Paresthesia Pt. 01

The hardest part is the choice. For me, at least. Choosing the right moment, the right instant of one second to the next, choosing which one to be in and dwell on for as long as I see fit, the perfect little speck of time, so miniscule, to cherish as my own. There's always that little voice in the back of my mind, when I do finally pick, that it was the wrong one. The one just before was a little better. There might be something more beautiful if I just waited a heartbeat more. But that's part of the struggle. That voice must die so that I may go forward and enjoy what is and not worry about the should haves, what ifs and if onlys.

And that doesn't even touch on the moments that I can't linger on because of the pragmatics of a particular sequence. For example, I wish to stop the moment so that I can further dwell on the dawning realization of the woman in front of me. But I can't because then I could not settle into a moment I know is coming down the line. And that is a moment I cannot ignore, even if I actually wanted to. Alas, the fear spreads far too quickly for my taste, the confusion so quickly replaced with terrible understanding. So many little things simply gone from the moment as I trudge forward. The only thing I really pick out is that she has three piercings on her left ear and four on her right, and what might be a hole for something on her nose. Progressive, really. Someone ought to be applauded. She sits there for the briefest of moments, waiting for me, behind the counter, register by her side, eyeing the baseball bat clutched in my hands.

"This is the moment where you do as I say, and nobody gets hurt," I say with a beaming smile. It's important to be expressive when the eyes are covered. So many people miss the cues when the whole of the face is simply gone. Her hands go underneath the counter for that handy little button that will make the problems go away.

I am now next to her, tapping her on the shoulder, still smiling and once again, I am forced to watch as the emotions cross her face, never staying still for too long.

"I understand that you're trained to do that," I say, "And I don't blame you. But please refrain from making this any more of an irritation than it already is. I'm already ruining so many people's days with this. Let's just try to make this little trip to the bank as pleasant as we can, shall we?"

She nods and I finally burn her nametag into my brain. Lola, her name is Lola and now she is my new best friend. Probably should have done it when I hopped the counter, but I have to conserve. The people in line have just noticed what is going on, and I feel the twinge in my stomach at so many missed opportunities. So many faces all morphing from one moment to the next and I miss all of them. A man with dark hair and a beard that needs a trim reaches for something in his pocket, but before he can do anything a gunshot pierces the stunned silence. I adjust my jacket and move to stand on the counter.

"Hello and good afternoon everyone," I say, still beaming, "Most of you have figured out what exactly is going on and I applaud you. So sharp. And for those of you that haven't, these fine gentlemen from the employ of Mr. Bloody Sunday are here to help you along. Now everyone, please follow the directions to the best of your ability, and this whole thing will be over before you know it."

Men in black and red with large rifles tend to have an impact and inspire docile compliance in most and defiant compliance in others. Mr. Hero over there still went against the wall with the others when everything was said and done, but he wasn't happy about. Well, he would just have to wait for everything to lock into place so that we may continue. The duffels from each of the new entrants into the bank, harsh heavy things that echo against the high marble when dropped, find their way onto the counter and Lola does her part admirably. She puts the money in the bag and keeps on going down the line, making sure no one has an empty belly. The gentlemen in the red and black take over my position as Lola's handler and I am free to peruse the rest of the captive audience at my leisure.

Still can't sit down and focus on any particular one of them, but that's the job, really. Mr. Bloody Sunday is a particular employer, and his Troubles do a wonderful job at the nitty gritty with the rifles and the mean looks. I'm just along for a little bit of pomp and circumstance and for the inevitable show that would come crashing down around in a moment's time. Give or take.

I don't particularly care for Deadman. Not fun to play against really. I can work with a lot, but I can't work with moans and grunts. Shame too because I hear he has a lovely singing voice. Master Windstep is fun, mainly because of his speeches, and how absolutely gratifying it is to end them with a bat to the temple. Serpentor would also be welcome to come slithering in. I haven't seen her around for a while, and I hope that the rumors of her moving are false, although understandable. Some troubles with her man and those always have a nasty habit of going bad places quickly. If Captain Solar shows up, then this entire day is a wash. Really though, I want my favorite to come crashing through the doors.

