TBT #100: The Forevermen

This is something positive! Like carnivals with cotton candy served not with contempt but with colloquial capriciousness, it’s all conveniently characteristic of something positive. That’s the way the world is today, True Believer, as Foreverman has finally defeated evil! That’s right, the villains have all been vanquished thanks to the vastitude of our valiant hero, Foreverman. And watch as the crowd roars in raucous approval of our hero, his work and a world free from pain. Watch as the hero himself emerges from behind the sun! Lit from behind he is a marvel! An icon! A champion for all mankind!

The hero breathes deep, inhaling the effervescence of earth as he moves towards it. Home, he thinks, and smiles a perfect smile. His long cape flutters endlessly in the breeze and the crowd still cheers. Foreverman moves slowly for the first time in a long time, no longer hearing cries of torment or torture, pain or plight, damnation and death. There is only the peaceful praise of the public and, in the distance, the soulful sound of the sea.

Yes, thinks Foreverman, the tireless titan of terrestrials, this is something positive.

It was The Best Thing for July 27, 2006.

Andrew Berk
Real science is done by computers. Andrew knows this now. When he was younger he imagined it would be like it was on TV. He’d be wearing a white coat standing in front of a maze of clear plastic tubes. Coloured liquid coursing through them, running into and through beakers over blue-flame Bunsen burners, changing from blue to red to azure to black, and, at the end, becoming something else entirely. It would be a process of magic and mystery and, as a scientist, he’d devote himself to explaining the inexplicable.

But real science is done by computers and so Dr. Andrew Berk stands in front of the glowing monitor, watching numbers fly by. Later he will save this data and send it to another scientist who will do something with it. Maybe.

The glowing man appears in the eighteenth story window one night but Andrew is not startled. Nor he is surprised when the dark-haired man, grinning and floating and wearing a cape, offers Andrew his hand. For the scientist, there is no choice. He looks from his computer to the hero and with all the confidence and all the strength he can find, shakes hands with Foreverman.

The world spins colours, changing fast like chemicals through tubes. Andrew wobbles and steadies himself against the wall, looking away from the hero for only an instant.

He’s gone, but Andrew’s insides ache. He surges towards the window and looks up and then down. He sees them then, moving about on the grassy fields below his office. They trail glittering paths of dust, galloping and jumping and holding their horns high. They look like they’re dancing together, mirroring each other’s movements in the night.

Andrew Berk smiles and watches the unicorns play.

Owen Blake
“You’re a right awful bastard and eventually you’re going to run out of people who buy your bullshit.” Owen Blake reads it over and over again, laughing each time. He shouldn’t, he knows, because it’s not funny. It’s tragic! Fucking tragic! Here was a girl who was beautiful and who loved him and everything he did. And he used her and told her everything she wanted to hear and then, before he could do it accidentally, he fucked it up on purpose.

But still he laughs at the letter, all long and angry and important. It’s the only way he can make sense of things.

But then a golden streak flies over his head and he feels his insides grow hot. The words on the page warp and shine, reflecting images through his eyes. She cries and bends forward, staring intently at herself.

And Owen Blake finally makes sense of things. Here and above the clouds.

Foreverman
“What are you going to do now, Foreverman?” he was asked again and again. And for a long time he had no answer. He still flew around the world each night, skimming the oceans and watching the sunrise play off the ocean with shimmering sparkles for as long as he could. Which was a long time but still, where was he going next?

He began to think more about himself and about his power and all the things he’s seen. “What makes a hero?” a pretty woman had asked him once, and at the time he did not know.

But thinking over mountains and deserts, through starlight and beyond, it dawned like flecks of light across the ocean: a hero gives people what they don’t have.

Someone Else Entirely
We nestle like spoons in her bed. She tells me she loves the sound of the rain outside. I hold my hand over her stomach and kiss her in one spot on the back of her neck over and over again. My emotions twirl like windmills because I can’t sleep. I love this and I fear this. It goes back and forth.

Then I think about the things I really want. I want adventure, I declare in my head. I want drama and heartbreak. I want excitement and unpredictability and days that extend from nights without explanation, rhyme or reason. I want rugged independence. I want the ability to leave. I want freedom and desire and lust and regret.

But then she rolls over and I feel the breeze from the window against me. She nuzzles her face against my chest and again I think about the things I really want.

And, you know, this’ll do.

Norman
Norman has the words to “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” in his head and they won’t go away. He met with Lauren and Steve earlier and for some reason they wouldn’t stop talking about New Years Eve. They told him he kept going on about some idea he had all night. Norman doesn’t remember that.

He does, however, remember all the words to “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.” He relates somehow to the passion of the words, especially the part where she Celine goes “if you touch me like this / if you hold me like that.” Sometimes he worries about himself because, while he knows he’s heterosexual — he has so much porn — he’s driven by a deep desire to just hold someone and be held. And while, yeah, he’d like to have sex again, what he really wants right now is just to lay on the couch with a girl and watch TV.

He would never tell anybody that, though.

“It was so long ago but it’s all coming back to me…” and then the ground shakes and for a second Norman can only see brightly moments of gold and flashes of light.

