Making Amends

A heroic short-story draft

Making Amends

My lungs burned in my chest like molten lava as I sprinted after the speeding V8 Barracuda. Even over the squealing of the tires and the roar of the engine, I could hear the little girl in the backseat of the car, screaming. It was all well and good that I was in great shape but I didn’t have super-speed. So catching a muscle car on foot was pretty much out of the question; things like that only happened in the movies…or to guys with super-speed. 

Still, I wasn’t going to give up so easily, I couldn’t. The life of that little girl depended on me after all. Graciela Melendez age twelve, had been kidnapped by child molesters and wanted to do indescribable things to her, pornographic movies being the least among their perversions. I was determined to not let any of those horrible things happen to her. The image of her from her picture was burned into my brain; bright brown eyes, dark brown hair with a gap-toothed smile full of life. 

Unfortunately the way things were going, it was looking more and more that the decision would be out of my hands. That meant that I would have to change things up. Besides, my legs began to feel like lead weights and I feared I would collapse right in the middle of the street if I kept my sprint up. I stopped in my tracks, pausing to catch my breath and also to look for anything that could help. My dark-blue cape fluttered around me when I stopped my run. Spotting a man about to start his motorcycle, I knocked him off of it, started the bike and took off. I cursed myself as I sped off after my quarry, one more thing to atone for. 

As I firewalled the throttle of the sport bike, my mind on it’s own recalled the events that led me on this merry chase. Unfortunately, the story didn’t start with the kidnapping of Graciela, it happened one year ago. I had just became the hero known as Captain Remarkable (I don’t care if you think it’s stupid, I love the name) and I had my first case. 

I stopped an assassin known as Blue Howitzer from killing a senator from Central California named Gordon Kaufman. Yeah, it should’ve been pretty simple right? I should’ve been lauded for my efforts. Except, things didn’t turn out as simple as intended. It turned out that the senator had raped and murdered the bride to be of a man named Jared Light. Oh yeah, he was also a child molester and bankrolled a child pornography ring. I thought that Josiah hired Blue Howitzer to whack Kaufman after the senator had skated on all charges. 

All of this would’ve been fine except after I took Howitzer down, it was discovered after the fact that Howitzer wasn’t an assassin but a vigilante for hire to take Kaufman down by any means necessary; he was trying to beat a confession out of the senator and tape it and I happened upon them. Both Howitzer and the guy who hired him, Josiah Barton were arrested for conspiracy to commit assault and battery.

 So I got a twofer on my first case. Except for the fact that Kaufman was in fact guilty but that wasn’t found out until six months ago. Blue Howitzer a.k.a. Neil Parker was killed in prison and Josiah Barton ended up committing suicide while inside. I tried to play the “I had no idea of the circumstances” card but society pretty much painted me as the real bad guy. 

Cops and other heroes in the community pretty much shunned me after that. Whenever I tried to do anything good, either the cops would “mistakenly” take shots at me or other super heroes would “accidentally” mistake me for a super villain and attack me, even though my costume was blue and gold and about as far from a supervillain costume as it got. Afterward, I’d get a half-hearted apology from the heroes before they moved on while leaving me battered and bloody. The cops never apologized. Not that anybody had to do anything. Every time I looked at my hands I could see the blood on them. 

All of my life, I’d been brought up with a sense of justice and a desire to do good. When I happened upon that alien spaceship that blew up in my face and endowed me with my powers, I took it as a sign that my path was that of a hero. After the tenth….or maybe the eleventh beating by another hero because of a case of mistaken identity however, I was pretty much ready to hang up the costume and get comfortable with being mediocre, Charles Westlake. 

Whenever I thought of the word “mediocre” I couldn’t help but feel depressed. I got depressed because the harsh truth was, without my powers, I was mediocre. Charles Westlake was just another dude with big dreams and ambitions without the talent or heart to match them. I won’t even go into my nonexistent love life. Being a superhero gave me a chance to not only balance the scales of my life but also of justice. I tried to tell myself that I was doing it for the people…and I was! But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that a lot of it was also for me. 

My thoughts drifted back to the present as I pushed the bike up to 90 M.P.H. It was almost midnight on a Friday night and thank goodness for that because traffic was light. Even still, the barracuda swerved between the few cars on the Vincent Thomas Bridge and I followed behind closely. Not too closely though because they lobbed shots at me. Fortunately for yours truly, hitting a moving target at high speeds while swerving wasn’t an easy feat. 

