Superpowerless

by Chris Priestley

‘Do you think you could give me a hand?’ she says.

  ‘Doing what?’

  They both seem eager to move on.

  ‘Could you just go round and tidy everything away – just neaten things up a bit.’

  David nods and does as he is asked, although there isn’t really a tremendous amount to do. He is the only one who makes a mess and he spends less and less time downstairs. His mother is obsessively tidy.

  David lays the table and then leaves his mother to get on with the cooking, ambling back down as the Millers arrive.

  After a drink and a pre-dinner chat, which is mercifully short on the usual probing into David’s life, they all sit down to eat. David is only half listening to the conversation most of the time, but his ears prick up when, as he is helping to clear the dishes away, Holly’s name is mentioned.

  ‘Obviously it’s very sad for her and her parents that Holly’s back home,’ says Marie in a voice that does not suggest great sadness, ‘but to be honest, she’s been a godsend to us.’

  ‘I know,’ says David’s mother. ‘It’s great to have her as a cleaner.’

  Marie screws up her nose.

  ‘Marie!’ says Mark.

  ‘What?’ says David’s mother.

  ‘Well,’ says Marie, dropping her voice as though she thought Holly might hear from their house, ‘she’s OK, I suppose. As a cleaner. If you keep an eye on her. Lovely as a babysitter though – the girls adore her.’

  ‘I think you’re being a bit unfair,’ says David’s mother. ‘She does her best.’

  Marie takes another swig of wine.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, swirling the wine in her glass. ‘I’m just saying her best isn’t that good. Only the other day –’

  ‘Anyway,’ says Mark, ‘I was –’

  ‘Don’t do that!’ hisses Marie.

  ‘What?’ says Mark with a sigh.

  ‘Don’t shut me up when I’m saying something you don’t like the sound of. It’s very annoying.’

  There is a tense silence. David taps his fingers on the tabletop. His mother stares at him. Marie laughs a little too loudly.

  ‘Sorry, Donna,’ she says. ‘Look at David. He doesn’t know what to do, poor thing.’

  David blushes. His mother grimaces. Marie reaches across to touch David’s hand. He jerks it away and Marie knocks her glass over, wine flooding the table.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ says Marie.

  ‘It’s fine,’ says David’s mother, frowning at David, leaping up to get some paper towels. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘Maybe I’m a bit tipsy,’ says Marie, making a funny face at David as though they were in it together. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I think maybe we ought to go,’ says Mark.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’re embarrassing yourself.’

  ‘No,’ says Marie coldly, ‘I’m embarrassing you.’

  David would be happy to admit that they were, all of them, embarrassing him. He gets back up and puts the rest of the dishes in the dishwasher and asks if it’s OK if he goes to his room. This seems to lance the tension and Mark and Marie’s stony faces crack into smiles as they wish him goodnight.

  David climbs up to his room. He tries to read a Doctor Strange comic but he just can’t concentrate – something he takes as a serious indictment of his mood, because, well, if you can’t concentrate on a Doctor Strange comic then what the hell – and so he gets up and walks over to the window – and to the scope.

  He zooms in on the Miller house straight away. Mark and Marie are saying their goodbyes downstairs, but he isn’t looking for them. The curtains to their lounge are open. The room is empty. David moves up the side of the house and sees that the light is on in the bathroom.

  The window glass is textured – rippled and distorted – but he can see a vague shape moving about and then the light goes out. He moves back down to the lounge and sees Holly walk in and sit down on the sofa. David gulps back an unsteady breath.

  From his angle he can’t see her head, only her body from the shoulders down – her arms, her hands, as she clicks through the channels on the TV remote and pulls her legs up onto the sofa.

  David watches her for a while as she settles down to watch TV. It isn’t like watching her sunbathe somehow. It ought to be less exciting because she is fully clothed, but it is more intimate somehow. He knows the Millers’ lounge. He’d played there as a child. He feels as if he is there in the room with her. He can imagine himself actually sitting beside her, putting his arm round her, sliding his other hand up inside her T-shirt. And she would turn and –

  Holly suddenly puts her legs down and turns to face the door as Mark and Marie walk in. She stands up and they talk for a while before Holly picks up her jacket and leaves. The lounge light is switched off. Mark and Marie head straight up to bed. David wonders whether they will have sex. In movies, he’s noticed that people sometimes have sex after an argument – to make it better. He speculates briefly about the Millers naked and passionately interlocked, but only briefly.

  David stands up and looks out through the slatted blinds, at the dark, at the night, at the black houses with their coloured windows picked out here and there.

  He thinks of all the people – all the lives – behind those windows, bright and black, and feels more keenly than ever a kind of jealousy in the back of his mind towards the normality of the lives they conceal. He grips the scope and for a second imagines himself taking it from its tripod and putting it away in a cupboard, perhaps for good. That, he says to himself, would be a good thing; a healthy thing – a sane thing.

  But he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. And the shame of this inability to do the good and healthy thing stabs him and stabs him until he can take no more and he has to let go of the scope, tears filling his eyes.

  He has to let go and leave the thing where it is.

