Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
Super
Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011
She didn’t understand why I had wanted to go to college. She thought I ought to be out there. A special boy like me, finally using his specialness for good. “Don’t be so shy,” she’d hiss, pushing me toward the burning building. “Go save the nuns. Go on!” But I could never do it. Not when everyone was looking at me. Wasn’t that what fire fighters were for?
She figured, once I was 18, once I was a mature adult, I would see that I was put here on earth for a purpose. I wouldn’t hide my light under a bushel any more. Maybe college would just be a phase. She clicked her tongue against her teeth every time she came home and saw me sitting on the couch, when she turned on the news and saw that North Korea still had nuclear weapons, that trains still derailed, that small children everywhere were trapped under various cars.
I said, “What am I supposed to do? There’s no ‘Superhero’ section in the Classifieds.” And she sighed in that disappointed way and waved her hands around her head. She looked old and tired in her nurse’s uniform. She said, “Haven’t I taught you anything? Haven’t I taught you how to make your own way in the world? To forge your own path? When your father left us, didn’t I take care of everything?”
I had to agree there. She had. And I lifted heavy rocks for her, and took care of the gutters—I didn’t need a ladder, and I wasn’t afraid of falling. I cleaned out the sewage drain, because I could hold my breath indefinitely. My x-ray vision found her missing earring; my superspeed saved her cat. And I washed the dishes after dinner, never breaking a single one. But I think the only reason she didn’t kick me out of the house was because she was afraid I’d kill her with my heat vision.
“I got an A on my midterm,” I said, almost hopefully.
“You’re wasting your gifts,” she said. She took the remote and turned off the television.
“I want to be a marine biologist,” I said quietly.
She pursed her lips. “At least you might save a whale,” she said, and went to her room. I don’t care what anyone says–disappointment is way worse than a super villain.
Dive
Monday, January 31st, 2011
Dear editor:
Your blog doesn’t have the guts to print this. Aliens are menacing our streets. They’re invading our borders, making love to our women, and taking our jobs. The time to act is now.
The aliens first arrived in an iridescent bubble, freely crossing Earth’s atmospheric border–our first mistake. That’s what my friend Mustafa told me. He said they shook hands with the president–our second mistake. Anyone, that I know who likes them, has been brainwashed. If they even brush your skin, they skim your mind and learn what pleases you. Everybody knows what they do to anuses. If we’d just patrol or, better yet, shut down our borders, we wouldn’t have this problem.
Second, women are falling head over heels for these guys. I mean, come on, they look like rodents with their big black eyes, long snouts, white fur coats that make them look like doctors or mad scientists, and long, whip-like metallic tails, which can slice open a can of sardines or batter innocent young children when no one’s observing. Who could fall in love with that? But women do. One lady was walking hand-in-hand with an alien near Times Square. When he stopped to buy hot dogs from a vendor, I asked why she was with him. She shot me a disgusted look (me a fellow human being while the alien she loved). She said he kept creeps like me away. I asked Mustafa if he’d gotten any since the aliens arrived. He said no. I hadn’t either.
Third and most important, they’re putting us out of work. I have friends, now unemployed, who worked as sewage divers. Lounging in the Baptist Shelter, they said aliens have swarmed the industry. They’ve taken over animal-insemination businesses and major political offices. Reporters tell us aliens only do the jobs that nobody wants, but have they asked the people who became unemployed? The kicker is that politicians made it so only properly licensed individuals can dumpster dive. That’s my trade. Neither Mustafa nor I live legally, crouching fearfully in fragrant dumpsters as aliens in patrol cars siren passed. Why is it that all licensed divers look like rodents?
So who’s next? Today, it’s the dumpster divers, tomorrow the trash collectors. When will it be your job? The world is in dire straits. If we don’t act soon, we may be destined for the compost pile of extinction… or worse.
Signed,
Dumpster Dave