THE HEROES OF EXILE

Behold! We remember the glory of the former days. We remember when there were leaders for the people. We remember when heroes did brave deeds- Beowulf

I was a little kid the day the rules changed. News agencies began showing amateur footage in the human interest section at the end of broadcasts. The footage was a shaky, ambiguous capture, typical of hoaxes such as yeti strolling through the woods and lights moving in improbable patterns in the sky. The wobbling video showed nothing but a silhouette, so skeptics placed it alongside photos of lake monsters that turn out to be backlit chunks of sticks and clay. Only this silhouette wasn’t a log bobbing in a pool. It looked very much like a man, not falling from, but flying across a summer sky.

I was young and stupid enough to believe that it really was a flying man. The image excited, evoked my childish imagination. Smarter and older people used their education to disprove the aerodynamics of the human form. As usual, the children were right to dream. The flying man really flew.

Soon there were more extraordinary people. One city had a ghost who fought crime. Another city had a Greek hero who hunted monsters. We saw a tsunami of these types. They arrived from the future and arose from the past. They flew in from space and popped out of Victorian novels. People now found that mutations made them shoot lasers from their eyes and that chemotherapy turned them into rampaging green beasts. Wondrous women  flooded into the world to fight evil scientists and organized crime. The adults were a little anxious about no longer being the top of the food chain. The children, once again, knew better. The world had finally become what it was supposed to be. We had learned a new word that would forever change us: superhero.

  Ok. Bear with me. I need to set the scene.

The cold had frosted the city into silence. Granttown’s ghetto looked like a still life’s bad dream. It was rotten, dirty; shadows hinted of shapes retreating from light. Even crime seemed to be hibernating. But it was the ghetto, and a patient man need only wait for action.

I towered atop a ledge. 

I was draped in the inherent drama of the city light, shone from street lamps. The light cast my body as a relief raised out of the sullen sky, as if each muscle was stone cut and carved into place.

People would think I was more than human. My body was the architecture of heroic archetype. Skin and fabric wrapped muscle. I was a collage of costume and composure, a deadly, demonic stillness, built to scare bad guys, that superstitious and cowardly lot.

Demonic. Too dark. Gargoylish? No, demonic works.

My cape flapped, flag like, around me. My mask covered my head. It was ash-grey, with glowing white slits for eyes, two horns on the forehead and three upward curving spikes on each cheek. My chest was covered with an armor breastplate with abs like boulders and pecks like hubcaps. Steel spikes rimmed my belt.

Armed with only my bo staff- steel cased cedar- I was ready for anything.

Somewhere below, a woman screamed.

I tossed my staff over the edge. It began its journey to the ground. I would beat it there. I pulled from my belt a thin cord attached to a grappling hook. With a sharp fling, it was secure on the building across from me.  I swung down, let go and bounced between buildings and ledges with improbable agility.

Using my cape to glide me to the ground, I landed in a crouch. I held out my hand, catching my staff. 

I stared down the street at the evil presence who had caused the screams. He went by the name Nightmare Mime. Nightmare Mime was the inevitable product of an flooded industry. Every theme had been exploited. There was no concept that, at one point, had not been turned into a form of super-powered iconography. Every Celtic god had become a superhero. Every animal, real and mythical, had been appropriated into a villain. The modern costumed menace did the only thing they could do in the hopes of staying relevant: they juxtaposed. In this case, he couldn’t just be an evil mime. That’s been done. He had to find a spin. So this mime had the power to give life to bad dreams. 

Nightmare Mime brought his costume A Game. His makeup was a white base painted with black scars. He wore a bowler hat, a red tail-coat vest and a black turtle neck. Behind him were several brooding, flexing goons in mime theme. The Mutes. There were two women and three men. One woman stood at alert with a staff like mine.

“You!” I said. I had been working on my banter, but I was having an off night.

“So Mr. Night Watcher, we meet at last,” the Mime said. He had a voice like a rusty hinge. 

“This is my city, Nightmare Mime,” I replied.

“We’re not so different, you and I,” he said. This is a bad-guy cliché.

“What do you mean? Why do villains always say that?” I asked.

“I have a theory about that,” he said. “It presents a sort of crime mitigation, an attempt to ease the conscience. In identifying with the hero, the villain can reduce the sense of villainy by claiming that their motivations fulfill the same cluster of needs- for greatness, for purpose. Hero and villain are two halves of the same circle, a seamless loop. Our roles in this drama are defined, not on their own, but in relation to each other.”

“Huh?” I said. Even his goons had begun playing on their phones while he spoke.

“Or,” he said, “maybe banter is a dead art. Get him, kids.”

