by Sevan Paris
“…. What do you want in return?” Liberty says to me.
“I just want what I’ve wanted since I was a little girl—which is why I look like this. I want to be on HEROES, and I want a full status. None of that probationary crap.” I nod at Rock, all pathetic on the floor. “And he leaves.”
Liberty looks at Rock. Then at me. “I doubt he’ll be much use to me at this point anyway. In all likelihood, Sentinel’s lance paralyzed him. Maybe sent him into a coma too.”
I think about it for a moment. Then shrug. “Whatever.”
Liberty stands and then walks over to Mystick, leaning down to check on her. “Get Mystick to the infirmary. Take care of her broken jaw and …” Liberty looks at Thinkor, “implant something into her mind to make her understand why we did this. Don’t make her agree with it: eventually she’ll suspect something if we go that far.”
Soon after, Liberty will want you to retake an oath with a new name. You’ll need something that will help you tell the truth to yourself, but lie at the same time. Something that reflects who you were, who you are, and what you appear to be simultaneously.
Liberty faces me as Sentinel and Thinkor leave with Mystick. “Daisy Dale is dead,” he says. “And Bubble Trouble is dead. We’ll need a new identity for you and another explanation for your powers. Magick makes the general public uncomfortable.”
“What about Cover Chick cosmetics?” I immediately say. “Maybe they let a batch of irradiated make up loose or something?”
Liberty nods. “I’ve actually heard real Superhero origins that were more difficult to believe. PR will come up with the details tomorrow.” He walks over to a computer console built into the wall and taps the screen. “But you’re taking your new oath, with your new name here and now. I want it on the record in case the press wants to jump on this tonight.” After a few more taps, the computer starts recording.
I nod, wondering if my next two words would sound original enough for Rock: “I, Pink …”
NOW …
The auditorium and everybody in it rushes back to me. Everybody looks at me. Everybody judges me.
“And when you took that oath for the second time,” Thinkor whispers, “did you think about Rock’s paralyzed body at all?”
“I did my thing,” I say softly. “… I did what you wanted me to do. I don’t care about the why or whatever anymore. “Now let—stop doing this to me.”
Thinkor laughs. “You only did what I made you do. Now, tell me how you felt, or I’ll —”
“But you know how I felt!”
“But this is different. I want you to feel it now.”
“I …” God, this is horrible. These feelings. About everything. I can’t cry like this. And I’ve suddenly realized that needing to cry and not being able to is worse than needing to throw up and not being able to. “I felt … nothing.” The word hangs in the air, causing more pain—more shame—than any one word should.
“You came all that way,” Thinkor whispers, “sacrificed so much. Just to be nothing. Pathetic much?”
I shake my head, sending out wisps of misty hair. “No, I—what do you even care anyway? This was about me. Is about me. It’s—”
“IT IS NOT JUST ABOUT YOU!” The students fill the room with a terrifying, unified voice that echoes off the high ceiling.
I hover there, not knowing what else to say, what else to do.
They laugh.
“What do you want from me?” I know I sound whiny, but I can’t help it. “I mean, you’ve always just been Liberty’s little green puppy. If anything, I should have a reason to get revenge-y on you—not vice-versa.”
“I thought—hoped—that you would figure it out, Pink. But that’s just not possible, is it? You’re just too diva.”
“Well, what’s to figure? This is my tortured afterlife. Not yours. You trying to compete or something? Trying to see which one of us has the most fraked up life? Fine! You win or whatever! Just, like, end this!”
“Why would I do that when I ‘like’ went through so much ginormous trouble to start it?”
He’s obviously trying to mock me in the worst way, but there is something else there. Something familiar … I float a little closer, really paying attention to the inflection, to the way his hand goes to his hip. I look—really look—at the blood-splattered writing on the board that seemed to important to Casa: Costume. I think back to Macabre’s words from way back when … I know that I can separate it from you. But to completely obliterate something from all of existence is beyond my capabilities.
