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r/isawsirius - 3 hours ago

Fluorideguzzler

ACTUAL SIGHTING. NOT A JOKE. I saw Sirius walking out of an ice cream parlor in Western Springs. I was in the parking lot. Right after I took this picture he ran behind the strip mall containing the ice cream parlor. I tried to follow him but by the time I got there he was gone. [Photo attached]

Blueeyedsirius79

Yeah sure, he was getting a sundae with Bigfoot, Nessie, and the last thylacine. We have fun here, but let’s be real for a second. Sirius has been dead for years. Every ACTUAL SIGHTING post has turned out to be a fake or a random person who happens to resemble Sirius. This is just some bearded hippie-looking guy in a hoodie.

Fluorideguzzler

So why’d he run from me?

Blueeyedsirius79

Probably because you were following him like a weirdo.

Schmendrickspeaks

That looks like a guy in my support group. I don’t think it is him (Sirius, I mean), but the resemblance is kind of striking. He’s even wearing the same type of hoodie.

Blueeyedsirius79

People see what they want to see. I mean, I get it, it’s exciting to think that he’s still out there somewhere, but in seven years, there’s never been any convincing evidence. And if he ever did return, are we so sure that would be a positive thing? We all had some good times with him while he was still saving people, but things got pretty weird toward the end. He got kind of scary. I miss him now, but honestly, when he vanished back in 2012, I was relieved.

Fluorideguzzler

And you don’t want to know the story behind that? You don’t want to know why the world’s only superhero suddenly started acting so weird, then just fucked off one day and never came back?

Blueeyedsirius79

I can live without knowing.

Schmendrickspeaks

He didn’t like the term superhero. Or even superhuman.

Fluorideguzzler

Well, he walked around with his ass in a suit and cape. Like, come on. He’s a superhero. Or was.

Blueeyedsirius79

Okay, just gonna drop this here. [Link] It’s a facial recognition program with a 99% success rate, and it accounts for aging and weight gain and stuff like that. Someone ran this through along with an older photo of Sirius, and the verdict is that it’s not the same guy. Another false sighting. Big surprise. Can we get back to the memes now?

Fluorideguzzler

I still think it’s him. The nose is the same, and the ears. And the way he was just gone when I chased after him, it was fucking eerie. Behind the strip mall there was just this empty lot and a field. There’s nowhere he could have hidden. He must have done that thing where he flies away so fast that the human eye can’t track him. You know, where he just kind of zip-blurs up into the sky.

Blueeyedsirius79

And we only have your word on that.

Fluorideguzzler

What about you, schmendrick? You believe me? You said that he looked like some guy from your support group. Do you think it’s the same guy?

Schmendrickspeaks

I don’t know what to believe.

Fluorideguzzler

Well, next time you go, take a picture of him and show us.

Schmendrickspeaks

I’m not going to do that. I’m not a creep.

Fluorideguzzler

Yes you are. You rave-reviewed that fanart of Sirius getting railed by an anthropomorphic cartoon cat. As did I. I know we like to pretend we’re better than the Star Brides because we’re in on the joke, but we’re all creeps and weirdos here. Just embrace it. Hey, what kind of support group are you going to, anyway?

Schmendrickspeaks

As if I’m going to tell that to a bunch of creeps. But no, blueeyes is right. We’ve all seen Sirius impersonators. Some people just have a similar facial structure. None of us here have actually seen him.

Fluorideguzzler

I know who I saw.

Aurora, IL – 2019

The support group meetings took place in the basement of a Lutheran church. Every Thursday at six o’clock, I pushed open the glass double-doors of the building’s main entrance and walked down a carpeted hallway, past posters for the Sunday school play, past the bathroom, past a framed wood carving of Jesus’ face with a tender and haggard expression reminiscent of an overworked single dad, down a set of cement steps with flaking blue paint, to a nondescript door. Always, there was a laminated piece of paper affixed to the door with blocky text spelling out Carolyn’s favorite mantra: “I accept that I must save myself or remain unsaved. I accept that no one will rescue me, or redeem me, or fix me. It is up to me.”

Kind of ballsy to stick something like that inside a Christian church, but maybe Jesus and other supernatural beings were exempted from this mantra.

The eight group members sat in plastic chairs positioned in a circle, under rows of panel lights on the low basement ceiling. The brick walls were painted a faded lemon yellow. The carpet was barf-hued, brown with flecks of green and orange like undigested peas and bits of carrot. Cardboard boxes were stacked against one wall, containing dusty props for the previous year’s Christmas pageant. Along the opposite wall stood a card table with carafes of lukewarm coffee (one regular, one decaf) and two packages of store brand sandwich cookies (one chocolate, one vanilla).

