Less Than Hero

by S. G. Browne

  “Come here, sweetheart,” Sophie says, trying to coax Vegan over without success. She walks over and picks him up and brings him back to the table, where he claws and fights and yowls until Sophie finally puts him down and watches as he runs off and disappears into the bedroom.

  Sophie shakes her head. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s been acting so odd lately.”

  “Beats me,” I say, staring at my dinner as if it’s the most fascinating thing I’ve ever seen.

  “So what movie do you want to watch tonight?” Sophie asks.

  “You pick,” I say.

  Tonight is Movie Night, one of the few evenings Sophie doesn’t have to work at Westerly. Since I missed our last Movie Night while out fighting crime, I’m letting her make the decisions.

  “How about WALL-E?”

  Sophie’s always been a sucker for animated films and environmentally themed movies.

  After dinner, we put on our coats and head out into the cool October evening to rent a movie. Halloween is still a couple weeks away, but I’m on the lookout for goblins and trolls and other mischievous creatures, especially with Sophie at my side. It’s almost to the point where I can’t set foot outside without assessing any potential danger. When it comes to fighting crime, superheroes can’t afford to take days off. Especially with someone out there stealing memories and causing hallucinations.

  More and more news reports and articles are popping up about people suffering amnesia and having delusional episodes. While some of the latter are homeless, most are average Dicks and Janes who suddenly suffer psychotic breaks from reality.

  So far the police don’t seem to have any leads, and neither the authorities nor the media have indicated they believe the crimes are related to us. I don’t know if the people responsible for the amnesia and hallucinations are working together or going into business for themselves but whoever they are, I’m pretty sure they’re guinea pigs. Otherwise, if they’re just average American citizens on meds for anxiety or depression or insomnia, then we’re going to end up with a country of mutants, considering fifty percent of Americans take two or more prescription drugs on a daily basis.

  In the meantime, I’ll keep my shields up and my bad-guy radar on to make sure nothing happens to Sophie.

  “There’s something different about you, Lollipop,” Sophie says, her left arm hooked around my right elbow.

  “How am I different?” I say, hoping she doesn’t notice that my heart has started playing a drum solo.

  “I don’t know.” She remains silent for several moments before continuing. “It’s like the Lloyd I’ve known for the past couple of years has taken a trip somewhere.”

  I know what she means, although I think of it more as having been upgraded to a new version. The Lloyd 2.0.

  “Is that a good thing?” I say.

  “I wouldn’t say it’s good or bad,” she says, stopping and turning to face me. “But there’s definitely something new that wasn’t there before.”

  “So you like it?” I say.

  “Yes,” she says. “I like it. I just wish I understood where it came from.”

  That’s not exactly the answer I was hoping for, but I’ll take it.

  She reaches up and brushes the hair from my forehead, then traces her fingers along the side of my head. “I think you’ve got some more gray, Lollipop.”

  “Thanks for noticing,” I say.

  She smiles and runs her fingers behind my ear. If I were a dog, my tail would be wagging.

  “I like it,” she says. “It makes you look distinguished.”

  “Great,” I say. “That’s just the look I’m going for. Now can we go get the movie?”

  Just before Delancey Street, we pass a couple of trolls hanging out with their hands stuffed in their jackets and their eyes all over Sophie. It’s probably nothing more than appreciative appraisal and isn’t anything I haven’t seen before. Sophie’s an attractive woman. Even when she’s not dressed up in her fairy outfit, she still exudes a certain something that men find appealing. But as we cross the street, I glance back and notice the two trolls still watching us.

  Sophie and I go into the Duane Reade and rent WALL-E from Redbox. Since I’m in the mood, I suggest we get two movies and pick out Mystery Men, thinking maybe it’ll be a good lead-in to having a conversation about my secret identity.

  “Okay,” she says. “But I’m not a big fan of superhero films. They’re kind of silly.”

  Or maybe not.

  On the way back, we cross Delancey again and the two trolls are still hanging out on the corner. As we continue down the street, I glance back and see that they’ve fallen in behind us.

