The Hero
The light bulbs in the alley are gone or broken but I still recognize it. We’re in the neighborhood where I grew up. It’s a broken down old slum these days, full to the rafters with people just trying to get by.
One of the men grabs my arm, urging me forward. I do as I’m told. There are three of us. I’m the only one not wearing a ski mask. The others look over their shoulders, toward the jagged city skyline, but I only look ahead.
There is a man under a pile of newspapers, huddled in the lee of the building. I can’t tell if he’s living or dead. Nobody bothers to check as we climb the rickety staircase beside him.
The building is dark, one of many in the slums with its power cut. We feel our way down a long hallway until a flicker of light leads us into an abandoned apartment. The men prod me and I step inside. With only the nubs of candles burning, the entry is full of shadows and more people in masks. I look across the room and freeze. On the wall opposite the door, someone has hung a life-sized poster of the Hero, arms crossed in a pose of stern justice. His cold blue eyes bore into me. People stare at me as I try to collect myself, but nobody says anything.
There’s a tension, as though everyone is waiting for something to happen. I don’t know who these people are, but it’s not hard to guess what they might want from me. I’ve seen groups like this before. They rarely last, even as long as a month. Though I’ve never heard of them doing anything this bold or reckless. They don’t know me, they only know who I am. I patiently wait for someone to speak and try not to make eye contact with the poster.
One of the masked people, who had been leaning over a table covered in notes and reports, straightens up and approaches me. “We’ve been watching you for a while. I’d like to think we can trust you, at least to an extent.” she says. Her voice has a dangerous edge to it, but there is also something familiar there. “I should probably tell you that there are more of us, and if you betray us, you’re going to be very, very sorry.”
I nod. She continues. “We have a singular purpose. And it seems you are going to be the instrument of that purpose. Trust is a mutual thing, and I think we could both use some.” She removes her ski mask, revealing a face I’ve known since childhood. Her name is Andrea Dahlmer and she’d been on the six o’clock news when I had been about seven. I remember the crush I’d had on her. She’d visited the orphanage a couple times a year, sometimes with the Hero and sometimes by herself. She always seemed a little sadder when she’d come to see us alone. I used to think it was because she missed him. I haven’t thought that in a long time.
She looks older now, and tired. The sheen of the bright lights and the camera have withered away beneath the hardships of reality. I can tell from the look in her eyes that there are a million things she wants to know and say, but her jaw is set. Emotions flicker for a moment and then are hidden away again.
I already know what she’s going to ask even before she speaks, and what my answer will be.
The mansion was designed to intimidate. It had belonged to Gerald Krieger, a chemical arms developer who had, briefly, been bent on holding the city for ransom.
There are wide marble columns adorning the front entrance, an impressively long paved drive flanked by stone statues depicting Greek and Roman champions and soldiers. The bushes flanking the drive are spiky, full of prickers. There are no flowers planted, but rolling, green lawns. There is a security booth beside the heavy electronic gate that leads to the drive, but nobody has manned it since the previous owner was evicted.
The news coverage after the fight had been so graphic it had been censored. The pristine lawn had been littered with bodies. With pieces of bodies. I was never sure which pieces had been the security guard. I tried not to think about it.
As I pass the booth on my way up to the house, I wonder if, when he had gotten up that morning, he’d had even an inkling that that day would be his last.
I walk along the drive and cut to the left, going behind the house to the servant’s entrance, which leads to the kitchen. Cook is there, busily preparing ingredients for future meals. I call her, as I have called them all, Cook. Sadly, they never seem to last very long, only a few months. She nods at me and asks how my bi-weekly day off fared.
“It was productive,” I say, as I hang my hat and coat in the back hall closet. My eye catches the hat of the man who had had my job before and I feel queasy for a second.
The house is quiet as I ascend the back staircase to my bedroom and I breathe a sigh of relief. In my room, everything is where it should be. This takes a little of the fear away, but it never goes completely. Unlike a few of my colleagues, I have never been stupid enough to feel too secure in my position. I’ve never been stupid enough to feel secure in anything.
It’s late, so I prepare for bed. I remove my clothes and fold them carefully. I feel the weight in the pocket of my pants, but put them in the drawer anyway. As I try to fall asleep later, I force myself to stop thinking about it. Lists of duties and things to check up on fill my thoughts, as they do almost every night and soon, I’m drifting off.
