“A jerk, am I?” Mr. Rauch pulled out a gun and grabbed one of the ticket sales students. Pushing the barrel of the gun into the kid’s back, he nudged him towards the stage. “Idiots, all of you. Back off, or I’ll shoot him, God help me, I will.”
“Let him go, Mr. Rauch,” Sally said. “This is between you and me.”
Mr. Rauch’s hand shook, his nerves unsteady, as he pushed the kid towards the stage. The cast on stage started to run towards the exit. Mr. Rauch fired a bullet into the air.
“Leave the stage and he dies, simple as that.”
Sally fought back against her pounding heart, trying to think fast. Only problem was, she hadn’t gotten super speed as part of the hero package. Without that element, she didn’t know if she could reach the stage in time to stop him.
Mr. Rauch kept his gun raised as he faced Sally again. “You’re the hero who saved that kid from jumping that one time, aren’t you?”
Ice spread across Sally’s heart. Why was Mr. Rauch bringing that up now of all times?
“You think you’re such a hero. You’re not. You’re just an actress in a costume, pretending to be something you aren’t,” Mr. Rauch said, staring up at the lighting. “There’s nothing you can do to stop this. I set a timer which is about to go off any minute now.”
Before Sally could do anything, a green light spread out from the ceiling stage lights. The strange glow filled her with dread. When Mr. Rauch grinned, she realized his deadly intent.
“You can’t save everyone, Myna Byrd. Not this time.” Mr. Rauch then looked at Caleb, who held onto Natalie with one arm. “Don’t be mad, Caleb. You wanted to die from jumping off the auditorium roof, Caleb. Remember? I’m just helping you out now.”
“I don’t want to die,” Caleb said with a whimper.
“That’s a lie and you know it,” Mr. Rauch shot back. “Not that anyone can stop the light. Here it comes!”
He pointed up at the stage lighting, now flickering that same green glow from before.
“Mr. Rauch, no!” Sally protested.
She flew towards the stage, pushing herself to get there as fast as she could without super speed. An intense heat struck her in the back as she flew into the direct path of the lighting. She tumbled downward out of the air, the pain frying the nerves in her back. If not for her strength, the pain would’ve been much worse.
Then screams pierced the air. Propping herself on her arms so she could look up, she watched the energy from the stage lighting flash. It vaporized Mr. Rauch, Caleb, Natalie, the other five or six cast members, and the ticket sales student right where they all stood, their bodies fading into the abyss. A second later, the light itself blew out with a resounding snap.
For a moment, no one said anything, a cloud of disbelief lingering in the room. Sally eyed the technical crew off to her right. As they fell into one another’s arms, offering themselves hysterical solace, she buried her face in the cold auditorium floor.
• • •
Two hours later, Sally left the Ruby Hills police station after the cops got done talking to her about what happened. Numbness washed over her heart. She chafed her arms as she wandered the streets, taking only enough care to watch for traffic at crosswalks. She heaved a sigh, thoughts of Mr. Rauch still on her mind. How could she have handled things differently?
I let them all die. I tried and they died. Why be a hero if I can’t save everybody?
She started toward home, but remembered she had left her daytime clothes back at school. Careful to avoid the busier routes to her destination, she sang a soft song to take to the sky. The wind caressed her, as if it somehow mourned right alongside her. Her remorse struggled to hang on as she flew. Something about defying gravity calmed her nerves.
At the school, she slipped through the halls, flying out of sight in the shadows, bypassing the alarms. She made it to the dressing room and found her clothes in a pile next to her backpack. As she pulled out her pants from the clothing clump, her Android fell out, striking the floor with a thud. She reached down and found it unharmed. Cursing herself, she went to put it back in the pocket when she saw an alert for an unread text message. Slightly curious, she swiped her finger against the screen to read the message:
Sorry you couldn’t make it, Sally. Pizza was phenomenal. Just thought you should know. Natalie
Sally deleted the message. Then she noticed there had been a second message, this one from Caleb. She read it:
Yo, Sally, you missed out on the pizza! Bet you had something important to do as Myna Byrd, huh? Yeah, I know you were the one who saved me from falling that night. You should mask your voice better or something. Anyhow, gotta go. See you at show-time! Oh, thanks for everything, btw. Caleb
Her innards iced over again, a single tear trickling down her face. Was she really going to give up being Myna Byrd because of what happened with Mr. Rauch?
