Sometimes, Superheroes Have Difficulties Too… Part I

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“Captain!”  The voice outside the door was insistent, filled with urgency.  “Captain, they’re calling for you – it sounds serious!”

I groaned loudly in response, raising my free hand to rub at my face.  My other hand was clutching my knee as I bent forward, and my face was screwed up in exertion.  “Not a good time!” I managed to grunt out in return.

From outside the room, I heard a loud crash.  This time, when my secretary yelled for me again, there was a new note of urgency in her voice.  “Captain, I don’t think that they can wait much longer!”

I could only respond with another groan, slumping forward a bit.  This was absolutely the worst time possible.  “Couldn’t Steelfist handle it?  He owes me a favor!” I called out.

“Abroad at a conference!” my secretary responded, frustratingly helpful.  “And Odin is off on another astral plane, and we haven’t been able to raise him!  Apparently cell phones can’t reach through the impenetrable ether.”

From outside, I could hear some faint but clear sounds of destruction, of shrieking steel and collapsing concrete.  I had to get out there.  People were in danger!  But when I started to stand up, I heard another unpleasant sound – this one a gurgling, coming from inside my abdomen.

“Oh god, I should not have gone for the all-you-can-eat option,” I groaned to myself, settling back down onto the porcelain throne that had become my prison.

The crashes were growing louder.  “Captain United!” my secretary yelled, a note of panic in her voice.

I felt a new wave of uncomfortable queasiness course through me, and shifted on the seat as it passed.  The crashes were so loud, I swore that they were right outside my little room-

-wait a minute.  I turned and looked at the wall next to me.  I carefully removed the toilet paper, setting it down between my feet.  At the moment, it was more valuable than gold.  Once that was safe, I turned to the wall, grimaced, and raised a gauntlet-clad fist.

I slammed my fist into the wall, sending a spiderweb of cracks out in all directions.  Two more punches, and I had opened up a hole big enough to stare through.  Leaning forward, I stared through the hole out at the large, scaly monster roaring and tearing its way through downtown.

Despite the hole that I had knocked in the side of the building, the monster hadn’t been alerted to my presence – it was a small relief to see that it had not figured out that men on toilets could be a threat.  And as it turned away, I spotted a small area on the back of its neck where the large plates of armor had a chink, where there was nothing protecting the beast’s spinal cord.  That was the weak spot!  If I only could find something to hit it with…

To be continued…

How I Got the Girl

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I love telling this tale to just about anyone who will listen.  Hopefully some of my readers like love stories, so buddy, this one goes out to you.

I was working for Habitat for Humanity after college, and one of the events put on by the organization was a big fundraiser/gala event where all the bigwigs came out, waved their monocles around, and threw cash at the organization so we could keep helping poor people.  As “volunteers”, we were being tapped to help out at this thing.

Now, I had no interest in spending a night volunteering when I could be at home, pantsless, reading Reddit.  But my darn Midwestern sensibilities wouldn’t let me refuse a direct request, so I agreed to come along and help out.

One of the requirements of this gala was that everyone had to wear formal wear with a hint of construction – people wore caution tape ties, duct tape hats, steel toed boots, and so on.  It looked quite strange when paired with formal wear.  I had some bright orange nylon straps (for attaching wooden planks to truck roofs), and turned them into a belt and suspenders.  Hooray last minute craftiness!

At the event, it turned out, like many obligations, to be much more fun than I had expected.  I was put in charge of a game called Hammerschlagen, which basically consists of a drinking game revolving around whacking a stump with hammers.  Good times.  And most of these bigwigs turned out to be former fratboys, so they insisted that I had to have a drink in my hand at all times.  Very fun.

Towards the end of the night, the games were shut down and we were all funneled into the central ballroom, where music was playing and people were drunkenly dancing.  I was tipsy, wandered around, and bumped into my very drunk boss.  I next had to quickly dive in and stop her from “twerking” on her boss, a board member.