Even still, an errant round blew out the bike’s headlight. The sight of the glass shattering made me jerk the bike and almost dump it but I held it together. As I struggled to keep the bike upright, I wished for the millionth time that I had the power of super-speed or even better, flight. I tried to shut the thoughts out of my mind and focus on the here and now; I couldn’t afford to daydream. I dropped back to give them some space and to make it seem like they discouraged my chase. 

Suddenly my quarry pulled off the bridge and into San Pedro into the warehouse district. They did me a favor by shooting out my headlight because they apparently couldn’t use it to see if I was following them. I followed them at a conservative distance; nearly getting my head blown off made me cautious I’ll admit. Suddenly, I also wished for the power of invulnerability. 

Salt air from the ocean mixed with various industrial smells drifted on the night breeze. I turned off the bike and could hear the muffled screams of the little girl as the kidnappers dragged her to whatever hellish fate they had in store for her. I was parked maybe a warehouse and a half down from my foes; they thought they lost me after I dropped back from nearly getting killed on the bridge. To be fair, most people would’ve been discouraged after that so it was a fair assumption. 

In a crouched run, I dashed to the warehouse they went into which was number 44. By the time I got to it, they slammed the gigantic, rolling door behind them. I didn’t dare try to door to preserve my stealth advantage. I spied a ladder that reached the roof of the warehouse and headed towards it. Reaching the top, I took a nanosecond to take a deep breath to inhale the sea air and hear the waves lapping against the docks. 

The moon was full and it’s shine illuminated everything like a gigantic flashlight. I imagined that I cut a dramatic pose standing there on the roof, my cape billowing in the breeze. If I had time and the wherewithal to take a selfie I would have, but I figured anywhere I posted the picture would ban the image. I chuckled at the embarrassing thought and shifted my focus back to the task at hand. I found a skylight and jimmied the lock. The skylight opened with a small creak and my heart froze in my chest. When it didn’t seem like anybody reacted to the sound I crept through. 

Inside the warehouse was dark save for a couple of ceiling lights that lit the sparse parts of the interior. In the shadows I could make out the forms of stacked, wooden boxes. The illuminated part that really caught my attention was at the far end of the warehouse. The place was made up to look like a real movie set; there were klieg lights that cast bright beams upon a cheap, dirty, double bed that looked like it needed to be burned because of no amount of cleaning would sanitize it. There were pink, satin drapes that surrounded the bed as well. A sick thought occurred to me, the kidnappers paid more attention to the drapes than the bed.

What really grabbed my attention were the three other little girls standing in the corner of the warehouse. One was crying and the other two stood in place listless as if all of the life had been drained out of them. Poor little Graciela was mercilessly shoved towards the other three. Her crying made the other little girl who was already crying, bawl even harder. What was really disturbing (if that was somehow possible) was that the other two zombie-like children didn’t even react to any of this.

“Yeah, fresh meat!” Said a voice in the shadows. The voice was full of bass and sounded like crushed glass. The three thugs who had kidnapped Graciela stood in the overhead light of the warehouse, looking smug and proud of themselves. 

“Just like you wanted, boss! Young, Latina with big eyes!” One of them said, a tall, white man with a hooked nose. He was husky with broad shoulders. He looked and moved like someone who was used to hurting people for fun. 

“We do a job, we do it right, y’know?” Another thug said. He wasn’t as tall as his friend but still on the tall side. He was black with an angular face. He was skinnier than his vocal companion but I could see the cruelty in his eyes that matched his friend. The handle of the Glock in his waistband glinted in the overhead light of the warehouse. 

The third man said nothing, he just smoked a fragrant joint that even carried up to where I was at. He was relaxed in a way that I suspected had nothing to do with the weed. His skin was olive toned and he was ethnically androgynous. In his eyes was the same cruelty as his friends but there was something else in there that I couldn’t quite place.  I could see a pistol sticking out of the back of his waistband. Every instinct that I had screamed out that he would be the most trouble. 

“Just remember, I get to break the new one in first. Once I’m done, you get to feast. You get to have her and the leftovers, after the scene is done,” The evil voice in the darkness ordered. “Tower, start the cameras.” 