All the Mutes but the lady with the staff charged past him towards me. 

The goons were in an unruly form. There was no art, no clever V charge. They ran side-by-side towards me. I barely moved my wrist and the staff was spinning, one end making contact with one mime’s forehead and the other colliding with another’s stomach. Both these clowns went down. I pivoted in a circle, bringing momentum and force to my swing, taking a third down with a strike on the side of the head.

The last one produced a machete from behind his back. He wildly swung like a a tantruming child. I blocked the machete, brought the other end of the staff up and across his face. He went down. 

The only goon remaining was the woman with a staff. 

She had remained still until now, like a machine placed on standby. She was the dapperest of warriors, with her mime makeup, her white-collared button up teeshirt, her suspenders and white fedora; a tomboy who looked ready for a cage match at a clown-themed swing dance.

I took a breath, lay my staff across my shoulder and cracked my neck.

She stepped towards me with mechanical rhythm. He shoulders tightened, then relaxed. She breathed with the consistency of a slow piston- inhale, out, inhale, out. She paused. Her eyes darted, her lips moved as though counting steps.

We each stepped to our right, circling each other. She shifted her grip. She lunged. I moved my staff in front of me. Hers swung from behind, coming down overhead. I blocked. She dropped, stepping towards me, bending her forward knee. Her staff swung in a circle, trying to take out my feet. I jumped. She stepped back.

She was elegant. She lowered, stretching like a crane, pulling her staff so it was parallel with her outstretched leg. I could imagine another life where we were teammates. Or even secret lovers with a complicated and tragic backstory.

The battle mime was on the offensive. She pivoted in a circle, her staff aimed at my knee. I blocked again. Another attack, another block. Her weapon was a blur of side strikes, top strikes, with me barely keeping up. I began to sense this was intentionally predictable. She had a trump move coming. I had seen this before: establish a pattern so you convince your enemy they have pegged you. Then hit them with something unexpected. 

Another side strike, but before it made contact, she leaned back, pointed her staff at my face, and shot it forward like a pool cue. The staff thrust towards my face. I stepped to the side, spun and windmilled my weapon into her skull. She was out. 

I turned to Nightmare Mime who was watching this like it was a sport.

“It’s down to just us.” 

He still had that annoying smirk. His eyes darted down and he let out a sudden snicker.

“What?” I said.

He put his hand over his mouth and began laughing.

Many super villains have trademark evil laughs. But mimes, not so much. 

“What are you…”

He was now bending over, clutching his side.

“What the hell are you laughing at?” I demanded. 

He tried to be serious for a moment, then laughed more. 

Finally, he straightened up.

“You,” snicker, giggle, “Don’t you,” snort, “Don’t you think that, when you go out crimefighting, hah hah, you ought to wear pants?” 

I looked down. It was true. I had no pants. My fishing-pole legs stilted out from a pair of happy face emoji boxers.

The street was no longer empty. Crowds filled the sidewalk: men, woman and children, celebrities, lingerie models, girl friends who had dumped me. They pointed. They shook their heads. And they laughed.

Now I was naked. My scrawny body shook before the crowds. And standing beside me was my grey-haired father.

He patted me on the back. “Don’t worry, son” he said. “We’ve always had the bar set to disappointed.”

I woke, weary and screaming.

It was only my bedroom. The winter sun forced entry through my window. White, witless, artless walls glared hello. 

“Fuck,” I said. “I hate that dream.”

I wiped two fists of steam off my bathroom mirror. It was still only me staring back. The steam plastered over the rest of the glass. My head looked like it was impaled on a cloud. 

It was time for my daily affirmation.

“Gareth, today, you are only mostly terrible.”

I looked closer and found a new age line under my eye. I was one foot closer to 30 and it was starting to show. People tell me of the blessing of Asian skin: I will be fifty before I show my age. People are dumb.

“I take it back,” I said to me. “You’re all the way terrible.”

The following hours were eaten by that soulless machine called work. I work to trade misery-filled moments for exactly enough money to fall deeper into debt. I’m told that hardship builds character, that suffering builds strength. But when I tell my landlord that I can pay with strength and character, he says he would prefer cash. 

I worked in the kitchen of the Highest Peak, one of those trendy chain restaurants where skinny waitresses in black shirts wink for tips, where the meals are fodder for social media food shots, where the ambient mood captured by the low lighting is destroyed by gym freaks bellowing, “shots, shots, shots,” and where a jump from the roof would not be lethal enough to be worth the effort.

