Grayscale

by A. E. Clarke

  I parked in the near corner, closed and locked the doors, and then crossed the bridge. When I got to the other side, I looked around, since I couldn’t see them. It was a pretty bare clearing, so they should have been obvious.

  Spoke too soon, I thought, and my heart started beating quicker.

  “Jesse? Brent?”

  “Down here, Holly.”

  I turned around and saw the top of Brent’s head peeking above the riverbank. He was waving me towards the underside of the bridge.

  I hopped down and looked around. “Good idea—whoever thought of this.”

  “It was Brent, actually.” Jesse reached over and squeezed Brent’s shoulder. “It’s like he’s done this before or something.”

  Brent punched him in the shoulder, but they were both laughing, so I let it slide without a single comment. I looked at the corpse, grimacing. His mouth was still hanging open. “How are you gonna do this?”

  Jesse sighed. “I don’t even know. If my fires will burn hot enough, I’ll probably keep going until there’s nothing left or dawn breaks.”

  I nodded. “That works.”

  “I can go hotter!” Brent said. “I can go supernova!”

  Jesse laughed and turned to him. “I knew showing you that movie was a good idea. I was making Fantastic Four references earlier, too.”

  I hadn’t seen the movie, so I rolled my eyes. “Do you guys need me to be here?”

  Jesse looked back and forth between me and the body, propped up against the underside of the bridge. “Nah, I think we can do it ourselves.”

  Brent clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Have a good day at work, Holly.”

  I laughed ruefully. “God, if it doesn’t go better than my morning has so far, I’m handing in my two weeks’ notice.”

  I jogged back up the bank and sat in my car for a moment, holding my hand out the window so I could let the electricity play on it again.

  Definitely could have been worse.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: Jesse

  I watched Holly go and then turned to Brent.

  “Okay, there’s one thing I want to do before I deal with this guy.”

  “What—”

  I cut off his question by literally jumping at him, grabbing the sides of his face so he wouldn’t hit his head on the rock beneath him when I landed, and planting my lips on his. I pulled away and lay on top of him, sighing contentedly.

  “Oh. That.”

  I laughed. “Fuck, I needed that. This…this past week has been so long.”

  “It’s only been five days, babe. Not even a week!”

  I pushed up so I could glare at him. “Yeah, that’s not what I needed to hear.”

  “Sorry, but hey—maybe the next two days will be so amazing that the week will end on a good note?”

  I made a quiet humming noise and fell against him, letting my eyes flutter closed.

  “Jesse, we need to… You need to…”

  I opened my eyes enough to see he was pointing at the body. I sighed. “I’m worried I’m gonna make it hard on myself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I only have so much energy, right? If I’m redirecting my energy into fire so I can burn him, how can I be sure I won’t use too much?”

  “Is that why you wanted me to come along? I’m your transportation home?”

  I smiled sheepishly. “Kind of.”

  I turned so I could lean back on his chest and held up my hands, touching at the base of the palms and fingers splayed outwards. I felt silly doing it—I was pretty sure that I could send the fire out as easily with one outstretched hand, but doing this made me feel more like I was in a comic book.

  I wasn’t sure that was a good thing, but it made it easier for me to deal with what I was doing. I was a comic book character, and this wasn’t really happening.

  Regardless, I let the fire billow out and made it burn as hot as possible. It started to get a little uncomfortable after a moment, so I stopped. It was interesting to note that I could, in fact, get hot enough to hurt myself.

  Brent backed away as soon as the flames caught. The smell was pretty awful—and uncomfortably close to the smell of bacon.

  I’d hoped there wouldn’t be too much smoke, but that was apparently a futile effort. There was a lot of smoke as his flesh and clothing was burnt away. Good thing it’s before dawn…

  I focused the blast first on his face, then on his crotch. I wanted to cause him pain, even though he was already dead.

  Okay, that wasn’t a good thought for me to be having.

