Forced Retirement

by Robert T. Jeschonek

  As Epitome clasped Hericane against the hard metal of his breastplate and carried her off, she hauled back one fist and hammered it into his jaw with all her strength. Epitome responded with a head butt that knocked Hericane senseless.

  As Hericane struggled to regain control of herself, he raised her high overhead. He looked as if he were ready to hurl her to the ground below.

  “I won’t let you kill me!” he said, visibly shaking. “I won’t let it happen again!”

  Then, just as suddenly as Epitome had snatched her from Mardi, someone grabbed Hericane from Epitome.

  It was the newcomer who had followed Overtime through the chute. He flashed Hericane a blinding smile as he swept her away from her father.

  Though Hericane had thought that he had looked handsome from a distance, she decided that he looked stunning up close. The smile, the bright green eyes, the creamy skin, the golden hair...all of it mingled in artful perfection, as impossibly ideal as a retouched photo or a painting.

  He turned to her, and she was lost in his gaze. She was held firmly by his intense personal magnetism...and something else. Only after he had set her down on the roof of a factory where Mardi was waiting did she know what it was.

  Familiarity.

  The man leaped away before Hericane could say a word to him. He headed straight for Epitome, who hovered some distance away with a frown of deep confusion on his face.

  “I know him from somewhere, don’t I?” said Hericane.

  “You might say that,” said Mardi Gras.

  At that moment, Hericane heard the familiar screech of her father’s powers in action...and everything fell together. Her eyes widened and a chill raced up her spine as she figured out who the long-haired man really was.

  Because her seventy-two-year-old father was not the one using his powers at that moment.

  But the long-haired newcomer was.

  “Oh my God,” Hericane said in a hushed voice. “It’s him.”

  Mardi Gras put a hand on Hericane’s shoulder and squeezed gently. “Yeah, it is,” she said. “We figured it was the only way.”

  “My father’s younger self,” said Hericane. “Overtime brought him from the past.”

  Mardi nodded solemnly. “He’s the only one powerful enough to stop Epitome.”

  The sky flared as the young Epitome blasted his older counterpart with a bolt of electro-breath. The old man fell back fast, then caught himself and pressed forward against the crackling stream of energy.

  The confused look was gone from his face, replaced by grim determination. “How many times have I put you down today,” he snarled, “and you just keep coming back for more.”

  Young Epitome cut off his electro-breath to answer. “This is the first time we’ve met,” he said. “You don’t remember because you’re sick.”

  When she heard this exchange, Hericane understood another of the day’s mysteries for the first time. Throughout Epitome’s attacks, she had wondered why he had thought she was him...and further, why he was trying to kill her if he believed that she was him.

  Now, she knew.

  “He never kept pictures around the house,” she said. “I never knew he looked so much like me when he was young.”

  “He sure did,” said Mardi.

  Hericane nodded slowly. “When he came after me, he didn’t think I was him as he is today,” she said. “He thought I was him from years ago. He remembered coming forward in time as a young man to fight himself as an old man.”

  “He knew this would happen all along,” said Mardi, “but he ended up making it happen. By attacking us to try to head it off, he forced us to get help from the only person who could stop him.”

  “Himself,” said Hericane.

  As she and Mardi watched, old Epitome drove a fist at young Epitome’s stomach, then another at his chin. Both blows glanced off seemingly without impact, as young Epitome hovered calmly in place without so much as a wince.

  The next time that old Epitome took a swing, young Epitome caught his fist with one hand and held it effortlessly in place.

  “Listen to me,” said young Epitome. “You are sick. You need help. Let me help you.”

  Old Epitome struggled against his young counterpart’s grip, working to free his captured hand. “You’re a liar,” he said. “You won’t help me. I remember how this all ends.”

  “You have Alzheimer’s disease,” said young Epitome. “You don’t know what you remember anymore.”

  “I remember!” said old Epitome, still straining to wrench his hand free.

  Without a twitch of effort, young Epitome steadily pushed his older self’s fist away from him. “You almost killed your own daughter because you thought she was me!” he said. “Still think you’re in your right mind?”

  For an instant, old Epitome looked down at Hericane and Mardi on the factory rooftop. Even from a distance, Hericane thought that she glimpsed a flicker of clarity in his eyes.

  Then, it was gone, if it had ever truly been there. Old Epitome started to glow with an aura of hazy, golden light.

  “No!” shouted Hericane, launching herself off the rooftop toward the action. “Don’t do it, Dad!”

  She knew exactly what that golden aura meant.

  Old Epitome was not going to surrender. Instead, he was pulling out all the stops.

  He was going into the Bonus Round.

  So was young Epitome. With his older self activating a rapidly changing sequence of unpredictable powers, what else could he do?

  For a moment, the young and old Epitomes hung in the sky, their combined auras swelling and brightening. Then, the auras shifted from gold to red, and the men exploded away from each other.

  They charged back together immediately, each glowing with a different light and surging with a different power as the Bonus Round fully engulfed them.

  Hericane intended to hurl herself between them and cut the battle short, but Overtime rocketed up to block her path. When Hericane tried to swerve around him, he grabbed hold of her and froze her in place with the Pause Inducer mounted in his gauntlet.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her. “That’s a fight you don’t want to be in the middle of.”