Every day after my shift, I went to the back of the kitchen and scrubbed my hands with Comet. It’s the only thing that rids me of the smell of onions and burnt oil. Above the sink is a yellow and water-stained poster. A stork is swallowing a frog. The frog reaches out from inside the stork’s mouth, its hands closed around the bird’s throat. There was a caption at the bottom that said, “Never give up.” Someone had sharpied under it, “Too late.” 

There’s a public bathroom in the subway entrance. Its sole occupant was homeless guy curled up under the sink. He cradled a bottle of rice wine. I went to the farthest stall. It was the only one with an unbroken lock. I hung my backpack from the hook. My secret headquarters.

I entered the stall a civilian. I came out as someone else. I imagine emerging into the night through machine-made fog, backlit by bright lights. Instead, I am pooped out of a subway bathroom on my way to the bus stop. Gareth the line cook was now Night Watcher the superhero. Ish.

I was in the early months of my new career. Corporate executives often start in the mailroom; police commissioners begin by walking a beat. Every madam was once an escort. I think that’s how that works.

I stepped off the bus and found myself staring at my dark reflection in the window of a store. A mannequin was looking back. It stood in the outline of my reflection, pasting its lifeless face over mine. 

I meant to model my costume on that of Night Hunter. He was Granttown’s superhero and my idol. He disappeared two years ago. I wanted my costume to honour him. 

But durable material is expensive and not easy to sew.  I’d spent most of my budget on my collapsible bo staff-aka, my fighty stick. What remained was… not what I’d envisioned, bought, mostly, at a basement sale in an army surplus store. A gray, military grade vest over a black jacket. Leather boots. Leather gloves. A face mask with one way plexiglass for eye covers. I painted black lines from the eyes of the mask and down my cheeks.  I had pictured war paint. It looked like tears. I was going for foreboding- a shadowy figure striking from the dark. Instead I looked like that guy who got kicked out of his pantomime troupe for being too sad.

“Let’s see what I can fuck up tonight,” I said to mannequin me. Another of my affirmations. 

I went nightly to Refuge Park. It was a park that filled two city blocks. The sidewalks were seamless, save the occasional crack made by use and extreme weather. These looked like healing scars. A Frankenstein garden of incompatible plants flanked the walkway, from dandelions to bonzais, that crushed together like concert crowds. They were sheltered by willows, oaks and palms that stretched arms over the pathway, overlapping from each side, forming a near-solid roof. 

The only light came from the lamps, each with unique designs as though made by different hands. Some were straight. Others spiraled. One had hieroglyphics etched onto the posts. Another looked like an eagle talon clutching a ball of glass.

Plaques lay at the base of each lamp, blurting statements like: “That darkness not have mastery over the night,” or, “Should this beacon fade, the end of Light is near,” and other meaningless lies someone was paid to write. 

I always found my contact in the same place- on the bench in Icon Circle, where the path opens up into a little outdoor lounging space. He never told me his name, so I only knew him as the Old Man. He sat here, while the world came to him.

Behind his bench was a massive oak that looked as aged as creation. Its trunk was thicker than a Volkswagen. Ridges like wrinkles and beaten bark told of stories of ancient days. I always see the Old Man like this: unlit pipe in one hand, a cane in the other and this ancient guardian at his back.

He was facing the Icons, a row of life-sized statues made of unnamed, probably fictional women and men, who, they say, guard the park. The park was weird like that. It was full of myth. The centre statue was a barefoot girl, a teen, with braided pigtails and a bandanna. She wore a tank-top made of ivy and a skirt made of banana leaves. The other Icons fit the same formula- young and beautiful, with clothes made from plants. 

I approached the man from the side. He was staring straight ahead at the statues when he spoke. “Cold night. Do vigilantes wear long underwear?”

“If I tell you,” I said, “I will be kicked out of the guild.”

I stood in front of him. “What quests have you got for me tonight? What evil chomps at the darkness for which only I’m equal? Let me guess: You’ve heard whispers that there’s a cat caught in a tree? An elderly lady needs help crossing the street? Oh, I know. Somewhere in the city is a child who can’t tie his shoelaces.” My breath formed clouds that caught the light.

“Worse, worse,” said the Old Man. I couldn’t see his breath. “A young man grows bitter because his life isn’t going the way he wants.”

“Let 'im,” I said. “Serves him right. You do good, you get burned. You seek greatness, you shovel shit.”

He put the pipe in his mouth for a couple of seconds and then took it out. “A man was going on a journey...”

“Nooo,” I said. “Not another parable!”

“...and he gave two beggars each a dollar saying...

“I'll also pay for the room.”

“He said,” the old man growled, “I'm leaving you to be the stewards of this money.”

“And then the straight-jacket went on.”

“The first beggar,” said the Old Man, “knowing the value of a dollar...”