  I shifted my focus to his chest and then stopped the flow of flame after a few minutes. He was probably still identifiable, but it would be hard to figure out how he’d burnt to a crisp under the bridge, and so there would be no way for them to connect his death to us.

  I sighed and sat down. I’d told Holly she shouldn’t feel bad about having killed the guy, but now I’d done the dirty deed of removing as much evidence as possible, I couldn’t help but feel awful.

  Amid the smoke, a hand landed on my shoulder and squeezed. It was Brent, his sweater stretched over his mouth. “You okay?”

  I nodded, not trusting myself not to start sobbing, which was the last thing we needed.

  “Come on, let’s get out of here.” He grabbed my arm, but I just sat there. I didn’t have the energy to move on my own, but I didn’t want him to move me, either. After a moment of him tugging on my arm, mumbling about needing to leave, I got up enough to crawl out of the space under the bridge, leaving behind the smouldering corpse.

  I turned around and focused on the small flame I could see still lit on the corpse’s arm. “Hold on a sec. I wanna try something.”

  I could feel the fire. It was like I had an entire new sense, and I held out my hand, letting my energy snake out to the sources of the flames before I closed my hand into a fist once again, and the fire went out. At the same time, I felt some of the energy I’d sent out into the world return to me.

  This was a good thing to know. Maybe I could carry a lighter around for quick pick-me-ups.

  I crawled the last couple of feet to where I could stand, and this time, when Brent offered to help me up, I grabbed his wrist and used it to pull myself right against his chest, trapping our arms between us. I kissed him again, disentangling my arm from between us and running my hand through his hair to grab a handful at the back of his head. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” He kissed my forehead and stepped back. “But we’re basically standing in a riverbed, breathing in the smoke from the corpse you disposed of after your sister—”

  “Yeah, I get it. Let’s go.” I grabbed his arm and pulled him forward, suddenly full of energy that didn’t seem to want to go anywhere.

  We climbed the ravine without much problem—it wasn’t even five o’clock yet, but whenever we were worried about losing our footing, I let my hands catch aflame and our way was fairly easily lit.

  For the most part, we knew the ravine well enough to find our way. We’d climbed it at three in the morning before, to see if we could.

  We stopped when we hit the top—there was maybe another three feet of elevation as we went around a clump of trees—and I looked up at the starry sky. There were three black lines crossing my vision, blocking out the stars, and I swayed from side to side, trying to find the fourth, when it hit me.

  “This is where Holly got hit.”

  Brent took the necessary step forward to wrap his arms around me and kissed my neck. “Yeah, probably. Around here, anyway.”

  I reached out my hand and, with my palm on fire, held it down to see the ground. There wasn’t a large black mark or anything, but there was an area in front of us, underneath where the fourth line should have been, where there was an obvious disturbance in the loose stones.

  “Right there,” I said.

  Brent hummed into my neck, and I closed my eyes, imagining what it would have been like.

  “I’m kind of glad, to be honest,�
� Brent said.

  I cocked my head and turned to look at him. “You’re glad Holly was hit in a freak accident?”

  “Yeah. I mean, obviously, it was bad at the time, but…” He leaned over and hugged me again. I squeezed him as hard as I could, still feeling a little weird that we were standing right next to the spot where my sister had her temporarily fatal heart attack. “Now I’m dating a superhero. Who the hell else can say that?”

  “Alex, for one.”

  “Stop ruining my moment.”

  We both laughed, and despite the chill in the air, we stood there for a while, perfectly content to share body heat.

  I mean, there was enough in me to go around, right?

  The End

  Epilogue: Holly

  The next few weeks were fairly normal, for the most part. Well, as normal as anyone’s life could be after all that.

  I started training with Jesse again, and Brent ended up watching us train a couple times. At one point, Jesse and I were trying to outdo each other—I think we were working on our aim.

  Aim and precision, to my surprise, was an area where I had a leg up on Jesse, which was, of course, a matter of great irritation for him.

