by James Maxey
“Sure did,” he said, pulling a remote from one of the pouches on his belt. He pressed a button and said, “Be here in thirty seconds.” He looked back at Jenny. “You were at the Butterfly House, weren’t you?”
“We knew each other,” she said. “You had hair back then. And real teeth.”
“Oh, these are real,” he said, opening his mouth wide so his teeth caught the light. “They just ain’t the one’s I was born with.”
“I knew you as well,” I said.
“You’re that monkey boy, right?”
I nodded. “Go by Big Ape these days, though my friends call me Harry.”
“How’d y’all break free of the brainwashing?” he asked.
“Jenny had a run in with a psychokinetic who undid her brainwashing by mistake. I escaped the Butterfly House before I ever got my memories rewritten. How about you?”
Gator winked at me, revealing green scale tattoos on his eyelid. “I’ll tell you when the preacher ain’t listening.”
“You two make an interesting pair,” I said to the reverend. “How, exactly, did you become friends?”
The reverend shrugged. “We both fight smugglers along the southern border. Eventually our paths were bound to cross.”
As he said this, a large fishing boat pulled up to the dock, stopping mere inches from the padded baffles. There was no one visible in the wheelhouse.
“The autopilot I whipped up works pretty well, I see,” said Kracker.
“It gets the job done,” said Gator. He gave Kracker a long look and I could see something was bothering him. “The rev didn’t say nothin’ about you coming along.”
“Last second decision,” said Kracker. “Two hundred feet of saltwater forms an impenetrable barrier to radio waves. I couldn’t control a drone remotely unless it was cabled. I’d feel guilty if you all got killed because you were denied the guidance of my mighty brain.” He tapped his diving helmet with a steel claw.
“All righty then,” said Gator, hopping onto the boat. “Let’s get going.” The boat was pretty big, the sort of thing you might take out to the Gulf Stream in pursuit of marlin.
“Nice boat,” I said as I followed him to the wheel.
He grinned. “That’s what I said when I killed the drug kingpin who owned it.” He looked me up and down. “You’ve grown since I last saw you.”
“Long story,” I said.
“You look like a goddam monster!” he said, with a rush of enthusiasm as he backed the boat away from the dock. “Man alive, you know how many hours I’ve had to sit in a chair for these tattoos? You have any idea how long it took me to eat solid food again after I had my teeth done? Shit, man, you lucked out in the superpowers department. You look scary as hell!”
“Right,” I said.
“I mean, what’s the point of having a superpower if you can’t at least look like a badass?”
I glanced at the back of the boat where Jenny was helping the rev check the scuba tanks. She had dive training as a member of the Silent Shadows and knew what she was doing. “Jenny doesn’t look intimidating,” I said, my voice muffled a bit as he revved the motor to propel the boat forward.
“But she scares you, right?”
“No. She’s my girlfriend.”
“Hah! Girlfriends are the scariest creatures in the world,” said Gator. “That’s why I only keep mine around for a few days before getting new ones.”
I figured that had to be a lie. How much action could a guy with metal teeth possibly get?
As we cleared the dock and the other boats, Gator pushed the throttle all the way open and we flew toward open water. “Need a beer?” he yelled over the roar of the motor.
“Jesus Christ, yes,” I said as he opened a small fridge near his feet with his toes. He leaned over and snagged a six pack of PBRs.
“A million dollar boat and you drink cheap bear?” I said as he tossed me a can.
“Once you own a boat, you kind of don’t have money for anything else,” he said. “I kept the boat since I really needed a boat, but I always turn over to the feds any cash or jewelry I take from the bad guys. I sign my deliveries with a gator paw stamp so they know it’s my catch. Are the bastards grateful? Hell no. They’ve got a fucking task force trying to hunt me down. Meanwhile, fifty billion a year in coke, weed, and illicit pharmaceuticals cross the border with maybe one percent intercepted each year. It’s totally fucked up that they waste a dime looking for me.”