After preventing this potential disaster, my eye fell on a flash of red.  A gorgeous girl in a tight red dress, the outfit hugging every curve and showing off an amazing hourglass figure, was dancing over on the side of the room!  And in my tipsy state, I was just lubricated enough to feel that I might have a shot with her.

I went staggering over, noting as I approached that she was wearing a child’s construction vest over her shoulders.  In the epitome of smoothness, I came dancing up, tugged this vest from her shoulders, and informed her that it would look much better on me.

Somehow, this theft of her clothing didn’t seem to turn the girl off, and we shared grins as we danced together.  The song ended and the girl asked for her vest back; I told her that it now belonged to me, and she’d have to give me her number to set up the next time she could get it back when she met me in person.

“Like a date?”

“Yeah, like a date.”  Oh yeah, man.  So smooth.

Perhaps it was the alcohol (in my system, not hers – she later revealed she was sober for all of this!), but I felt totally cool as I swapped phone numbers with her and tried to prevent my eyes from lingering too long on what lay beneath that red dress.  The party was ending, the band was done, and I had to dash to go help clean up.

The whole ride back home (I had carpooled, hence the drinking), I was bragging to my coworkers about this great girl I had met.  They listened politely, and I went to bed happy, with a child’s construction vest sitting on the foot of my bed.

The Soul Gene, Part II

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Continued from here.

This announcement produced a small gasp from the more theatrical-minded members of the audience, but most of the scientists in the darkened theater remained silent, waiting to hear Cooper’s next words.  The white-haired scientist hadn’t expected to get much of a response in any case, but he did appreciate a good reveal.
“My team was initially not focused on the Y chromosome at all,” he said, taking a step back from his announcement.  “We were instead tracking negative behaviors in society, looking for a genetic correlation.  We believed that behaviors often seen as immoral may have a physical component, possibly a faulty neural junction or a misfolded protein.  Given the wide degree of neural-associated proteins now linked with mental responses, it’s not that big of a leap to make.”
“And we did find a distinct genetic correlation using GWAS, a genome-wide associated screen,” he went on.  Cooper clicked to the next slide, and a Manhattan plot appeared, showing data on a graph.  One peak seemed far higher than all the others, nearly rising off the screen.  “As you can see, we had one especially prominent hit.”
Another slide click, and it was back to the image of the Y chromosome.  “This gene maps to the Y chromosome,” Cooper announced.  “And deletions in this gene correlate incredibly well with violent crimes – murders, rapes, and psychopathic tendencies.  Smaller missense mutations seem to match behavior that, while still negative, is not quite as devastating.”
Cooper took a deep breath as he prepared to make his most stunning announcement of the night.  “Ladies and gentlemen, we believe that we have found the “soul” gene.”
There was immediately a rush of whispers and cries from the audience.  Cooper had expected no less, and a minute later, the lights rose up to reveal an angry crowd on its feet.  
“Excuse me, professor!” called out one angry scientist who didn’t seem excused at all.  “Are you saying that the existence of this gene confers a soul upon an organism?”
Cooper spread his hands, although it did nothing to mollify the shouter.  “We are stating that the lack of this gene appears to lead to profoundly negative behavior,” he clarified.
But this just led to more yells.  Many of the scientists on their feet weren’t even making their complaints clear, but were merely angrily shouting and booing.  
Cooper reached up and rubbed his face.  He had several more slides on methods as well as another half dozen graphs of results, showing how his correlations held up across multiple populations, but he sensed that he wasn’t going to get to show these off.  He had wanted to wait to release this information, had wanted to first write it up into a paper, but the University regents were anxious to be the first group to get their name in the papers.
Well, that was definitely going to happen now.  Although perhaps not in the way that the regents had been expecting.  More people were shouting questions, and some were surging angrily towards the stage, but Cooper kept his hand over his face.
Perhaps the Society of Women in Genetics had not been the best avenue to present this work.

The Soul Gene, Part I

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Cooper held onto the podium with both hands as he gazed out at the crowd in front of him.  Thanks to the spotlights focused on the stage, they were nothing but vague whispers in the darkness, the hint of something out there beyond the bright lights trained on him.  His hands clamped so tightly onto the sides of the podium that the knuckles were white.

