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It was the guinea pig that gave it away.
When Emil was twelve the family still lived in the dingy apartment down the street from the canning factory. They lived with his grandmother, who seemed to have stayed in her rocking chair for so long that she had fused into it. She did little but knit, the whole day through, her eyes glued to old recordings of operas and ballet performances that played about on their little TV set.
(The camerawork was so shaky that he decided they must have been recorded illicitly. He imagined his grandmother as a young woman, sneaking a bulky camera into some dimly-lit theater back in the Old Country, and felt oddly proud.)
His grandmother was also the owner of a particularly foul-tempered cat.
Her name was Babydoll?but she was clearly ancient. Maybe even older than him. Not that it stopped her from acting like she ruled the apartment, or regularly performing amazing feats of acrobatics. She would jump up on the kitchen counter and snatch the fish right out of Emil's mother's hands, and startle his father by leaping onto his chest when he dozed off on the couch. Almost as if she knew that there was nothing they could do about it.
On top of that, they were always yelling at him to feed her. When her yowling failed to awaken him, Babydoll would resort to snapping at his heels until he scrambled off the bed and stumbled into the kitchen, slinking smugly behind him.
All of this, Emil was used to.
The real problem started when, for his twelfth birthday, he asked his parents for a guinea pig.
If it weren't for his friends, he might not have asked. But at that age, it seemed like everyone at school had something. Hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs, even some lizards. And he'd heard of one girl in the seventh grade who kept a pet tarantula.
The first time he brought it up, his mother only sighed.
?We have Babydoll,? she would say. ?Don't you think that's enough??
?But she's not mine,? he would reply. ?I promise I'll take care of it. You and dad won't have to do anything.?
And little by little, his insistence wore away at them, until finally, they relented.
He loved that guinea pig. The problem was, Babydoll didn't seem to have the same opinion. Emil would catch her eyeing Mr. Incredible's cage in her spare time, with an evil glint in those slit-pupils. And he had to be very careful when he took him out.
One day, he came back from school to find that someone had let Mr. Incredible out of his cage. Babydoll was chasing him around the house.
In a panic, he ran behind them. Instead of crouching down and getting out some food to lure her over, he dived after Babydoll and tackled her.
At that moment, Emil remembered thinking no, don't. But also, underneath that?why can't you get along?
The moment he touched her, Babydoll's fur puffed up. She growled, low in her throat.
Then she slipped out and headed straight for Mr. Incredible.
But she didn't eat him. Didn't even claw at him. All she did was reach out at Mr. Incredible with one paw, while Emil looked on in terror, and lightly bat him on the side.
And then?something happened.
As Emil watched, Babydoll's paw seemed to go into Mr. Incredible. Only there wasn't any blood, and the guinea pig didn't show any sign of distress. Instead, he remained perfectly stoic as the two shades of fur?brown and white?started to blend together. As their bodies started to blend together. Mr. Incredible's body seemed to travel further up the cat's front leg, until his head stuck out from her torso, right by her neck.
It looked almost like they had two heads. If it wasn't so frightening, it might have seemed funny.
But it wasn't funny. Emil blinked, deliberately. It was still there. He felt frozen to the spot. His heart went thud-thud-thud, and a roaring noise was starting to build in his ears.
By that time, Emergences had been public knowledge for more than two decades: they already had research and laws and commissions for this sort of thing. And of course, there were the capes, who took it upon themselves to use their powers in service of the law. Just as those who sought to use them for crime.
At this age, he'd already heard of the SELC. It stood for Specialized Emergences Licensing Commission. But it was in charge of much more than licensing. Why else would he have seen classmates being picked up from school in those sleek grey vans, like when Evan Tremblay accidentally set a fire, or when Jenny Chiang did a little too well on the monkey bars?
Most of them came back. Some didn't. Those were usually the ones with the most volatile powers, or the ones with the greatest potential for danger.
They'd had a presentation in school the other week, where a smiling woman in a lab coat came to explain the tests they would do. The first was for the nature of the ability, the second for their psychology, and the third for their level of control. If those combined showed a little too much risk, then the Commission would have to monitor them.
Emil didn't know about the latter two, not for himself. He had always been a little anxious, which could be good because it meant he was careful. But it could also be bad, because it meant he wasn't confident enough to be stable.
Then, a horrible thought came into his head. Animals were bad enough. If this would work on people?
He squeezed his eyes shut.
And so, even though Emil wanted with every fiber of his being to call for his parents, to run away?he didn't. He forced himself to breathe and counted to five.
One. Crawling on his elbows, he inched closer to the? thing. Two. He laid a hand on its fur. Three. He stared at it. Four pairs of eyes stared back. Four. He thought, as hard as he could, go back.
Five.
He closed his eyes.
When he opened them?
They were back to normal. As if it had never happened.
