Furies- Thus Spoke

by O'Brian Gunn

  “Paul, I told you—”

  “I know, I know. You had your reasons, reasons that you think you can’t tell me...your friend.”

  “Everything’s gotten complicated.” Leo sighs. “All this mess just hit me like a bolt of lightning from a blue sky.” He swigs beer. “Funny thing is, I actually miss that place. Walked into that lab almost every day for the past three years and didn’t think squat of it. Been gone for only two days and it’s the only thing on my mind.”

  “If I believed in that sort of thing, I would call that a sign.” Paul tips his bottle at him. “And if I wasn’t your friend, I’d let that flowing stream of bullshit you fed me just trickle on by.”

  Leo gives him a look. “What? You think I got fired or—”

  “Oh, I know you didn’t get fired. Not only would Acker have to be a bitch, she’d have to be a crazy-ass bitch to let someone like you go without a fight.” A smirk. “I still don’t know how you developed the Triple A-13 formula last year.”

  The muscles in Leo’s jaw pulse as he takes a final swig of his beer, casting his gaze towards the sunset.

  Setting sunlight glares off glass.

  “You still getting depressed like you used to?” The bottle cap makes a sharp sschik as Paul pops it off. “Might wanna think about getting some help if you are.” The wind launches over the patio. “Maybe a prescription, one you helped create.”

  “Not really the kind of help I need right now.” Leo swallows and glances at his friend.

  “How’s Francie feel about all of this? Sure your mahogany queen can’t be too happy about having to support both of you until you’re back in the centrifuge saddle. But she’s been with her company for what, one and a half years? Sure she should be up for a raise some—”

  “Francie and I will be fine.” The words are low and loaded. “I’ve got plenty of money in the bank. I wouldn’t put her in that position.”

  Paul sips and stares and sits quietly. He clears his throat, scratches at his head, but keeps silent. A full minute passes before he speaks. “I wasn’t suggesting that you can’t take care of her, or that you can’t take care of you; was just asking a question. You don’t have to blow things up and make an issue out of nothing.” He gets up and goes inside. “Gotta break the seal.”

  It triggers a memory: “The only person making an issue here is you, Mr. Kennington.”

  That night, Leo has a surprise dinner with his parents at The LiveWell Bistro.

  “How long are you in town for?”

  His mother swallows a sip of water and sets the glass on the table. “Oh, just for a few days. Couldn’t go flying off to Tahiti without checking in on our baby.” She reaches over and pats her son’s hand.

  “Come on now, Grace, he’s twenty-eight years old, he’s not a baby.” His father gives her a weak scowl. He looks at his son. “Do you think you can do some kind of experiment to see why mothers insist on referring to their children as babies even when they’ve been out of diapers for years?”

  “That’s the way of a mother’s heart, Robert.” She rolls her eyes good-naturedly. “Where’s Francie?”

  “She’s working late tonight; she sends her love.” Leo looks down at the tablecloth, partially concealing his expression.

  His mother waves a dismissive hand through the air. “My Lord, you young people work too hard. No wonder you’re starting to go gray so early. Francie is gorgeous enough as is without having unsightly wrinkles on her face.”

  They pause as the waiter comes by to take their orders.

  “So how is work...baby?” His mother’s face brightens at her quip.

  Leo runs the tip of his finger across the tongs of his fork. “I, uh...” He scratches above his upper lip. “I decided to take some time off.”

  The forkful of salad wavers at his father’s mouth. “Son, is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, dad, I’m just—just figuring some things out.”

  He instantly recognizes the expression on his son’s face, the one that says he’ll say more when he’s done solving the mental equation scrawled on the whiteboard of his brain, the one he wore often when he was younger. “Oh, well...Your finances okay while you’re figuring things out?” Another thought bolts across his face. “Are they going to save your position while you’re—”

  “Robert, please. You can see he’s distraught enough as is. No need to overwhelm him.” His mother places a hand on his wrist. “Don’t hesitate to let me know if you need anything. Anything at all.” She gives him a reassuring nod. “And that includes a financial boost. Our investments have been doing better than we expected.”