“And so, without any further ado,” Cooper announced, the microphones in front of him grabbing his words out of the air and blowing them up loudly, “let me present my research.”

Cooper turned towards the large screen beside the podium, clicking the button on the laptop in front of him.  The professor was proud of how well he had adjusted to the most recent technology.  Many of his fellows were still struggling to use word documents and email, but Cooper had taken quickly to the new digital age.  Perhaps that had helped spur his research.

The man clicked through the first few slides, laying out the background for his discovery.  “For a long time, the Y chromosome has been believed to be largely useless,” he explained to the listening crowd.  “Indeed, in less developed organisms such as C. elegans, there is no Y chromosome at all.  These nematodes simply pass on one or two copies of their X chromosome, where two copies designates a hermaphrodite.”  He clicked to a picture of the microscopic worm in question.

“However, when we move up to more advanced organisms such as Drosophila species,” he continued, “we begin to see the appearance of a Y chromosome.  Given the results that will come soon, this may prove to be very significant.”

Cooper clicked to the next slide, a large schematic of a chromosome.  The banded pattern that represented chromatin staining made the picture immediately recognizable to the crowd.  “The Y chromosome in *Homo sapiens*, which we all should recognize,” he labeled the slide.  “We do know that there are a few genes on here.”

Advance to the next slide.  The large chromosome was still visible, but now labels pointed towards several areas.  “Here are some of the main genes,” he went on.  “Several sex determining proteins, as well as some kinases.  However, genes on this chromosome are prone to microdeletions, making them a risky prospect in evolutionary terms.  It also makes the Y chromosome markedly more unique than the others when compared across individuals, as well as populations.”

There was a large area towards the center of the Y chromosome schematic that had not received any labels.  Cooper nodded towards this area.  “For a long period, it was believed that this section of the Y chromosome contained nothing but junk DNA,” he said.  His voice dropped, the mikes having to strain to carry his words out to the crowd.

“But we now know that this isn’t true.”

To be continued…

Three Sons in a Room

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I gazed around at the other two people in the room with me.  With the clinical detachment that comes from years of experience in observing the uniquely human condition, I watched the other two men struggle to make sense of what they saw.

Both of the men were dressed similarly, I noted.  Of course, they both wore the straitjackets that were required by the authorities in this room.  But beneath those straitjackets, long white robes flowed down over their legs and towards their feet.  When they shifted back and forth, I noticed that they were also both wearing thong sandals.

The man on my left shook his head back and forth, making his long, light brown hair fall in waves over his bearded face.  “This is totally inappropriate, man,” he complained.

The man on my right had similar brown hair, although his was cut a bit shorter and he was clean-shaven.  “This is no way for me to be treated,” he agreed, blinking a few times to clear his eyes.

“Yeah, man,” the bearded fellow agreed.  “They should be glad I’m a forgiving dude, or I’d be laying out some smiting right about now!”

“Oh, if I gave them a smiting, they’d wake up next to my dad, having to explain their actions,” the clean-shaven man snorted.  “Don’t even get me started on smiting.”

I briefly wished that I had a notebook to write my observations in.

The bearded man was still grumbling, but the clean-shaven man started to look around and to notice that his arms were pinned.  “Hey, what gives?” he called out.  “You can’t treat me like this!  I died for your sins!  And this is another big sin, right here!”

“Excuse me?” spoke up the bearded fellow.  “I believe that I’m the one who died for your sins, not the other way around!”

The clean-shaven man leveled a menacing glare at his companion that would likely have held more weight if he hadn’t been similarly restrained.  “Do you know who I am?” he asked in tones of ice.  “I’m Jesus freakin’ Christ!”

The bearded man just shook his head back and forth.  “Nah, man, you’ve got something loose in that head of yours,” he said back.  “I’m Jesus, man.  Maybe you’re one of my disciples or something?”

As the men argued back and forth, I watched and made sure to listen carefully.  The administrators had warned me that there were people impersonating me, that I would have to learn what made these poor souls claim to be Jesus.

