A Very Good Man

by P. S. Power

  She tried for baffled rather than her normal confrontational style, since they hadn't called her ugly, just confused her with someone much better looking, which was a first for her. Maybe she had a lot of damage to her face? She couldn't feel anything, no bandages or sore spots... Maybe they just thought that her normal look – the right side of her face swollen and misshapen, the left side slightly concave and lumpy, jutting out at the bottom of her chin suddenly, nose having been broken several times from different attacks – indicated fresh damage?

  “I'm sorry, that's not me. I know I may look funny, but it's just the way I look. I'm Gwen Farris, not, what was the name? Katherine? Though that does remind me... the freak that stabbed me? He called me that. Maybe he has some kind of serial killer obsession with her? Though people like that... don't they usually pick women that remind them of their target, the person they're fixated on?” Being careful not to let her head turn, she tried to give them a small smile, so they wouldn't freak out on her when they realized that she really looked this bad all the time.

  Instead of saying anything, the nurse went to the hall and came back a few moments later, handing the doctor a silver colored hand mirror that looked to be made of real silver, slightly tarnished on the back. Real metal, not plastic.

  He held it in front of her, so Gwen could see herself.

  The woman in the mirror wasn't her.

  She'd love to look like that, but she knew, from thirty-four years of living with it, that her face resembled a lumpy sack of potatoes someone had taken an ugly stick to and not spared effort on, not the plucky sidekick from a television show.

  She moved her face and the woman in the mirror did the same things. She wanted to touch it, but her hands couldn't reach that high, it hurt too much when she tried. She'd have figured it as a dream, except for her chest ached too damn much for that. Trying to reach up to her face anyway sent a wave of pain through her that made her stop. Definitely real pain at least.

  “That's not my face. I mean, I admit the face in the mirror seems to be reflecting my image right now, I'm not stupid or denying that the image is tracking, but I don't look like that. I can't look like that. The doctors told me that they'd already done all the corrective surgeries possible years ago. Besides, even if someone could afford that kind of massive work, which I can't, why make me look like someone else that's that different? Wouldn't it be easier to find someone that looks like her, Katherine, already and start from there?”

  The doctor took the mirror away, handing it to the nurse without even looking at her, the woman taking it away smoothly, like a runner passing a baton in a relay event.

  “I...see. Well, this could be any of a number of things. It could be that you're suffering from shock of course, in which case I'm sure you'll recover your normal self soon. Just in case this is something else, I'd like to bring in a specialist. Nurse Rogers... could you get in touch with Doctor Professor Grainger at Western University? Please ask that he come quickly and bring the full kit. He'll understand what that means, I believe.”

  The nurse left and no one mentioned her odd appearance again after that, they did bring her a few tiny sandwiches and tea after a while. The white bread had a thin spread of very bland cheese inside, with spices Gwen thought, but not enough to make it taste like much. The tea was a basic green, like the Lipton she had at home in her cupboard. Unsweetened.

  The nurse fed her patiently, interspersing tiny sips of the warm liquid when she asked. She decided to give the woman a rare third mental check mark by her name. That level of attention from a nurse was incredible.

  She'd have liked to look in the mirror again, but couldn't move easily enough to get it from the table it had been placed on, next to the water. If the face in the mirror had somehow been put on her body, she wanted to keep it if at all possible. Even with her warped body, that face would be a godsend. Worth being stabbed in the heart to get, especially considering she'd lived through it. She'd been hurt worse with less to show for it.

  Actually, most of the times she'd been hurt there'd been nothing to show for it at all, so this was a massive improvement. About time things started breaking even.

  As darkness fell outside her window, the high kind that you couldn't see out of without a ladder, a man with silver hair came in, a heavy fellow, not fat, but stout or maybe beefy, who didn't smile or frown, looking at her curiously instead. He spoke softly, as if afraid she might be slightly deranged. Given what was going on it was a good guess, Gwen thought. For a few seconds she wondered about that possibility herself.

  “Miss...Farris?” He said tentatively, standing well back, the nurse hovering behind him, watching what he did, it seemed to Gwen, not her reactions. “My name is Doctor Professor Grainger, your doctor, Schmidt, asked me to check out some things using my specialty of radiative effectives. The tests won't hurt and may tell us a lot about what's going on here, even if they don't make sense to you immediately. Is it alright with you if we do that?” He smiled then, trying to look encouraging she supposed, and failing slightly, at least to her eyes.

  “Sure, I'm not doing anything else anyway. Where do we start?” She made herself smile, confused again for a second at how it felt, just flowing into place without stress on any of her facial muscles at all. Was this what regular people felt all the time? It was so easy to smile this way you'd think they'd do it non-stop, Gwen thought. Her opinion of average people dropping a bit suddenly. It was that simple for them and they chose to frown? What jerks.

