In a Flash
Lois stared nervously into the camera. Nausea stirred her guts and she swallowed hard. She shivered in her satin nightgown, skin prickling with goose bumps. Her hair was a knotted mess from flying through the night air in Superman's arms.
She couldn't believe what was happening.
It started when he entered her apartment through her window, with stealth she didn't know he had. But in hindsight, she should have known. He didn't make a sound when he flew, when he hovered. He'd melted the latch on her third floor window and hovered inside, suspended inches above the floor.
She woke up when he put his palm over her mouth. His hand was hot, muscular and very, very big. She'd never feared Superman until that moment. His large hands, which had always seemed to promise safety, now made her wonder how easily he could crush her jaw.
He seemed to have grown in height. She never imagined how menacing he could be.
She lay paralyzed in bed as he pulled the bed sheet to the floor. She instinctively grabbed for his wrist. He simply stopped, looked at her and said, "You can't fight him."
Him?
But there was something unsettling about his gaze, like he was spaced out, like he was distracted by something and not really looking at her, but through her.
He slid his hands under her and lifted her up.
"Clark?" She said tentatively.
He paused briefly, blinked rapidly, and resumed his path, headed for the window.
She began to struggle. "Stop. What are you doing?" She demanded. When he didn't answer, Lois began to fight. She kicked her legs and screamed. She knew it was pointless, but she wasn't going to go without a fight.
Something seemed to snap inside him, however, and he gripped her tightly and gave her a shake. Lois gasped in pain as she felt a rib crack inside her, the noise wet and muffled.
Clark dropped her.
She moaned in pain, her leg burning excruciatingly. She pulled up her nightgown with shaking fingers and saw a handprint-shaped bruise already forming, red and black and ugly as all hell. She drew breath and moaned again. It hurt to breathe.
Superman leaned down and said to her, "Don't fight him. He doesn't want to hurt you. But I will if you resist."
It was amazing how successfully her pain produced her cooperation. She didn't fight again, and allowed Superman—or whatever was controlling him—to carry her out into the night air.
She tried calling to him every few minutes, urging him to stop, to reconsider. Always using his name, using her name, but it was to no avail. He seemed sealed away inside, and the only thing that gave her a sense that he could hear her was a twitch in his facial muscles, or rapid blinking, or, in one heart-stopping moment, a faltering flight pattern.
They had arrived here at the Metropolis News 8 Studio just a minute ago, but the place had cleared out in a matter of seconds. There were chairs and papers scattered over the sleek, tiled studio, spilled coffee, things like that.
Lois squinted up at the bright white stage lights. All the anchor people had fled. Security guards fired their guns empty after Superman dropped her in the chair and could do nothing else but call for backup.
Lois sat anxiously in the anchorman's seat, stiff from pain, her mouth dry.
The cameraman stood behind his equipment. He was shaking, the camera's handle rattling under his grip. The guy with the microphone was frozen in place, waiting for her to speak.
In the control room sat a group of people, rapt and afraid to move. The ON AIR sign was lit.
A man cued the shot, counting down with fingers then pointing at her at the final second. Lois looked down at the piece of paper Superman had given her. He stood behind her, hands on her shoulders.
Lois began reading to the camera.
TWO DAYS EARLIER.
You know, it never fails. Get in the shower and there's a knock at the door.
Well, in my case, it wasn't so much a door as it was the wall.
And it wasn't so much a knock as it was absolute annihilation of the aforementioned wall.
My reaction came instantaneously. It took about four milliseconds. I dodged the flying crumbs of plaster, leaving nothing behind by hanging droplets of water. I watched specs of dust flow inward, interacting with the drops of hanging water. It's like watching a video captured by a slow-motion camera, one of those things that have about a thousand frames per second instead of the standard 25.
Okay, I'm not bragging when I say this—really, I'm not—but it's almost impossible to catch me off guard. So that's why I gotta hand it to the big guy. When he came barreling through the Iranian tiles of my bathroom wall like it was an exploding cake, I gotta admit, I was not expecting him.
As I stood there in my birthday suit, my jaw slack to the floor when I saw that it was Superman who decided to crash—literally.
In the time it took for him to dust off, I was already dry and dressed. "You could have used the door," I remarked, giving him a once over. He didn't look quite like I thought he would, you know, like a squeaky clean mama's boy. Actually, he looked deranged. His hair was limp, overgrown and he had heavy stubble. His suit was torn in places and stained with dark brown down the front, like blood. Hmm. Could Superman bleed?
He raised his head and his eyes flickered like embers. They became brighter and brighter until—Holy crap!
I flung my body to the right as twin beams of neon red cratered another pair of holes in my beautiful Iranian tiles.
A dazed look of astonishment crossed his face. Beams shot out of his eyes again, blasting more holes and obliterating the last of my tiles. I dodged each time, sending dust and shards of tile flying upward. I caught a few chunks and threw them at him, but they exploded into powder. Seriously, he didn't even feel a thing.