After all, it’s no good being the Son of God if you can’t distinguish yourself from the competition.

Ambition, Part II

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Continued from part I.

Azrael stood up, gripping his cup of pale, sugary coffee.  He slid over the barrier between the booths, dropping into the seat opposite the mousy-looking salesman at the next table.  The man glanced up as the newcomer slid into his booth at the diner, but he didn’t seem to be unduly surprised or put off.

As the angel leaned forward to stare into the man’s eyes, searching for some sign of what might be lacking, Mephistopheles sauntered around and slipped into the seat next to the salesman.  The waitress, noticing that her two customers had changed tables, came over and dropped the devil’s plate of greasy meat in front of him.

“Hello there,” the angel ventured, speaking to the man as if he was a small child.  “What’s your name?”

The man looked back at the angel without much interest.  “Arthur,” he replied.

“Hello, Arthur.  And what do you do?”

The man gave a shrug.  “I sell insurance,” he responded.  Azrael waited politely for the rest of the speech, but nothing more was forthcoming.

The angel’s eyebrows dropped down.  Now that wasn’t right.  One of the most defining qualities of any insurance salesman is their insistence that, no matter how much insurance you might have, you always need more.  So to not be immediately deluged with “one low price” offers was more than a little surprising.

“You know, I don’t happen to have any insurance,” the angel ventured, poking the bear.  He kept on peering closely at the man as he waited for some sort of response.  Nothing seemed to be coming out of the man’s mouth, however.  He just nodded vaguely and continued gazing straight ahead.

Next to the man, Mephistopheles had managed to get his hands around the large, meaty burger that had been brought to him.  He took a big bite, chewing with obvious relish and ignoring the little flecks of mush that flew from his lips.  “Weird, ain’t he?” he asked with enjoyment.

“You definitely took something from him,” Azrael agreed.  He turned his attention back to the man.  “Arthur, did you know that I’m a genie?  I’m here to grant you one wish!  Anything you want!”

Arthur blinked a couple times.  “I could maybe go for some cheese balls,” he spoke up.

Azrael’s eyes narrowed.  “I just gave you a wish for anything,” he repeated in tones of mingled disbelief and righteous anger, “and you want to wish for some cheese balls?”

“Maybe some crisps,” Arthur ventured.

The angel’s hand twitched as it wrapped around his coffee cup.  He took a long drink, steadying his nerves, and then turned to Mephistopheles.  “You took his ambition, his drive,” he told Mephistopheles.  “The poor guy’s a husk.”

“Lucky guess,” the devil said through his mouthful of food, but he raised one of his greasy hands and snapped his fingers.  Another little cloud of smoke burst around Arthur’s head, and he blinked a few times and looked around, as if seeing the other visitors at his table for the first time.

“Oh, hello there!” he commented to the angel and the devil.  “Didn’t see you folks sit down.  Now, are you totally satisfied with your current insurance?”

*

Instead of answering, the devil and the angel simply stood up and walked back to their table.  Arthur watched them go, a slightly crestfallen look on his face, before he was briefly distracted by something flitting in front of his face.  When he pulled his eyes back to the two retreating figures, he couldn’t remember why he’d been looking at them in the first place.

“I liked him better without any ambition,” Mephistopheles complained.

“I know, I know,” Azrael comforted him, patting the devil on the shoulder of his suit.  The fallen angel felt slightly greasy, but the angel resisted the temptation to wipe his fingers off.  “But you lost, so you have to pay for the meal.  Rules are rules.”

Mephistopheles nodded, and tossed a couple heavy gold coins onto the table with a clink.  The waitress came by, scooped them off the table without stopping, and made it several steps before she stopped and looked down at her hands with a confused expression.

“But next time,” the devil insisted.  “I’ll get you on the next round!”

Azrael just lifted his coffee cup to his lips for another sip.  The sunshine was streaming into the windows.  He leaned back in the booth, savoring the moment.