“Right on time,” Carolyn said, smiling at me. She was a woman in her late forties with a warm, motherly aura, graying brown hair always tied back in a ponytail. “We were just about to kick things off with a round of shares. I thought we could get the juices flowing by listing our accomplishments this week. Bill? Would you like to start?”

Bill—who had been sexually assaulted as a teenager—cleared his throat. He was a beefy refrigerator of a guy with a bald head, a bushy ginger beard and Japanese kanji tattooed on his left arm. He’d told me once that the words were supposed to say, In spite of everything, I choose love, but the tattoo artist had messed up. There were like three different kanji for love in Japanese and Bill got the one associated with passion and lust instead of selfless, spiritual love. Different vibe. He’d talked about getting it redone, but so far it remained. “I got a Fitbit,” he said, holding his arm up to show it off. “Been getting ten thousand steps a day. Most days, anyway.”

“Congrats, Bill.”

There was a light spattering of applause.

Jeanine—who had survived a house fire and was still triggered by even the flame of a Zippo lighter—said, “I’ve been getting into knitting.” She ran her fingertips idly over the twisting scars on her right arm. She wore tank tops even in cooler weather, as though daring people to stare. “It’s very calming.”

“I’m trying to get an ocelot,” said Dave, a tall, skinny sixty-something guy with thinning gray hair and a horror of fireworks and thunder. Though it wasn’t his turn.

“Oh,” Carolyn said. “The type of wildcat?”

“Aren’t those illegal to own in Illinois?” Bill said.

“Yes, and in most other states,” Dave replied in his usual expressionless way. “But there are ways around that.”

I didn’t expect Dave to succeed in this. He always had a weird obsession, and it never panned out. Two weeks ago, he’d wanted to build a trebuchet in his yard.

Directly to Dave’s left, in an olive green chair, sat a man wearing a dark blue hoodie and sunglasses, his head bowed and his arms crossed over his chest. A scruffy dark beard obscured the lower half of his face.

“Ken?” Carolyn said. “It’s your turn.”

The bearded man in the hoodie and sunglasses shifted in his seat and mumbled, “Pass.”

When we went around the circle to describe our weekly progress or struggles, he always said, “Pass.” And Carolyn didn’t push, because the shares were voluntary. You couldn’t force someone to heal, as she always said.

But it pissed me off.

Most of us had, at this point, known each other for several months. We’d described our bad dreams and flashbacks to each other in gruesome detail. We were all sitting here naked (figuratively), our boobs and balls hanging out, our wrinkles and scars and moles and cellulite on display, and he was still primly clothed, not even flashing us a bit of ankle. He was probably just shy or whatever, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was observing us, coldly detached, like we were specimens.

“Okay,” Carolyn said. “Sanjay?”

“I completed that three thousand piece jigsaw puzzle,” said Sanjay, who had witnessed a gang murder in the street, right in front of his house. “The one with the dolphins. I’m thinking about spray-gluing and framing it.”

My gaze remained focused on Ken. He stole a quick glance at me, then quickly lowered his head.

It couldn’t be him. Could it?

“Shawna?” Carolyn said.

Shawna—who had been in a car accident that resulted in six surgeries and an opiate addiction—folded her hands, smiled in her nervous way and said, “I went on a date. I don’t know if I’ll go on a second one, but I just wanted to put myself out there again. To prove that I could.”

“That’s fantastic,” Carolyn said. “Every step counts. How did it go?”

“I mean, I like him,” Shawna said. “I do. It’s just…getting close to someone means opening up. He’ll see the scars.” Unlike Jeanine, Shawna never wore short sleeves, or anything that exposed her midriff. “I don’t know if I’m ready for that. I don’t know if rejection is something I want to deal with right now. I know it’s not a guarantee that he’ll reject me, but the idea that he won’t is almost scarier.”

Ken muffled a tiny cough against one fist. Everyone looked at him. He said, “Sorry. Dry throat.”

“Do you have anything you’d like to share, Ken?”

He shifted in his chair. The metal legs squeaked faintly. And for a moment I thought he was finally going to disclose something. He had done it once before—albeit silently—two weeks ago, when Carolyn had asked the group, “So, who here feels like it’s a struggle to make friends? Raise your hand,” and his hand had shot up as though yanked by the string of an unseen puppeteer.

Now, his mouth opened, then closed again. He shook his head.

“It doesn’t have to be related to trauma,” Carolyn said, “or even a mental health goal. You can just tell us something fun you did this week. Did you see any new movies? Read any books?”

