Recent Posts

She saw him inspecting his hands, and hoped she had not offended him. When your mutation stemmed from your hands, you were very cautious about shaking peoples hands, especially when you had just been in an adrenaline fuelling situation and your mutation could break fingers with ease. She felt she should explain this to the man, without outing herself as a mutant.

“Your hands are fine it’s just… You know, New York being the hub for mutants… you never know what might happen if you shake a stranger’s hand.”

You could be turned to stone, or a duck, or who knows what else. Or, you could have your fingers sucked through a portal and broken. Regardless, there were a number of things that could go very wrong.

“Tea, would be lovely. Lots of milk and sugar if you have them…”

It was time for a sooky tea, the healer of hurts, the calmer of nerves.

She settled herself on one of the couches, sitting on the edge and turned to watch him brewing the hot drinks. Jack lay on the floor patiently, happy to wait in the warmth of the room for as long as it took. Verdy looked around the shop. It was nice, much nicer than the mechanic Cafas’ shop was attached to. This one had a luxurious waiting room; she was fair sure theirs had a magazine rack and a fold out chair.

“Nice place, do you own it, or work here?”

Nothing like some small talk to soothe the nerves.

He was the junkyard mechanic, and his name was Jacob. She smiled as he offered her the chance to warm up inside his shop. It would be inevitable after a rush like that, the sweat that comes from fear and adrenaline, would cool against her skin and make her shiver. She shivered. Like that.

“Yes please, that would be good.”

Perhaps he had a spare tyre she could sit on for a while while she calmed herself. And tea, tea was good. She rolled her eyes inwardly at how much of sook she had become since living at the mansion. In days gone by she would have taken out the follower before he had a chance, her senses would not have been hindered so much by the darkness, and she would never have ended in the bigger man’s grasp. She had become lazy and therefore weak. She was lucky Jacob had been there to protect her, when she couldn’t protect herself.

The man had stopped and stooped to pet Jack who was thumping his tail against the ground happily. This man had saved his master, he was their friend. Verdy smiled again, then realised she was being rude by not introducing herself, when their rescuer already had.

“This is Jack, Captain Jack if you want to get formal, and I’m Verdy, Verdigris Willow.”

Cracking out the last name. Fancy.

She indicated the black patch around one eye, like the stereotypical pirate captain. Jack was a fairly common name, so it helped to have a title.

The evening was cool, but not too cold and she was warm enough in her hoodie for the walk home. Jack padded quietly beside her, the only noise the sound of their footfalls and his happy panting. It had been a busy day at the shop, three pre-organised pickups and six walk-ins, four of which had purchased something. The bag that held the day’s taking was thick, but not heavy. No coins or petty change in the sword-buying business.

They had passed a small gas station and two closed home improvement yards that sold things like gyprock and scaffolding when she noticed something a little off. There was a faint shuffling sound, like jeans on jeans, which she knew couldn’t be coming from her, she was wearing thick track pants to ward off the chilly breeze. She suppressed the urge to touch her jacket where the money was zipped in an inner pocket. She had checked the pocket and zipped it closed before she left the shop. Touching it now would just indicate to someone following them where it was. Instead she suddenly dropped Jack’s lead then stopped to pick it up. The shuffling sound stopped but not fast enough.

Now, if it had merely been someone walking the same direction as her, at the same pace, they would have continued walking when she stopped to retrieve the lead. Since the shuffler had stopped, she assumed the worst, that whoever it was, was following her. She looked ahead, making a mental map of her trip. She would pass another two yards, closed due to the late hour, then there was a stretch of darkness where an old carwash had shut down and not been re bought. There was no light on the path there, and she guessed that there was where the follower would make his move. From what she recalled there was another mechanics/junkyard on the other side of the carwash with a decent yard light. To get there she had to pass through the darkness though, and she doubted there would be anyone around to help her. This was an area of six-to-sixes, and it was now more like eight. She silently scolded herself for being out so late now when darkness was falling earlier and faster.

She could take care of herself if she had to, but she would really prefer not to.

She was passing the second yard now, and the stretch of darkness lay before her. The sound behind her quickened and she broke into a trot. If she could just make it through the darkness to the safety of the mechanic’s yard light…

She didn’t see the dark form step out from where it had been leaning against the fence of the abandoned carwash, but she certainly felt it. She was at a jog, not a full-blown run, but the impact still knocked the air out of her in a solid ‘ooph’. Jack began barking at the man, who wrapped his arms around Verdy, pinning her arms to her sides, but he took no notice of the dog.

“Where’s the money, sweety?”

He murmured in her ear. His breath smelled like smoke, but not alcohol, so there was little hope that he was intoxicated and could be easily overpowered. She struggled and jabbed at his gut with her elbows as best she could, trying to release her arms to use her hands. In a place like this pretty much any projectile would be a painful one. No socks or erasers here.

A dangerous landscape it was indeed. She had seen at least three sets of ears perk up when she spoke to the man. Several of the more serious nerds, wanting to take her under their wings and explain the unforgivable mistake of confusing Star Wars with Star Trek, Jabba with Jar Jar or mistakenly calling ‘the Doctor’ ‘Doctor Who’. She moved into step with her shiny guide and walked with him, his confidence and authority splitting the ranks of his customers, allowing her passage.

“And it’s…El Beam, not El Bean. Just so you know.”

