TCD Gallery

          Just as the couple exited the restaurant, streetlights began to come to life. Their glow was dim at first, slowly growing to a bright shine. The sun had yet to fully set over the city, washing the street in an orange hue. “Thanks again, that was really fun,” the woman said while she fiddled nervously with her watch.

           “Yeah, yeah, no problem.”

           “You know it’s still really early – we could catch a movie down by the pier?” She looked down from her watch to her date. He was looking at his phone. She could see over his shoulder that he was staring intently at his background. “I mean, I don’t work tomorrow morning, so….”

           “Yeah, yeah.” he paused. “I don’t think… I think I don’t want to, exactly.” He put his phone in his pocket, examined the streetlights, and then looked up to her. Her heart began to sink to her shoes; she’d seen that look before.

           “Oh, well, we could go back to my place and-“

           “No, it’s, not, you know, it’s not the movie, it’s,” he fumbled with his words. He shifted his weight from the left foot to the right, and back to the left, planting it firmly. “You know, you’re really sweet and good looking, yeah?” She closed her eyes, gripping the strap on her purse, bracing for impact. “It’s like, you’re swell, yeah? Yeah and, like, you’re funny and, you know, you’re….” He trailed off. He could read her face through her curled lips and furrowed brow. He shifted back to his right foot and put his hand on his phone in his pocket. “I guess you know what I’m gonna say, then.”

           “I just want to know why. I thought,” she clenched her eyes tighter for a moment before opening them. His stance was flimsy, noncommittal. A stiff breeze would send him over. “I thought we were doing well? The first date was good, wasn’t it? I thought it was good.”

           “It was, you know? It – Sarah, you’re great. Really! You’re gonna find a guy, and I wanted to give it a try, but, you know…. And this has nothing to do with you, it’s me, it’s a me thing, but,” He tapped his toe on the ground and took his hand out of his pocket. “You know, it’s like….” He sighed, and scratched his head. He decided to rip it off like a band-aid. “You’re like six foot two, at least, you know? And that’s not in heels or anything. Like, it’s nothing wrong with you but, you know, it’s not for me, yeah?”

           Sarah felt like she was hit square in the breadbasket. Her heart fell to her hips and the air got sucked from her chest. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard it, and it wasn’t the worst way she had been told, but that did little to dull the sting. She ran her hand up and down the strap of her purse. A car drove by and as it passed, a thick silence began to fall over the street. The man broke it again, shifting backwards a few steps. “I think it’s just best if we stop sooner rather than later, you know? I don’t want to hurt you or anything, yeah?”

           “Yeah.”

           “Okay. Cool.” He took another step backwards, starting to turn. “I’m really sorry. You’ll do great though. Have a good… you know, take care.” He turned and walked down the street briskly, rounding a corner and disappearing from sight. Sarah stood there a few moments longer, watching where he went as the sun finally set, draping a dark blanket over the sky.

           She let loose a heavy sigh, letting the weight of the conversation roll down from her shoulders. He had walked in the same direction as her apartment, and her superior stride would catch her up to him in no time. “I guess I’ll take the long way home.”

*

           Gray clouds obscured the stars, and a gentle drizzle began to patter on the streets and rooftops of Red City. Sarah quickened her pace, determined to get home before the rain ruined her favorite dress. She ducked into the first convenience store she saw, hoping to wait out the sudden downturn in weather. It was a dingy little place with yellowed walls and cracked linoleum, and not another soul in sight. She grabbed two cans of wet cat food before setting them down, and picking up a single bag of the cheaper dry variety. She headed for the unmanned counter and waited. After a minute she began to wonder if anyone was actually there, and she turned her gaze around the store, peering over the shelves in search of the owner. “Hello? Is anyone here?” she called. There was no answer, and so she continued to wait. A newspaper stand beside her caught her eye, the front page featuring news from just the day before:

           LOCAL HEROINE SUBDUES DOCTOR SUB! SEAFARER’S BRIDGE BOMB PLOT DIVERTED! The accompanying picture of a masked heroine holding a man dressed in an old-fashioned diver’s suit over the edge of a bridge was almost absurd. What must have been hundreds of pounds of man and metal were being held with one hand like a bag of groceries. Between the two of them, the woman was easily the more imposing of the two. But the crowd in the background was captured in a moment of thunderous applause, and the sub-header below read: IS MISS COBALT ON HER WAY TO BEING THE MOST POPULAR SUPERHERO OF THE YEAR?

