It all began in a seemingly innocent way. Twins were born to a middle-class couple, and the exhausted mother and proud father stared down at their children: a serious, pinched looking little girl and a giggly baby boy. It was a scene normal to the hospital staff, and no one paid much attention as family and friends streamed in to welcome the new additions. There were the newly minted grandparents, beaming with pride and there were the new uncles already cracking jokes.
A hush fell over the room as two fully kitted up agents in black suits strode into the room, checking in corners and closets with no time spared for explanations to the family as all but the new mother was ushered out of the room, concern visible on every face. After the room was clear and an agent spoke briefly into his headset, a woman came through the door.
She was petite, almost child-sized, wearing a white outfit that was oddly like scrubs in its clinical cleanliness. She tried to smile at the new mother, but her face crumpled into a sob as she saw the child wrapped in a pink blanket.
"I'm sorry, sister. I'm so sorry." She reached out a hand and snatched it back as blue light danced around her extended hand. She turned and fled out of the door, already dissolving into tears. Behind her on the bed, the joy had drained from her sister's eyes. She stared down at her children with a newly somber look on her face.
"We'll be in touch." One of the men in suits said before they all turned to escort her sister back out of the room.
Her husband raced back to her side and checked her and the babies over frantically as he took in her bleak face with the tears streaming down it. "What is it, honey? What's wrong?"
She shook her head fiercely, trying not to let the terrible truth out.
And just like that, a life that had started in a leap of joy began its downward descent into indifference.
Growing up, we never really knew why Dad always worked long nights, why Mom had to have her “special juice” with every meal, why sometimes she would just stare at me like I was a changeling who took over her daughter’s body. But my brother and I had each other, and that got us through a lot. Like most twins, we spent almost every minute together and didn’t start to seek outside friends until we were close to ten years old. Even then, we were each other’s closest friends, the one who was there when the parents of the other kids wouldn’t let them come over, and when our mom wasn’t awake enough to take us to the other parents’ houses.
Tom was really only different from me in one way. He really loved superheroes. I never understood the appeal, but I was content to play the damsel while he ran around in a cape. Until mom caught him and yanked the towel from around his neck and sat us both down to another long lecture about how superheroes were freaks taking away jobs from “normal” police officers and soldiers. How all they did was cost the taxpayers money and ruin the infrastructure of a city while living lavishly in government high rises.
It took a while to learn that our home was different from our friends, and you know how it is for people to think you’re different. We tried to hide it as much as we could, and we managed to slowly fade from “those poor kids” to “those kids” which was more than we had dared hope for. My brother and I had even attained some level of normalcy among our peers before we hit sixteen. Then my mom sat me down for what was sure to be a super awkward conversation about being a woman and having sex and all of that nonsense I learned at 13 from my friends.
“You’re an abomination.” I blinked. Surely I hadn’t just heard…? “If I hadn’t borne you from my own body I wouldn’t believe you could be my child. You and that filthy sister of mine-”
“I have an aunt?” I couldn’t help but interrupt, though the look she shot me made me deflate and remain silent, leaving my questions to spin around inside of my head.
“You’re all alike. You’ll put innocent people in danger and ruin everyone’s life. You’ve already ruined mine.” She shot me another filthy look, more anger in her expression even than I had seen after my attempt to pour all of her alcohol down the drain when I was fourteen. She locked me in my room every night for a month after that. “I just thought you should know that before you hurt anyone.” She spat as she rose from the table so suddenly I was left with my mouth flapping.
“Wait! What powers? How do I control them? Who was my aunt?” I scrambled after her.
She sniffed as she filled a rocks glass halfway to the top. Johnny Walker. Neat. “I don’t know what you’ll be able to do. My sister was a master manipulator.” I frowned. That didn’t sound like a superpower. She took a big gulp of her drink. “Her name was ‘Dolore’. Try not to break your father’s computer.” On that, she turned to take the stairs to her bedroom.
