Chiral Mad 3 Read online

  He gets up first, and I watch him walk out the door, gray outfit blending into the endless sidewalks before him.

  I don’t need you. You need me.

  As soon as he’s gone, the voices take over again.

  “Maybe you should let your sidekick take over.”

  “You’re growing old and tired.”

  “Worthless.”

  And suddenly, as I squeeze my palms into the sides of my head, I realize the last thing I want to do is be alone in my apartment.

  Ryvie’s shift is over. The new bargirl—platinum blond and short ruffly skirts—drifts over and pours me a shot of tequila, which I turn around and around in my fingers.

  Ryvie slides beside me and puts her hand on my arm. The warmth of her skin presses through my shirt. “I follow your comic, you know,” she says close to my ear.

  I smile gently. She thinks it’s so easy. That’s what they all think.

  “Still upset about the Surgeon? There’ll be other chances.” Ryvie flips her hair back, her fingers tangling in waves of black silk. “Besides, if you end it now, you won’t have a story anymore. What are you going to do with your life then?” Her grin takes on a mischievous quirk, and she leans in closer. “You need your story to keep going, Red. Or you’ll just fade. People will forget you. Your writer will lose interest. And you’ll stop existing.”

  I twist around and clap my hand over her mouth, cutting her words off. The feeling’s there again, as if there are a hundred eyes watching me from all around. She’s touched on the taboo.

  The one no one talks about.

  I let go of her, more forcefully than I should.

  “Don’t,” I tell her.

  It’s something I don’t want to think about, something I’ve tried so hard to block out. But now that she’s mentioned it, I can’t stop thinking about it.

  Ryvie pouts, her soft red lips pressing together. “But why? The story’s the most important thing of all, isn’t it?”

  I draw my hand across my eyes. “No. Saving people is.”

  Not that it matters to her.

  Not that it matters to anyone but me.

  She perks up again. “You know, I’m a huge fan of Issue 8. The one where you hypnotize the Surgeon and push him in a shark tank. You should do something like that again.”

  A good story, that’s all they want. No justice, no lives saved.

  “Those days are over.”

  I’m talking about justice, but of course she misunderstands.

  “They’re never over.” She pats my arm. “Not if you keep the story interesting enough that people will keep buying. It’s not over, Red.”

  And maybe because she’s the only one who doesn’t see the wrong in me—even if she’s wrong—I end up taking her home.

  We kiss in the cold embrace of my dark apartment. Her hand trails down my chest, slipping through the buttons of my shirt. I open my eyes, my lashes brushing against her cheek. The cold, white walls of my room loom behind her head.

  “Red, make the story shine again,” she whispers in my ear. “You have what it takes to make every kid in New York beg for a pair of red Converse at Christmas. You just have to raise the thrill factor, and they’ll love you.”

  And that’s when I realize what she’s doing.

  Her hands move down to my belt, and I push her away.

  Both of us are breathing heavily, staring at each other in the dark.

  “Red? What’s wrong?” Those wide, childish eyes blink at me under the moonlight.

  I know why she’s here—why she’s saying those things to me. It’s the same reason I was delivered the last page of my own comic. And it has nothing to do with the Surgeon.

  I walk over to the wall, plant my hands against the blanched plaster.

  “Get out.”

  I don’t turn around. My heart pounds heavily in the back of my skull. The heat is still in my body, lingering in the places where her hands pressed against my skin.

  “Red?” she tries again, more quietly.

  “I said get out.”

  My shoulders heave with each breath as I listen for the jangle of gold bracelets getting softer in the shadows, the gentle thud of the door behind six-inch stilettoes. Eventually, I get up from the bed and sink to the ground, my back against the door.

  I pull the crumpled wad of paper from my pocket, unfold it.

  The last panel is still there, featuring me towering over the Surgeon, red Converse hovering over the edge of the 103rd story.

  Below it, the young woman with dark hair smiles up from her photograph.

  “You,” I whisper.

  And just when the pieces begin to fall in place, the door bursts open behind me, knocking the page from my hands. I whip around in time to watch the Surgeon pull on his gloves, before an invisible bat smashes into the side of my head.

  I wake up alone in the still coldness of my room.

  The fan spins on the ceiling, creaking under the weight of its own blades. A faint tinkle carries on the breeze—wind chimes and the grate of a garbage disposal truck.

  The floor is strewn with books. Open books flat on their faces that have been pulled from my shelves and shredded.

  A figure in blue scrubs stands on top of my dresser, tying a noose to the ceiling.

  The Surgeon.

  His cheeks are pulled into a smile even though I can’t see his mouth under the medical mask. “I’ve got you, Red.”

  I try to reach for the knife on my belt, but my hands are tied behind my back. “What do you want?” I can’t make sense of all the torn-up books on my floor.

  “Does that really matter?” the Surgeon leers at me.

  I know what’s coming next.

  I dodge an attack from an invisible weapon and roll backwards. There’s a knife under the pillow of my bed, which I try to retrieve despite my bound hands.

  He’s found that one too.

  “Why do you even try?”

  “You can’t win.”

