POPGEEK

I’m trying this again. Please reinforce my fragile ego. I’m having tense issues, as in, I keep writing in present tense even though I’m pretty sure that’s a shitty idea.

Prologue

One Week From Today.

Superman’s head shatters.

The bullet breaks apart the Man of Steel’s plastic noggin and continues with velocity into the back wall of this shitty little closet, packed to the rafters with toys for grown men.

“Ike, come on out. Let’s do this face to face. I get that you’re scared.”

“I should be! You’re shooting at me!”

Ike hears a small distant thud, Sean’s pistol hitting the worn carpet of the darkened office cube farm outside the closet door. There’s a beat of silence.

Ike looks down at Veronica’s unconscious form, her body sprawled haphazardly over two large cases of Witchblade maquettes. There’s a large bump on her forehead and it’s shiny even in the closet’s near-darkness. He stares at the small of her back and the visible bit of her underpants. Her skin is so white, it glows.

“Ike? Don’t test me.”

It occurs to Ike that this was never supposed to happen—but then most of the time, when one is being shot at, it’s not supposed to be happening. Ike wishes he were at home in the crummy recliner he pulled out of his neighbor’s trash six years ago, settling his ass cheeks into the cushion’s familiar imprint for a night of Twilight Zone reruns. He has wished this same wish about seventy times over the course of the past fifteen minutes. It has yet to come true.

Instead, he’s here, and he’s shaking a little but it’s to be expected, because he can see through the bullet hole in the shitty little closet’s door and Sean is closer than Ike thought, arms extended forward into pudgy claws like Batman crawling out of the Batmobile in that full-page Frank Miller splash from Dark Knight Returns…

Ike opens the door.