The Rules of Supervillainy (The Supervillainy Saga Book 1) (6 page)

“How long has she been standing there?” I inquired.

“
Decades, in all likelihood
.”

“You never did anything about her?”

“
There are a lot of ghosts, Gary. Sometimes, they just fall through the cracks
.”

That wasn’t a good attitude for a superhero to have.

I liked kids, despite not having any of my own. Seeing a little girl, even a dead one, in distress made me want to help.

Walking across the street, I saw she was staring at a bloodstain on the ground. The child showed no recognition of my presence and stared at the blood with an impassive expression on her face.

“Hello,” I said. “Can you hear me?”

“
I’m afraid she’s too far gone into her memories. You would need a name to call to her
.”

“Do you know it?”

“
I possess many magical powers; omniscience is not one of them. As much as I regret doing so, I advise you to move on. There’s nothing which can be done with your present resources.”

“Screw that.” I pulled out my cellphone and called Mandy. She was the person I could always depend on for information. “Hey, Honey. I need your help for something very important.”

“You’re alive?”

“Yes.”

“Free?”

“Yes.”

“Not fleeing the police?”

“Nope.”

“How about the money?”

“Got it.”

“Thank God. Did you get the yogurt I asked for?”

“I’ll get it, I swear. However, I need you to look up a little girl’s name on the internet. Use your ‘leet’ internet skills to find any references, old time references, to a girl about twelve years old who died on Seventh Street.”

“Why?”

“I’m trying to make contact with her restless spirit,” I answered matter-of-factly.

“Oh, okay.” Mandy took it in stride. “Okay, give me a minute.”

“I know this is a lot to ask. It’s probably imposs—” I started to say.

“Theresa Douglas. The same Douglas family you helped regain its lost heir,” My wife explained. “She was murdered in 1942 by her father as part of some weird murder-suicide pact the Brotherhood of Infamy was involved in. Her mother killed herself a week later.”

“Wow,” I said. “That was fast.”

“I’m magic.”

“That you are. I’ll call you right back after this. The mission went very well and I got some henchmen. I’m only getting like a four hundred thousand dollars fee, though. I’ll also have to spend a lot of my take in order to build up my street cred.”

“What now?”

I was very grateful when the line cut out. I’d forgotten to charge the cellphone battery.

“Oh, I’m going to catch hell for that, later.” I grimaced, staring at the phone. “I’d better call her back on someone else’s cell on the way back. I should also pick up a few dozen roses too.”

“
I retract any doubt I may have had about you being a supervillain. You’ve taken part in the murder of half a dozen people and your chief concern is about how your wife is going to react to your phone dying on you
.”

“I have my priorities straight.” I put my cellphone up. “It’s why most marriages fail today. People don’t put their spouses first.”

“
For once, I have no objections to your words
.”

“They have cloak marriage where you’re from?”

“
Let’s move on
.”

Coughing into my fist, I stared at the girl. “Theresa, Theresa Douglas, can you hear me?”

Like a light bulb turning on, she became aware of my presence. “I can’t talk. I’m waiting for my mommy. She was supposed to pick me up here but my father came here instead. He... hurt me.”

I wished I could raise her dad from the grave so I could kill him. “Your mommy.... is waiting for you elsewhere.”

“She is?” Theresa asked. “Where?”

I didn’t know how to talk to a dead child. “Help me out here, Cloak.”

“
The Place Beyond
.”

I whispered the name in her ear and she nodded. “I saw it…once. It was pretty.”

Theresa faded away. Once she was gone, the bloodstain vanished as well. A clean sensation replaced the cold darkness which I hadn’t even realized I’d been feeling until that moment.

“Will she be all right?” I asked, genuinely concerned.

“
As much as anyone who is dead
.”

That wasn’t very comforting.

“
Merciless... Gary...Thank you
.” Cloak’s display of emotion surprised me. He was more than just a magical artifact.

“Don’t mention it.”

I headed back to the car.

Mandy took the whole business regarding my new minions and my intention to spend the majority of my ill-gotten loot on supervillain overhead even better than she did the announcement I was a supervillain. She threatened to divorce me. I also wasn’t allowed to bring any murderers into our house.

Fair enough.

“So, where
am
I allowed to bring murderers?” I asked, leaning up against the door.

It was close to midnight and the two of us were in the living room. We’d been arguing in a very polite fashion for the better part of an hour. Mandy was sitting in her comfy chair typing on her laptop. I could see the Foundation for World Harmony logo on her webpage from where I stood, which made me think she’d hacked into their database again.

“Did you
actually
ask me that?” Mandy asked, looking up. She had a pair of reading glasses on and they were sexy as hell.

“Yes.”

“You don’t see
anything
wrong with that question?” Mandy said.

I pretended to think before responding, “Nope!”

Mandy grumbled, continuing to work on her computer. “I believe you. Which is terrible. What is sparking this whole ‘I want to be a supervillain’ thing? I know you’re taking advantage of an opportunity but tell me what’s at the root.”

