Kingdom of Heroes (20 page)

At the time, his powers had just begun to manifest. The strong sense of taste had been the first to arrive, forcing him to survive for a solid year on a diet of plain, white rice and water, the only two things his over sensitive taste buds could tolerate. Next came the increased levels of hearing. The first time he had heard someone’s heartbeat from over twenty feet away had almost been enough to make him question his sanity. The over active sense of touch eventually came, and he remembered all of the nights he had spent in the dark with a book, teaching himself how to read just by touching the type. And finally, there was his amazing olfactory sense, the sense which told him that this place was engulfed by the stench of death.

This night, fifteen tears ago, the body of twenty-five year old Elsa Martinez had been found in the office of a salvage yard. The young woman had been cut and stabbed until she was unrecognizable, forcing the coroner to use dental records to confirm her identity. On a routine search around the premises, he had found what no one else would have been able to find: a strong odor emanating from the trunk of a wrecked economy class sedan, stacked second to the ground in a pile located in the back of the grounds.

Just from the smell in the air, he was able to find five year old Cassie Martinez, stabbed, raped, and hidden in the trunk of a blue car. No one else could see her or sense her presence, but he knew, without knowing, that there was a dead body near. In a moment, he would attract the attention of another uniform, and the two of them would pry open the trunk and find the little girl, still dressed in her pink Sunday church dress. People would question how he found her; he would say he smelled her. They would say he was better than a cadaver dog to his face; freak would be the word they would use behind his back, which he would be able to hear due to his now freakish hearing.

He turned and tried to get another officer’s attention, but no one noticed him; they all continued with what they were doing, waving their flashlights from spot-to-spot, ignoring him as if he was nothing more than a ghost amongst them. Maybe he was. He walked towards the car, the odor almost pungent enough to drop him to his knees. He pulled the trunk up; this time, it wasn’t locked. And there he found her, the tiny child who still caused him the occasional nightmare, forcing him to always wish he hadn’t been the one who had found her. He stared at her as she laid there, dead, soaking in a pool of her own blood. Her eyes opened.

He took a step back. She stretched her blood covered right arm out towards him and offered him her hand.

“Thank you, Officer,” she said, her voice as sweet as pie. “Thank you for finding me. I’ve been trapped in here for so long. Won’t you please help me out?”

He shook his head from side-to-side. This wasn’t right; this wasn’t how it happened. This exact moment was carved into his memory like a tattoo. It wouldn’t come out, no matter what he did to get rid of it. And this, this wasn’t right.

“Please, Officer,” she said again, pushing her hand closer and closer to him. “Please take my hand and help me out of this awful place. I need you. You’re the only one who can save me.”

He took another step back. “No,” he said. “I can’t. You’re already dead.”

And then, she was gone; the salvage yard disappeared, and the cold January wind against his skin was replaced by the feeling of blood pouring down his bare back. He was in an old abandoned warehouse, somewhere outside of the Canadian capital. Blood flowed freely down his back and across his shoulders, running down his arms and dripping from the tips of his fingers and onto the dirty, concrete floor. Mere minutes ago, he had killed the bastard with the invisible whip, The Lash. The teleporter, by this point, was long gone. This was the moment after the shooting, after the killing; this was the part he never wanted to remember but couldn‘t forget, no matter how hard he tried.

Her name was Angelica Jones, and if she liked someone, they could call her Angel. The Agent’s men had chained her the same way they had chained him, with her hands above her head, leaving her hanging like a piece of cured ham, leaving her dead while they interrogated him. The Lash’s whip had torn her once beautiful skin to pieces, the skin on her face basically flayed from the bone. If The Detective hadn’t known for a fact who she was, there would have been know way he could have identified her body. And this, this was the moment when he found her.

She had been brought in as a liaison between his super powered security squad and the Canadian Government. She was a normal, living and working everyday with a group of super powered men and women, and the group didn’t just dislike her; they resented her very presence amongst them. She was an outsider, placed alongside a group of people who were unable to trust outsiders and their ilk. But he liked her, and she had liked him. He was the only one on the team allowed to call her Angel. He used to take pride in that fact.

He stared at her bloody corpse, all the while trying to ignore the grotesque scent of death emanating from it. The smell was overpowering, almost too much for him to stomach. He pushed it aside as much as he could. He looked closely at her. Even her hair was covered in blood, making her once light brown locks seem almost red. He remembered this moment, looking at her flayed flesh, thinking about all of the times when he wanted to ask her out, to let her know what he thought about her, only to realize it was all for naught. This moment, this exact point in time, was over; it had already passed. This was nothing more than a memory he couldn’t forget.

“It doesn’t have to end like this,” a familiar voice said to him.

He looked up to see Angelica Jones standing in front of him, no longer chained from the rafters, appearing as she once was, beautiful, happy, alive. Her skin was no longer flayed, and her now blood free brown hair fell down into her face, as it always had. She stood in front of him, wearing the short pleated skirt that always stood out in his memories of her, and she smiled at him. She held out her hand for him to take.

“Take my hand,” she said as she reached out for him, “and this moment, this place will cease to exist. Take my hand, and we can be together.”

For a split second, the tiniest of instances, he considered taking her hand, clutching it and giving in to her offer, but there was still that stench, the smell of death that overwhelmed him. “No,” he replied, taking a step away from her outstretched hand. “I can’t. You’re already dead, and there’s no going back.”

And then, she was gone, the warehouse, the blood, the chains, all disappearing with her. The Detective was now naked, standing in front of The Ice Queen’s picturesque bedroom window, staring out on the night covered cityscape below. He turned around, and Ice reclined in the nude on the bed, her long, white hair falling gently across her large, bare breasts, her nipples hard and stiff as they always seemed to be. She smiled at him.

