Fifth Tuesday stories
August 30, 2016
Writing challenge: A superhero makes a career change. Do not identify the superhero you select in your story, but do plant enough clues that readers can guess who it is.
Max length: 500 words
Red
Eva Mays, first and third
The sliding doors hiss closed behind me, and I go to the end of the covered walkway. I take eight smoking cessation patches out of the chest pocket of my custom-fit scrubs and, one by one, peel off the backings and slap them on my right bicep, red as a surgeon’s Corvette that’s parked in a prime spot by the door.
I hear the door open and shut again, and a man in a brown custodial uniform is standing at my elbow. He looks askance at me as he pushes a few pieces of nicotine gum through the foil package, pops them in his mouth, and begins chewing industriously. A cold wind gusts through the parking lot, and he shivers, but I don’t. It’s one of the benefits of having hellfire in my veins.
“Guess I don’t really need to come outside anymore, but, hey, what can I say? The fresh air is as addictive as the nicotine.” He jabs a finger at the sign posted on the nearby column. For the health of our patients, this is a smoke-free campus. “Goddamn fascists, am I right?”
“Nah. The Nazis were fascists. These are just your garden variety bureaucrats.”
He squints up at me. “This your first day? I haven’t seen you around here before. And I think I would remember seeing someone like you.”
I nod. “Fresh out of school.” My jaw clenches down on the cigar I wish I were smoking.
His eyes go up and lock on the stumps of my horns, freshly filed down this morning before my shift began. “Bit of a…non-traditional student, aren’cha?”
I don’t take the bait. “Yeah, second career. Hunting paranormal baddies is a hoot and everything, but I’m on the outs with the Bureau, so I thought I’d try my hand at something else.”
He looks down at my right hand, and I flex it so the stone joint rumbles.
He stands on his tip-toes to get a look at the ID badge clipped to the front of my scrubs.
“NICU, huh? So, what do they call you, a ‘durse’?” He chuckles at his own joke.
“Hey, man, knock it off with the demon stuff. I’m as human as you. I have a note.”
“What, like, from your doctor?”
“No. The U.N.”
Newest Member of the Starbuck’s Team
Nora O’Reilly, first and third groug
Clark swung open the door to the Starbuck’s on 34th and Vine. The line was already eleven people deep.
An electric buzz was in the air. Toes tapped. Cash crinkled. Coins jangled. Gotta go, gotta go. Run, run, run.
Today the verdict would be read. Mr. B. Short had been snagged on concealed carry charges. Clark was ready for the worst. If found guilty, the city could end up in smithereens. He had to be the first in the courtroom to read the faces of jury, the lawyers, the judge.
What is taking so long?
A young girl was the only one working. She was torn between the register, the computerized espresso machine, the queue of decaffeinated customers, and a sour-looking patron first in line.
“Look, little miss! You f’ed my drink up royally. I asked for a grande triple shot caramel macchiato. Extra caramel. Extra whip. This is a lukewarm, watered-down excuse of a coffee with a sad pool of day-old whip.”
The girl looked like the man had informed her that she had inadvertently slaughtered a litter of puppies.
The line now trailed out the door. The crowd inside was getting squirrely. There were a few, ‘Come on man’s’ and collective groans.
Lois is going to be furious if I’m late AND her dark roast with a splash of hot milk is cold.
Clark usually tried to blend in. Today he’d make an exception. He adjusted his thick glasses, then unbuttoned the top few buttons of his striped dress shirt. In a flash, he left the line in a cloud of exhaust and landed next to the startled barista.
He leaned over the counter at the disgruntled patron, touching him on the shoulder with his pointer finger. Before the man could let out a peep, he sailed to the corner of the shop before he thunked down unceremoniously at a table. “Back of the line, bucko!”
Clark turned to the girl. “My name’s Clark. I’ll take care of this gang. Could you start a grande dark roast with a splash of hot milk and a chai latte?”
She took in the blue Spandex and splash of red that peeked out from his open shirt.
He turned to the now quiet throng. “Well folks –” He sneaked a look at the barista’s nametag. “– Becky here is working on a special order. The fate of our city could ride on it.”
