Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen (30 page)

We’re very lucky with Barb; her natural reticence keeps her amenable. Not all our long-termers have such resilience of spirit. Which brings us to our last door, or rather, aquarium.

Meet one of our less-celebrated residents, Jellied Eel. Wave hello, doctors. Oh, Jelly, naughty naughty. It’s difficult to tell, what with the excess of boneless limbs and overall translucence, but he just made a rather vulgar gesture. Yes, that’s his genitalia he’s fondling there, under that flap. You are incorrigible, Jelly! Ha! You have to yell to be heard through the Plexiglas. Not that he ever listens.

Jelly may not be entirely media-friendly, but when it comes to naval warfare he has no peers. If it weren’t for him and his electracles, the entire Atlantic seabed would now be overrun with the spawn of Octopustule.

Doctor Shonaman, Jellied Eel is a patient, not a sideshow! Tap the glass again, and I’ll make sure you spend six months on dietetics duty with Regurgitator!

As I was saying, Jelly here is rather
unwilling
to remain in our care. He’s a good soul, but unstable. He was an environmental activist at one time, and he’d much rather be causing havoc to fishing fleets and offshore drilling rigs. That’s how we caught him, actually; he became ensnared in the nets of an illegal bottom trawler he was set on sinking. We can depend on him to fight when the cause is just, such as when the Fishmongers tried to poison the world’s drinking water. But when the job is done he invariably flees, and we have a devil of a time capturing him again.

No, Jellied Eel is not a
prisoner
. We don’t use that term here. Jellied Eel is a conscripted volunteer. Also, he’s particularly susceptible to waterborne fungal infections, anchor worms, gill flukes, sea lice, and the like, and the only place he can receive treatment is here. Right now he’s recovering from a nasty battle with an army of nematodes that annexed his colon. I’ll hazard none of you expected to work as an ichthyologist, eh?

And thus concludes our tour. I realize that this is a lot to take in, which is why the rest of you won’t begin your residencies until tomorrow. For the rest of the day I want you to rest and acclimate. If need be, please take advantage of one of our on-site counselors to help you through this transition. They’re excellent listeners, and psychic empaths as well, so don’t bother holding anything back.

Sorry to leave you now, but I have a rather full slate of patients to examine and only four arms. Colonel Tidhar will now lead you to the barracks you’ll be calling home for the next several years. After you’ve freshened up and had a bite at the commissary, you’ll be briefed on your various assignments over the next few months. Just to whet your appetite: The Gruesome arrives in the morning for a bowel resection; Madame Carbon is due for her monthly graphene finger- and toenail trimming; Chlorophyllis has come down with her annual bout of early blight; and Captain Awesome once again seared his eyelids when he blinked while using his laservision.

I won’t lie to you: I don’t expect all of you to survive your residency. Those who do can consider themselves employed for life, either here or, if you show an aptitude, at one of our government überhuman research facilities. Those who don’t, well… nice try.

I’ll be seeing you around the wards. Keep your heads on straight and you’ll do fine.

And remember: sometimes, the only difference between a superhero and a supervillain is a malpractice suit. Ha ha.

* * *

Based in New Brunswick, Corey Redekop is the author of the novels
Shelf Monkey
and
Husk
.

Bedtime for Superheroes

Leigh Wallace

Marie had made a full pot of tea even though she was alone in the little house. She added a perfect dribble of milk to her mug and took a slow sip. It was late, and everything was tidy. She was an old lady, she reminded herself. She should sit down, take a load off. Instead she pulled three more mugs from the drying rack and lined them up before her on the counter.

Into the ugly cartoon mug she dropped two absurdly large blobs of honey. Into the sparkly unicorn mug she poured some of that artificial hazelnut stuff. Next to the yellow mug with a chip in it she placed a container with a perfectly sliced lemon wedge— not too thick. She made the tasks take up as much time as possible.

Tea in hand, she turned from the counter toward the living room, the living room being the far corner of her unspacious kitchen-living-dining room area, where the soft old furniture was crowded. And there, on the sofa, suddenly and silently, was a ninja. So Marie went back to the counter and poured a second mug of tea. The tacky supervillain mug — with an image of a punching masked woman and the word
Shwoooom!
— half full with two oversized spoonfuls of honey. It was for the ninja, who liked her tea sweet and evil and who was all tuckered out.

