Excerpt From A Superhero Story

Big Bill was out on I-90, fighting traffic again. Big Bill was more of a reactive type with no more malice than a school boy. He was only a problem because he stood three-stories tall and could dead-lift a couple Mac Trucks. My sister, Anna and I were more or less his babysitters, in that we figuratively put him to bed when he got up to nonsense, like tearing up the mall or in this case, flinging cars left and right. He probably wandered out on to the interstate and got himself hit. He’s a big fellow and probably would have done more damage to the car, than the car to him, but he’s reactive like I said and he’d probably he saw something like that as an attack.
The Army had redirected traffic away from I-90, which was all that they could do when Big Bill got in his stride. Apparently, Big Bill had a couple cars pinned down. They were flipped on their roofs and were crushed so the people inside couldn’t get out.
Anna was the better flyer and got down before I did, which I had advised against. Big Bill and her had a testy kind of relationship. She’s the type that’d break a jaw rather than let the owner talk. I could sometimes get Big Bill to calm down if I were alone, but that possibility goes out the window when she’s around. I was frustrated about that to start with, that she insisted on coming along. I descended down on a full mile of busted up road, busted up cars and torn up trees littering the road. I-90 stretched through miles and miles of maple wood forest and low hanging rock faces which kid came out to spray paint their names on. The sun was low in the sky and washing everything in dull shades of red and purple. Big Bill had gone off on the interstate, tearing up great chunks of pavement and driving cars into the dirt. A dozen roadside lanterns had been knocked over and sparked harmlessly like sparklers. Bill probably would have tired himself out if Anna hadn’t come. She had one of the torn up trees in her arms and she was swinging it like an oversized baseball bat. Big Bill took the hit she was giving and splinted the tree, sending wood shards all over. He was swatting at her like she was a bee. She was a quick one, so I wasn’t too concerned. Big Bill did end up catching her and she flipped him. His body hitting the ground shook the Earth beneath my feet, so I figured that she had him. I went to the trapped people and started flipping them right side up. Couple of the cars needed their doors ripped off. I personally hit doing stuff like that. People work hard for their money and Insurance Companies are bastards when it comes to paying out for repairs. My sister, who’d seen far too many Hollywood movies, was of another mindset. She was actually ripping more trees up out of the ground to chuck at Big Bill. The way I figure it, I pay taxes. Therefore, it’s partly my interstate, or at least the government is going to take money out of my check to repair the road and re-plant those trees she was breaking over Big Bill’s head.
I had freed all of seven people and all of them wanted me to fly them away. I used to not mind doing that, but if you so much as touch any of them, they start going around saying you’re their personal friend, or they start saying you copped a feel. It’s better to have the Army come in and take them off. Once they were clear, I thought ‘d help out with Big Bill who’d smashed my sister straight into the ground. She looked a little dazed, but she had worse. Bill was advancing on her and I flew up and popped him in the chin. His head snapped back, but he kept on his feet. He swatted me out the air and I bounced into the field that my sister and Bill had just made. I recovered before I got too far away from the action and then sped back at him, aiming for his gut. My shoulder connected with him and that sent him on his ass. By this time, Anna was up and ready brought him down completely, driving a fist across his jaw. Spittle flew from his mouth like in those Boxing movies and he thudded against the road.
“Eric!” Anna yelled breathlessly. “Took you long enough.”
The Army came rushing past us with their rifles drew once they saw that he was out. They carted him off and we had our post brawl thank you from one General or other. This particular one was surprisingly small compared to the one’s we’d seen. Normally they’re big fellows with their chest puffed out like blowfish. I offered my hand to the man and he shook it, not trying to overpower me like some of his predecessor had. Big man of power tend to make a bad habit of trying that with me and instead of explaining that my hands can crush diamonds into powder, I let them squeeze as much as they like. Anna got the same treatment and she’d broken a couple hands.
This particular General told me his name was Arthur Greenberg. I had decided I liked General Greenberg after Big Bill was carted off on a flatbed truck and my sister and I flew up into the night’s sky.
My sister and I were inexorably linked together or at least power wise. The best we could explain it, we were like battery chargers for one another. We didn’t grow up together. I grew up down South in Atlanta and went to school in New York. My sister, on the other hand, lived in New York and got arrested in Boston. Anna didn’t like talking about why she got arrested. What I gathered was, she moved to Boston with a man who ended up beating on her. She took this abuse for the whole a couple weeks before she got herself an idea to scare him. Or I believe that she meant to scream him. In any case, she was officially charged with Man-Slaughter. I don’t know how he died or how long she was in jail. All I know is, she found her way back to New York while I was still in New York and the two of us started to have dreams.
It’s a vague sort of clairvoyance that the two of us got. It’s hardly ever been useful except for us finding each other. That clairvoyance itched in the back of our heads like little bugs, invading our dreams. The two of us met in the world famous Time Square, with a bustle of tourists bumming shoulders with me and her. My eyes drew to her and her eyes clung to me. To the outside observer, that fateful meeting might have been confused for the beginning of a love story. She was a pretty enough girl with her long dark hair flowing down her back and her emerald eyes like pond water and me, I’d like to think I’m a good looking fellow. I’m a tall one with broad shoulders and I keep my hair short in the army fashion. That habit, I got from my foster-parents, an ex-military man and his wife. Well, the two of us went into a Pizzeria and made awkward small talk for an hour before she claimed that she need to be somewhere. The two of us somehow kept running into each other after that, in line at the ATM, at a corner liquor store, at the odd party. The way we figured it, we were two incompatible pieces that the world was trying to force together. We forged a flimsy sort of friendship based partially on her love of my beer and how neither of us knew our real parents. More and more people kept thinking that the two of us were siblings and it started to make more and more sense that we might be. A blood test proved it and proved that something was different about our blood. For one, they had trouble putting the needle in our arms. They couldn’t figure out our blood types and they noticed how rich our blood was with oxygen. If they tried to do the same tests now, they wouldn’t be able to. Our skin would snap the needles. That would be an issue, if we ever got sick. We don’t.