Super Born: Seduction of Being (24 page)

To anyone else, the naked woman in the mirror
would have seemed quite attractive, a well-formed woman near her
prime. There may have been something rounded here or there that
should have been angled, but all in all, I had the hourglass look
going on. With my new metabolism dropping me in dress sizes, the
truth was, I looked good; I just didn’t feel that way. For years, I
had battled the stigma of being a teenage mother, and then began
viewing myself as a single mother who’d lost her dreams.

Here I was going nowhere in a town going
nowhere that was filled with childish, stupid men. Eventually, I
had taken on the labels and restrictions and stopped trying to be
anything more. The woman in the mirror was no longer me, but a leaf
fluttering in the wind. I had accepted that for years.

Now, as my powers had manifested themselves, I
didn’t know what was true anymore. The powers were intriguing and
enticing, yet still somewhat foreign to me. The new, powerful me
couldn’t see the woman in the mirror either. All I could see were
the limits and restrictions that these powers had brought: the need
for secrecy, the fear of being found out, and the frustration of
using up forty batteries and still not being able to get off. Which
“her” was I?

I brushed back my hair again, took a long look
in the mirror, uncertain what I saw, looked down at the pile of
batteries, and then sighed. The mom in me bent down, put the toy in
the nightstand, and piled the batteries in a bag for the trash. But
the B.I.B. in me was frustrated and angry—instead of taking the bag
of dead batteries out to the trash, I threw it down on the bed and
marched to my closet, opening a hidden panel behind a box behind a
box and pulling out my B.I.B. clothes and mask.

My frustration needed to be satisfied one way
or another, and someone would pay. Tonight, I would go
hunting.

Before, I had always had a target, a plan in
mind, before donning the outfit—but not tonight. Tonight, I would
be on the prowl for a new way to use my powers. I didn’t feel like
hiding or being cautious anymore. Paige was at Kelly’s house—she
would be fine. It was time for me to show how strong I could
be.

* * *

When I awoke the next morning, my eyes slowly
opened and began to focus. I had slept like a log, and it took a
minute to become aware of my surroundings. When my eyes did focus,
a shot of adrenaline made me leap to my feet. My hands—there was
dried blood on my knuckles, and on the side of my hand below the
little finger. In horror, I flipped my hands around, over and over,
searching for the wound from which the blood had come. There was
nothing.

I inspected my bare arms and torso, but found
no source for the blood. I ran to the dressing mirror to check my
entire body. Then came another shot of adrenaline at the sight of
lines of blood on my cheek and even in my hair. On the floor beside
the mirror was the pile of my black B.I.B. clothes ripped and
stained with crimson that varied from specks to small
pools.

My thoughts grew to panic—not only did I have
no idea where the blood had come from, I had no recollection of
what had happened last night. I remembered leaving the house; I
remembered standing on a rooftop downtown with a strong breeze
filling my hair and cape, then nothing else until waking
up.

In alarm and frustration, I pounded the frame
of the mirror with my fists, rattling the glass, until it almost
broke. I had imagined showing everyone how powerful and potent I
could be, yet I was powerless even to remember what I had done, and
to whom. I slid down the mirror until I was a ball on the floor. I
sobbed, and tears began to run down my cheek, drifting through the
blood and ending up pink as they dropped to the floor. After a
moment, I gained control and opened my eyes to look into the
mirror. I didn’t know who this was either.

I heard Paige’s voice calling from down the
hall. “Mom? You better get up or you’ll be late for work…I’m
leaving for school. Are you up?” she said, knocking on the
door.

In an instant I was composed. “Yeah, I’m up,
honey. Have a good day,” I said, quickly donning a robe.

“
Okay, see you at Lori’s after work.
I hope she’s not having meat loaf again…Mom, I’m sorry about the
fight last night. I know you work really hard and you do your best
for me. I was just being a jerk.”