  Chapter 9

  Permission to Be Happy

  If it’s possible, David is becoming more reclusive. He just wants to be somewhere else – someone else. His super-self seems to possess an authenticity his real self struggles to match. He has been using his power of invisibility more and more, particularly when he comes downstairs. Most of the time his mother doesn’t even know he’s there.

  He spends his time watching films or reading comics. He does not want to give his mind room to think because, when he does, those thoughts are invariably barbed and poisoned. His mind has become his enemy. He has to tame its imagination by giving it enough to feed on – enough to keep it busy.

  David’s shrink, Dr Jameson, had asked him if he thought he would ever give himself permission to be happy again and David had been annoyed at the question but had also seen very clearly in that instant that he would never be happy again. Not truly. And people didn’t like that. It’s a kind of sin.

  It isn’t even as though people want you to be really, truly happy. They would be content with a convincing pretence. They just didn’t want you to make them feel unhappy, or awkward or whatever. It’s always about them really. But screw them.

  So David is not going to give himself permission to be happy. Not now, not ever. His dad deserves better than that, and if his mum can’t see it, that says more about her than it does about David.

  This very thought is in his head as he walks into the kitchen one evening to find Marie and his mother laughing and busying themselves getting ready for a night out. He scowls at them. Particularly at his mother.

  ‘Hello, love,’ says Marie, either not noticing the scowl or seeking to cheer him up. ‘Have we woken you up?’

  David smiles, but sarcastically, to let her know he understands she is joking, and walks over to the sink to pour himself a glass of water.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ says his mother. ‘I can –’

  ‘Just thirsty,’ he says.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  David nods, pouring himself another glass. He sees Marie make a face. The ‘oh dear, he’s in a bit of a mood’ face. That was the
partner to the ‘oh dear, poor David’ face. And just as annoying. Maybe more annoying. They go back to talking as though he isn’t there. Which is fine by him, by the way. Totally fine.

  ‘Holly may as well move into our place,’ says Marie. ‘I feel like she’s a proper employee rather than a bit of extra help. I don’t know why Mark has to be out the same night as me. It’s not like I didn’t tell him ages ago that we were going. And then yesterday he suddenly announces he has this works do he simply has to go to.’

  Marie rolls her eyes.

  ‘Still – it gives Holly some work,’ says David’s mother, always reluctant to join Marie in criticising Mark. ‘It’s not like you can’t afford it. She’s trying to get on her feet again.’

  ‘I know,’ says Marie. ‘I know. You’re right.’

  ‘If David would get off his backside, he could babysit for you,’ says David’s mother, loudly, for his benefit.

  David ignores her.

  ‘Aww – bless him,’ says Marie. ‘No offence, David, but I’ve never been keen on the idea of boys babysitting. It’s not natural, is it?’

  ‘Not natural?’ says his mother.

  She doesn’t normally pick Marie up on this kind of thing in front of David – but she doesn’t stop herself in time. Or smooth the aggressive tone out of her voice. Marie does not notice.

  ‘I just mean, girls are more suited to it,’ continues Marie blithely. ‘You know, if the baby wakes up.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I know our kids aren’t babies any more but they can still be a handful sometimes. And Morag’s been having terrible nightmares recently.’

  ‘Oh?’ says David’s mother, not altogether ridding herself of her frown. ‘Poor little thing.’

  ‘She’s so nervy,’ says Marie with a sigh. ‘I hope it’s just a phase.’

  ‘I’m sure it is.’

  David had hung about deliberately when they were talking about Holly, but his interest has expired. He says goodbye and walks towards the stairs to go back to his room.

  ‘We won’t be that late,’ says his mother.

  ‘I’ll bring her back safe and sound,’ says Marie. ‘If we can find the way!’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ says his mother in exasperation. ‘That sounds like we’re going on a drunken spree. We’re going to the cinema and maybe we’ll have a drink –’

  ‘Or two!’ says Marie with a chuckle.

  ‘I mean it, Marie. Stop.’

  Marie rolls her eyes at David, but David looks away.

  ‘Bye, David,’ says his mother. ‘There’s a pizza in the freezer. Don’t forget to turn the oven off.’

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  The door slams behind them and David stands a moment, mentally taking possession of the empty house. It’s not an entirely pleasant sensation.

  He always imagines that he is going to enjoy being in the house on his own. After all, he spends so much time in his room, and with his mum working, that he may as well have been alone mostly. And yet he doesn’t.

  Instead, a terrible melancholia descends on him when he is in the house alone. It is the melancholia that others ascribe to him all the time and which he always denies. But it becomes true when no one else is around.

  When his mother is in the house he doesn’t feel the absence of his father nearly so much. He himself had been busy and was out a lot, and so as long as his mother was around David could at least pretend there was some kind of normality still in existence – that his father is just busy somewhere – held up, on his way home.

  But with his mother out, David’s thoughts are uniformly dark. The certainties of his superhero comics and the lurid thoughts of sex flee his mind and all available space is filled with a cloying blackness.

  David wanders around the deserted house, unable to settle, unable to calm his mind enough even to watch TV. It had taken his mother a while to feel comfortable with leaving David alone for extended periods. David could sense her reluctance to let him out of her sight.

