My Hero

Vigilante Man woke with his hand on his mask, his cape tangled in the sheets, and grinned where nobody could see: someone was calling his name. He pushed off from his bed to the open window by his bed. Below, the lights of the city shimmered in the heat. A siren wailed, a dog howled. He leaned forward onto the sill, tilting his head for the voice that had called his name, trying to separate it from the gunshots and screeching tires and for a moment he heard it—a whimpering, a last breath, of someone cornered and alone, not knowing who else to call, what other name to say—but then a gloved hand muffled it. It had been coming from the bowery, though. Always the bowery. Elastic Man’s stomping ground.

It would be so easy to let him handle it, too.

But what if it was the Exacerbator again? What if the hospital staff had put him in a room with an exterior wall again? It would be as good as keys to someone with his abilities, and now. Now he would be free to wreak his own special brand of havoc on the city, bring it to its knees, like the time before, and the time before that. And Captain Impossible had been around then.

Vigilante Man closed his eyes behind his mask, lowered his head. He was so tired. The closet behind him was filled with the carefully folded clothes of his alter-ego Evan Boanerges, ace accountant, and nights like these it would be so easy to just slip into the white undershirt and faded boxers, wait for the alarm to wake him, then ride the bus to work. But then a paper would blow up against his trouser leg on the way into the office and he’d see the crime, the decay, the rampant destruction, and he’d look to the sky like everyone else. And what if that was Sherry down there anyway, backed into a corner of the bowery not even Elastic Man could squeeze into?

Vigilante Man clutched his cape—kevlar, because not all superheroes are bulletproof—and raised one leg to the sill then thought better of it, took Evan Boanerges’ keys instead, locking the apartment door behind him, riding the elevator down with an old woman holding her dog. The dog growled at him. He stared straight forward at the row of buttons.

There was no theme music as Evan Boanerges entered the office the next morning, the pocket of his shirt lined with pencils like he was an engineer. It was part of the disguise.

His cubicle was third from the left, by the window. The special compartment of his briefcase held this month’s issue of Rescue Beaver, the comic he liked to quietly make fun of during the lull before lunch when he made himself take a break from his projects, so he wouldn’t get too far ahead of his coworkers. He didn’t want to make them look bad. It wasn’t their fault they needed calculators and deodorant.

In the false bottom of the drawer devoted to the last five years’ tax codes was a back-up mask, just in case. His old one, with the elastic strap that always took a loud wad of hair with it.

At nine o’clock Boy Plunder showed up, the new temp. He had hidden pockets all over his body, shaped like staplers and hole-punches and tape dispensers. Evan Boanerges stared at him and Boy Plunder stared back. If he only knew.

Evan Boanerges crunched numbers for an hour, and then hunched over Rescue Beaver before it was really time: Sherry wasn’t here yet, and she hadn’t called in. Evan flipped through the pages humorlessly, Rescue Beaver’s trademark taunts and obligatory tail-slaps suddenly banal and crude, his mask a mockery of heroism.

In the break room all the talk was about Morton in Special Accounts. Vanessa from Human Resources had seen his last health insurance claim, and he had some syndrome: Ehlers-Danlos. She said it with a question mark and a whisper and then looked to Evan. Evan pretended to be carefully preparing his coffee, though. The glass door at the front of the Hawkins & Daniels suite opened but it still wasn’t Sherry.

Where was she?

Three cubicles over Boy Plunder pocketed an electric pencil sharpener, his back to the office, his reflection caught in the observation window which looked out onto the whole city. The window was why Evan had turned down other jobs, better offers. Up here he was a guardian.

He held his steaming coffee to his lips and turned his back on Vanessa, but then Mr Sharpes’ wide frame filled the door and everybody’s backs straightened.

His eyes were gleaming with managerial fury, the fist of his right hand clenching and unclenching.

Evan avoided eye contact, because, even in this suit, with this bearing, this posture, still, there was something of the carriage of Vigilante Man there. Of rights to be wronged; of duty. Everything he stood for, Mr Sharpes stood against, and for a moment Evan saw in his boss—from the knees down, at least—a similarly hidden identity, and then followed the three piece up to the leering grin, the bald head. Mr Sharpes ran his hand through the hair he didn’t have, told Vanessa to continue, not to stop on his account.

Vanessa swallowed and explained: Ehlers-Danlos syndrome simply meant you had too much collagen in your skin and bones. In extreme cases it could make a person rubbery. People with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome didn’t break their bones, they bent them.

Evan winced, grimaced, grinned displeasure. He had known about Morton Collander’s secret identity for months already. It was obvious: what kind of a name was Collander, anyway? But he was young, unlearned. Still slugging it out in the bowery every night, like one hero could ever make a difference there. Evan envied him his youth, though.

‘It’s nothing,’ he stammered—Evan, his coffee sloshing over the foam lip of his cup, onto his fingers. He pretended it hurt so they wouldn’t suspect him too.

Mr Sharpes laughed.

It was his first time back in the office since his vacation. He had a tan six weeks deep.

‘Saw your girl last night,’ he said, shifting the attention to Evan.

‘My … my girl?’ Evan asked, no eye contact.

Mr Sharpes grinned: he was back alright. Stronger than ever.

‘You know the one,’ he said, tracing her shape in the air like he’d actually felt it, ‘Sherry. Ms. Tombs.’

Evan’s cup exploded all over the front of his white shirt, and Vanessa laughed, and her friend laughed, and Mr Sharpes shook his head and walked around the mess to the refrigerator.

For the days when Captain Impossible had been on patrol.

When Evan returned to his cubicle Boy Plunder was up to his armpits in a drawer.

‘Lose something?’ Evan asked, a Rescue Beaver line. He was standing over the two-drawer file cabinet, arms crossed.

Boy Plunder smiled, nodded to Evan’s pants.

‘Wet yourself, boss?’ he said, and in the instant Evan looked down—something Vigilante Man never would have done, as his tights were stain resistant, designed to wick even the slightest hint of moisture away—in the instant Evan looked down Boy Plunder lowered his face to his waiting hand.