The Green Shadow, Part 3
Reaching out.
You’re reading Terrific, my original superhero prose series. Looking for commentary instead? Check out the navigation page. Otherwise …
Welcome to Olympus City, where super-powers, physics-defying tech, and unearthly creatures are all possible now. Human nature, however, remains unchanged.
No one is born a perfect superhero, but a few strive to live up to the ideal anyway.
Previously: The Green Shadow has been lurking in the corner of Miranda’s eye. No one else can see this specter, and she has no idea what this mysterious being wants.
Part 3
The Green Shadow followed her everywhere, in both identities. Even now, as Miranda sat in total darkness within her studio apartment, the specter lurked in the corner of the room, fitting snugly between the desk and bookshelf. She had closed the blinds, turned off all lights, and unplugged the microwave to extinguish its digital clock. But still she saw the green tatters waving in the corner, watching her.
So, she broke down and texted Alyssa. An interminable half-hour later, Miranda thanked her for coming over so quickly and got right to the point.
“I need you to fry my brain.”
The request spilled out so abruptly that it caught even the telepath by surprise.
“Not going to do that.” Alyssa cocked an eyebrow. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
Like you don’t already know, Miranda thought. “Just trust me on this. I need a head-splitting migraine. I’ll be fine. Just—just trust me.”
Alyssa stared at her with eyes that could see far too much. Then she turned her gaze across the cramped apartment and stepped into what qualified as the living room. She seemed healthier, less bony but still lean.
“New place looks nice.”
“It helps that there’s not much to decorate. How’s the old place?”
“Noisy as ever.”
Miranda understood. Thin walls were the least of a mind-reader’s problems.
Alyssa pointed at the corner where the Green Shadow lurked. “This is where your ghost is hanging out?”
Miranda tensed. Of course she heard—of course you heard. “Do you see it? Him or her or whoever? What are you picking up?”
“Nothing. Just empty space.” Alyssa concentrated, raised her fingers to her temple, squinted, even stuck her hands into the flowing robes. Finally, she shook her head. “Only way I could see this person is if I’m looking through your eyes.”
The statement repelled Miranda, pushing her a few steps backward. “I don’t need you to see. I just need you to shake whatever this is out of me.” She pantomimed wringing the Green Shadow by the neck.
“At best, we’d send it into hiding while it recovers, but it would just come back and start bugging you again. We need to get this thing out, and we need to do it properly. Ultra Woman can’t be having big green spots in her vision.”
“And by ‘properly,’ you mean …”
“I need to go deeper.”
Miranda recoiled. “No.”
“This thing is already crawling around your brain. It could be seeing anything in there.”
Miranda thought about everywhere a cerebral intruder might have wandered, everything a spy might learn. Family, friends, secrets, embarrassments, bank accounts. She stiffened and clenched her brain, trying not to think about anything but wondering if it even mattered.
“So the solution is to have more people crawling around my brain?”
Alyssa’s frown deepened. “You used to tell me everything.”
“So did you.”
Alyssa tossed her arms up and started for the door. “Fine. The offer stands whenever you’re ready.”
“I’m sorry—”
“No, I’m sorry, and I just wish you would finally understand that.”
Alyssa shut the door behind her, leaving Miranda alone with rambling, guilty thoughts and a strange apparition who was perhaps swimming around in those very thoughts. The figure remained in the corner, the tattered robes undulating for no discernible reason.
“Let’s step out for a bit,” she told the Green Shadow.
*****
Olympus City Memorial Park had closed when the sun set. Floodlights shone up at the obelisk, engineered with enough care that little spilled onto the neighboring apartment buildings. Miranda landed in a dark corner of the park; she hadn’t even bothered to switch into costume.
Sure enough, the Green Shadow was already waiting for her. The floodlights imbued the mysterious entity with an eerie glow.
“I’d like to talk,” Miranda said, “but I’m guessing you truly can’t, right?”
The Green Shadow nodded.
“Okay, but you can respond. We can work with that.”
Miranda hoped no one strolled into the park and saw her talking to herself. If anyone did, she was an actress rehearsing her lines; that was all.
“You’re one of the names on this monument, aren’t you? One of the first names.”
The Green Shadow nodded slowly.
“The blast affected you, turned you immaterial—something like that—and you ended up trapped in that tree.” The realization echoed. “Oh God. You’ve spent all these months trapped in a tree.”
Another nod.
“You figured out how to affect the tree, turn it ghostly. That was a cry for help.”
Miranda wondered how much longer this person would have remained trapped if she hadn’t come along, if that moment of contact hadn’t allowed this presence to transition from the tree to her.
Can this person affect me like that?
She suppressed the thought, not wanting to give anyone any ideas.
“Can you point to your name?”
The Green Shadow neither nodded nor pointed. But Miranda remembered. The monstrous zombie unicorns had blasted the apartment building that previously stood here, wiping out the entire top floor. Debris had spilled all over the street. More than debris. As Ultra Woman, Miranda had dug through the wreckage and discovered three bodies, three of the seven who died that night. The stench of death had lingered in her mind ever since—had already lingered from months earlier, when Warner Pinkney sent a robot to kill Officer Hoskins, and Miranda could only watch as the nice old man died right in front of her. And even that wasn’t the first time she saw someone die. Such moments frequently replayed in her mind.
“I’m so sorry.” Words had never felt more inadequate. “I should have been able to save you, all of you, but I’m … I’m just …” She faltered. Why would a ghost care about her excuses?
The Green Shadow gave a slow, solemn nod. Miranda got the sense that maybe this person was beginning to understand her—they were beginning to understand each other.
“You’re not out for revenge. You just want me to remember—you want to make sure I don’t fail again. Is that right?”
The next nod was firm and deliberate.
“What can I do to help you?”
The Green Shadow extended an arm toward Miranda. Skeletal fingers peeked out the robe, striving for connection, a moment of human contact.
Miranda owed this person at least that much. Lifting her hand, she stepped toward the apparition.
And she stopped, and remembered. No … please, no …
She remembered the first time she saw a dying person, remembered the demand that creaked out of the old woman’s weary throat: “Just grab my hand, dear.”
Miranda withdrew her hand. She knew exactly who the Green Shadow was.
“Dame Disaster.”
The hidden eyes seemed to laugh at Miranda as the figure stepped closer.
“No.” Miranda backed away, memories haunting her. As an ordinary twenty-two-year-old, she had stumbled upon the dying old woman in Mount Olympus Park—an electricity-generating old woman wearing what Miranda thought was a superhero costume. The old woman kept asking Miranda to come closer, to help her, to take her hand. Miranda started to. Their fingers brushed against each other. Miranda had come that close to dying. “No! Get out! Out! Out of my head!”
The tattered figure stumbled backward, becoming translucent as she plunged to her knees. Still, she reached toward Miranda. As she looked up, the hood flipped off her head, revealing an aged face, silver hair, and sinister eyes—the most sinister eyes Miranda had ever gazed into.
Since becoming Ultra Woman, Miranda had met some truly awful people, some of the worst humanity had to offer. But they were people who had succumbed to bitterness and hatred and had allowed themselves to become corrupted. They were not born evil.
Dame Disaster was born evil.
“You’re dead!” Miranda yelled. “I saw you die! You’re supposed to be dead!”
Wrinkled lips curled into an amused smile as the Green Shadow faded away.
Miranda spun around, searching in all directions for any hint of tattered emerald robes. Nothing. The specter had vanished.
But Dame Disaster was alive. She was out there somewhere, and she was coming back.
Next: The Perfectionist
"Dame Disaster was born evil." So it CAN happen....