What is a Hero?

The fallen hero lay dejected, the side of his face pressed into the gritty mud, rain gathering in the shell of his upturned ear. It almost drowned out the sounds of laughter. His closed eyes could shut out the pointed fingers, the disappointed stares, but the sounds of disapproval still permeated him.

"This is a shit show." He confirmed out loud, pushing himself away from the ground and standing up to face his losses. He turned to face his companion, who was handcuffing a black and blue villain to a nearby lamp-post. The kid seemed sparkling and young and masculine to him, despite the rain and cold and the blood on his vinyl costume. Yet again, stealing the show from him, so nonchalant, as if this was how it was meant to be.

The kid turned back to him, flashing a dazzling smile, so unaware of how humiliating it was to be a hero who was shown up by his side-kick. He was still so caught up in that Daddy-be-proud-of-me attitude. He hadn't a clue that his leaps and bounds and successes were slowly killing the self esteem of a once-king crime buster.

"What's a shit show, Pops?" The man shook his head, reaching up with his leather-clad hand to wipe the street grit out of his eyes.

"Nothing. Nothing at all. Good job, Kid. You did good." He would praise him forever, no matter how badly it made him feel. Every time he felt like he could just wring the kid's neck for showing him up, every time he wanted to trip him to take out the villain first, he would think back to the day the child showed up on his doorstep. All big blue eyes and small hands and tiny pouting mouth, reaching up at him with a scribbled note tagged on his shirt, You know what this is about.

And he had known. And he had taken the kid in and hugged him and apologized to him for his entire life. He'd given the kid everything, and now his everything was fading with it. Even heroes make mistakes. The difference between the hero and the bad guy is: A hero will do everything to fix mistakes. A bad guy just keeps on making more.

Even so, he didn't know how much longer he could keep up. This dapper young guy was out-running him, out-jumping him, out-thinking him, and certainly, cumulatively, out-heroing him. Though it would kill him either way, the hero thought that maybe it was the right time to leave some money on the table and walk out the door... Again. Maybe go into a more laid-back line of work. Maybe hedge funds.

They got into the car, took the low jack off the wheel, and headed home. The man made an effort to listen in on the kid's excited babbling. Twenty years old and the kid still babbled like a ten year old, on and on and on. He must've got that from his mother. Not that he knew much about what she was like. Just one night of giving in and following that grateful would-be Jane Doe home, one time where he'd let himself fall into that fantasy of damsel in distress... What did it get him? A god damn glory hog of a son.

Once safety tucked away in the confines of his den, the hero surrendered himself to the depth and darkness of his thoughts. His footsteps thumped dully against the soft shag of the same brown on darker brown 70s retro funk vomit carpet he'd had since his glory days. The fake wood panel walls were papered in clippings, from The Times, The Gotham, The Onion even. Parody, wasn't that the highest form of flattery?

The kid knew every line from every article, these walls were his bible. How could the hero possibly escape from the clutches of this mess? The ink spun spiderwebs around him, binding him to this stagnant, steadily declining piss-pot of a life. He couldn't just walk away from this. It would have to be something more extreme.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"How... Could... This... Happen....?!" Iridescent gloves the color of spilt oil pinched the soft spandex of the Hero's empty mask, rolled it over and over, disbelieving, grasping at the object like one holds a hand in a dream. The kid shivered on his knees. It was warm, hot even, inside the form-fitted safety-yellow spandex, but the cold was from inside. It was the same cold as every time his mother looked at him like an accident, the same cold as standing before that closed front door after she'd urged him out of her 1988 powder blue Subaru. Even before his father was his Pops, even when he'd been an anonymous sperm donor in the dark young corner of his life, he had never, ever felt this cold lonely abandonment.

No signs of struggle, no body, no prints, no nothing. Nothing but shredded pieces of bone and brain and blood slicing the thin fabric of the mask from the inside, cutting into the kid's fingers as his loose devastated grip tightened into fists around it. Tears pressed out of his eyes and traced hot red itching marks down the inside of his mask, the salt burning his skin in some strange reaction to the chemicals in the vinyl hugging his face.

