Bob exited the hospital at 9:00 AM and paid half of the fee with most of the remaining money that he had stashed for his retirement.
But, he smiled. The clean air, he sighed in, letting the burdens of money drop from his shoulders. Finally, after all these years, with no hope, nothing to wish for. Finally, finally, finally.
Forkman, a new pseudonym, a new name for him to fight with. Perhaps, something like Prophylaxis, or The Righteous One, but he liked Forkman.
Bob rested his feet upon the park bench, rested his head on the metal bars, and napped in the soft sun. No more worries about money. The hospital was gone. They were all gone. The years of studying business and economy. The years of worrying about money and income.
All gone. All gone. All gone. He was to survive and walk as a new person. Forkman. Forkman. Forkman…
After a while, he woke up to a family of four staring at him and a sun eclipsed by a cloud.
He stood up, tired, woozy, drunk in peace, and calm. He sighed and walked home. He felt a bit funny, a bit empty, a bit guilty, but very content. Happy with his place in the world. His freedom. He had no worries because he had no job. Strange how that’d happened.
Bob visited the art exhibition at night, staring at the interesting paintings. He liked a very good painting, “The remembrance of lost things”, containing a fantastically cosmic eye that ‘continuously stared into the soul and formed unease in the heart’, reading the description he felt none of that, but only a deep nostalgia that made him warm. He stared at it, looking at the same painting again and again like he was trying to remember something, and that this singular eye was the catalyst for the remembrance of forgotten things.
But all he remembered was that he had wanted to be a painter a long time ago. But, as he had run forward, something had gotten tangled into the mix.
Now, he sold the paper. So he could hear that endless whine of lasers skimming the infinite papers. Sales reports, bar graphs, all scrawled in illegible lettering until his eyes grew red and dim, so he could grope blindly for the next sheet and write checks and sales reports.
But, he had a gigantic canvas hidden in the basement of his home. In it, there was a single drop of paint, a single stroke of color, and a figure. Hidden deep behind it was a chaotic rush of color and lines going across the bare canvas in a beautiful image of Everything.
Years and years, but where had it gone? He hadn’t painted on that canvas. It had been rotting away forever in a warehouse somewhere. He hadn’t painted on it for years. Perhaps, today was the day.
But, he didn’t need to worry about painting. He would be something free. A superhero. A man with a fork, who had powers. He would save people in need, and, finally, leave his job and enjoy the last years of his life as a man who fought supervillains.
The quiet valley filled with deer that nibbled on the wild grass. Around him, trees grew from the earthen walls of the forest, and vines curled around the strong stumps. It was an oasis of rotting beauty, and there was nobody. Nobody at all.
Bob sat on the grass, on a homemade bench, in his homemade shed, where he had been living for the past few years. A few logs stacked themselves together in a zigzag pattern until it formed a crumbling pyre. There was a lightbulb at the top, flickering and buzzing, and a cloud of bugs that were fried alive on the touch of the glass.
He held a fork. Three actually, one shoddily carved from wood, one made of metal, and one drawn on a piece of paper. The metal one was cold, rusty, overused, bent in many places. The wooden one had splintered, frayed at the handle, was freshly carved, and could be easily broken. The piece of paper had a burnt mark, a streak, that stretched down it quickly until it dimmed.
He held the metal spoon, and he could feel it enveloping him. He could feel the weight of gravity fade away, a burden fading from his shoulders. And then, he stepped forward, felt the grass bend underneath his worn soles. He crouched down, picked up a pebble, and gently tapped it against his palm. It split open, revealing a mixture of quartz smashed against white limestone chalk. When he tested the wooden spoon, nothing happened, nor did the drawn-on-paper one, so thus, he wrote it down.
Now, what was there to do?
He checked the radio for something from the news. CNN, NPR, Local News Channels, Police Radios. There was quiet all over, static sometimes, and a mixture of calm, soothing voices, talking about politics, fast cars, and more.
No bank robberies, no crime, nothing in the city. It was a quiet place, for quiet people, and quiet things happened in areas like that. Ah yes, there was no crime.
But tomorrow, he would fight crime. Tomorrow! Soon, he would retire from the years of hard work...
When Randy arrived at George’s place, he had been running for two hours, in that rain. Cars rang their horns at him. The rain made his clothes cling to his skin. Wet and miserable, he ran as people yelled at him and children curiously reached out to touch him while their parents looked disapprovingly
At midnight, he reached George’s place, steel beams stuck into the dirt, with a steel plate roof, to form a makeshift shelter.
“F-Ouch-ing children”, Randy shivered in the frost of the cold.
He heard the shudder of metal, turned around, and laughed at George’s pitiful attempt to get his fat body out of the tent.
“Oh, hey”, George waved. Then, he drank from a rusty tin can. He smelt the fresh brew of coffee, crushed from the finest grains of the trash heap. Boiled in used coffee filters and mixed with the spine of a pet weasel.
“Y-y-you sterilize that?”
Randy laughed suddenly, while George made a small smile at him. He didn’t reply.
“It isn’t too safe here because of a raid. The police came.”, George stared at him. “What?” Randy shook his head, “They were at my place too. They’re everywhere now. God, they shot down most of the people living near Brita Street.”
Randy sighed. George paused to drink further from his mug.
“What to do?...”, Randy sat down. “So many dead.”
George didn’t reply, shivering as the wind beat against his wiry body.
“But, all of that police. That kind of thing never happened. They used to take care. Those government apartments. Families livin’ inside them. Tommy, that kid who dropped out of high school. And then, so many people. Free, but then crime… Then poverty… But it wasn’t our fault. It was those frickin’ drug lords, who’d shot someone dead.”
“I dunno’. The apartments weren’t great”, George murmured.
“The police again, and idiotic everything! Everyone! Why the hell! Why the hell do I have to worry about the police every day? I can’t sleep on a bench without someone looking at me. I can’t warm myself near a-”
“We’re safe here.”, George nodded and smiled toward him again.
“Aren’t their patrols?”, Randy sighed, stared at George in the eyes, “I don’t know why you’ve still survived. Anything that comes through one end of your ear goes out the other way.”
George quieted down and shuffled back into his abode.
“Quiet, George”, Randy sat against the muddy wall, “I’m thinking...”
“Sorry”, George whispered.
“I’m thinking...”, He screamed aloud, ”Don’t you want to survive the police! Dammit, shut-!”
A great pain filled his mind, like thousands of carved clay spikes stabbing through his skull.
“What?!”, George backed away, “Stop that, why are you screaming! Please stop! I’m s-s-sorry, alright, I didn’t mean what I meant-”
George continued to ramble.
But, he ignored this. In his eyes, Randy saw small fires, blazing lively inside everything. When he reached out his hands, he could manipulate each of them. First, he slowly increased the flame of a broken can.
As he continued, he began to see it slowly levitate.
George shook his head, in sudden disbelief, as the rusty can split apart.
“I think I’ve figured it out, George...”, Randy jumped up, “I’ve figured it out!”
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