Superheroes

by Margaret Ronald

  Doctor Death At Your Service I’m not a doctor, not really. Actually, I’m a lowly LPN, Licensed Practical Nurse. One step up from a CNA (a Certified Nursing Assistant), my license frees me from the true drudgery of the medical world: bedpans, enemas, urine, vomit—all of the astonishing range of fluids emitted by our bodies. I can’t do that much, however. I can draw blood, run IVs, give injections, stuff like that. That’s it. But I read a lot. And I pay attention to the doctors. The nice thing about being low on the ladder of expertise is that you are basically invisible, especially if you are a “pool” nurse, transferred around a hospital or nursing home wherever you’re needed. Kind of like a cockroach on the wall.

  Even though I don’t have much formal training, I’d humbly say I probably know more about human illness than your garden variety GP. And when it comes to the topic of death, well, I’m the expert.

  When I come to a city, I put my name on the on-call nurse lists. With the shortage as it is, and with my willingness to work for crappy pay and crappy hours, there’s never a lack of work. But it may surprise you to hear that hospices and hospitals are not particularly promising sites for my craft. Both institutions do a pretty good job of pain management. People in hospitals are getting some help, at least, and people in hospices, well, they’re going to die soon anyway, so usually it isn’t worth the bother to hurry the process up. Mental health units and nursing homes, well, that’s a different story. Rooms filled with the forgotten and the lost.

  But even there I have my standards. I mean, ordinary life basically sucks for most people, I’ve discovered. And people are pretty capable of killing themselves without any help if they really want to. They aren’t my problem. The two key categories eligible for termination are the disabled (the bedridden ancient crones, the drooling wheelchair slumpers, the MS patients who can’t even blink their eyes anymore … ) and various categories of the insane. We’ve gotten so much better at treating clearly physical ailments, but with the sickness of the mind—which of course is physical too—even the best specialists are often at a loss.

  Frankly, some of these people are simply dangerous. I’ve put down a couple of real psychopaths in my time, and a couple of pedophiles too, even though they’re outside my area of expertise. Not that I feel that remorseful about it. There are some people who really just don’t deserve to use up oxygen. But there’s a danger in becoming judge and jury. Most of the time, I just give an anonymous call to the police. And if they don’t deal with it, well, look, I can’t do everything. And in special cases, the ones the police won’t understand—huddles of nighthawks or nests of vampires or the occasional dominator—I call in the League.

  In the night, I walk the streets in dark clothes on soft-soled shoes. Like a minor god I travel at the center of my approximately hundred-yard bubble of acute perception, participating in the sleep of the snoring obese, children lying awake in fear, the taste of alcohol on a hundred tongues, the rustle and slickness of sex, and, every once in a while, the deep pain of hopelessness.

  You might be surprised at who I kill. Old ladies in houses filled with cats and stacks of newspapers; skinny track-armed drug-users; homeless vets with their jeans stuffed with newsprint against the cold: they’re often much more content than you might imagine. Just because someone’s life doesn’t look like yours doesn’t mean it doesn’t work for them. We tend to be so judgmental, but mostly we don’t understand. No, it’s often normal folks who are trapped, in some way, in their powered wheelchairs, in the spinning irreparably jagged wreckage of their minds. To everyone else, they can seem fine.

  In any case, there are more people to kill than I can handle, or than it would be safe to terminate. I have to pick and choose carefully. The last thing I need is a media story about a spike in the number of people keeling over. And you remember those stories of nurses put in jail for killing hundreds of patients? Well, they were simply stupid, probably just as damaged as the people they were injecting. And usually they have some simplistic MO that any idiot could begin to recognize. So, then, two criteria: selectivity and creativity. Don’t do it too much and don’t do it the same way too often.

  My other job, the one that along with my reports of “special” problems brings me in contact with the League, is recruitment. Although they don’t like to acknowledge my service, there are only a few of us who are likely to run across others like us. In any case, there’s often a fine line between a superhero and a real wacko nut job. I don’t find many—maybe one a year worth (and in need of) rescue. Teflon Boy, for example, didn’t really count. He didn’t need help, and I couldn’t see how he could help us. He was kind of an almost-almost-superhero, you might say.