  I looked over as he was gloating about having beaten me during our silly precision training in the newly fireproofed basement and saw Brent clutching his sides, trying to hold in the peals of laughter I’d come to recognize as his trademark.

  For me, that will probably forever be the memory that marks the period after I found out about my powers. Not the bus exploding, not the break-in—you would think that one of those two things would have stuck in my mind, but they were so hectic and high-stress that I can barely remember them at all. I know they happened, obviously, but if you asked me details about either event, I wouldn’t be able to tell you anything particularly interesting.

  I wonder if Jesse experiences that too.

  There was another thing that happened soon afterwards, though, and that sort of shaped my life—almost as much as the explosion of the transformer above me.

  It was about a week after the break-in, and to be honest, it was the moment when…well, I’ll get to that.

  I was walking around downtown after a late night out—I don’t remember where I’d ended up, since I was trying to walk off some of the drink. I hadn’t had much, but I’d wanted to take a walk, since a bus ride was still out of the question. I remember I was east of Yonge, and I think I was south of the Danforth, but that really doesn’t mean much, does it?

  Regardless of where I was geographically, I had wandered into one of the less reputable parts of town. One of the sketchier areas that made me wish it had been a bit cooler so I’d been wearing a hood. As it was, I pulled my baseball cap down, hoping to shield my view from the world and avoid trouble. I’d be able to handle myself like literally no one else in the world could, but that knowledge had to battle with two decades of being told girls shouldn’t walk around alone at night.

  Trouble seems to have this way of finding me, though, and when I heard a scream from a nearby alley, I couldn’t help but look in and see what was happening.

  I mean, okay, Toronto’s a big city, and a scream doesn’t necessarily mean anything’s wrong. Hell, I’ve completely ignored them plenty of times before, without a second thought.

  I guess I was feeling a little antsy, though, because I ran right to the mouth of the alley and looked in. There were two figures further down, one standing over the other, who was splayed out on the ground.

  The one on the ground screamed again—still no words, just sheer terror, though the one who was standing over her didn’t seem to be doing anything. I took a few steps into the alleyway and hid behind a dumpster.

  I remember thinking to myself how stupid this was. Come on, Holly, there’s no need to get yourself involved. You can walk away and call the police, let them deal with it. But I wanted to know what was going on. This was the first time since the break-in that I’d actually seen something happening, and…well, I guess I was eager to try out some of the things we’d been practicing.

  Okay, I admit it. I wanted to be a superhero. I didn’t really know that I wanted to become well-known or anything, but I wanted to make a difference in people’s lives.

  Y’know, other than making and selling tasty pastries.

  I peeked out from behind the dumpster, the brim of my cap pulled low. He’d moved, leaning down over her body.

  I could see by then what she was screaming about. His zipper was hanging open, and when she made a move to get away, he shoved her roughly back down to the ground.

  I swallowed. I’d been hoping that this was a mugging—okay, that sounds a little weird, but it would be the lesser of two evils. Rape, though…

  I held up my hand and let the electricity crackle over the surface for a second. I was ready to charge out and give him the shock of his life but decided to hold back for a second and whipped out my cell phone. He seemed to be having the time of his life tormenting her, and I wanted to get hold of Jesse, who was at a party nearby. At the time, I knew exactly where it was, though it’s slipped my mind since.

  I texted Jesse, asking if he was still nearby, and then turned my cell phone to silent, keeping it out so that I didn’t alert the would-be-rapist to my presence.

  Within seconds, Jesse texted me back, saying he was only a block away. I told him to get over to where I was as quickly as he could.

  I shoved my phone back in my pocket and stepped out from behind the dumpster. He had made another move and was lying on top of her now, one hand over her mouth, the other groping her chest. Her dress was hiked up over her hips, but her underwear was still intact.