Mr. Hero tries to stay down. He really does. This is just a fight he can't win. Take me out of the equation, and he still loses. One guy with a pistol loses against five with rifles. I may not be a particularly gifted man in the fields of mathematics, but I can do that at least. He stands and opens his mouth. I feel the words start to form at the back of his throat, some grand condemnation that I am a terrible person, that I cannot escape justice, that I am some spawn of the worst of mankind and he will be thanked and rewarded for all he has done by removing me from the face of the earth. I don't get to hear it. I am there, right beside him as he reaches down to his hip and I drive the baseball bat right into his stomach.

He goes down, sputtering and a round of fear passes from his body, gasping and writhing on the floor. The gun goes clattering across the floor. It's always the ones with revolvers that try something.

"Everyone," I say, "Please applaud this man for his selfless act of bravery. If we were all a little more like him, I believe that the world would be a much brighter place. While he did fall this time, I would like to remind you all that is no good reason to give up the fight. You simply have to get back up again after you fall."

I smile and they don't know what to feel. The man on the ground curses me through half stolen breathes that don't quite reach the whole of his chest. That's fine. He won't die. The Troubles and Lola are still working on filling the bags with delicious cash. Any minute, any moment, and second and I get to earn my cut. I'm getting impatient really. She should be here by now.

The window explodes into a tantalizing starry smear against the ceiling and I move to cover my ears. The shockwave still hurts, still shatters my mind, and tries to collapse my ribs. And there she is, always so loud and cacophonic and I can't stop smiling. I step over the man and pick up his gun, only to toss it away as far as I can. He would still try something once his strength came back, no doubt. He probably had another piece on him, but it would be too late. The star had arrived. Nothing he could do now.

She came to a stop in the middle of the floor, shards of glass no larger than a snowflake still swirling around her, dancing in her sunlight hair, the wind whipping the cape and the skirt into a frenzy of action. She skids a little more but does not stumble. A hundred, a thousand, a million and maybe more. She's done this again and again and again and still another time and it always takes my breath away.

This is the moment I take, I steal, I mug the heavens for. The starlight shimmering woman cloaked in concussive waves shattering the world with her presence, standing before me on marble halls polished to a mirror sheen. Unfortunate that there is no color. By my will, time simply stops. All the color fades and I am left in a gray world, my gray world. Sauntering, cantering, slowly meandering my way through the flakes of broken glass.

She wears orange and black, gray and black from my perspective. The shockwave from her entrance is frozen around her, a slight shimmer in the air, separating her from the rest of the world. I can't stay here too long, take in the frame and the form and the shape of her body. I have a job to do and I have to do it well. I smack the baseball bat into my palm, once, twice, and I ram it into her stomach and hope that some kid in the stands has his glove up.

I will it and the color pops back in. She was going to say something, but the wind isn't there. I am, standing over her, hating myself for not having it within me to go again so soon, hating myself for giving the moment away.

"Hello there, Blast Hole," I say as I lean on the bat and run a hand through my hair, loving the spring back against the force. She coughs hard but manages to stagger up and try to get a shot off. I sway back, but the shockwave still rips through me and sends my own clothes fluttering.

"Hey, Beat Down," she wheezes, "Glad to see your hair still looks terrible."

Always right for the hair, and I know she loves. I love it at least, a proud mohawk that everyone who wears faded leather and worn denim should sport. That's all that matters.

"Not many people can rock a mohawk like I can, Blast," I say, "You know it. I know it. They all know. Hey, Mr. Hero. Do you like the hair?"

"Punk," he sputters back.

"See, he gets it."

She gets to her feet, bounces a few times to get the blood pumping and squares off. The moment passes and something clicks in my mind. I can go again now. I shrug my shoulders, adjusting the leather coat.

Another burst of gunfire fills the air, and she looks. The Troubles are nowhere to be seen, disappearing into the back reaches of the vault and it's now my job to keep Blast here. She starts to run, and she gets another bat to the knee to take her down. I love being the distraction.

