Good Sunday afternoon to ya! If you’ve been keeping up with my hero story (Part 1 here, Part 2 here), you’ll be pleased to read the third part today. Enjoy!
The hero was on his knees on a dirty Columbia, SC sidewalk. There was a pain, a sting, where his knees met the concrete. The afternoon summer breeze brushed his hair out of his hazel eyes to reveal a stern look of determination. His thoughts raced as 10 men surrounded him, each with a different type of weapon. The disaster occurred when a Columbia gang heard of the escapades of the caped crusader and decided that they would take matters into their own hands. They planned to kill the hero and turn his body over to the police to rid the filth and scum of Columbia of any type of authoritative threat. Their plan, so far, was working perfectly. They’d lured the hero into an alley using a decoy mugging down Main Street. When he entered this alley, our hero found that there was a chain roof and doors on all sides. He could not escape without damaging the building’s infrastructure. He had no desire to do such a horrendous act to the downtown residents and developers. “What is there to do?” he asked himself.
The gun in his mouth left him little freedom to speak. While our hero is strong, invisible, and can fly… he is not invincible. Surely a bullet out of a Desert Eagle .50 caliber fired at point blank range would put a damper on his weekend. As he knelt there in that dark, damp, unforgiving alley, he began to recollect his life and the all the events that had led up to that moment. “We truly are left to our decisions and they define our future.” he thought earnestly.
The events of his life leading up to this situation have been naught with peril and deceit. Ever since he was a small boy, at the age of 11, he had been very strong. The kids at the playground used to have him throw them into the lake adjacent to their school. He had to be careful not to throw them over the lake, as they did not weigh anything to him. He saw it as a challenge and as a way to earn acceptance into their friendship. Little did he know, throwing kids 200 feet into the middle of a lake was not an ideal way to merit their friendship. Brushy Creek Elementary School in upstate New York was a small school, only several hundred kids played there during the week while their parents were at various business functions. The faculty there, unforgiving as they were, did understand the need for acceptance, but upon hearing of our hero launching kids into the middle of a lake, took immediate action. The school expelled our hero and his gifted ways. His parents decided to home school the child due to his gifts.
As the hero grew, so did his powers and his strengths. His parents made sure he developed those strengths on the privacy of their farm land in Boonville on the edge of the Adirondack Park Preserve. They had him lift whole oak trees out of the ground, move boulders the size of cars (even one the size of a small house!), and use his intuition to escape various obstacles and design various traps. His parents were proud. They were simple people, not too in tune with the world around them, always in thought, always learning. Their use of computers was non-existent, their knowledge of TV was limited to the 6 local channels that aired the same shows nightly, and their excitement was contained by a knowledge that their son was not normal. How could they get excited about a child at the age of 13 who could destroy the world they knew with a 100 foot tree trunk?
At the age of 16 a strange and exciting new development took place. The cliffs to the side of their property overlooking Kayuta Lake were used by the boy to judge distance, conquer his fear of heights, and provide a good place to ponder life’s unknowns. This particular day was different. Our hero’s fear of heights was tested when an eagle scared him off the cliff some 400 feet down. He slammed into the rocky wall thinking, “This is it, my death will come at the age of 16”. As he tumbled toward the pristine blue, 45 degree water, he felt himself slowing till finally, about 50 feet from the surface of his doom, he stopped falling. He opened his eyes to find himself hovering, floating on what first looked like nothing at all. As he examined his surroundings, looking up gave him a sense of the situation he was in and how far he had fallen. Oh, his heart was pounding, his adrenaline had been kicked into overdrive, his senses were extraordinary. “How is this possible?” he thought to himself quietly as he floated above the icy waters.
These things he thought briefly as he came back to reality. The gun in his mouth tasted of cold steel, the kind of taste after you lick frost off a metal object. The 10 men surrounding him deciding his fate, were undoubtedly wicked. Our hero began to develop a method of escape from the clutches of death. His brain worked blazingly fast, the neurons firing saw a small 6″ bolt lying on the concrete 14 feet behind his captives. The brick walls and metal grate installed above him were his bane. He noticed that the man holding the weapon in his mouth would occasionally look towards his assailants trying to figure out their plans. “This is my opportunity” he thought silently.
Next time that man looked away, the hero was off his knees in action. He grabbed the gun, bent the tip of the barrel and pushed the man back into the group breaking his sternum and 6 ribs, knocking them all down. He immediately turned invisible. The assailants were amazed for a split moment, but immediately terrified of what they had just witnessed. “What kind of voodoo and magic does this guy have!?” one guy screamed with a trembling voice. Our hero, oh, he was not good to these men. He took each gang member’s weapon and broke it in half. He toyed with their fragile, undeveloped minds. “You have come here to kill me. Your hesitation and bickering have led to your downfall” he whispered in a voice filled of power and anger. He told them all the things he could do, his powers, his training, his years of dispatching vermin such as themselves for far lesser crimes. The fear that en-gripped the hearts of these men was profound. All 10 men were trembling upon every word spoken by our hero. After torturing the men for over an hour with taunts, whispers, and various other psychological ‘tricks’, he appeared behind them. “I think it is time you turned yourself into the police” he said without hesitation. The men turned, slowly, as to not anger the creature they fear unlike any other. “If you do not turn yourself into the police, I will find you, and I… will turn you into the police myself” said our hero with a smirk on his face. All 10 men went running for the alley door, soon to find themselves in a police station telling their story.
Our hero, smiled at what had just transpired. Part of his life flashed before his eyes. He was thankful it was the part of his life that was not haunting his future. Standing in that alley, our hero turned invisible yet again and flew to the Dome of his residence. He had done a good deed today. Ten men were saved from a life full of wickedness. His good deeds this day will trigger some more of his past. Hopefully, the next few days of his life won’t be his last.