Now I felt doubly upset, I didn’t know where
I’d been the night before and could think of little else while my
daughter showed her concern for me. What kind of mom was
I?

“
I’m really sorry too, honey. If
anybody’s a jerk it’s me.” I quickly got to the door, one-eyed my
face beyond the door jamb, and waved. “Love you.”

“
Love you too..See you at
Lori’s.”

“
Have a good day.”

When I heard the door slam, I leapt to the
bathroom and started the shower. How much water would it take to
wash this blood down the drain?

* * *

All day at work, my mind was an
unfocused maze of thoughts and fears. Occasionally, I would hear
co-workers talking about the news, something that had happened the
night before. Now and then, I would hear someone use the
word
B.I.B.
I
wanted to ask them what had happened, or check for the news on my
computer, but was afraid of what I might find. Finally, just before
lunch, my friend Jan came by.

“
Some crazy night, huh?”

“
What? Something Happen?”

“
Haven’t you heard?” Jan was
obviously excited to find someone who hadn’t heard the news. “The
B.I.B.—nobody sees her for a while and then,
bam,
sounds like she was in five
places at once last night. Of course, nobody will confirm it was
her, but who else could it be? There were a lot of witnesses.
They’re talkin’ about the police going after her this
time.”

“
Anybody hurt?” I finally had the
courage to ask.

“
Oh yeah, lots of people. Hospitals
and jail are full of ’em. Mostly lowlifes. I would think twice
before committing a crime in Scranton after last night. She didn’t
arrest ’em; she pummeled their asses first this time. It’s all good
as far as I’m concerned, though. I heard she broke bones on two
wife-beaters and nearly castrated some guy while he was having sex
with his ten-year-old stepdaughter, sick shit. All in one night!
She was, like, everywhere. Just goes to show you the amount of crap
happening every day. It’s scary. Oh, and did you see the pictures
of the beer trucks? You gotta see those!”

Jan sat on the corner of my desk and stole my
keyboard. She typed frantically, and up popped a slide show of
pictures from the local news channel. “Watch this.”

The first picture was of the mayor standing in
his driveway with his hands on his hips and a sour look on his
face. In the foreground, surrounded by police, was the massive
Miner’s Lite beer truck that had crushed his black Cadillac. “Is
that cool or what?” asked Jan.

The second picture was a series of shots of the
headquarters for Camino Waste Management. The first was a picture
of the top of the building with just the tops of two Miner’s trucks
showing, the rest of the trucks having landed inside the building.
The second was a view of the same building from an aerial view
showing the two trucks inside the building. The third was a picture
of Carmine Camino standing in the parking lot of his headquarters
with hands in the air apparently yelling at a nearby policeman.
Beside him sat the remains of a heavy-lift helicopter, with its
tail section bent and nearly broken off, its rotor blades bent and
tied into a big bow.

As those pictures flashed I couldn’t help but
laugh at a trickle of memories that was coming back to me. But it
took me a while to remember intercepting the other trucks as they
were dropped from the helicopter, intended to hit an innocent
church, school, and home and redirecting them at the mayor and
Camino. When I saw him and the mayor at the Miner’s truck impound
lot, I’d put two and two together and got ‘Camino’s a rat.’ I
remember lifting the helicopter off the ground after it had
returned to its field to make sure it was done playing beer truck
catch with me for the night. I hoped bringing their little game to
their home turf might make them realize the discredit-the-B.I.B
-game was not worth the price.

The next picture brought back memories
that…weren’t so good. There was a picture of a man with blood
pouring from his nose as he weakly supported an arm being bandaged
by EMS staff. He looked like a pure victim. It didn’t show in that
picture, but that guy’s next stop after the hospital was jail, for
trying to jack a car from a couple of young women.