“Penny for your thoughts,” she said, her full red lips wrapping each word in a tender embrace.

“Bad memories,” he answered. “Too many bad memories.”

She held out her hand for him to take. “Come back to bed. We’ll come up with something better for you to recollect.”

He took a step towards her and started to reach for her hand, until he remembered that the Ice he knew smelled like chilled strawberries, just like she tasted. This Ice smelled like a rotting corpse in the final stage of decomposition; this Ice smelled like death. He stepped back. “No,” he said.

“Take my hand,” she said, her voice softer and sweeter than he could ever remember it being. “We can be together; we can be happy. I can take you from the pain; I can take away all of the bad memories and replace them with something new, something worth remembering. Just take my hand, and we can both be happy. I promise.”

“No,” he said again, taking another step away from her hand. “No. This isn’t right; this isn’t real. None of this is real. You are just an image in my head; you’re just a nonexistent piece of my overactive, goddamn imagination.”

And then, she was gone, replaced by a bedroom in a mansion where he stood over a barely alive paraplegic attached to an oxygen tank. He stood in a room filled with the all consuming stench of death and decay. He remembered that he had to move backwards, to move away, but he couldn’t, finding himself still bound by some invisible force within his head. He cleared his mind and put every ounce of energy he had left into one final push.

“Get…the…fuck…out…of…my…head!” The Detective said as he ripped himself away, landing hard against the wall on the far side of the room. Moving as fast as possible, he pulled the gun from his coat and aimed it at the old man’s head, holding his forefinger firmly against the trigger. “If I hear one more word inside my head or see one more goddamn thing that isn’t real,” he said, sounding and feeling out of breath. “I will muster enough willpower to pull this trigger and blow your fucking skull through the goddamn wall.”

The Detective pushed himself to his feet, his back still clung to the wall. He walked a few feet closer to the old man’s body, the gun still aimed at his head. “I’m leaving now, you dried up motherfucker, and like I said, a single thought in my head and I will kill you. You’ve been in my head, so you should know the things I’ve done and what I’m capable of doing.”

The old man’s lips moved from beneath the oxygen mask, and words leaked from his mouth like tar running through a keyhole. “H…o…w?” the old man asked.

“How did I escape your unbreakable mental hold?” The Detective replied. “How did I escape the grip of the man who could hold an army at bay? You fucking smell like a rotting corpse, and all of the images in my head smelled the same way. Eventually, I caught on. And don’t forget, you’re not the first piece of shit, almighty, no one can stop me, everyone worship me, look at how fucking powerful I think I am, psychic I’ve had to deal with, and you won‘t be the first one I fucking kill, either.” Without another word, The Detective turned and walked through the double doors on the other side of the room.

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Journal Entry

[Found on page 38]

Note: The following is a transcription of a recording found on Barren’s computer, recorded from his penthouse and taped, according to the time stamp, approximately an hour and a half after he brought Metal Girl back from the hospital. In the time that passed between the two recordings, the rest of The Seven, excluding The Agent and Psychosis, had gathered and were waiting The Agent’s presence.

(Members of The Seven sit and stand around the room. This was postwar, so costumes were already out of the picture. Barren is standing by the bar, Fire Maiden and Ice Queen next to each other beside the balcony door, staring out of it and whispering to each other. Metal Girl is still sitting on the couch, sitting in the same spot she was in during the last tape, and still crying. Her eyes are puffy and red. Speed Demon sits two spots down from her on the couch and casually changes channels on the television with a remote.)

(The Agent walks into the room, and everyone turns towards him.)

Ice: So is he alive?

Agent: (stopping in the center of the room) Yes, by the grace of God, he’s alive, though barely.

Metal Girl: (jumping up and wrapping her arms around The Agent’s neck and crying something that‘s completely unintelligible)

Agent: (pushing Metal Girl away and guiding her back to the couch) Please, Hope, I’m not done. There’s more to tell.

Barren: He’s alive, but there’s more to tell?

Agent: The bullet split his spinal cord in half, just below the third and fourth vertebrae. He’ll live, but he’s going to be paralyzed from the neck down. He’s a paraplegic.

Metal Girl: (crying again) Oh my God.

Agent: I have spoken to him.

Metal Girl: He’s awake?

Agent: Technically, no. His body is still unconscious and may remain in that state for a while. But his mind is fully active and completely aware of what’s happening to him. I spoke to him telepathically, and he asked me to extend his appreciation for everyone’s concern. And Hope---

Metal Girl: (looking up at The Agent) Yes?

Agent: He agreed with me that you must learn to control your emotions, especially in public. We have come too far to see it all ruined by one member’s selfishness.

Metal Girl: I know; I know. Anthony already gave me the riot act.

Agent: As he should have. How close to complete is the mansion Psychosis was having built?

Metal Girl: (crying again) Close. We were supposed to move in next month.

Agent: Fine. When he’s ready to be moved, we’ll have him transported there. (walking over and pulling Metal Girl’s chin up so he can look into her eyes) And from this point on, you will be responsible for him. You will be his guardian and protector.

Metal Girl: I will do whatever I have to. I will give my life for his.

Agent: That’s a good girl.

Ice: Two questions, Agent. Exactly how did a sniper get through all of the security, and why didn’t Psychosis pick up on the thoughts of someone attempting to kill him?

Agent: I don’t know. My security team found the shooter, but he didn’t survive the trip into custody. The answer is I don’t know, and to be honest, we may never know.

(Barren downs another drink as the tape abruptly cuts to black.)

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