Dark Rain: 15 Short Tales (24 page)

No, not
that
something. Hell, I
wish
it had been that.

No, this something appeared on the other end. The rear end. Yes, I’m talking about the damn tail with the furry little ball. That damn furry ball that itches so damn much.

There it was, curled in my boxers like a sleeping snake. Except it wasn’t a snake. And it was attached to
me
. Right there at the base of my spine.

A tail.

A goddamn tail.

I had been so worried about the horns that I hadn’t noticed the appearance of the tail.

Go figure.

No, I didn’t have many friends in those days. Truth is, I don’t have many friends now. In fact, I might even have more enemies than friends.

It’s the way of superheroes.

Anyway, with the appearance of the horns and tail, I called the only person I could think of—a fellow rodeo clown named Gerald. He and I had worked many years together. We weren’t actually friends, but we had shared a beer or two. Now, thirty minutes later and sporting a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon under one arm, Gerald, sans the clown makeup, appeared at my door.

And nearly dropped the Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Nearly. It would have taken a lot more than horns and a tail to make Gerald lose his grip on his beer.

Instead, he cowboyed-up through the shock and was soon sitting across from me in the living room. My ass was still sore from the new tail and, quite frankly, I wasn’t sure exactly how to sit with it, so I stood and paced. Gerald kept drinking until the shock wore off.

“Jesus,” he said again, for perhaps the tenth time.

“Yup.”

He motioned to my horns. “Those things real?”

I lowered my head and gave him a good look.

“They look real.” He drank a lot more beer. “You have anything to say about all this?”

“Damn strange,” I said.

Gerald nodded. “Yup.”

It went on like this for another ten minutes as he examined my tail, running his hands along it, getting dangerously close to my backside.

“I don’t feel right looking too closely,” he said.

“Jesus, it’s just a tail, Gerald,” I snapped.

“Yeah, but it’s attached to your ass. Your shockingly hairy ass.”

I shook my head and continued pacing, my tail whipping about the small apartment. Once or twice the furry end smacked Gerald in the head. He said “hey” but kept on drinking.

“Well, it stands to reason…” Gerald finally said, after perhaps his eighth beer.

“What stands to reason?”

I had been pacing and panicking and wishing like hell I would wake up from whatever nightmare I was in the middle of. No such luck.

“Well, the bull that was about to hit you done disappeared.”

“So Tanya said.” Tanya the nurse.

“Well, she mighta heard what some saw.” He shrugged. “Most were just scattering for cover.”

“What did
you
see, Gerald?”

He took another swig of beer. “Just when the lightning struck, I thought you were done for, Carl.”

Truth was, so did I.

Gerald went on. “But when the lightning struck something
strange
happened. You ended up on the far side of the arena, and the bull…”

“Yes?”

“The bull was gone. And…”

“And what?”

He shook his head and looked away. “Nothing.”

I roared. A great roar. So loud, my little apartment shook… and the popcorned ceiling actually popped. “Tell me!”

Quaking with real fear, Gerald said, “Okay, okay. Just relax, Carl. Well, there was something else.”

“What, goddammit?”

“It wasn’t really lightning that came down from the heavens.”

I blinked. “Then what was it?”

“Well, it was a
kind
of lightning. But it was mostly in the shape of, well, a man. A giant, lightning-shaped man. Then again, I might have been drunk at the time. In fact, I’m sure I was drunk.”

I thought about that as Gerald drank the rest of the case of beer. I thought about that even more as Gerald slept it off. I thought about all of it and more as I paced my small apartment, occasionally slapping the snoozing Gerald in the face and knocking over every goddamn lamp in the joint with my tail.

I spent that night in agony.

While Gerald slept off the Pabst, my body literally—and I mean literally—morphed into something bigger and greater than it was before.

Perhaps even greater than
anyone’s
had been before, ever.