           The last line curled Sarah’s face into a crooked smile. She laid her money down on the counter, and carried the bag of cat food out in her arms, stepping into the rain. “Popular my ass.”

*

           “Noodles! Noodles, mommy’s home!” Sarah entered her apartment sopping wet, closing the door with a foot and patting around on the wall for the light switch. The lights came up on the little one bedroom apartment which was sorely in need of cleaning. Dishes were scattered about, piling up on the coffee table and in the sink. “Tomorrow, definitely. Since I have no plans. Definitely.” She walked into the kitchen and opened the bag of food, pouring some into the dish on the counter. “Noodles you fat jerk, come say hello!” The sound of dry food clattering into the metal bowl roused the cat from slumber, tugging his chubby body out from under the couch. He lazily strode over to the counter, jumped and nearly missed, struggling to pull his generous backside up. He made a beeline for his dish, only to be stopped by a hand. “No, I said to say hello! I’ve been gone all day!” Sarah scooped up the cat in both hands, putting her face against his. “Haven’t you missed me even a little?”

           Noodles had no response.

           She sighed and set him back down on the counter, and he went to eating straight away. “You fat jerk, I know you love me. You could stand to show it once in a while though.” She leaned on the counter, her chin in one hand while the other stroked the cat’s behind. “I got dumped again today. I wasn’t even that much taller than this one. Four inches, max. And he was so nice, too.” Her eyes drifted to the rain against her window. “Not that nice, I guess, since he broke up with me for such a stupid reason. I mean, is it even dumped? Two dates, we weren’t really dating yet, right? Should I count this one?”

Noodles continued eating.

           “I guess taking down my DateMe profile was too optimistic, huh? But I didn’t want to seem like I wasn’t going to be serious about him, you know? I wonder if he took his down when we set up our date.” She stood up straight, grabbing a dishtowel from on top of the refrigerator and tried to dry her hair. She squeezed the water from it, letting the towel drape over her eyes. “I guess I could start it up again, but would that seem too desperate? I’ve only been back on the market for an hour and a half.”

           Noodles had finished his food and was halfway under the couch again, struggling to get his full belly through the opening.

           Sarah watched in amusement, taking the dishtowel off her head and putting it back on the refrigerator. She shook her head at her cat and herself. “I’m asking my cat for his advice. I think I am desperate.” She went to her bedroom and slipped her dress off, letting it fall to the floor. “Matching underwear was also probably too optimistic.”

She looked in her mirror, hands on her hips. She thought she looked good, she really did – but the top of her head couldn’t quite fit in the full body mirror, and in that, she saw what almost every other boy from middle school to Dr. Sub said about her. Amazon. Giant. She-Devil. They were intimidated, and while she thought it was funny while she was younger, it was starting to wear her down by twenty-seven. She slipped into her pajamas, and looked at the clock. 7:25 PM. The trend was beginning to look like a way of life.

*

           In the living room Sarah sat on her couch and opened her laptop. She navigated through a few pages until she brought herself back to her DateMe profile – an online site she had thought herself too good for in her early twenties was the driftwood she clung to in the storm of her later ones. With a few familiar clicks, she reactivated her profile. Welcome Back! The page read. “What a horrible thing to say at a site like this,” Sarah thought. “Ideally I wouldn’t ever be here after the first time.” Since you’ve been gone, please update your profile! She rolled her eyes. Two weeks time hadn’t given her time to make any drastic changes.

            First, upload a picture of yourself! The previous picture she had used was of herself and her sister. She envied her little sister Mable – she didn’t get half the strength Sarah had been blessed with, but she did end up about eight inches shorter. Mable didn’t seem to have these sorts of problems, at least. She decided to change the picture to one taken of just her at a concert earlier that year. She was tired of getting messages asking if she was, “the giant one or not.”

           How would you best describe yourself? Sarah paused, rolling over the question, feeling it was probably harder for her than for most women. At worst, most people needed to hide their bad habits like nail biting or drying their hair with dishtowels. Sarah had to carefully navigate the minefield of not announcing her secret identity. “Career driven. That sounds good and normal, right?”