Then there was a man sitting on a curb with
blood streaming from his head. His pregnant wife, who he had just
kicked in the stomach, wasn’t in the frame—she was being laid on a
gurney—nor were the police that had surrounded the man. It seemed
the media was intentionally trying to make me look like a villain,
rather than a vigilante. Vigilante had a negative connotation, but
it comes from the word for ‘ someone who watches over’ or and I was
one in the purest sense of the word.

Jan laughed. “She really beat the crap out of
that guy.” In actuality I remembered only giving him a light tap
that had knocked him over. The concrete road did the rest of the
work. If I had beat the crap out of him, he wouldn’t have looked so
good.

As each picture slid by, I remembered more and
more of the night before. But I’m not sure that was a good thing. I
began to wonder what I was capable of. Moreover, what control did I
have over it? I had certainly exerted a lot of force, but was it
power?

When Jan saw that I was not talking, she asked,
“You okay?”

“
Didn’t sleep well. I’ll be
fine.”

“
Can I buy you lunch?”

I shook my head. “I’ve got to pick up something
for Paige. I’ll take a rain check.”

“
Okay, see ya later.”Jan waved and
nodded as she left.

I took a deep breath, sighed, and then examined
my reflection in the window for a long moment. Who was
I?

Chapter 19

Who Was I?

When my lunch break came, I walked past the old
prune out of the building into a sunny, windswept afternoon that
was warm for this time of April. I buttoned my light coat and
hurried off down the sidewalk.

With only a short lunch break, I had to rush to
pick up some clothes Paige wanted from a store near the office. We
had picked them out a few days ago, but I didn’t have enough money
at the time. Ahead, I could see the streetlight about to change, so
I broke into a jog to cross the street in time. At the same time, a
young man with a large bag draped over his shoulder emerged from an
alleyway with his head down. Neither of us expected the other to be
there, but, in an instant, we had collided and almost knocked each
other over. The collision sent the man’s shoulder bag to the ground
with a metallic clang and made me lean on him to keep from
falling.

No damage done—I laughed, apologized, and tried
to make light of the incident. But the scrawny, dark-haired man
seemed panicked. His dark eyes grew wide and he flailed his arms to
get away from me. That was just rude. Quickly, I knew something was
wrong.

He pounced on his bag, but not before I saw
that it was filled with five or six pipes, capped at both ends, a
configuration I’d seen many times before on the news. He clutched
it to his chest, gave me a threatening look, and then ran back down
the alley from the same direction he had come.

I had a quick choice to make. Should I let him
go, knowing a bag full of pipe bombs might go with him—or grab him
now, right now? I didn’t want to be the B.I.B. right now. The
events of the previous night had made me frightened and uncertain
of the course I was on. But I didn’t know if I could live with
myself if he wound up hurting anyone.

Who did I want to be? In that instant, I would
have to decide. With my costume lying bloody in the closet, I had
no cover for my actions.

For a moment I felt my feet anchored
in rebellion against the seduction of the powers that drew me into
this unpredictable life. Then the cloak of responsibility fell. If
I did not do something
this instant,
this guy was on his way somewhere with a bag of
explosives. Before he had traveled twenty feet, I was on
him.

His collar jerked back in my hand and his feet
left the ground. I swung my arm to the left, and he flew like a
shot into the wall of a building and the Dumpster that was beside
it. He didn’t move, and his arm twisted unnaturally beneath him. I
lifted the bag from the ground and held it at arm’s length as I
heard the sound of voices coming down the alley. A burly biker
dude, a middle-aged woman clutching her purse, and a young man and
woman were coming my way.

The biker walked up behind me and stopped. “You
okay, lady? What’d this loser try to pull? I saw him hit
you.”

I stood with my back to him, not knowing what
to do. Was I the B.I.B., a single mom from Scranton, or someone
else?

“
Hey, lady?” he said, touching my
shoulder.

I hesitated for a long moment, turned, and
handed the biker the bag, saying, “Call 911,” then assumed the best
disguise I could muster—a deep, profoundly puckered fish
face.