  Where they began seemed odd to her, everything the man wanted seemed strange in fact. He had her hold two copper spheres connected by wires that ran to a small device he watched intently, while asking her questions. She held them resting by her sides. The man had reached over her to place the sphere in her left hand and the nurse took several steps closer for some reason, as if worried.

  To protect her from attack? The big man, Grainger, actually seemed nice enough to Gwen. He certainly didn't act ready to harm her at all. No, that was different. Nice to have backup though, since she doubted that she could do much for herself at the moment.

  He asked her name, then if she remembered ever being known as Katherine Vernor. When Gwen said she didn't he wrote something down and moved on, asking her favorite color. Green. If she liked reading books; yes, mainly mysteries and fantasy. Her parents' names, the names of her brothers and sisters, and where she lived.

  She answered as simply and honestly as she could, in case this thing acted like some kind of a lie detector. After about a half hour of questions, he started asking everything again, with different phrasing. Kind of like on a police drama where they asked the same questions over and over, trying to catch people in a lie. She knew that they did that in real life too, having been examined that way after reporting attacks several times. This guy probably meant to do the same with her now. Well, all she could do was tell the truth, she didn't have anything else to give the man that made more sense, or she might have been tempted.

  Then, digging through the large dark brown leather bag he'd brought, Grainger took out a complicated looking device made of wood, with a pendulum in the middle that looked to be made out of layers of copper disks with glass between each layer. Every couple of layers the glass, if it was glass at all, looked red instead of clear like the others. This made a clump that hung by a shiny white cord of some kind. Nylon maybe? Or silk, but most people didn't tie things up with silk thread as far as she knew.

  After setting up on the table near her, moving it closer so she could reach it, he asked if she could possibly put her hand under the pendulum, palm facing up and open. It hurt, a lot, but she managed after a minute.

  Obviously, this wasn't Kansas anymore. Or even Nebraska where she'd been when she'd fallen asleep. If this man could help her figure things out, then she'd help him do it, even if it did send shooting pains across her chest. Pain wasn't exactly new to her after all. The rest of this was.

  Then the man asked her the same, or at least very sim
ilar, questions again. As she spoke, the pendulum moved, swinging one way then the other. Slow movements that had the feeling of one magnet being repelled by another, not just the back and forth movement she expected. At one point, when she tried to tell him what programs she liked to watch on television, it suddenly jumped straight up about an inch and hovered there for a second. Like something floating in liquid.

  The big man stroked his mustache and nodded, asking her then to describe her daily life as completely as possible, not leaving anything out if she could help it.

  “Well, OK. I work at home, Web-design mainly.” The copper and glass assembly jumped again. “Anyway, I get up in the morning, work for a few hours, then eat breakfast, I normally just nuke a bagel for a few seconds with some cream cheese...” It bobbed again.

  Each time she mentioned an electronic device, and a few other things like cars, the pendulum reacted in a funny way, jumping up and bobbing around.

  Grainger saw it too and took extensive notes asking for particulars on some strange things.

  Finally he called the other doctor in and explained his findings. That he had findings from what they'd done left Gwen feeling a little in awe of the man. Given everything she'd have just assumed that the crazy person was lying to her. This place obviously and sincerely wasn't home. The idea should have shaken her, but home, while being what she knew, wasn't that great. She'd deal.

  “Miss Farris, and I do believe that's truly her name, seems to have been placed in this body somehow, probably some magical event from our world as her world seems to be largely without our kind of magic. They use “electricity” instead, a powerful force indeed – that being the stuff of lighting if I understood correctly – but how they make it do all she claimed... Still, she told no lies at all and the responses to those questions indicate a truly otherworldly origin. I have to say that this woman is indeed who she claims to be and is definitely not from our world, even if her body clearly is.”

  A woman wearing what seemed to be a suit jacket, blouse, and mid-calf tweed skirt, all in a light brown, entered the room then, taking it all in carefully.

  “Interesting,” she said to no one in particular, voice flat and devoid of life, “I wonder what happened to Katherine Vernon then?”

  As a special bonus, here's a free sample of

  “The Infected: Proxy”

  Book one of The Infected series by P.S. Power

  1

  The bar smelled like stale beer and blood by the time Brian got there. Before he could do more than get a vague sense of place – some images of brown wood and red tile floor, flashes of blue and green neon from the walls that didn't make sense to his mind yet – the men attacked.

  The last two times this happened had been different.

  Then the people, both men, had reacted in shock to a chubby Chinese guy suddenly existing where their victim had just been. They showed this clearly, and sensibly, by moving away from him in fear. In the second case, the guy actually ran away all together. These two didn't seem afraid at all unfortunately. They just hit – hard – before Brian even really knew he'd gotten there. At least one of them had to have hyper-reflexes to make that happen, that or something so close that it wouldn't make a difference.