  The League of Almost-Superheroes Young members of my adopted League family are often obsessed with comic books (although video games seem to have taken over, recently). When I was a kid, at least, our rooms at the Farm were usually plastered with lurid covers of improbable figures in capes and hoods, and panels of quick death and triumph against overwhelming odds. But as much as we dreamed of being like those we met in these bright pages, we looked in vain for anything that resembled our lives. Sure, Spiderman and Batman (their Batman, not ours) and the Thing suffered angst and the terrible limitations that came with being a superbeing. But, in the end, they really were superheroes, and we, we knew, were not, not really.

  I remember the day Ant Boy came up with our name for the League. When we were both about twelve, he was trying to dodge Plastic Girl after one of his regular pranks. And he came across an old series of comics in some dusty boxes back under the eaves in the attic. Called the League of Superheroes, they were much like many of the other comics we had read over the years. But a few of the issues mentioned another group of people with special powers, people who were different but whose capacities did not entitle them to membership in the League. These misfits had a whole collection of mediocre powers like the ability to spit long distances, or to warm the temperature in the room a few degrees, or to leap twenty feet into the air. They banded together and formed what they called the League of Almost-Superheroes. Sometimes they even came to the rescue of the real superheroes, even if they were never given much credit for anything.

  Ant Boy ran down to find me, shaking a comic book in his fist. “This is us!” he shouted, “This is us!” And even though he was still only a kid, this name resonated somehow across the Chateau and into the fellowship spread beyond the farm. We became, and remain, the League of Almost Superheroes, although there is some question about whether I, in particular, remain a member in good standing.

  Of course, our pompous leaders wouldn’t suffer such an indelicate name. They like to refer to us cryptically as The Fellowship.

  They can kiss my ass.

  The Science of Death There are many ways to kill, but it must be said that the human body is surprisingly resilient. In my valise I carry perhaps thirty or forty of the most efficient or, in some cases, the most practical options. With respect to those who are already weakened by long bouts of disease, the easiest path (although not always the most comfortable for the patient) is the introduction (by shunt, IV, scratch, etc.) of one of any number of antibiotic-resistant infective organisms. If they are weak enough, these can knock someone out quicker than you’d think, with little chance of recovery.

  The fact is, hospitals are death-traps. Don’t let that disinfectant smell fool you. They’ve all got little bacterial Godzillas creeping around their walls, the evolutionary result of surviving every nasty medicine modern man has dreamed up. Ever seen someone’s flesh literally melt off their bones? Not pretty. (I’ve killed a couple of those poor bastards in my time). And the “health professionals”—an oxymoron if I ever heard one—stand around picking their noses and gossiping about who’s humped whom and touching a hundred patients a day, rarely washing their hands.

  Take this down: if you get sick, stay home. If you have to go in, point the half-wits to the alcohol hand-cleaner before they get anywhere near you.

  A
t least I kill people on purpose.

  Healthy folk who need to die are a more difficult challenge. Even old people are often astonishingly tough. I remember one old guy who suffered from constant, untreatable panic attacks who survived three different attempts to kill him. I finally took a chance that no one would notice (he was ninety-three and in a nursing home) and just popped an air bubble into his vein.

  I have to admit it. In Portland I got cocky. I stuck around too long. Somehow they caught on to me through my job at the medical college. I was lucky, though. I got a strong emotional hit when one of the guards glanced at me as I was entering the building, and took off running. With a little dodging around, I managed to shake them. I called home to my crappy studio and coded in the self-destruct in my trunk (thermite inside an insulated box) even though I was pretty sure they wouldn’t be able to track me back to it. I doubled back to where I’d stashed my emergency kit, and lit out for the bus station, where I took the next bus out. I figured I was probably safe, but, like I said, I don’t take chances.