“No way,” I whisper. “No fraking way …”
“Oh, now you’re starting to get it?” Thinkor writhes one way, then the other. His back arches, twisting and turning, until a dark mist swirls out of his body, slowly rising to the ceiling of the auditorium. The inky cloud changes shape, forming the small arms, legs, body and head of a thirteen year old girl wearing a Brittany Spears t-shirt. “It took you long enough,” the black thing that looks just like me says.
I float back, eyes wide. “If. You. Seek Amy.”
CHAPTER FOUR
I stare at the dark me-looking thing, open mouthed.
She giggles. “I know, right?”
Her face is my face—the kiddie one that I show people. All except for her sick, twisted snarl that I couldn’t give the worst person on the best day.
She snakes back and forth, lower part of her stretched legs still inside Thinkor, still maintaining partial control over him. His head slumps to the side and back again. “I’ve been calling myself Black,” she says. “Thought it’d be cool in a Bizarro kind of way.”
“…. So you’re what? All that stuff Macabre pulled out of me?”
The wispy part of her lower body curls and then springs, placing her dark face inches from mine. “Every. Single. Bit. Every piece of accountability you never wanted to face. Every piece of judgmental crap you couldn’t cope with. Macabre’s Magick turned it all into me. Leaving you to be … like one big, raging id.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. That part of me would never … be you—would never do these things.”
“Oh, I’m ghostified irony, no doubt. But when you’re Jiminy Cricket 24/7, you become paralyzed by goody goodness. All that caring, it’s plumb suffocating. You know you can’t do enough—be enough—to make everyone happy. To make everyone see you better than they do. So you end up doing … completely nothing instead.” Black drifts over to the right; tethered ten feet away, Thinkor trails her with a couple of clumsy steps. “On an absolute whim, I tried doing something else to get me out of the funk.” She drifts back, bottom lip pouting. “Something bad.”
“Macabre … you’re the one that freed him.”
Black nods. “Those days were a blur. I was feeling so much … of the everything you hated, of the everything you left me with. But I remember, eventually, finding my way back to Macabre’s cell. Where he put it all together, spelled it out for me. Gave me a philosophy to help deal: If the right thing is paralyzing to the point of apathy, then all I can do to achieve any real agency—any real sense of purpose—is the wrong thing. And do you know how the wrong thing makes me feel, Pink?” She darts to me, yanking Thinkor to the floor. “ALIVE! And let me tell you, alive is wicked addictive!”
I lower my head, trying to look anywhere but her.
“Oh no—you LOOK at me!” Black says, sticking a phantomy finger at me, “Hate me all you want, but don’t you dare ignore me. I deserve better than that!”
I look up.
“And Casa and Galaxy deserve better than that. Before I kill them.”
“No …” I take another attempt at steadying my so-called voice: “Don’t. Do this to me.”
“You selfish little … this has never been about you—this is about me! I was the one carrying all the pain for both of us, all by myself in a world full of suck! While you were doing what? Playing hero and watching Vampire Diaries? Well that time’s over, sweetie. Eye-for-an-eye time now.”
&nb
sp; “But I didn’t DO this to you, not intentionally!”
“I know that.” Black laughs. “But does that really make a difference in the land of nobody cares?” She laughs harder and louder, filling the auditorium with her girly voice.
And then all around me, it’s like … it’s like I can hear Mom and Liberty laughing with her. Because they were right—I never had what it took to be a hero. How could I if everything good about me went bad? Even in my deepest, darkest moments over the past five years, I took some small measure of pride, of hope, in knowing that at one time I was a decent person. At one time, the things that don’t bother me now would have bothered me then. But Black’s existence means I was less than nothing before I became nothing. Her laughter swallows the single, last piece of comfort I have—and before I even know what I’m doing, my hands reach out.
And latch around the bitch’s throat.
With an abrupt gag, the laughter stops. “…. H-How are you doing this?” she rasps.
