Resurrection

I pressed the barrel hard to the back of his head. I switched the safety off. I pulled back the slide. I cocked back the hammer. Then, I took a breath. The stench of death filled my nostrils as the corpses around us began to enter the first stages of decay. The buzz of millions, maybe billions of flies began to fill the empty air, an unusual quiet for a city of just over a million people.

He laughed. "I was wondering how this would end, old friend?" he said, his arms spread wide, hands empty. On his knees and his back to me, he looked as harmless as a child. I just needed to remember that he was one of the most dangerous men on the planet. Just pull the trigger and be done with it, I thought to myself as my heart pounded with anticipation, that was the plan after all.

I took a glance around the battlefield: buildings destroyed, vehicles burning, and countless dead at our feet - monsters and civilians lying lifeless. They'd struck so quick, so precise, we were completely unprepared. So many heroes fell in the first moments, we had no time to formulate a plan, no time to regroup. Even now, I'm not sure what they were: aliens from another world; monsters from The Dark Beyond; an invading army from an alternate dimension. Whatever they were, I knew there was only one option for us to survive.

"It doesn't have to be this way," he said with his arms still spread, "after all, you're the one that asked for my help." I imagined the murderous smile on his face, not a drop of sweat despite the battle we'd just survived and my gun currently pressed to his head, all while wearing a long black trenchcoat he must've picked off of one of these unfortunate dead. Out of spite, I kicked at the top hat and the wand that lay at my feet. "After all, Saint Lazarus, you're the one that brought me back"

I thought back to that moment, with the world outside turning to hell as the creatures killed everything in their path. Back then, it wasn't silence, but screams that filled the air. Desperate I ran from the battle back to the office, past the reception area, past the meeting rooms, past the rows of desks and cubicles, to the very back of the office. To the mail room. I found Marty cowering behind a cabinet, shaking, though I couldn't tell if it was from fear or from the war just outside.

I stared at the man, nearly fifty years old, hair starting to thin, an old mustard stain on the blue polo shirt he wore untucked, though not from the lack of trying. This was insane, I thought as I started to walk away.

"Blaine, what the hell is going on?" said Marty as I heard him start to move behind me, "and what happened to your clothes?"

Turning, I saw that Marty had pulled himself off the ground and was staring that the holes, rips, and tears in my jacket, shirt, and pants. My clothes in tatters, I walked back to my desk and pulled out my suit from a locked cabinet, the suit of Saint Lazarus, the Immortal Man. "Marty, what if I told you I was a superhero. And what if I told you that out there me and all of the other heroes were fighting an enemy the likes we've never seen before. And what if I told you that you were our last hope?"

Marty stared at me. I could see on his face as his brain tried to process everything I just said and what was going on outside. "Blaine," he said finally, "you're a reporter."

"Yes, Marty," I said as I began to take off the remains of my business clothes and change into my costume, "I'm a reporter. And just like every reporter here at The Daily Post, I'm also a superhero. We're all superheroes. And though no one else wants to admit it, we need your help."

He stared again. "Am I a superhero?" he asked, a faint smile spreading on his face.

Geez, I thought, those psychics sure did a number on you, Marty. "No, Marty you're not a superhero. You're a mistake. My mistake," I said, hanging my head as I said those words. "You were powerful, you were dangerous, but we were friends."

"We are friends," Marty said with a smile. I smiled too, thinking about the years we'd spent at the Post, lunch in the breakroom, beers after work, watching football on the weekends with the boys.

"Yeah, we're friends, Marty," I said, "but a long, long time ago, we weren't. In fact, we were enemies. Mortal enemies. And when I finally caught you, I convinced them to wipe your memory instead of killing you. I said we could change you as long as you didn't remember. But now I need you back. Now we need you back. The thing is, I'm not sure if I can trust you."

"We are friends," Marty said, putting his arm on my shoulder. I shivered as the touch of his hand on my costume brought back memories, old memories. "You can trust me," he said, and looking into his face, I believed I could.

I nodded. "Okay, let's do this," I said and then began the password to unlock the prison our psychics had placed on his mind. Just as I finished the last word though, something smashed through the wall and exploded in our office, sending Marty deeper into the building and me tumbling twenty floors to the pavement.

