"Oh no! Help! He's about to jump!"
A skinny boy sprinted towards the building the man had jumped from, throwing himself against it and launching into the air from it— breaking one of the windows, but that didn't matter for right now.
He caught the man and continued falling, but he was only several feet from the ground, so he just placed the man down. He, however, continued to skid on the concrete for several paces. He dug his elbows into the concrete, stopping himself.
Okay, not exactly graceful, his mind snarled, and not perfect either. There's a lot of blood.
Work on that!
The man stood up, blinking. He wasn't falling anymore, and clearly he was shocked. He recovered quickly enough, and Alfred walked away.
Alfred found himself at a coffee shop. Okay, okay, fine, he wasn't the best hero, much less a superhero. He was a superhero, though, and that was... exactly what he didn't need. It was hardly relevant, people bugged him about it, and somehow things that required his attention only happened when he was meeting up with someone, and now... well, now he didn't have any plans, seeing as his date apparently hadn't showed up at all.
Alfred stepped inside, and ordered a "full glass of espresso" as he'd put it. Admittedly, he hadn't slept in a few days, what with all the crap he had to do for college— and while he hated the bitterness, it would serve him justice where it was duly needed.
Now, he had no homework. He should've been home, getting some sleep, but he couldn't sleep and his house was barely a home. He'd bought a house with a large amount of money he'd won a couple years back, back when he was still in high school and had hope, but that was far away, and now the housing market was shit and he couldn't move.
"And I warned you it would be like this, you little piece of shit."
Alfred chuckled, taking a sip out of the cup of coffee. He pulled out his laptop. An article about trauma pulled up.
Alfred had quite a bit of unresolved childhood trauma, and it was just recently that he was beginning to call it that as opposed to "having the quality of being a prissy ass bitch".
And, yes, yes, Alfred knew that having a traumatic childhood was such a cliché thing for a superhero. But it wasn't his fault (or maybe it was). He couldn't change the past; and he had tried.
After finishing the whole damn cup of coffee, he paid and left.
(I don't know how to do transitions, so here you go. I'm sorry.)
Long after finishing the cup of coffee, Alfred entered his room. It smelled like beef jerkey and spoiled fruit. "Ugh. I should probably clean, huh?"
Alfred's way of coping with day to day life was to pretend that there was a camera recording him; that he was entertaining people with his existence, that his life had purpose. He entertained that last idea; though he wasn't quite sure if he believed it.
"But that doesn't matter for now!" Alfred smiled, and then he began collecting all the trash in his room and putting it in a bucket, before putting up his clothes and fixing his bed and rearranging his shelves and—
Alfred could move extremely quickly— just barely superhero quickly, but superhero quickly. He preferred to just move at the rate of a normal human, to enjoy the process.
He pulled out the vacuum. Now he really couldn't move fast. One time, he'd been in a rush and had tried to vacuum as fast as possible, and, well— let's just say that that hadn't turned out too well.
Alfred tried not to dwell on the fact that his date hadn't been at the coffee shop. To be fair, I was late... he thought to himself.
He was shaking. Itching to do something, anything.
Or maybe it's that I'm just not respected. I fail most of the time.
He went downstairs and began to wash the dishes, something he'd both been procrastinating and hadn't actually found time to do in the past few days.
A lot of people said that you 'had to be confident to be strong', that you 'had to let go', but there were very few things that Alfred's mind would flit between— except for when he was saving someone, which didn't take too much time or energy. Alfred hardly even had to think of it.
Once he was done vacuuming, he finally fell asleep.
Reviews would be wonderful. Remember to drink water and have a lovely, safe day.