The tall man with the hooked nose went to a camera that was previously unnoticed by me. It was professional quality like a movie studio or a news station and it made me wonder where and how and where they scored the thing. As I pondered, my rage stoked hotter within me to the point that I couldn’t take it anymore. I leapt down on top of one of the stacked boxes below me and climbed down to the ground level. 

The tall, creepy guy never knew what hit him as I snuck up behind him and wrapped my arms around his neck. The only sound he let out was startled croak as I choked him out. I wanted to hold on longer; it took every ounce of self-control to not snap his neck or strangle him to death. I had to remind myself that I was not a killer. I vowed a long time ago to not fight killers by becoming one. I got a lot of shit for it by the harder-core crowd who believed in the judge, jury, and executioner bullcrap. 

As tempting as it was to stoop to the level of the criminals I fought, there was a part of me that still believed that everyone had a chance for redemption, even the most evil of us. Hell, redemption was the whole reason why I was in that hell hole in the first place. I’d seen the power of redemption first-hand. 

A friend of mine named Ted Jones who had killed three people which included a five year-old child in a drive-by shooting when he was sixteen. He had gotten mixed up with the Cruising Blades, a local street gang in my old neighborhood. He had been unrepentant when he had gone inside the system. Eight years later when I was in college, he had gotten out and devoted his life to ministry and trying to repay a debt that he could never repay. 

Seeing Ted, one-hundred and eighty degrees different from how I remembered him as a kid, made an impression on me and stuck. I always wondered if he was truly repentant or if something happened to him while he was inside that was so horrific that it forcefully reprogrammed him. Either way, I couldn’t argue with his deeds since. 

That memory was the only reason why I let up on the choke. Lord knows he deserved to die but I wouldn’t be the one to levy that decision. As the pervert slumped the floor, the camera pointed upwards to the ceiling with a loud, thunk. The sound alerted his friends who turned in my direction. 

“I thought we lost him on the bridge!” The thug with the angular features shouted as he pulled his pistol. I was already moving as he fired. The bullets pinged off the camera, destroying it as I dove for the cover of nearby cargo boxes. I could hear the rounds thudding into the wood of the boxes; splinters flew everywhere from the impact.

“Find him and kill him!” The evil voice from the shadows commanded furiously. If I believed in God or the Devil, I imagined that voice belonged to Satan incarnate. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the face that the voice belonged to was red and had long, sharp horns growing from his forehead.

I was already moving around the other side of the boxes as the two thugs searched for my last known location. They were either scared or stupid to not split up. Not to be cocky but I didn’t blame them at all for being scared. Fortunately for me that was to my advantage. I found an errant crowbar lying on a crate, picked it up and hid in the deep shadows of some stacked crates. 

When they came to my position with angular guy in the lead, I got ready. Angular man had his pistol out in front of him. I swung the crowbar at the his wrist and was rewarded with the sound of a sharp cracking of bone. The gun clattered to the ground. He screamed out in pain. His friend, the calm, cool and collected guy finally lost his cool and froze. I swung the blunt end of the crowbar into his chest. He doubled over and followed up with an uppercut strike to his jaw with the crowbar, breaking it.

Fear and adrenaline made “Angular” recover quicker than I anticipated because with a roar, he tackled me from behind to the ground. I lost my grip on the crowbar as he dropped his remaining good fist and elbows on the back of my head. I managed to roll and sweep him from my back to try to get to my feet but I was groggy from the blows. He threw a kick at my stomach that had power and technique to it which told me that I had underestimated him. I felt the wind get driven out of me and I doubled over. He followed up with a knee to my jaw which made me see a blue flash of light and taste the coppery tang of blood in my mouth.

The guy I first choked out had apparently recovered because he wobbled as he came over and started wailing on me as well. I covered up but it was like fighting a hurricane against the two of them. Angular guy threw a slick roundhouse kick that connected with my jaw and his friend lashed out with a powerful, overhead right that sent me reeling to the cold, concrete ground. 

They started stomping on me for good measure and all I could was turtle up and think of how I failed those little girls. Blood streamed out of my nose and mouth and spattered the ground. Part of me wanted to not resist anymore and let myself get beaten to death in that dark, evil place. My two attackers laughed maniacally as they did their best to kill me and I was letting them.

“Captain Remarkable, my ass!” Angular shouted as he stomped me.

“Fuck him and his stupid cape!” Cool guy chimed in.  

Suddenly from the darkness, that vicious voice boomed, “Stop! I don’t want him dead, not yet. Bring him here.”

