found drama

It’s my old neighborhood. The one I spent my childhood in. Not the slightly-secluded-in-the-middle-of-the-city East Deer Park – – but the 80s townhouses. (I forget what they were called. My street was “Whispering Wind Court”.) Except that there’s a near-future-right-now pall over everything. Very Marvel. Very X-Men. I have the feeling that at any moment I’ll turn the corner and encounter Jubilee. (Little bitch keeps stealing my lunch money.) But I’m coming in to my own now. I’ve felt the tingle in my blood. Mutations are on but I don’t know what to do with myself. It’s just a feeling. I’m strolling around the neighborhood, sixteenish and ready to breathe fire or shoot lasers from my eyes. Something. I’m headed south (don’t remember the real orientation) down the hill from the Villa Ridge apartments into the center of the neighborhood. Past the junior high. Past the tennis courts. Toward the bottom end of the neighborhood where my crush lives. Past there used to be a row of commercial properties. There was a Papa Johns there. (Maybe it was a Domino’s?) And a pet store that specialized in fish. But instead there’s this huge white dome. With spires on it. Again, very Marvel. But at the same time, very Star Wars. Something is drawing me to it. I venture inside via some air duct and discover this central chamber. It’s more impressive inside than it is outside. And dark. Very dark.

Magneto greets me. His suit seems different somehow. (Halfway between Singer’s and the “real” one?) His words to me are gentle and encouraging. It’s the usual Magneto Homo superior rant but personalized and in my favor. He will teach me. The ideology sounds right to me. Especially when he reveals two figures I know – – tormentors from this time and place.

Magneto springs into the air. I can’t fly. My power is over gravity and has little if anything to do with magnetics. But it’s like he speaks through me. Up into the air I can cast them. And I do. Around and around the inside of this massive dome. I feel the threat they pose. They’ll strike at me. I know that they will. It’s all I can do to keep them bound and suspended. I don’t know how I’ll kill them. I know that’s the only escape from this.

About Rob Friesel