God Laughs When You Die Read online

  The sister remained still; her empty gaze taking in everything and nothing. She might have been any American kid watching her favorite Saturday morning cartoon show. Reaching down with her right hand, she retrieved a half- empty bag of GORDITOS from the bed and began to eat.

  The room shifted beneath my feet. A flush crept up the back of my neck, enveloping my eyes and head like a hood. There was no pain, merely an unfamiliar sensation of warmth. The last thing I remember is the two of them watching me, their eyes burning into mine.

  Then I blacked out.

  ***

  I returned to work the very next day. No fictional dead relative, no weekend withdrawal required. On Monday morning I felt as right as rain.

  I do my job now. I find them. The freaks and misfits and “Super Fat Babies,” the cold-eyed pederasts and gender-flipped sex fiends. I locate the lowest of the low and shove them out of the nest of anonymity and into the national spotlight of Morrie’s modern day freak show.

  But I work for another boss, one who holds a lot more than my immediate financial future in his hands.

  He’s building an army, you see.

  At first, when the sister mentioned the “others” I had no idea who she meant. But by the time I made it back to Los Angeles I had pretty well figured it out.

  The others. Others like him.

  He’s wearing us down. Understand? Destroying our sense of what is acceptable, sensible. And he’s using the most powerful instrument of mass manipulation in the history of mankind to do it.

  Watch the television sometimes and you’ll see what I mean. But I warn you, the game’s afoot. His numbers are growing and the Nielsen’s have never been higher. Yesterday’s show was called; “White Supremacist Meets Long Lost Mexican Son on Death Row!”

  Our overnights are through the roof.

  He’s bigger now. He’s waiting in that little house on the edge of that vast American desert, and he must weigh nearly four hundred pounds.

  He’s only seven years old.

  I don’t know how he got the way he is. Maybe he’s a mutation. Or maybe he’s an alien. The real deal, not one of the phonies we see on a monthly basis.

  I buried Susan Jefferson in a dusty field outside San Bernardino. I believe she was intentionally placed in my studio, on my stage, as a lure. Chun King needs big numbers. That means television. He used his mother as bait to bring me into the fold.

  The sister told me that their parents met while working in the nuclear waste processing plant out at the Air Force base. Maybe the answers to Chun King’s origins lie in their radiation-riddled DNA. Their father, an Air Force sergeant, was killed in an accident at the plant soon after Mohammed’s birth.

  He has power. With a thought, he can cause pain or pleasure; pulses of delight that make me forget the things he compels me to do. I’ve seen him drive a man mad with a whisper.

  That night, standing before them in that darkened room I felt that power. It thunders in my head even now, shatters my soul and makes me his creature. I feel the touch of his pleasure moving along the nerves of my spine like invisible butterfly wings and know that I am damned - a modern day Judas to the entire human species. And I am not alone.

  All over the country there are others like him, more and more every day. They see my show, and they come to me. Across vast distances they come to me and through me…to Him.

  And there are the folds: Folds of soft tissue that cover his body, all dermal elasticity gone from the incessant stretching of his skin. There are things nestled in the folds of his flesh, things that come out at night to feed.

  The other day I interviewed a mother who videotaped herself murdering her seven children. When I asked her why she did it, she said, “Why, for the talk shows of course.”

  Oh yes, my friends. They’re out there.

  I’m writing all of this down as a way of earning a measure of peace. When I’m done I intend to drop it in the nearest mailbox. It’s addressed to an old Journalism professor of mine, a mentor. I think it will do the most good in his hands.

  Chun King hates the human race that spawned him, the children that ridicule him on those rare occasions when he allows himself to be seen in public. He means to kill you or enslave you all, and remake the world in his own image.

  After I make my little mail drop I’ll go to my apartment. I have a gun there, a syndication gift from Morrie. I’m going to drive out to the little house in the desert and put an end to it, one way or another.

  The sister never leaves his side. In her own way she has become as grotesque as he - speaking his word and will - the Oracle of a dark new god.