Emil laid back on the floor and stared at the ceiling for a few minutes. Then he stood, picked up Mr. Incredible, and set him back in his cage.
Babydoll's green eyes seemed to follow him, accusingly.
***
Mr. Incredible was never the same after that. He seemed listless and despondent, and would often stare for long hours at one corner of his cage. Babydoll, too, would seem confused, sometimes freezing up in the middle of grooming herself. She would only unfreeze when someone patted her.
About a month after the Incident, she died quietly. Mr. Incredible followed close behind.
Emil buried them in a bare patch of land behind their apartment, and hoped the landlord didn't notice. I'm sorry, he thought, looking down at the small piles of dirt.
He made up his mind to never do that again. In the next few years, Emil was careful not to pet any dogs, or touch anyone else with his hands. Even though that didn't always seem to happen, he couldn't be too careful. He bought boxes of latex gloves with his allowance, and later with the money that he made working at the convenience store on the corner of the street, replacing them every time they wore away.
***
One summer afternoon, Emil was walking back from his shift at the store when he spotted an ice cream truck parked by the side of the street. He had just slipped off his gloves after buying a new box: the old ones had holes in them, and it was sweltering.
The driver crouched on the roof, fixing something. Emil was passing by the truck when he saw the man bend down to retrieve a tool from the front seat. Facing the truck's interior, he didn't seem to notice just how far he was hanging into the road?down which a car was fast approaching.
Emil called out a warning, but it seemed like the man had earbuds in.
He froze. The car was a few seconds away.
Then, cursing the absurd situation, he scrambled up the truck from the other side, using the open windows as footholds. With the car so close, Emil had no time to pull himself up fully onto the roof. Instead, he reached up blindly for the man, thinking, desperately, please get over.
His hand wrapped around the man's ankle, pulling him back onto the roof just as the car drove by.
Of course, in this heat, the man had to be wearing shorts and sandals.
Emil held his breath.
Then, his own flesh began to liquefy and fuse into the man's leg. The sensation wasn't painful. But it was like vertigo, like your body being flung about on a rollercoaster?visceral, nauseating. He had to stop this before someone saw.
But before that? he remembered the way Babydoll and Mr. Incredible had seemed so calm during the Incident. And how, afterwards, they had changed.
It was a desperate gambit. Forget, he tried to think at the man. Then, separate.
They separated. Emil fell backwards from the truck, landing hard on the sidewalk. He tried to resume his walk, hoping the driver wouldn't question what had just happened.
When he turned around discreetly, the man seemed to be looking for something, confused but not horrified.
So those affected could forget. That was good, Emil told himself.
If only he could, too.
***
Eventually, Emil graduated high school and applied to college. He was hoping to become a mycologist, if only because pre-med would be too difficult while still keeping his Emergence hidden. And fungi were interesting. He liked the way that they seemed almost like flesh, but weren't. Almost animal, but not. He could handle them without worrying.
Not that he expected to hide forever.
Deep inside, he knew that discovery was all but inevitable. All it would take was the slightest slip-up, and he would be carted off by the Commission.
(He had never even considered becoming a licensed cape, because?even if they let him?what could he do with an Emergence like his?)
And so he trudged on through his classes with a sense of vague hopelessness.
***
Someone had brought him to this party, so now he was standing awkwardly in the corner, hands cradled around the paper cup like a prayer. It was easy, he thought, to use it to hide his face. All he needed to do was bring it up to mouth level and pretend to be drinking.
This would have been easier if it wasn't filled. He considered the liquid inside.
And then, well.
The world shifted, blurred around the edges. The strobe lights made everything pass in flashes, in time with the beat of the music, as if time itself was stuttering into slow-motion. Emil moved along the edges of the room, trying to walk in a straight line. Imagined the tightrope, the sun in his eyes, a high wind whistling.
There was? a hallway. Sealed and claustrophobic, like the inside of a drum, everything dark and muffled and indistinct. Eventually, he came to a room where the door was slightly ajar, as if someone had forgotten to close it.
Through the crack in a door, he saw someone with their head tilted up. Their throat moved vainly, as if seeking benediction from the bottom of a bottle. There was just enough light to illuminate the faint sheen high on their cheek. Sweat, he thought, or tears.
As if looking out from a dream, Emil raised his arm and pushed lightly at the door.
It opened. The occupants didn't seem to notice him. They were standing in a circle, drinking methodically?almost violently?from a succession of bottles that had been placed before them. At the furthest end of the room stood a few who weren't, but merely watched the proceedings, sometimes going to replenish the supply of bottles.
One of the drinkers swayed on his feet. Somehow, Emil knew that if he fell over, the others would simply go on with the ritual until the cold light of day came to scour it all clean. But by then, it would be too late. It was always too late.