  “Something wrong?” Sophie asks.

  “Nope,” I say as I summon my trigger and my lips go numb. “Everything’s ducky.”

  I’ve never used my superpower in front of Sophie or anywhere in her general vicinity, and that’s not the way I want her to learn the truth about me. But I’m not going to risk her safety for my ideal confession scenario.

  Up ahead of us there’s scaffolding erected in front of Eisner Brothers. Other than the two of us and the trolls, there’s no one else around, so once we get under the shadows of the scaffolding, I step in front of Sophie and face her and tell her to close her eyes.

  “Why?” she asks.

  “It’s a surprise.”

  Sophie’s always been one to play along, and she loves surprises, so as soon as she closes her eyes, I step to one side and let out a yawn. Before the two trolls reach the scaffolding, both of them fall to the ground in unconscious heaps.

  In a normal world, the one in which I used to exist, I never would have had the confidence to believe I could protect Sophie. Or even considered it. So Sophie and I might have been mugged. Or worse. But now I have the courage. Now I have the power.

  “What’s going on?” she says. “Where’s my surprise?”

  “Hold on,” I say, then search through my pockets to see if I can find a good cover story, but all I come up with are my apartment keys, some lint, and a half pack of Mentos. Sophie already has a set of keys and probably wouldn’t appreciate the lint, so I tell her to hold out her hands and give her the Mentos.

  “You can open your eyes,” I say.

  Sophie looks down into her hands. “Mentos?”

  I just look at her and smile.

  “But I don’t eat Mentos,” she says.

  “I know,” I say. “That’s the surprise.”

  Sophie stares at the half pack of Mentos, then looks back at me and cocks her head. “I don’t know who’s acting odder: you or Vegan.”

  “Come on.” I take Sophie’s hand and lead her away from the two trolls slumbering behind us on the sidewalk. “Let’s go watch a movie.”

  Frank, Vic, Charlie, Randy, Blaine, and I are upstairs having lunch at Curry in a Hurry, which is packed with the weekday lunchtime crowd. Hanging plants and watercolor paintings of snake charmers and Indian romance adorn the walls. In the back, next to the bathrooms, a flat-screen television plays something from Bollywood.

  “Did you know that a lot of Bollywood films are just remakes of Hollywood films?” Blaine says. “And not remade with permission, but plagiarized?”

  “Like what?” Charlie asks.

  “The Godfather. It Happened One Night. Mrs. Doubtfire,” Blaine says, ticking them off on his fingers. “There are hundreds of films that have been plagiarized. Some of them scene for scene.”

  “Please don’t ask him to list all of them,” Vic says. “Otherwise he won’t shut up.”

  “Another one of these!” shouts some obnoxious guy sitting with a friend three tables away, waving an empty Kingfisher Lager bottle, trying to get the waiter’s attention.

  I glance over at Vic. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “What?” Vic says, wearing his innocent face.

  In spite of the fact that we all agreed to not use our abilities to teach douche bags a lesson, Vic seems to have a problem sta
ying on message. More than once we’ve been out to the movies or to lunch or walking down the street and some man or woman smoking or swearing or blabbing away on a cell phone has suddenly started vomiting.

  At another table, a Japanese woman answers her iPhone.

  “Not her, either,” I say.

  Vic pouts as he digs into his beef curry. “Cell phones shouldn’t be allowed in restaurants.”

  “What about for emergencies?” Charlie asks.

  “Emergencies existed before cell phones,” Vic says. “And we got along just fine without them.”

  “More than seventy-five percent of nine-one-one calls come from cell phones now,” Blaine says. “The problem is, since cell phones don’t have a fixed address, police and fire departments and paramedics aren’t able to respond as quickly as if the call originated from a landline.”

  “Speaking of emergencies, there was a four-alarm fire in my bedroom last night,” Randy says. “Total Talking Heads.”

  “Can we please have one meal without you discussing your sexual escapades?” Frank asks.

