Entry 08: Listening in Spandex (2)
Title: Listening in Spandex
Entry Number: 08
Author: latemarch
Fandom: Original
Rating: PG
Genre: adventure, superhero
Spoilers: none
Word Count: 1090
Author's notes: As usual, you all are so far ahead of me and I'm scrambling to catch up! Oh well, here's the next part of Listening in Spandex ( entry 07). Enjoy!
- - begin entry 08 - -
Damn superheroes and their nylon. Can’t wear normal clothes because that’s not impressive enough. Please. We as a community were already a bunch of weirdos on the inside, would it kill us to look normal from day to day? No, of course not, we have to broadcast our weirdo-ness on the outside too.
One of the tiny bottles sprung a leak when I fiddled with the cap and dripped all over my sleeves, bright and vibrant red. It looked pretty grim against the white of my blouse, dotting only around my wrists, insinuating something that I didn’t like. I wondered if it would stain, but then of course it would, it was hart’s blood.
A server was finally nearing my area with a tray full of cocktails, so I made a beeline for the stampeded woman. Reaching first for a Green Giant, I ignored her startled and slightly starstruck expression (to clarify, reality star-starstruck, nothing major), and took a Blue Razzberry Fizz Bomber for the road. At the very least, now I could make it look like I was waiting for someone to come back for their drink.
Until I drank it.
“Maureen?”
“Yes?” I was toying with the mint topper on my Green Giant, but dropped that and whipped around, in favor of potential company.
She looked a bit unnerved with my eagerness, but oh well. My new companion was a taller woman, maybe six feet, with a thin, willowy body to match. Her suit was totally out of place in all the capes and masks, and was colored to match the shade of her light hair. A black purse was tucked under her arm, which she dumped on the table. Finally! Someone who didn’t hate me!
Interrupting her opening volley, I shoved my extra drink at her. “Here!” I felt like a kid trying to make their first playground friend, like I was offering her the first go-around on the slide.
“I’m Elizabeth Vitale.” She handed me her card and.
I took it hesitantly. Friends didn’t hand out cards.
“Vee-tail.” She emphasized with a hard edge to her pronunciation.
“I… got it. Jeeze.” The card was feeling heavy in my hands - I hadn’t looked at it yet, but now I was dreading it more and more.
“Yes.” We say assessing each other in a long spell of awkward silence. I looked at the chips of her nail polish, and I’m sure she saw how the lining of my purse screamed, “Fake!”
Narrowing my eyes I asked, “Are you a reporter?” at the same time that she asked, “So how do you feel about your mother’s apparent suicide?”
The use of the word ‘apparent’ startled me; as far as I knew, my mother had committed suicide upon her conviction, but I wasn’t going to let this shark know that under any circumstances. “Perhaps you should move along, Ms. Vitale. There are smaller fish here that you might actually be able to fry.” I sat up as straight as I could and looked down my nose at her.
Ms. Vitale’s face tightened, and I sensed a bit of a red flush under the coating of her foundation. But it was my mistake to antagonize the beast - especially in front of the audience we were rapidly attracting - she only kept going. “What’s it like going from being a millionaire to a cashier at Happy Mart? How has the press treated you? Are you aware that no Hero will take you on now that you’re tainted goods? Isn’t that why you’re here today?”
She shoved some sort of recording device in my face, and I blinked, wounded and stunned. My reliant store of anger rose up, and I tapped into that innate part of me that made me a part of the superhero community. It was a power that I advertised on my card: listening. Before I even knew what I was dong, I found the thread of her existence in all the surrounding sound waves - she sounded like clicking high heels and the feedback of microphones - and twisted it. I was being petty and mean and I knew it - but I was enjoying it too much.
The reporter hid her reaction well, I gave her that. She only jerked in her seat and went still while I added one last remark to the retaliation. “I’m sorry, what was that? I was too busy counting your gray hairs.”
God I was a bitch. A provoked bitch, but none the less.
Left alone again, I slumped even lower in my eat and gulped down the rest of my Green Giant. It burned on the way down, but I only coughed and signaled for another. Drinking was not my de riguer mode of stress relief, but considering that I couldn’t spend thousands of dollars on shoes, it would work.
What bothered me most, as I sipped my new drink, was Ms. Vitale’s question. Apparent suicide? Please. If anyone would know whether my mother was dead or not, it was me. Still, I was unsettled (and tipsy) - and the idea that my mother was alive somewhere began to take root. Was that why people were treating me like a criminal? They believed I was aiding and abetting her? Suddenly everything was… generally clear; they all thought I knew where she and her millions were hiding and was only playing the martyr. But I wasn’t so lucky.
If she was alive, wouldn’t she have come to see me first? We never had the greatest relationship, but I was her daughter, after all. Thinking back over the last few months, I couldn’t think of anything that really stood out as an indication of her presence. The coroner had only had only had a few parts of a decomposed body to identify in the end - but that didn’t mean she was still alive, right? I groaned into my glass, envisioning coming home after a long day at work to find my mother going through all of my things.
Dismissing it all as nonsense, my attention returned to watching the room. My smack down, for lack of a better phrase, had not yet lost its appeal for the rest of the con goers, and I was definitely being watched. Gossip was spreading like wildfire through the popular tables, high school all over again. I could see the reporter sitting across the room being fanned and offered drinks, and snorted indignantly. Please. I didn’t even touch the woman. It’s not like I made a grab for her extensions or something.
- - end entry 08 - -
Whelp, I guess I'm just going to have to write faster. If I'm very very lucky, I'll get as much as I can out today and focus on the long entry tomorrow and thursday.