I stared after her, completely flabbergasted. Cautiously, I walked into my father’s study and turned on the monitor’s screen. Was I really about to search for this? Did I even believe my mother? No, no, I really didn’t. It was too far fetched and irrational. Before I could make the decision to leave, my fingers were typing “Dolore superhero” into the search engine bar.
I hesitated before clicking on the first search result. Was I really, really doing this? This wasn't a rational belief. This wasn't something I even wanted to be true. Couldn't I just write it off as one of my mother's drunken ramblings?
No. She was sober until she told me. She made a point of it. I hadn't seen her sober on purpose in months. Maybe even the whole of last year? It was before my last birthday. That's right...
I clicked the link. There was nothing else to be done. I'd wonder forever if I couldn't prove it.
But I just couldn't tell. There was a little bit about her, a newspaper clipping or two from small towns, always different ones. Weren't heroes assigned to their towns? Didn't they stay in one place and protect the citizens? Maybe she just didn't fit anywhere. I guess I could understand that. There was no mention of what her powers were. No mention of what her name meant. Her costume was bland and boring. Nondescript, really. A blue leotard over white leggings. So early hero wear. Tacky, really. Though I guess it was long enough ago she could be forgiven, I realized, glancing at the newspaper dates and realizing they were almost forty years old. I didn't know what to make of it. I went back to the search results and scanned further down. Everything was generic. Her on government rosters of superheroes, her in a photo with her basic training classmates, her being a spokesperson for some small-town restaurant.
I typed "Dolore Superhero Powers" into the search engine and tried again. "Powers: Unknown" "Powers: Classified" "Powers: insert text here"
I went to the second page of the search engine. The. Second. Page. And there was a small conspiracy website. "Heroes or Villains?!? Is the government covering up and paying villains as heroes?!?!?!?!" Well, it was worth a shot.
"Dolore was believed to be a villain contracted by the government to perform city cleansing. Unexplained suicides skyrocketed in the towns she was present in, being unmistakable proof of her being a government assassin of some sort. This is further proven by the frequency of her moves and the secretive nature of the government in response to requests as to information about the nature of her powers. This is clearly irrefutable proof of the government's plot to assassinate private citizens with superheroes or rather villains masquerading as heroes. There is no evidence of Dolore ever retiring from the game, but there is a note in her file as ‘on medical leave’ though that has been in place for over twenty years. She was probably trapped inside a government prison and left to die in a white jumpsuit."
Well, okay, so... That wasn't exactly a reputable source. I clicked on the links to the newspaper articles about the suicides and it's true that there was an astonishing coincidence there, but a government assassin? That seems like it's pushing it just a little bit, don't you think? I guess that's what I thought. Or maybe I didn't know what to think. I turned off the computer and went upstairs to my room. I sat awake thinking for a long time, hearing my brother play on his computer in the next room. Should I tell him about this? No, no, not until I'm sure this isn't just another one of Mom's rantings.
As I sat there increasingly sure that this was all just Mom trying to make me worry, I got mad. I mean, really mad. I don’t think I’d ever been that mad in my life. Mom being weird to me was normal. Mom being mean to me I could deal with. Mom lying, Mom drinking, Mom declaring random things true. All of these I was sadly used to. But this? After how clear she had made her opinion of heroes over the years, that they were worse than gutter trash, a plague upon humanity, the reason for inflation, taxes, and the common cold. And now to declare I was one of them? That was a pretty clear indication of how she felt about me, then, wasn’t it? I was livid. In anger, I did something I never had before. I punched the wall. That really hurt. But as I did, I saw a red flash, and as I blinked to clear my eyes, realized I had burned a hole in the drywall, neatly fist-sized and with every knuckle outlined. I think I screamed? I know I passed out. When I woke up, my brother was standing there looking down at me all concerned. “Oh, shit,” I mumbled, eyes going round as saucers.
“What the hell was that?” He asked, not without due concern.