  Their son’s smile is wan at the edges. “I’ll let you know, mom. But thank you.”

  The waiter breezes by to refill their water and wine glasses.

  “Good to see we didn’t raise a son who lets his pride get him in over his head.” Robert winks at Leo.

  Leo looks at the two of them on the other side of the table. His brown-skinned mother and his fair-skinned father. His parents. His creators. His blood.

  “Yeah, you raised me well.” He hesitates with parted lips. “You also raised me to be weak.”

  His father’s mouth wrinkles. “What?”

  “I’m probably about to say something that I’ll hate myself for later, or maybe I won’t. Maybe it’s just the thing to make me feel better. Either way, I’m saying it: your son is weak, and it’s your fault.” He rests a forearm on the table.

  “Leo, why—”

  “You put me in a box when I was growing up. I didn’t live a real life, I lived in a—in a fantasy. I was some sheltered child actor in a play. You told me who I was, where I came from, but you didn’t let me hear who or what everyone else thought I was. You didn’t show your child the real world even though you knew, you knew, that I would have to step out into it.”

  “Son, you don’t need anyone to tell you who you are. Your heritage, your family, your color...” His father cuts a hand through the air. “That definitely molds you into who you’re going to be, but it doesn’t lock you into who you’re going to be.” He jabs a finger at his son. “You write your own damn story. You’re our son, we love you.” His father shakes his head. “We never lied or hid the truth from you.”

  “But you never exposed me to it either! Heritage, family, color—” He slaps at his chest twice. “All of that is in my genes...along with something else that doesn’t belong there. I—I—I don’t know what I’m supposed to say or what I’m supposed to do when someone makes a wayward comment when I tell them I’m bi-racial. I blow up every time someone make a harmless joke because I think that’s what I’m supposed to do, get defensive, stand strong for myself. And the reason for that is because I spent my childhood looking through a pretty window. I wasn’t part of the real world.”

  His mother’s confusion leaks through the pain on her face. “Why would you want to be?”

  “BECAUSE IT WOULD HAVE GIVEN ME CONTROL!” He slams a fist on the table, toppling glasses of water and wine as he stands, skin humming and itching with the awakening power of his A-O gene swelling just underneath. “Because it would have made me strong! I feel like a damn idiot yanking out my guts in front of a circle of strangers, telling them how much I hate myself, hate what’s inside of me. If I had learned how to process all this as a child, maybe I wouldn’t be feeling so fucked up right now!”

  His mother looks up at him, ignoring the restaurant of stillness and stares. “Sit down, Leo.” He remains standing. “Leo, please sit down.” He slowly sits. She looks at him. “You are casting stones at the wrong people. Everything your father and I did in raising you we did because we love you. Is that wrong?”

  “Yes.”

  “Every parent does the best they can when raising a child. You can read every book, every pamphlet, every manual there is on parenting and you still won’t be prepared for the life you bring into this world. Every word you read is obsolete the moment that child is born. We didn’t raise you around the ugliness
out there—” She jabs a finger at a near window “—because we didn’t want it to poison you.” She blinks. “But somehow, it has.”

  Someone slurps their water.

  A muscle in Leo’s cheek twitches along with a corner of his lip. A tear glimmers in his eye. He stands up. “It’s not the ugliness that’s poisoning me.” He walks out of the restaurant.

  Outside he stalks down the nearest alley, ignoring the stench of rotting garbage as he rakes his fingers over his scalp, trying to scratch away his frustration. He mutters incoherently to himself as he paces back and forth. He crosses his arms over his chest, spinning right on his heel. He uncrosses his arms, spinning left on his heel.

  His blood thrums, flares, rushes, and blazes in his veins.

  Along with his A-O gene.

  His skin tightens and he welcomes it. The world goes silent and he welcomes it. A dome of silver-blue wavers into the air and solidifies around him. And he welcomes it.