Rustles of ‘whoo’s’ and ‘ahh’s’ swept through the crowd.
“To speed things up for you lovely people, we’ve got something special – a cinnamon, raspberry mocha, extra whip, extra hot.”
Clark paused with an eyebrow raised at Becky. “Sound good?”
She grinned. “Divine.”
The unlikely duo churned out thirty Superhero Specials, extra hot thanks to his heat vision.
Customers noticed that this morning’s whipped cream was particularly delicious – whipped with Clark’s own hand – chilled to perfection with his freezing breath.
If only every morning could start with a Superhero Special.
Superhero
John Schneller, first-and-third
They warned me.
But who would believe them?
“Your power will be stolen,” they said. “And no one sees the thief coming.”
Who makes rules like that? And who believes them? Even when you’re fully powered-up, there ain’t no one got an early warning system.
We make lots of talk about immortality, but in back rooms, you hear the whispers. “Thirteen years at most. So-and-so holds the record. Seventeen and a half.” And if we talk about the odds, it’s one hundred percent.
Today I’m head-figuring. Trying to remember day one. I think it was the day of the painted mushrooms. Yeah, pretty sure that’s when it kicked in. The day of the party. The next two, maybe three years, a real blur. Faster than the speed of light, they used to say.
With a sigh, I rise from the couch and head for my confessional corner to lament mortality. Movement on the street catches my attention and I pause, fully aware of who and what will transpire outside my window, before the figures emerge under the streetlight.
Billy-Bob, neighbor and formerly my peer. Who would have believed there would be two of us on the same street, in the same little town? Tonight he darts right and left, capturing flash-sparks – powering up on my lawn – while his handler verbally whips him into a frenzy. I can hear the mocking, the laughter, and I know that the show he puts on is no act. Powering up is always the best part of superheroing.
I watch, swallowing melancholy like a bug caught in my throat. This had been a great run, I thought to myself. Two of us on the same block. Feeding off each other, each quest better than the last. It did not matter that I was the mentor and he the rookie. Now, he, a rookie running solo.
I hold no grudge. Like the mentor who brought me up to speed . . . I think he was the one who gave me the cape. The one who warned me about the kryptonite. The cape I transferred to the fool running around on my yard. Let him bask in the good days. He doesn’t believe the warnings anymore than I did. Warnings that came true for me a day after another party. No painted mushrooms this time. Just a birthday cake. And a boy.
Thirteen years. It had been a good run.
I trudge up the short stairs and tuck myself into the dark corner at the end of the hall, alongside my partner in crime. I take her hand, moist with tears, knowing that no one but the two of us would hear the metallic click as our rings made contact. No one would lift up the same prayer as we glance together at the scribbled sign on the door.
KEEP OUT!
EVERYONE!
ESPECIALLY MOM AND DAD!
Tomorrow will be another day for mere mortals, and we contemplate our new quest.
Teenager.
A Love Story
Mike Austin, first-and-third
In the end, he finds farming suits him. He loses the deathly pallor that came from being out all of those nights and now has the ruddy look of the farmers around him.
The farm is small, and, if he didn’t have all of the millions from his past life stashed away, he knew he’d never have made it. But twenty cows to milk, morning and night, is enough for him and Dick.
They purchase an ancient John Deere tractor, and he finds that he has an aptitude for working on machinery.
Dick lives in his own quarters not much bigger than a chicken coop and digs into farming with the same enthusiasm he’d brought to their crime-fighting days.
He keeps the buildings in good repair and the chickens healthy. Together he and Dick make their little farm the pride of the valley. They always have pie and coffee at the ready in case any neighbors stop by. And a few do, after they get over the strangeness of two men working the small farm together, and the obvious inference they draw from the age difference.
Eventually, Al stops in for a visit, to look around, and decides that he wants to stay as well. He’s travelled enough, he says, and even though he’s getting a little shaky in his old age, he grows stronger gardening and putting up food. His pickled vegetables win a blue ribbon at the county fair.