  I notice Charlie isn’t joining the conversation and looks kind of spaced out, staring at his food as if in some kind of a trance. I’m about to ask him if he’s okay when Blaine says, “Hey, check it out.”

  The obnoxious guy has climbed on top of his table and is sitting down in his plate of half-eaten food.

  “I like to think of myself as a scale,” he says, striking a pose with his legs crossed in the lotus position and his arms held out to the sides, palms up.

  “How about now?” Vic asks.

  Charlie laughs and takes a bite of his aloo gobi instead of staring at it, so apparently he’s fine.

  “I am Karma,” the guy on the table says in a loud, commanding voice. “I weigh the outcome of your decisions. Heed my wisdom.”

  “Heed this,” a balding man says, displaying his middle finger. A few seconds later, he trips and falls into another table.

  “Now that’s some instant karma,” Vic says.

  “I don’t know.” I watch the guy who is still sitting on the table and wonder if he might have had anything to do with Baldy falling face-first into someone else’s lunch. “Maybe it’s more than that.”

  “What do you mean?” Randy asks.

  I nod toward the guy sitting on the table. “Maybe he’s like us.”

  “You think so?” Charlie says, his eyes wide like those of a starstruck teenager.

  All of us turn to look at the self-proclaimed Karma.

  “Couldn’t it be a coincidence?” Blaine asks.

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Frank says, “nothing’s a coincidence.”

  At the back of the restaurant, the manager points his finger at Karma and yells, “Get off the table! Get off the table and get out or I’ll call the police!”

  Karma doesn’t appear overly concerned about the manager’s threats, because he’s not moving.

  “If you do good things, good things will happen to you,” he says, then lowers his right hand and raises his left. “If you do bad things, yada yada yada.”

  “Do you think we should go talk to him?” Charlie asks.

  “And say what?” Frank says, his mouth full of chicken masala.

  “Maybe we could recruit him,” Charlie says. “See if he wants to join up with us.”

  “I don’t know,” Vic says. “He seems like a huge douche bag to me.”

  The man who would be Karma remains on the table, espousing various Buddhist teachings to the lunchtime crowd about wholesome actions and kindness and truth. The strange thing is, a lot of the customers are actually paying attention. At one point, his lunch companion, who looks like the offspring of Brad Pitt and Ryan Reynolds, asks him a question about the path of destiny.

  “Man creates his own destiny,” Karma says. “The path you seek is your own.”

  While the manager calls the police and Karma continues to dispense his wisdom, a twenty-something man holding a baseball hat approaches him.

  “If I apologize to my girlfriend, will she forgive me?” he asks.

  “Deeds, not words, define the man,” Karma says. “Apologize with actions and you will reap the rewards.”

  The young man gives his thanks and leaves the restaurant.

  “Is it too late to make something right?” a young woman asks.

  “It’s never too late to atone for one’s offenses,” he answers.

  She starts to cry and then leaves.

  “Oh, come on,” Vic says. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  Charlie stands up. “Will I be able to find happiness?”

  “Happiness is found within,” comes the reply.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Vic says.

  Charlie shrugs and sits back down. “I was just curious.”

  As the sound of sirens approaches and several other customers stand up and ask Karma for his advice, one of his answers plays back in my head:

  Man creates his own destiny. The path you seek is your own.

  Whenever Sophie talks about destiny, I always resist the idea, because the concept makes it seem like someone or something else is in control of my life. Not that I’ve done such a great job of managing things to date, but I like to think I have some say in the decision-making process rather than being bound by some cosmic decree written in the stars. But maybe I’ve been thinking about destiny all wrong. Maybe it’s not so permanent.

  Man creates his own destiny. The path you seek is your own.

  Maybe our future isn’t written in the stars. Maybe it’s right here in our own hands, waiting for us to do something with it.

  Then the police come in and arrest Karma and drag him out in handcuffs.