To my relief or disappointment I wasn’t sure which, they stopped their attack. My bones and aching muscles at least expressed relief when they relented. They picked up my dazed form under both arms and dragged me to the lighted spot in the center of the warehouse. When they got there, they dropped me like a sack of potatoes and I lied there in a heap. 

“Raise his head up,” the voice said. They did as he commanded and raised my bloody head up. Blood dripped down my blue and gold uniform. My vision was blurry and all I saw brightly colored spots and I tried to refocus my vision. In the distance though my hearing was also distorted, I heard the sound of metal grinding on concrete and heavy footsteps. 

Soon a form came along to accompany the sounds, a huge form. As my vision cleared up, I saw a literal giant of a man. He stood at least eight feet tall and was filled with rippling muscles that shown even through his tattered, gray trenchcoat. His scraggily black hair was plastered over his face but still revealed a bright white, evil smile. His hair couldn’t hide his face with the protruding eyebrows and granite, square jaw which made him look like a Neanderthal. In his left hand he dragged a humongous sledge-hammer which I was sure was meant for my head. 

I’d heard of this guy, his name was, The Behemoth. He was feared throughout the underworld and his name had been spoken is hushed whispers. Even from seventy-five feet off, he was massive and seemed to take up the whole, gigantic warehouse. Despite my impending doom I suddenly smiled a bloody, crooked smile. I felt a familiar click behind my eyes as my powers finally clicked on. It was my turn to laugh maniacally. I started slow and low at first and let and build. Everyone in the warehouse was taken aback by my sudden fit of insanity.t

My powers are a funny thing, I can mimic the powers of other superhumans but only when I’m around them. I’ve estimated its range to about seventy-five feet; when I’m in that radius I can maintain the mimic indefinitely. When I’m out of the radius, they last for only three minutes. I always say that when I’m around other supers, I’m unstoppable or at least I can break dead-even with them. 

Strength from the approaching monster filled my body. I shoved my captors off of me and they flew thirty feet from me, both slamming into crates on either side of the warehouse, slumping to the ground unconscious. I stood up, still sore from the beating I took, still bleeding but when I saw those little girls cowering in the background, my lost confidence was supplanted with rage. 

The monster looked surprised at first and then smiled savagely. “So the heroic pussy still has a little fight left in him left, huh? Okay then, I’d prefer it if you didn’t make it easy anyway,”   

To answer him, I threw a right cross instead of my words. Not only was he hurt by the force of my blow he was also surprised by it; I could see the confusion in his eyes as he stumbled backwards. He rubbed his jaw and nodded slowly to himself. “Oh, this is gonna be fun!” He growled as he swung his massive hammer. 

I felt that along with his strength he also had enhanced durability but I wasn’t exactly up for testing that gut feeling. Instead, I deftly dashed to the side, narrowly avoiding the hammer; my injuries from my earlier beating slowed me down a tad. The hammer slammed into the ground where I once stood and created a huge crater. The shockwave from the resulting impact made everybody including myself, fly backwards. Meanwhile he stood his ground. I landed on my back fifteen feet away from where I once was.

A bestial-like grin filled his features as I stood up. As I was recovering my bearings he flung the hammer at me. The flat of the weapon caught me full in the chest. I reckoned that the force was enough to bring down a small building. All the breath was driven out of me and I coughed up blood. Not only that, the force of the blow sent me careening through the far, cinderblock wall, smashing through it. 

Slowly I got to my knees as I coughed up blood, spitting it on the ground. The cool night air hit me like a pimp slap to the face. My costume was in tatters to say nothing of my cape, that thing was nothing but cloth streamers at that point. I could hear The Behemoth’s footsteps pound towards me in a sprint. I barely had time to get my arms in front of my face as he slammed a powerful haymaker against my arms. The impact made me slide backwards; I almost fell over the docks and into the cold water. 

Barely managing to duck the next few shots I tried to take a sneaky swing at his kidneys but my arms were numb from my foe’s clubbing blows. He saw my feeble attempt at a punch and with that evil smile that seemed permanently etched on his face, he rained both of his colossal fists onto my back. I screamed out in agony as I was again forced to my knees. Speaking of knees, he rammed his into the point of my jaw. The familiar sight of stars from my neurons being scrambled filled my vision as I went soaring through the sky into the dark black ocean. I didn’t even feel my body make impact with the water.