  Several former Guests have moved in with them. One of them is a trucker from Tucson who sleeps with his daughter and can kill with a touch. One man claims to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, complete with toxic stigmata.

  If can mask my thoughts long enough to get close to them, maybe I can use the gun. I had to hurt myself in order to interrupt the imposition of his will over my own.

  I’m free for the moment.

  Twenty minutes ago, I called in a few favors around town. If my plan pays off, the pain will have been worth it. Maybe I can direct the spotlight to where it will do some good. If I can kill enough of them before they kill me, the cameras will come. The cameras will always come. But if someone out there sees some part of the story, maybe enough real people will tumble to what’s really happening.

  As I close the envelope and seal it I savor the irony. I think about Susan Jefferson’s face, and her wide, wide eyes. And as I turn out the lights in my office for the last time, I laugh.

  What the Hell. Maybe my story will wind up on THE MORRIE STAPLER SHOW!

  THE TARANTULA MEMOIRS

  I was running scared. Believe me, when you can run at the speed of sound that's saying something. The prospect of meeting Prometheus face to face had me quivering in my black leather boots. Look. I’d stared Death in the eye on a daily basis, even before my retirement, but we're talking about a living breathing extraterrestrial here.1 I suppose you could say that I was sort of a fan.

  Prometheus had the strength of a thousand men. He had been credited with single-handedly bringing crime in Boston to a standstill. He could read minds, hear a butterfly beating its wings from his secret headquarters, which happened to be on the moon, plus he had a whole list of powers and abilities that put other M.V.s,2 completely to shame.

  His I.Q. was somewhere between "extraordinary genius" and the "I make Mensa members curl up in a corner and dribble" range. Plus he was handsome in the extreme, with the body and face of an African Adonis, and faster than a speeding ballistic missile.3

  And he was immortal.

  Prometheus had all this going for him, plus a great looking uniform whipped up for him by the Artificial Intelligence Servitors aboard the ship that had brought him here from the Great Beyond nearly seven decades earlier. I’m talking about the planet’s greatest defender; a beacon of strength, fairness and justice for all.

  He wanted me to take down the King of the Fairies.

  Now let me say one thing about that. It wasn't me that gave Oberon that title. It was Shakespeare who coined the term in A Midsummer Night's Dream. For those among you who haven't opened anything resembling a book since you dropped out of the sixth grade, Oberon was the King of the Fairies. Capische?

  During our first battle atop the Empire State Building, that time I was on the trail of my archnemesis Ubermensch and Oberon stuck his cowled nose into things, I called him "Fairy King" because that was how I did things then: a little snappy patter to irritate and distract; then whammo! A few hundred subsonic uppercuts to the chops. How was I supposed to know the guy was the latest in a long string of costumed newcomers to set up shop in my hometown? Have you seen the New York skyline lately? It's busier than a cheap hooker on Saturday night.4

  Okay, so Oberon got pissed and threw me over the side to plunge to my death a jillion stories below, right?

  Wrong. Scratch that. If you'll st
udy the numerous recordings of the battle, you'll discover that my going over was merely a ruse to distract the so called "Midnight Sleuth" while I reloaded my steel silk pods for another blast.

  And alright, Oberon did appear to leap over the side and shoot down one of his skim lines to grab me out of mid-air and haul me down to a lower floor where he set me down safe and sound with a stern warning about high places and name calling. I'll give him that. But I would have reloaded my steel silk shooters in another five seconds and saved myself. You can trust me on that one.

  In any event, the two of us worked together a few times after that, several team-ups, during which we usually fought first but eventually managed to solve a crime or rescue a damsel in distress... but I never got to know the guy.

  Let me explain something about hyperheroes. Not all of us are as open as yours truly: Jack Greer, once professionally known as The Tarantula! Dreaded, wall-walking Super Soldier of Hope, Happiness and the American Ideal!

  Some of these people have real problems.