  Something slammed into the side of his head making him see stars, not making the world go dim yet. However that worked. If you'd asked Brian even a few minutes before, he would have said they were the same thing. That was wrong though.

  Apparently.

  The one in front of him, obviously Infected, moved to hit him again, doing it so fast that the impact didn't even register until the man had backed away and stood, waiting. Testing the waters maybe? Seeing what powers this new guy would be bringing to the fight? The answer he got was a wobbling run toward the door at speeds that were so slow the men didn't react, not at first, too busy looking for the set up, for this to be a trick, or, just possibly, a joke.

  A fat Chinese guy runs out of a bar...

  The other man, dressed in jeans, button-up shirt, and a cowboy hat of all things, jumped into his way, laughing. “Are you lost or something? What did you do with the pretty red-head? We were just going to have a little fun with her... I guess you'll have to take her place.” The talker pulled a handgun, something small compared to the giant images in the computer games Brian played.

  This one was real though, which made a huge difference to how big is seemed, adding size to it in his mind, making it gigantic. Shiny black and scratched on the back end, a sticky tar-like substance coating it, all clearly visible as the metal came toward his head.

  Brian fought then, swinging as hard as he could, desperately, missing more often than not, and spinning slightly in place since the momentum didn't have anywhere else to go. If he'd had time he could have figured out how hard each blow had to be, just based on the amount of reaction, he knew. Because of course, his mind had time for that, just not to help get him out of the way. Blows peppered his face.

  The quick man moved into and out of range so easily that punching hardly seemed worth the effort against him, so Brian attacked the gunman instead. Normally, if it had just been about Brian, he probably would have just begged the men not to hurt him, given them his wallet, and hoped they didn't kill him for fun. Like officer friendly had taught the kids in elementary school, when in doubt, beg and grovel. He could do that, if it would have worked.

  Right now he didn't have that option, did he? Giving up would mean that the woman, the red-head they'd talked about most likely, would end up dead. If that wasn't the case, Brian wouldn't be in the bar at all. His power didn't work that way. At least it hadn't seemed to so far.

  If it made him show up, someone was about to die.

  He grabbed at the gun, a move of pure desperation, getting hit with it a few times, pain blossoming at each point of impact, nearly as bad as any that he could remember ever feeling. Slipping on the floor suddenly, Brian fell to his back and hit hard enough to force the air out of him with a “woof.” His hand, slick from whatever was on the floor, came up red when he looked at it. For a moment he wondered if it could be his. He'd certainly been hit hard enough to be bleeding by now.

  Then the others came into focus.

  All dead or dying, shot or cut, it looked like at a glance. Brian's mind worked hard, trying to figure out what to do. He couldn't run away, the smaller man was too quick. Way too fast. The other guy moved in to hit him with the weapon again, so he tried a hay-maker with his right hand, wishing he'd started at least working out or something.

  Maybe some boxing lessons? Anything would be better than the spazing out he was doing right now. It sent a shock down the whole arm when he connected with the side of the man's head, knocking his hat off. The little man laughed at his friend, an eerie chittering sound, then pulled something off the bar and hit Brian over the head with it. Pain, cuts and burning washed over his skin.

  Brian kept swinging, not hitting anything at all, gasping for breath from the exertion, while the smaller man, also dressed like a douche-bag cowboy, jumped in and hit him with various objects, bottles that sent glass flying, and almost absurdly, a bowl of bar peanuts. The salty residue burned wickedly. He was barely able to see by that time, his eyes burning too much from whatever liquid had been in the bottles Brian guessed, just hoping it wasn't from glass shards cutting his corneas. His vision was the one thing that had always worked for him – it would be a shame to be left blind now. As he went down he kicked at the men, again not hitting anything at all.

  The one he'd hit, the larger, slower man that was still probably twice as fast as Brian, moaned, “Damn. Our first real superhero fight and we get the “Incredible Pussy” instead of someone that can actually do anything. Does this guy even come with an ability or is his power just showing up and getting his ass kicked?” A pointy-toed boot hit him in the ribs as he struggled to get up from the floor, slipping in the blood again and hitting the ground with a thunk. Two more kicks and he didn't want to even get up, it hurt so much.
Brian stood back up anyway. He had to. No matter what, he had to save her.

  That woman.

  Brian punched and kicked feebly, hitting air for the most part, getting a single lucky punch in on the smaller man who just laughed about it and told his friend to go ahead and finish the game so they could move on. His best punch of the night and the guy just... laughed. Brian tensed and tried to think of how to fight these men. Some way to win, anything.

  Nothing came.

  The gun butt, the metal hard but not cold, warmed from either the flesh of the man that held it or the people he'd beaten before, hit the back of his neck over and over again. Brian struggled, trying to get up, to fight. Somehow. In slow motion he tried to punch from all fours, something connected, barely brushing a pant leg, getting more laughter, this time from both the men.