Fictitious 52 #1

So here it is folks, story number one of my much talked about Fictitious 52.

Taking a page out of Jonathan Coulton's book, I'll be writing one short story a week for one full year. I set 5000 as my minimum word count but, as you'll see with this one, I'll probably come in below that pretty often. But only because I feel that extending the story further would be a bad idea.

Anyways, hit the jump for story number one: Off Duty

 It's been a long day, we're both tired. Well, I'm tired, he's pretending to be. I appreciate the empathetic gesture, we both know he doesn't get tired. Not from a simple day of teaching, at least. I, on the other hand, am not so lucky. Janitorial duty in a high school for the... rowdier students in the county wasn't exactly a picnic. But work is work, and I do need to work, despite what some people may think about me. Feast or famine is no way to live. Trust me, I've been there.

Paulie and I have been friends forever, or since I can remember, at least. I wouldn't be surprised to learn he remembered a time before he knew his best friend. I wouldn't be surprised at any astounding feat someone told me Paulie could perform. He seemed to grow more and more talented by the year.

He's the one who got me my job, you know? He'd been working at that school for a year, I hadn't been working anywhere for two. It's hard to get back into a college when you'd been booted out of your previous one for accidentally rendering the science building unusable. It's hard to get a serious, well paying job when you have no degree and no experience to speak of. And it's hard to get menial work when you're as intelligent as I am and too proud to go bowing and scraping before a bunch of people who think they're better than you. It makes it hard to interview well.

And that's how Paulie did me a solid. He called me, asked me if I'd be willing to do the job. I was desperate, there are worse things than being a janitor. An hour later he called back and told me to show up for work the next day at seven.

Paulie's always looked out for me like that, and I like to think I've done my best to repay the favor over the years. Who knows how true it is? Maybe I'll never pay him back for all he's done, or maybe he owes me.

My name is Michael by the way, you've probably heard of me, if not by that name yet then by another. Michael, not Mikey. My friends call me Mikey. I've started running low on those lately, so I doubt you're one of them.

Anyway, I digress. Getting back onto the topic I had started, I was tired, Paulie was feigning exhaustion for my benefit, and we decided to spend a few hours at the bar in each other's company. So I've had a few, Paulie has too, not that they've thrown him much at all, and I say:

“So, P, whatcha got planned for the weekend?”

Now, I say this in jest, knowing full well what he had planned for the weekend because I know full well what I  have planned this weekend , but he turns to me and says:

“Oh, Gin,” that's his wife, by the way, “Gin and I are going to head out of town for the weekend with the kids. Get some fresh air up by the lake.”

Now this takes me by surprise. That shouldn't be what he's doing. No, I left that letter at the mayor's office last night. He should have heard about it by now. It was on the news!

“What about that big thing with The Abject?”

“Don't know what that has to do with me. That's a job for Prominence. Getting out of town is probably a pretty good idea in general, now that you mention it. What are you going to do, Mikey?”

My nervousness dissipates at that, you can always count on Paulie to be quick with the jokes. I laugh, knock back another one.

“What's funny,” he asks me.

“Not your joke, that's for sure. 'A job for Prominence,' you've had better ones. Though to be fair you've had much much worse.”

“What?”

I look at him, a little confused. Probably looking more confused than felt. And almost certainly being more confused than I should be, due in large part to how much cheap alcohol I have coursing through my system. It won't be in my bloodstream for too long, I learned how to avoid being drunk over extended periods a long time ago.

“Okay, Paulie, you can drop the act.”

It's his turn to look surprised, scared even. I've seen Paulie face down a million different dire situations, some in which his life was riding on the outcome and not once hav I ever seen him as terrified as he is now..

“Wh-what act?”

“Paulie, come on. Stop joking.”

He takes a swig of his drink then and avoids catching my eye. We we're both quiet for a while before he looks at me and asks, in a hushed tone:

“You know?”

Needless to say I'm completely floored at this point. This isn't exactly how I expected this conversation to go. Although, thinking back on the whole mess with the perspective that I have now, I realize that we had somehow managed to go our entire adult lives without stumbling into this kind of mess earlier. It's things like that that'll make you wonder if there isn't some higher being that gets his jollies setting up jokes that take fifteen years to deliver the punchline.

