Nyx’s Journal: Jan. 16, con’d…
Posted on March 11th, 2010 by desert ratPosted in Chronicles, prose | No Comments »
What’s even more unbelievable, is how I got away. I’m starting to wonder if it really happened – and I was there.
When HeroNo1’s henchmen couldn’t get the info they wanted out of me, they decided they needed to take me to see No.1 himself. Never mind how many times, and in how many ways, I tried to tell them that I had no clue what the hell they were talking about. Maybe they thought I was being brave. To tell the truth, after three days of the worst good-cop, bad-cop parody ever, I was starting to wish they’d just torture me and get it over with.
At least the back seat of the giant black boat they insisted on calling a car was more comfortable than the creaky old cot that smelled like moth-balls and cat pee. I was getting more than a little tired of being tied up, but it could have been a lot worse. They could have followed true movie protocol and tossed me into the trunk. As it was, I had the back seat to myself, and eventually managed to squirm around into a mostly-upright seated position – just in time to get thrown against the window as the car swerved wildly to the left.
It happened so quickly, I had to replay what I’d seen in my head to make sense of it. Amazing how slowly time crawls by when the car you’re in is careening off the road towards a bus stop full of people.
They had swerved to avoid a kid who was standing in the middle of the road. Not walking, not running, just standing there. The snapshot of it was crystal clear on the back of my eyelids. The kid had his eyes closed, his face raised towards the sky, as if basking in the mid-day sun. He wore a black T-shirt over a grey long-sleeved shirt, as if he’d temporarily forgotten it was winter. I knew that face. It had been staring back at me from my computer screen for days. And he was wearing the same stupid back-turned ball-cap he’d had on the day he broke into the safe. My safe.
Then we were smashing through metal and glass, and people were screaming, and then everything stopped really suddenly. It took me a while to realize it wasn’t me that was upside-down, but the car. Took a bit longer to realize that the wall that had stopped us was attached to the sprawling brick edifice we in these parts like to call City Hall.
Considering how the two thugs in front weren’t doing much at that point besides groaning and twitching, it seemed like a good opportunity to leave.
After a few enthusiastic blows with both feet, I came to the conclusion that it was a lot harder than it looks to kick open a locked car door. I twisted around so my bound hands could reach the lock, and pried it up, then managed to contort myself enough to reach the door handle – after which I kind of tumbled ungracefully out the door onto the ground. Everyone around me was in full panic mode, far too busy running around and yelling to notice me. The broken glass of the car windows provided another moment of serendipity too good to pass up. I nicked my wrists a few times cutting through the rope, but it finally fell away and my arms swung free. You think pins and needles from sitting cross-legged too long are bad, try hours spent with your arms wrenched behind your back.
I looked around once before I ran, making a mental note of the only two things that seemed worth registering: First, there were no bodies littered around the car, which hopefully meant that the folks at the bus stop had seen us coming, and got out of the way in time. Second, the kid was nowhere to be seen.
It was like being taken over by some kind of alien presence. I felt my legs pushing off, my feet leaving the hard surface. My body launched itself forward, into a front flip, the kind we always did off the towers at the pool. I felt the wind catch my open jacket, spreading out like wings. I landed rolling, ending in that classic mutant hero stance, crouched down, feet flat on the ground, one hand outstretched, the fingertips of the other resting lightly on the pavement, the coat-wings settling at my side. I hoped the thud my boots made on impact hid the sharp crack that shot up my left ankle into my shin.
Seems we had some stainless steel rats chewing on the wires for a while there. Back online now.
The world has gone mad. We’re talking, if sanity is Mercury, withering in the heat of the sun, then we’re way out past Neptune; hell, we’re in a whole different galaxy.
Okay, so maybe I don’t have any powers to speak of. No super strength, or super speed, or super durability, or anything like that. Might have been able to do something if I had; maybe saved the Hornet from becoming another specimen for the evening news.