It took a minute to pull myself back together. The chaos around me now consumed the entire city as just a few heroes remained and the invaders ranks grew ever larger. I picked up as many weapons as I could carry and started to make my way into the carnage when I heard the whistling. I stopped in my tracks, as did a number of the other heroes. The enemy paused too, briefly, confused as to why the enemy they'd been viciously fighting for the past half hour would suddenly be consumed by a fear they'd never seen before.

"It's the Murder Magician!" shouted Eagle-man as he flew as fast as he could out of the city, "Everyone get the fuck out of here, the Murder Magician's back!" And so they all ran: flyers, speedsters, teleporters, some of them even jumped into whatever working vehicles still remained and drove off. The enemy, however, focused their attention on the man striding out of The Daily Post, a man wearing a blue polo shirt with a mustard stain and the biggest smile I'd ever seen.

"It's going to be glorious," was all Marty said as he snapped his fingers and one of the enemy fell to the ground, dead. Pulling a finger out of his nose, he flicked away the booger and another enemy died. He pointed at another, and it died too. He motioned at one of those things hovering in the air, as if he was merely trying to shoo away a pigeon, and it fell out of the sky.

Finally figuring out what was happening, the enemy began their assault, but it was too late. The Murder Magician was back. I watched briefly as he dodged enemy attacks as if he were in his twenties again, his hands and fingers moving like a conductor, directing the demise of his enemies. It wasn't until one the enemy blasts tore a hole in my side that I remembered I was also part of the fight. I healed and launched my own attack, calmly walking amongst their ranks and putting bullets into anything that attacked me. And, as quickly as it had begun, we'd managed to kill them all.

With his back to me, I put one final bullet into Marty's leg, then ran as fast as I could before he could turn. His top hat hit the ground as he fell to his knees. Line of sight and a hand-motion, that's what we had determined his weaknesses to be. If I could control that, then he'd be vulnerable.

"So, was this really the plan?" Marty said, "Wake me up, have me clean up this mess and save the day, then kill me?"

"I can't risk you free again, Magician," I said, "this is the only solution." I looked at the dead and imagined them as the bodies he left in his wake the last time he walked these streets. Thousands dead in a month for no reason other than one man's amusement.

"I could've killed you at anytime, Blaine. I'm trusting you that you'll do the right thing. That we're still friends. But I still can still change my mind."

As if on cue, one of the creatures stirred and began to rise, the bullet I'd put in it not having found a lethal target. Before I could turn my gun on it though, it slumped forward, dead.

"My hands were always just for showmanship," Marty said, standing and turning despite my gun trained on his head. He shrugged off the coat, and I saw the mustard stain on his shirt, the murderous smile gone, replaced by the familiar one that used to laugh at my horrible jokes as we ate lunch together. I saw Marty. I dropped the gun. After all, we're friends.



 So this is something I haven't done in a while, write a story on the fly without any real preparation. As I was going through Reddit Writing Prompts last night, I saw one that caught my attention: "You have a choice. Pull the trigger, or walk away" and just decided to see if I could write a story out without any of the typical planning I do. It's one of the reasons I usually never have a story done on the same day a prompt comes out. Obviously, if you scrolled to the bottom already, you'd see that I cheated as this is based (sort of) in the same universe as "The Sovereignty" superhero universe. I didn't have a healer character (and I wouldn't name him "Saint Lazarus" but I was tired and when I Googled 'resurrection' his was one of the first to pop up), but I did have "The Murder Magician," a supervillain who could kill by just willing a person dead. And yes, I realized later that I'd actually stolen the same from Gerard Way's "Umbrella Academy" comic books (seriously, it took me forever to remember where I'd heard that name before to the point that I almost thought I'd come up with it on my own). As I was busy writing this before I went to sleep, I didn't have a lot of time, so I think the one part I definitely skipped on was the enemy. Without a lot of time, I just tried to pass it off as an enemy as vague as possible and hope no one would notice I provided absolutely no details regarding them. For the most part though, this is kind of how I imagined introducing this character. Letting him live, though, that I hadn't decided upon.