           Career driven, eh? Would you miss a date for work? Sarah clicked the affirmative without a second thought. Banks are rarely robbed at a convenient time, and doomsday plots don’t take rain checks.

           What do you do for a living?  She winced. “Ah, do I say… law enforcement? Would they be able to fact-check me on that? Could I get in trouble…? Oh, I know! Loss prevention! That’s sort of true!” She typed it in with renewed vigor. “Sounds kind of official that way.”

           How important is money to you? Lightning flashed and thunder cracked. She looked up from her computer, and saw her tiny apartment illuminated by the bolt. She made ends meet working part time at a grocery store as, much to her dismay, heroic work is more of a non-profit lifestyle. She tried to wrap her head around how some of the other superheroes did, if they were living the same way she was, or if they had some sort of secret money-making strategy she hadn’t been let in on. She tried to consider the point of the question – to match her with people with similar answers. She didn’t need someone with a lot of money, and hopefully whoever she met wouldn’t expect a lot of money from her, either. “I guess not very important is the right answer.”

           Is it okay to lie to your partner, if it’s just sometimes? This one gave her pause. She put her hands to her head, pressing her palms against her eyes. Miss Cobalt told everyone that honesty and hard work were the only ways to live your life, and if you did, you’d surely succeed. But the hypocrisy was never lost on her that she said that behind a mask. Was she not the biggest liar she knew? This part of her life she kept secret from everyone, even if by omission, was still a lie. She closed her laptop and set it on the coffee table. “I’ll… come back to that one.”

           Sarah stood up and paced around her apartment, stepping over cat toys and discarded clothes. She walked to the window and watched the rain fall over the city. Lights from windows cut through the rain and illuminated snapshots of other people’s lives. Families gathered around television sets, a man having an animated argument on a video-chat, an elderly couple sharing a meal like they had so many countless nights before; Sarah envied them all, in some small way. The good and the bad, the people were living their lives connected to one another. Rain continued to patter on the window, growing in intensity.

           A sharp ringing noise snapped her from her thoughts. She turned quickly, looking around the apartment. “Phone!” She instinctively ran towards her purse, darting to the door. “Not there, wait, where did I – Kitchen? No, wait, bedroom, bedroom! I’m coming!” she called out as the phone continued to ring. She went to the bedroom, rummaging through her purse, pulling out a bright blue cell phone. It was off, and she sighed with relief as the ringing continued. She set the blue phone aside, and pulled a second phone from her purse. The screen read in large bold letters: MOM. Sarah’s chest tightened up all at once again, and almost reluctantly, she put the phone to her ear. “Hello…?”

           “Well! How did it go?” a cheery voice on the other end of the phone almost deafened Sarah. Too much exuberance to handle all at once, she pulled the phone from her ear and switched it to the opposite side. “How was the date with Clyde? It was Clyde, right, that’s the new one? From the bank?”

           “It uh, it was fine. It was fine, Mom.” The sound of rain bouncing off the window was staccato and uneven. Wind rattled the fire escape and the gutters, threatening to shake loose all of the plants hanging from them, sending them toppling towards the flooding streets below. Sarah switched the phone to her other ear.

           “He dumped you, didn’t he?” the tone was accusatory, but Sarah couldn’t quite tell towards whom.

           “Yeah, we decided – we figured we’re just not a good fit, Mom.”

           Thunder crashed outside, rattling the windows. “This is outrageous, Sarah. When are you going to get your life together? You’re pushing twenty eight years old and you’ve never had a steady boyfriend! Never once! Are you gay? Is that what this is about?”

           “No! Mom, I’m not, I’m not gay, it’s just-“

          “You know I wouldn’t care! Your cousin, Herschel? He’s gay, and his boyfriend is lovely. It’s fine if you are, dear. I seriously don’t care!”

          “Look, Mom, I gotta go, okay?” Sarah shifted the phone to her other ear, clasping her free hand to her elbow. “I’ll call you on Saturday, alright? Love you bye!”  

           Sarah hung up the phone before her mother could protest. She paced around her room, pinching her bottom lip between her thumb and forefinger while the storm outside grew more violent. Lightning and thunder came hand in hand, shaking the apartment to its roots. Wind splattered rain against the side of the building, as if trying to push it over.