  The whole secret identity thing for instance. I've never made any secret about my other career as a performance artist and painter. I've been famous, both as the Tarantula and as Jackson Greer. My parents, as everyone knows by now, were murdered by Ubermensch in the nuclear attack that gave me my powers. I've never been married. Well…not long enough to become a liability to my loved ones anyway. And I know of no little Tarantulas walking the walls of the city. Although with an ex-wife like mine who can say?

  Despite my openness I've always been something of an outsider in the hyperhuman community. So imagine my surprise when I received an invitation, delivered to my PO Box and addressed to a Mr. T. Tula from Prometheus, the greatest Hyperhero of all time.

  He was a legend by this time. Remember, he was the first one of us to step out of the shadows back in the early twentieth century. And by his own reckoning he was ancient even then, although he never looked a day over thirty five.

  I had met and battled robots, mad dictators, terrorists of every stripe, creed and contour imaginable. I had fought the Mauler to a standstill with no steelsilk blasters to blind my foe or swing me out of harm's way.

  But this guy was from another planet.

  You've gotta understand the times we're talking about. By the second decade of the twentyfirst century, the hyperhuman phenomenon had been well documented. The infamous "accident" at the Interdimensional Energies Project headed by Doctor Antonin Harris and his team out at Region 99, the Air force's most highly classified "nonexistent" research facility, occurred at the height of WW II. It wasn't until the U.S. government sent their mysterious cadre of "mystery-men" into action against the Germans in 1943 that humanity became aware that the Age of the Superhuman had begun.

  But there had been stories, as far back as the twenties, urban legends of a strange black man with silver eyes, who lived outside the normal conventions of the time. He appeared when needed most and always "in the pursuit of Justice," a phrase he himself made famous. With the evildoer incapacitated, he would vanish into the crowd.

  At first he wore a simple black domino mask to conceal his features. But when the War ended, the Masked Vigilantes became the objects of distrust and fear rather than awe and inspiration. Prometheus was the first to appear in public without his mask, although he maintained the hyper-speed illusion that distorted his features. I've tried it. If you keep moving while standing still,5 you can maintain a vibratory state wherein your features appear blurred to all but the sharpest superhuman eye.

  So there I was, standing in my civs while people stared and snapped photos, reading a letter from the Mystery Man of the Future!

  What I read had me shivering in my Birkenstocks:

  1 Or extra-dimensional. I wasn’t sure which at the time2 Masked Vigilantes, though I prefer 'Hyperheroes,' the term that Prometheus' girlfriend, Wanda Washington coined in the New York Clarion.

  3 The flying thing goes over like a dream with kids of all ages.

  4 Sorry, kids but as it says on the cover 'Adults Only.' The hyperhero game is not for the faint of heart and The Tarantula Memoirs are strictly for mommy and daddy.

  T,

  Oberon out of control. Please convene at Jo Rel's to discuss possibility of intervention.

  Hoping this letter finds you well,

  P.

  P.S. Saw Taking off the Mask on satellite last night. Thought it was grand, though I doubt Medusa will approve.

  I crumpled up the letter and stuffed it into my pocket as a kid stepped up and asked me for an autograph. For the first time since my "coming out" I felt a flash of irritation at this intrusion of fandom into my day-to day existence. If what I'd read was true, things were about to get ugly very, very soon. I wasn't at all sure I was up to it.

  I took the pen from the kid and signed his book a little harder than I'd intended. The pen snapped in my grip and tore through the thick autograph book like a bullet through tissue paper.

  "Hey!" the kid whined.

  5 Any speedster will know what I mean.

  "Sorry 'bout that, son," I replied. I felt as if a dark shadow had slithered across the sun.

  "That's ok, Tarantula," the kid smiled up at me.

  "Hey, do you think you could…?"

  Against my better judgment, I moved up and over the crowd that had gathered outside the post office. As they milled around, wondering where I'd gone, I made my way home, dizzy and reeling from my little disappearing act. But I had a lot of thinking to do before the meeting. I couldn't afford to be distracted.