She took a long, deep breath and considered her choice. The Myna Byrd suit landed inside her backpack for her to wear again soon.
A Word from Jeffrey Beesler
Firstly, thank you so much for reading “The Spotlight.” It’s been a while since I tried writing a short story. Usually, I go for longer-sized works, mostly novella to novel size. Some years have also passed since I wrote a superhero story, thus I’m grateful for the invitation to write for this anthology. My current diversion from the superhero genre is an anomaly, since my adolescent years have found themselves surrounded by the Superfriends on TV and Uncanny X-Men in comic book format.
I still fantasize about being a superhero, even if my prose finds itself engaged in other activities. Whether it’s the sorcerers from my Mages of Trava fantasy series, or the road-raging demons in the Horrors of Helensview, or even the pregnant men in my Interstellar Dad series, I’m always pushing the limits of my own imagination. There’s no doubt that I will return to superheroes at some point. It’s just a matter of when. I feel that the piece you’ve just read is the starting line on that path.
Feel free to drop me a line at my email. My catalog of titles is available at my Amazon page. Thanks again for reading, and have a wonderful day!
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FADE
BY JOSI RUSSELL
FADE
BY JOSI RUSSELL
The problem with Pirate was that he had figured out he was immortal. Or close enough, anyway. He didn’t even hesitate to run into the street after the neighbor’s cat now, or pause to consider before he wolfed down a chocolate bar.
“One of these days I won’t mend you,” Charlotte chided him, passing her gnarled hands over the little dog’s collapsed ribcage. She felt the bones knit, the muscles tighten. Pirate’s breath came back and his tail started to wag. He gave her fingertips a good licking as he wriggled to his feet, his one good eye gleaming with gratitude.
She could have mended the other eye, could have restored it and his sight perfectly, but there were enough questions from the neighbors about his miraculous recoveries already. They knew he was half blind, and sudden sight would be very hard to explain.
“I’ll let you go one of these days,” Charlotte said, “you silly thing. Nine resurrections is plenty for one foolish spotted dog.”
But she knew as she said it that she didn’t mean it. She wouldn’t, probably, ever let him go. She’d never been good at that. The black door of death scared her, and she couldn’t bear to let him go through it.
Of all people, she should have been the least scared of death. She, of all people, knew it was a swinging door, that it worked both ways. But with all her power over it, she still had no idea what lay beyond it: Heaven? Hell? A vast nothing? She wished, sometimes, for a glimpse, a peek at what lay ahead.
She also wished, sometimes, for a power that could stop it from happening, instead of just reversing it. She knew, through visions she called fades, when a death would happen, but someone actually had to go through it before she could mend them. Sometimes, she wished for the ability to fly, so she could whisk
a patient away from their fate. Or for incredible strength so she could stop people from hurting others. Even laser beams from her eyes would be useful in many situations. But she didn’t have any of those things. Instead, she had the power to mend. She showed up after the excitement and fixed what had gone wrong. But it had to be done quickly. She’d found that out the hard way when she’d tried to mend her mother. Her aunt had been in the room at her passing, and had carried on for half an hour before she’d finally left and Charlotte had moved to bring her mother back. But it had been too long. She was gone for good.
Charlotte, as a girl, had worked her grief off by doing all it took to figure out exactly how long she had before the death was permanent. Now she let no more than three minutes elapse.