I chugged the beer and he tossed me another. At my size and weight, two beers couldn’t make any real dent toward getting a buzz on. Hell, two six packs wouldn’t do much more than make me feel a little warm. Honestly, I haven’t been really drunk since becoming Big Ape. I don’t miss it much, though I wonder if Jenny and I would talk more if I could still get loose. I’d had a few the first time I ran into her after joining the Lawful Legion. It was my night off. I was still Sock Monkey, smaller than most people, and back then I had a magic ring that could make me look human. I’d just moved to LA and didn’t know anyone. I wound up getting dinner alone at a Mexican restaurant. I ordered a margarita the size of a fishbowl and was about halfway through it when this girl sits down across from me in the booth and said, “Hi, Harry.”
She caught me off guard. I knew I knew her but couldn’t figure out from where. She was totally out of context.
“It’s me,” she said. “Jenny. Screaming Jenny.”
I broke into a broad smile. “Oh my God! What the hell are you doing here?”
“Looking for you,” she said.
“How did…” I frowned, staring down at my magic ring. “How did you even recognize me?”
“I’m covert ops, remember,” she said. “It’s my job to know stuff.”
“I, uh, heard you were on medical leave,” I said.
She crossed her arms. “You heard I’d gone crazy.”
“Not crazy,” I said. “More like injured. I know the Victorian messed with your head.”
She nodded. “Yeah. Pretty bad. But not as bad as what I did to myself.”
I didn’t say anything.
She continued. “Apparently, to graduate from the Butterfly House, I let them give me new memories. Not only that… they gave me a new personality. New values. And I agreed to it.”
“You aren’t the only one,” I said. “Honestly, if Brain Boy hadn’t talked me into escaping, I’d have taken the deal. It’s not like my childhood memories are some special treasure.”
“Tell me about it,” she said. “As my mind has healed, I’ve remembered a lot of stuff I wish I’d forgotten forever.”
At that moment, a waitress came up and asked if she wanted anything. She glanced at my margarita and said, “I’ll have one of those. Frozen.”
The waitress asked for an ID. Jenny produced what I assumed was a fake driver’s license, just like my own license was fake. Neither of us were legally old enough to drink but the waitress seemed content with the fake ID. When she left, Jenny blurted out, “My father sexually abused me for years.”
“Shit,” I said.
“My mother didn’t do a thing about it,” she said, crossing her arms.
“That’s… wow. I mean, I don’t know…”
“You don’t know what to say,” she said. “Because you don’t know if you believe me.”
“Of course I believe you. I’m sorry that happened. It sucks.”
“That’s an understatement,” she said. “I was betrayed by my parents. I had every right to hate them. But… what I did to them. With my powers. It was… I mean… how the fuck am I supposed to process that? How am I supposed to sleep after hearing their screams?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“No wonder I was such a bitch at the Butterfly House. I hated everyone and everything, myself most of all.”
“I didn’t know you hated me,” I said.
She managed a half smile. “Okay, not you. You made a good first impression by trying to help me escape.”
I sh
rugged. “I’m a sucker for a damsel in distress.”
“Distress is my middle name,” she said, as the waitress sat the margarita down in front of her. She took a long, fast suck from the straw.
“Careful,” I said. “You’ll get—”
“Ow,” she said, pressing her head back into the padding of the booth. “Brain freeze.”
“I was going to say,” I said.
She grabbed the drink again and took another sip, sucking it up fast until she put it down, wincing. Through clenched teeth she said, “I’m kind of angry at my brain. It deserves this.”
“It’s not your brain’s fault,” I said. “You have bad memories because bad things happened to you. No part of you is to blame.”
She shook her head. “I have plenty of things I can blame myself for. I hurt a lot of people before the Butterfly House snatched me.”
“You were just a kid,” I said.
