The Good Fight 4: Homefront Read online

  So the first time I lay eyes on Cordelia, she’s already a month old. She’s bald as me and has her mom’s smoky eyes, but they’re not hooded and crafty; not yet anyway. Matter of fact, they’re saucer-wide at the sight of me, and for a long awful minute I think she’s terrified at the big hulking giant sitting on the other side of the table from her, muscles, regret and joy barely contained in my ill-fitting orange jumpsuit. But when I raise one meaty paw to give her a tiny wave, she bursts into a toothless grin like the world’s happiest wino.

  One look at that face and all the stuff that’s been going on with Liza snaps into place and suddenly makes sense. How could you not wanna try to be the best possible you for that face? How could you be one-hundred percent evil if you were capable of contributing to the creation of such a cherubic slice of divine perfection? I am making vows in my head and my heart from the moment that baby smile-wave hits me that I am going to change, to turn my life around, to be something and someone better than the troublemaking, shit-stirring, head-busting, heat-seeking danger missile with a death wish that I’ve been for as long as I can remember.

  * * *

  DALLAS, TEXAS 2000

  I may not have always been, but these days I am a man with a certain amount of class or taste or decorum or whatever the fuck you wanna call it. Which is to say, I am not going to go into messy detail about what happens next between the Dame and me on that rooftop, or on the floor of the Dallas Art Museum once she’s showed off her mad thievery skills and got us inside without tripping any alarms. I will say that it’s amazing we don’t set anything off once we’re down there, doing fun and dangerous things to each other in the refracted liquid light of the moon bouncing off the surface of that crazy blue gemstone. It feels like we should be breaking the world with the energy we’re putting into it, with the wild, manic, Id-driven enthusiasm we will bring to everything we do in the first decade of the next millennium.

  * * *

  ALL OVER THE MAP (BUT MOSTLY TEXAS) 2011

  Cordelia is not yet four years old when Liza boots me out the door for good. Because for all my Father-of-the-Year intentions, I am still just an asshole with about five total life skills, none of which are socially, ethically or legally acceptable. Prior to that dark day, I make pathetic stabs at becoming Joe Six-Pack, the all-American schmo-next-door.

  * * *

  I get a job in the garden center at the Home Depot in Round Rock and manage to hold onto it for nearly four months, until the twenty-something assistant manager brat—who’s too dumb and entitled to be intimidated by a guy of my size, shape and demeanor—calls me “Sling Blade” or “Lenny” one too many times and they find him the next morning unconscious in one of the giant terra-cotta pots that look great holding a palm outside a bank entrance but not as good when the only thing sticking out of the potting soil is some blood-smeared a-hole’s broken arm. Truth is, I’m not sure they fired me so much for what I did to Caylan as the fact that I cracked the pot in the process.

  * * *

  We host a barbecue for the neighbors at the house and I even man the grill. It’s a raging success and everyone’s having a great time and ice is being broken and fences are being mended and all that shit, so after a few beers too many, all the soccer dads on the block just have to see my mini-gun arm in action. I wind up taking out a couple of street lights, scaring off half a dozen of the neighborhood cats, three of ‘em for good, winging an endangered Mexican spotted owl and killing a Cocker Spaniel three blocks over who’s too dumb to get out of the way of falling bullets. Not only do we never host another barbecue, we never get invited to another one either.

  * * *

  When money gets tight, I take a quick guaranteed-big-money gig (with Motherfinger, ironically enough), but Liza catches me sneaking out with my weaponry quiver and about a thousand rounds for the mini-gun and refuses to let me leave. The job goes south without me and not only am I out the earnings, but now the whole crew is gunning for me.

  * * *

  Bored as all hell, I get a forged scrip for fentanyl, take way more than is recommended for anyone not trying to trank an elephant seal and end up passing out in my car. On the 610 freeway. At rush hour.