He couldn't have gone like this... A bullet to the face, his body carried off, the mask left behind like a mocking note, something callous and gaudy. That couldn't be it. His father. His hero, his idol, gone! The kid just couldn't take it. He didn't even know what his body was doing at that moment, but his reaction to the emotional pain coursing through his veins was surprisingly physical. An absolute roar was ripping its way up the dark chasm of his throat, filling the air with the kind of sound that strikes even the happiest soul with the deepest empathy. He was pounding his bleeding hands into the dirt, into the blood spots, mashing them into mud that covered the Hero's mask, which he still clutched in his vice grip. He couldn't see, he couldn't hear, he couldn't feel, he could only think. Pops, Pops, Pops, Pops! Over and over, deep into the dark, the echoing name in his mind rolling through the cold lonely expanse between the earth and the night sky.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A deep contented sigh practically oozed out of the hero's... Out of Rick's mouth as he melted into his beach-side lounge chair. Condensation from the margarita glass dribbled over the back of his hand; The sensation felt like a relaxing caress against his tired bones. Everything fell together so perfectly, someone up there had to be looking out for him again. The old luck, given back to him now that he'd gone solo. The pig's skull had burst perfectly with the bullet, left behind just enough to look like the end. Then finding perfectly priced tickets on priceline... Escape to Greece, those alabaster beaches where he could soak up the sun and plot his next move. Or he could never move again. It wouldn't matter. Not one bit. Not to him, not to these other civilians. Not to the kid...

His brow wrinkled. Of course he felt guilty. He wasn't some kind of heartless animal. But there comes a time in every young sidekick's life where he would have to either be kicked out of the nest or be forever relegated to the side car. Rick was positive that the kid was not a side car type of guy. He was a front liner. A solo artist just like his Pops.

Another, less content, sigh rolled out of him and the wind of it ruffled his linen shirt. Maybe he would write a book. Memoirs of a Dead Vigilante. Or something equally as melodramatic.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

She was found with her head split open against the kitchen sink, her hands gloved in pink rubber and dripping still with bubbles from the sink. Martha was a low woman, and was generally known not to keep a good house. She had been fitted with the gloves, in addition to a pair of black pumps and a flowered apron. Carved into the drywall with the sharp edge of a broken plate, a message startled police investigators.

"MOTHER WHAT HAS BEEN DONE?"

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Two weeks into Rick's rambling through Greece and her surrounding islands, he found himself stopping small crimes. Tripping would-be muggers at the opportune moment, spinning women into that creepy-old man flirty dance while simultaneously pivoting away from a would-be pick-pocket, even briefly directing traffic at a broken stop light. He couldn't believe himself. A small scale hero. It felt good to do the little things, but it was almost masturbatory when those around him didn't understand they were being saved.

Week three was different. He found that a woman was following him. Hugging the corners and watching him save old women's purses and intervene in bar fights. He was flattered. Week four he sat down at a table for two and she joined him. Proposed that he team up with her. Said that he would be a natural bid for her sidekick. He swallowed an amused smile and agreed. He certainly wouldn't mind following a woman like that up a ladder.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The kid had become a brute. His Hero, his Hero, he would find him inside the skins of the low-lifers, the dregs, the homeless under bridges, the prostitutes at their corners, the milling junkies in their cockroach houses, he would split them open every night and find the mask of his father in his hands, staring at him, laughing, laughing at him.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Rick thought she was beautiful. He would follow her to the ends of the earth, hanging back, holding back while holding doors and checking his punches so she could give the last blow. He was the sidekick now, it didn't matter if he was shown up. In fact his job hinged on it. He loved that Valkyrie smile she got when blood splattered over her cheek, or when a tooth bounced against pavement, or when a blackguard turned blue and sputtered choked notes of truth that would save lives. He forgot about the kid. He was second in their team but number one in her heart.

It wasn't until he rolled over one morning, almost a year later, dingy from the sweat of their work and their sex and their old bedsheets that he even thought about that first mistake of his. A casually tossed aside newspaper trumpeted up at him, Lightening Kid, Gone Berserk in America! His heart stopped. She rolled over, one arm coiling over the cold feeling in the pit of his stomach as her auburn hair cascaded over his taunt shoulder. She asked him a meaningless question that he didn't hear. Then she spied the headline, making a brilliant exclamation.