After a pause, he said again, “Pass.” And then, after another brief silence: “Sorry, I’m…private. I’m a private person.”

There was something odd about the way he spoke, as though he were consciously deepening his voice, making it raspier than it naturally was, the way Batman did when he was in disguise. Ken always talked that way, on the rare occasions that he talked at all.

“Okay,” Carolyn said. “Well, if you do think of anything you want to tell us, feel free.”

I wanted to say to him, Do you think the rest of us like this? Do you think we enjoy recounting our traumatic memories and baring our insecurities over stale coffee? No, we’re here to do the fucking work, we are here to murder our traumas, because we’re sick of being chained to them, and the only thing that gives us the courage to expose our soft little underbellies is the fact that everyone around us is in the same boat. So show us the goods or get out.

I bit my tongue until it started to throb.

Six weeks, he’d been showing up here, and still I’d never seen his eyes. He always wore sunglasses. The first time I’d heard his voice was when Carolyn had asked him politely to take them off and he’d mumbled something about his eyes being abnormally sensitive to light. Maybe he liked to come in stoned or tripping and he didn’t want us to see his dilated pupils. He was always scratching his scruffy jaw, quick little agitated movements.

“Hazel? Any accomplishments you’d like to share?”

My turn. Goodie.

“I visited my parents’ graves,” I said. “I don’t know if that really counts. But it was something I’d been meaning to do.”

“Of course it counts,” she said with a gentle smile. “How did it feel?”

My tailbone was starting to ache, distracting me. I adjusted my position, which didn’t help much. These chairs were not very ass-friendly. Dave always brought a pillow—a yellowing, lumpy pillow that was probably older than me. Maybe I should follow his example.

“Hazel?”

“Sorry,” I muttered. “It felt…I don’t know. I kept waiting to cry. It’s been years since I’ve been there. But it felt like I was watching someone else. Like I just disconnected.”

“That’s understandable,” Carolyn said. “What did you want to feel?”

I stared at the carpet between my feet, wondering how many years it had been there, wondering if that dull barf brown was its original color or if it had faded over the years. “I was looking for closure, I guess. I don’t even know what that word means. I just want to feel normal. It’s been five years since my mom’s death and over ten years since my dad’s. I’ve had plenty of time to heal. I shouldn’t feel so…stuck.”

“There is no should or shouldn’t,” she said. “We don’t get to control how things affect us. We can only control how we respond.”

Ken was looking at me. I could feel the weight of his gaze behind those sunglasses.

“All right, everyone,” Carolyn said. “Today I wanted to talk about a trauma-related article I found online recently. I thought it might give us some good points for discussion. It’s from a woman who—”

“I think Ken should share.”

All eyes turned toward me. Ken froze.

“Sorry,” I said, “but it’s been a month and a half and he hasn’t told us anything. Every time, he just sits there. Do you even have PTSD, man? Or are you just finding a random support group to crash so you can experience some kind of secondhand catharsis? Are you Fight Club-ing us?”

“Hazel,” Carolyn said quietly, “everyone heals at their own pace.”

“Well, I don’t like having an audience. I feel like a spectacle.” I stared straight at him. “Either he leaves the group or I do. Unless he wants to share something now.”

“Jesus, Haze,” Bill muttered. “Cool it.”

“What? I’m the only one bothered by this? No one else finds this weird?”

“It’s okay,” Ken said in his Batman voice, gaze downcast. He stood in an abrupt, lurching movement. “I’ll go.” He turned and walked toward the door.

“Ken,” Carolyn called, “you don’t have to leave.”

The door opened, then closed. Ken was gone.

Everyone stared at me dourly. Shawna’s face held a sad, knowing look. Carolyn’s lips were pressed together in a disapproving seam. Clearly, I was the asshole.

“Come on,” I said. “Someone had to say something. How long were we going to let this go on?”

“You didn’t share anything the first few sessions, either,” Jeanine said.

“I shared on my second session.”

“Pretty sure it was the third,” Dave said.

“Well, either way, he’s been here longer. Is there any limit? Would we let this go on for a year? Two years?” At their stares, I blew out a heavy breath, vibrating my lips, and said, “Fine. Fuck it. I’ll go apologize.” Without giving them a chance to respond, I stood and marched out the door, up the steps and outside.

It was late October. Clouds masked the stars. The cold air filled my lungs in a tingling rush. Ken stood on the tree lawn outside the church, head bowed, arms hanging at his sides, sunglasses folded and clutched in one hand. Soft, hitching breaths filled the silence.

Shit. Was he crying?