  * * *

  My old pal Knuckleduster calls up one night and says he’s got a present for me and that I am going to love it. When he shows up with an ampule of viscous aqua green liquid and waves it in front of my eyes, I get a tingle I haven’t felt since I swore off the stuff a decade ago. TRIX is my jam, the drug of choice so enticing that it scared even me. Serious next-level interdimensional narcotics that may or may not be a living organism from a reality two doors down from ours, with the power to physiologically manifest the user’s wildest dreams, fears, or dark desires. Sacrament and profanity in one mad blast.

  I almost say no. But fuck it. What else have I got going on? I mean, the kid’s asleep, the wife’s away . . .

  Later on we’re hanging out in the garage, just shooting the shit, taking the edge off with some brews and morphing various body parts into bioweapons and animal appendages for the fuck of it when Knuckleduster happens to mention the bounty on my head from Motherfinger. I wave it off and don’t give it a second blurry thought until either several hours or just a few seconds later—time being very relative when your lobes are zapped with a fuckload of TRIX—when he comes after me with the snarling head of a Rottweiler clutching my own weed-whacker in his paws. After a knock-down drag-out that must wake up half the county, I end up squeezing the life out of his lungs on the oil-stained cement while inside, Cordelia wakes up and tries to climb out of her crib to come find me. Only she hasn’t mastered her ninja climbing skills just yet and takes a tumble to the floor and splits her tiny little sweet baby chin open. So when Liza comes home to a cosmically hallucinating husband, a dead hench in the driveway, and an inconsolable kid in need of eight stitches, she is officially, understandably, done.

  * * *

  And with nothing but Knuckleduster’s TRIX stash to keep me company, so begins the darkest period of my violent, misspent life.

  * * *

  DALLAS, TEXAS 2000

  The soft blue light filtering through the skylight is heavenly enough, in my post-coital torpor, to completely distract me from the fact that it’s clearly almost dawn out there. I scrabble my metallic fingers over the cold stone floor, prodding for warm flesh that’s no longer there. Not sure why I expected she would be.

  I heave myself into a sitting position, sore from head to toe from a long night of fuckin’ and fightin’ in that way that feels almost good, or at the very least goddamn satisfying. I pull on my leather pants and lace up my knee-high steel-capped assault boots in a hurry, then make my way over to the display case where the Blue Scarab waits, alarms already deactivated by my new ladyfriend. Or where it should be. But in the pre-morning haze, all I see is the light dusty outline where the gem sat just an hour or so ago. And the neat little slip of folded paper that now rests in its place.

  You bitch, I think, mind going automatically to the no-brainer notion that I’ve just been screwed in every literal and figurative sense you can conceive of. Of course she never meant to just let me have the damn stone. She probably figured she couldn’t take me in a fair fight, so she just emitted some womanly pheromones—the superpower most of her kind seems to possess to some degree or another—that turned my head all around until she could get me where she wanted me: fucked right to sleep on a museum floor. Small wonder she didn’t just go ahead and cut my throat while I was snoring.

  I pinch the note from the case and open it like it’s the final notice for a bill I’ve put off paying one cycle too many.

  Sorry, HandCannon. Had to slip out before the awkward moment where we wake up and run out of shit to say to each other. Besides, I NEVER stay the whole night on a first date. What kind of Dame do you think I am? Anyway, it was fun.

  Ciao.

  You little . . . I think, but before I can finish the thought I unfold the last third of the very l
ovely, mildly perfumed stationery.

  P.S. Check your pockets!

  I slide my good hand into the back of my leathers, fingers bumping up against the fist-sized bulk I just assumed was my pager or a chunk of plastique I’d stashed there earlier. But when I draw it out and hold it up to the fading moonlight, sure enough it’s a perfectly realized beetle hand-carved in jeremejevite. Now that I’m holding it, I try and chalk up the rush of pleasure I feel to some mystical property inherent in the ancient gemstone. But of course I know that’s bullshit. What’s got me feeling so good has nothing to do with hocus-pocus, or a job well done, or my promised cut of the action for this priceless hunk of arcana. No, what I’m excited about in the moment, and for as long as I can make the feeling last, is the Dame and all her possibilities—for more fun, more fucking, and a limitless, chaotic, thrill-filled beautiful future.