  I’ve got more fake identities than lonely old ladies have cats. And I always wear gloves (if asked, I vaguely refer to allergies). No fingerprints. Of course, you can’t do anything about DNA. But I’m very careful about not leaving pop bottles or coffee around. A little squirt of bleach water also does wonders. It doesn’t take much to disguise your appearance: a little extra weight here, some gel pads in your cheeks, fake facial hair, a wig, etc. Every place I work I am a different person. And at my apartment building I was someone else again.

  I’m immodestly proud of my emergency bag. It’s just an ordinary soft leather valise, but inside it has pretty much everything someone would need to survive almost anywhere (plus enough chemicals to poison a small village). I’ve got a wire saw, compass, water treatment pellets and a filter straw, signaling mirror, space blanket, survival knife, you name it. You remember the guy who wrote that book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? He argued that the most useful item for a traveler was a towel. I don’t know if he was serious, but he didn’t know what he was talking about. The most useful things to have with you are actually garbage bags. You laugh.

  But I’m not talking about a flimsy little five gallon kitchen bag. No, I mean a couple of those oversized three mil contractor bags. Endless uses: a sleeping bag, a raincoat, a tarp, a waterproof stuff sack, and on and on. And you can cut them up in all kinds of different ways for different purposes. Take a tip from someone with long experience.

  Vampires

  So anyway, now I had to kill someone.

  I checked the old lady out a little more just to be absolutely certain, but there was no mistaking her condition. For thoroughness’s sake, I scanned the rest of the coach all the way to the back, but my heart wasn’t in it. The last thing I wanted to find was another termination challenge.

  Happily, I didn’t.

  Bored, then, I just sat and watched the desert crawl by, the only entertainment the occasional mobile home or crumpled barn, some dead and rusting cars, the momentary glimpse of the flat basin of a long dry lake, and, off in the distance, the dim shapes of weathered lava cones. I was trying to hold it till the next stop, but out here that could be almost forever. Finally I slipped on another set of gloves and elbowed fat boy, who amiably shuffled out of the way. Bent a little on aching legs, and immediately assaulted by the din of emotional trauma around me, but happy to be released from his embrace, I stumbled my way up the aisle, glancing over to check out the old lady I was going to have to kill.

  What I saw hit me like a paving stone. It felt for a second like my heart had stopped, but with only a little stumble, I moved on.

  It wasn’t her—she was pretty much what I expected, a drab woman in drab clothes rocking slowly back and forth in her seat in time to the pulsing of her emotional hell. No, the problem was that the aisle seat next to her was supposed to be empty. Or, at least, when I scanned it, it was empty. But there was someone there—a dapper little bald man in a bright yellow golf shirt. I could see him with my eyes, but I couldn’t see him with my senses. It felt almost like I was seeing a hologram of a person, or an empty blow-up shell. But this guy was real. And I also saw what someone else would have missed, that he had a finger laid lightly against the old lady’s wrist. That, and the almost ecstatic look on his face, the little smile, gave him away. At least his eyes were closed. He didn’t seem to have noticed anything. I had the upper hand, for the moment.

  I cursed my luck as I lurched up the rest of the aisle to the toilet.

  Shouldering my way in, I unzipped and stood there thinking, trying to take a piss. I always have trouble peeing in places like that, with the noxious fluids sloshing around below my penis and the hot air spilling into that upright sewage closet and the constant jostling of the bus and now the anxiety pulsing in my chest from the close encounter with the little man. Even with the incredible pressure in my bladder, it took me about five minutes before I let go in blissful release.

  A vampire. We run into them fairly frequently, although not usually alone like he seemed to be. They usually congregate in groups, nests we call them. Not the kind of creature that you’re probably thinking of—though I’ve met a couple of creepy blood drinkers in the past. No, these are worse. They’re psychic vampires, emotional parasites. They don’t seem to have their own emotions. The usual vampire is cold, often with an almost mathematical sense of beauty. They do have a hunger, however, a craving for intensity, the intensity of life that they lack.

