Incidental Superhero
Part 2
17 months is a long time to be alone.
Not alone exactly. Actually I’ve met more people than I’d ever thought I’d meet.
OK, not met exactly, more like I’ve “briefly encountered and then dollied onto a tractor trailer” more people than I’d ever thought I’d do that to. A lot more. I lost count several months ago, but I’ve got over 100,000 people standing, frozen in time, at the very edge of the “danger zone”, the bright line beyond which my time-controlling guardian angel has decided there is no danger from the impending nuclear explosion.
I know what your thinking: “Huh?” Let me get you up to speed.
I have a superpower – not sure what else to call it now – that slows time to a near stop whenever I’m in danger. New York City is about to get hit by a nuclear bomb and so time’s slowed to a crawl for everyone except me. Its been 17 months from my perspective – about 2 minutes real time – since the announcement of the missile, and I’ve spent that time ferrying New Yorkers out of the city to the edge of the safe zone in double hitched tractor trailer loads.
I bet you’re wondering how things have been going. I guess we can get into details.
First thing, I’m pretty sure that I’m aging. What I mean is I think time is actually passing for me at a normal rate, even though everyone else is shut down. My hair definitely grows as normal, and over the last year I’ve gained a ton of muscle mass, so I can only guess my metabolism is working normally.
I’ve eaten exceedingly well. Before this I’d never used my ability to steal or pickpocket. But I figure the local restaurants and supermarkets are making an involuntary donation to the rescue of New York City. It’s not like anyone else will ever eat in Le Bernadin again when the city is a ball of radioactive ash.
Over the many months of my solo evacuation I’ve developed a comprehensive methodology. Starting up in Inwood and moving down Manhattan island, I clear every building, one at a time, in a single block radius. I found a girdle in a Modell’s and way upped my protein intake, and nowadays I can clear 100 individual apartments in a work day, give or take a lot depending on whether they’re elevator buildings.
Walk ups are the real nightmare. I can get through maybe 10 brown stones in a day, at best, usually fewer. You haven’t lived until you’ve dragged a 300 pound man down five flights of stairs.
Six months ago I took a vacation. Hurt my back hauling a family of six down a fourth floor walk up. Stayed in the penthouse suite at the Parker Meridian. It was occupied by some very wealthy man who had just arrived seconds ago from his perspective. I put him in the closet and really relaxed for a couple of weeks.
Mostly I read. At “night” I floated in the hotel jacuzzi, which is a bizarre sensation in my current situation. The water seems to phase into real time in a small area directly around my body, just enough for it to feel like a normal jacuzzi. But right outside that bubble the water remains frozen in time.
The time off got me thinking about the parameters of my powers. My ability seemed to work without much rhyme or reason. Why did the cars and trucks, the elevators and jacuzzi’s function, when the people remained frozen? I would use a coffee machine and it made coffee, but I then I’d turn on the AC and it would do nothing. TV’s turned on, but they were frozen on their last image, usually a missile alert.
It’s all impossibly strange. Don’t ask me how it works, I have no idea. As to why it works, that feels more and more obvious. In fact the how and the why almost work in tandem and as time passes, the how becomes subordinate to the why – things work because the guiding hand wants them to.
That sounds like religion. I’m not religious, but it’s tough not to see some larger power at work in all this. Especially after yesterday.
Eventually my back healed up and I jumped into it again. It was around Hudson Heights I saw her.
At first, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I literally didn’t believe them, so I went rummaging through a purse until I found her ID and only when I checked her full name and birthdate was I satisfied. It was Sonya.
We met at our college graduation, the day before Sonya was set to ship out to Geneva to intern at CERN. She was 19 when she graduated, because Sonya is a genius, plain and simple. We had one, amazing night – not sex, just hanging out, a little kissing. Next morning she stepped into a taxi, gave me her email on a piece of paper, and left. Almost immediately a stiff breeze took the paper out of my fingers and I watched it fly away. The only time my powers didn’t step in to save me. We hadn’t seen or spoke since.
And now here she was, looking out the old floor to ceiling window of a pre-war apartment in Manhattan, right under my nose. Her face bore a light smile, and I bent down to look out the window at what she might have seen, but there was nothing there, just the leaves of a tree.
I looked at her for a long time. Somehow it felt weird to just cart her out with the rest of the strangers in the back of the cramped trailer.
Not sure how much time passed, but eventually I decided to empty the rest of the building first and then come back to get her. I got everyone out and into the truck and then returned to where she sat in frozen repose.
Gently, carefully, so as not to touch her unduly, I lifted her up into my arms. Her frozen body made it awkward, as they often do, but I managed to hold her across both arms, her face smiling up at me.
When I got her off the ground a small metal object fell to the floor. I looked down and my heart exploded. On the ground was a metal button, and I was so excited to see I it I almost dropped Sonya.
The button was custom made for me by a friend of mine in college when I was too scared to go bungee jumping. (I know that’s weird given my situation, but I’ve always hated heights.) It featured a tiny chicken with my face superimposed on it wearing a crown between the two giant words, “King Chicken.” It had gone missing after graduation, and I’d wondered what happened to it.
Then it clicked for me that the button must have been in Sonya’s hands, which were gently folded together at her waist when time froze.
My mind ran wild with that. Of course she wasn’t smiling at some tree leaves, she was smiling at the pin. She had finished her internship at CERN and come to New York City to find me, the King Chicken, her lost love, only to be frozen in time, only for me to find her.
At least that was the overwhelming narrative that occurred to me and seemed to legitimize, in my mind at that moment, what I did next, which was kiss her.
To my astonishment, like Snow Goddamn White, her body unfroze, softened, came back to life, back to time, even as our lips still touched.
Eventually she stopped screaming, and I stopped apologizing, and the two of us took a long, mutually amazed moment to come to grips with reality.
Then, slowly, astounded beyond all comprehension, hesitant as a lost bunny, she smiled just a little, and spoke.
“Henry?”
Best day of my life.
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READ MORE FLASH FICTION
| ACTION | APOCALYPTIC | DARK | ESTABLISHED UNIVERSE | FANTASY |
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