  -~o~-

  Stephen T. Brophy teaches a master class in procrastination (dates to be determined). He has been writing about Duke “HandCannon” LaRue, and working out his own demons through the big lug, since 2013. Duke is the kind of guy who doesn’t know a whole lot about himself but sure would like to, a super villain’s henchman with a machine gun arm, a heart of (fool’s) gold, an estranged daughter, an ex-wife who’s put the life of crime behind her, and a whole lot of trouble swirling all around him at any given moment. This is the story of how he met the first love of his life, Liza Fate, and helped conceive the second, Cordelia LaRue, the precociously powerful perpetual thorn in his side and apple in his eye. As for Brophy, he continues to pay his bills producing the reality TV you pretend not to consume in your spare time, which helps keep himself, his lovely wife, his own precociously powerful daughter and his two pit bulls alive in Apocalifornia.

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  Impulses

  Adrienne Dellwo

  “Freak! Freak!”

  Ten-year-old Misty Michaels’ head spun as the throng of kids around her yelled.

  “Freak!”

  She didn’t like the word coming out of her mouth, didn’t want to call Andrew a freak. But she wanted to be in his place even less.

  Andrew cowered against the base of the brick wall, his arms thrown over his bald head. Misty felt his fear, felt the hate and anger from her yelling friends and classmates. With her own confusion added to the mix, she felt immersed in a stew of emotion and adrenaline. Her stomach churned and bile rose in the back of her throat.

  The bell rang and the throng dispersed in an instant. Misty looked around and saw no one was paying attention. She reached out her hand to the skinny boy on the ground.

  “Sorry, Andrew,” she mumbled.

  Rather than take her hand, Andrew shot it a mistrustful glance as he stood and slunk away without a word, staying tight against the exterior wall. The hate came off of him in waves. His second set of eyes—the ones on the back of his head—kept glaring at her as he walked away.

  * * *

  “Freak!” Jessica yelled after Andrew’s bike. His back mouth stuck his tongue out at her. “Those stinking paras shouldn’t even be in our schools,” Jessica told them as they walked through their subdivision on the way home. Misty squirmed, remembering her grandma’s stories about being bussed to the white part of town.

  “My sister would’ve been valedictorian if it wasn’t for some girl with super memory. My dad says that’s for sure why she didn’t get a scholarship she totally should have.”

  Even though they’d all heard this rant before, it always called up fear in Brittany and Sarah. Sure, Andrew’s second face was creepy, but Misty didn’t understand the fear. It’s not like he could spew acid or turn invisible and sneak up on them.

  She was relieved when it was time for her to split off from the other girls and turn into her cul-de-sac. A pang of guilt struck as she walked past Andrew’s house to get to her own, but she was relieved that he was nowhere to be seen.

  * * *

  The knock came as Misty was setting the table for dinner.

  “Can you get that, Angie?” her dad asked as he stirred a pot of marinara. Strands of blond hair had escaped his ponytail and hung in front of his glasses as he leaned over the pot to give it a good smell. His white cheeks were pink from the heat. Her mom put the medical journal she was reading on the coffee table and crossed the room to the door. She’d just gotten home and still wore brown scrubs that were almost as dark as her skin.

  The moment it swung open, fury swept through the great room. Misty gasped at looked up to see who it was.

  “Dr. Michaels, we need to talk,” said Mrs. Bennet from next door. Her voice shook as she fought to keep her rage in check.

  “Come in, Lisa,” Misty’s mom said, “and it’s just Angie.”

  Mrs. Bennet scanned the room and saw Misty, frozen next to the table with a fork in her hand. “Oh good, your daughter is here.”

  * * *

  I can’t come to your party Saturday, Misty texted to Jessica.

  How come? Jessica asked.

