Hopes

“Oh boy,” Malcolm said.

“Yeah, sorry,” Ben said.

“Tell us how you did… this,” Gloria whispered. The ‘this’ looked like the sculpture of a drunk artist: two cars melted into each other, positioned as if the highest one was crashing into the other. A crowd had gathered on the street to watch the odd spectacle. Kids closed in and touched the cars, just to see if they were real.

The three walked away from the curious onlookers, still murmuring among themselves.

“I was walking back home last night when I heard shouts. I ran towards them, and I saw an old couple being attacked. I recognized them: the Samsons, from the grocery. I remembered they liked going to the cinema once a month. For a moment I didn’t know what to do. I only had my eye mask with me. But they were being robbed: a guy had grabbed Mrs Samson’s purse, while two others were holding Mr Samson down. I had no choice, really.

“I put the mask on and let myself be seen. I told them to stop, and they laughed at me and my mask. They left the Samsons and charged me. Head on, no subtlety: not used to any opposition. They stopped laughing soon. And I still hadn’t used my powers, as you taught us, Gloria.”

Gloria nodded. She was the fighting instructor of the trio. “It’s always better to just beat a bad guy with your fists, just in case,” she said.

“But then there was another scream. There had been a fourth thug that I hadn’t seen, and he had a knife to Mrs Samson’s throat. He told me to back off; I told him to calm down. But I could see he wasn’t going to.

“I panicked.”

Malcolm put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Go on, Ben.”

“I… I felt my power surge, as it always does. I shivered, and leaned on a car. And suddenly, the car was in my hand, as if glued to it, and I couldn’t feel its weight.”

“That has never happened before,” Gloria said.

“You can try to figure it out later, Ria,” Malcolm said. Ben nodded and went on.

“The guy looked dead scared. I… I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t shake the car off my hand, but at the same time I didn’t want to. It was a damned car! I could hurt the Samsons! Then I touched the second car… and they stayed stuck like they are now.

“I tell you, it was.. weird. They just… shifted into one another and stayed like that. No clang, no thud. I don’t know who was more scared, them or me.

“And the robbers just fled.”

Ben shut up.

“What is it?” Gloria asked.

“The Samsons. They… they were afraid of me. I had just saved them, but they were terrorized. They fled almost as fast as the robbers had. Mrs Samson almost forgot her purse!”

“Did they recognize you?” Gloria asked.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“You know, we need to work on all this,” Malcolm said. “I’ve foreseen it: the war in Europe is coming to us. We could be very useful, you know.”

“We’ve talked about this before, Malcolm,” Gloria said. “First of all, not all your predictions come true.”

“This one will.”

“I agree, but it doesn’t matter,” Gloria continued. “More importantly: they’ll never let us help. Three black kids, one of them a girl? No matter our powers: they’ll never let us help. Never.”

“We’ll see,” Malcolm said. “We’ll see.” And his eyes went blank.

~~~~

This is my entry for the Weekly Writing Exercise: December 7–13, 2015 on the Writer’s Discussion Group in Google+.

Well, I tend not to mention these things, but I’ve been taking part in the Writing Exercise for almost a year, and I think this is the first time I get no votes. And while it’s true that I wrote late in the week and posted on Saturday, it’s also true that the result came up late. So on a hand I’m disappointed with myself, since that shows I should do better.

On the other hand, however, I like the story I wrote, in a week where I was quite busy and with a prompt that gave me problems.