Random stories

The truth is it didn’t bother me. I know it sounds cold but I married and had a family as a kind of disguise for my regular identity. The better you blend in, you know? So I don’t blame her — her life was empty because I was a shell.

The fact it was Hotshot screwing her? Well, might as well be someone who I know’s decent — at least decent in the ways that matter. Like I say, I loved my wife but not in the way she needed. So how can I be mad at either of them? Like, what gives me the right?

Nothing, that’s what.

I moved out. That’s part of the costume too. You got to act like you would have done if you really had loved your wife with every particle of your being. So I moved out and people presumed I was hurt and didn’t blame me. I’m a good actor. You got to be to keep two identities.

The new place was a cheap one bed apartment a way outside of town. It sat in a worse area than I was used to, which maybe I could have done something about — helped clean it up, you know? But I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. I didn’t want cops and amateur sleuths drawing rings and arrows on maps of all my latest appearances and going Aha!

There’s something to be said for living alone, not being badgered into quitting drinking for the night or getting to bed. Hell, now I drink champagne for breakfast some days. It gives you a buzz, makes you feel like a king.

Hotshot left me. Would you believe that? Coincidence of course, but after the wife thing having him leave me too? It’s a strange world, that’s for sure. Hotshot said I wasn’t reliable anymore. That I was drinking on the job, getting to fights late. That I was going to get us both killed one of these days.

“You got to change things up or I’m out of here,” he said.

He didn’t know he‘d been fucking my wife. I knew, but he didn’t. He didn’t know my real identity, you see. So I had every right to be mad as hell with him and yet I wasn’t. See, I knew he was still seeing her and I knew — and maybe this hurt a little — that they were both kinda happy. I even heard a rumour she knew his real identity. That he’d revealed it to her. What kind of fool would do that? In the many years we were together it barely crossed my mind. Jesus, and he has the balls to say what I’m doing is dangerous.

”Well then, good luck,” I said. And that was that. No more wife, no more sidekick.

But that was all right, it was time for a change.

Months went by and to tell the truth I got pretty used to the new routine. I relaxed more than I used to. Maybe I fought a villain once a week or once a month, instead of once a day like when I’d been married. Truth is, it didn’t make a difference how often I fought them. There were always more heroes and there were always more villains. People lived and people died regardless of my actions.

​

There were two villains I fought a long time ago. I’ve been dreaming about them a lot recently. They were a duo, a man and woman who both floated inside thick undulating bubbles. One dark bubble, one light — chaos and order. And a buzz of static always arced between the two bubbles. They shared their powers and minds 24/7. One mind. Together, they must have thought, they were stronger than separately, so they’d decided many years before to team up.

Anyway, they’d attacked a bio-lab and it just so happened me and Hotshot had been in town already, not too far away, defeating a different villain. We got to the bio-lab before Chaos and Order were done.

One thing led to another. We fought.

I never tried to harm the people I fought. Not truly. I wanted justice and that was it.

But me and that guy in the bubble collapsed into a building as I leapt up at him. The whole thing shattered around us, on top of us, brick and smoke and blood.

I was okay because, well, that’s how I am.

He suffered brain damage and spent the rest of his life in a bed. There was never a bubble around him again.

Thing is, he didn’t die. Spent years in that bed so far but didn’t die. It was the woman, his partner who died.

She’d visited him once in the hospital when she’d gotten parole and then she died later that night back in her own home where they’d once lived together. Maybe it was an overdose or something. But I don’t know.

If I was pushed, here’s what I think happened: when she knew they’d never share a mind again she realized the best part of her was already dead, and then her heart, that night, simply caught up.

I dream about them a lot. About that severed connection. And sometimes I’ll wake in the night to still-darkness, my heart pounding, sweat pouring down me. For a while as I sit up in bed catching my breath, I think I understand how she felt right after she visited him in the hospital.

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Submitted by Rupertfroggington on Wed, Mar 23, 2022 to /r/WritingPrompts/

The prompt

You are a superhero who keeps his identities private, even your sidekick doesn't know your normal identity. Today you come home to find your wife in bed with your sidekick.