  Misty’s phone died and, annoyed, she sighed and gave it a squeeze. It turned back on. She didn’t know why, but that always worked. Her dad’s phone had started randomly turning off when his battery was bad, so she figured it must be a bad battery connection or something.

  Andrew’s mom told my parents what happened. They grounded me and sent me to my room, she typed in.

  They should’ve told her to keep her freaky son away from normal kids.

  Misty put her phone away. She’d been sent up to her room while Mrs. Bennett was still there. She heard the front door close and knew her parents would be up soon. She dreaded it. Her mom’s anger was bad enough, but she did not want to feel her dad’s disappointment again. It made her feel even more ashamed.

  Sure enough, she heard the stairs creak followed by a brusque knock. “Come in,” she said, her voice weak. The door opened and her parents came in. Her dad sat next to her on the bed and her mom turned around the desk chair to sit facing Misty. Her face looked pinched and stony.

  “Why in the world would you do that to Andrew?” her mom asked. “He’s one of the few kids who was nice to you for the first few months we lived here.”

  Misty ducked her head. “I didn’t mean it. I just went along with my friends.”

  Her dad put his hand on her shoulder. “Misteya, with all you’ve been through, you know better than that. Can you imagine what he was feeling while you all stood their taunting him?”

  “I know exactly what he was feeling,” she said. “He was scared and angry and sad. Plus . . . I don’t know how to say it, but he was, like, accepting? Like he’s just used to it now?”

  “Do you mean ‘resigned’?” her mom asked, a curious look on her face.

  Misty nodded. “Yeah, resigned.”

  “That’s a lot to pick up,” her dad said. “What about the other kids, do you know what they were feeling?”

  “Yeah, some of them were mad and like, hating, but most of them were scared.”

  Her parents exchanged a look and she realized they were both curious but being cautious. Guarded.

  “What do you think they were scared of, punkin’?” Her mom’s face had softened.

  Misty shrugged. “Andrew, I guess, except I don’t really get that ‘cause yeah, he’s creepy, but he’s never hurt anybody.”

  Her dad smoothed her hair. “How often do you know what people are feeling?”

  She looked up at him, confused. “What do you mean?”

  He sighed and gave her mom a pleading look. Misty knew they were both uneasy and it scared her.

  “Honey,” Angie Michaels began, “You know about my sister, Yolanda, right?” Misty nodded. Her mom’s older sister had died when they were teenagers. Angie continued. “She was a parahuman and her ability was empathy. Do you know what that is?”

  Misty scrunched up her face. “Like the lady in purple on that old space show dad likes? The one who always says, ‘I’m sensing’?”

  Her parents burst
out laughing. “Yeah, baby,” Craig Michaels said. “Like her.”

  “But I don’t have any special abilities. It’s just, you know, the normal kind of sensing.” Misty looked at her parents, hoping for confirmation of what she was saying, what she suddenly had trouble believing.

  “Misteya, not everyone can tell what other people are feeling,” her mom said, putting a hand on her knee. “I mean, we can draw conclusions from their faces, or their body language, their voice, those kinds of things. But most of us can’t stand in a crowd and just know what emotions the people around us are experiencing.”

  “You can’t?” Misty asked. The adults shook their heads. Their daughter felt suddenly dizzy and tears welled up in her eyes. “So, wait—you think I’m . . .”

  Her dad hugged her shoulders while her mom leaned in and took her hand. “Baby, it’s possible that you’re a parahuman. We can get you tested to see for sure.”

  * * *

  The test came back positive. Her parents sat her down to tell her and she knew right away what they were going to say because of how they felt. Trepidation. She could identify the feeling even though she didn’t know the word for it.

  Misty sat and stared straight ahead. She said nothing. The room was too bright and her vision was fuzzy around the edges. She could understand her parents even though their voices sounded tinny and far away.

  I’m a parahuman. I’m a freak. Everyone’s gonna hate me. The thought replayed over and over in her mind.

  They talked about all the para heroes, saving people, saving cities, saving the world. All the scientific and technological advances that wouldn’t have been possible without the unique abilities of certain paras.