“Sixty-five cents on the international market.”

“...invested it wisely and doubled his money.”

“And could finally afford that coffee.”

“The second beggar,” he said, showing no signs that he was hearing me, “knowing that a dollar does not go far...”

“Stole the money from the first guy and bought a bagel?”

“…threw it down a sewer.”

“And?” 

“What,” asked the old man. “No clever follow-up line?”

“How can I hope to outdo such a climax? You ought to write for infomercials.”

“Tell me,” he said,” Do you fight your enemies with that staff or do you assault them with your razor wit?”

“Neither,” I said. “I confuse them with anti-climactic, inapplicable stories.”

“And what do you get from fighting these deadly enemies?”

I sighed and my shoulders dropped unintentionally. “I thought justice was supposed to be its own reward.”

“It would seem that it isn't.” He pointed his pipe at me. “How is it that you serve justice and are left wanting?”

“Because... I can only beat up Gerald the Friendly Pimp so many times before this quest for justice loses its lustre.”

“Then what would give it back?”

I sighed. “A supervillian,” I said, louder than I had meant. “A bad-guy with an eccentric costume and a wholly implausible gimmick.”

I turned and looked at the Icons, the guardians of stone. “I grew up listening to newscasts and watching security footage of epic battles on the city streets. One time Night Hunter was caught on camera fighting a monster created by the Seventh Circle.  There were explosions, overturned cabs, sword fights, people falling from buildings, police chases. Everything that gets a superhero on the news. What have my exploits been? Last night I stopped a fight between two drunk bums. One of them threw a punch at me, missed, fell over and barfed on my boot. How do you bring closure to such an adventure? 'My work here is done. No, don’t thank me. The good I do is thanks enough’.”

I stopped talking and turned back towards the Old Man. He was sucking on his pipe again, his shadowy, half-closed eyes fixed on me. After a long, and supposedly meaningful silence, he took the pipe from his mouth and said, “A man was going on a journey...”

I threw up my hands. “And just what am I supposed to get from this story?”

“Hush. The manager saw that this first beggar was wise and shrewd.”

“And hung like a horse.”

“Did you want to tell this story?”

“No, I lack your finesse.”

“I suppose I'll skip straight to the moral.”

“Yeah, it's going on a bit.”

“Yes, I'm keeping you from your busy night of sucking wind.”

One point for the geriatric division, I thought.

“The point is,” said the Old Man, “how are you with the little things?”

“That’s something only the future Mrs. Night Watcher can answer.”

“I mean, you idiot, the little responsibilities. How do you expect to handle menacing, super-powered enemies if you don’t care about dispensing justice on more trivial levels? Why did you become a vigilante if you don’t care about all of society’s ills?”

The Old Man annoyed me. I came here for tips on where to find Adventure. Instead, I get a lecture on social maintenance. It felt like time to go.

“I guess this means you've got no tips for me.”

The old man turned and looked away. “Nothing to interest you. Cats in trees and untied shoelaces. Nothing more.”

“Well,” I said “thanks for your time. Guess I'll go home and sleep.”

“If you ask me,” the Old Man said, “you've been asleep for a long time.”

I wasn’t there for this part. I know it happened a few minutes after I left.

The Old Man seemed to be staring at nothing, but was actually fixated on the statues, as though trying to solve a puzzle. 

A shadow fell across the him- a figure outlined against a park light. The Old Man had not heard the approach and did not look up to see who it was. He knew who it was.

The shadow spoke. “Are you sure that’s him?” 

The Old Man bit down on his pipe then took it from his mouth.

“Yes,” he said.

The fastest route home was through Crater, Granttown’s worst ghetto, a place where homelessness usually signaled an upward climb on the social ladder. I walked over sidewalks of stratified dirt, gum, chewing tobacco and frozen bodily fluids. 

I used to think that this was to be my proving ground. It's the perfect place for the aspiring new super hero. It was populated by murderers, muggers, aggressive Christian missionaries and gangs.

 Blood Wraith started in this sort of place. He would prowl the rooftops of Gothos, saving old ladies from vicious, gold-toothed thugs who had names like Sid and Spike. A few months of this, and then the Heckler appeared, kidnapping the mayor's daughter and planting a bomb in the basement of city hall. Blood Wraith beat the Heckler, saved the girl and defused the bomb. It was a huge step forward in his career.

Similar opportunities were not forthcoming for me. The Crater looked especially grungy today. A grey crust crept up the sidewalks as if to say, “You are right to feel down.”

Or, maybe it was the same it had always been, and the pallor thrown across its streets was coming from me. Was I becoming depressed? I couldn’t escape thoughts of the Old Man’s smug moralizing. I was sure he knew of some criminal venture that I could fight. He seemed to know everything that went on in this city. Instead, he just wanted to help me be a better person. Ugh.

