Three hours earlier, Lois Lane had been grappling with the intricate mechanics of The Daily Planet's water cooler.
She pressed the plunger.
This produced a muted gurgle.
But no water.
She bent down to inspect the mechanism, her investigative mind piqued. She had always been like this, ever since she was a kid she couldn't leave a broken machine broken. The Xerox repairman once, jokingly but with a hint of concern, told her that she was putting him out of business.
"Now that's what they call a butt that won't quit."
Lois rolled her eyes in mock disgust.
"Hi, Earl."
"No seriously, you're looking hot! New suit?"
"Yes Earl, it is. Thanks for noticing."
Earl Baker had begun making outrageously flirtatious remarks towards Lois ever since she'd arrived at the paper as an intern. At first she'd been faintly flattered, hiding her slight attraction to the handsome forty-something designer beneath a veil of low key hostility.
Years later, as she and Clark had begun dating, even after they'd been married, Earl's risqué comments actually increased in their frequency and daring. Lois eventually became outraged, even annoyed at Clark's inability to defend her honour, secret identity be damned.
"I really don't think you're his type." Clark had smiled, wryly.
When she stared back at him quizzically, Clark assured Lois that had she been the last woman on Earth, she still wouldn't have been Earl's type.
Lane, for a trained observer, you sure do miss the easy ones.
Now she and Earl were making corridor chit chat. Easy, natural discourse between old friends about The Metropolis Monarchs, good wine and Perry White's aggressive approach to tardiness on deadlines. Perry had been riding Earl pretty hard about improving the interface of the Planet's online content.
"Listen Earl, you tell Perry that if he keeps getting on your case I'll tell everyone he cried like a girl when he saw me in my wedding dress. And another thing-"
Lois was cut short when the lithe figure of Jimmy Olsen sprinted around the corner, skidding to a halt at the cooler where the pair conversed.
"Lois!" he gasped, breathlessly. The Planet was a big building and it looked like the young photographer had sprinted all around it trying to find her.
"Jimmy?"
"Jim? You okay, son?" asked Earl, his playful grin belying genuine concern.
"Yeah, fine Earl. Thanks." Jimmy took a moment to find his breath.
"Sorry Lois, been looking all over. You got a visitor. A crazy. Keeps blabbering something about Ker-plunk and Superman. Normally we'd march him straight out of the door but… you know how it is, since he mentioned Superman we thought you might want the last word."
"Ker-plunk?"
"Not Ker-plunk. Jenga! No.. wait, Helter Skelter!"
"Helter-Skelter?"
"Yeah."
"And Superman."
"Uh-huh!"
"How crazy are we talking here?"
"What, like, on a scale of one to ten?"
"Yeah."
"I'd say about a seven or an eight."
"So… severe mental illness but no access to experimental weapons?"
"Sounds about right."
Lois sighed, her hopes of an early cut dashed before her eyes.
"I'd better go check it out. Thanks for the heads up Jimmy."
Lois and Earl walked their separate ways, leaving Jimmy by the water cooler.
"It's Jim!", he mumbled to nobody in particular.
Lois had been in the game long enough to know the genuine crazies from the people that just wanted attention. This guy was genuine. Probably even dangerous.
She introduced herself and held out her hand.
He merely stared at it and giggled, as if it had a dirty limerick written on the palm.
As Lois sat opposite him she registered the Charles Manson twitch, the paranoid agitation.
The scars.
The shaven head.
The jailhouse swastika tattoo.
The way he rubbed his hands together and glanced furtively around.
Oh yeah, this guy was textbook.
She sat with her back straight, keeping her body language strong but non-confrontational. She was all too aware how easily people like this man were agitated. She also knew that when they became jumpy, someone almost always got hurt.
He gave his name as Eddie Cheevers and before Lois could get a word in, he unleashed a brown toothed, cackling verbal torrent;
"Helter-Skelter man. Helter-Skelter. Gonna be just like before but nothin' like before man. Gonna be dogs eatin' babies on the streets man. Gonna be blood in the gutter. Then the great white nation gonna take it all back, man."
"Uh huh", Lois took it all in, nodding demurely.
"You don't understand man. We been pushed underground man, deep underground. But all that's gonna change man. It's all gonna change 'cause now we got Superman on our side and-"
"I'm sorry," she was genuinely dumbfounded, "Superman?!?"
Lois did not like the man's caramel toothed smile.
"Yes!" the man called Cheevers hissed, "We got Superman on our side. The real Superman. Y'see he's been driven underground too, just like us. But now he's ready, and he's going to lead us, we gonna rise up!"
Flecks of spittle flew from his lips as Cheevers became more excited and animated. His hands flexed, clenching into tight fists.
"He's gonna lead us out of the gutter and we're gonna rise up. He's gonna crush 'em under his boot. The impure. The unclean. The filthy parasites that come into the great US of A like goddamn locusts. He's gonna crush their skulls with his bare hands. He's gonna build paradise for the whites on the bodies of those scum-"
"That's ridiculous!" Lois had bolted out of her chair before she had time to admonish herself for her lack of control.
It was not even the slur upon Clark, Superman, the man she loved, that raised her gorge so much as the perversion of what Superman represented.
Superman.
The man who had fought tirelessly for years, for practically his whole adult life to protect the innocent, the wronged and the oppressed of the whole world regardless of boundaries, borders, races, faiths and politics.
The world seemed to stand still.
Lois was aware that her hands were shaking.
The smile was now gone from the madman's face. In its place was only the featureless expression of a lunatic provoked.