She looked up as Pirate hopped down from the faded Formica table and started crunching at the kibble in his bowl. The house had grown bright while she’d been preoccupied with him. A warm yellow tinge washed over the worn kitchen, lighting up the corners. It had the same counters and cabinets she and Arthur had picked out four decades ago, and in them were reminders of her life with him. His blue mug, an empty tin that had once held his favorite crackers, odds and ends of the life he’d left so suddenly. The kitchen was tidy, and she was proud of that. Arthur had always said she was the best cook and the best housekeeper in three counties. How she missed that man. She pushed away the bitterness that came every time she thought of that last flight he had taken, the crash, and somewhere in the Columbia river, his unrecovered body. That and the fact that her powers had no effect on her own rapidly aging body, were the greatest unfairnesses of her life.
The phone rang, and she knew who it was before she picked it up. Her friend Audrey had pressed her to commit to brunch at the senior center today.
“Not this morning, dear,” she said into the phone, “I’ll be tending to my mending.”
There was a breath on the other end of the phone. Charlotte tried to decide if it signaled frustration or resignation. Audrey confirmed the latter.
“Okay. Well, maybe next week then?”
“It’s a date!” Charlotte answered. She checked her watch and hung up. She needed to hustle. She realized that she should not make promises like that. She had little control of the demands her days would bring, and she didn’t like disappointing her friend. Charlotte extracted the cookies from the oven—Mason would be over later, and he’d finished off her snickerdoodles yesterday—and double-checked to be sure that the oven was off.
She gathered her purse and snapped open her hand mirror, admiring for a moment, her new glasses with the mother-of pearl inlay that matched her snowy hair. Plucking up the car keys, she tried to avoid Pirate’s doleful gaze.
“You can’t go today,” she said, “You’ll get in the way.”
He responded with a long, thin whine and a shake of his tail.
Charlotte caved. “Oh, all right. But you’re staying in the car.”
• • •
The first work of the day would be easy. It was a public tennis court, too late in the morning for much traffic. Her patient was practicing her backswing, completely ignorant of what the next few moments would bring. She was in her mid-twenties, Charlotte noted, with a long, dark ponytail. Charlotte swung her big brown car into a parking space and stepped out just as she saw the young lady fall. The scene matched Charlotte’s fade exactly.
Charlotte heard voices coming around the corner. She slammed the door and rushed through the court gate. Her steps were short and stiff—she wasn’t as nimble as she used to be.
She’d need to work quickly, before the voices arrived. This was her favorite kind of job—a young life, full of promise, the sun shining down on the warm expanse of the court, a bird singing overhead. It seemed like the perfect moment to give life.
Though she saw all deaths within a fifty-mile radius, Charlotte didn’t save everyone. Usually, she let the very old go, and the very cruel. But this girl, she could tell, deserved it. She would be of use to the world. She was bright and vivacious, with everything ahead of her. She deserved to find love, grow old with someone, have a career, hold her grandchildren. Charlotte gave her those gifts as she eased down beside the still figure. But she also gave her the deathmark. It came with the others, and there was no avoiding it. The process of passing back through death’s door cursed the patient to a power of their own. Not Charlotte’s same power, but one of a range of physical or mental aberrations that would remain with them throughout their lives.
The thought of it had stopped Charlotte more than once, but she herself had lived with her mending power all her life, and hadn’t she been happy? Hadn’t she been fulfilled? It seemed, most of the time, a small price to pay for returning.
Charlotte knew what had happened as soon as she put her hands on the girl. Some weakness in the heart, some malformation, had gone unnoticed until now. The girl was dead, of course, but Charlotte put her right again. She called it mending because it wasn’t unlike sewing—stitching together what was torn, rearranging pieces until they fit perfectly.
It took just seconds—a defect was an easy mend—still, the voices arrived before Charlotte could slip away.
“Hey,” one called, “everything okay over there?”
The girl’s eyes were fluttering. Her hand was twitching, reaching for her fallen racquet.
