#

“Are you gonna answer it?” Jake asks. Everyone had gone silent at the noise at the door.

“Did anyone call for a pizza?” The question came from Mitch.

Again, silence.

“Dadgummit,” Mitch says, “I’ll get it. My blue rocks’ll be my mask today.”

No one else moved. Several looked around. “Should we get ready? Ready to fight or something?” Jake asks.

“I’m always ready for a fight,” Miguel says, “but if there’s a cape at the door I think the fight’s gonna be a little one-sided, don’t you?”

“Well, I’m always ready,” Jane whispers, patting the pistols that have been in her holsters since they all got up this morning.

“Let’s try something else, though,” says Russ, pulling out a set of bifocals.

Mitch got to the door, sweating already. Glad I look forty instead of seventy, he thought to himself.

Breathing deep, he opend the door, and-

It was a boy scout.

“Hi mister! Would you like to buy an apple?”

Mitch smiled, and dug into his pocket for some coins. He took the apple, nodded to the young fellow who couldn’t be more than ten, and then to his father who was standing on the sidewalk. By the time he got back to the living room, everyone was wearing old-man glasses and holding playing cards around the dining room table. A pile of peanuts was mounded in the center of the table, and smaller piles in front of Jake, Jane, Miguel and Russ.

“Apple day,” Mitch says. “False alarm.”

“No alarm is a false alarm,” Jake said. “That’s one of the first things we learned if we were doing a steal or a long-con. Always be ready to blow your place or abort the job if anything goes wrong.”

“Leavin’ here won’t be much of an option,” Jane said. “I’ve got the rent paid up for another month.”

“Is there a paper trail?” Russ asked, his voice suspicious. “Anything that a cop or a cape could find us with?”

“Nope. I never saw the landlord. Just mailed him a cashier’s check, an’ the place is ours for a good four weeks. You say there were TV cameras when you chewed out that colored Barbie doll this mornin’?”

“Yeah, but they were all lookin’ at her. And I was too, with that outfit she was wearing an’ all. And I took the blue rocks as I walked away- no one saw an old man walkin’ from the place, only me, an anonymous, forty-something guy with graying temples and no bursitis. Anyone else a risk?”

“I think we’re all a risk right now. Look at us-” It was Miguel this time. “We pulled off a good job, we’re celebrating, and some random doorbell ring makes us all paranoid, suspicious, ready to pounce on each other, getting defensive. We need to keep this little poker table ready just in case the real thing does come knocking.”

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

“Yeah, true. A knock at the door isn’t something for us to worry about. If they were capes, they wouldn’t knock. They’d just blast their way in.”

Jake’s comment made everyone get quiet.

“Who’s for another drink?” Jake said.

Still, quiet.

“Well, folks," Jake said, "if our number’s up, no blue rocks an’ no gadgets are gonna change that. If a cape busts in, we’re just a buncha old friends playing poker, drinking booze, watching old movies and maybe playing a stupid party game with comic books. Now, me- even though I’m only forty again, I’m gettin’ kind’ve tired. I’m turning in. G’night, everybody.”

Jake was just the first; everybody followed in the next few minutes. Jane looked for a few seconds at Mitch, but he missed it. Mitch then looked at her, and he thought she missed it. But in the end, it didn't matter; they both slept alone.

Miguel grabbed the shower. Russ stayed up for a little while, deciding to enjoy the silence, reading first the local paper, and then some of the funnybooks that Mitch brought with him.

Unsurprisingly, most of them have Snowman making an appearance. Mitch only squared off against the Streak once or twice that Russ knew of, and that was after the crew broke up. Still, in the comics Snowman went up against The Streak again and again, ending up in jail again and again. In real life Mitch escaped both times. He thought fast for a kid who was then barely out of his teens; he knew he was in a territory that Streak patrolled, so he blasted the ground around him, turning just about every surface nearby into a skating rink. When the speedster showed up . . . slip, bang. Streak ended up in the hospital with a major concussion, slipping on the ice and hitting a brick wall at 90 mph; going fast didn’t guarantee you were invulnerable, and Streak was out of action for the better part of a month, his secret ID blown open to the world. Now his kid seemed to have taken up the mantle - too many of them doing that these days, it seemed. But at least the kid wore a helmet.

The whole thing set Russ thinking: had they really planned well for what could happen if a cape like Primus showed up? Gladiatrix probably wouldn’t be talked down a second time. Something to talk to Jane about in the morning during the next planning session.

#

Roger McFinty slowly came out of the haze. He’d been home in bed when he’d had a dream about getting stung by a wasp as a child on a picnic with his mom and dad before they’d gotten divorced. The dream had shifted to his bedroom. He was alone, his wife on one of now fairly consistent tirades of leaving him and going to visit her annoying family for a week or so. He knew she’d be back, of course. If there was one thing her family respected it was money, and since his business had taken off he’d had plenty of . . .

And he’d fallen asleep again.

Though he felt awake, part of him realized he must have been still dreaming. He’d 'awoken' at his office, in the back room of his main store. His head had been on his desk, and he was in an uncomfortable position, as if he’d just been sprawled into place on his chair and had sat there for the last hour. His leg felt cramped and asleep, and-

“Roger McFinty,”

The voice that had spoke his name was slow, and sounded like its owner was speaking into a metal fan spinning in a garbage can. Roger looked up through the haze he felt and realized he must still be dreaming; he never worked late at the office anymore, not since he had enough money to pay a manager. This and sitting across from him was . . .

“Dark? The Dark?” he mumbled, the blood suddenly charging through his head and clearing the cobwebs as the adrenaline kicked in.

“You are not dreaming, Roger McFinty. This is very real. I’m in an unpleasant mood already, having had to drag your very heavy body from your house to my vehicle, and then from my vehicle out here into your office. I want information, McFinty. Information about an old man who purchased a wingsuit from your company....”

“What? No, you don’t understand- this is great!” McFinty said, jumping up from his seat.

#

...TO BE CONTINUED.....