Marie shuffled her old feet to the couch, a mug in each hand. She kissed Lacy, her ninja, on the forehead before closing the living room window, which Lacy had suddenly and silently left wide open to the chilly night before collapsing onto the sofa. The ninja hugged her mug like a friend, like she didn’t even think it was ugly, because she didn’t.

Before Marie could sit down with her own tea there was ninja paraphernalia littering the floor. She put her mug down on the coffee table and gathered up the mask and the gloves with the little black buttons that she had sewn onto them. Lacy had asked her to sew them on. Had begged her to. Even though nobody’s ever heard of a ninja with buttons.

“You’re wearing the housecoat we got you,” said Lacy, cracking open a drowsy eye.

“It’s lovely, dear,” said Marie.

“Is it warm?” asked Lacy.

“Yes, just lovely.” The housecoat was a leopard print, but it was nubbly and thick and Marie loved it.

Marie nudged the ninja’s boots with her toe. No shoes in the living room. No. Not even ninja boots. Not even after a long day of fighting crime. The boots blurred off Lacy’s feet and onto her lap.

Marie, with her usual unhurried step, put the mask and gloves away on the hall closet shelf, above her limp old housecoat and the ninja’s patched old ninja suit that neither of them had ever thought of throwing away. One of the fingers of the ninja’s good gloves, the new ones with the shiny buttons sewn on, was pulling open at the tip and Marie thought she might try and get that sewn up tomorrow before the ninja went back out. Or exchange the pair, since they were new. No, it was easier to just mend it. That’s what she would do.

“Oh no!” In the living room Lacy was poking at a wisp of thread hanging loose near the top of one of her boots. “Gram! I lost a button!”

Marie paused in the hall. “Who ever heard of ninjas with buttons?”

Lacy shrugged. “I like buttons.”

Marie shrugged back. “So put on another one.”

Lacy made a scrunchy, lip-bitey face. “I didn’t buy any extras.”

“Honestly, Lacy.”

Lacy didn’t look up. “Well, they were expensive.”

Marie didn’t sit down to her tea yet. She made her way to the hall closet to fetch her sewing basket. “And may I ask why you came through the window? Again?”

“I forgot my key. What do I do about my button?” Between those two sentences Lacy had gone from a sock-footed ninja to a pyjama-clad young woman who looked like she’d been coiled into that afghan all evening, betrayed only by the current of inside air that eddied back from her bedroom. Her buttonless boot was back in her hand.

Marie finished placing the sewing basket from the hall closet down on the coffee table. “Watch the springs. Don’t go so fast.” But Lacy never went slow. It wasn’t her thing. The sofa had lost the will to moan ages ago, anyway. Lacy dove into the sewing basket and scrounged through all of it before Marie had turned back to her tea, which was now getting lukewarm.

“Guh! They’re all pink!” The sewing basket was instantly on the floor, its contents strewn all the way into the kitchen.

“Pick that up,” said Marie, but the full sewing basket was already back on the coffee table. Lacy was fast. It was her thing. The sofa sighed an unheeded whisper of protest.

“Gram. Girl superheroes don’t. Wear. Pink.”

“In my day, ninjas didn’t wear buttons, either.”

Lacy didn’t say anything. At first. Then she said, “I like buttons.”

Lacy pushed the sewing basket further away down the coffee table with her toe, grabbed a paperback from the overstuffed living-room bookcase, flipped its pages once, and tossed it onto a growing pile on the floor. Marie, with creaking old bones, put the boots in the closet where they belonged, with the gloves and mask. When Marie re-entered the living room Lacy had curled her feet up under the afghan, forgotten the sewing basket on the coffee table, and was deep into another book, an unauthorized biography of The Housekeeper.

“The Housekeeper’s making a comeback,” Lacy informed Marie.

“Mmm.”

“Gram, she was spotted in Toronto,” Lacy went on.

“Mmm.”

“She was
in her mask
,” Lacy insisted.

“Mmm.”

“Gram, you’re not listening.”

The Housekeeper was the vintage supervillain on Lacy’s ugly mug, and one of the only other speedsters out there. Of course, Marie knew perfectly well that Lacy’s fascination with an old villain didn’t mean Lacy would ever go villain herself. It was silly to even think it. Marie would remind herself of that in the empty evenings, when Lacy’s mug sat the counter. Marie was proud of her granddaughter. Lacy was a true hero. Marie sipped her tea, ignoring how cool it had gotten, and took out her knitting.