In that instant, he forgets all the words to Celine Dion songs and gets the courage to approach a girl. The pretty one, with streaks in her hair, who works in the cubicle across from his.

Foreverman
The golden gladiator of gallantry stood atop the steps of city and proclaimed simply that he would be giving away some of his powers.

“Evil has been vanquished,” he said, his voice thunderous, pausing for the cheers of he cavorting crowd. “And so the last act of a hero is to share what makes him heroic. To let other people see the things I see.”

The clouds were fluffy that day. They looked like animals in the sky. Foreverman gazed up at them, not bothering to give them names.

“Other people need to know what it’s like to fly.”

Arguing Couple
“This is just like before.”

“It’s not just like before. It’s not — I mean, come on, this doesn’t matter.”

“You haven’t changed.”

She looked like she was going to cry.

“I just…” she started, and then stopped. Her eyes met his

“Why haven’t you changed?” he asked slowly.

“I’m trying,” she said, fighting tears. “I’m trying.”

A wooshing sound, like strong wind through a narrow alleyway.

“Did you feel that?” he asked.

“Feel what?” she dismissed, still crying.

“We’re perfect for each other.”

Wendy
Wendy feels the heat inside her and the blood rush to her head. She remembers shaggy hair and that secret smile. With wobbly knees and a remembered heart once broken, she lets herself go and mourns a man long past.

Stan Tropp
they strap me down and a man with a thick brown book reads me a bedtime story. they gave me something because I was fighting. i kicked and punched and screamed all the bad words i know (which is a lot) and so they gave me a shot. i didn’t mean to fight, i really didnt. i like the guys. all the guards and them. i like them a lot. they didn’t kick me or punch me or try to hurt me. thats what happened outside all the time. thats why i had the gun. thats why i got mad when i saw that guy, that mean guy, the guy everyone knows is a mean guy, with sandra. my sandra. i hope shes okay.

i killed the guy. i know that. im really sorry about it.

so im strapped to a table and now theyre going to give me another shot. i should have written mom a letter. i wrote her one but it was short and didnt say a lot. but now that this man is reading the book and theyre bringing a needle towards me i have lots to say to her. dear mom, im sorry. thats how i would start it. and then id tell her that it was not her fault. i just get really mad sometimes.

its hot in here so i notice the breeze when it hits me and creeps up my body like ice cubes under my skin. at first i think its the needle but the guard with the syringe is still beside me. its still filled with green death. no the breeze and the cold comes from something else.

And then I know what it is. I feel it inside me and my heart races. I realize quickly I could leave, break away, and touch the stars. I know I can fly and I would love so much to see the sails of the ships again, to follow them out to sea.

But it’s enough, I think, to just lay here, and die in peace.

Marie
Marie feels it because suddenly everything moves faster. She’s standing in the kitchen, drying the dishes her boyfriend has washed, and suddenly everything moves faster. The classical music turns to an incredible tempo, faster and faster so that the notes blur into one another and each crescendo and decrescendo is over before it even begins.

She looks to the man beside her and tells him their relationship is over.

Gary Scatoli
(Fade in on Mary Scatoli, a ragged-looking woman in a pink bathrobe, smoking a cigarette from yellow-stained fingers, frowning deep lines in her face.)

Mary: Yeah, that’s right. One day Gary gets up and suddenly he’s strong as an ox. Fast as hell, too. I don’t know what got into him. But it still didn’t amount to [expletive]. He gives me one good morning of [expletive] and then suddenly he’s out the door. Threw that bus damn clear into the ocean. A bunch of others too. He was really surprised to learn how many there were.

Jake’s Dad
“Unicorns!” he screams, the power inside of him. His child and his friend are long gone, but still he’s been camping atop this mountain, waiting for the day when he would be able to shoot and capture the beast that would prove the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost to the world. He accepted the power as it coursed through him. The power of Jesus, he decided, as he smashed down a tree and flew around a bit.

But then he saw them, dancing and galloping and leaving trails of sparkling dust: unicorns. And after he gets over his surprise he really begins to wonder what this means in terms of Jesus.

Foreverman
The power was shared so many times, again and again, to those he saw around the world. To those alone and poor, to those together and rich. It wasn’t about need. He didn’t give strictly to the unfortunate, the downtrodden or the selflessly good. He just gave to those with holes in their lives. To those missing something.

One day, months after he started giving, he felt a strange feeling in his head. It was like someone was pressing on it, holding it down. He wondered about magic, socercery or witchcraft. But then, the hero found, when he sat down, that all he needed to do to feel better was let his eyes close. That’s right, True Believer, the dynamic destroyer of damnable denizens, fell into a blissful sleep. Something he had not ever done in all his years on Earth.

Annabelle
She does not know why she keeps coming back to the old man. He has some youth inside him occasionally especially in the way he makes love to her and even more in the way he holds her afterwards. But still, his face wears years and he dresses only in high-waist pants, suspenders and a tie. He’s not good for her, she tells herself again and again, but still she finds her hands drawn to his weathered face, her eyes to his sad eyes.

He hears music, he says. Too much music, usually.