           Throwing herself face down onto the side of her bed with a heavy thud, Sarah tossed her phone into the pile of blankets forming at the foot of the bed. She pushed a pillow aside with her cheek and let her legs hang over the mattress, toes still reaching far enough to brush the floor. She closed her eyes tight and curled her lips. Rolling to her back, she opened her eyes to stare at the ceiling and the light above her. Her eyes began to dance with spots and swirls. Her mind went back to her date’s face, tinted orange with the setting sun as he awkwardly shuffled like a cornered child. “We just weren’t a good fit.”

           From the bed, the light switch by the door was barely within her reach. She considered turning off the light and crawling under the covers when the apartment shook again – this time not from thunder, but from a vigorous pounding on her door. She lifted herself off the bed and strode quickly for the door. The knocking came constant and hard, each blow as if the person on the other side of the door was having a fight with it. “I’m coming, just wait!”

           As Sarah opened the door, she was met with a familiar scowl – the middle aged man who lived beneath her, scruffy and shaggy in all the wrong ways. She barely had the door open before an accusing finger was thrust across her threshold. “If I told you once, I’ve told you a thousand damn times! Quit your damn stomping around up here! Have I not told you a thousand damn times?!”

           “Mr. Stewart, I’m sorry, but I keep telling you, I’m not stomping, I’m just-“

           “Yeah right, look! I work thirds, you know what that means? I sleep weird hours, and every day, every day it seems I’m up here telling you to quit stomping around! I haven’t gotten a good sleep since you moved in, you know that! I don’t know what you’re doing up here, but if you don’t cut it out I’m gonna get you evicted, you hear me?” His breath reeked of sleep and plaque, assaulting her nose with impunity. His finger had not altered its trajectory even slightly, still aimed squarely at her chest. “You gotta keep it down, this is damn shared space! Didn’t anybody raise you better?!” Before Sarah could try to defend herself again, he retracted his finger. “If you say you’re not stomping, then you better start tip-toeing, you damn Amazon. I’m sick and tired of living beneath a damn circus!” With that, he turned and headed down the hallway, leaving Sarah mouth agape at her open door.

           A moment passed, and thunder crashed again, causing the lights of the hallway to flicker. “Yeah, well… your breath stinks, how about that?” she finally said, and closed the door. She shook her shoulders out, letting it all wash over her like the rain. She stepped gingerly from the door to her couch, gently lowering herself into it and staring out the window. Noodles pulled himself out from beneath the sinking couch and slunk over towards the window, hopping up to perch on the sill.

           Her view of the rain obstructed, Sarah leaned forward to open her laptop again. The last question stared back at her, eagerly awaiting her response. She steeled her resolve and braced herself, fingers adamantly punching the keys as if she had something to prove. “Sometimes you have to lie, if it’s to protect someone else. God, it’s too complicated – how am I supposed to give a black and white answer on something like that?” Noodles bat a lazy paw at the raindrops streaking down the glass. “If I can’t be honest with them, I’m at least honest with myself.”

           Alright then! What’s your dream vacation? And no lying! ;). Sarah was taken aback. “Don’t you winky-face emoji at me you sonuvabitch – who writes these prompts?” She blinked a few times in disbelief, about to walk away from the whole thing again, but the question began to chew on her. Vacations were something she had always thought about, but had officially decided were a luxury she couldn’t afford. Not just financially, but morally – what if Beast King tried to abduct all the animals at the zoo while she was busy cultivating a tan on some beach somewhere? Sure, the city got by with robberies and small crimes before she showed up, but she had caused a dependency on herself to bloom in her wake. Whether she meant to or not, Red City could need saving at any time, and Miss Cobalt had promised to answer that call if it came.

           But what about Sarah? Sarah, the girl at the grocery store who always had mustard stains on her pants? Sarah, who looked like she never got enough sleep, but always said her hobbies were just old movies and playing with her cat? Whose favorite bands formed in the eighties and hadn’t toured since the nineties? Whose bathroom smelled like lavender and had pictures of ducks on the shower curtain? Did she make that promise too? What was Sarah’s dream vacation – did she get to have one, or were things like just to be labeled under “frivolities?” If Miss Cobalt’s pledge was carrying a life sentence, was Sarah just guilty by association?

