Story 1: of Villains and Politics

Selina had to go to the grocery store. She hated going, but couldn’t exactly hire someone to do it for her with imaginary money (although she imagined it would be nice), so she planned some time for it on Saturday morning in between studying for her chemistry class and homework for her math class. She made a grocery list, like any good college student would, then made herself go to the grocery store. The last time she went grocery shopping, which was a good three weeks before, she had forgotten her wallet and had to drive back home, leaving her cart full of groceries at the check-out. She barely had time to go grocery shopping itself, much less make an extra trip home to get her wallet, and the whole experience had been even more hateful than usual. She hated everything about it, the lights, the piped in music, the people racing around all panicked to get there food and get wherever they were going. This Saturday was no exception. It was beautiful outside, and she hated spending her only hour of spare time in an artificially-lit warehouse fighting her way down the aisles. She bought extra everything, hoping it would last longer than usual. Afterwards, she lingered by her car and enjoying an extra moment of the sun before putting the last bag in. She saw some kids playing in a park across the street, and envy rose up inside her. She shook her head and looked away, back towards the grocery store. Something strange was going on at the grocery store, however. The roof looked like it was being lifted up in the front, right off the building. She moved her gaze up to the sky for an answer, and saw only clear blue. There wasn’t even much of a breeze. Well, this is interesting, she thought. She looked back at her car, which was the same color as usual, and then over at the kids in the park. They were looking at the grocery store now too, one of them was shading his eyes with one had and pointing with the other. She heard someone else in the parking lot scream, and now she could hear the sound of metal crunching as the roof began curling back like the top of a can of sardines. Screams and shouts from inside the grocery store could now be heard, and a few people in the parking lot were shouting as well. A car crashed into the front of the grocery store, the distracted driver most likely not noticing where he was going. The front end hit a sturdy part of the front side and the damage looked minimal, but the panicked driver jumped out of his car and began running backwards, trying to get a better look or trying to get away.

Selina hadn’t seen anything that strange in quite a while, and the sight glued her to the ground as she tried to take it all in. It still wasn’t clear what was causing the roof of this grocery store to peel back. It didn’t look like the store was built to do something like that, since pieces of it were breaking off and falling into the building. The break looked smooth, like it was cut with a saw or something. Selina shaded her eyes and squinted up at the freshly cut line, and noticed that the front center of the roof seemed to be leading the rest of the roof, and the corners were lagging behind or breaking off. From the center of the roof she thought she could see a string, no it must be a wire, and attached to a string was what looked like a man dressed in blue, almost the same color as the sky. He looked like he was standing in the middle of the sky, hauling back on the wire, which was attached to some larger object that he was holding with both hands. In concurrence with Selina’s revelation, she could hear a few words from the people around her that they had seen the man too. A woman at a car across the aisle demanded that Selina explain it to her.

“Is there a man up there? What’s he doing? How can he do that?” the woman said. She was very large and had short hair, and was wearing what looked like a mumu. Why do you only ever see women like this at the grocery store? “How can he do that?” She repeated. Her two kids were standing near her asking their mamma the same thing. “What’s that guy doing momma?” One asked. “Do you see him up there? Is he flying?”

The roof seemed to be done peeling back, and started falling apart. People were now running out of the grocery store, screaming and shouting, and a few ran past Selina. The woman in the mumu collected her kids and tried to make them get in the car. They resisted, mostly because she didn’t explain to them what she was trying to do, and she had to physically pick one up and fold it into the car. The kid started screaming, which started the other kid screaming, and a few people running past were screaming, and Selina wished she could join the guy in the sky where it was probably peaceful and quiet.

Something near Selina made a loud popping noise, and then glass shattered. She quickly squatted down beside the wheel of her car and momentarily covered her head, then looked over. A windshield of a car near her had shattered. Was debrit falling from the demolished grocery store roof? She looked up, then realized looking up was a dumb thing to do when checking for falling debrit, and quickly looked back down. She had to take a second look up, because the man in blue was on his way out to the parking lot, standing still, looking like he was floating. He was pointing something and waving it around, and clearly yelling something that was completely incomprehensible.