“It’s... complicated,” I said. “Lots of children want to grow up to be supervillains. I never gave up the dream.”

“Bullshit. Children also want to be pirates and I don’t see you dressing up like Johnny Depp.”

“Well I—” I started to make a crack.

“Please, Gary,” Mandy interrupted. “Why are you doing this?”

I realized this deserved a serious response. Dropping my flippant attitude, which was
hard
, I gave her a straight answer. “My brother.”

“Your brother?” Mandy looked surprised.

“Yeah. Remember what I told you?”

“He was the arch-nemesis of the Silver Lightning?” Mandy asked, sounding somewhat impressed. She shouldn’t have been.

“Arch-nemesis may be too strong of a word. The Silver Lightning can turn into living electricity, my brother had a harpoon. There’s not much comparison. I think he should have tried being the nemesis of an aquatically-themed superhero…but yeah, Keith’s the reason.”

Mandy put her computer aside and got up. She walked over to me and placed her hand on my shoulder. It was warm and made me feel better. “Tell me what you’re thinking.” She knew about Keith’s death but not about how it related to my sudden, from her perspective, desire to become a costumed criminal.

“Sorry,” I said, clenching my teeth at the memory. Even after a decade and a half, discussing my brother’s death was painful. “I keep thinking about how he died. The papers celebrated his death. Celebrated, Mandy. My brother never killed anyone during his decade-long career and they
still
cheered when some wannabe shot him in the head.”

I still had nightmares about Shoot-Em-Up. I always would. Some things never left you.

“So, you want to be like your brother? Is that it?” Mandy asked, looking at me in disbelief.

“No,” I answered, turning back to her. “I don’t intend to get killed, for instance.”

“I doubt he did, either.”

“Keith never made it to the big time.” I ignored her jibe. “He was a B-list villain for an A-list superhero who I bet doesn’t even remember his name. Still, it was the happiest time of his life. I figure, if I can be the supervillain he wasn’t able to be, I can exorcise his ghost.”

Mandy looked at me with a skeptical expression on her face. “That is the single dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life.”

“Okay, it’s because I want to be rich and famous,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “That better?”

“If people ask, go with that.” I was about to say more when my cellphone rang. Voltaire’s “When You’re Evil”
was my ring tone.

“Can you change that to something more upbeat?” Mandy asked, staring at my cellphone. “That creeps me out.”

“Pet Shop Boys’ ‘It’s a Sin’?”

“No.” Mandy rolled her eyes.

“Michael Jackson’s ‘Bad’?” I smirked while suggesting.

Mandy threw up her hands. “Forget it. Answer the damned phone.”

Pulling it out, I asked, “You want to get Chinese food tonight?”

“Sounds good,” Mandy replied, switching gears, “as long as you aren’t going to get
evil noodles
.”

“No, that would be silly,” I said, answering the phone and putting it to my ear. “Hello?”

There was nothing but an unearthly horrible static on the other line. Then there was a voice which sounded eerily like Mandy’s own. “Gary...zzzzt...Gary...we...bzzt...need—”

I hung up.

“Who was it?” Mandy asked.

“Wrong number,” I lied, shrugging.

“
You really shouldn’t have done that. That sounded like spirit world static
.”

“
Is it a pressing issue
?” I asked, mentally.

“
Not now
.”

“
Then hold off on it
,” I said. “I’m talking to my wife.”

I started dialing the Chinese restaurant.

Mandy walked a bit away from me. “Gary, is this your dream?”

“Excuse me?” I asked, looking up.

“Your dream, the thing you want most in the world.”

I was surprised at the direction the conversation was going but, I supposed, this is what I wanted, the chance to talk to Mandy about this seriously.

She walked over to the fireplace shelf. The fireplace, which we hadn’t used in our entire marriage and wasn’t even linked to a chimney, was purely a place to put pictures. Picking one up of her father, she looked at it. He was a slightly balding man wearing a blue military uniform with numerous patches indicating the various alien invasions, robot uprisings, and anti-terrorist operations he’d been involved in.

Colonel Summers hadn’t liked me.

“I had a dream too once.” Mandy said, surprising me.

I knew what my wife was referring to but I also knew she wanted to talk about this. “I take it you don’t mean your music career.”

Mandy looked down. “No.”

“You mean wanting to join the Foundation,” I said, sighing. “Like your dad.”

The Foundation for World Harmony was the institution which existed for the explicit purpose of cleaning up after the superhuman, supernatural, extraterrestrial, and ultraterrestial so a modicum of sanity might prevail in this world. Its agents were outmatched by even low-level supervillains but they did a bang-up job fighting P.H.A.N.T.O.M and the International Crime League.

Good guys.

Mandy got a little misty eyed. “Yeah.”

Her father had passed last year from congenital heart failure.

It had been rough on all of us.

