She’s hesitant about using her gravity on walls, because it affects both sides–not really fair to anyone inside the building. But now she’s got no choice. Carlisle’s jetpack has a brute-force vertical efficiency, and if he gets up there first…
Lissa’s hands smack brick, and then she concentrates and rotates her own personal world: now fore is down. Her sneakers scrabble in the corner and she’s off, running straight up, behind but moving fast.
Inside, people gasp, coffee spills, papers flurry. Each office she passes becomes chaos for a second, as in her wake, everything suddenly tries to fall out.
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
Rikki nearly skis to keep her balance on the heaving carpets, but somehow the Hioliphant stays gyroscopically still: this strange moving tent orbits around him.
“I got this far,” she says, trying and failing to keep the yelps out of her voice. “You know that means I’m worth hearing.”
A brazier crashes down, then rights itself, ridiculously. The Hioliphant keeps writing.
Rikki gambles: “A name,” she says, “Rakshasa’s mistress.”
The floor’s suddenly still, and the Hioliphant’s brown eyes are on her, big and impenetrable. Rikki can see the sharp triceratops shadows outside. She licks her lips: the ride’s not over yet.
Thursday, October 30, 2003
On his bed, top bunk, the late afternoon light’s coming in slantways and outside somebody’s yelling. Gorgeous day.
He didn’t see the scar on her wrist at first because it’s not discolored, but it’s definitely there if you look. He draws his fingers up to her hand and touches it. He’s known about it, about her, for a year, but hasn’t seen either until today.
She’s watching him, not afraid, just curious. It’s soft and warm under his touch–he almost expected hard edges, but it’s only a gentle, horrible vertical spray. Now and forever, it says, this person is me.
They gave him a name when they took him from his catatonic mother to the care facility, a different name when they placed him with a family, yet another at Confirmation and finally, on turning eighteen, he fought and harassed and stood in the clerk’s face until they found it, his original birth certificate. On it were his mother Jane Doe, his father Unknown, his birthdate December 10 and his first last name, his point of origin.
He had it changed that day. He left town with two pair Jockeys and ten dollars, feeling clean as spring water: henceforth, Hyphen Blank.
Martinez pushes through the gelatinous wall and feels it seal up behind her, jams her filtration mouthpiece into the bubble over her lips, and one dive later she’s plowing through a blue-black world. The Fishbelly Slick hews warm and tight to her skin, and its hydrophobic surface makes her dolphin stroke feel like a skid on buttered tracks.
Martinez goes down and down. The schools barely bother to explode at her passage, and she thinks about the drawings from a childhood magazine, primeval whales with hands. Slicked and insulated, she imagines herself another curve back into evolution: swimming, walking, swimming again.
Tuesday, November 4, 2003
It’s to the point now where they can’t pop their knuckles separately. When one of them tries, the other will accidentally run into a wall, or something, and crack! Simultaneous. And always on beat.
At first it was just their drums, then footsteps, then heartbeats and breathing and now their joints. It was cool at first, and now it’d be amazing if they did it on purpose. But actually, it’s getting scary: Dalton and Huecker are stuck in rhythmic lockstep, synchronized in everything but speech. Dalton’s thought of that, but he hasn’t mentioned it. He’s afraid. It can’t be very long.
Thursday, November 6, 2003
Luther’s got his shopping list in his pocket, and it goes
and it’s everything he needs to get. He only has unsalted butter because he’s been baking and unsalted butter is better for batter and he hiccups with laughter on that thought. Then he laughs some more, and throws his keys as high as they’ll go, and tries to catch them before they hit the lawn. He misses.
He feels like some ridiculous children’s museum exhibit where everybody gets sogged and soapy, just an explosion of bubbles and a placard that nobody reads. Butter and Jared. Jared and butter.
Monday, November 10, 2003
Lissa’s skirt is a short leather sleeve, laced bootlike up front and back; together with halter top and garter belt, it’s just not a role model outfit. Not that superheroing was the plan tonight–that was margaritas and dancing to drive Shaun wild–but here come the Black-Masked Bastards! Carnival must be the perfect place to blow stuff up.
At least she’s got a mask already: big, white and feathery. She’s grateful for that, and, vaulting off a streetlight, almost warms to Black-Masked Beefcake.
Then she notices Shaun carrying some other girl to safety.
She hits Beefcake with a coffee shop.
Thursday, November 13, 2003
Slick is black, was born black, knows himself that way, it’s a part of him but compared to these folks he’s barely toasted. They’re blue-black and purple-black, and their lips are lurid as wounds.
He’s started to confuse Earth with Mars, the dirt here is so red. Iron-rich. He’s tired. Red dust in his lungs.
No one turns to look when he wanders through and he keeps plodding. Walking in time.
The drums are talking to him, not like African drums, like somebody’s hidden around here with a kick and a hi-hat. Boom slick boom, they say. Boom slick BOOM slickBOOMslick
Monday, November 17, 2003
Faye feels herself being pulled up by her ears, a nice stretchy feeling. She must be an electric elf! As everything turns blue and fuzzy. So many things need electricity! She dashes to the well to fill her bucket. She fills the TV first, why not, but then the lamp needs some and she has to hurry! Well lamp well phone well clock and already the TV is almost out, electricity draining out the bottom, faster, she sobs laughs a squeal so fast the well blue crackles her halo somewhere she’s shuddering, tight, curled up with something hidden in her fist–
Tuesday, November 18, 2003