  He opens his mouth and releases a savage scream that scours his throat raw.

  His mother teaching him about Dr. Martin Luther King and his message. Reciting to him the poetry of Claude McKay and Nikki Giovanni.

  His parents interlacing their fingers, showing Leo that his skin is their skin and their skin is his skin.

  Leo looking out at the playground for classmates who look like him and finding none.

  Leo playing with his classmates with a child’s joy, a child’s purity, a child’s benign ignorance.

  Leo crying in his mother’s arms after Harold Gunter pushed him off of the monkey bars and fractured his wrist after calling him a nigger cracker.

  Leo studying his reflection.

  A portrait of Leo beaming and sitting between his parents, looking like both of them and neither of them.

  The furious force field explodes omnidirectional with his voice, shattering the window pane behind him and slamming into the solid wall in front of him, smashing several bricks in a jagged imprint as a backwash of wind tears at the air.

  Leo studies the destruction he has wrought, chest heaving. His tongue darts out to lick his lips and his breathing returns to normal. He looks to either end of the alley and sees no one. He deflates down to his knees and rests his palms on his thighs, utterly empty. And he welcomes it.

  P E R R Y

  “So you know exactly who killed Matthew Maddrox McCain?” The blonde woman across from Perry looks up from where she sits with her elbow braced on the desk, fingertips pressed to her temple holding back her disbelief. “And the boyfriend, who sounds more like another victim in all this, is staying with you?”

  Perry rocks forth and back in his chair. “I know inexactly who killed McCain, Jill. All Walter said is that it’s a Hispanic male.”

  Detective Jill Torv rifles through the stack of papers neatly stacked on her desk. “Well, whoever he is, it might not be the first time he killed someone.” She consults a sheet, eyes roving. “We weren’t able to lift any prints from the knives in McCain’s wrists or heart. And while forensics was able to find a blood sample other than McCain’s, it’s...wrong.”

  Perry stops rocking. “What do they mean wrong?”

  Jill eyes resume roving. “There’s no specific blood type, it’s continuously shifting. According to the analysis, it may have to do with some type of enzyme.” She looks up at him. “Might be an A-O.”

  “A-O on A-O violence?”

  She opens an empty hand. “Very well might be.”

  Perry rubs at his bottom lip with his index finger. “Gahdammit. Somethin’ else to add to the pile.”

  The other detective interlaces her fingers and rests them on her stomach as he leans back in her manager chair. “You know, honestly, I’m almost tempted to throw this case to the bottom rung. I mean, from what you tell me about about Matthew and Walter, it almost, almost, seems as though Matthew got what he deserved for being an abusive asshole.”

  Perry starts to spark off a retort. Jill holds up a hand to fizzle his words.

  “But he was murdered in his own home when he only deserved to have his ass handed to him on several different platters.” She leans forward. “Which means we need to catch a potential vigilante with an ever shifting blood type and hope that we don’t get our asses handed to us in several different caskets.”

  They get to work.

  Perry stops in the doorway. He’s come home to find his apartment clean and pristine and smelling of sage and citrus. The setting sun slices through the open window in warm shafts that seem to make the place glow.

  He set his keys on the dust-free table next to the door and goes to the closet to put his jacket away, noting the vacuum tracks along the carpet and the fading scent of jasmine. The kitchen counters nearly blind him with their sparkle, and he finds that the colors of his dish rag, towel, and pot holders now match.

  “What do you think?”

  He turns to see Walter folding a bath towel with a pleased little smile on his face, brown eyes aglitter behind his lenses.

  “This isn’t my apartment.”

  “Hope you don’t mind.” Walter puts the towel in the hall closet. “I made a list of how and where everything was if you don’t like it.”

  Perry runs his fingers against the marble countertop. “It’s fine. Nice, in fact.” He looks at Walter. “’Preciate it.”

  “Just wanted to show my thanks.” Walter disappears down the hall.