“I think we need to have a talk somewhere more private, Mikey,” he says before I can answer, and I agree. So he pays for his drinks, I put mine on my tab, and we're walking down the street.

“How long have you known, Mikey” he asks me, and I still can't quite believe what it is I'm hearing.

“Paulie, I've always known that you were Prominence. Of course I've always known!”

Apparently he didn't know I knew, the look on his face couldn't be faked by even the best actor.

We continue down the street in silence for a while before Paulie speaks up again.

“How, Mikey? What gave me away?”

I don't think he means to, but that offends me.

“What gave you away? Paulie, we've been best friends since pre-school! I see the both of you everyday! You think just because you put on a costume, bulk up, turn your hair golden, change your eye color, and lower your voice a few octaves I can't recognize my best friend? How stupid do you think I am, Paulie? How much do you look down on me?”

He lowers his head after this, apparently he had been greatly underestimating me. I know he didn't mean it that way, but I don't have much to be proud about. I have my best friend and I have my intellect. That's about it for my list of achievements and to have half of the list looking down on the other half hurts. And besides that, there is a much bigger problem.

“And another thing, Paulie. I assumed you knew that I knew, but if you didn't, how could you not have told me? Let's put aside the whole trust issue that's boiling right under the surface of that for now, because there's a much bigger problem. All the times we've fought, how could you let me go on thinking I was doing battle with some nobody? I could have killed you, Paulie. How do you think I could live with myself if I'd killed my best friend over some stupid energy conversion conduit? The only reason I pulled my punches, so to speak, is because I knew it was you.”

“Wait, wait, wait! Mikey, what are you talking about?”

I am not sure if you have ever had your world view completely pulled out from under you in a matter of ten or so words, but if you haven't, let me tell you, it's not a pleasant feeling.

“What?”

“Fighting, killing me, you've lost me, Mikey.”

From the first time we clashed, I was always sure. It was me and Paulie doing our usual thing. Watching out for each other. Helping each other like we always did. Despite the mounting evidence to the contrary, I hold out hope that what I had always thought to be the truth of our relationship remained just that.

“Paulie, you know I'm The Abject.”

Seeing the rapid fire changes in emotion crossing Paulie's face is amazing and I wonder if that's at all what I looked like when it was my turn to have my world up-ended.

“You're... what?”

“Who,” I correct. Really though, it's more a nervous reaction than anything else. Half humor, half stall tactic. But it doesn't seem to work, Paulie just locks in on me with his super serious super hero stare.

“I said I'm The Abject. I thought you knew.”

“KNEW,” he explodes. “How could I know something like that? How could I know that my best friend is not only secretly a criminal, a super villain in fact, but my main adversary and biggest threat.”

I admit it, that gets a smile out of me, before Paulie fixes me with a look I have never seen him direct at me before. Well, that isn't exactly true. It's a look that Paulie gives me all the time when we're on the job, so to speak, but I expect that from my arch nemesis. I don't expect it from my best friend. It scares me. What it could mean for our friendship scares me.

“Michael, how could you do this to me?”

“Do this to you? What have I done to you?”

“What have you done to me? You're my worst enemy! You attack me on a bi-weekly basis!”

“I have never attacked you, Paulie. The only reason we even butt heads is because you try to stop me. You attack me. And I have no problem with that, I understand. It's what you do. I understood when I thought you knew it was me, you're a crimefighter, you fight crime. You can't give me preferential treatment just because we're friends.”

That isn't, strictly, the truth. The Abject has never been arrested. When I believed we were both in on each other's secrets I had convinced myself there was this unspoken deal between us. 'Never ruin the other's life.'

“I... can't be having this conversation right now, Mikey. What am I saying right now, I can't be having this conversation. Michael, I'm going to head home. We're going to need to have words later.”

And then he leaves. Without so much as a goodbye, he's gone. Ah well, I figure that at least it's all out in the open now, since it turns out that it wasn't before. How have I let myself go so long operating under so many false assumptions?

I sigh, I'm going to need a good night's sleep after that. I'm glad I've spent the off duty hours I had during the week prepping for tomorrow's festivities because I'm certainly not going to be getting any work done tonight.