"What are you doing?" I demanded finally.
He pulled the sink from the wall and spun it toward me like a discus.
I flashed out of the way and it went through the remainder of the wall—then went crashing through two more. It bounced twice, skidded to a stop in the living room, and fell apart.
All right, that was it. I could deal with the Iranian tiles being annihilated, I wanted to remodel anyway, but the granite sink was the last straw.
He came at me all of a sudden, and damn, he was quick. Faster than I thought. He caught me around the waist and I think I passed out from the force, just for a split second. My brain bounced around a couple of times in my head. Felt like I was bonked in the head with a boulder.
We went through two walls, three, maybe four, who the hell knows. But anyway, I lost count and I was suddenly staring up at Mrs. Sykowski's stunned, wrinkled face gawking out from under Pepto Bismol-pink hair-curlers. "Don't know you know it's rude to stare?" I chided her with a groan just as Superman grabbed me around the neck and went hurtling through the ceiling.
Let's say I became very intimate, very fast, with a lot of concrete and steel beams before finally kissing the night air outside. I was spitting bloody chunks of concrete when he was through and dropped me on the condo rooftop.
I lay there on my back for a few stunned moments, drawing on the Speed Force to heal me. I vibrated my body, slowly at first, then faster and faster until my body healed. I could breathe again without feeling like I was drowning in my own blood and I sat up, lively as ever. I motioned a T with my hands. "Look. Time out. Why are you doing this?"
He opened his mouth to tell me. But a strangled yell wrenched from his throat and his hands flew to the sides of his head. He stood there like that, hunched over, for several seconds, growling through gritted teeth. And that's when I realized he was crushing his own skull.
"Hey, stop!" I protested. I ran over to him and tried to pull his hands free. Blood leaked out of his nose and he dropped to his knees.
I began to hit him hard and fast, rushing around in a red blur around him, fists flying like I'd sudden sprouted a thousand of them. He took every one of those punches like they came from a gnat and still he didn't stop.
I couldn't believe it. I was about to become the guy who watched Superman kill himself.
I spotted a stack of bricks and some cans of tar on the roof, covered with a blue, plastic tarp. I skid over it, began flinging bricks at his head. It knocked one hand free. I began getting excite that it was working, and began throwing faster. In seconds the bricks were almost gone. I snatched up the can of tar and tossed it at him. The lid flew off. Thick, sticky tar splashed all over him, into his eyes, nose. Even his mouth, man. I stopped. "Oops."
Superman started coughing and spitting, but it seemed to snap him out of whatever suicidal tendencies my simple question might have induced.
He looked down at himself, flung tar away. Some drops stretched toward me, like sticky molasses. "Watch the suit," I told him, dodging.
He glared up at me, folded his arms over his chest and launched into a spin. The ground began tearing up where he floated, spinning like a gravity-defying top, flinging off a fine spray of black tar. By the time he was done I was looking less like the Scarlet Speedster, and more like the Taupey Tar-baby.
I tried wiping my face, but the thing with tar is, the more you try to get rid of it, the more it spreads. I groaned. "This is never coming off." I glared up at him. "What the hell is your problem, anyway?"
He exhaled deeply, composing himself. "Darkseid summons you."
I narrowed my eyes. "Who?"
"He summons all of us."
There was a sudden whoosh behind me, like something breathing hard on my neck and I spun around. There was a huge white hole there, a tear in space, bright enough to make me shut my eyes. When I opened them, standing on the other side of the portal was the ugliest mofo I ever saw. I was absolutely sure it couldn't get any worse.
And then he started talking. That was it. Just talking, like Hello, how are you? Harmless, right?
Calm, quiet whisperings came over me, soothing and insidious at the same time. And even as I tried to understand, I was ensnared in the black beauty of what he had to say.
Beams of black light emanated from inside his mouth, like shadows. With each word he uttered, words from another language, the shadow beams grew denser and more numerous. The first two pierced my eyes painlessly, then my forehead, then my mouth, my throat, my chest, my heart. They began to multiply with each word he enunciated in a deep, rumbling voice. The words themselves meant nothing, but I understood them nonetheless. I understood the logic of all of it. I understood the complex philosophy of hopelessness, compressed in its entirety into mere moments.
I couldn't stop listening. I wanted to stop, to pull away, but it was too late. I'd heard too much already and although I can go back in time, doing so will not change what I have inside my mind. Doing so will not change my memories.
The longer I listened, merely moments only, he started making sense. His voice became my own. And I was suddenly, astonishingly, talking to myself, reasoning with myself, telling myself that everything that I'd ever done was in vain. It was a poisonous pep talk, a demon goading on the urge to harm one self, to kill oneself. I understood now, why Superman came to me.
Superman came to my side and we paid obeisance together, fist to the ground, one knee down, the other folded, head bowed.
I looked up at Lord Darkseid and beheld his black glory. And I asked him, "Who's next?"
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