Caped (Book 1): The Burdens of Fate (12 page)

I bet she was happy though, she loves finding
ways to goad me to acting like the baby she treats me as. Wish I could've seen
the look on dad and Brandon's face once they understood I was one hundred
percent serious, but I didn't bother to stay around, my eye's were tearing up
and I wanted to put as much distance between us as possible.

I had to steal Otep's (That's what I call him,
he doesn't like "
Mr.
") number out of moms purse, I needed it
to call Alvin, which I'll admit probably wasn't the best idea because of the
whole "
don't get in the car with strangers
" bit, but I figure
if he wanted to do anything to any of us we didn't have much of an option.
Luckily he was nice enough to oblige.

Of course this left everyone but me stranded in
L.A., and mom
eventually resorted to calling Michael for a lift. They're driving down from my
Aunt Wendy's place now because dad didn't want the neighbors asking about any
flying men. T-Minus thirty minutes before the biggest tongue-lashing of my
life. I'll let you know how that goes.

But enough of the sad stuff, the point is that
I'm back home and as safe as I'm ever going to be. Away from that tattered
hotel that was nothing but an all too real reminder that earlier this week
wasn't a dream and I'm never going to wake up normal.

I can't let this win. Yeah it's bad, but I'm
tougher than this. I can do it. I can do it... Can't I?

Yanni Miller -

I can't handle
this. I'm not a bad person, I promise. But I'm afraid and I just want them all
gone. I want the world back to the way I remember it, is that so wrong?

I've spoken to my
friends about this and it’s like we all expect to wake up at any moment and
find out it's all a weird dream; not a bad dream, just a weird one.

I don't know anyone in L.A., and I have no intentions to go to any
of the protests. My daily life hasn't changed and I can't even say I know an
E.C. It's all in the way I go about my day, the way I interact with people.
Hell, the way I LOOK at people that's changed and I don't like it, and I refuse
to get used to it.

Timothy Burke -

If you ask me
the MSM is making far more out of the Los
Angeles disaster than is warranted.

Yes, it was a
mind-numbingly horrible event. People lost their lives, watched helplessly as
they murdered strangers, friends, and in some cases even their own children.
Numerous people, both NOC and normal, ended up going on a killing spree.

It was bad,
don't let anyone tell you otherwise, but none of us were ourselves. We need to
accept that.

I wish they'd
mention, and more than in passing, how someone managed to knock everyone free
of it and put out all the fires. Or how since everything has calmed down NOCs
have been nothing but helpful in trying to rebuild the city.

People
preaching how dangerous they are will certainly use L.A. as proof of their argument, yet most
fatalities have been accredited to the police! And I'm not trying to say the
police are a threat or that actions need to be taken against them. Again, none
of us were in our right mind, so let's stop trying to demonize innocent people
who, for the most part, haven't done anything aside from try to continue living
a normal life.

Instead we should start looking at the upside
of this, find a way to capitalize on these abilities. Like a former pilot
gifted with teleportation I found advertising his services on Craig's List.
He'd definitely be a cheaper and much faster travel alternative to commercial
services; let's see how long it takes before homeland security, or worse, try
to shut him down. But isn't this the type of innovation we should be pursuing?

–
3/22
–

Dennis Shaeffer
-

Life is nothing more than a tangled series of
stories, and if you're brave enough to keep a journal you better know how tell
it well. Nobody wants to sit though one hundred and twenty pages of fried eggs
and toilet seat observations, it's just not going to hold anyone's attention;
unless you're one of those silly people who write only for themselves. Seems
like a pointless endeavor to me to have all that effort and beautifully written
prose lost to the sands of time. We should let the story of our lives be free
to have a story of its own, the results are equally as beautiful.

My life has always been a wonderful journey,
that's part of the reason I write it all down, it's a fantastically human
story. I married the love of my life, I recently started working at a top
architecture firm, and my sister won a million dollars in the state lottery.
But there have been severely low points too; bar fights, long nights, and lost
loves, but my life has been nothing but entertaining, at least to me.

So when I'm waiting in my living room in the
middle of a wonderfully sunny day, on a day that lets me know spring is here
and summer’s nipping at its heels; I kind of find myself longing for those old
days when me and the wife would picnic by the lake, or take off hiking through
the mountains. That's not to say those days are behind me, but with so much on
my plate, running off to enjoy the smaller moments life has to offer seems a
little treacherous.

Raphael is a good man; I know this because I
only let good men into our home. This is our sanctuary and I've spent many
years making it feel distinctly ours, even though Nena's arrival has stretch
the definition of the term "ours."

Who is Raphael? He's an Italian teleporter Nena's
known since the seventies, not that he's been teleporting that long. They spent
a couple months lost in the spectacular throws of youth and love. A passionate,
albeit brief, affair that Nena spoke of more fondly than anything else I've
ever heard her speak of, and although she refused to go into too much detail,
it was obvious she placed great value in what they had. And despite the fact
she left him alone and broken hearted in a foreign country without the courtesy
to give him a proper goodbye, she obviously never let him go. Even after all
these years locating and contacting him proved an effortless endeavor.

Life's treated him well though and has afforded
him many pleasures, but I doubt he ever expected this particular woman to march
back into his life, and certainly not in this fashion.

A mature woman with a very seductive voice
answered the phone, in Italian of course, and made me wait a full five minutes
before Raphael came to the phone, most likely in hopping I'd hung up. "I'm
calling on behalf of Nena Faulkner, a lady you knew many years ago by the name
of Lucia Scarpetta." The line immediately went dead, which was better than
getting no reaction from him at all. It took him four hours to call back, by
which time nobody was home. Nena was still out collecting her trinkets, and I'd
decided on an impromptu movie night with the wife.