She took another drink, more slowly. “I tell myself that.” She ran her finger around the rim of the glass, gathering up salt, then licked her finger. “I don’t know that talking to myself is doing any good. The Legion hooked me up with a therapist, but, if they’re paying her, I’m sure they’re also telling her what to say. Now that I know that they’re cool with brainwashing, it makes me not trust anyone. How can I know if my therapist is giving good advice or just manipulating me into being a team player? You’re the only person I might be able to trust.”
“There’s also Val,” I said. “You know, Cut Up Girl? She also avoided the brainwashing.”
Jenny scowled. “She’s the last person I’d want to talk to about sexual abuse.” She shook her head. “I mean… I saw the videos. I was curious since it was in the news and all. I wasn’t watching them for any kind of thrill.”
“Sure,” I said.
“The things she let him do to her,” she said, with a shudder. “She wasn’t a child. She could have said no. How can you be friends with someone so… so… warped?”
“What right do you have to judge her?” I said, feeling the hair rise on the back of my neck. “Why should anyone give a damn what two consenting adults do in private?”
“She let him film her.”
“That wasn’t consensual. She had no idea she was being recorded. She knows more about violations of trust than you give her credit for.”
She toyed with the straw in her glass. “You seem pretty defensive. Is she your girlfriend or something?”
“No,” I said, laughing. “God no. I don’t even like human women.”
“Seriously,” she said, sounding dubious.
“I mean, I’m only half human. You’d find it weird if I felt attracted to female chimpanzees, wouldn’t you?”
“Are you?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “And human females, well….” I let my voice trail off as I took a drink from the last remnants of my margarita.
“Then why do you watch so much porn?” she asked.
I literally did a spit take, spraying my margarita all over the table.
“What?” I asked.
She looked amused. “Retaliator has software on your computer that records every keystroke you make.”
“He’s spying on me?”
“He spies on all his teammates,” she explained. “The Lawful Legion has people in its ranks that could destroy entire cities if they went rogue. I was outraged at first when I found out about it, but, when I cooled down, I don’t know that he’s wrong. I peeked at your files before coming out to find you.”
“Whatever the Victorian did to you it seems to have messed up your sense of right and wrong,” I said, pissed off.
“You’re upset because I caught you in a lie,” she said. “You must like human women… unless you’re watching those videos to look at the men.”
I wiped up my margarita with my napkin. “Fine. I like to look at boobs. You’ve discovered my dark secret, oh master detective.”
She smiled. “Don’t get upset,” she said. “I honestly don’t think any less of you because you have normal human urges.”
“In my body, human urges are completely abnormal,” I said, fiddling with my ring. “When I take this thing off, I look like—”
“I know what you look like,” she said. “I always thought you were kind of cute.”
“Yeah, I know. Other heroes get action figures. I get a stuffed animal.”
“No,” she said, sounding horrified I’d misinterpreted her words. “Not in a cute animal kind of way. I mean you have a nice face, even without that ring. I always thought your eyes had a depth to them,” she said. “There’s something about the wrinkles around your eyes that makes you look wise.”
“Oh,” I said. I started to ask if she was joking, then realized her tone was utterly sincere.
She sighed. “It’s okay that you lied about not liking women. I lied about why I watched Cut Up Girl’s videos. I mean, sure, I was curious when I first watched them. But… I’ve been through, like, fifty hours of video.” She eyed her margarita, not looking at me. “I’m kind of addicted to them. I guess, sure, they’re disgusting.” Her hands tightened into fists. “I mean, I really get angry, sometimes.” Then they relaxed. “But… I don’t know. Maybe I don’t know what it would be like to be in a sexual relationship voluntarily.” She took a long, slow drink, nearly emptying her glass. “When I was, um, undercover with the pulse gang I, uh, I did stuff. Lots of stuff. But it was all… all just acting. Playing a part. I lie awake nights thinking about it. Wondering. Wondering if I could ever… ever do stuff like that… because I wanted it.”