When the water started to fill my lungs, my body woke up from my unconscious stupor. It took a moment to realize where I was as my brain struggled to reorient itself. Apparently I wasn’t out long because I still had that monster’s strength. With his power, I swam to the surface with record speed. When my head broke the surface, air had never tasted sweeter than in that exact moment. I gasped and drank in my fill, coughing up the sea water that I ingested. I hurt all over but my rage numbed that pain. 

Swimming faster than any Olympic gold medalist in history, I made for the docks. I figured I covered a mile in about a minute because the man-monster had gone from a dot on the horizon to Kaiju-huge,  quickly. I imagined that he thought he had finished me and he was standing there, gloating, figuring that nothing stood between him and those little girls. Oh how wrong he was. 

Leaping out of the water like a flying-fish I clung onto his back. He let out a surprised gasp as I constricted my arms around his neck. “Round two, Motherfucker!” I shouted as I began to squeeze tightly. He bucked and writhed and tried to pull my arms off of his throat but he couldn’t shake me. I figured it was his first time fighting someone with his equal strength because he was panicking, I could feel it and read it in his movements. 

He changed tactics and started slamming his fists onto my back. I closed my eyes and gritted with each high impact blow. With a groan, he pitched forward and Judo-threw me off his back. I smashed into the concrete ground, leaving a body shaped hole. He coughed and gagged as he tried to recover his wind. 

On wobbly legs, he staggered as he tried to catch his breath. Meanwhile I got to my feet, ignoring the anguish that wracked my entire being. It was weird but at that moment, all of my failures, fears and humiliations came rushing to the forefront of my mind. I thought about Blue Howitzer and Josiah Barton and the shame and humiliation of their deaths and letting Senator Kaufman get away with his crimes. I thought of the taunts and the beatings from the other supers that I endured. I remembered the jeers of the cops and nearly being killed by them. 

All of this boiled into a tempest of fury that permeated entire being. That fury boiled over and I lashed out. It was my turn to transform into the unyielding hurricane as I swung wildly at the bastard beast. Two good punches became three, then four, then five. After the twelfth, I lost count. My fists on his face filled me with a satisfaction that I had long since forgotten. My final strike was a massively potent, overhand right which sent him smashing through the wall and right back into the warehouse. I heard his body hit the ground with a thud and he lay still. 

I limped into warehouse, dragging the monster’s hammer behind me. He lay prone, blood streaming out of the corner of his mouth and breathing shallow. I thought of all of the misery this bastard caused and lifted the hammer over my head. I knew, I knew, that removing this curse from the count would make the world a better place. But then just as suddenly I dropped the hammer. I also knew that decision was not up to me. 

Over the last few months I had a lot taken from me but if I let this guy take my moral core then all of my haters and doubters would win. I’d be just another animal who let his feelings dictate his actions instead of logic. His henchmen started coming to and saw me standing ragged but triumphant over their boss. I growled, “Don’t even think about trying to escape!” They got the message and lay still. 

The sounds of the little girls weeping harmonized with the sirens in the distance. I turned to them and said, “You’re safe now, the cops will be here any moment. These monsters can’t hurt you anymore.” I wondered how true my statement actually was; I couldn’t imagine the horrors that they endured and I wondered if they could ever be made whole again. 

By the time the first tires screeched to a halt, I was gone from the scene. As I hobbled from the warehouse I could hear the sounds of cops shouting orders and even the ratchets of handcuffs and the cacophony of radio calls for backup. My borrowed super-strength was beginning to fade and I hoped that I could make it to a hospital. I decided that I could make it and as long as I ditched what was left of my costume, I could pretend to the doctors that I was victim of a mugging. My clothes and ID were at home but I’d figure something out. 

I wondered about my future as a hero in L.A. and ruminated on whether I needed a change of scenery. I wondered if I had finally redeemed myself. Then I realized that my redemption really didn’t matter. People would spin things however they wanted and I couldn’t control that. I did know that I did right by those little girls and that was enough. 

In some small way, I hoped that I made amends for the deaths that were on my head. I said a silent apology to Blue Howitzer and Josiah and realized in that moment it wasn’t just them that I had to make amends to, I also had to make amends to myself. For the first time in months, I felt a confidence that was like meeting up with a long-lost old friend. If Charles Westlake could recover then maybe Captain Remarkable could too. The dark road to the hospital seemed a bit brighter and I walked with more strength in my steps. 

The End