With unnerving speed Eddie Cheevers had risen and lashed out at Lois, clutching at her jaw. Dirty, yellowed fingers dug into her chin with feral strength. He drew close to Lois and hissed in her ear;
"Yeah, I had a feeling you wouldn't believe. See, you're just like them!"
Cheevers' voice was tremulous, his vocal chords strained by a mind that was a cauldron bubbling with hate, rage and perverse excitement.
"But you'll see, lady. You'll all see."
Gagging on the stench of cheap cigars and something sickly sweet that she didn't care to mention, Lois Lane caught a glimpse of something terrifying in Cheevers' eye. It was nothing more than a glint, indefinable but horribly present. She had seen it before in only a few poor, tortured souls. It made her sure, beyond any doubt that the man who now squeezed the smooth, powdered flesh of her face was a killer. A man who had not only taken life, but taken life and enjoyed it. And with that knowledge came the unflinching realization that there was a good chance that he would kill her too. That her life would be ended abruptly and violently in her own office at the whims of a deranged racist psychopath.
She had faced certain death before, had almost become hardened against death and danger. She had smart mouthed terrorists. She had laughed openly at the machinations of deformed monsters and career criminals even as they exposited their grand plans over her bound and gagged form. Only a handful of times had she truly known terror and it was terror that wrenched at her gut as her nostrils were filled with the lunatic's cloying stench. For the first time in her life she was completely paralyzed by fear.
His lips drew close to hers, his bare head nuzzled into her hair. His smell, his aura seemed to envelop her and it was as though it choked the very life from out of her. Sight and sound were lost to her, smothered by an ominous black cloud of total panic.
Dammit, Lois, snap out of it! You've got a few seconds before he tries something. Maybe less. Oh Clark, where are you? Why don't you fly in right now and…
She felt something cold and hard nudge persistently against her rib cage, a knife slid unseen between the buttons of her blouse, gliding toward the underwire of her bra.
No! Clark can't be there to save you all the time, however much he loves you. He belongs to the world. You can get yourself out of this.
"Oooh, don't worry precious," whispered the lilting voice of the psychopath, "I ain't gonna kill ya. 'Least not yet anyways. I just been sent to give you a little incentive!"
All about the ace reporter and her fearsome interviewee, Lois' co-workers had begun to notice her plight. Hushed voices began to reverberate around the Daily Planet's newsroom. Tentatively the paper's staff began to edge toward the pair, creating a perimeter of terrified journalists, all of them wanting to help their respected and adored colleague, none of them wanting to agitate the deranged intruder who held her captive.
"Who is that?"
"He's got her-"
"Keep back, you damn fool, he's got a knife-"
"Security? We've got a situation on news desk-"
"-Get down, he'll see you!"
"What in the Hell is going on here?" bellowed a voice that cowered an entire staff regularly.
Perry White strode out of his office, his every step laden with steely determination. He advanced, unflinching, toward Lois and Cheevers. His intention to startle Lois' attacker long enough for her to maneuver her way out of danger.
Lois seized her chance.
Inwardly thanking Perry for his quick thinking she pushed back hard against Cheevers, her left foot stepping back as her right lashed upward into her assailant's groin.
As Cheevers staggered back in shock and pain, Lois tumbled backward over her chair, colliding with her desk, bringing her working space and its contents crashing to the ground with her.
While the 'Planet's staff rushed to the aid of the reporter, Cheevers bolted out of the office, shoulder barging sports columnist Dave Thomas to the ground on his way out. Kicking the plexi-glass double doors of the open plan editorial suite open with a muddied boot, Cheevers turned to address Lois. A nicotine stained finger was leveled at her, the knife held high above his head for all to see.
"Gonna have ter take a rain-check on our date, little lady. But you and me are gonna get face to face real soon. Trust me."
By now Perry White and Earl Baker were sprinting toward the lunatic, flanked by two diligent security guards. With a sickening grin Cheevers hurled the knife, halfheartedly, at the advancing group, sprinting down the corridor as the weapon clattered harmlessly to the ground.
After being helped to her feet by a newly arrived Jimmy Olsen, Lois caught her breath, staring resolutely after her attacker.
"Great Caesar's ghost Lois," chided a red faced, panting Perry White. "Just what in the blazes was that all about?"
Ignoring him, Lois stared fixedly at the door, walking slowly and deliberately toward it as if in a trance.
"Lois? Lois, can you hear me?"
Lois knelt down and stared at the muddy footprint that Cheevers had left on the door. The angle at which his foot had struck the door had caused the markings to be streaky and blurred but she could still determine a working print from them. She rose to her feet and held out her hand.
"Jimmy. Polaroid!"
Within moments the photographer had scurried to her side and placed a chunky Polaroid camera in her hand. Scowling with determination she photographed the smeared boot print. Her fear had now completely subsided and given way to steely resolution and righteous anger.
"Lois," cautioned Perry, "Whatever you're thinking of doing… Don't!"
Lois snatched the small square of laminated paper from the camera and dried it with a rapid flick of her wrist as she handed the camera back to Jimmy. In seconds the image had formed. The photograph providing Lois with a valuable investigative tool.
"Lois! For God's sake that man could have killed you!"
Without a moment's hesitation Lois strode toward the double doors, leaving silent, awed reporters in her wake.
"Lois!" boomed Perry, "You take one more step and you're fired!"
But by the time the sentence had left the mouth of the Daily Planet's editor, Lois Lane had already swung the door open and made her way down the corridor.