sticky

Matthue Roth

 

In the second hour of the battle, it looked like Doctor Razorback might have us cornered. There was a watch in my info-goggles display that counted how long we'd been fighting. There was also a pulse readout that measured the pulses of everyone on the team, and it told me that both Starfire Sprite and the Top were out for the count.

I swallowed hard. I braced myself.

I was the last bastion between Doctor Razorback and the Science Research Center. Now he was gathering his boomerangs from the Top's collapsed body. I was hunched over, knocked over by the blast of the mini-Razorbeasts that I just took out.

I was in no position to take the offensive.

Doctor Razorback looked up from the Top. He offered a grimace as inhumanly metallic as a kid with braces trying to smile. His eyes were bright. They darted all over the place.

He laughed. His laugh was grotesque, sticky, throatier than it seemed like it should be.

I jumped up. I slipped into a defensive huddle.

I braced for his attack.

Doctor Razorback tensed. His jet-black uniform shimmered against the coal black of the pavement. He made a fist in front of his mouth. His fingernails were foot-long. His tranquilizer boomerangs glinted a pale reflection of the night moon.

Then the street erupted.

A fountain sparkled, twenty feet in the air. Tiny bolts of yellow and gold swam through the deadly red.

It looked almost pretty.

Dazed, knocked on my back again, I almost wanted to reach out and touch it with my fingertips. I held up my hand.

There was a glove covering it.

A plain white glove -

That ran up to my shoulder -

I was wearing a costume. Why was I wearing a costume?

A sudden tsunami gusted. It knocked me back a hundred feet in the air.

I gasped.

The last thing I remembered seeing, before I blacked out completely, coming out of that pretty stream of molten lava, was a humanlike form, encased completely in almost-dried magma, surfing a tidal wave of lava to the top. Lava shot through his hands as he leapt from the wave. His legs seemed almost indecipherable from that lava wave, even as they twirled and shot out spurts of red, reigning down on Doctor Razorback, touching on the ground, shooting up little fires all along the street that made the darkness sing out and sparkle and grow into one big haze as my head dropped finally to the ground.

* * *

Sick Bay. The Human Volcano stood in a corner, watching me. I didn't know how long he'd been there. I know how long I'd been there. Long enough to make my joints feel like fossilized Play-Doh.

As soon as I stirred, my eyes flickering from black to fluorescent light-fixture, Volcano left. I caught a blur of his departure. A curt, satisfied nod, then he spun and exited, leaving ashen footprints that smoldered slightly, black steam rising from them.

The Top walked over to me, brushed the hair out of my face. My eyes darted over to his arm, spinning rapidly in circles as usual, but with a big bandage over his shoulder. He grinned.

"Don't ya worry none about that, Cacta," he said. "My spin's a few degrees off, but the doctor says a few good rounds and it'll spin right back into place."

His hands lingered on my hair for a second. They hit a bruise, and I must have flinched, because I felt my spikes come out and the Top jerked his hand away.

"Ouch!" he cried.

"Oh, fuck!" I exclaimed. "Are you okay, Top?"

"Don't worry none about me," said the Top. "It's Doctor Razorback we should be praying for."

"Nnn," I grunted, mystified. We never really talked about what happened to villains once we finished them off. But my arm that felt like dry Play-Doh had begun to start feeling like liquid, melting Play-Doh and I closed my eyes.

"You gonna be all right there, Cacta?"

"Yeah, no sweat, Top." I swallowed. It hurt. "Five o'clock hits, I'm going home with the rest of you."

A playful grin spun across the Top's face. He didn't even try to hide it.

"What?" I demanded.

"Maybe you'll go home at five o'clock, but the rest of us sure aren't." He quieted his grin, made to leave the room, and leaned against the doorway for a second. "Happy hour tonight at the Head of the World. And - hey - I'm only telling you this as an incentive to heal faster."

I grinned weakly. "Duly noted, Top," I said, closing my eyes, pretending to pass into sleepfulness.

* * *

I didn't pass out, of course. I always pretend to be just a little more delicate, just in case I need that extra reserve. Plus, I like it when everyone else thinks I'm a little bit weaker than I actually am.
I mean, I have super strength. But that's the trouble with super strength; you never know just how far it goes.

Five o'clock hit, and the robot doc told me I was good to go. "I would not try over-extending yourself," he told me. "Or extending yourself at all, for that matter. Ha-ha-ha." That's how you know you're in a big-city super team: even the robots get one-liners.