Emil took off his glove. His body felt like a bag of rocks, and oddly weightless, all at once.
He reached out and tapped the nearest guy on the arm.
Fuse, he thought. All of you. Then, sleep.
In one hour, you'll wake up. Before you wake up, you'll forget all of this, and separate.
The guy stiffened and surged towards the one right next to him. Their flesh started to combine. Then the next, and the next, and the next. Until they were all one mass of flesh, joined together, heaving and then abruptly slumping over in a ring around the room. With his mind, Emil reached into their veins, feeling for the alcohol in their blood.
It would be enough. The amalgam could withstand it.
Emil sighed. Then, he turned and ran.
He slipped out of the front door just as the screaming started.
***
Several blocks away, Emil shivered in the night air. When he exhaled his breath came out in clouds.
Under the streetlights, he was all alone.
He glanced back. In the distance, the sirens were growing louder. And if those were coming they would have called the SELC, too, because these things?things that would have been called impossible, before?just didn't happen without an Emergent.
When he turned back again, there was a man standing under the nearest streetlight.
He wore a heavy coat and scarf that covered most of his face, but left the eyes exposed. It was hard to make out their color. His hair was limp and stringy, like waterlogged straw.
Emil swallowed.
?Did the Commission send you??
The man shook his head. ?I sent myself. You put on quite the show, back there.?
Emil couldn't help himself. A dry, hacking laugh forced itself up the back of his throat.
?I knew someone else, once. A friend, with a similar problem.?
The man's voice rasped, like skin on bone. ?I couldn't help him. But I can tell you, now,? he continued, ?that there is a way to get rid of your Emergence.?
Emil stared at him. For a moment, hope swelled in his chest. Had he ever really helped anyone, even a little, without it backfiring?
But then he thought of the greenish cast to the pledges' faces; the tremble in their hands as they lifted the bottles.
?I think I'll take my chances,? he heard himself say.
The man pressed a card into Emil's hand. ?For your consideration. In case you change your mind.? Then, he turned and walked down the street.
Emil tucked the card into his pocket. He watched the silhouette until it vanished, and waited for the Commission to catch up to him.
Every night, a solitary fear keeps me from falling asleep. I have no known phobias, and yet I will never be able to shake off the feeling that there are secret agents hiding in my walls, maybe next door, or under my bed, and once I fall asleep, they'll catch me, and it will be game over.
I'm not paranoid, you have to believe me. You and everybody else who reads this might be my only hope. You might even be the only hope for humanity.
Allow me to explain.
My name is Moacir. And I'm the world's only superhero.
Shocked? No, I don't think so. You've read enough comic books to know this type of story. The typical superhero troupe. Subconsciously you might have begun to guess what's my superpower. Am I really fast? Do I have phenomenal strength? Maybe I can turn invisible? Or perhaps I can insert a flash drive the right way in my first attempt?
No. I mean yeah, sort of. My powers are quite difficult to describe, and I haven't seen them in any movie or comic book, and I have read a LOT of comic books.
I can? become a ghost. That's the simplest way to put it. I can vaporise at will, completely disappear. While I am a ghost, I can touch speeds of Mach 15 (You really don't want to know how I know my speed limit). Although I cannot pass right through objects, I can exert substantial amounts of force if I try hard enough. Ever had your toes not tucked into your bedsheet and felt a tingle? It might have been me.
What does being a ghost feel like? Extremely strange. I retain consciousness but my body feels like it's trying to rip itself apart in every possible direction. Have you ever juggled? It's a bit like that, except you have a hundred balls and each one seems to have its own gravity. I have to keep juggling my atoms with the sheer force of my mind to stay alive.
By now you must have realised, dear reader, that none of what I'm saying makes sense as per the underdeveloped principles of science. How could I possibly retain control of my mind if I've theoretically been ripped into atoms? How do my parts not get mixed up at times? How do I breathe? Believe me I've had those questions as well. I fancy myself as an atheist, and the supernatural does not sit well with a mind that seeks to condemn the idea of an omnipotent who willingly lets his subjects experience pain and sorrow and suffering. And yet, here I am, a pinnacle of irony.
My powers cannot be explained by science. But that does not imply that a God exists and that he gave them to me as some kind of compensation for my experience as an orphan. Some will say that he gave me ?a chance to write my own destiny'. But all that would only make such an entity more devil-like. After all, many in this world have faced far worse situations. Many are nobler than me. Many are more capable to be in possession of my powers, and yet I am their sole user.
I rose to fame when I stopped a classic bank robbery. Three goons couldn't really keep down a ghost, you see. I was hailed as a saviour sent by God - my photos taken as if I was to leave for heaven tomorrow...
?And for the first time in my life, I felt loved.