  I breathed out a sigh of relief. At first, I thought I’d waited too long, wasted too much time asking Jesse to come back me up. I didn’t want something like the break-in to happen again, although if I’d actually used my powers…anyway, that’s an argument I’ve had with myself a number of times and will likely continue to have until I’m old, grey, and senile. It’s not one that I need to commit to paper.

  I held up my hand and pointed at the ground next to them. Saying a silent thanks to whatever power was watching over me that I was the one with the amazing aim, I let off a small blast of lightning.

  Even if I’d missed my mark, it wasn’t enough that it would have killed either of them, but the point became moot as soon as it hit the ground.

  I’d thrown what I liked to call a sonic ball. While it was, obviously, made of the electricity I seemed to be able to keep jumping around in a little ball that would probably bring a physicist to tears, it didn’t pack much of a punch. It was sort of a hollow ball of electricity, and it crackled as it zoomed through the air, sounding a lot more menacing than it was.

  It did what it was intended to do, though: it caught their attention. In retrospect, it probably looked a little stupid. I mean, there was a loud noise that suddenly erupted a couple feet away from their heads, and when they looked up, framed in a grotesque parody of sex, all they would have seen was a twenty-something girl wearing a baseball cap and a bright green tank top.

  Yeah, that’d be terrifying.

  The woman seemed to gain strength from my presence, though. While before she’d been silently crying and only half-heartedly struggling, now she was kicking and screaming as hard as she could. She bucked the man off and screamed at me to help her.

  I put my hands together in front of me, palms flat against each other, as the guy sat up and swore at me—“Who the fuck do you think you are, interrupting this shit?” and “Do you have a death wish?” and threatening to kill me if I didn’t leave at exactly that moment. “And don’t tell the fucking police.”

  I pulled my hands apart, and an arc of electricity spread from palm to palm, reaching about a foot above my head.

  His eyes went wide, pupils dilating in the sudden bright light, and he started to scramble away. I wished I’d been paying attention to the woman, who had shuffled to the side of the alley, but I didn
’t even register her pulling out her cell phone.

  At least, that’s the only time she could have pulled it out.

  When the guy made a run for it, I extended one hand, and a tendril of electricity shot out, hitting him in the back. He twitched and fell to the ground. I stopped the flow of energy, and he stopped twitching, but he stayed down.

  I only resisted the urge to run over and check his pulse because a hand clapped on my shoulder.

  “Hol, what happened?” Jesse was breathing heavily. He’d arrived quickly, but not soon enough.

  “He was…” I shook my head. “I stopped him.” I felt very removed from the situation at the time. When I replay it in my head, I sound cold and detached, and I remember looking at it almost clinically. The guy had been committing one of the worst crimes on the planet; the only logical thing to do was stop him. There wasn’t any confusion or grey area there for me.

  “Oh.” Jesse stared at the body.

  I nodded and left him fumbling in his pockets, the change in one of them clinking together. I needed to know if I’d done it again.

  The guy—the rapist—was still breathing, and his eyes, though glassy from pain, were open and possibly focused on me.

  I stood over him, not even bothering to kick him or shock him again, but I took a step backwards. I wasn’t giving him the chance to do to me what the guy had done to Jesse during the break-in. I wasn’t sure I could pull off a bad-ass scar.

  I turned around to see what Jesse was doing. He was on the phone. Given his hand was over the microphone and he was speaking with a passable Irish accent, he was probably on the phone with the police.

  He hung up and immediately jogged over to me. “Okay, we’ve gotta get out of here.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Let’s put it this way. Do you really want people to know that you’re a superhero? We’ve gotta keep our secret identities…well, secret.”

  Little did we know, eh? Although I haven’t gotten to that point, yet, have I?

  I nodded, though I hated just leaving him there, lying on the ground, nothing keeping him from getting up and running away before the police arrived. But I hadn’t realized how resourceful Jesse was. He must have had the same thought, as he walked over to a pile of recycling next to the alley wall, untied a length of twine from a box and then roughly tied the guy’s hands behind his back, with me staring the guy in the eyes, daring him to move.