The waitress came up before I could say anything and asked if we wanted more drinks.
“No,” said Jenny, pulling out a credit card. “We’re ready for the check.”
The waitress took the card away and Jenny said, with her fists clenched, not looking directly at me, “You live near here.”
“Sure,” I said. “And I’ve got tequila and some mixers there.”
“Good,” she said. “I’m inviting myself over. And we’re… we’re going to take things slow. But not too slow.”
“I’m cool with that,” I said.
Then the memory faded, and I wasn’t in California any more, but far out into the darkness of the bay. I realized that Gator had been talking with Reverend Rifle for a couple of minutes. I hadn’t heard a word they said. I stared at Jenny sitting on the back of the boat, her eyes fixed on me. I was pretty good at reading her expressions and always on guard for ones I didn’t recognize. Her eyes were inscrutable. If I had to pick a word that might have captured her thoughts, I’d go with haunted. I wondered what she was thinking, but didn’t have enough alcohol in my belly to ask her.
Chapter Ten
Smash
AS WE RACED across the water, Reverend Rifle went back to do something with the dive gear and said something to Jenny. She smiled, whatever he said, and said something back I couldn’t hear over the motor.
“Acid,” said Gator, one hand on the wheel of the boat and the other popping the top of his fifth beer.
“What?” I asked.
“You wanted to know how I broke free of my fake memories. Acid.”
“Like battery acid?”
“Like LSD, man.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Remember the Red Shark?”
“I saw his statue in the Legion Memorial Hall. He died on his second mission, right?”
“Naw,” said Gator, before drinking his beer in one long chug and tossing the can overboard. “He was me. I’m still alive, more or less.” He leaned down to the cooler at his feet and retrieved another beer.
“Seriously? You were the Red Shark?”
“Yeah. You know I had to be brainwashed to wear that costume. Man, that fin on the head was fucking lame.”
“You’re talking to a guy whose first costume had a robotic tail,” I said.
“Anyway, water-themed heroes don’t get a lot of options for missions. I was assigned to fight this guy
named Professor Power. He lived on a supertanker. I caught up with him off the Baja coast.”
“Seriously? You know Professor Power turned out to be Cut Up Girl’s dad, right?”
“I didn’t know that,” he said. “I also didn’t know he had super strength. He kicked my ass good. Since I was dressed as a shark, he somehow got the idea I could only survive out of water for a little while. He had his henchmen fly me out to the desert. They staked me out beneath the sun after breaking both my legs. Then, for good measure, they stuck this massive dose of acid under my tongue. I was supposed to die in agony, tripping out in terror. But I broke free of my ropes and started dragging myself in some random direction. I was out in the desert for three days, the acid tearing up my brain. Massive hallucinations, but also this strange sense of being outside my head, looking in, reading my memories like turning the pages of a book. I managed to break through my false memories and dig down to my real origins. I thought I was an ex-marine who’d gotten his powers from an alien spacecraft that had gone down in the Caribbean. Turned out I was only a redneck who didn’t take his first real breath until he was three.”
“But you still fight crime even though you no longer believe your fake origin story?”
“Hell yeah,” he said. “Now I have a real origin story. I’ve been messed over by a drug lord smuggling his wares across the Mexican border. I make it my personal mission to put a stop to that.”
“And you got all your memories back with a single acid trip?”
“Naw,” he said. “That first, big trip showed me the way. I still use acid pretty regularly. In small doses, it sharpens the mind. Hell, I’m on it right now. Don’t tell the rev.”
I nodded. I’d suspected that anyone who’d replaced their teeth with metal spikes probably had some familiarity with drugs.
Fortunately, before I said some variation of this thought out loud, Gator cut the engine. We drifted to a stop in what looked to be the dead center of Sandy Hook Bay, judging from how far away the city lights were. The sky above us was a dull, starless gray, faintly luminous with light pollution from New York City.