They hear of a woman moving in up the road a piece. “She’s a strange woman,” folks say in town, though none of them can say exactly why they think so. “She just has a way of looking at you,” they say. “Like she’s laughing, even though she’s not. Like she’s about to start toying with you,” the men say, though they have a hard time admitting that a woman could disconcert them so. “I feel like a mouse who’s got a cat standing on his tail when she’s around,” another says. “She rescues cats,” still another says.
He decides it’s time to meet the neighbor.
She’s waiting for him, curled up on a porch swing. There are cats everywhere. Some rub against his legs, others glare at him. Even seated, he sees that she is still lithe and strong, and carries a dark menace.
She smiles at him as he strides up the steps, his dark eyes threatening until she says, “I’ve missed you.”
He stops, confused. Is this a trap? But she stands almost face-to-face with him as he stands on the lower step.
“My life has been empty with you gone. There’s no point to my mischief, and nobody able to decipher me the way you do,” she says.
Her eyes are suddenly warm and almost vulnerable. Open.
And it opens something in his heart that he’d thought long closed, and he begins to realize that something has been missing from his new life, leaving him a little empty. What he’d been looking for had found him, against his will, but welcome just the same.
He finally smiles back at her. “Come on over to the house,” he says. “I have fresh pie and coffee. Dick and Al will be happy to see you.”
Fast food fool
Jerry Peterson, first-and-third
Milo Fernwald – not his real name – he just wanted to be normal.
So he chucked his job at the newspaper, assumed a new identity, and bought a Taco Bell. He figured twenty years and he could retire to Sun City with a nice little income from the restaurant for as long as he wanted to hang onto it.
He knew his face would be recognized, so he shaved his head, grew a drooping mustache, and took to wearing horn-rimmed glasses with smoke-gray lenses.
“Hey, there,” he said to his employees on the first day he came in as the new owner and G.M., “I’m Milo Fernwald, and I’m from the Big K.”
“Kansas City?” one of his kitchen prep men asked.
“You’re pretty good. Actually, I grew up in a small place a little west of there. Anyway, I’m here to tell you your jobs are secure, but there are going to be some changes.”
A hand went up from one of his order takers.
He peered at her name badge. “Yes, Tina.”
She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “What kinda changes?”
“While I grew up on KayCee barbecue, I have a passion for Tex-Mex.” He motioned at the menu displays. “We’re going to be shifting our menu. It will be gradual. My aim is to make this the hottest Bell corporate has ever seen.”
He fired his index finger at the window, at a man wriggling his way out of a Smart car parked in the handicapped spot next to the front door, the man with a bulbous nose and in a Bizarro suit. “Look alive, our first customer of the day.”
The man sashayed inside and up to the first order station where Fernwald stood, waiting. The man thrust his hand out to Fernwald, and Fernwald clapped onto it, shook it, and yelped.
The man flashed a buzzer in his palm. “Just love this thing,” he said, snorking up a giggle. “Name’s Oswald Loomis, novelties salesman. Like my boutonniere?”
Fernwald glanced at the poppy in the man’s lapel, and Loomis pressed something in his pocket. The flower squirted, showering Fernwald.
Loomis hoo-haaed and slapped the counter.
Fernwald, drying his glasses, whispered to Tina, “Call Nine-One-One. This guy’s got a gun.”
“Gun? Where?”
“In his pocket.”
“How do you know?”
Fernwald put his glasses back on. “I can see it.”
“You can what?”
Loomis, straightening up, brought out a pistol. “He’s right, missy, this is a stickup.”
He turned the gun on Fernwald and squeezed the trigger, showering Fernwald once more.
Loomis again went up in gales of laughter. “I’ve got dozens of this trick stuff. I could keep going all day.”
“No longer.” Fernwald grabbed Loomis’ arm. He hauled him across the counter and threw him on the floor, came down on his back with his knee. “Want to laugh now?” he asked. To Tina he shouted, “Make the call.”
“Who is this guy?”
“The Prankster. I put him in prison in another life, for ninety-nine years.”
Loomis twisted his face up toward Fernwald. “You, man?”
“Yes, me, man. How you got out I don’t know, but you’re going back.”
Tuesdays with Story 
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