Years of being on the streets, having to beg to survive, not even knowing who my parents were, or why they left me and my brother, had taken quite a toll on me. I had been kicked around like a pebble on the sidewalk for so many years, that? when this illusion of fame and popularity covered my vision like a dense fog, I took decisions that ruined the only strings of true love that had bound me to my humanity.
Looking back at it now, my little public stunt was the biggest mistake I've ever made in my entire life.
There was no stopping the rise of ?Ghost-Boy ? The blessing of God' after that. I toured the world, spoke with various global leaders, I even had a cereal to my name ? ?Ghostflakes'. I got to live in the finest of resorts, buy things I never could have even imagined buying. They were dreams come true. Dreams that fuelled my evils much beyond what my present self would have liked.
The screams of newspapers eventually reached the ?scientific' community, who demanded that I allow them to run some tests that might help them determine what exactly makes my powers possible. I declined. I didn't really want to know what caused my powers. I was happy as they were, and besides, who likes the doctor?
The scientists did not like being refused. It was the first major breakthrough they'd have in years. A breakthrough large enough to stop people from suspecting that they had all been paid off by large corporations to keep mum. How else can we not have flying cars in the 21st century? Heck, we sent people to the moon in 1969 and you want me to believe that we can barely even send a satellite to Mars in 2019? Invention has come to a standstill so that iPhones can sell for a thousand dollars and not the hundred they are worth without the name of the company.
And besides, who wouldn't want to replicate my powers? They could effectively make me a product, and then I would lose all the love that I had gotten so fond of. I would go back to being a nobody again.
They pressurised me. I ran away. Ran back to where my brother was still content living. In an abandoned factory, just outside the city physically, but miles away metaphorically, with lead skies that had limited the imagination of its inhabitants since time immemorial, and a sewer system that brought the waste of the city to where it ?belonged', the neighbourhood of the homeless.
I ran home. But life couldn't be that easy right? With that complex a life story, how could things just end on a simple note?
And as you might have guessed, when I got home, I realised something wasn't quite right.
The place was just as I remembered, the dull grey concrete walls, the smell of drugs and old cigarettes everywhere, adults passed out, either temporarily from a fight or for good as we are all destined to one day.
And then my heart and brain could finally understand my fear. Quidel was nowhere to be seen.
The bastards had taken him off with them once they realised they couldn't have me.
The world seemed to crumble in front of my eyes. All my memories of my brother came rushing back to me at once, and their weight forced me to my knees. And I lay there crying for a few hours, with no company except for all the souls that were dead the day they were born into this world.
Quidel didn't have any powers. I knew that. He knew that too. The world knew that I was Ghost-boy and not he. And yet, they had kidnapped him.
The government allowed this abduction in the name of science. It had been all over the papers the next day. Funny how on one hand the government won't acknowledge the obvious matter of climate change and on the other hand, violating all ethics that made us human and conducting painful experiments on an innocent boy is somehow scientific.
Either they hoped that the secret to my power might be in my brother's blood just as it was possibly in mine, or they were counting on the fact that I would come to help my brother.
And forgive me, Quidel, for I was the biggest coward there could ever have been. I'm sorry I didn't come to save you, even as they cut you open and looked inside, searching for secrets that didn't exist. Your cries for help went on the television. But I'm sorry they remained unanswered. Nobody really sticks up for orphans. We were nobodies, and nobody helps a nobody. How could anyone else have, when his own brother, a literal superhero, didn't.
I was selfish. Perhaps I had thought that my life was ?superior' to his, as I had saved lives, but now it is clear to me that he was superior, for he had given up his life for the life of a brother whose empty self-proclaimed claim of superiority today buries him in shame.
He had given up everything for a brother who had given him nothing.
Quidel endured the torture for 28 days before his heart gave up. His pale corpse was simply discarded into the ocean with the trash. I wept bitterly that night. I had lost the only person who loved me unconditionally, who loved Moacir and not Ghost-boy.
Since then, I knew I had to stay on the run. I couldn't trust anybody. The one person who actually loved me had been brutally murdered, and anyone else I team up with will likely meet the same fate.
The clock ticks monotonously on my dressing table, reminding me of my incoming doom. The four walls of the cubicle are no better than the lead skies I lived under as a kid. My eyes are red and sunken. Moacir and Ghost-Boy are becoming one. One of them has given up their freedom, the other their powers. One lost his reality, the other was simply hit by reality.
I'm bound to die, one day or the other. They will eventually catch me, and as a guinea pig for their experiments, I shall most certainly perish. I bury my head under my pillow, hoping to drown out the screams I alone hear.
Peter Parker could become Spider-Man after his uncle died. But Ghost-Boy became Moacir when his brother died. Peter Parker was someone who deserved to be a superhero. Moacir was someone who most certainly did not. Peter Parker was a fictional character, Moacir is a real one.
Superheroes are fiction, they can't exist in reality. And I hope your God realises that.
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