I was also annoyed at the little mystery  he tossed at me as I was departing:

“Oh, Night Weiner,” he had said.

“What,” I snapped.

“There is one thing- probably nothing important- that you might want to pay attention to.”

“What?”

“Keep your ears open for any mention of the Beowulf Prophecy.”

“What's that?”

“I don't know,” he said, not looking at me. “Just a term I hear every once in a while. If you could find out what you can about it, it would be helpful for me.”

Of course, now I was curious, but do you think he'd say anything more? Nope. He went quiet, seeming to fade, almost to sink, into that bench on which he sits.

I walked past a three-story building that sagged in the center as though in permanent exhale. It's four windows on the upper two floors arched inwards like down-sloped eyebrows.

Various assortments of people milled around. One old man in a torn burlap trenchcoat puked into the gutter. An old lady was sprawled across the top of several newspaper boxes- an impressive feat, since the boxes were all different heights, like a jagged city sky line.

Most people were quiet, solitary, sad, separate islands. But one couple made a lot of noise.

“Where's the rest of it,” a man shouted. He pressed the shoulders of a woman against the drooping building. He wore a long green army jacket over tattered camouflage jeans. His face was covered in patches of uneven scruff. 

“That's all there is,” the lady shouted. She was blonde, wore a white jean jacket, a green tank top and a short, tight skirt. She was not dressed for the weather. She was thinner than is healthy and had scabs on her face. Her eyes were dark, sunken.

“Jani, You said you made eighty,” he yelled. , “Why are you giving me thirty?”

“Darrel,” she said, almost frantic, “you know that I had to pay Nick.”

“Damn it, Jani,” he growled, slamming her back against the wall, “you need to get it through your mind that you don't make decisions without me.”

“Hey,” I said, stepping up to Darrel. “Be nice to her.” I like to think that my voice was calm and authoritative and totally didn’t crack.

He turned towards me, his eyebrows narrowed. He bared his teeth. His left canine was missing and his breath smelled of coffee and fried fish.

We went into a brief staring match that he topped off with “Who the fuck asked you?”

“Hey,” I said, “if you're going to have your conversation in public, you're inviting public comment.”

I suppose he was unconvinced because he drew his shoulder back slightly and his fist shot towards me.

I blocked with my staff. His knuckles collided with it.

He screamed, shaking his hand. I flicked my staff into his knee and then drove it into his forehead. He grabbed his head, swayed and then fell on his ass.

I nodded to the girl, choosing to make my grand exit rather than bask in her gratitude. It was best, I told myself, to leave while I was hot, while they were clamoring for more. Besides, I didn't want her falling in love with me.

I turned and walked away, thinking that maybe the Old Man was right. “How are you with the little things?” he had asked. Maybe that's what this superhero stuff was about. 

My walk was slow. I felt my spine straighten as I pondered this superhero thing I was doing. 

I stopped, lost in my own reflections.

I thought of Mr. Bend, leader of the Messengers. A reporter asked him what was the most important thing he had ever done in his career.  Rather than citing the times he saved the world or had been honoured in parades, he listed two simple things. The first: marrying his wife Angela, also known as Sight Unseen. The other was the time he brought a man, paralyzed from the waist down, to the Courts of Kindness to be healed. Why those two moments? Angela, he said, taught him to be a better person. Helping the paralyzed man reminded  him that he liked the man he was becoming.

Perhaps superheroes weren't created by exposure to radiation but by a swelling of the heart. Someone has to be looking out for the common people. Someone has to save the world in little ways. Today I didn’t stop an alien invasion, but I had saved a woman from abuse. Maybe that could be enough.

Such was my line of thinking when a foot sledge hammered my crotch from behind. I doubled over, clutching myself as pain spread out from my groin towards my knees and swallowing my entire body. Even my skull throbbed. I gasped, trying feebly to suck in enough air to scream, but I could only mew like an injured cat.

I looked behind me. Jani was standing over me, her fists up, her legs spread slightly like a boxer's. “You leave my man alone,” she yelled. She went to help up her boyfriend.

“Is my little man okay,” she cooed.

“No,” he whined, almost crying. “He rattled my head.”

“Oooh.” She put his arm over her shoulder. “We'll go home and I'll get you some aspirin and make you some cocoa. Would you like that?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I want cocoa.”

They walked away, Darrel with an exaggerated limp, Jani suddenly upright and tall. 

The pain was starting to subside. I sat on the curb with my feet in the gutter.

“Common people suck,” I said.

That's when I met Druid.