The bar was on top of a skyscraper. There were walls, but only waist-high, so you could see the city as it sprung out beneath your feet. There was an elevator, but most everybody flew. We all got out of the Supercar and I suddenly felt alone as the rest of my company rose into the air. It felt like an elevator with a hole in the middle.

I suppose these things happen when you only have small-town powers. I turned to walk toward the actual elevator.

Rocketboy hovered by my shoulder.

"Can I give you a lift?" he said.

He smiled, and his teeth glinted. Like the rest of him, they were stainless steel.

The scene was trendy, ultra trendy you could say, more haute than haute. It was a mix of people I'd seen in magazines and people I'd seen in movies and people I had never seen but could tell were Big News anyway. I wondered if they all had powers, or if non-super movie stars could use their connections to get in, too. Rocketboy plowed through the crowd like he owned the place. Halfway through, he turned to see me bewildered, my white and green costume garish against all the black. "You doin' okay with this?" he whispered in my ear, taking my elbow to guide me.

Rocketboy's smile was friendly, but the shaded visor that covered his eyes weirded me out. His face stopped at his nose and faded into the nothingness of his visor, the reflection of myself and the night sky behind me. Suddenly, I felt very dizzy, surrounded by sky and stars with no walls or roof, me drinking a beer and wondering what kind of life this was that I was living. Jumblingly, like the lists I used to make in junior high school, I arranged my thoughts by number:

1. Save universe,
2. Go to drinks,
3. Mingle with extraordinarily attractive, totally buff men whose eyes I will never be able to look into?

I tugged at Starfire Sprite's sleeve. She was standing right beside me, and she seemed as good a confidante as any. "When do we change out of our superhero suits?" I asked her.

"We don't," she said flatly, like a deadpan joke.

I felt as though I was supposed to laugh, but she did not.

"You know," I said slowly, "Just because my costume itches and I'm feeling very awkward and visible with all these Variety type people, and me just in my lycra."

When I was fighting, my costume felt comfortable, like skin. Any other time, I felt awkward, like my breasts stuck out too much and my shoulder-high gloves never let me actually touch anything. Back in Eerie, where I was the only hero in town, it seemed like a fine enough costume. Here, with all these Mizrahi spacesuits, it just seemed tacky.

"You don't take your mask off. Never let any of us see your real face," Sprite admonished. "You don't understand this, but just listen to me, okay? It's your first day on the job, and we won, but you need to keep reminding yourself, it will be years before you can actually start feeling comfortable. You're super, and that means everybody is going to be after you, one way or another. Are you drinking?"

"Yes," I whispered. My fingers wrapped around the daiquiri in my hand. I was holding it low, waist-line. "Should I not be?"

"It's okay," she said. Condescension crept into her voice. "There's always a designated flyer, somebody who stays sober and keeps the superfights to a minimum." Starfire Sprite glanced around. "Looks like it's the Human Volcano tonight. He's drinking, but his digestive system burns up alcohol along with everything else."

"Cool," I murmured.

"Come on," said Sprite. "Sorry if I'm scaring you. Finish your drink, girl. Next round's on me."

I smiled, thrown by her sudden mood swing. I don't like talking to people. I really don't.

Superheroes are uncommunicative by nature. You'll never read an interview with The Human Volcano, because what's he going to say? Yeah, man that Dr. Razorback sure is tough, no, Mr. Brokaw, thanks for asking but there is a reason that we call it a secret identity, chuckle chuckle.

And, the reporter asks, looking Volcano deep in the eyes, is there any message you'd like to send to our viewers today?

Yeah, I would. Stop making yourselves so vulnerable. Carry your wallets inside your pockets for a change, would ya? I kept my powers a secret. I had to be street savvy. Why the hell are you still walking the streets alone at night, dressing in your silly high heels that make you unable to run?

At the end of the night, there were only a few of us still at the bar, crashed out all over the couches, swilling shots and making cracks at each other. The wind wisped around our ears. Fall was getting on. The notion of fall scared me, kind of. It always used to mean school was coming. But I wasn't in school anymore. The Human Volcano, kneeling on his haunches, was giving a dark and perceptive monologue about how none of us really knew each other, how, if we saw each other on the street, we wouldn't recognize each other.

"That's only if you're looking at faces," Rocketboy said, "and nothing else."

"Fuck that. You scope out the costume and it's the costume you're fantasizing about," someone said.

Angel Girl snorted. "Maybe when they look at you," she said, straightening her push-up sparkles-and-cleavage bustier for the umpteenth time that day.

The conversation carried. I walked away. Rocketboy saw me leave, followed me across the roof. "How are you taking it?" he asked.