---

The sun sets against the city's skyline, jagged peaks of black metal against an orange canvas. It's beautiful, only beautiful because it is fleeting. Even if I stayed and drew it out as long as I wished, it wouldn't work. The color would be gone, and they wouldn't change. No point in my will if it actually made the moment worse. An empty chair, much like my own, sits beside me near the lip of the roof, sandwiching a cooler that is mostly cold water at this point.

The cops were easy enough to throw off. Hard to catch a man that can slip through a moment like it was a gossamer curtain. As soon as the cuffs were about to go click, I simply chose to enjoy my last moment of freedom a bit longer, and I guess I just wandered away. Shame really, the officers were doing a fine job of it before hand, save for the all the men that slipped away as I fought Blast Hole. I still have to collect my cut from the lovely Bloody Sunday, but that's a task for tomorrow. The money will have to be laundered and divvied and allocated. That's fine. Sunday's good for it and I'm not worried. It hurts the business in the long run to screw over your business partners for a short-term gain. If only he ran seminars for that. I sigh and stretch out on my rooftop, cheap lawn chair squeaking in protest.

My hair is down now, rinsed of the structure and dye, hanging limp, and defeated against the side of my face. The show is over, and the magic is gone, and the only thing left is to bask in the afterglow on my rooftop oasis in Riverbank and put my feet up. And wait.

A boom shatters the sky, and the roof threatens to collapse on me as my guest arrives, spent and tired from a long day's work, just as I am. She sighs and takes off the mask, tosses her hair to get it out of the way and collapses in the chair. Blast Hole looks tired, almost unable to keep the joints in the sockets, the muscle stuck to the bone.

"Long day," I ask. Blast reaches over and rifles through the cooler, finding a bottle that is passably cold.

"Had to do 2 school visits after your whole shenanigan," she sighs, "And with the name change it was only a matter of time before some smart ass started snickering. I don't know what PR was thinking. Blast Wave was fine. It was good. It made sense. I told them this would happen, but some test group liked it and they went forward with that."

"Are you trying to get it changed?"

"Are you fucking kidding me? The first thing out of my mouth when the marketing guys said that. First thing. I even opened with your suggestion. Said it was too long."

"Cannon Parade is one of my better ones. God, they're all idiots."

"They are. And I like that name. No one else has it. No one else has anything like it. And I like that whole pirate, royal navy gimmick that we came up with. But no, the whole thing needs another blonde bombshell with long hair and a short skirt. I spend so much getting it colored. God forbid they do anything interesting."

"Like me?"

"Absolutely. I still think the hair is too much, take it down by half, but it's interesting."

"Just for that, I'm growing it out another 2 inches."

"Oh, please don't. Please don't. It's bad enough it's green. You already so deep in the whole stupid punk schtick. You don't need a bigger mohawk."

"It's not a stupid punk schtick. It was your idea, remember?"

"I remember it being your idea, and me trying to stop you. Don't do this. I don't need another fight today. I just need a drink and a sunset and a moment to thank every god I know that I don't have night patrol with Captain Solar tonight."

"Who do you have it with?"

"No one. I'm off. The denizens of the night will fear literally anyone other than fucking Blast Hole."

I let the silence lapse back in, growing up around us like the rising tide. I don't understand why she stays. I know there are benefits, but she's this unhappy and it kills me a little inside to see her like this. But that's another little conversation that we keep having, again and again, with neither one of us budging. Still, it's a good one to have, a good release from the pressure building up. Build up and release. I tell her some of the darker things that go on in the city and she tells me some of the darker things that go on above it. I can barely make out another cape fluttering in the evening sky. Probably Solar, or maybe its Umbra Climax. It doesn't matter, not really. Another mask in front of a face, and I already had a moment right here, that could keep going on and on forever for all I cared.

"Hey," she said in the best way possible, "Hey, Evan."