  They survive by feeding on the strong emotions of others. Sometimes love—but love is hard to maintain and control, so they mostly focus on pain. Any kind of pain: physical, mental, whatever. Usually they don’t bother to torture anyone, although they don’t really mind a little torture. Instead they often troll the streets for suffering homeless people. I’ve heard of them kidnapping alcoholics and denying them liquor so they can feed on the DTs. They’ve been known to steal people with chronic pain, or the terminally ill with agonizing cancer, and keep them at the height of agony for days or even weeks. Eventually, though, even the most intense feeling gets boring. If it isn’t too dangerous, they often just sling people back out on the street. If there’s any risk, they kill them and bury them in mass graves in their basements, or feed them to wood chippers or arc furnaces or whatnot. And then they go out on the prowl again for something new.

  The League hunts them. Sickos like that, not just vampires, but all of the oddities with strange powers that emerge in the dark corners of civilization, hidden from the “normal” people. If there are (almost) superheroes there must be anti-heroes as well. That used to be my day job, before the League decided my proclivities were, well, too unusual for them to tolerate.

  In some ways, vampires are like me, in that they can feel the pain and pleasure of others. But your generic vampire is much more limited. Mostly they can draw sensations only through touch. So while I couldn’t sense him, it seemed likely that he couldn’t sense me, either—at least as long as I didn’t make physical contact.

  I could have just killed him, of course. That would have been no great challenge. But he was taking her somewhere. And that probably meant back to the nest. (Just because I was on the outs with the League and their pompous pronouncements didn’t mean I felt no larger responsibility.) If I killed him, I’d never know where that was. Vampires are almost fanatically careful creatures—the kind of people who keep all their pencils lined up in order of length on their desks. And they fear the League. There was little chance that there would be any clues on his person about his destination. But I wasn’t willing to let the old lady suffer any more than necessary. From a purely moral standpoint, she was my first priority.

  She had to die first. Then I’d figure out how to deal with him. Losing his mule might even disconcert him enough to make him careless. I just needed some time alone with him when he wasn’t expecting it, while he still didn’t know about me. And maybe then I could do something about finding that nest.


  I shuffled back down the aisle, trying not to stumble against the little man.

  Plastic Girl Superpowers suck. You don’t get something for nothing in this world. The line between an invalid or a nut or a cripple and an almost-superhero is pretty thin. A little training and attitude and perspective are sometimes all it takes to move from one side to the other.

  Up in the hollows of Kentucky’s Appalachia, the Farm encompasses the entire breadth of a weathered mountaintop, with a forest of trees and fields, fallen-down homesteads, and innumerable pools filled in the spring with tiny frogs. I remember the scent of honeysuckle in the summer, and the acrid smells of cut grass, gasoline, and oil after the fields around the Chateau were mown by the grumpy Gardener on his ancient, sputtering Sears rider. I remember the sharp crunch of baby apples we weren’t supposed to eat, and the taste of blackberry jam fingered up warm from boiling pots, and the horrid, lingering torment of a black walnut skin accidentally allowed to touch the tongue. I remember playing late into the evening at the water hole in Chattering Brook, and languid summer days lolling in the heat with homework forgotten and books tumbled from lazy hands. And the somber dawn burials of heroes returned for the final time to the earth, a snaking line of strange sorrowed figures trailing up into the cemetery at the weathered peak.

  Scattered throughout the Chateau at the Farm, with its twisting passages, odd-shaped add-on rooms, hidden staircases, and a few narrow pointed towers (filled, too often, with bats) was the most bizarre collection of kooks and misfits you’re likely to find anywhere outside a state hospital. There was Braniac, who never left his room filled with strange mechanical artifices and computers, and who answered questions through a funnel connected to a garden hose that ran through a hole in his door. There was Dolphin, the result of some ill-conceived breeding program between a sea mammal of some kind and a human being, a trickster who lived in Chattering Brook in the warm days and who took over the pool in the winter. And there was Ogre, and Batman, and Hunter, and Clear Eyes, and Gardener, and others who are not particularly important to this story.