Ambition, Part I

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Azrael slid into the seat in the diner, waved his hand vaguely towards a waitress to put the idea into her mind to bring him some coffee, and began struggling out of his overcoat.  Just as he’d known, Mephistopheles was late.  The angel had even done his best to move slowly, to not rush to get to the diner on time.  Angels have a hard time violating social protocols, however, even when they’re trying to do so, and Azrael had still ended up walking into the little restaurant exactly on time.

The waitress arrived with the coffee, and she placed it in front of him with a rusty smile.  The angel nodded back politely and began adding his generous rations of cream and sugar.  Twice, he had to pour a little of the coffee out to make room; he guiltily opened up a tiny dimensional pocket to hold the excess liquid.  No sense in making a mess.

Once the liquid in his cup was a light brown in color and a thick sludge of sugar covered the bottom, Azrael raised it to his lips with a satisfied sigh.  And of course, that was the moment that Mephistopheles chose.

The devil came barging in, kicking the door open in front of him with a clatter.  He barreled across the diner, pulling off his coat to reveal the ill-fitting suit beneath, and plopped down into the booth opposite Azrael.  He grinned, showing off his tombstones of teeth.

Azrael glanced up at the clock.  “Only eight minutes late,” he commented.  “You’re getting better.”

Mephistopheles just countered this with a glare.  The waitress, alerted by the man’s banging entrance that he was probably an important person, wandered over with a menu.  Temporarily distracted by this, Mephistopheles quickly leafed through it and ordered something with triple bacon.

“I really didn’t even need to bother showing up,” Mephistopheles complained after he had placed his order.  “Pretty thin itinerary for today.  It’s only because we’ve been meeting for the last couple thousand years at this place that I even bothered to come.”

This put a grin on Azrael’s face.  The devil would never admit it, but Azrael knew that he had grown fond of having some company to chat with.  “Well then, we can just talk,” he offered.  “There’s always time for a relaxed debate.”

The fallen angel rolled his eyes, but his attention was diverted as the door to the diner opened again.  A man came wandering in, looking around with his footsteps a little uncertain.  He hovered at the entrance for a minute, but eventually made up his mind and settled into the booth next to Azrael and Mephistopheles.  He had the vague, mousy, slightly worried look of a home insurance salesman.

Mephistopheles jerked his head back to indicate the newcomer.  “Shall we play a game?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows.

Azrael groaned, but he didn’t say no.  “What are you thinking?” he asked.  “Sodomite?  Whose Claim?  Judgment Day?”

“You know that all of those games are basically the same thing,” Mephistopheles pointed out.  “In fact, every game we have is the same.  I try and ruin him, you try and save him.  Just once, couldn’t we play something different?  Like horseshoes, or Mousetrap?”

“Does that mean you don’t want to play?”

“Now, I didn’t say that!” the devil countered.  “Here, I’ll tell you what.  I’ve got a twist.  I’ll strip some quality out of him, and you try and figure out what it is!  Guess it right, he gets it back.  Deal?”

Azrael looked shocked.  “Of course not!”

“Too late,” Mephistopheles said.  “I’m doing it anyway.”  And the devil snapped his fingers, and a puff of smoke momentarily surrounded the insurance salesman’s head…

Just a Hunting Trip in the Woods…

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It all started when Jeb came stumbling back from the woods.  He was still holding his shotgun, but his bright orange flannel was ripped, and his eyes had a crazy glint in them.

“Goddamn, man,” I let out in astonishment as he came back into our clearing where we were sitting around the fire.  “What the hell happened to you?”

Jeb just stared back at me, not even blinking.  “Deer,” he gasped.

Next to me, Kyle popped the top of the cooler.  “I dunno what happened to you, man, but you definitely look like you need a beer,” he commented.  He popped the top off a Miller by rapping it against the cooler’s lid, and then passed it over to Jeb.

The newest arrival took a long drink, and some of the color returned to his face.  “That helps,” he agreed.  He lifted the bottle to his lips and drank again, not stopping until the last drop had rolled down his throat.

With the beer filling his belly, Jeb finally blinked, leaning his gun up against a nearby tree.  “Those deer, though,” he insisted, looking around at the rest of us.  “I’m telling ya, there’s something off with ’em.”