And so she holds his hair and screams and shuts her eyes. And all at once the bed is pushing up against her back. And there it is, she thinks, the answer she needs. She holds the old man tight and does not need to see.

Night Embalmer
I slash a fucking razor blade across my forehead and let the blood pour all over the canvas. I can do it so fast not one of the eighteen thousand packing the arena tonight will notice it. They’ll just think I was busted open when this Benjamin Hollywood pretty-boy hit me with the chair. I try not to be proud of myself — I’m not supposed to be proud of myself — but, dammit, I am. You need pretty big balls to do what I do, I don’t care what anyone says.

And, yeah, you know, I feel that Foreverman faggot streak by me and give me some his powers. But I ain’t needing them. I got a tattoo of Jesus across my heart and big fucking balls and between you and me and God that’s all this cowboy will ever need.

Colin Sanderson
The ship is shaking and rumbling way more than it should be at this altitude. Colin Sanderson knows this but can do nothing. There are no buttons to push, no wheel to take, no controls at all. He just sits back in the cramped rocket and listens as the pieces of steel he had welded on began to fall back towards his home.

But then all at once the shaking stops, and the ship gains speed again. He’s pushing forward in his chair and the ship moves with him. Colin Sanderson laughs and cheers. At that moment he can feel the tumor in his brain, pushing on his eyes, screaming for him to return to bed. But out the window he sees only stars, and other things that he has never seen before.

Foreverman
Foreverman, the gallant guardian of good, sat in a doctor’s office for a first time. “I feel different,” he told the doctor, a young man in a lab coat and spectacularly-fitting jeans. “I don’t know what’s happened to me. I can’t do all the things I used to do.”

The doctor looked at him quizzically, doing his best to examine Foreverman’s impressive physique. “We’ve run all the tests we can run,” he said finally. “There’s nothing medically wrong with you, except…”

“Except?” urged the hero.

“I think you might have a cold,” said Dr. Blanco.

The Forevermen
The nights are alive now, all over the world. People can fly and they do so with abandon, spinning and screeching and flinging themselves forward. It’s not uncommon to see colourful blurs of humanity darting back and forth across the street: human beings at mach one. Occasionally they’ll break the sound barrier, an ear-splitting pop sound being all that remains as they trop off towards Europe.

Some people use their powers all the time, even donning dynamic costumes like their hero and seeking to fight evil, though there is none. Others are content not to use their powers at all, seeing it as enough to just sit and feel it inside of them, making them stronger and better equipped to deal with the things that challenge their life.

And others still just left, going towards the stars without so much as a word. They must have hated this planet.

Foreverman himself may have been among them. The world has not heard from the hero in months. No one else seems to have gained any powers in that time. Many are resentful, wondering why the mighty messiah of the new millennium, passed over them. Others are just thankful, whether they have powers now or not, for all the hero did for this world.

Those old enough to remember his first appearance, glittering gleefully atop City Hall and then lowering himself, a man descending, into the riotous streets of the time, offer the best perspective on the hero’s actions over the past few years.

They tell of a man who grew from nothing like a flower in a barren garden, a marvel of magnificence and unlikelihood that needs to be seen to be believed. And not only did he appear suddenly, and bloom, he spread himself, terra-forming the terrestrial, making things new. He was a man of springs and summers — he grew and prospered but never withered, and never died. There was no fall and never a winter. Blooming and blooming and blooming still again, redefining ‘hero’ for all humanity. He did not need rain to grow.

He did not stop until there was nothing left to fight.

Foreverman
He’s withered and confused on a street corner. A mess of bloodshot eyes and a long scrangled beard. He hums a tune he does not know, trying to perfect it. He smells of urine and potatoes, a unique stench that, for some reason, makes him want to laugh. He does not ask for money or help. He just sits and watch the world go by.

So why does the man kick him and throw him head first into the brick wall? Why does he yell and scream and strike him angrily across the face. His words are fast and loud, not registering in the old homeless man’s ears. So he’s thrown down to the pavement again and feels three times the heavy toe of the other man’s boot crash heavy against his ribs. He coughs and coughs again, spewing red designs across the pavement.

The man’s words are registering now.

“You pathetic son of a bitch. Look at you!”

Again, he’s hit against the ribs, but this time there’s a loud cracking sound. The other man just grins and wipes his nose.

“Look at what you gave up! And for what?”

Again a kick and the bone breaks clean. The homeless man still does not scream.

“For this.”

He does not have a lot of experience with pain. His entire side throbs, like his bones want nothing else but to escape his body. He rolls on his back, trying to shield his side from the man’s attacks. His eyes shut tight he imagines the sky, blue and mid-day, the sun bright and warm on his face. And then, without ceremony, he opens his gaze, and sees clouds that look big and fluffy and exactly like animals.

“You gave it all up!”

But Foreverman did not bother to give the clouds names. Instead he turned and wrapped his weathered fingers around the other man’s ankle, gripping him tight. Looking up at the man from the pavement, all young and arrogant, angry and abusive, Foreverman felt his insides grow warm, and heat build behind his eyes.

“Not everything,” cried Foreverman, the walloping warrior with no weakness, using his eyes to make the evil man burn.