In the dream, I’m seven again, riding in the back of my father’s blue Ford. My mother is sitting up front in a nice dress with her hair done. I can’t help but think how beautiful she looks. My father has his hair brushed back and is wearing his best brown suit. He smells like coffee and cologne. I don’t know where we’re going, they don’t say. The neighborhood around us is clean and full of life. A woman walks her two tiny dogs and some children my age are playing baseball in the park. My parents seem to be in a very good mood. They just keep smiling at each other and me and that makes me start smiling. Everything is fine, and we’re probably going to a nice dinner somewhere.
Two men plummet out of the sky and shatter the pavement a few cars ahead of us. Traffic screeches to a halt as the force of what happened hits it. One of the men is wearing the green and purple uniform of Dr. Extraordinary, the other is the Hero, whose eyes are as blue as arctic ice. For a moment my heart races: the Hero is my favorite. I remember the old book of newspaper clippings under my bed and lament the fact that I don’t have it with me for him to autograph.
I strain my neck trying to see him over the cars in front of us. He is landing hammer blows, left and right, and Dr. Extraordinary can do nothing to block them. The doctor, seemingly cornered, picks up a cab and holds it above his head. He swings it at the Hero and lets it go. Things seem to slow as it flies through the air. The cabby’s face is a portrait of shock and horror, floating toward us, upside down. My mother reaches back in slow motion, scrambling to shield me from what is coming. My father flinches helplessly in the driver’s seat. The Hero’s eyes and mine meet for a second before the front bumper crashes through the windshield of the Ford.
I wake up in a cold sweat . I’ve had the same dream a couple times a week since I’d gone to the orphanage, though never with this sort of intense clarity. I shiver a little as I get out of bed, completely awake. The sun is not up yet, and I feel my way to the little sink in the corner of my room. I look at myself in the small mirror above it and trace the long scar on the side of my face with my eyes. It’s a pale, puckered line now; a ghost of a past no one seems to remember but me.
As I descend the stairs to make sure everything is prepared for breakfast, I feel the weight in my pocket against my leg. A constant reminder of what my future will inevitably hold.
The household is small, only two, but the formal dining room is used for almost every meal. Today, Ellen sits alone, a tiny figure at the center of a table built for twelve. She’s eating oatmeal with bananas and reading a modern history textbook I’m certain I couldn’t have tackled when I was thirteen. She looks up as I walk in and I bite my tongue, trying not to tell her what I’m afraid is about to happen. Ellen is a sweet girl, caught up in things I can’t imagine she fully understands. I smile at her as I sit down in front of a pile of the household accounts a few seats down, like I do every morning. In the back of my mind, I wonder what I will do tomorrow. Or if I’ll be able to do anything at all.
The big double doors at the end of the dinning room open and I get to my feet as my employer comes in. He’s a large man, muscular, tall, and trim. What some might consider perfect. His hair is expertly styled, and I know for a fact he gets a manicure every week. He is rich, he is powerful, he is formidable. The name he goes by is Herman Carlson. And right now, he’s ruling the world. I call him Sir.
I don’t meet his eyes, being subservient. “Good morning, Sir,” I say bowing.He barely glances over at me as he sits down at the end of the table. He remembers me from yesterday and the day before, even the day I was hired as his personal assistant, but not as the bloody little boy he pulled out of a ruined car once.
“Good morning,” he says, more to his daughter than to me. She nods, engrossed in her modern history. I wonder what she’s thinking about as she reads: her father’s part in the world as she knows it? How much stronger he grew with every foe he overcame until there were no more? Or is she thinking about what happens to a man left with immense power, and no one to check him in how he uses it? It’s funny to realize I lived through what is written there; the days before the fall.
I pour coffee with milk and sugar and place a cup in front of him. “Will you be having breakfast, Sir?”
He nods and I worry he might know something. I try to push this from my mind as I walk to the kitchen. There is a tray waiting with scrambled eggs, Canadian bacon cooked to perfection and half of a grapefruit. Cook nods at me, nervous, sweating. Not at all like she was yesterday. The kitchen staff is jittery, as though a bomb is being disarmed in the next room. I understand: one chip of eggshell on that plate, no matter how small, and it’s all over.
I carry the tray like almost every morning, but today, I pause in the little back hall and reach into my pocket. The syringe contains a clear orange liquid. My blood turns to ice in my veins as I stare at it. For a moment, I’m terrified I can’t do it. With trembling hands, I remove the cap and inject the grapefruit in the fleshy part, where a small puncture won’t be noticed. The liquid is odorless and I can only hope the sour-bitter taste of the fruit will be strong enough to cover any strange flavors.