I cleared my throat. “Hey. Ken.”

His shoulders stiffened; his unsteady breaths fell silent. He remained motionless, facing away from me.

“Just wanted to say, you know. Sorry. I was out of line.”

“It’s—it’s fine,” he mumbled. His voice sounded different. Less deep. His fingers clenched tighter on his sunglasses. He rubbed his thumb along the frame of one lens. He took a breath, and when he spoke again, it was in his fucking Batman voice: “You were right. I don’t belong here.” 

“Why not?”

“I’m not like the rest of you.” The way he said it, in that growling rasp, made it sound self-important, though that probably wasn’t intentional on his part. “I’m different.”

“Meaning what, exactly?” At his silence, I said, “Sorry, sorry. It doesn’t matter. Just come back in. You don’t have to share, if you don’t want to. It’s none of my business.” Still, he remained facing away from me. On impulse, I reached out and touched his shoulder. “Hey—”

He flinched. His head turned sharply, and his gaze jerked toward me. In the same moment, a car glided past on the street, headlights shining. Quickly, he looked away and fumbled his shades back on, but it was too late. I’d glimpsed his eyes. I’d seen them flash like a cat’s in the car’s headlights.

The car turned a corner and disappeared. We stood there, looking at each other in the dim yellow glow from the streetlight on the corner.

His face had changed in the seven years since his disappearance. It was older, fuller, more weathered, and the hood and beard further masked the resemblance. But there was no mistaking those eyes.

“Holy shit,” I said in a small, wobbly voice.

“What?”

“It is you.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” His tone was stiff.

“I saw. I saw your flashy things. You’re him. You’re Sirius.”

We stared at each other for a few more seconds. Then he tilted his head back, clamped his arms against his sides, and shot straight up into the sky. There was no dramatic whoosh, like when people flew away in TV shows. It was almost silent. There was a faint fffp—a pop, air rushing in to fill the void where he’d been an instant before, a sound like a bit of air escaping from a balloon or like a very quiet fart—and then he was gone. The night was still and clear; the only sound was the distant rush of traffic.

My knees turned to water. I sank to the ground and propped myself up with one hand. The grass prickled against my palm. Dry little straws. A wave of shaky dizziness rolled over me, momentarily blacking out my vision. Once, years ago, I’d given blood on an empty stomach, a decision I quickly regretted. That was the only feeling I could compare to this.

A minute or two passed before I felt steady enough to stand up again. Wobbly-legged and nauseous, I picked myself up and walked back into the church. Everyone was still sitting around in a circle. “I apologized. But he, um. He left.”

“Do you think he’ll come back?” Sanjay asked.

“I don’t know.” After a few seconds, I shuffled back to my seat. My head was ringing. Should I tell them? Would they believe me?

“Anyway,” Dave said, “there are hybrids between domestic cats and servals. I could conceivably find an ocelot cross. It’s a legal gray area. My psilocybin guy says that he could potentially hook me up. He has connections with big cat people. Roadside zoos, that kind of thing.”

“Why is an ocelot so important to you, Dave?” Carolyn asked.

“Why are marriage, children, and a six figure salary important to so many people?” he replied. “No one bothers to ask that question.”

Their voices washed over me, turning to static in the back of my head.

Bill leaned toward me and whispered, “Haze? You okay?”

“Fine,” I muttered.

For the rest of the group, I didn’t speak. My throat felt hot and tight. Sirius, the world’s only superhero and the man who had saved my life, presumed dead for the better part of a decade, had been sitting right here, in this room. I had not allowed myself to believe that it was really him. And now he was gone. I had scared him away.

* * *

It was 2008, and I was twelve years old. I was on a plane with my mom and dad. We were flying to Georgia to visit my grandparents on my dad’s side. I was watching an in-flight movie. Iron Man. Mom and Dad sat to either side of me, talking in low voices. I had the headphones on, but I’d nudged one of them to the side and turned down the volume of the movie so I could hear their conversation.

“I don’t think your father should be driving, with his cataracts,” Mom said. “Every time I get in the car with him, it feels like I’m playing Russian rubies.”

I know she must have been saying Russian roulette, but I didn’t know that term, at the time, so my memory transformed it into rubies.

At some point I must have dozed off, because I remember waking to a violent shaking sensation and the voice of the pilot on the intercom, urging us to stay calm. A plastic cup on my dad’s tray table, still half-full of Coke and melting ice, was vibrating. There was a jolt, like we’d been smacked by a giant flyswatter. The Coke spilled, and someone let out a little bleating yelp. My mom hugged me, breathing hard.