“Don’t know.” I squeeze harder. “Don’t care.”
Her hands clamp around my pink wrists and desperately, furiously, try to pry me away. My hands don’t budge—only swirl into her black neck instead … and then wave after sudden wave of strange images flood into me: watching people I’ve never seen; talking to people I’ve never met; Macabre giving me approval for something I never did …
My fingers twitch with the jolt of rushing memories, and it’s almost enough to let Black slip away. We exchange looks of absolute shock.
“What,” she says through a gurgle. “What was that?”
“I …” suddenly I do wonder why I can choke Black—why I can even touch her when I can’t touch anything. Why I can prevent her from breathing when we don’t breathe. I look at my palms, still on her throat. “We can touch,” I whisper. “And we can … combine. Because energy can combine.”
“That’s,” Black starts. My grip loosens just a little more. “No …”
“I—I’m absorbing you?” I say, horrified at the thought.
“NO!” Black says.
“No, no, no, no, no …” The students around us say.
Black pulls her legs out of Thinkor and coils them between us, pushing against my chest. “It can not—will not end this way! You can’t handle this!” She writhes, trying to pull and push herself away. “Think, Pink: All you do is run! From everybody!”
She feels me loosen to the point of letting go and smiles. “And you run from yourself! Hiding beside—inside—others! What would you do if you have nowhere to run? From yourself? What will you become then?!”
The students, free of Thinkor’s control, stand right where Black left them, too terrified to move, too terrified to speak. All they do is stand, sit, or crouch in a massive clump, cutting me off from Casa. Cutting me off from Gabe …
My grip tightens. And I pull Black close. The words that leave my mouth do so not because of who I am, but because of a desperate faith that Liberty and Mom were wrong about who I was: “I will become—me.”
I shove myself into her. She screams and pushes at me, pulls at my hair, kicks my chest and belly. But each touch just sends me deeper into her. Our bodies—our writhing, screeching, bodies spin and bleed into each other. She screams louder. I think I laugh. Not because I think anything is even kind of funny. But because I need something to separate me from the lifetime of hurt I’m about to live.
Black pushes at my shoulders, panic in her wide eyes. “NO! Not this way! You don’t get to have this! My life! Who I am!” Her voice sounds more like mine now. And I think—feel—the words like they’re my own.
I ignore her … like she’s nothing. And force all that I am into all that she is. She becomes me and I become her. All of the pain, all of the emotion, all of that boring, human stuff enters me with one blinding jolt of despair and anguish.
EPILOGUE
I am so, so sorry …
It’s all that I can think. All that I can feel. When I think of something happy, I think about how I shouldn’t be thinking of anything happy. Cause I don’t deserve happiness. I deserve misery. Hurt. Pain. The searing, soul crushing kind that you see on the news.
Crippled.
I crippled Rock.
And the things that Black has done. The things that I now feel because she is me and I am her …
Oh God …
But that’s not the worst part. The really awful part. The one that would make people sick. Disgusted. Appalled. The one thing that not even I can understand. So how could Mom? How could Gabe? How could they ever want to see me? To love me? How can you love someone so sick? So demented. Black enjoyed the things she did … I enjoyed the things I did …
God—I’m so ashamed. So disgusted. So …
I scream. Scream like I haven’t since that day. That awful, awful day when things changed. No, that’s too vague. Things didn’t change. I changed. I became less.
I scream again. Scream to Rock that I am sorry. Scream to Mom and Dad that I am sorry. That I really, really didn’t mean it …
Please, somebody help me. Take this pain away. Take me away. I can’t live like this. Can’t feel when the only thing I can feel is pain. It’s never going to end. Just going to be one big wave of agony after the next. And it’s never ever going to end. This is as big as the sky and it never ends.
Somebody … please help me.
Please kill me.
I’m still alive. I scream again.
I never stop.
***
“Pink?” a young male voice says.