“Yeah, they won’t hold still long enough for you?” I jabbed, drawing a bark of laughter from Kyle.  Jeb didn’t laugh, however; he didn’t even crack a smile.

“Them holding still ain’t the problem,” he said darkly.  “I hit ‘im.  I know I did.  I saw the hole.”

Kyle was still sniggering a little, but the corners of my mouth lowered.  Jeb really seemed shaken up.  “So what’s wrong?”

The hunter turned to me, and I could see the agony in his eyes.  “He kept coming,” he said.

I opened my mouth to say more, to question, but Jeb’s eyes shifted, moving to over my shoulder.  His mouth dropped open, and his hand shot out – but the gun he was reaching for was still leaned against a tree, on the far side of the clearing.

Spinning around, I saw a nightmare emerging from the trees.  It was a deer, no doubt about that – had to be at least a ten pointer.  But it was diseased, sick.  The coat was a sickly pale green color, and the eyes of the creature looked cloudy, hazy and opaque.  Its mouth was moving, drawing my eye, and for some reason, its teeth seemed to be protruding more than usual.

Kyle, sitting on my left, coughed as he also took in the sight.  “Holy shit,” he gasped.  In shock, he dropped his beer bottle and started to stagger to his feet.

With no warning, the buck dropped his head and charged.  Those antlers caught Kyle right in the chest, and the man’s gasp turned to a wet squelching sound.  He was carried back several yards before the deer skidded to a stop, throwing the man’s lacerated body clear.  He hit a tree, hard, and slid to the bottom.  I stared at him, but he didn’t move.

Now that the buck had charged past me, I could see his side – and now I saw why Kyle had sworn.  Right in the middle of the animal’s rib cage, a fist-sized hole had been ripped in its skin.  I could see the exposed white of ribs, little gibbets of flesh dangling out.  And inside that hole, something was pulsing, shifting back and forth.  I didn’t even want to think about what it was.

The buck turned back around.  Those milky eyes revealed nothing, but it was lining up with me.  I was frozen, paralyzed.  The creature dropped its head once more, those antlers now stained with points of red.

Its hooves digging into the loam of the forest floor, it began to charge.  It drew closer and closer, that rack aimed straight for me.

No more than three feet from my chest, however, the buck suddenly slammed sideways, nearly knocked off its feet.  Woozily, shaking its head back and forth, it tried to recover, but the momentum of the attack was gone.  Another blow ripped its skull apart and it collapsed heavily onto the ground.

I turned to see Jeb, his eyes still wide, clutching his shotgun.  Smoke was trickling up from the barrel, as well as from the two discharged shell casings on the ground next to him.  “And this time, the fucker’s gonna stay down,” he panted.

I climbed to my feet, my legs a little shaky beneath me, and picked up my own rifle.  I cautiously approached the corpse, prodding at it with the tip of my weapon.  The contact provoked no response, however; clearly, although this thing did just fine without a belly, it still needed a brain to function.

My eyes rose up to gaze into the forest around me.  I hadn’t noticed until now, but it was eerily silent – no chattering of squirrels, no chirping of birds.  Really, no noise at all.  “Jeb, I think we gotta cut our hunting trip short,” I said slowly.  “I don’t think we’ve got enough ammo for this…”

Evan Michael Tanner

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The internet is a wondrous place, ain’t it?  There’s just all sorts of things that a fellow can learn on there.  Especially if he’s got a drive to learn, a dedication to a cause, and a lot of time on his hands.

I had all three.  Actually, I even had a bit more than that.

I’ve always been interested in learning, reading and fiddling with anything I could get my hands on.  When I was young, I used to creep back downstairs after my parents tucked me into bed.  There might not have been internet, but there were books and screwdrivers and my dad’s old soldering iron.  Not everything made it back together in quite the same way that it had arrived, but it all still worked.  And my parents, so well-meaning in their intentions, never noticed the differences.