“I bet she’ll go on Ellen.” Lacy mused.

“Mmm. Wait. Wouldn’t she be too old? Or dead? Or evil? Wait, is she
Elvis
?”

Lacy rolled her eyes and went on reading. Marie leaned over Lacy to flick on the corner lamp for her. Lacy was always reading in the dark. It wasn’t one of her super things; it was one of her young woman things.

As Marie unwound her yarn the front door clicked open and heavy, uneven stomps made their way down the hall toward them. Marie put the knitting and tepid tea aside and hurried back to the kitchen. She filled another mug, the one with the sparkly unicorn handle that still shed unvacuumable glitter everywhere, and handed it to the six-and-a-half-foot-tall pirate who just clomped in.

“Thanks.” The pirate tossed eye-patch and bandana onto the small dining table against the side wall and thumped over to the sofa with her mug. Marie noted that one foot had a hesitant quality to it. She wanted to ask about it but managed not to. The pirate was a grownup who could surely look after herself. What could a little old lady do, anyway? She didn’t want to be a nag. Even if she had let the pirate move in for free, incidentally,
and
handwashed the sparkly mug every day because it wasn’t dishwasher safe.

“Hey, Bea,” said Lacy without looking up from her book.

“Hey, Lacy,” said Bea, the pirate, stopping in front of the coffee table and leaning on one foot. She unbuckled her heavy pirate belt and looked into the sewing basket. “So. Buttons?” She said.

“Yeah. Pink buttons.” Lacy glared at the sewing basket. She didn’t make eye contact with Marie. Marie ignored her from the kitchen, where there was still one empty mug left.

“Pink buttons suck,” Bea said as she collapsed onto the sofa beside Lacy. She looked all tuckered out, like Lacy. Only twice Lacy’s size, and all muscly. Muscles were Bea’s thing.

“So you like the housecoat, Marie?” asked Bea.

“Oh yes, dear.” Marie picked up Bea’s eye-patch and bandana from the table, even though she knew she shouldn’t. The girls were going to have to start picking up after themselves. But she hung the eye-patch and bandana over the banister to remind Bea to bring them upstairs when she went to bed.

“My feet hurt.” Bea stretched her legs out under the coffee table.

Lacy asked. “That’s because of your noob boots.” She nodded with all the weight of her substantial three years’ experience as a superhero.

Bea wiggled her toes. “I like my boots. They’re not noob.”

“Bea. Seriously. Only noob superheroes wear heels. Seriously.”

“These are my pirate boots.” Bea glared at Lacy, but Lacy kept reading as if she hadn’t noticed. “The pirate thing was your idea.”

Lacy chuckled at being a superhero ninja with a pirate sidekick. Being a superhero ninja with a pirate sidekick made her laugh every time. Marie still didn’t get it but she managed to be okay with that.

“Don’t forget to take off your noob boots inside,” said Marie.

Bea ignored her and took a sip of her tea. It was coffee. “Marie, you gave me coffee.”

“Because you didn’t do your homework.”

“Yes I did. I told you I did.”

“I checked. You lied.” Marie kissed Bea on the forehead even though Bea hadn’t finished her homework and had stayed out fighting crime past curfew. She was doing a little better on her second lap of grade twelve, so Marie reminded herself, again, not to worry. “Also, you still haven’t taken the garden tools downstairs.” She knew she was nagging this time. But was it so much to ask?

Bea grumbled up to her room with loud, uneven noob boot stomps. She left her eye-patch and bandana on the banister.

Marie hovered in the kitchen next to the counter, not looking at the empty yellow mug, now sitting by itself. “I wonder where Celeste is?” she mused innocently.

Lacy’s pages paused in their continuous flipping for that one instant. “I’m sure she’s fine, Gram.”

“Oh, I know.” Marie barely sighed. “I know.” She shooed Lacy off the couch. That was Marie’s spot. Lacy settled sideways into the armchair instead, already too bored to read. She’d read all of these books, like, yesterday. Marie ignored her, picked up her knitting and started the needles going. When Marie knitted she was fast. Bea, in a big T-shirt, came down the stairs and flumped onto the sofa beside Marie with her coffee and chemistry book and wriggled her chilly bare toes under Marie’s thigh. Marie had bought or knit Bea five pairs of slippers before giving up. Bea clearly preferred to have chilly toes and to keep them warm under Marie’s thigh.