The Inaction Man

by Phillip Donnelly

  Chapter 11

  The Dying of the Light

  Inaction Man and Illogical Woman immediately became inseparable. They had much in common and much to discuss.

  In a note to Symbol, which Inaction Man wrote on toilet roll paper in a cubicle, he praised the fresh perspective that Illogical Woman offered on many issues. He also approved of her determination to communicate through rhyming verse, which although difficult to understand, was a melodious form of code. However, he had to admit to Symbol that he wished she would speak to him face-to-face, rather than always positioning herself behind his head and tapping out messages on his ears as she spoke. Inaction Man folded the toilet paper into squares, blew his nose in it to avoid suspicion, and kept the message in his shirt pocket. With a heavy sigh he wondered when he would see Symbol again and be able to rub the note on her handlebars.

  Illogical Woman sent messages inwards rather than outwards. She used her tongue to draw letters and words on the inside of her left cheek and used the roof of her mouth for punctuation. In a letter to herself, she spoke warmly of Inaction Man. He took her ideas seriously, even if he was incapable of versespeak and almost as chained to logical thinking as a mere mortal. Most importantly of all, she wrote on her mouth, his ears were very tappable and even flickable. In the Illogical Universe, ear tappability is a crucial attribute in any partner.

  Ear tapping coded versespeak did not lend itself to easy communication. Nor did the lack of a superhero training and induction programme. Inaction Man and Illogical Woman often referred to alien worlds and alternate universes using entirely different terms. They had a shared purpose but different vocabularies. This lexical incompatibility, if you didn’t listen very carefully, might lead you to conclude – as the nurses did on their clipboards – that our two protagonists were simply babbling to themselves, lost in worlds of their own creation, rather than two superheroes bound together in a common fight against their shared enemies.

  Their primary enemy, they both agreed, were the shape changers who wore the skin of nurses. To confuse them, Inaction Man suggested they present a moving target, so they began to walk from one corner of the Recreation Room to another. Illogical Woman improved upon the plan and said that “to confuse and confound, make us both backward bound,” but walking backwards was not really within the remit of either of their superhero powers and they continually walked into things and fell over.

  One of the nurses insisted they stop moving in this curious manner and threatened them with physical restraints. “Clear evidence,” Inaction Man told Illogical Woman, “that our circumlocutious perambulation befuddled our fiendish foes.” They later tried to hide under the tables and behind the sofa, but one of the nurses always found them.

  Inaction Man insisted that inaction was the key to success, so our two heroes pretended to be statues. In these frozen postures, they kept their eyes open and waited for the first opportunity to escape from their prison and for the evil machinations of the shape changing nurses.

  Keeping your eyes open is not an easy business when your blood is soaked with poisons designed to make them shut. The chemical weapons, which the nurses called medicine, battled against our heroes’ willpowers. The nurses shot clozapine into Inaction Man and drowned Illogical Woman in Zyprexa.

  Hypnos and Morpheus won in the end, and the statues went from standing to sitting, and from sitting to nodding, and from nodding to sleep. So much medicine was in their bloodstreams that the nurses couldn’t wake them and they had to be carried to their respective beds. When the defenders of the Earth woke up the next morning, they discovered that yet more time had been stolen from them.

  Worse than this theft of time was the insidious theft of reason. The poisoned chalice of the hypodermic drugs had twisted their minds while they slept. When Inaction Man opened his eyes, he saw that the world was greyer.

  “What dark magic has allowed you to drain this world of all its hue and texture?” he asked the nurse who shook him awake. She didn’t answer and Inaction Man apprehended the third loss. “Time, sight and sound. One sense trips upon another’s heels, so quickly do they fly from me.” The background hum of cosmic conversations was beginning to fade. How lonely existence was without those voices in his head. In their place came a deafening silence, a freezing silence. He was, he realised, falling victim to the fog, which was being pumped into the Recreation Room through the ventilation shafts. He could feel himself being turned to stone. Doubt and confusion filled him and he started to question his superhero status. The poison also affected his body, making his hands tremble and his face tick – side effects of losing his superpower of inaction.

  The Illogical Woman also felt the horrors of the fog. The quality of her verse deteriorated, and at one point, her darkest hour, she even began to question the necessity of speaking in rhyme and the indispensability of being illogical at all times.

  The two superheroes held an emergency conference, huddled behind the sofa, shaking and twitching. Inaction Man spoke first, trying to disguise the growing sense of self-doubt which was crushing him from within.

  “The psychic mosquitos bled me while I slept, Illogical Woman. My visions are fading; my insights, blurred. Do you also feel an ebb in your powers? Speak to me, oh mistress of illogicality.”

  “Dopamine my receptors block

  Antipsychotics mock and mock

  Clozapine the darkness feeds

  Zyprexa my rhymes it steals”

  “We must escape from this dungeon before we are twisted back into human form. Frown not, long-nosed nymph, for I, Inaction Man, Tsar of all inaction, have a plan. We will meet in the garden after lunch, arriving separately to avoid suspicion, at the giant oak tree by the far wall, where the drunken goblin Hiver stands guard. When he slips into his margarine stupor we shall use the tree to climb over the wall and make our escape. This is my plan. This is what we must do. This is how we must act!”

  Illogical Woman spun back in horror, pointing her tapered index finger at him.

  “Inaction Man his powers deny

  In his haste to flee and fly

  A plan he makes a plot he schemes

  He does and does and deeds and deeds

  Inaction Man hath lost his way

  Inaction Man doth die today”

  Inaction Man turned pale when he saw the truth in Illogical Woman’s words. He was bound to fight action in all its forms. Yet here he was, planning action, spreading the very corruption he had sworn to cleanse. But what other solution was there?

  Illogical Woman was suspicious, but she checked his ear wax consistency with her tongue and tasted that he was telling the truth. She sat behind him, wrapped herself around him to help them move more quickly, and put her hands over his eyes to help him see more clearly. She rocked him with her rhyme of unreason:

  “Fire with fire must we fight

  Or else be lost to endless night

  Meet we at the goblin tree

  Climb the wall and then be free

  So, after lunch, right?”

  Illogical Woman gasped at the absolute lack of rhyme. She began to gently sob, feeling her powers desert her.

  They sat entwined behind the sofa until lunch. The world’s two great superheroes rocked back and forth, trying to conserve and share their powers, to wrap each other in a superhero shield. Neither spoke but both wondered if they could protect each other against the end of vision, as they raged against the dying of the light.