A dedication to a cause?  I had a dedication to many causes.  Every cause I found on the internet, in books, in the backs of magazines.  They all spoke to me, they all called out for help and participation.  Who was I to turn away?  So I enlisted everywhere, wrote back to pledge my support, swore that I would fight the good fight for every cause I came across.

As for time, well, I already alluded to that.

It never bothered me much.  Maybe I should have gone to see a doctor, a sleep counselor, a specialist, a shrink.  But what would they have done?  At worst, they would have turned me away with no aid.  At best, they might have found a change, some way to make me fall dead for eight hours every night like the rest of the world.

Maybe I have that best and worst backwards.

The point is, I’m perfectly happy with my extra time.  Like I said, it gives me time to learn.

And oh, there are so many end points that I can see, so many uses for all that I’ve learned!  Even before the internet, I knew about a lot of things that men would probably prefer to keep silent.  But now, there’s no limit to my knowledge.  And I astonish even myself at how much I can cram into this noggin of mine.

Right now, I’m just relaxing.  There are a lot of people looking for knowledge, people willing to pay just about any price to get their hands on what they seek.  And they don’t usually say no to a finder’s fee when a helpful fellow is willing to point them in the right direction.

But someday, I’m sure that I’ll be in demand.  Sure, I keep my work quiet, but I know that I’m on the radar of some powerful forces.  Hell, I’m watching them at the same time.  I generally just play them off against each other, keeping my distance at the center.  Waiting.

Because I know that someday, they’re going to need a man with skills.  A man with knowledge.  A man who doesn’t need to spend a third of his time lying down on a mat with his eyes shut.

And I’ll be waiting for them to come knocking.  What’s one more cause to add to my list, after all?  They will request my aid, and I will happily give it to them.

For a price, of course.

Musings With Lincoln, Part II

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Continued from Part I.

I took a deep breath as I stared across my bed at our sixteenth President of the United States as he sat in my room’s armchair.  I was about to share some deep feelings, even if it was just to good ol’ Honest Abe.

“I’m scared that they’re going to go away,” I said finally.  “She’s got such strong feelings.  And I just sometimes get really scared that one day she’ll wake up and won’t feel that way any longer.  That it will all vanish as fast as it came on.”

I was still half expecting Lincoln to make some sarcastic remark, but the man just nodded solemnly.  “It’s understandable,” he agreed.

Another breath was in my lungs, but I didn’t have anything more to say.  That statement had pretty much summed it up.  “So what should I do?” I finally asked.  “Advise me, o leader!”

Lincoln, unfortunately, just looked back at me.  “I’m afraid that I can’t offer you any advice here,” he eventually commented.  “I don’t know any more than you do.”

I glared at the man.  “Fat lot of good you are,” I told him.

At this, Lincoln shrugged, back to his usual sarcastic, snotty self.  “That’s like punching yourself in the face,” he pointed out.  It was even more annoying because he was right, even if I didn’t want to admit it.  The man leaned forward, pointing one long, bony finger at me.  The digit didn’t quiver an inch.  “You’re going to have to ask yourself one question, though.”

“And what’s that?”

The president’s lips quirked up in a slight grin; he knew that he had my attention, that he had gained control of the conversation.  “Are you worth it?” he asked, the words barely audible.

“Am I worth it?” I repeated, not sure what the question meant.

Lincoln nodded.  “She believes that you’re worthy of those feelings,” he elaborated.  “Is she right?”

My mouth immediately opened to confirm this, but I paused.  “I think that I am,” I spoke slowly.  “But there will always be that little voice in the back of my mind whispering that I’m wrong, that I am not worthy.”

“So use that voice as a warning!” Lincoln seized on the chance to speak.  “Let it be a constant reminder of the work you have to do.  May you constantly stride to prove that voice wrong!”

It wasn’t a perfect answer, but it was an answer, of sorts.  I looked up at Lincoln to thank him, but the apparition was gone.  I was once again alone in my room.

I sat back on the bed, lacing my fingers behind my head as I gazed up at the ceiling.  Lincoln was never kind to me, but he was right.  And he had left me with a new perspective.