Illustrated Scene: Freedom from Routine

June Illustrated Scene #1

2,417 words

Universe: Freedom City, from the Mutants and Masters RPG

Picture by ???, 2002ish

I've totally forgotten who drew this for me and I don't recognize the signature, so if you know, tell me?

***

This is a stand alone story about a young man who hasn't got much going on in his life.

The illustration for the story obviously suggests that something is going to change that.

***

Let me give you an image, a sensation to describe my life. It will help, because you have to understand what I was like before, to understand what I am now. Imagine the inside of a movie theater, just after the lights have dimmed but before your eyes have adjusted, before the sound system roars to life to announce the coming light show. The experience of that moment is an almost featureless blackness, filled with the anticipation that in any second something important will happen.

There are other people there beside you, but not really with you. Everyone is waiting together, but separated by the darkness. There are lights on the floor to guide your footsteps, but it is never enough to see by, not enough to live by, and the moment you look up to see the world you came to see, you'll lose sight of the path and stumble in the darkness.

That is what my life has been like the last five years. Stumbling in the darkness, unable to see what everyone else can, unable to keep my feet on the narrow path. I have lost faith that it would change anytime soon.

Faith is a funny thing. When you have faith in something, you have no doubts. There are no conflicting emotions, no reservations about the path you walk. Faith is like those lights guiding you through a theater. You can’t see where you’re going, and you don’t know exactly what you will find at the end, but you know that you are on the right path. You have to trust in your faith to lead you and block out all the doubts. When you lose your faith, when your belief in something wavers and you look up, all of that doubt comes crashing back down on you.

I cannot say exactly when I lost my faith. It has been gone far to long for me to remember the warmth, the fire inside me that my faith once gave me, as something good. Now there is only a hole where it used to be. Instead of faith, I now have a routine. I get up. I wash. I dress, and leave my tiny apartment at 7 am every day. There is always a wait for an elevator, the building has fifty floors after all, but never long enough to make me miss the 7:25 bus downtown, and as those elevator doors open, our story begins. For you, the darkness of the theater fades away as the movie that is my life starts, and you can see me leaving my home.

See, there I am now, right on time. I am the man in the back, in button up blue shirt and black slacks, carrying his lunch in a plastic sack. No tie, no suit coat, no briefcase, and therefore of no importance. Not someone worth paying attention to in the sea of humanity that is Freedom City.

I am still lost in that darkness, a brown haired, twenty four year old programmer with no path in life. Just a groove I’ve carved for myself, which quickly became a rut, and is well on its way to being a canyon. I ride my buildings elevator down to the ground floor. Then I walk the gleaming streets of Freedom to my bus stop while watching the sky, always hoping in a way to glimpse something more. My bus will drive past City Hall on my way to Lynx Enterprises, the fine company that employs me. I look up only briefly, to see if a ceremony is going to take place today.

Judging by the activity there will be, probably sometime around noon. Something to honor the Freedom League or the Atom family I have no doubt. There was quite a disturbance over the weekend, all that commotion down at the outdoor marketplace on the south side of town. It could be for that. On the other hand, maybe it’s for those new superheroes I heard about last week, some teenagers who stopped an attack last week at the amusement park. The city always gives out medals for that sort of thing. The mayor always makes a big deal out of a hero’s first time saving the city from danger. I'll have to check the City Hall website and see if I can be part of the crowd on my lunch break. I enjoy doing that, seeing one of them up close. Superheroes are pretty common here in Freedom City. You live here long enough and you’ll end sitting beside a person with powers taking the bus before too long.

I got to talk with ‘Asbestos’ that way actually, about a year ago. She’s not your normal superhero, like Captain Thunder. The Captain can fly and throw lightning bolts, has enemies the world over and saved the city, planet, and even universe, more then once. ‘Asbestos’ well… doesn’t. She doesn’t wear a costume, doesn’t fight crime, and wouldn’t even register in even the most meticulous supervillian plan to take over the city. Abigail, that’s her real name, just doesn’t get burned. She can put her hand in the hottest flame, and not feel anything. She can breathe smoke like it was normal air. So she works for the city fire department, helping how she can. It was thrilling, really, just being able to talk with her about her work. I asked her about how it felt to run unprotected into a burning building, and know that you would not get burned. That only falling debris could hurt you.

I think I frightened her a little with my enthusiasm. She obviously wasn’t used to someone knowing her on sight and being a fan, but I’d always been fascinated by the heroes of the world. Enough that yes, I find out about even the normal people like Abigail. My hobby, you might say. My only hobby in fact.

Ah, this is my stop. Off the bus, into the Lynx Computers building, a towering spike of steel and glass, and then up to the 12th floor. I was amused by the irony at first that I worked on the same floor as my apartment. Third row, seventh cubicle, I even traded with the guy next to me so I could have it. Cube #1237 just like my apartment number. That’s where I sit, writing and updating code for 10 hours of my day. I eat at my desk. No point in leaving it really. I don’t have anywhere to go. I ride the bus, I work, I go home, and then I sleep. A routine. A series of motions to repeat endlessly without thought. Every day I do the same, very safe, thing.

Today, well today is a bit different I guess. I’m 25 today, so happy birthday and all that, and by 11'o clock I'm out the front door of the Lynx building looking a bit befuddled. My boss got rather upset at me for some reason when he found out it was my birthday. Made a big deal about the fact that I was working on my birthday when I hadn’t used any vacation yet. “It’s been almost three years, for God’s sakes Harold! Why don’t you take a day off once in a while? Go visit your family or something?” I winced when he said that, but not for the reasons he thinks I’m sure. I just, well I don’t like hearing the lord’s name taken in vain so casually.