The silence was what struck me. It seemed like everyone should have been screaming. But aside from the yelp, no one made a sound.

Through the window, I could see white haze, and then a glimpse of ground. We were descending. Way too fast. My dad gripped my hand in his. “Hold on. Hold on, Hazy,” he said. “Just some choppy air.”

I started to cry quietly, in tiny, breathless wheezes. My mom hugged me tighter. She didn’t tell me that it would be okay. Maybe she already knew that it wouldn’t be. The oxygen masks tumbled from the ceiling. My mom strapped one onto my face and then fumbled with her own, which was the opposite of how you were supposed to do it. I remembered that from the little video they’d shown us. But it didn’t matter, as it turned out.

The ground kept rushing toward us, and that was the exact moment it sunk in that I was going to die, that we were all going to die. The oxygen masks wouldn’t save us. This was one of those things you heard about on the news, one of those things that had never seemed real to me because it was on a screen. I wouldn’t get to grow up. I would never have a job or my own house or get married or do any of the things that grownups did. These were going to be my last moments alive, and then…what?

I wondered what I’d never quite allowed myself to wonder, before that moment. Was heaven real, or was it just a story that grownups told kids, like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny?

I didn’t scream. I wasn’t even crying now. I was frozen, numb.

“Oh God,” a woman was moaning over and over, very quietly. “Oh God, oh God. Oh Jesus, oh God.” I heard a man whispering rhythmically in another language—a prayer?

“We’re still near the ocean,” Dad said in a strangely calm voice. He was staring out the window. “If the pilot can get us to water, we’ll b—” The plane jolted again, and my dad lurched forward in his seat, his head smacking against the seat in front of him with such force that he slumped over unconscious.

And then our descent began to slow. The roar of rushing air quieted. Gravity had gone funny, and things were floating into the air. My coloring book hung suspended, open, above my head. Another plastic cup drifted over the aisle, its contents half-spilled, ice cubes and globules of amber liquid shining like glass beads in midair.

In that moment, I didn’t know what was happening. I had no idea that we had been saved. But a bystander on the ground caught it all on camera, and I would see it later on the news—the plane hurtling down from the sky, black smoke pouring from one side. And then a tiny human figure, barely visible from that distance, racing through the air, flying toward the plane and halting its descent with his bare hands.

You almost can’t blame the conspiracy theorists, the ones who say it was all staged—both the engine failure and the dramatic intervention—because, looking at it from the outside, it feels so much like a scene from a movie.

* * *

After Sirius gently set the plane on the ground, he’d stuck around only long enough to ensure that everyone was safe. Or safe-ish. I dimly remember going down a big, inflatable slide, then standing out in the empty field, holding my mom’s hand, looking around for my dad, certain that he was in the crowd somewhere.

I glimpsed a young man walking around, talking to people. My first thought was that he looked like he was going to a costume party, or like a high schooler still trying to trick-or-treat past the age where it was appropriate. He wore a dark blue cape and a matching, close-fitting suit with a single white starburst on the chest, not centered, but slightly to the left, over his heart. It looked kind of silly. And yet, even at a distance, I could see that the costume wasn’t some cheap thing. It fit him perfectly, like a second skin, like something from a superhero movie.

Had he been a passenger on the plane? Had he been dressed like that during the flight? How had I not noticed him until now?

He was of medium height, clean-shaven, with short, neat dark hair. “Everyone okay?” he asked. He was smiling a broad, bright TV smile, and his teeth were very white.

At the time, I had no idea who he was. No one did. But I now knew that when this occurred, Sirius had been sixteen. Still a kid. Just four years older than me.

He walked toward Mom and me. I was in a daze, half-convinced this was all a dream. “Everything okay here, folks?” he asked in a tone of chipper concern.

“My husband is still on the plane,” Mom replied, her voice wavering. “He’s—” she glanced at me. “He hit his head, and he’s breathing but he’s not responding. I thought he shouldn’t be moved. We’re waiting for the ambulance.”

“They’ll be here any moment,” Sirius said. “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.” He gave us a thumbs-up, then glanced at me. “What about you, Miss? Are you okay?”

“I think I peed myself,” I heard my own voice reply.

“Happens to the best of us,” he said, still in that too-happy tone, like he was an announcer on an infomercial, talking about how amazing the new product was. “What’s your name?”

“Hazel. Hazel Howl.”

“I’m Sirius,” he replied. “Like the star. Pleased to meet you.”

I stared into his light brown eyes, still numb. Those eyes were a little too wide, whites showing all around the edges, and I thought, He’s trying to hide it, but he’s scared.