Charlotte made her voice thready, “I saw her fall,” she called. “Do come and help!”
Two young men were soon beside her, one assisting Charlotte to her feet, the other kneeling beside the girl.
She left her patient in their capable hands, shuffling more than necessary as she went back to her car, and drove to her next appointment.
That had gone just as Charlotte preferred. A timely arrival, a quick fix, and no need for explanation. As she arrived at the apartment house where her next appointment would be, she saw she wouldn’t be so lucky.
Time was running short and there was a doorman. Doormen could sometimes be fooled by her insistence that she’d come to visit a wayward grandchild, but this one, she could tell, was not the type. There was, mercifully, a fire escape down the alley, so she parked her car and tripped up it. The first few flights weren’t too bad, but by the time she’d reached the sixth floor where she should find the fader, she had to sink onto the edge of the metal stairs and catch her breath.
A breeze ruffled her hair as she sat. The building was old, but well-maintained. The brown bricks were warm in the midday sun, and she could see out over the little city from here. It seemed peaceful today, even sleepy. The window to her patient’s apartment was next to her and she squinted to see past the blinds, but couldn’t make out what was inside. She checked her watch. It was time.
From her purse, Charlotte withdrew a handy little tool called the “Springer.” She’d bought it from a nice young man in an alley several years ago, and it had served her well. It popped locks open neatly in a variety of ways. This time, she used the standard approach for windows and was soon easing herself across the sill.
“Hello?” she called, but was met only with silence. She was relieved to see that she was not too early. That could be awkward. A figure was crumpled over the kitchen table, his cheek in his cereal bowl. Sticky milk had pooled beside him and was dripping steadily onto the floor. Charlotte reached for a kitchen towel on the table.
She lifted the inert head—as always, slightly heavier than she expected—and washed the patient’s face before scooting aside the cereal bowl and swiping the breakfast mess away. Then she laid his cheek on the clean table and got to work.
Charlotte felt a sense of dread as she ran her fingers over his temples and down the thick cords of his carotid artery. Suddenly, the morning didn’t seem peaceful anymore. This death was unnatural. Something had ruptured suddenly and violently in this young man’s brain. Charlotte knew the inner workings of the human body well enough to know that this didn’t happen by accident. She glanced over her shoulder, searching the shadowy corners of the cramped apartment
for whoever had done this.
The fact that made her most uneasy, that made her feel weak and nauseated, was that she had seen it before. In the last month, she had revived three—now four—victims of this same unusual death. She could no longer deny that this was intentional and systematic.
When she felt the young man’s heartbeat return, Charlotte crossed to the apartment door. She slipped out and walked toward the elevator, carrying the knowledge that somewhere out there was a killer.
• • •
Pirate was barking like crazy when she got back to her car, and people on the street were casting disapproving glances at her, presumably for leaving him alone. She didn’t stop to explain that she’d been trying to make him happy by bringing him.
Charlotte couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow, something was going wrong in her cozy city. She found herself glancing worriedly into alleys as she drove by, peering longer than usual at scruffy men on street corners and idling adolescents. She stepped quickly as she dropped off a check at the bank and stopped at the grocery to restock her supply of treats for Pirate. She breathed a sigh of relief as she followed the little dog through their front door and locked it securely behind them.
Charlotte ran through the four similar fades in her mind, trying to recall details. She’d only suspected a connection on the third one, a middle-aged woman. One had seemed odd, two unfortunate, and three a pattern. Now she was faced with the image of the young man in his cereal bowl. Number four. Now it was a true chain of deaths.
Charlotte considered calling the police, but she’d never found them to be willing to listen to a crazy lady who said she knew when people were going to die.
The kitchen was hot now, soaking in the late-afternoon sun, so she opened a window and tried to push the thoughts out of her mind. She jumped when she heard a knock on the front door, and cautiously peered out to see who it was.
It's A Bird! It's A Plane! Page 22