            She bit her lip, and then let loose another sigh. She pushed the laptop away, and let herself fall onto her side. She buried her face in a pillow as the storm swelled with intensity, winds whipping up again and again, higher and higher. Her hair smelled like a dish towel and her face was getting covered in cat hair, but she couldn’t bring herself to move. All of the weight she tried desperately to shake off throughout the day was coming back to her with renewed force, threatening to press her straight through the couch and into the apartment below. As she felt the floor beneath her groaning with the pressure of her day, the tightness in her chest squeezing harder and harder, she heard another ring. A loud, piercing ring cut through the air of her apartment, and like reflex she threw herself from her couch and across the floor. She strode long and wide, reaching the bedroom in only three steps, shaking the ground with each and every one. She looked to the bed and saw her phone lying there, inert. But the ringing continued, this one coming from the bright blue phone she had discarded earlier. She scooped it up, and pressed it to her ear with no delay. She answered with authority and purpose. “Miss Cobalt.”

             The voice on the other end was stern. “Miss Cobalt, this is Police Chief Drury. We’ve got trouble. It seems The Meteorologist has escaped prison – we believe this storm may have something to do with a weather controlling device he had been developing before his previous capture. If left unchecked, this storm could keep growing in intensity until it wipes Red City off the map. We’ve got a good idea of where he’s holed up, but my men can’t get down there with these flooded roads.”

When I was young, I knew a girl who grew fire in her field like strawberries. She would tend to it from early in the morning until late in the evening, nurturing it from small sparks to roaring flames. She would make her living by selling her produce to the blacksmiths, and bakers, and all manner of shopkeepers who had a need - but when winter came she was never remiss to leave a small flame on the porches of her neighbors.  

               The flames she grew were beauteous and proper; their heat was gentle and soothing, and never did they diminish or rage. They were proper fires, raised with good care and upbringing. They knew their limits and stayed well within them, as they were taught. She could make them hold in the sunlight of an early dawn or the moment of twilight just before night – flickering little bodies of orange and red with flashes of pink and purple. Her fields would light my way home after a long day of play on the mountains and signal that rest was close by for weary travelers at the end of long journeys.

               Her life had mystified me from the day I first saw her carry the amber colored flame into my father’s library on a late autumn night, the same flame that still burns there today. It took me many months to muster the courage to ask her to take me as an apprentice and teach me her secrets, but she turned me away with a smile, kneeling to my level and putting my dirt-caked hands in her own. “You’ve still got much playing to do,” she said, “before you’re ready to take up a job.” I felt the warmth from her thumbs press into my palms, like holding a small bird. The heat had a pulse, a flicker of something gentle and living that stuck to my hands even after she had let go and sent me on my way.

               But I was voracious, I had to know, I longed so to be beside her, to be her, and so I skipped school the next day, and crept towards her fields in the mid-morning. Thinking myself rather clever and sneaky, I crawled on my stomach towards the glowing strand of fire beside her home. I saw her walk between the rows of knee-high flames, no tools in her hands or kindling beneath flames – as if they sprung up from the ground on vines of embers. She walked through them slowly, looking to them as they danced in the breeze or played with one another, flames licking flames and trails of wispy smoke intermingling above her head. When she passed by one that would start to diminish, she would squat beside it, hands on her knees, and begin to speak. I could not hear her words, but as she spoke to the flickering flames, it would grow higher and higher, more lively and joyous in its dance. If it got too wild, her tone would sharpen just slightly, and the flame would quickly mind its manners. Then she would move along and go to the next.

               Hour after hour passed as I watched, enraptured as she tended the fire. Sometimes she would speak, or sing, or even read to the flames as if they were her children, until afternoon came and I began to feel my interest sated and my stomach empty. I wriggled backwards, a worm in retreat, until I thought I had safely cleared her line of sight, and then sprung to my feet and ran towards the mountain trail. I ate wild berries from the bushes until my stomach groaned, ordering me to waddle back home as the sun was setting.

My father asked me if I had learned much at school that day, and I lied, reciting what I remembered of my arithmetic and what letters I had learned were vowels and which were not, but he was not impressed. He said, “I’m surprised,” his eyebrows rose, “that your school seems to be so filthy today. Look at you, covered in soot, head to toe!” He pinched my ear and drew me a bath, and sent me to bed without any supper. My stomach did not protest.  

Got a couple really cute ones for TCDPenguinGod! Both his characters- or alternate versions of his characters, at least!