Of what, though? Us?

Then he turned away and approached the next passenger, asking their name, introducing himself, reassuring them that everything was okay.

The sirens of the approaching ambulances filled the air. Sirius turned his head in their direction, then tucked his arms against his sides. He flew straight up into the sky and vanished to a chorus of gasps and awed cries. I remember thinking, Wow, those special effects are pretty good. Which didn’t make sense, of course, since we weren’t watching a screen. But maybe that was the only way my brain could process any of it.

* * *

After the near-crash, a month went by before Sirius made his first TV appearance. During that time, the media was dominated by questions about the identity of the flying man in the blue suit and cape. Who was he? What was he? Where had he come from?

Throughout it all, the memory of that day replayed in my dreams again and again. I had survived, but I couldn’t unlearn what I had learned in that moment: that any of us could die at any time. The sense of safety and mundanity that kept us sane, day to day, was an illusion. We were—all of us—stranded in a universe that was not obligated to care. It was easy to tell oneself these things and say that they were obvious. It was another thing to really understand them on a gut level. Like the laminated paper on the door to the church basement said: we were alone.

Yet we had been saved. Sirius’ existence was a quiet repudiation of that statement, a counterpoint. We all should have died, that day. I should have died. But I hadn’t. We’d been pulled from the jaws of oblivion.

Except for my dad. Once the ambulances arrived, I watched them load him onto a stretcher and into the back of a big white vehicle. He had a concussion, they said. They were taking him in for a CAT scan.

I saw him alive only once more after that, in the hospital room, machines beeping, breaths rasping faintly into an oxygen mask like the one on the plane. His face was slack, his head swathed in bandages from a recent surgery, an attempt to control the internal bleeding. I’d touched his hand, kissed his cheek. My mom told me to sing to him, so I sang “Red, Red Robin,” which he used to sing to me when I was little. Wake up, wake up, you sleepyhead. Get up, get out of bed.

He didn’t respond. Didn’t even twitch. A few hours later, he was gone. One of the two pillars of my life had vanished; something which seemed so solid and eternal had turned out to be made of smoke, dust suspended in the shape of a person. A stray puff of wind had blown it away.

* * *

Bethany Church stood in a quiet, mostly residential neighborhood, across from a school and a small park surrounded by a rusted chain link fence. After the group let out, I walked up the street to the spot where my car was parked, directly under a streetlight. I got into the driver’s seat, closed the door, and brought up r/isawsirius on my phone.

The subreddit had first emerged in 2012, a few months after Sirius’ mysterious disappearance. But most of the sightings were so unreliable, even back then, that the space had quickly turned into a collection of memes and in-jokes. A typical post would go something like: I saw Sirius in line at a Burger King. When I asked him, “Are you Sirius?” he shook my hand and said, “I died for your sins” and handed me $100. Afterwards he gave me a blowjob in the parking lot and when I nutted I looked up and saw my childhood dog Sparky running towards us, returned from death and wreathed in angelic light. Sirius is a true American.

And someone would reply: Are you serious?

I’m Sirius. Are you Sirius?

I’m totally Sirius.

The top-rated post in the subreddit featured a legitimately impressive oil painting of Sirius as Jesus at the last supper, in his classic blue suit and cape, with the mascots of his various corporate sponsors assembled around him. Cool Blue—the smiling, sunglasses-wearing cartoon cat from a brand of muesli cereal which Sirius had done commercials for—was Judas. There’d been some scandal involving a contract violation, the details of which are too boring to recount, but the result was that the subreddit had deemed Cool Blue as Sirius’ arch nemesis, since he didn’t have a real nemesis, only the random petty criminals he stopped and the New York Times writers who published articles about how he represented fascism or consumerism or the toxic seductions of nostalgia or whatever. Lots of people made fanart of Cool Blue and Sirius engaged in epic battle; other people shipped them and posted links to NSFW art.

The subreddit also functioned as an impromptu marketplace for old Sirius merchandise—boxes of the long-expired cereal with his face on the front and hardened, fossil-like blue marshmallows inside, Happy Meal toys, and those talking dolls with the eyes that moved creepily in their plastic heads. The real Sirius had brown eyes, but in the initial run of the toy they’d given him blue irises, maybe thinking that blue would sell better. The resulting public outcry had caused them to quickly recall the doll and correct the inaccuracy, and now Blue-Eyed Sirius was a rare collectible.

