Heck Superhero by Martine Leavitt

Author:Martine Leavitt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boyds Mills Press

WEDNESDAY, MAY 4

All night long, sleeping in the old car, Heck dreamed he was running from flesh-covered cyborgs. He avoided lightning-flash punches and steel-toed kicks and flesh-burning lasers that melted mortal skin like butter. All night long he leapt from roof to roof until he couldn’t run anymore. Then his mom was there, and he threw his arms around her, but it wasn’t her. It was a hard-light hologram with her face.

When he woke up he was cramped and cold and sore. His teeth were itchy. Deep down in those black holes and down into the pulpy nerves and down past the nerve into the secret bone of his jaw it was itching. Not a nice tickly itch, but a buzzing bee-sting type of itch.

He sat up. Mr. Hill was peering at him through the window. He said something.

Heck rolled the window down. “Hey, Mr. Hill. Sorry about your car. I—I was just guarding it for you.”

“You got any girlies in there with you?”

“No, sir. No girls.”

Mr. Hill hit his cane on the ground. “Aren’t you the boy who lives upstairs?”

Heck smiled cordially. “Yes, sir. Used to. We’ve moved.”

“Well, I don’t like this. No sir. As for me and my car, we will serve the Lord, so you and your girl can just clean outta that car.”

“Sir, I don’t have a girl. See?” Heck lifted his feet and pushed up his sleeves. “I was just making sure no vagrants come and sleep in here at night.”

“No girlies, eh? I was a boy once. I know how you think, what you’re up to. But I’ve repented, and so’s this car. Had it cleaned by professionals, had it blessed. Gonna be buried in it.”

Heck got out of the car. It was another thing altogether to be sleeping in someone’s coffin. “Sorry, sir, it won’t happen again,” Heck said.

“Better not. The world is coming to an end, son, and you can’t hide your sins under a car top. Purify yourself, boy, prepare to meet the Lord. Stay your hand from the temptations of the flesh.”

Heck’s mom had taught him to be respectful of the elderly. “I didn’t know you were a preacher, sir,” he said, backing away.

“Wasn’t. Broke every one of the Ten Commandments and a few the Lord forgot to mention. That’s the beauty of getting old. Gives you cripple time to get yourself holy. But just in case you don’t get old, take it from me, boy—”

“I won’t,” Heck said. “Anymore.”

“Won’t what?” He was having to raise his voice since Heck had gotten a distance away.

“Everything. Won’t everything. I gotta go, sir.” He did have to go to the bathroom. The old man started reciting something as Heck walked quickly away. Once he looked back, nodded, and waved.

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