“Um… I have no idea.” I lied badly. I shifted into a sitting position and looked warily at my hands. No damage, not even scraped knuckles, and they felt normal again.
He caught sight of the wall, and his eyes went wide too. “Did you do that?”
As I looked back at my handiwork, I could see radiating scorch marks, and a small wisp of smoke floating away. “Maybe?” I am a really, really bad liar.
“What the hell happened?” He stared at me, and I saw excitement flickering in his eyes. With a sickening feeling pooling in my stomach, I suddenly remembered our childhood stories. I suddenly remembered the secrets he would whisper when we were at our loneliest and saddest. I wanted a mom, a real one. He wanted to be a hero, to save people. He said that would be better than, more important than, anything in the world ever.
“Do you have powers, Anna? Could it be that we're powered twins?” He grinned ear to ear, almost splitting his face. I felt a spurt of relief. Maybe we were! That happened sometimes. Oh, this would be so much easier to bear if I had him there to bear it with me.
“I- I think I might, Tom.” I gulped, my voice sounded foreign to my ears. “Mom said I did, and, well, there’s that.” I waved vaguely to the wall. He moved to examine it more closely.
“Fire or heat, maybe? Did Mom say anything?” He came and sat next to me criss-cross style; like we used to.
“She said we have an aunt.” I laughed at the surprise on his face. “I couldn’t find a lot of information. It looks like she moved towns a lot, and she hasn’t been active in twenty years.”
He looked thoughtful. “Anything about her powers?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. Not a peep.”
He frowned. “That’s strange. Not a single mention?”
“Well…” I grimaced. “There was one conspiracy site that claimed she was a government assassin, but…” He started laughing and I had to grin. “There was some pretty suspicious stuff about suicides in towns she was in as resident hero at the time. It was just maybe too weird to be a coincidence, so I see where they’re coming from, I guess.”
“Hmm…” He cocked his head to the side as he thought. He shot a glance at the wall behind us. “Can you do it again?”
His childish grin was infectious. I found myself reciprocating as I thought back. “Maybe?” I echoed my earlier reply. “All I did was punch the wall.” I stood and tapped the wall with my fist, but there was no flash of red, no sizzle of heat.
“Well, you have to punch it, Anna.” He teased me. I grimaced, contemplating how my hand had felt the last time. Nothing for it, I guess.
“Ow, mother fucking hell!” I yelped, jumping up and down with my fist cradled in my hand. There was no dent in the wall where I had performed my latest test, just a burning sensation on my knuckles that had absolutely nothing to do with fire.
“Okay, so that’s not how you do it.” I glared at him as he was struggling to hide his amusement.
“Yeah, why don’t you give it a shot?” I snapped.
“I could try, but I might end up popping a vein just trying to ‘do super stuff’ with no idea of what I’m trying to do.” He maintained his amusement through my barrage of cursing. “What were you doing when you punched the wall?”
I thought for a moment. “Mentally cursing Mom?”
“You were mad?” He asked, surprised.
“What, like that’s never happened?” I said defensively. “She was being a real bitch, and-”
“No, no, I mean, that’s important!” He cut me off. “You must have to get mad to use it!”
“That’s a thing?” I asked, perplexed. “How does anybody control it?”
He shrugged. “But, yeah, it’s a thing. So, get mad again!”
I tried. Finally, after about ten minutes, my shoulders slumped. “It’s not gonna happen, Tom. I’m too keyed up to get mad on command.
That’s when he punched me.
“What the fuck?!” I screamed at him as soon as I could draw breath again. I half expected Mom to come running in. She must have already passed out.
“Are you mad, Anna?” He asked with a calm betrayed by his wildly glittering eyes.
“Fuck, yes, I’m mad, you fucking prick!”
“Punch the wall.”
I screamed as I did, a hoarse yell of rage that had never come out of me before. There was a flash of red and my fist left another perfect scorch mark. Tom’s eyes lit up with glee and he began trying to recreate the phenomenon.
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