  Hericane wanted to correct him, tell him that she had to try to save her father, but she was on pause and could not speak. All that she could do was watch helplessly as the young and old manifestations of her father battered each other with a stream of destructive powers.

  Both Epitomes changed powers in the blink of an eye, switching from one to the next every few seconds. It was a dizzying whirl of fire and ice and cyclones and explosions and body parts that multiplied and distended and vibrated faster than the eye could see. Even Hericane, who knew her father’s abilities well, did not recognize some of the transformations and emissions on display in the heart of the duel.

  One man grew to five times his original size, and the other man shot purple rays from his fingertips. Clouds of scalding steam hissed out of one man’s nose, while the other man split into a dozen razor-sharp slices.

  While Hericane watched, the two Epitomes flashed from nightmare vision to ink blot blasts, from plague breath to laser fists to slave rays to spike skin. Young Epitome’s limbs disappeared, then punched back in from another dimension, glowing orange and seemingly detached from their owner, to pummel old Epitome from different directions. Old Epitome turned into a sheet of malleable golden metal and wrapped around young Epitome’s head, sealing it in a sphere without a single opening.

  Young Epitome thrashed in the air, pulling at the sphere, trying unsuccessfully to wedge his fingers between the golden skin and his throat. His body turned to rock, then steel, then ice, but he could not break open the sphere from within. He expanded and shrunk and stretched, but the sphere changed size and shape along with him.

  Young Epitome wrestled with the smothering helmet for one more moment. Then, he stopped fighting it.

  And became a blinding ball of energy like a new sun flaring to life in the sk
y.

  Because Hericane was on pause and could not blink or shield her eyes, Overtime threw a hand over them to block the burst of light. When Overtime pulled his hand away, Hericane saw a single figure hovering in the sky, silhouetted against a pulsing rainbow nimbus.

  For an instant, Hericane thought it was the seventy-two-year-old version of Epitome, because his hair was little more than stubble, and his costume was red with a gold breastplate instead of red and white fabric.

  But as the halo faded, and the man drifted toward her, she saw that he was not the old man after all. He was not quite the same young man who had come from the past, either.

  For one thing, the blinding smile was gone. “I’m so sorry,” he said grimly, looking lost. He stared down at his costume, brushing it with his fingertips.

  Hericane felt sick. She had always wondered how the impenetrable golden breastplate of her father’s costume had been created, with its unearthly properties and unique, pebbled texture. It must have been forged in the heart of a volcano or a star, she had thought, or in another dimension where the laws of physics were different from those she knew. How else could an indestructible metal be shaped into body armor for a super hero?

  Now, she knew. In addition to burning his long hair down to stubble, Young Epitome’s nova blast had liquefied the metal sphere that had nearly smothered him. The metal had oozed down over his chest and adhered to his costume.

  For fifty-odd years, Hericane’s father had worn a costume sheathed in his own remains.

  “Sorry,” said young Epitome. The confusion on his face shifted to horror. Tears rolled out of both eyes. He drifted close to Hericane as if he knew her, as if she could help or reassure him in some way.

  Hericane felt a mild zap like static electricity as Overtime took her off pause mode. Her body jerked as she regained the power of movement in her native time frame.

  Even when she was able to move and speak again, however, she did not know what to say to young Epitome.

  He continued to hover in front of her, alternately meeting her gaze and staring down at his newly minted breastplate. His expression shifted quickly, like super-powers in the Bonus Round, switching from anguish to disbelief to horrified rage to blank shock...though the overriding visible emotion was deep confusion.

  “I think I owe you an apology,” he said slowly, returning his gaze to Hericane. “I’m sorry for killing your father.” He said it like a question, raising his voice on the last syllables.

  “I only wanted to help him,” said Epitome. His eyes narrowed and shunted to one side, staring into space. “I wanted to stop him from hurting people...but God knows I didn’t want this to happen.”

  Tears rolled down his face, and his shoulders shuddered. He hung his head, then caught sight of the breastplate and quickly looked up again.

  Hericane drifted forward and took him in her arms. She stroked the stubble on his scalp as he sobbed silently into her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry he hurt you,” said the man who was or had been or would be her father, trembling against her. He was younger now than she was, and she did not know him though she had known him all her life, and it was almost too strange for her to bear.

  At that moment, Overtime bobbed into view behind Epitome and pointed to one of the fifty watches strapped onto his right arm. Then, he turned and waved at the rainbow disk of a newly opened time chute spinning in midair behind him.

  ‘Time’s up,’ he signaled. ‘Time to send him back.’

  Hericane shook her head and held on to her father.

  “How can I live with this?” said Epitome. “Knowing I did this to myself? Knowing this is what’s in store for me?”

  “Don’t close yourself off,” whispered Hericane, giving him the only advice that she could think of...the advice that she had wanted to give him for decades. “Don’t be afraid to reach out to other people. Maybe things will be different for you next time.”

  Overtime tapped Epitome on the shoulder then, and he drew back from Hericane. “I don’t know if I can take that chance,” he said, wiping the tears from his eyes. “I don’t want to hurt you again.”

