake from the memory alone, could recall the words as if they’d been videotaped somewhere in eir brain. Come on, everyone, have a look at the it!

  Darcy had hoped that sort of thing would stay at school, once ey had escaped to the real world of offices and politics and adults—but teenagers and adults weren’t so different. Weight or no weight, ey still had to listen to the words used in much the same way.

  Hannah shook her head and lobbed the newspaper into the basket at the other end of her desk. The sudden clatter was reminder enough of where ey was for Darcy to sit up and try to shake away the memory.

  I’m at work. I’m in my chair. I haven’t been in school for three years. Ey let out a long, slow breath, and then another. Focused breathing wasn’t the miracle cure eir psychologist claimed, but it helped. Sometimes. I’m safe.

  The paper had landed front-page up, and even though ey didn’t mean to look as ey glanced back at eir monitor, ey could see the nondescript chin and nose of the city’s saviour poking between the sides of black mesh. The picture felt a mockery: this superhero, Misstery Man, had the very thing Darcy wanted and was too scared to get or ask for.

  All it took was being a superhero wearing a concealing costume.

  “That guy in the Daily thinks it’s a man.” Tim propped his feet against the desk. His dress trousers rode up to reveal socks red enough to match his close-cropped hair. “Too tall and buff to be a woman.”

  Workplace gossip had been so much easier for Darcy to tolerate when everyone spoke of a hero and not of a mystery. They all knew of the Grey Ghost, who wrote editorials about her own deeds for the newspaper, and of John Jeffries, who’d lowered his mask and revealed his powers under his own name. Misstery Man, in contrast, was nothing more than a name and the ability to slip through space and perform miracles … and that wasn’t enough. In this new, post-superhero world, saving lives had become commonplace, even inconsequential. When rescues were made, criminals were caught, and people stepped onto the streets without fear in a peaceful city, what was left to talk about over the coffee machine? Life? Death? Gender?

  “Bull.” Hannah tossed her over-perfumed hair. She was everything a conventional woman should be: kitten heels, hourglass figure and womanly scent. Sure, Hannah hated fashion magazines and collected Matchbox cars, but while she wore correct feminine office attire and spoke with a woman’s voice, enough pieces of the puzzle fit together for her gender to be accepted and unassailable. “It’s a woman. You ever see those woman bodybuilders? They’re huge.”

  Darcy turned back to eir computer, stared at eir morning emails in an attempt to distract emself from the memories, eir shaking hands—and the bitter, soul-twisting anger.

  Misstery Man said nothing on the subject, a phantom ghosting the pages of newspapers and televisions around the city. Why couldn’t ey send that one letter to a newspaper and make a request for correct—gender-neutral—pronouns? Didn’t Misstery Man realise what a difference that would make to everyone who wasn’t lucky enough to be a superhero? That Darcy could then say eir gender wasn’t the gender written down in eir passport, and ey would also prefer to be referred to by the correct pronouns, protected by the existence of a genderqueer superhero who’d earned the city’s trust?

  “I don’t understand it, anyway.” Tim waved his hands towards the mesh paper basket. Tim looked so confident, sitting there in shirt and tie, with short-cut hair, dress shoes, and broad shoulders. Everything about him made sense. “It’s strange. Why would it do that … keep such a thing hidden, you know?” He tipped his head toward his wall of images, the comic-book superheroes of old. “None of the others do. Not the Ghost, or the Raven Rider, or…”

  No one would ever accuse him of keeping his gender a secret. He had, for a man, the socially-accepted pieces and the socially-accepted inclination for self-expression, so how could being otherwise make sense to him, anyway?

  Darcy tried to keep staring at eir computer, but the screen seemed to blur and fragment right before eir eyes. That word again, the one that made em less than human: the word was used for objects, things that couldn’t say their own name and sat on a shelf gathering dust, not people!

  Hannah raised her eyebrows. “Because it wants everyone talking about it, obviously?”

  Ey had heard those words, too, back when ey’d been idealistic enough to give being emself an honest shot—before public gropings, before superheroes. You’re just making it up for attention, Mum had said, shaking her head as though Darcy’s very existence made her tired. She didn’t, or couldn’t, see eir pain. You just want to be different. Why can’t you just be what you’re supposed to be?

  A quick glance around the office showed listeners and coffee drinkers and a few people hard at work, all oblivious to the horror in that one unflinching word.

  No-one stood up and said this was wrong. No superhero swept in to prevent the kind of crime that was made up of dehumanising words or the violence that came from those words but didn’t make it to the pages of the newspaper. There were no Misstery Man or Grey Ghost to save Darcy from the Adam Richfields of the world. Nobody here, never mind a superhero, even knew that Darcy’s real self existed, and how many others in the world would there be, hiding in plain sight just like em?

  Nothing would change. Ey would sit at eir desk, trying to hide eir anxiety and the flashbacks provoked by a casual word, while Tim and Hannah and everyone else would use words in ignorance, oblivious. Darcy, meanwhile, would never be any closer to feeling as though ey could be emself. What could change?

  The answer felt as loud as though ey had spoken it aloud. If ey didn’t want to sit here every morning and listen to that word used over and over, then couldn’t ey just say so?

  Last time … no, this wouldn’t be like last time.

  “Please don’t say that.” Darcy’s voice wavered like that of a nervous child as ey turned to face Tim and Hannah. “‘It’ is for objects. Not people.”

  Tim dropped his feet and turned to give Darcy a startled glance. “You actually joining us?”

  “Um … yeah.” Ey let out another slow breath and pressed on. “But please—you don’t call people ‘it’ … unless they want you to. But just because you don’t know … you don’t call em ‘it’.”

  Tim raised both eyebrows, held his hands up and out as if to fend off a furious charge. “Whoa, Darcy!” He smirked enough for Hannah to attempt an amused giggle. “And what else are we supposed to use, then? What did you say?”

  �
�He or she, perhaps. Or … some genderqueer or non-binary people prefer invented pronouns.” Darcy paused, hoped to sound as if ey were just plucking the word out at random. “Like ‘ey’.”

  Everyone in eavesdropping distance seemed to stir, glancing around at each other or focusing a little too hard on their computer screens. A few smiled, or raised an eyebrow, followed Tim’s lead to bright-faced amusement. Darcy clenched eir sweating hand around eir mouse, wiped the other against eir right pants leg.

  “And how do you know that?” Hannah flipped her hair back over her shoulder.

  The simple, matter-of fact question took Darcy by surprise: ey gulped, froze, floundered. There were lies about relatives and friends, of course, flickering through Darcy’s mind in an instant: tempting, possible, but somehow void of any personal emphasis that might make them listen, stop, and feel awkward enough to attempt another conversation topic. Wasn’t that why ey was speaking?

  After all, what could they do when Darcy spoke? They couldn’t touch, grope, or pin em to the wall. Teachers might turn a blind eye in school, but now ey could complain to eir boss or the police. Yet eir fingers rattled as though ey were about to step blindfolded over the edge of a cliff.

  “I’m … I’m non-binary,” Darcy said—now ey was rushing towards the