  I momentarily lose track of my surroundings, and the blunt edge of a bat smashes into my chest. I stumble back, stars of pain blistering deep inside my body. My body goes numb, and before I can recover, another blow slams me down into the ground.

  I heave myself onto my elbows, but the pain is too great. My body is heavier than I remember it was, sinking with the weight of my crushed ribs.

  “Why didn’t you kill me at Joey’s?” I breathe. “You could’ve finished it there, and this fight would’ve been over.”

  The Surgeon kicks one of the books on the ground. Its jacket flops weakly. A huge chunk of text has been torn out from its end. It’s a wasted ghost of a thing.

  “I could’ve killed you many times,” he tells me.

  He grabs me under the arms and drags me on top of the dresser, where he loops the noose around my neck. It’s so high that I’m barely standing on the tips of my toes. My eyes water from the effort of breathing without the ends of my ribs digging into my lungs, for once, I’m glad I’m wearing a domino mask. While I fight to keep my balance, the Surgeon steps back to admire his work.

  I scan over all the tattered books, trying to figure out why the Hell the Surgeon threw them off the shelves. “You going to torture me to death?” I ask him through gritted teeth. My chest feels as if it’s about to rip open. “You know psychic surgery won’t work on me. It’s not pain that makes me scream.”

  “I don’t want to kill you.”

  I struggle to see past the dresser, but I realize what he’s done to the books. He’s torn out all the endings.

  I don’t know if I want to laugh.

  The Surgeon. Scared of the ending of stories.

  Stories aren’t real.

  I’m struggling to stay on my tip-toes, but I can still catch the titles of a few books by the Surgeon’s feet.

  War and Peace.

  Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.

  Red Runner vs. The Surgeon, Issue 17.

  “Not even your own comic?” I ask him. “You
don’t die at the end of that one, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

  The Surgeon glances at me. There’s something different about the taunting set of his eyes this time. Something I can’t reconcile with the twisted doctor who maimed the bodies of small children and sank them to the bottom of the Hudson in pieces.

  I wonder if it’s fear.

  Then he kicks the chair out from under me.

  The noose zips to its limit, snapping my windpipe shut.

  My scream is choked off by a blunt blow that yanks my head up from my shoulders. I struggle to keep all the muscles in my neck tight. Every inch of my body burns with perspiration.

  The Surgeon leans into me.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” he asks. His blue eyes are deeper than I remember, reflecting my twisted, broken figure back at me. “They say you’re the only one in the world who can kill me. You used to be my equal, and you came so close to it.” He bends down and picks up one of the books. Red Runner vs. The Surgeon, Issue 8. “Remember what happens at the end?”

  The muscles in my neck are sore, where the rope burns. A muffled gurgle comes up from my throat. I can’t hold this up much longer.

  But I remember what happens at the end of Issue 8.

  I’ve pushed him into a shark tank at the New York Aquarium in the dead of night. He’s pounding against the glass with his fists as a great white slithers out of the murky darkness, and reflected in his eyes are the watery shadows of my red Converse—shoelaces untied.

  The Surgeon throws the comic away from him. “It’s changing now. I’m stronger than you. Your writer is losing faith in you. Every time we fight, I can feel it. You’re weak, fading. Nothing like you used to be.” He grabs my shoulders, shakes me against the stranglehold of the noose. For a second, there’s relief. “You don’t see it, do you? I didn’t bring you back here to kill you. I saved your life.”

  He shoves me away.

  I swing on the rope, choking against the bloated mass of my tongue. I can’t hold my body up with my broken ribs. The Surgeon watches with his hands behind his back.

  “I’ve been saving your life for years. Playing with you and then letting you go. What are we, Red? Just fictional constructs within a story. People love you and hate me, and that’s what keeps us alive. Red Runner vs. The Surgeon. We’re supposed to fight each other—that’s why we exist.”

  He looks into my eyes one more time. The edges of my vision are starting to go out. I can feel my tongue swelling out of my mouth, a gross gag that presses into my teeth.

  “It’s not the ending I’m afraid of,” the Surgeon tells me. “It’s ending.”

  And he slashes through the ropes.

  I crash through the dresser onto the floor below amid broken slabs of wood and bits of rope.

  The drapes flutter in the window where the Surgeon has leapt, the same way he’s gotten away from me in five of our comics—barely slipped away from the tips of justice’s fingers.

  But I know now.

  There is one way to defeat him.

  Only one way.

  I make one last phone call to Niall. I don’t tell him much, just to meet me at the corner of 47th and Broadway.

  While I wait for him, I dig the crumpled last page of Issue 12 out of my pocket. I’d found it smoothened out on my kitchen table, held down by a bottle of aspirin. I know the Surgeon read it while I was out—that he knows who it’s from.

  Slowly, I trace my nail through the photograph of the young woman.

  “I know why she created you, Ryvie.” The woman’s smiling, a mischievous and knowing smile that makes me believe she’s standing right behind me when she isn’t. “She was using you. To get to me. She can feel that I’m slipping out of her control. I’m becoming my own character independent of what she wants, and it’s not flashy enough for her taste. Shark tanks, hypnosis, bladed yo-yo’s—that’s what readers want, even if it’s a stupid way to fight someone.”