  It isn’t just that though. It is a sense that she does not know him any more and so does not really know what he might do when left alone. She never quite voices it in these terms, but David has overheard her talking to Marie, expressing these kinds of concerns. He had been cross – hurt – to hear it.

  But now he isn’t sure she doesn’t have a point – that in fact he isn’t entirely safe to be left alone for very long. He feels overtaken by a great wave of despondency. His super-senses seem to magnify everything, making it impossible to read or watch TV.

  He hears conversations from a street away. He feels the draught from a passing moth. It’s like he’s tuned to every channel at once. He wonders if one day his mind will simply overload. Maybe it already has.

  David stands at his bedroom window. It’s close to ten and his room is as dark as the night outside. The gardens are a mysterious confusion that his memory of them by daylight can not entirely disentangle.

  David peers through the slats of his blind. The houses all around are now a black fortress, roofs and walls combining to make one dark mass against the green-blue-black of the night sky.

  Many houses are solid black but others have squares of colour as room lights shine through curtains and blinds like fragments of stained glass inside a dark church. The scaffolding on the house opposite is just visible, as is the shiny fabric the builders have put down to protect the roof.

  Night sounds drift by from far away, audible only because of David’s super-hearing: a distant burst of a police siren and the eerie baby-crying whine of a cat on heat. But mostly it is quiet. No wind. No rain. The black cut-outs of the trees are frozen. If anything is moving in the gardens below, only the darkness knows.

  But there are signs of movement at the illuminated windows. David pans from one to another. Mrs Davison is washing something up at her kitchen sink. The dark blue blind is only half pulled down and David can see her hands busily moving among the suds.

  There are trees between his house and the Millers’, but there are breaks in the leaves and through one such large break David has his clear view of the window to their lounge.

  There she is, on the sofa. He would recognise those legs anywhere – those legs he has scanned with the scope so many times while she was sunbathing. But even while he is thinking about her bikini-clad body, David realises she isn’t alone.

  Someone else walks into the room – a man. David can’t see who it is because his top half is cut off by the top of the window but, his heart racing, he sees the stranger’s hand move across Holly’s shoulder then her breasts, as David himself has so often wanted to do, as she lies back on the sofa.

  The man walks forward towards the window. The house isn’t overlooked by any other, but he is obviously feeling cautious, so he grabs the curtains and pulls them closed, shutting David out.

  David gasps as though a screen has gone blank while he was watching a film. He slaps the wall angrily with the palm of his hand, staring at the curtains, willing them to part.

  Chapter 10

  Super-Sensitive

  David pretends to be asleep when his mother gets back – even when she clumsily opens his bedroom door to whisper goodnight. But how is he expected to sleep?

  He has lain awake for hours thinking about what he’d seen – and not seen – through the scope, the view already enhanced and edited to add content not actually glimpsed other than in his imagination.

  What are the facts? Holly has a boyfriend. They are secretly screwing in the Millers’ house while the Miller children are asleep and while Mark and Marie are out. Not just kissing or cuddling – that seems pretty clear – but actually doing all those things that David obsesses about on a daily basis.

  And not just that, exciting though all that certainly is. No – now David knows about it! It’s a secret he has unearthed by chance. He feels complicit somehow – as though he himself is involved. It has been one thing to spy on Holly sunbathing, but to spy on her with a man se
ems to bring David closer to her in his imagination – to bring sex closer to him.

  ‘Ah,’ says his mother, when he finally goes down for breakfast. ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Morning,’ mumbles David, slumping down onto a chair. He’s exhausted. He feels properly weak.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  He nods.

  ‘Seriously, David,’ she says, coming over and putting a hand to his forehead, ‘you look terrible.’

  He shrugs her away.

  ‘I’m OK. Honest. I’m just tired. You must have got back late.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘You know what Marie’s like. I popped in to see you but you were fast asleep.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ says David.

  Don’t talk. Don’t feel you have to talk. His mother smiles, mistaking his reluctance to engage in chatter as an attempt to put her mind at ease.

  ‘I was about to make a coffee,’ she says. ‘Do you want one?’

  She moves around the kitchen to the tune of clinking crockery and rattling cutlery drawers. Holly. Holly. David’s mind has become uncontrollable now. He worries that he is projecting these lewd, disgusting thoughts – that his mother will see them leaking out of him. He closes his eyes tightly shut but it makes no difference.

  ‘David?’ says his mother, more worried now. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

  ‘Just a bit of a headache,’ he says, opening his eyes and blinking through the blur.

  ‘Do you want some paracetamol?’

  ‘No. Thanks.’

  She stands and scrutinises him for a moment or two, but David speaks before she can say anything else.

  ‘Did Marie come back here?’ says David, hoping that talking will, after all, make him think of something else.

  ‘No – I dropped her off at her house. She’s so noisy. I knew she’d wake you up.

  ‘I was serious about the babysitting, you know,’ she continues. ‘Marie gave Holly fifty quid! Fifty quid! The kids slept right through apparently. She basically got fifty quid for sitting watching TV.’

  ‘I don’t want to babysit, Mum,’ says David.