"The city?"

"The job. It's your first time on a team, isn't it?"

So I'm already a part of the team? I signed my contract but that doesn't mean I'm won over. It's still my first day at work. "If it's that obvious," I grinned sheepishly.

He shrugged. "Don't worry about it. Screw up, who's gonna care? Look down below. Ten million windows, and inside each one of them lies a true American afraid to look outside the affairs of his own home. The reason this whole costume thing works, it's just an extension of a grade-school imagination game. They never bother looking at the shape of your face, it's just whether or not your mask falls off."

"Does yours ever?" His visor came cleanly down over his eyes, curved out just above the apex of his nose. It was clean sheet metal. I could see myself reflected on it. It felt like you should just be able to slide it up.

He caught my hand as it was going towards the slit. "Naughty girl," he said. It felt weird for him to have my hand; I wasn't even thinking when I reached. That the mask was attached to his face or anything. "But yours," he murmured. Running his fingers along my mask, feeling the fabric sink into my hair. "Yours is all lycra and spandex, isn't it?"

"That - that's what you do when you're Eerie, Pennsylvania's town superhero," I stammered. "That kind of thing doesn't come with an instruction manual."

He laughed. "Eerie, Pennsylvania? Be careful. Any more information and I could find out your first name and everything."

I wanted to laugh, too, but suddenly I felt very self-aware. "Where is this place?" I asked him.
"Right off 84th and Broadway. Relax, you're fine. Listen - if the heat ever comes up, all you have to do is change your costume. Two new colors, a different size cape, and you're a completely different person."

"Have you ever done that?"

"Look, would my name be as derivative as Rocketboy if I didn't?"

That shook the laugh out of me. It was nervous and shaky, which made me cringe because that is a telling kind of laugh, but instead he said, "If you look right down there, you can see the subway stop. And if you're at all new to the city, you moved near a 1/9 station, so stop worrying and enjoy tonight, okay?"

I consented. "Is the whole roof of this place a bar, then?" I asked.

"Not hardly," he said, and his eyes gleamed. "There's a fitness center, swimming pool and over there is a restaurant. Do you want me to show you out back?"

* * *

The next day I had off from crimefighting. I was supposed to maintain a desk job at the local tabloid as a copygirl. But I staffed the phones, and if anything important happened I could just change clothes, into the contents of my little purple handbag. That afternoon I got a call on the desk phone, and I answered, "New York Daily - "

"Don't give your name," a voice whispered back. "You already know that, right?"

"Sprite?" My brow furrowed. I was horrible at recognizing voices.

"Yup. How you doing, Cacta," she said. "I'm doing desk duty at headquarters. Just felt like dropping you a line. . ."

"Oh. Well, thanks."

"Everything's good?"

"Yes. Anything else?"

"Not especially. Just calling to see how you are and all that."

I sighed, thinking about friendships and all that. Things that just made life too complicated. Things I was forgetting about.

When I hung up the phone, I thought about it, shivering violently enough almost to make the cactus-pricks beneath my skin shoot out. And then I would turn all green, and the pigmentation wouldn't wear off for half an hour - I shivered, got all claustrophobic about stuff, and I picked up the phone and *69'd Sprite.

"Did you ever tell anyone that you were a superhero?" I asked her.

"Only my parents and my husband," she said. "What about you?"

"You're married?"

"Only sometimes," she told me. "He knows who I am when I go out at night. He doesn't know what I do."

"What do you mean?"

"Well - I don't have to spell it out for you. I mean, you understand life in a mask, don't you?"
I waited.

"I remember, there was one night," Starfire Sprite continued, "where we'd just fought the Sinister Seven, and after the smoke cleared, we realized one of them wasn't gonna get up again. Shell had done it, a bolt straight through the poor guy's heart. He burned him out so bad you could see through his body.

"That night, we all drank too much, even Volcano, who was supposed to be the straight one. I started warning Shell, saying that he was maybe drinking too much. Then he said what was I doing, caring about him or something? And he said nobody ever worried about him and I said sometimes I worry. He kissed me in the bar and then he took me out back."

"But I thought -"

"Masks, right. Well your masks only cover your eyes. Plenty more to you than just eyes."
I thought of Rocketboy last night and bit my lip.

* * *

That night on top of the city, Preacher Man and the Blob got into a barfight with some black mock-turtleneck poetry guys. Rocketboy tried to break it up and ended up getting everyone after his ass, and as the bar erupted, I moved away to the balcony.