During the height of his fame, Sirius had been a world-changing phenomenon. His very existence had forced everyone to reevaluate their ideas about reality, had opened windows into possibilities that none of us had ever imagined. Now, just seven short years later, he’d been reduced to a curiosity. A joke and a spooky little mystery rolled into one. When Jesus (allegedly) performed miracles two thousand years ago, he’d created a new religion that swept the globe. Now, when a man performed miracles, what did he get? Sponsorships, a subreddit, and porn of him getting fucked by a furry (for some reason, most people seemed to assume that Cool Blue was the top). Humankind had grown more jaded.

Some stalwart cynics maintained that Sirius had never really had superpowers, that it had all been staged to sell toys and that the thousands of witnesses who saw those powers in action had been paid off, but these people were in the same camp as moon landing deniers as far as credibility. The mainstream position was that Sirius’ extraordinary abilities were just a weird genetic fluke that would probably never be seen again. This explanation was a bit thin, yes, but it was the best we had.

Of course, he still had his true believers, the people who saw him as a messiah, though they tended to be a little kooky. A few years ago, at a flea market, I’d spoken to a bald, sunburned man with a bushy lumberjack beard and a Sirius tattoo covering most of his back. He’d proudly taken off his shirt and turned around to show me. “He’s not dead,” the man told me earnestly. “He’s coming back in 2020. He spoke to me in a vision.”

On another occasion, I’d visited a gas station that sold those long glass jar candles with Sirius’ image on them in place of Jesus or Mary. There was a movement called the Star Brides involving a bunch of women and a few guys who claimed to all be married to Sirius in some abstract, spiritual way, which included mind-blowing dream-sex on the astral plane. Occasionally, they still popped up on r/ISawSirius and posted accounts of these experiences. The ruthless mockery they received in response never dimmed their enthusiasm or their faith. They were all heart emojis and star-eyed smilies and cheerful, polyamorous camaraderie, bolstering and validating each other’s delusions. Some of them were also real-life married to each other and had dream threesomes with their idol. Kind of wholesome, really.

But no one took it seriously. In the years since Sirius’ disappearance, there’d been only a single photograph that was unambiguously accepted as authentic. It had been snapped near the edge of Earth’s atmosphere by a weather balloon, about three months after his retreat from the public eye. In this image, Sirius floated silently, eyes closed, head bowed, curled up like an embryo inside an egg, hugging his knees to his chest. He was still wearing his famous blue suit, cape and all.

I tapped the create post icon with my thumb, then stared at the blank field. After a minute or two, I closed it.

* * *

I drove home to my apartment.

Moving slowly, like a sleepwalker, I heated up some instant mac and cheese in a sauce pan. I ate at the table in my tiny kitchen, aware of the peeling corners of the cheap vinyl flooring, aware that I still hadn’t changed the burned-out bulb of the dingy lamp on the ceiling, aware of a dead fly on the counter, aware that there was a funny smell coming from somewhere and I still hadn’t figured out the source. Probably a dead mouse wedged behind the stove or in the insulation.

Hanging on the wall next to the refrigerator, in a frame, was a Tyler Durden quote embroidered in green thread on burlap: “This is your life, good to the last drop. Doesn’t get any better than this.”

I finished eating, rinsed out the bowl.

In the bedroom, I opened my closet, dragged out a cardboard box filled with old toys, and rummaged through it. My cat, Icy—a silver and gray female—lay curled at the foot of my bed, atop the faded green comforter, the tip of her tail flicking this way and that. She had only one ear. The other was a stub; she’d lost it during her days as a feral kitten. She’d been so tiny and bedraggled, then. I’d started feeding her, not expecting it to turn into a permanent arrangement.

I removed plastic horses and dinosaurs and a headless Barbie from the box until I found a faded toy I’d purchased almost a decade ago: Sirius in his little felt cape. It wasn’t one of the popular talking dolls, just a plushie. The face was simple, just two black button eyes and an embroidered smile.

I’d kept the toy all the years. During my breakdown, I’d brought it with me to the psych ward.

A lump filled my throat. “What the fuck, man?” I whispered. “You show up in my support group?”

The toy smiled up at me.

The back of my neck prickled. Icy jumped off the bed and padded across the room to my side. Her hackles were raised, her tail flicking like a whip. She crouched down and stared at the window, ears pinned back.

I followed her gaze, but I saw only darkness. Yet she kept staring. A tiny, mewing growl escaped her throat. Then she darted under the bed.

I set the toy down and walked over, heart knocking against my ribs. My apartment was on the first floor of my building. I peered at the parking lot outside. A single streetlight stood on the corner. For an instant I thought I saw a flicker of movement across that light. Could’ve been anything. A bird, maybe.

I opened the window halfway. “Hello?” I called.

Silence.