I open my eyes and look around. I’m balled up, floating in a corner of my room in Casa’s apartment. Gabe is next to me, sitting criss-cross applesauce on the floor. Casa sits on my bed.
I drift up, looking at each of them. I feel … different. Angry, happy, sad, and anxious. “What … what happened?”
Gabe stands. “We’re not sure. You’ve been in and out of it. Screaming about …” Gabe and Casa share a look, “stuff.”
“What kind of ‘stuff’ ?”
Casa stands. “The worst kind.” His voice is raspy from the blow to his still-purpled throat.
I hover to the mirror and look, expecting—hoping—to find the same pink, misty thirteen year old looking girl wearing an I heart Brittany shirt. I’m still misty—I’m pink (just a little darker). But the shirt is gone. As the thirteen year old girl is gone too, replaced with a twenty-three year old me.
In my birthday suit.
“Fwa!” I cover myself up and dart behind the dresser. “I’ve been naked the whole time? Tweety and all?”
Gabe rubs the back of his neck. “I … uh.”
“It’s not like we could just throw a blanket on you,” Casa says. “And you hardly have anything I’ve never seen.”
“But you’re an absolute perv! An old, creepy absolute pervy … perv!”
“Pink,” Gabe says through red cheeks. “Casa wouldn’t think that …”
“No, she’s right,” Casa says. “I am a perv. Fortunately, there was a nineteen year old male college student here, making sure I was a perfect gentleman the entire time.”
I concentrate, and shift my body into some clothing. I think about the I heart Brittany shirt for a half a hot second before deciding on sweats instead.
“Neat trick,” Gabe says. “Why did you only stick with the one outfit all this time?”
I float out from behind the dresser with a shrug. “Only thing that felt right, but now I … I don’t know.” I look at the hardwood floor for the first time. A mattress with a crumpled blanket lays at the foot of my bed; a laptop and an iPad over to my right; empty coffee cups, bottles of water, and pizza boxes are scattered everywhere. “How long was I here?”
“A week,” Gabe says.
“A week?! What happened at UTP? What about Thinkor? What about …” I trail off, realizing that I care—I actually care about what happened to Black’s hostages.
“You merged with Black,” Gabe says. His tone is gentle, like
he’s afraid the wrong words will break me. “And then you were too out of it to do anything else. I figured out a way to put a force field around you, keeping you together so that I could bring you here.” His eyes narrow suddenly, like he’s flinching at something. He’s so weird sometimes.
Casa grabs a glass of bourbon off my dresser, next to a Hello Kitty lamp. “The students told the police what happened, or at least as much as their fragmented memories could put together.”
“Considering everything Black put them through,” Gabe says, “they’re lucky they could put a word together.”
“So what is the official statement?” I say, drifting between them.
“Thinkor was under the influence of an unknown Super that did some unknown things for unknown reasons,” Casa says.
I turn and face them as I continue to float in the same direction, backwards. “That’s it? People bought that?”
Casa shrugs. “What’s not to buy? Gabe and I were the only ones that weren’t brainwashed by Black. We’re certainly not going to offer up any more details. But in the meantime, a lot of people are questioning Thinkor’s ability to resist any sort of outside influence. And since Thinkor himself doesn’t have any idea what happened, he’s not able to offer up much of a defense. The official statement from HEROES is pretty much, ‘We’re looking into it.’ ”
Another thought hits me. “Rock! Oh my God, Rock! We have to—”
“I checked into him,” Gabe says. “He’s at Prose General, in the coma ward. We can go see him whenever you want.”
“Pretty sure the answer to that ‘whenever’ is never. But I need to—have to go see him. It’s the least I can do after …” I look down. “So, wait a minute, Gabe, you stayed here? The entire time?”
Gabe raises his eyebrows. “What does that mean? Of course I did.”
“You say that like it was expected or whatever. Like you had to … you were afraid I’d come back as her, weren’t you? As Black?”