I took a long sip, letting the name hang in the air. My name. Not Beat Down, not punk, not Adagio or Minuteman, not the performer, not the mask, not the thing that slips between moments and seconds and snatched them all up, just for himself. I think I knew the words that would come next. There were only so many things that she said after using my real name, but I liked to hear them. It made what came next that much easier.

"Yeah, Hannah," I say as I set the bottle down.

"You up for a game of Phantom Limbs?"

She sets her drink down and looks at me, and I turn to face her. She's serious, maybe a slight turn at the corners of her mouth. She still has some of the make up on, a little orange here and there not quite wiped off. Her lips, still that same sunset glow that Blast needed, not Hannah. Hannah likes more subdued things, flesh tones, maybe a deep red every so often to make it an occasion. She has blue eyes. I know this, but every single time I see them without the performance I have to remind myself that they're real. That they are attached to a real woman, because something that perfect should only exist in my dreams. I smile back.

"Do you think you've earned it?" I ask.

"Two middle schools, Evan."

"That will do it. Alright then."

I stand and so does Hannah. She sheds the cape and lets it pool on the ground, as I take of my jacket, folding it and setting it down on the chair. The rules are simple. She names a part of her body and I steal the moment before the words actually leave her lips. I then touch her and if she guesses right, she gets a point. If she's wrong, I get one. Never really figured out what the winner gets when we're done, but that's not the point of the game. The frills are gone, just two people on a rooftop in the industrial district.

She takes a deep breath, letting out the last little bit of the day behind her into the moment right now. I watch the lips, waiting for the moment behind the eyes where the mind made something concrete. They part and the world goes gray.

I start by looking, just looking. She is clay, shaped and molded then fired into something stone and solid. Still a softness to her that hasn't been baked out but sculpted by action and deed into strength. I'm taller than her, just a bit, not even enough to really matter. Just enough to avoid her eyes dead on. A slight tilt of the neck and I'm gazing into her. Blue, still so blue that not even what I steal from the world takes them fully away. Still so incredibly, deeply, clearly, cleanly blue, after the day, night after the morning, after everything she's done and she is gazing back to me, through the stopped moment. Sharp nose, lips thin, a scar just on the chin from something I can't quite recall at the moment, but I have a game to play right now.

Obvious points, breasts, hips, ass, crotch, but that would be playing the hand too soon. But she would know that and that made it a viable choice once more. The game of what I know, and she knows and what we know about each other rebounding again and again and again, back and forth, always took a while before I grew bored.

Neck, just the neck, trailing my hand down to her collar bone and letting it rest there for one of my seconds, before bringing it back up and lingering there, pressing into the skin. It's always an odd thing to touch someone else in the gray time. Not quite the right consistency of warm, soft skin, but close enough. A slight delay almost in registering it as such. But it is her skin, smooth and tender and sensitive. I swear it shudders, but that's just me.

"Arms," she says as I give the time back to the world. And she does twitch, almost fleeting into the past if I was not such a stalwart timekeeper, but I notice it and she tries to just play it off as mild frustration for losing the first round. I smile and that does bring out a little morsel of frustration to her lips. I wait for the urge to come back in my stomach, the chime to say that I can snatch some more time for myself. I nod and then I wait for the draw. Her lips part again, and I take the world.

Now the mind game really begins. She knows I'm going cautious, trying to hit the less thought of spots outside of the obvious. I settle for her arms. She just called them and only a mad man would do such thing. But she knows that I am a mad man, so that might end up biting me. A decision still has to be made and might as well get on with it so that we can continue the next round. Just like the rest of her body, it's toned. Not massive, bulging things stapled to bone, but slight rises and dips. It's very hard to be in this line of work and not be some amount of fit. But the arms are light and pliable, no real softness to them, no real hardness either. She could probably get a nice bump if she flexed, but I am not thinking about that now. I am tracing the forearm with my fingers, up and down, up, and down, massaging the muscle and taking my time to give her something to feel. The moment flows once more.

"Arms," she says with an all too smug grin. I sigh. Fell right into it honestly, but I got to feel her arms, so I am the real winner. And she had her arms touched, so that has to count for something. Again, the round starts with the gray seeping into the world.