  I know now that it’s her voice that won’t leave me alone, her motivations that won’t let me destroy the Surgeon. It’s her thoughts and her desires, in conflict with my own, that have turned me into a madman.

  “Well, fuck your readers.”

  I crush the page as tightly as I can in my fist—so tight it makes my ribs throb, when the door of a cab slams by the sidewalk.

  Niall clambers out. I notice he’s added a bright red belt to his usual gray costume. “Red, you’ll never guess what happened! I met a villain today, in Chinatown …”

  He trails off when he sees the ginger way I’m holding my torso up, the crumpled note in my hand.

  “Niall, I can hear her.” I unravel the page just enough to show him her picture.

  Niall’s jaw drops slightly. I’ve never broken the taboo in front of him. Never.

  “What? Are you sure?” He takes a step back. “She can’t speak to you through the page. There’s a wall between you.”

  “No, Niall. It’s all for the money.” I exhale slowly. I can’t fight the deep-rooted betrayal that sinks through my body like a stone. I’ve been taken advantage of. We all have. “We pride ourselves in saving lives because we care about justice, Niall, but do you know why we exist? It’s all for the money. I’ll never kill the Surgeon—not while she’s pulling the strings.”

  I know now. There’s only one way to defeat her too.

  The same way I can defeat the Surgeon.

  I squeeze Niall’s shoulder like I always do, and a bitter nostalgic ache flows through me. I’ve raised him into what he is, someone he can be proud of. I can tell him to turn back, to throw it all away because it’s a lie—but I know he won’t listen.

  I wouldn’t have.

  So instead, I let him go.

  “Red, I’ll see you tonight, right?” Niall’s still breathless. “At the Manhattan Superhero Convention? I’m giving a talk about side-kicking, and you have to be there so I can introduce you.”

  I smile and let go of his shoulder. “Of course. You’re a great guy, Niall.”

  He doesn’t know it, but that’s good-bye.

  After all, we’re heroes. We exist to save the day and have it taken away from us. Over and over again.

  A good story.

  I drag my sneakers through a soiled mulch of dead leaves and shredded candy wrappers. One half of a maple leaf gets caught in the wind, turns over once, and sticks to the hem of my jeans. How lonely it is, to walk an empty road through the silence. At the end of the street, I reach up and pull the domino mask from my face.

  The mask lies across both my hands, an old friend who stood by my side through my broken fears, my petty triumphs.

  I’ve worn this disguise for ten years. But now I know that it’s all a lie. That’s what a domino mask is, isn’t it? Just a blindfold that lets in a little more light than it should. I lift the lid of the nearest dumpster and drop it in.

  I look down at my shoes—at the fashionably scuffed red canvas and muddy soles. She created this costume for me—made it into who I am. So why, when it’s finally my turn to turn it all back in her face, do I find that I can’t let it go?

  I stuff the bullets into the magazine of my revolver and click it into place.

  Slowly, I turn to face the barbed wire dividing the alley from the rest of the world. The braided staples grate my vision, as if I’m looking out at the world through a cage.

  There’s only one way to beat them both.

  “It’s my turn to tell the story.”

  I close my mouth over the gun and squeeze the trigger.

  WELCOME HOME, DARLING

  STEPHANIE M. WYTOVICH

  It was cold and it was white

  and the room looked as if it were dressed in clouds,

  in cumulus outfits that made me think of hospitals and teeth,

  that made my spit taste like antiseptic,

  like wet gauze and expired medicine,

  and yet the floors, covered in alabaster crumbs, were sharp,

  their voices wooden stakes that sc
reamed against the white,

  against the clouds

  and I was not happy,

  not pleased that mother made me come here,

  here in this asylum-crusted room

  with all the white, with all the clouds,

  because they were not me

  at least not then,

  for then,

  I was a storm, a rainy-day child who preferred black to white

  darkness to sun,

  and that room,

  that porcelain cell,

  that spacious square of bone

  was not a place of happiness;

  it was a prison and

  I was trapped.

  THE DEAD COLLECTION

  MERCEDES M. YARDLEY

  ANIKA WISHED that she knew what it was like to be lonely.

  Her best friend killed herself at seventeen. Belky was hesitant about taking her driver’s test, about saying hi to the new boy in school, but she was absolutely fearless when it came to cutting her wrists. Not a single hesitation mark. She appeared, faintly transparent and apologetic, and followed Anika around from then on. Each first kiss, each tearful breakup, each agonizing job interview … Belky was there. She was also there when Anika was raped in the back room of the pizza place where she worked. Belky did, out of respect, turn her face to the wall, her wrists weeping in a way that she could not. Anika was grateful for this little comfort.

  After Belky, it was D, who was killed on his motorcycle. He stood silently behind Belky, his helmet bashed in, his eyes as dark and beautiful as they had been in life. Anika stepped onto the subway, holding onto the rail, watching Belky and D as they bobbled and swayed with the movement. They watched back.