  He reached out then and ran his fingertips softly down the curve of Hericane’s cheek. She had never known that he could be so gentle. His eyes widened and sparkled as he gazed at her wonderingly.

  She felt tears of her own begin to fall.

  Finally, she understood why he had pushed her away all her life. Not because of her sexuality. Not because he did not love her.

  He had pushed her away because he had wanted to protect her from himself.

  “I love you, Dad,” said Hericane, her voice catching. It was the last time in her life that she would say those words to Epitome...though, from his point of view, it was the first time that she said them to him.

  Then, Overtime took young Epitome by the hand and guided him into the swirling disk of the time chute.

  Hericane should not have been happy, she thought, because, after all, she had lost her father that day. He had died right before her eyes.

  And yet, her heart was full and her tears were tears of joy, for just before Epitome slid headfirst into the chute, he looked back over his shoulder and said the one thing that she had never heard him say to her before.

  “I love you, too,” he said. And then he was gone.

  Special Preview: Vampire Lords

  By Robert T. Jeschonek

  Now Available from Tsetse Press

  Jonah was drunk, pissed at the world, fresh from his mom and dad's viewing at the funeral home...and he was playing what might have been his best gig ever.

  He had always been good, but he was great that night. He ripped through every song with unusual precision and ferocity. Instead of note-perfect renditions, he brought each solo alive with newfound fire and surprise. He pushed the whole band to a new level, and he could tell they loved it.

  As they drove through one Jethro Tull classic after another, from "Locomotive Breath" to "Thick as a Brick," all four musicians grinned with rare and predatory intensity. It wasn't just a run-of-the-mill gig.

  Too bad hardly anyone was there to see it.

  The bar, a downtown Tucson dive joint called Halcyon, was tiny...and nowhere near full. Not counting the bartender, Jonah didn't see more than ten people in the room at the same time that night.

  But he played for those ten people like he was playing for a full house. Like he was playing with something to prove.

  Something to forget.

  The audience, small as it was, definitely caught the vibe and egged on the band. It was the kind of give-and-take that Jonah thrived on, with band and audience equally focused and serious and unified.

  And some were more focused than others. One, in particular, was focused hard on Jonah.

  She looked twenty-something, with shoulder-length blonde hair and impossibly bright blue eyes. A tight-fitting white tank top and black leather skirt hugged the curves of her perfectly sloped and rounded body.

  If she ever took her eyes off Jonah, he didn't see it happen. She watched every move he made and locked eyes with him every time he looked out at her.

  She didn't seem to be with anyone. She just stood with a bottle of beer in her hand, six feet away from Jonah, dancing to every single song with supple, undulating movements.

  Which, naturally, made him play with even more fire. He had a pretty good idea what might be coming next.

  Sure enough, at the end of the first set, the girl made a beeline for him. With a silent, knowing smile, she wrapped his hand in her own and led him out the back door into the alley outside.

  Then, she closed the door behind them and pinned him against the wall.

  Jonah's heart pounded as she flexed her body against his. Her hands, where they locked his wrists to the wall, were cold, but her gaze was filled with heat.

  "You were amazing in there." Her throaty voice was a purr. "I am so turned on right now."

  "I know the feeling." Jonah grinned. Playing with the b
and had taken his mind off his troubles a little. Maybe the blonde would take his mind the rest of the way off, if only for a while.

  Without another word, the girl moved in for a kiss. Jonah's heart beat even faster as he finally made the contact he'd been anticipating for so long.

  But the kiss was not quite what he'd expected.

  The girl's lips were freezing cold, as if she'd just eaten ice cream or gone swimming. There wasn't the slightest trace of warmth anywhere in her kiss.

  Jonah pulled back. "Are you chilly?" Even as he asked the question, he couldn't imagine that she could possibly feel cold in that alley. It was a hot desert night in Tucson, probably in the nineties...plus which, heat was rolling off an air conditioning unit in the window a few yards away.

  "Low blood pressure. But we can fix that." The girl moved in for another kiss. Her fingers latched onto his belt buckle.

  "We need you," said the girl.

  We? That was when Jonah realized something wasn't right.

  He suddenly felt much hotter than he thought he should. His lower body, in fact, was quickly becoming uncomfortable, as if he were standing too close to a hot stove.

  Jonah looked down...and immediately wished he hadn't.

  He'd never seen anything like it. Thin streams of blood projected from the tops of his legs--a dozen streams per leg punching right through his clothing. They met in a glistening red veil that hung suspended in midair, rippling mere inches from the girl's face. As Jonah watched, new streams burst from his legs and added their crimson liquid to the veil.

  "What the hell?" said Jonah. "What are you doing?"

  But the girl did not answer.

  Get out of here. Now.

  Jonah was in for another shock when he tried to escape: his hands were stuck to the wall, and his feet were locked to the floor of the alley.

  He couldn't move.

  What's going on here?

  Then, it got worse.

  The girl opened her mouth wide, and red filaments reached toward her from the veil. The sinuous filaments twisted and writhed as they flowed between her scarlet lips and over her jet black tongue.