Raphael had no interest in talking to me, which
was a shame considering Nena, despite all the fond memories she was happy to
recount to me, shows little interest in meeting him. Just like Nena's brother,
she knew long in advance Raphael would acquire the ability to teleport, and
while I could tell by the way she told those old stories that she still held a
soft spot somewhere in her heart for him, she's unwavering in her dedication to
her current cause. This is the endgame, three moves until checkmate.

To her, creating a better world is an extremely
selfish and personal endeavor. She needs the technology to go home, and under
such a system such technologies are too guarded to safely attempt.

So that was this week’s challenge, finding a
way to sit down and talk with a man who's ability allows him to come and go as
he pleases. On the bright side, there's absolutely no reason to go on those
time-consuming transcontinental flights anymore, on the other, I'd just given
my address to a complete stranger.

I was on the phone with this guy all week just
trying to nail down a time that worked for both of us, which wasn't always easy
considering his extremely thick accent. I was told he'd attended college in the
states but considering he's a little older than myself I should have known not
to put too much faith in his English, he knows enough to get by but he's not
necessarily what you'd consider fluent, and his lisp doesn't help. Regardless,
he's a suave older gentleman who manages to use his thick silver hair to
compliment his high-class style; and he's no slouch when it comes to intellect
either. If I remember correctly he holds a master's in psychology, and I know
for a fact he plays a good game of chess.

We met on a Sunday, it wasn't raining, which
was a nice break from the last couple of days, and also made being stuck inside
a little more disappointing, but my schedule wouldn't allow for otherwise. The
job let me take a very impromptu vacation once all this crazy life-changing
stuff started happening but now that I'm back I have to hit the ground running,
I still need to keep the roof over my head.

And there I go getting off track again. Raphael
jumped directly into my living room just shy of ten in the morning, smelling
strongly of cologne and creating the brief sound akin to someone swinging a
spatula through the air. He was wary of me and
I
of
him. I'm not going to waste paper on boring specifics but we spoke for a long
time. He sat down on the same couch Nena passed out on her first night while I
laid out what had happen so far, the raid on Nena, the situation in Tokyo with Alvin,
etc., as well as the next few steps.

We spent most of our time answering questions
he brought up, most of them consisting of our intentions once we'd accomplished
our goals. He remained very vocal of his hatred of dictators throughout our
entire meeting and raised sound questions, which I've been over so many times
the fact that I was retreading that same path made the entire event extremely
boring.

But a strong argument and a plan already in
progress makes our offer rather hard to decline. That and I'm sure nostalgia
had something to do with it.

–
3/23
–

Laurie Stahl -

It almost made me feel young to be in so much
pain, until I realized I was in pain because of the exact opposite. My arms
hurt, my legs, even my fingers hurt. I can still duke it out with the best of
them but I'll be damned if it isn't catching up with me. Nothing a couple hours
in some bath salts can't fix, but I'm definitely not a limber as I used to be,
even if the last time I could be considered anything near limber was a quarter
century ago. Maybe I'll terrify everyone and sign up for some yoga classes.
Imagine my hairy self trying to bend and twist like a young buck, that'd be a
laugh.

Speaking of which, one of my greatest joys as a
father has been getting a good laugh at my kid’s expense. Maybe it's the irony
of the situation but when I got home and seen just how many messages were
waiting for me I couldn't help but laugh. They didn't know their old man was
out there kicking ass and taking names. They'd essentially lost their minds,
Sandra definitely more so than Kevin, and there's a little remorse I put them
though that; but not too much.

Definitely not the best of situations to be
back home, trapped in the same old house reminding me of the same old problems.
I even hate going to the same grocery store. I drove an extra fifteen minutes
yesterday just so I didn't have to visit the same grocery store I've been going
to for the past forty something odd years, not that the other one is any
better, I've been there on multiple occasions too, but it's nice to surround
myself with a couple new environments. And that's really what I need to do, I
need to find some things that'll give me reason to stay out this house. Hell,
if nothing else I can always throw a towel over my shoulders, wear my knickers
on the outside, throw a bandanna over my head and charge out into the streets.

Ha! I bet that'd be more of a laugh than the
old goat who took his Hoveround into oncoming traffic on the highway just so he
could pick up his pills. I admire the determination, I know I feel that way at
times.

I guess I'll just wait, maybe even actually
look into those yoga classes. I certainly have to do something, but what?

–
3/26
–

Dennis Shaeffer
-

This lovely little house guest of mine, as nice
as she is it's still an incredibly daunting task to approach her and ask her to
do anything, simply because I've seen how aggressive she can be. She goes out
at night and returns with a bevy of these oddly shaped and sized packages, only
to cart them off into my basement. I don't so much mind the packages, or the
fact that she's been using my car to pick them up. She keeps the tank full and
hasn't brought any attention to herself. But recently, there's this god-awful
stench that's been coming from the basement, and not continuously either. One
moment I'm in the kitchen and every thing's fine, and the next this putrid warm
gust of air carrying the smell of rotting flesh and moldy garbage blows
through. It's startling, horrifying, and only lasts a few moments before
leaving you to wonder if you've smelled anything at all.

At first it made it as far as the kitchen, no
big deal, but now it's far more repugnant, engulfing the first floor for
minutes at a time. It's even made its way up the stairs to my room, and I think
even smelled it out on the front lawn once.