  Perry takes the teakettle from the counter, fills it with water, and sets it on the stove. “You know, Walter, there are easier ways of saying thank you.” He takes down a box of assorted teas from the shelf over the oven, flips through it.

  “Like what?”

  Perry decides on a bag: mint green. “Like verbally saying thank you.” He shuts the cabinet door.

  Walter returns with a towel folded over his arm. “Dinner’s in the oven...if you’re hungry; should still be warm.”

  The other man looks at him. “You cooked?”

  A nod.

  Perry bends down, opens the door, and sees a plate of green beans, steamed broccoli and a large hamburger steak smothered in mushrooms and shredded cheese and topped with tiger dill. His head pops up, everything below the top of his nose hidden behind the oven top. “What’d you do?”

  Walter stops folding the towel. “What did I--Nothing, I just wanted to fix you dinner. Something wrong with that?”

  Perry takes the still-warm plate from the oven, grabs a knife and fork and sits down at the table. “Where’s yours?” He slices into the hamburger steak.

  “I already ate, didn’t know what time you’d be back and I was starving.” Walter’s voice calls distant from down the hall.

  Perry chews...and stops. He swallows. “What’d you season the meat with?”

  Walter pops his head around the corner. “You like it?”

  “Yeah.” He takes another bite. “Texture’s a little funny.”

  “It’s seitan.”

  A bite of green beans. “Satan?”

  “Sei-tan.” He pops around again with a bedspread tucked beneath his chin as he folds it. “It’s a meat substitute, healthier for you.”

  Perry loosens his tie as he looks over his shoulder. “Will you stop folding and come sit down?”

  Walter finishes folding the bedspread and lays it on the table. He watches Perry. “How’d your day go, get in some good detecting?”

  The detective eats a mushroom. “Investigated a crime scene.”

  The other man squirms in his seat. “Where was it?”

  He looks at him for a second. “Guess.” Chews. Swallows. Slices.

  Walter’s expression collapses. “You saw—” He swallows. His lips part and he looks away as sweat stains his forehead.

  Perry nods. “Mind if I ask you a few questions about that? If you think you’re okay to talk about it, that is.”

  Walter visibly struggles to get his breath under control, bobbing his head in a nod. “G—go ahead.”

  “You said the Hispanic man
let you leave before he killed Matthew. Mind giving me more details on what he looked like?”

  Walter looks down at Perry’s plate, watches as he eats. “To help you build a case so you can arrest him?” He scrolls his eyes up to the other man’s face.

  “‘S the idea.”

  Walter grazes his fingertips across the freshly washed tablecloth. “What if...What if I don’t want him to be caught? I never would’ve left Matthew on my own, didn’t have it in me. That guy made it so I didn’t have a choice but to leave him. Did me a favor.”

  The fork wavers near Perry’s mouth as he stares across the table at the stinging sorrow seeping from the other man. “Walter—”

  “I get the distinct impression that you’re all about doing things by the book, Detect—Perry. That you might even write and update the book yourself when need be. But I’m starting to feel like I’ve been given another chance here, a chance to do things right. For myself this time.” The smile on his face is cracked and wavering.

  Perry lowers his fork.

  “I’m sorry, but...” He swallows the anxiety welling up in his throat. “I don’t think I can help you, detective.”

  While Perry should be building a case to track down and capture Noir, he is instead researching SWAT teams and techniques used specifically to capture or take down A-Os with dangerous abilities. A special U.S. government-sanctioned operation known as Gladius is in development to address Alpha-Omega threats across the country using a combination of soldiers and specially-trained Alp—

  “Thinking about joining the army?”

  Perry jerks at Walter’s sudden voice behind him. “Shit!” Shoulders are hijacked up to his ears. Adrenaline-spiked muscles seize between flight and locomotoring his fist into the other man’s face. “Need to get you a damn gong to wear while you’re here.”

  Walter laughs as he sits beside Perry, grazing a palm across his shoulders as he passes behind him. “Sorry.”