"This could be our biggest job yet! I'm booking our flight." He was in stunned silence over the entire ocean. She thought the tension singing under his skin was his way of steeling himself for the battle ahead. He was too broken to protest anything she said. Guilt was pouring over him like a waterfall. Everyone makes mistakes. But heroes always fix their mistakes. Bad guys make more. Bad guys make more mistakes. How many mistakes could he have made before the kid got like this? How many mistakes can one person recover from? He was a bad guy. He wasn't a hero and he never had been. He was a bad guy. Bad guys were selfish, and their selfishness hurt and destroyed others.

She gripped his hand, steeling herself for battle.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The kid laid on his back, staring up at his ceiling. The Hero stared back down at him, empty eye holes stapling the mask to the flaking plaster. His hand dropped to the floor below his bare mattress, gripping the dirty brown on darker brown 70s retro funk vomit carpet from the Hero's glory days. The newspaper clippings of his bible fluttered in the breeze of a creaking window fan, one remaining blade determinately pressing a few pitiful breaths of fresh air into the fetid stench of the room.

"I'm doing good, right Pops? Getting the bad guys. They all deserve to die for what they took from us. I'm putting them in the ground. Its for the greater good. You know Pops? I'm doing good, its for you, and its GOOD."

An awful laugh barked out from the mouth slit of the Hero's mask, the black gap widening and closing with the horrid sound. The kid pressed his hands to his ears and cried. He rolled over and his side and curled his knees into his chest and roared his sorrow into the reverberating box of the room. Mother what have you done...?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"You're quiet. What's the matter?"

"Nothing..."

"Are you sick? The plane food was pretty terrible, but you still should've eaten. You're pale. I need you strong for this."

"I'm not hungry."

"Maybe I should go this one alone. I couldn't bear it if I forced you into this when you weren't tip-top and something happened. "

He nodded, once. She expected him to fight, and the ease of him giving in made her angry. She stormed off through the city.

He turned down the familiar streets, teetered through those rough and low places, searching. Where was the kid? There had to be a way to save him. To wash the blood from his hands, to open the door again and take the note off his shirt, the note he himself had written in his old mask and in pig's brains.

It was almost too easy to find him. Too easy and too heartbreaking. The safety yellow vinyl was as dingy as a pair of sanitation worker cover-alls. Blood to the elbow and to the knee. Fresh splatters across his chest. His bare hands prying open the sternum of some poor junkie caught unawares.

"Christ, Michael..." He couldn't stop himself from speaking. The kid's head snapped around like a wolf, rage melting instantly into a heartbreaking mix of waking nightmares and dreams melded and come true.

"Did I do Good, Pops?"

Rick was crying, he couldn't see but he held his arms out and the kid charged into them and smeared the warm blood all along his front and oh God the smell was terrible. There was a stiff jerk that he thought was the kid, a crazy convulsion. He looked down and for some reason the insanity was fading from the kid's eyes. He was smiling, that same look he gave when the Hero first opened the door and crumpled the note on his shirt and picked him up and held the kid for the first time. Then there was blood bubbling, coughing up from the corners of his mouth.

"You did good, Kid." And he knew, he saw her over the kid's shoulder, the righteous Valkyrie slaying her companion's attacker. Why else would her man have his arms wrapped around a dirty villain, but to hold him for her blade?

They locked eyes and confusion clouded her face. She pulled the blade back and ran. Rick had never looked at her like that before. No one she had saved had ever looked at her with that pure look of horror written in their eyes.

The Hero lowered his fallen son to the ground, sat down, pulled the kid into his lap and cradled his face as the kids lips whispered up at him.

"It's alright, I know they were bad. You don't have to do it anymore. I'm letting you rest, you can close your eyes and rest now. I'm so sorry. My whole life, I've been so sorry. You didn't deserve this. I'm sorry."

The kid's shaky hand reached up, tracing the shape of the Hero's mask with a gore-covered fingertip. "It's ok... Pops. You always came... Back to save... me."

And the kid was gone again, brought into the world and taken out of it by a woman who thought she knew best. Rick didn't even know what his body was doing at that moment, but his reaction to the emotional pain coursing through his veins was surprisingly physical. An absolute roar was ripping its way up the dark chasm of his throat, filling the air with the kind of sound that strikes even the happiest soul with the deepest empathy.

He wasn't anyone's Hero anymore. He wasn't Rick. He wasn't even a man. He was just another bad guy. A bad guy filling the world with mistakes.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++