---

It's late when I wake up, or early depending on how you look at it. I don't wake up in the middle of the night very often, but it's hard to sleep through flood lights blasting through your bedroom window combined with the sound of police sirens and helicopters.

“What's going on,” I wonder to myself as I pull down the blinds to look outside.

My apartment building is surrounded.

“Give up, Michael. Give up and we can get you some help.”

I turn around, and there he is, fully decked out in his gold and whites. Emilio “Paulie” Paulson. My best friend. My arch nemesis. Prominence.

I feel naked there. Standing in front of Paulie in his full costume while I'm in the t-shirt and pajama bottoms that I generally wear to bed. The whole situation is surreal to me. Something I never expected to happen. A meeting that, in the world I had constructed, the world that apparently existed only in my head, should have been impossible. Michael Morrow, not The Abject, plain old Michael, staring down Prominence.

“What have you done,” I ask, accusing.

“I'm doing what's best, Michael. Don't try to pull a weapon on me, I've searched the room and removed the ones you could get to.”

“What's best? You've brought the police to my home. Not one of The Abject's lairs, you've brought them into my life. You've exposed me.”

“Michael, you're a super villain. You're The Abject. You need to be brought to justice so that you can be helped.”

“Helped!? How does this help me? You've ruined me! How could you do this? These lives aren't supposed to cross! You're not supposed to bring Prominence into my life, just like I keep The Abject out of yours!”

He narrows his eyes at me, looking at me in that way I'm so used to seeing from behind a high-tech visor. Like he hates me. Me! He's not looking at The Abject, and despite the costume, I'm not seeing Prominence. Paulie is looking at me, Michael, as if I'm the worst thing on the planet.

“Damn it, Michael! You're a super villain, not very powerful, but easily the most potentially dangerous. You need to step back and look at this from outside of your little fantasy. There aren't two separate lives here, there aren't two separate people. Everything is just you. And it's my duty to stop you.”

“Fantasy? I know who you are, Prominence. I have always known who you are. How many times has The Abject shown up on your door step? Terrorized your family? Hurt your friends? Not once! Because we're friends! I'm the godfather of your children for god's sake! So what if we have it out when we're at work? What we do in our public personalities has nothing to do with our personal lives. You weren't supposed to turn on me. Not for something like this. If you were upset we could have talked it out over dinner, or fought it out in the streets. You didn't have to bring my life to an end.”

“Michael, your life isn't over. Just, come quietly.” He holds out a hand for me. As if I'm hanging on the edge of a precipice and he's my only salvation.

I hurl myself off.

“No,” I say.

For the most part, I don't keep any of my Abject equipment in my home. I store them in the various lairs I keep hidden in this and nearby cities. However, there are two exceptions. In the first case, I would be a fool to run around completely defenseless. One of the reasons I am so effective is due to the level of redundancy of my equipment. Theoretically, because it has never happened before, were some upstart hero actually relieve me of my power gauntlets and armor, they wouldn't find squishy little Michael Morrow. The very same nano-machines running through my bloodstream for the purpose of eliminating toxins are also embedded just below my skin in strategic locations. It's a painful process, bringing them to the surface. And not particularly fast either. But it means I've got a low power energy gauntlet, amongst other things, at all times.

Not one hero knows about my extra layer of preparedness, so it takes Prominence by surprise when I hit him with a bolt of anti-light. An energy of my own creation, by the way. It won't be long before he gets back up. The only reason a blast like that puts him down in the first place was because he wasn't expecting it.

The second exception to my rule are the retreat canisters. Miniature teleporters designed to take me to my nearest lair. I keep two in every room, those were the things Prominence thought were weapons. This situation isn't going to end peacefully, I know that, and I have no intention making it easy for him. I make a break for my living room and grab a canister, activating it.

I know it won't be long before he figures out how to find me, but by the time he arrives, I'm ready. I've donned the black, silver, and red armor of The Abject and prepared for battle. I am lowering the helmet when I hear him call out from behind me.

“Mikey, stop this!”

I activate the voice modulation in the helmet then tap into my lair's speaker system so that my booming bass reply is heard loud and clear.