My mouth had gone dry. I swallowed, trying to work up some spit. My ears caught a faint rustle in the darkness. “Sirius?” After a few seconds, I tried again: “Ken?”

The shadows stirred, shifted. There was a faint whoosh as something descended from above. And suddenly he was there, standing right outside my window, on the thin strip of grassy lawn between the exterior wall and the parking lot. He was still wearing his baggy blue hoodie, his jeans and sneakers. His eyes caught the light from my window and bounced it back. The tiny twin moons flickered as he blinked.

“Oh. Hi,” I said.

After a brief silence, he whispered, “Hi.”

It had begun to rain—a soft, monotone patter. The pavement gleamed wetly. “Did you follow me home?” I asked, keeping my tone carefully neutral.

Blink. Faint, raspy breathing filled the silence. He was just far enough away that I couldn’t make out his expression, only the outline of his hood and the coins of light hovering inside the darkness within. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” He was no longer deepening and roughening his voice to disguise it; it was the clear, light, gentle tenor I remembered. “I know I scared you.”

“I’m fine,” I said, my heart pounding.

He gave a small nod. “I’m glad.” His tone was subdued. “I’m sorry. For intruding into your safe space. I shouldn’t have stayed so long. And I won’t come back. Either here or to the group. I promise. I won’t bother you anymore.” He started to turn.

“Wait.”

He went still.

“Do you know who I am?”

“You’re Hazel Howl.” 

“No, I mean, yes, that’s my name. I mean—did you know who I was when you joined the group?”

After a pause, he replied in a soft, subdued voice, “Yes. I knew. You’re from the crash. Or…not the crash. The plane I stopped from crashing. In oh-eight. These past few months, I’ve been checking in on people I saved.” 

“So you spent six sessions lurking in the group just to ‘check in’ on me.”

“I didn’t plan to stay that long. I was only going to show up once. But then I started listening to everyone’s stories, and…” He lowered his gaze. “I’m sorry. About your dad.”

A dull cramp flared in my chest, like an old injury. My first impulse was to say, It’s fine, but of course it wasn’t. “It’s not your fault,” I said instead.

Wasn’t it? The lurch which resulted in Dad’s fatal concussion had been a direct result of Sirius catching the falling plane in midair. But that had just been an unfortunate fluke, and considering that everyone on that plane would have died if Sirius hadn’t showed up, it felt incredibly petty and entitled to complain about him not being gentler. I wasn’t even sure that a softer catch would’ve been possible. I’d never tried catching a plane with my bare hands, after all.

Still, I didwish he’d been gentler.

“I’m sorry about your mom, too,” he said.

“That had nothing to do with you or the crash,” I said. “She just got sick. It happens.”

“Still. I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.”

Another stretch of silence.

“Should I leave?” he asked, breaking the silence. A slight tremor had crept into his voice.

“No. No, don’t leave. Not yet.”

“Are you sure? You smell nervous.”

“I smell nervous?” I knew that his senses were keener than an ordinary person’s, but still, that was a bit Silence of the Lambs.

“Yes. I can smell sweat. And adrenaline.”

“What else can you smell, right now?” I asked, curious in spite of myself.

“I know that you had macaroni and cheese for dinner. And also that your cat is in heat.”

“Uh…that’s right. The mac and cheese part anyway. I don’t know about the other part.”

“She is. Or she will be, soon.”

“Good to know.”

“Sorry. Was that a weird thing to say?”

“No. This is a completely normal conversation.” My heart was still pounding. I wondered if he could hear it over the soft patter of the rain. “Hey, listen. I want to keep talking to you, but it’s kind of awkward, doing it through the window like this.” But inviting him inside also felt strange. “You, um. You wanna go to a bar or something? Let me buy you a drink.” Did he drink? “Or food. There’s an all-night diner just a couple blocks from here. The Carousel. It’s the one with the merry-go-round horse out front. They’re famous for their ice cream and milkshakes, but they have other stuff too. You wanna meet there in a few minutes?”

“I…” He took a step back. “I shouldn’t be out in public. I shouldn’t be talking to you at all. I don’t want to be recognized.”

“No one will recognize you. No one in the support group did, right? They still don’t know who you are. I didn’t tell them your real identity. I swear, I won’t out you.”

He blinked again. He glanced around nervously and backed further away from the window. “I—I don’t—” his voice wavered.

And then he vanished. He must have flown away again, but he moved so fast, I didn’t see where he went. There was a flicker, and the night swallowed him.

“Is that a yes?” I called out into the rainy darkness.

Icy crept out from under the bed. I scooped her up and hugged her.