I set the tray before my master and go back to my place. For the first time, I find it impossible to balance spread sheets, to even concentrate. I keep glancing over, waiting for him to pick up his spoon. Guilt is rising in me like bile. Part of me that loves this man for who he was aches with the need to save him, but I shouldn’t. Can’t. It feels like sickness inside.
Ellen and her father have not been getting along for about a week though I can’t say I know why. This morning he stares ahead as he eats his meal in silence and she does everything she can not to look at him. I’m caught between two on-coming storm fronts.
He wipes his mouth with his napkin and my heart leaps into my throat: he’s going to get up. He’s not going to eat the grapefruit! I freeze for a second, waiting for him to rise, but he doesn’t. He clears his throat, looks as though he’s about to say something, but Ellen continues to ignore him. He seems to change his mind. I shuffle papers as he picks up his spoon and sinks it into the flesh of the grapefruit. A little juice squirts out, but he ignores this as he pries the fruit away from the peel and puts it in his mouth. I hold my breath. For a moment, he doesn’t seem to notice anything wrong.
But only for a moment.
There’s a sudden change in the air, as though someone has opened a gigantic oven and we are caught in the blast of heat. Ellen looks up from her book and her expression contorts with fear. Her father’s, no, the Hero’s eyes glow an icy blue I haven’t forgotten since that day sixteen years ago. His face is breaking out in red-orange blotches, and he claws at it as though it’s on fire, screaming in pain. A wave of force bursts from him, pushing us back in our chairs and shattering the floor to ceiling windows. I try to usher Ellen out of the room, but he’s behind me, grabbing my shoulder in his vice-like grip. I’ve known this man to crush people’s skulls like egg shell, to fell an entire crowd with the power of his stare.
He squeezes as he lifts me into the air and I hear bones crack. A sheer need to survive dulls the pain and I struggle, but it’s no use. He throws me across the room and for a second I am flying, until I crash into the ancient Chinese vase that sits beside the door. The vase shatters as we collide and when I come back to myself I’m wet with warm, sticky blood. Ellen kneels over me. There is absolute terror in her face. Over her shoulder, I see her father losing control. His whole body is breaking out in blotches and his face twists with pain. When he opens his eyes, blue lasers shoot from them, burning the ceiling and setting the carpet on fire. The girl sobs. “He’s lost his mind.”
Inclined to agree with her, I try to get up, but can’t seem to coordinate it. My body is too broken. “Run,” I tell her, not taking my eyes off of the destruction behind her. She shakes her head. She won’t go unless I go with her. “Run!”
Her father seems to notice us again and trudges in our direction, unbalanced and blinded with pain. His skin is blistering and glowing as though he is burning on the inside. The room is filling with smoke as the drapes catch and the fire climbs toward the ceiling. There are no words anymore, just animal-like screaming. Ellen grabs me and holds me tightly and I do my best to shield her. Her father looms over us as orange as the flames that consume the mansion.
This man has ruled the world with an iron fist. This great and terrible god-like being, will kill us. My consciousness is slipping.
He explodes outward, like a star. We are surrounded by bright, white-hot light, though we do not burn, protected by some sort of bubble. I look at Ellen who has her eyes clamped shut, deep in concentration. Outside of our little force field, the room seems to warp and melt from the heat of the explosion until there is nothing left but a gigantic, charred hole where the Hero once stood.
As the smoke of the wreckage rises, I feel myself getting colder. “Don’t tell them,” I say. It comes out more quiet than I would like, but I can’t really breathe anymore.
She looks at me, her eyes full of questions. “Don’t tell them,” I repeat. “Don’t tell them.”
Ambulances and fire trucks come, they put me on a stretcher and give me oxygen. The charred remains of Cook and the rest of the staff are taken away in the coroner’s van. Ellen, miraculously unhurt, rides with me to the hospital. Her eyes are puffy, like she’s been crying and I realize I’ve been blacking out. I ask her if she’s seen Miss Dahlmer. Her eyes light up, despite her tears. “Mom? I thought she was dead…”
My heart beats strangely, slows down. As my vision darkens and falters, Ellen holds my hand and I wonder what will happen to her now. Her eyes meet mine and she stares, like she’s looking for something. For a second, there is understanding, but deeper, wider, like the ocean.
Then, nothing.
