Superheroes - Written in 2024

 

"Emma & Sal"

 

The sleet beats down as if it means to erase me, wash me from the mean city streets. Yet it is my team that keeps the heart of graffiti-town beating. No us, no justice. In the glare of oncoming headlamps I become flat to the dreary and dank redbrick walls. My back, already soaked with sweat, goes from hot to frozen in an instant. As my breath rises in agitated puffs I tap my comm on, “Sal, you there?”

 

“Em, we’re being hunted,” says Sal, her voice a low whisper. “The bad guys won. I don’t know what to tell you. Go to ground. Hide. Stay alive. I’ll find you.”

 

“How?” I say, fearing that I already know the answer.

 

“It’s another night of the long knives,” says Sal, as her background noise sounds like notebooks being shoved into a backpack. “They have enough corrupt agents to wipe us out, frame us for God knows what. Follow your training. Be a ghost Em. Vanish.”

 

“God, Sal,” I say, the icy sleet feeling several degrees colder, as if I could freeze from my bone marrow outwards. If that’s true, they’ll be rounding up entire sub-communities soon. It’s world war two all over again, only the Nazi’s are global, better organised and better funded. I remember what my father said about the bunkers and the basements. I remember the way he refused to tell me what they did to their captives. This is why we carry the cyanide pills. “Live free or die. Remember that. I’ll be out there somewhere. Find me if you can. Life gets awful lonely awful fast.”

 

Knock knock. 

 

“They’re here,” says Sal, her breathing low and shallow. “Thank God we have the secret garden. See ya, Em.”

 

With a buzz of static she’s gone. It’s one thing to plan for an event, quite another to see it in motion before your very eyes. My eyes find the electronic billboards, how long before the junk food adverts are replaced with our faces as fugitives? The bank. The safety deposit box. Not the real bank, you see. That would be dumb. Our bank, down by the river. The place. The one off the radar of Evil. Inc. Passport. Money. New clothes and face mask. With a twist I slip back onto the street behind a merry crowd of pub goers, following them as if I’d hitched a ride.

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"Echo"

 

            Echo sat in the dark. Water dripped. The wind whistled through winter denuded trees. Upon the window pane beat a wisp of a twig, a twig so thin it was almost a ghost. A mean draft reached under the door of her cottage, reaching as if it were an octopus formed from vapour-snow, if such a thing were to exist. With a shivering sigh, Echo picked up a piece of long dried firewood and placed it in the ash-freckled hearth. She struck a match, shielding it with her free hand. Its tiny glow illuminates an old photograph.

           How nice it must be, she pondered, for such memories to feel sweet. It had been so many years since those happy days and still they were printed in her uncried tears. Before her eyes could gloss, thunder rolled across the city and she re-gazed at her unlit hearth. What a difference it made, she thought, when the flames leapt in their merry dance illuminating her home with their sepia glow. Yet before she could ignite it, her pager sounded and with a flick of her hand the nascent fire became a smoky charcoal trail. Duty called once more.

             From the safety of the shadows, she watched. Remaining hidden was the only guarantee of seeing another day, yet it also guaranteed his end. Then who was it that would wake up tomorrow? Not this version of her, not a version of herself she would ever respect or forgive. To go out there alone, however, would most certainly mean two body bags instead of one. So, she raised the silent alarm, prayed her friends would arrive in time, and struck a bold pose in the streetlamp’s glow.

 

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"Bruce"

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“One thing an ocean of caviar will teach you,” said Bruce, “is that those fish eggs belong to the water. The finest things in life can’t be bought and sold, enjoyable though they can be. Give me a mansion without love and I have nothing. Yet still, I would not live in a hovel. I would not dwell in the dirt and cold for the sake of appearing humble. So, what I’m saying is, heroes suffer more than most; that’s part of this way of living. So, take the good times when they come and let them warm your soul, ignite your smile and bring your feet to a merry dance. Yet these trappings of wealth are but chains and locks.”

 

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"Bruce"

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“If you can find it you can eat it,” said Bruce, dragging light body armour over his cotton onesie. “Make yourself at home. Order in what you want, so long as it’s not from FiveStarRipOff.com. I’m on night duty, see you at sunrise.” Then, with an aching sigh, he reached for the door handle and was gone. Heroes are that way I guess, there one moment and gone the next. Duty calls and that’s it.

 

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"Grace"

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“You know they’d never do it for you,” said Mary. “They’d sit in their palaces and eat caviar while you burned.”

 

“And if I stop,” said Grace, her eyes finding her friends, “what of our entire way of life? What future will the children have? I have to cut a path and pragmatism has its own demands.”

 

“That it does,” said Mary. “Be careful out there. Heroes don’t grow on trees. We can’t replace the likes of you.”

 

“I’ll do my best to stay alive,” said Grace, pulling on her winter coat, her face hugged in fur. “It is what it is. My path is my path. Chin up, Mary. When life becomes an interesting story, it’s always the worst of times.”

 

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"Aqua Phoenix"

 

Aqua Phoenix wasn’t supposed to exist, and that’s a lonely place to be. Everybody knows the story of the phoenix, born of fire only to return to ashes and be reborn. Though Aqua had come from a normal family of fire birds, she was the child of the water element. The gods had chosen to make a new species and she was the first. From an egg of pure flame she’d come as a cloud-bird, white, fluffy and singing entirely the wrong song. Though they loved her, her future was with the water creatures and there she had made her home.

 

Yet the gods make new creatures for a reason and that reason is always a grand battle between good and evil. Aqua had a destiny and she could feel it. The water both soothed her and told her of future days, of times when the world and her family would need her to be brave. A war was coming that the fire-phoenix’s would lose. Different though she was, they’d need her and so would all of creation. It seemed that the day of her calling would never come - but then the fish came as messengers and nothing would ever be the same again for our water-bird.