  I’m standing across from the Flatiron Building just after midnight, my hoodie pulled up as ghosts of breath disappear into the chill of the early-November morning. The homeless who sleep in and around Madison Square Park have been getting attacked, assaulted, and beaten up. Since the police haven’t managed to solve the problem, we thought we’d see if we could lend a hand.

  Inside the park, Vic and Charlie wander around pretending to be drunk, while Randy waits across the street by the Twenty-Third Street subway entrance smoking, which he seems to be doing more often lately. Frank stands next to me, eating an apple fritter. For a few weeks, Frank kept exercising in an effort to keep off some of the extra weight, but eventually he decided it was a losing battle, so his wardrobe now consists almost entirely of sweats and loose-fitting clothing with elastic and Velcro.

  “Mmmmm,” he says, licking his fingers, then holding the apple fritter out to me. “You want a bite?”

  “No thanks,” I say.

  I’ve already had my fill of pretzels and jellybeans, which are high on the glycemic index. Not as high as sourdough bread or instant rice, but they’re easier to carry around and they help to up my glucose levels so I can improve the strength of my superpower. I just have to make sure I don’t become diabetic. Even if I could afford to take something for type 2 diabetes, I wouldn’t want to deal with possible side effects like jaundice or suffering from a severe skin rash. If I want that, I can always hit up Randy.

  Isaac is enrolled in a four-day lockdown for an experimental drug to treat dementia and psychosis, so he’s not here. While Isaac enjoys going out with us, I know he gets frustrated since no one can tell when he gives someone an erection.

  Laughter drifts to us from inside the park by the Shake Shack, loud and boisterous, followed by the sound of a bottle breaking. That’s the signal. Frank gobbles down the rest of his apple fritter and I pocket my jellybeans. Out by the subway entrance, Randy takes one last drag on his cigarette, then stubs it out and disposes of it properly and jogs across the street to join us before we head into the park.

  During the day, the Shake Shack is the scene of long lines of men and women waiting to order burgers, hot dogs, fries, frozen custard, and of course, milk shakes. But after midnight, this is just another place for trouble.

&
nbsp; When we get to the Shake Shack, two punks are hassling Vic by the closed pickup windows while Charlie backs away from a third out behind the hamburger stand. Two more punks terrorize a homeless woman by the southern fountain. Frank peels off from me and heads that way with Randy while I stand point and watch to make sure no one gets blindsided or outnumbered. Or in case someone pulls a gun.

  Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve all worked on honing our skills and improving our teamwork. I don’t know if we’re ready yet to take on Doctor Doom or Magneto, but at least we’re able to make a difference for those who can’t stand up for themselves or who don’t have anyone to fight for them. And we’ve learned how to fight for each other.

  Since Vic’s got his hands full with double the fun, I keep an eye on him in case he needs a hand. But as soon as he burps, the two punks start clutching their stomachs and stumble away, falling to their hands and knees before spraying vomit across the sidewalk.

  While the local authorities have issued multiple statements saying that we’re vigilantes acting outside of the law and are not to be encouraged, the local press hasn’t helped matters by turning us into heroes and glorifying our exploits. They’ve even given us superhero names.

  The two punks crawl around on the ground, moaning and puking, as Vic lets out a laugh and another burp and makes them throw up again.

  Vic is known as Captain Vomit.

  Out behind the Shake Shack, Charlie tries to reason with his would-be assailant. This is part of Charlie’s new attempt to maintain his self-control when channeling his ability. But the punk isn’t listening. So Charlie shivers in the early-November morning and the next instant the guy drops to the ground, shaking and convulsing like an epileptic having an orgasm.

  Charlie’s been dubbed Convulsion Boy.

  At first Charlie was disappointed that Vic was given the rank of Captain while he was relegated to the status of sidekick, like Robin or Kato, but eventually we convinced Charlie that it didn’t matter what everyone else thought. As far as we’re concerned, he’s a leading man.

  None of us ever expected this to become our lives, but it’s who we are now. We’ve become drug-reaction crime fighters. Side-effect superheroes, using our pharmaceutically enhanced abilities to teach criminals a lesson.