When I found Volcano, he was standing with his arms folded, looking down the roof at the rest of the city.

"What's your American dream, Cacta?" he asked me, staring into the bottom of his shotglass. "Is it a house, with two kids and a househusband? Do you think there are men who want to stay home and vacuum all day, or is that just a generational thing? When I was young, I had a dream. You know what the Empire State Building is, right?" A wind shuddered through the bar, and my gaze swept along the canopy of rooftops to the one building that towered above all the others.

"I know," he nodded. "You've seen pictures of this city on TV. You're not that new. But listen. This is my American dream: to be perched above there, the way you always see us in the cartoons. All the thousand lights of buildings below you. Only the moon can climb as high as you are. There are ten million husbands down there with ten million wives, but none of them have vanquished evil in this city. Sure, they all do their part and pay their taxes, and some are even police, but only we look evil in the eye. This is my American dream, Cacta, and I'm living it like a mother lode. Drink up, girl, because tonight you're on the top."

And then he leapt over the balcony keeping us all on this side of the air, threw his hands down and skated across a lava-bridge that took him off through the sky. The last time I looked up, his silhouette was in front of the moon. There was a hand on my shoulder, and when I looked back it was the Top. "I thought he was supposed to be the sober one tonight," I said to him.

"Looks like no one's around to keep us out of trouble anymore," he grinned.

* * *

"I'm not disgruntled. I'm really not," Sprite told herself. She was looking into a mirror in the lounge. I was standing behind her.

"Once, Kronos hypnotized everyone in the Legion. Bank robberies, you understand - they're easier when all the robbers look like crimefighters. But it took him a week to bring everyone under control, and while he was doing it, we acted normally. Only it wasn't normal, we were all good. Preacher Man didn't even touch a drop of alcohol. Rocketboy stopped coming on to everyone.

"In a way, I liked it more. I mean, I'd never abandon this job - walk out, take up my secret identity full-time - but sometimes I wish heroes were like they were when we were kids. Sometimes I wish that I still believed in God, you know?"

I didn't. I still did believe in God. Not that I'm especially religious but that's what helping your fellow man is all about, right?

* * *

Senior year of high school, everyone was getting ready to leave to their own respective colleges. My boyfriend had just got accepted early-decision to Penn State, which was four hours away, and at that point it looked like I was staying in the area. We were talking about break-ups and when they have to happen.

At one point I told him everything. I showed him my costume, told him the stories that didn't make it on the news, when I flew to Pittsburgh and Cleveland and fought crime there, too, on some Saturdays. Told him I was going to be big.

A week later, in one of the calm patches, we were undressing each other and stuff. When I was in the middle, he stopped me and asked me to put on my uniform.

He still sent his acceptance in.

That was about the time when everyone was getting those big envelopes and housing forms, and in the midst of all that, a brown package arrived for me with a postmark dated New York City.

* * *

A few days later, I walked into work and saw the red Legion Line-Up light flashing. When we assembled to go fight evil, I saw how Rocketboy's usual spot was replaced by this youngish guy in a tight yellow-and-red hangup.

I squeezed Starfire Sprite's forearm. "What's up with the newbie?" I whispered.

"Looks like the Rocketboy turned out to be limited-edition," she murmured.

* * *

At the bar, everyone was crowded around Angel Girl, congratulating her on saving the day. One of the Eventful Eight guys came up and asked me to dance.

"Have you been Cacta for long?" he said. He looked seasoned, and his breath smelled, kind of.

"So why are you called the Eventful Eight if there's only seven of you?" I asked.

But, you know, the night was still going strong and it was early. Starfire Sprite was chatting it up with some of the Eights, and the Top was telling a bunch of the poetry crowd about this villain we'd jailed called Prosaic Man. The new kid looked uncomfortable, sitting in a corner alone, and way too muscled-up to squeeze onto a regular barstool.

The muscles kind of strained his shirt, actually. He looked interesting.

* * *

But I was alone, too, hovering just above the cornerstone of the building. Ninety-eight flights and three inches above the ground, and the only thing keeping me afloat was myself. That night in the city below, the lights lined every street in perfectly crisscrossing beams of fluorescence. They looked firm enough for you to step down and walk along, almost.

But I saw the city, and I saw the moon, and my mind had been running through what prickles besides a cactus. I thought if I wanted to, I could call myself Porcupina. I could start over again with a clean slate, or I could just forget the groups and do freelance work.

Or I could go over and show that kid in the corner around.

Whatever I wanted to do, I could stomach it. Gravity didn't mean anything to me, and if there was one thing I had, it was time.