So today, I’m taking a half-day, because it's easier to leave just to keep him happy than to argue. Going home on the 12:10 bus instead of the 6:20 bus I normally take. I wish that I had gotten off at the City Hall stop. I could have watched the award ceremony without worrying about being back at my desk in time, stayed an mingled with the crowd. Perhaps even wait through the reception line and shake a hero's hand, but I forgot all about it until the bus was already speeding past the crowd of people. I did not want to pull the stop handle and make everyone mad at me. Didn’t seem worth it, I guess.

Anyways, my building looks much nicer in the daytime then it does after dark. A fifty-story apartment building, it boasts some of the nicest, most expensive loft apartments in the city. The top five floors are all one just one big apartment each. Richard Lynx even lives here, and he’s the CEO of my company. How’s that for irony? He lives and works on the same floor, just like me. I’ve never met him before, but I find it amusing that we both live and work in the same buildings, even though we live and work 38 floors apart. You can bet he doesn’t ride the bus to work though.

I waited patiently by the elevators, lost in my own little world. Waiting for the show to start, like I have been for nearly 5 years. I barely even hear it when the person standing with me says, “No, 1237 is a Harold Stevens. See says right here on this sign.”

“What?” I blinked and looked up, and was more then a little surprised to see a tall, blond haired woman smiling brightly as me. She’s wearing a strange, zigzag pattern dress that looked almost like two kimonos that have been cut up and pieced back together like a zebra.

Beside her stood a sharply dressed businessman wearing an all gray suit and holding a cane, and a nervous looking FedEx deliver man.

“Do you live in 1237 Amok Plaza?” The deliveryman asked, holding a grubby looking package out to me.

I should have said no. The package was obviously not for me, it had postmarks from Europe, Asia, and Africa. I should have just looked away as if nothing was happening, but I didn’t. I just nodded and said, “Yes,” sheepishly as the woman smirked at me. The handsome man in the gray suit just sighed softly and looked at the elevator doors in annoyance.

“Great! This is for you then.” The FedEx deliveryman jumped a little as the woman grabbed the package and thrust it into my arms. I looked down at the thing, dumbfounded. Hundreds of stamps, forwarding address and hand written notes covered the brown wrapping paper, and the whole package seemed to be just a bundled up ball of postmarks and forwarding requests. Sitting on top, was the most recent postmark from the Freedom city post office with my address on it. But the name on the package was a “Ms. Cleo.”

“Wait, this isn’t for me, she… moved…” My words died away, because the FedEx guy was no longer there. I looked back at the woman and businessman as the elevator doors opened, and they both just shrugged their shoulders at me. I rode the elevator upstairs with them, feeling even more out of place then I ever did in the fancy elevator. After all, I was standing between two people who actually belonged in this swanky apartment building. I did not. I got off the elevator on the twelfth floor, while they continued to the penthouse levels. I opened my apartment door and sighed as I set the package down on the countertop.

Whoever this “Miss Cleo” was supposed to be, she likely would have fit right in with those two. The package has dozens of strange and fantastic pictures on it, and seems to have traveled the world the hard way. Every edge is dented until it’s nearly a sphere rather then a box, and nearly every inch has a postage label on it. Dubai, Moscow, Senegal, Beijing, Hawaii, Prague, Frankfurt, this thing has probably circled the globe a dozen times. It’s been returned to sender a dozen times, only to be forwarded on to another new exotic local and then shipped off once more, always in search of this Miss Cleo. Just tracing its history take me several minutes, until the overpowering urge to open the wrapping and look inside takes over. I use a knife to cut the tape holding what might be the top open, and peer inside.

There, lying in a ball of straw and newspaper clippings in different languages is something metallic. A strange piece of gold shaped vaguely like an ankh on a chain... I reach out to pick it up, to see what strange thing someone might send and resend across the world, and the metal feels warm to the touch.

The flash of gold light is blinking, and I don't see what happens next any better than you can. Everything is brilliant gold, and then goes black. It’s as if the movie projector has broken, plunging us into darkness.

It feels as if I’m floating, as if the black emptiness of my life has sprung into being around me. A wave of noise washes over me, as if a million whispering voices are calling out. Calling out to me, beseeching me with words I cannot make out, in tongues I do not understand. I try to move, to flail my arms and legs, but it’s like they aren’t even there. As if I don’t exist.

When I can open my eyes again, when I have eyes again, I push myself up off the floor. My apartment has been destroyed, all my furniture torn asunder, the table, my couch, everything slashed and broken apart as if by a beast.

But I’m the only one there. It was me. It has to be. The evidence is undeniable.

I look at my hands in a daze, staring at the thick fingers, at my palm. It not my hand anymore, it’s been replaced with a paw. My fingers are thick, with pads like a dog. Turning them over, the huge claws catch the light, and I stare at the tan fur covering my massive arms. I rub my hands… paws across them, feeling the strange softness, my fingers tracing the dark brown spots along my arms. As I move my arms, the ankh shifts sliding from the nape of my neck down between the valley of my now huge pectoral muscles, the dull gold gleaming against my new fur.

What the hell has happened to me?

Nothing to do with Hell, my boy, a voice says in my head.

Which is about when I start screaming.

The fact that it comes out as the bellowing laugh of a hyena does not calm me down.

****

Well, that's it for now! Maybe there will be more of this story one day, there's a whole backstory for who and what this young man Harold has become, why he's a hyena, and who the other two obvious main character superheroes are, but I've no idea if I'll write more about them. You'll eventually see more of Harold in his big buff hyena form though, since there are a couple sex scenes I wrote with him that were just for fun.