  The stakes were way too high.

  ***

  We met at Jo Rel's the next day. But a gathering of well-wishers, tourists and wannabes forced us to move to a little table in the back near the kitchen. There, with Spanish music booming, I had my first face-to-face confrontation with the 'Man of Might.'

  Looking at Prometheus - well - it's a little like seeing what might happen if the Clone Master got hold of Sidney Poitier, Arnold Schwarzennegger, Michael Jordan and threw in Albert Einstein's brain for kicks.

  “Can I help you…gentlemen?” the waiter, a seedy DiCaprio type drawled. Jo Rel’s was famous more for the attitude of its wait staff than for its hyperhuman customers. People in the Village are notoriously contemptuous of hyperheroes, largely because of our costumes; which they find abhorrent. All I know is that it sucks when you're battling Doctor Chaos below 23rd St and the people you're protecting stop to compliment his wardrobe.

  We ordered gazpacho and a veggie platter. Prometheus raised a blurred eyebrow as he took in our surroundings.

  "Are you certain coming out was the wisest thing to do, Jack?"

  I jumped. Of course he knew my real name. The whole world knew my real name by then. Still. It sounded weird coming out of his mouth.

  The waiter came by with our drinks and never batted an eyelash as Prometheus ordered a large salad with tofu, sprouts and black beans. That's the effect that blurring one's features has on civs. It tends to make them look the other way. Preoccupied human minds inevitably ignore what they can't perceive directly. The waiter simply looked through Prometheus instead of at him.

  Man, this guy was good.

  "Well, it seemed like a good idea after - after I retired," I said, somewhat lamely.

  For some reason, I was suddenly ashamed. No. Prometheus made me feel ashamed, as if I'd betrayed a hyperhuman tradition simply by stepping fully into the public eye. But I was tired of playing "find the phone booth" while people died. I figured if there was a fire next door it was better to leap right in, rather than take precious seconds to change into my work duds.

  "I simply meant…" he said as if he'd read my mind, "that I wonder if all this fuss is worth it. It must grow tiresome, being the object of such intense scrutiny.”

  Then Prometheus did something I didn't expect. He smiled and extended his right hand over the table.

  “I meant no offence, Jack."

  After a moment, I smiled back and accepted his hand. Hell,
this guy had been pulling cats out of trees since before my grandfather was a kid. Who was I to take offence?

  "None taken," I said. "So, what you wrote. Is it true?"

  He stared at me a bit too long before he nodded gravely, as if he'd confirmed something for himself.

  "The man I wrote to you about disappeared seven months ago. In all that time there have been no reported sightings of him in and around the Chicago area. Crime in the city has increased to record levels in his absence. Other hyperhumans like Carrion and the Scorcher have risen to fill the void left by his absence, but their effect on the growing crime wave has been minimal.

  "It appears that word has gotten out among Chicago's criminal elite that the heat is effectively off, while other local heroes try to solve the mystery of where Oberon might have gone. Our colleagues in the Alliance are - concerned."

  It sounded serious. Normally when one of us disappeared it was with good reason. Sometimes personal matters, family illness or the like, will take a hero off the streets. But the best ones always return. Just when you think they’re down for good, they miraculously "return" just in time to save the day.

  I, on the other hand, had officially retired from crime fighting. I'd saved thousands of lives, single-handedly saved the world more than a dozen times, and the known universe twice. I sipped at my iced tea to keep my hands from trembling. Prometheus sat there, studying me with his Ultra Vision for all I knew. But I didn't care, because I knew by then, you see?

  I knew that I was dying.

  Civilians tend to think that people like me live forever. No one ever thinks a hero can die of an illness like radiation sickness.

  "You said that he was out of control," I said, trying to take my mind off my own problems. "What makes you think he didn't retire, or go undercover? The Raven did it last year in San Francisco. It took her a whole year to infiltrate Johnny Skull's drug network. Maybe he's just keeping a low profile."