Well that made a lot more sense considering all the shininess on his costume. A bean, even a magic bean, tended to be somewhat subdued. The wink suggested that she had not offended him, but she felt her fumble needed to be rectified.

“Sorry, Beam, got it.”

Not the rafter, not the Jim, but the glowing ray of light.

Since he had seemed more forgiving that the raging teen who had shouted her down for her mispronunciation of DeLorean, she decided to risk asking.

“You’ll have to forgive me, I’m new to the comic scene. What are you from, El Beam?”

Who knew, it might end up being a comic she liked as much as Judge, Jury and Executioner. She could do with some other reading material, and comics seemed the easiest to get back into if she was interrupted at work.

The library in the mansion was good, but it had one major drawback. Students. Verdy didn’t so much detest them when they were studying in corners or at tables, or surfing the internet on the banks of computers, not even when they formed a line that seemed to stretch forever backwards from the service counter. No. Verdy detested the students when they were in before her to borrow out the brand new comics.

Not only had they borrowed out the newest Judge, Jury and Executioner, but the others had had the nerve to reserve it. When the help desk lady looked at her through her multifaceted glasses with her multifaceted buggy eyes and told her there was a month long waiting list she gave up. In a month of waiting she could have read it already, and be on the waiting list for the next one. As it was she just thanked the woman for her help, borrowed her book on drawing cartoon people and left.

Despite Mr Holloway’s teachings, she found the cartoon drawing books easier to manage. Mostly because their ‘proportions’ page, and in fact every page, had a swimsuit as the bare minimum for their examples. There was something just disconcerting trying to study the shape of a body with anatomically correct drawings, mainly their genitals. She had tried sticking a sticky note over the drawing examples, to give them a little privacy but it still made her uncomfortable.

So the cartooning books were her non-homework and the comics were her guilty pleasure. She really felt like she connected with the characters, like they could be friends. Although, now it looked like there would be no guilty pleasure friends for a month. Disappointed, she headed to the living room where she plopped down on the couch to try and watch telly. She succeeded for a few minutes until she realised the student on the other end of the couch, a mere cushion and a half away from her, was reading the new JJ&E. Worse than that was the way he was reading it. Angled just enough that she could catch tantalising sections of border and the occasional dialogue box. Finally she could stand it no more, and she rose to leave. As she did so the boy stopped his reading long enough to smirk up at her. Little punk knew she wanted it.

Breathing deeply she decided to go to her room, and have a read through the guidebook she had picked up. She was sure there were anatomy mistakes all over the place (“ribs!” popped into head often) but she didn’t care. She plopped onto the bed and the screen of her computer lit up as the sudden movement jostled the mouse that was buried somewhere within the covers. Struck with sudden inspiration she searched for nearby comic stores, and in less than ten minutes was rugged up with a thick woollen beanie ready to head out to the nearest one in search of her guilty pleasure.

~~~

The trip into town was much faster when she could take a bus the whole way. Jack had opened one eye at her and thumped his tail on the floor when she spoke to him, but he showed no interest in going out into the brisk air only to be tied up outside. Besides, it was still light. Verdy didn’t need protecting on this trip.

She found the address she had scribbled down and slipped through the door into the little store. It was nice, and much warmer than outside. She stepped forward and began to browse.

They were all clean! Clean socks and jocks! It was too late to say that now, the moment had passed. Still she wished that had been part of her little share-fest.

He looked a little uncomfortable for a second and she hoped it wasn’t because of her nail. It wasn’t really that gross, but she was used to it by now. He indicated without saying how much worse it could have been and she had to concur. Some mutations were even more destructive to their owners than the people around them.

He complimented, or rather encouraged, her drawing and she surveyed it. The grapes were leaning a little to one side, like their part of the table was at a different height to the rest, but on the whole it was nice. In fact it was bedroom-pinboard-worthy. She decided to put it up as soon as she got back to her room.

“Hmm.”

Considering how long it had taken her to get the fruit down right, it was probably better not to start another object just now. Going over some of the basics of body structure could be good, as something to take away and think about until the next class.

“If we do some basic body stuff would probably be ok, then I’ll call it a night before my head can’t take in any more.”

“That makes a surprising amount of sense.”

It did, and it had taken a long time to get there. She found it was easier to explain a mutation shorthand first, then elaborate, and diving straight into portals whisking unnoticed items away and out one of her palms, which could be alternated with chosen objects should she put them in her other palm, that the portal was controllable but only to a degree, as were the objects… it was all a bit much for a simple description.

“It’s a bit weird but sometimes not being a visible mutant can make a lot of things go smoother.”

Like catching a cab, or eating at a buffet.

Oooh, they were doing show, as well as tell. The shadow pup-pet started out cool, as he didn’t need to move his hands, then became even cooler as it formed something that no amount of readjusting the flashlight could accomplish.

“That is indeed a mean shadow puppet. My turn.”

She spent a second inspecting the room, noting breakable vases, windows and the like and settled on using her eraser rather than one of the marbles in her pocket. She held up the rubber for him to see, then placed it flat on her left palm, closing her fingers shut tightly around it. Taking a second to choose an appropriate target she let loose on a dried splodge of paint on the floor.

The little eraser flung out of the portal in a blur, hitting dead on the centre of the paint splatter and ricocheting off a few desks before tumbling to a halt.

She too, was pretty awesome.