Why this happened to me, I don’t know. What exactly had happened to me, I still don’t know. No one knows. I’ve had some of the finest scientific minds study me. Hell, one mad scientist had even put me in lockdown, determined to replicate me into an army of me. Except, of course, I had broken out and destroyed his island fortress… but that’s a story for another time.

Anyway, by the following morning, I had gone through a complete—and painful—metamorphosis. Yes, the horns and tail had been weird enough, but by the time old Gerald awoke from his beer-induced slumber, he might have thought he had awoken to his nightmare.

Nope, pal. This one is all mine.

For standing before him, naked if not for the stiff fur that covered my body from head to toe, still breathing heavily and sweating from the growing pains of the previous night, was the creature—and some even go as far as to call me a superhero, now known as The Bull.

Me. Carl, the part-time rodeo clown.

“I’ve got to go,” Gerald said.

I never saw him again, although he went on to write a book about our friendship. Fiction, mostly. I should sue his ass. Do superheroes do that?

To say my life changed radically from that moment on is an understatement. I couldn’t go very far without having people either follow me or run in fear. Didn’t take the press long to figure out the mother of all freaks was living in Rustic City either. Hell, TMZ has staked out a permanent spot in the parking lot just opposite my apartment.

Yes, the press coverage alone is dizzying. As my publicity soared, and as the medical establishment did their damn best to come to grips with what had happened to me, two things became evident:

One is that the world actually needs me. It seemed almost overnight my services came to be in demand. From saving whole families in fires (my thick bullish hide is impervious to flames) to stopping bank robberies (for some reason, the heretofore reasonable number per capita shoot up like an S.O.B. in Rustic City).

Two—with my own strange transformation, there also appeared another type of monster. Evil geniuses. You know, those homicidal madmen bent on literally destroying the world. Some have speculated that the universe needed an answer to the influx of coming evil. A sort of superhero yin to the evil yang. Apparently, I was the yin.

Why a bull? I don’t know. Hell, I can think of countless other critters that might have been more useful, but I am what I am.

What can I say?

I am The Bull, with my great strength and quick temper. Don’t get me started on seeing the color red. The Bull, with my razor-sharp horns that can literally tear through anything. The Bull, with my tail that I’ve mastered as a useful whip. The Bull, with my thick hide that is protecting me from bullets and knives and everything else in-between. No, I can’t fly, but I can charge,
quickly
.

Comics have been made about me, and even movies. I have a Facebook page that numbers in the hundreds of millions of fans. Even more than Vin Diesel.

Go figure.

Many laugh at me, some admire, most fear me.

I would fear me, too. A giant of a man. Half-man, half-animal. A freak of nature. There is nowhere for me to hide, and so I didn’t bother hiding. In fact, I never bothered moving. I like my one-bedroom apartment. I like my Pabst Blue Ribbon even more. It just takes a hell of a lot more of the stuff to get me drunk.

No, I don’t have a Bat Signal, but I do have Skype.

You can Skype me, too. I’m always ready to help. Just let me finish my beer first.

I am The Bull.

Go figure.

dam Carr has a problem.

It’s his heart. He’s sure of it. Except, of course, his doctors can’t find anything wrong with him or his heart.

Nothing at all.

This troubles Adam, as he’s certain the problem is getting progressively worse. In fact, as he leaves his cardiologist’s office now, stepping out into the blazing hot Corona sunshine, Adam is certain that someone is playing a very sick joke on him. Perhaps even God.

As he stands there, letting his body adjust from the air conditioned comfort of the specialist’s office to the extreme heat of this outpost southern California city, Adam finds thinking difficult.

After all, it’s damn hard to concentrate when his own heart pounds in his ears.

He takes in a gulp of sizzling air, and lifts his face to the sun, and listens to his heart beating so loudly that he’s certain anyone within twenty feet can hear it.

Except, of course, no one can hear it.

Only him.

And it is totally freaking him out.

Thump, thump, thump…

And so it goes.

He’s had three experts check him out, and subsequently three experts tell him there’s nothing wrong with him. Nothing at all. This last expert even went so far as to suggest that Adam go see a psychologist.