“Only my friends get to call me that, Prominence. To you I am now, as ever, The Abject.”

“Mikey...”

“How do you like my accommodations, Prominence? If you were wondering where the millions I've managed to steal over the years went, why Michael Morrow lives paycheck to paycheck so often despite them, here's your answer. Here is my passion.”

“Lovely,” he quips. He's getting into the swing of things despite himself. “Come with me, don't put up a fi...”

He's interrupted mid sentence when he has to dodge an anti-light beam from my gauntlet. The wonderful thing about anti-light is the fact that firing a beam of it does about as much damage to things as shining a flashlight on it. Except to Prominence. Anti-light is one of his few weakness. This means I can be as reckless with my arsenal as I want here without any collateral damage to the surroundings. Which is important, since I intend to win this fight and the key to that is the extra oomph provided to my armor by the lair.

---

On your average day, my Abject armor working at one hundred percent could last maybe ten or twenty minutes in direct combat with Prominence. Our confrontations are usually more about the circumstances surrounding them. Every now and then I will mix things up with an automaton or something that can stand against him longer. But any time the two of us actually come to blows, it is a stall tactic on my part to facilitate an escape. I can't hope to win even if I want to.

But not today. Today is the first time he's set foot into my territory, and my territory keeps my force fields, weapons, and mechanisms fully charged while providing a steady source of maintenance nano-machines to repair any damage my armor may sustain.

“You've doomed me, Prominence,” I yell and the sound system amplifies. “I have nothing to go back to now! No reason to be Michael anymore. His life is gone. I can be The Abject full time now, and I have no reason not to be!”

He doesn't reply, he just keeps coming at me. Even with my home field advantage, we're practically even. My force fields are very slowly draining while, miracle of miracles, he's just as slowly slowing down.

Finally, after an hour of fighting we find our grips locked, pushing against each other, each trying to bring the other to his knees... and I'm winning. I look down at him as he slowly starts to lose his footing. He looks up at me. And I see something I never expected. I see Paulie looking at his best friend and wishing he could help him again.

And that's the last thing I see before he takes the opportunity my distraction gives him to lay me out with one punch full of everything he has to give.

---

“And that, Miss Blair, is how I came to be here, in this maximum security prison, talking to you.”

The reporter nods, writing down this last bit of his story.

“One final question for you, Mr. Morrow. Why did you agree to give me this interview?”

Michael gives the young reporter a sad smile.

“The answer is twofold, Ms. Blair. The first is that I needed to talk to someone, but I couldn't risk exposing Paulie. You see, while I would never do anything to mess with his off duty life, if his identity got out there are tons of villains who would hurt Gin or the kids. And I wouldn't be able to live with myself if that happen. As such, I can't talk to any of the staff here, including the shrinks who I'm supposed to be telling all this kind of stuff to. You never know who might get payed off or tortured for information.”

“But I'm a reporter, this is for an article in a national paper. Everyone will know about Prominence's secret identity.”

“And that's where the second part of the answer comes in. You see, you were too enthralled by getting my tale written down to pay close attention, but if you will, try to recall the part where I said I'm never unarmed.”

Patricia Blair's eyes become as wide as saucers when she realizes the implications of what he's just said. She looks down at his hands to see what looks like metal skeletal structures growing out of the back and small turbine-looking tubes in the palms.

“Now, if I have the timing right, and I'm certain I do, the gas currently being released from my left hand will render you unconscious and eliminate all recollection of our little conversation. Once that happens, I'll be relieving you of your note pad and tape recorder. And once that's all taken care of I believe I will be breaking out of here tonight. Sweet dreams, Miss Blair.”

---

“I can't apologize for this enough, Prominence,” the Warden says to the understandably upset superhero. “We have no idea how he managed to smuggle weapons into the prison, let alone the visitation room.

“The Abject is a clever man, Warden. You don't have to apologize. You said there was something left behind?”

“Just a scrap of paper, sir. His way of adding insult to injury, I'm sure.”

He hands the piece of note pad paper to the hero and Prominence looks it over. The message is short for something written by The Abject.

Sorry, Prominence. Still friends?