“My father was never a liaison to the Society of Superheroes or even one of its members but he was always there fighting the good fight,” Mandy said. “I remember him pushing me from day one. Ballet, martial arts, gymnastics, linguistics, mathematics, criminology, gunplay, ethics, and computer programming. That was just my high school years.”

“I still think he pushed you a little too hard.”

Mandy put up the photo. “He did, and I was wound so tight, I snapped when I got to college. He’d wanted to make me into the perfect candidate for the Foundation for World Harmony or even a superhero myself.”

“Lots of parents do.”

“And lots of parents ruin their kids that way,” Mandy said, looking back. “I came to Falconcrest U wanting to be the perfect student, only to end up smoking dope and screwing everyone I liked within a week.”

“Oh, you monster,” I said, heavily sarcastic. “They should just throw the book at you.”

“You know where this leads, Gary.”

“I’m sure I don’t.”

“The Black Witch.”

Oh.

I bit my lip. “Then I guess I do know where it’s going.” We actually hadn’t discussed that part of her life in detail. I knew my wife had been involved with her and some of her gang in the past, but aside from statements about ‘bleak poetry speaking to her’ and distancing herself, I didn’t really know how close they were. “Sort of.”

Mandy looked down. “Do we really want to go here?”

I also knew it was perhaps better to leave some things buried in the past. “I think we’ve been together long enough to share everything without judgment.”

“Perhaps not without judgment.” Mandy said, looking down. “But with love? Yes. Gary, I loved Selena Darkchilde.”

“Loved?” I asked, wanting to make sure it was in the past tense. It was unfair of me since human emotions weren’t so easily shut off. If you loved someone in the past, it didn’t go away just because you wanted it to. God knows, my parents’ lives would have been simpler if they could have just disinherited Keith and me.

Mandy nodded. “Yes, loved. I was never her henchwench but I knew who she was, what she was doing, and what she planned to do. I was an accomplice because I never tried to stop her or even suggest she should.”

I blinked, staring. “Wow. So, uh, you didn’t just know about her crimes after she was finally captured by Ultragoddess.”

Mandy crossed her arms. “No. I knew her when she was just a mousy occultist before her experiments with Professor Thule made her Hecate’s champion. Which, in retrospect, yeah, with a name like that he was going to become a supervillain.”

I pointed at her. “I
never
liked that guy. Swastikas being harmless Asian good luck sigils, my ass.”

Mandy blinked. “I thought it was all good fun. Striking at the system, getting revenge on people who’d wronged us, and so on. I...perjured myself when I was brought to court as a witness. They found me guilty.”

I blinked. “I see.”

“I got my sentence reduced to community service because someone pulled strings. They even kept me in the program.” Mandy looked back at her father’s picture. “I had a criminal record, though, now. Worse, I’d been proven to be involved in a sexual relationship with a supervillainess. I might have gotten away with it if I was a man, but a woman? No. My father never said anything about it but I could tell I’d disappointed him in a way he never forgave.”

That was very much like the Colonel. He never stopped loving his daughter. He also never stopped judging her. I still hadn’t told Mandy about his ever so delightful conversation with me about how I should convert to Christianity so I could help her back to the righteous path.

“
He sounds like a real ass
,” Cloak said.

“
Thanks
,” I said back. “
Now would you stop listening? This is private
.”

“
I wish I could
.”

I decided I needed to convince Mandy she wasn’t the biggest fuck up in the room.  “If it’s any consolation, this isn’t the first time I’ve tried to be a supervillain.”

“What?” Mandy asked, eyes widening. “You did this before without telling me?”

I went to the fridge to get a beer. “No, this was before we started dating.”

Mandy blinked. “When?”

“It was a phase in college,” I said, using words which caused Mandy’s eyes to narrow. “Not
that
kind of phase.”

“I dislike bisexual erasure,” Mandy said, shrugging. “What can I say? It’s a pet peeve.”

I unscrewed the beer bottle top and took a swig. “I was pretty idealistic during my Junior year. I was away from my parents and I thought I could honor Keith’s memory by taking up his mantle.”

“You became Stingray?” Mandy said, stunned. “Why didn’t I hear about this?”

I took another drink of my beer. “
Because I was awful at it
.”

“When has that ever stopped you before?” Mandy said, smirking.

“Ha-ha,” I said, still smiling. “I decided I would take up the environmental cause of the oceans versus, you know, robbing banks and stuff.”

“The oceans?” Mandy said.

I gestured with my half-empty beer bottle in hand. “Words cannot express what terrible horrors mankind has unleashed on the sentient porpoises, Atlanteans, Lemurians, Merrow, and transmigrated Space Whales.”

“I had sex with a Merrow once,” Mandy said. “It turns out the whole fish tail thing is a myth. Not that we needed that part. She was great in a hot tub.”

I stared at her.

A minute passed.

“Gary,” Mandy snapped her fingers.

“Hmm?” I said, finishing off my beer. “Sorry.”

“Must you make that joke every time I mention my sex life?”

“Do you have any people not ridiculously hot you’ve dated other than me?”