Selina was pretty sure the man in blue was shooting some sort of gun, but by now the yelling and running and screaming around her was so distracting she couldn’t be sure. She was somewhat protected by her car, but still wanted to watch all the action, so she opened up her car door and got behind it.. All the while, she was watching the man in blue. He was floating across the parking lot now, shooting the gun off, about 12 feet in the air. He appeared to be floating on a blue plastic disk that strongly reminded Selina of a disk sled she loved as a kid. The man in blue was clearly not trying to shoot anybody, since he appeared to be aiming for empty cars or remote areas of the parking lot. He hadn’t noticed Selina, and was following the mass of people as they charged across the parking lot. He was in fact coming directly in line with Selina as she squatted behind her car door thinking of what she should do. She could finally decipher a few words of his yelling, but “Bush” was all she could make out.

As the man in blue approached, Selina decided what to do. She was going to attack him. She was sure he hadn’t noticed her, and clearly wasn’t expecting an assault since his suit was made of nylon or cotton or something and he wasn’t shooting at anybody. Right when he was directly overhead, Selina jumped up in the air so that she was right behind him, and kicked the disk sled with everything she had. Unfortunately, her jump was a little rusty so she only got up about 11 feet, and the sled tottered underneath the guy instead of flying out from under him like she was hoping.

He looked around at her with his mouth open in surprise as she landed back on the ground beneath him. She saw now that his hair was died blue, and he had a long face and an angry bushy monobrow. As he swung his gun downward, bending his knees and moving the sled aside to get better aim, she jumped again and this time was able to knock the sled out from underneath him like she originally planned.

Selina was an out-of-shape college student whose diet consisted mainly of tunafish, and she fought to get her breath back as the man in blue teetered off his disk slide and grabbed it on his way down. The slide tipped up as he hung on to one edge, then lost its anti-gravity power and he and the slide fell the rest of the way to the ground. He looked even angrier now, but fortunately he had dropped his gun and needed to find it.

Selina decided to attack while the attacking was good. She could now hear sirens approaching, and figured she would have some police backup soon anyway. Selina knew she had the advantage that she was clearly not the villain this time, since she was wearing jeans and a t-shirt instead of the old familiar black lycra outfit.

She got herself pumped up. Clearly, this guy was a raving lunatic, and anybody who liked blue that much had to be stopped. Now that he was on the ground at her level, he looked like he could be easily taken down. She deeply inhaled, and let her breath out in a hiss as she accelerated towards him in a ball of spit and nails.

He buckled quickly at the onslaught. He didn’t have his gun, had been thrown off his flying snow disk, and once his blue suit got ripped his fight lost its fury. Selina felt sorry for him, and after she had him in a painful hold on his back on the ground, she eased off and softened her expression, although that could have been because she was so out of breath.

“I only wanted people to finally hear me,” he whimpered. “They need to hear my message…”

The police had circled them, and had their guns drawn. One of them was yelling at her to back off because they had it under control, but she knew she had it under control already.

“What was your message?” She asked him.

“Bush is corrupt! He’s crazy…”

Selina was mortified. She tightened her hold on him and he squealed in pain. “You’re in the wrong city,” she told him. “This is already a blue state, hadn’t you realized? We already know!”

He recoiled, and she wasn’t sure whether it was in pain or surprise.

The police had circled in close by now, and one of them pulled her off while another quickly handcuffed the man in blue. Selina reached out her hand to a nearby car to steady herself, then wiped off her face with her arm. She was still breathing heavily, and turned away from the police so they wouldn’t see. She had lost the effortlessness she had previously developed so well, and was embarrassed. The police didn’t know her from the next guy and were already gushing.

“That was great, lady! We can take him in now, but we’d like to ask you a few questions first… man, where’d you learn how to attack like that? Your nails were like knives…”

Selina smiled weakly at them, and glanced back over at the man in blue, whose blue outfit was hanging in shreds around him. He was being held by two police officers while his remaining clothing was searched by a third. His eyes, beneath the wild but defeated monobrow, locked with hers and he mouthed, “Remember…”

“It’s a good message, but you’ve got to change your delivery!” she yelled at him.

He lowered his eyebrows and started to fight the policemen, who tightened their grip until he gave up.

Selina turned her back on him and sighed, noticing her racing heart had finally slowed. She wanted nothing more than to get back home to her homework, and perhaps next time she’d don the old black lycra outfit when she went to the grocery store, just in case.