The Superhero Next Door by Daniel Slaten

The Superhero Next Door
by Daniel Slaten

I wasn’t expecting to find out that my next door neighbor was a superhero – a super model maybe, but not a superhero. New York is a big, strange place, though, so I probably shouldn’t have been surprised. You encounter all kinds of people here, and superheroes are just people after all.

My neighbor was a tall brunette with a thing for sweaters and tight blue jeans. I also had a thing for sweaters and tight blue jeans, but I didn’t like to wear them like she did.

I probably never would have found out that my tall, jeans and sweater-loving neighbor was a superhero, except one day I saw her apprehend a notorious supervillain on the street outside our apartment complex. Her “disguise” was not much of a disguise, just a crimson and white outfit with a crimson mask that wrapped around her eyes and tied in the back, so I immediately recognized her as the girl who lived next door. I also recognized her as the Crimson Ghost.

“Oh, hey,” she said, apparently recognizing me too. I didn’t have on any kind of disguise at all, just my usual blue jeans and Yankees t-shirt.

“Hi.” I wasn’t exactly sure what to say. I’d never really talked to her before, even though we’d crossed paths a number of times. So there we were standing outside the steps to the apartment, me with a bag of groceries in my hands and her with the Gorilla, a notorious supervillain, in her hands.

“I’m just waiting for the police to show up,” she said, as if an explanation was necessary.

“Of course.” I smiled, nodded, and then awkwardly walked inside the building. I should have said something else – something witty – but she seemed a little preoccupied. Besides, I heard sirens in the distance, and I didn’t want to be around for questioning when the cops showed up. Plus I had ice cream in my bag.

I ran into her the next day while checking my mailbox downstairs. She was checking hers too, and I couldn’t help myself; I had to strike up a conversation.

“I had no idea you were a superhero,” I said.

“I try not to advertise,” she said.

“I’m Adam, by the way.”

“Linda.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said. The next thing out of my mouth surprised even me, and I realize I’m prone to saying dumb things from time to time. “What are you doing living here?” I asked. My apartment complex is not exactly upscale, and it didn’t make sense to me that a superhero would live there.

“Being a superhero doesn’t pay as much as you’d think,” she said. “Think about the comic books you’ve read. Sure, Batman and Iron Man make a pretty good living, but what about Spider Man and Superman? The newspaper business isn’t exactly booming.”

“You’re in the newspaper business?”

Linda shook her head. “Used to be a reporter. The paper I wrote for downsized and they decided they didn’t need me anymore. I’m a waitress now.”

“I’m a painter,” I said. I’m not sure if I was hoping to impress her or not. As soon as the words were out of my mouth I thought I could have come up with something better. She hadn’t even asked what I did.

“A painter? What kind?”

“The kind that struggles to pay the bills,” I said. “I paint all kinds of stuff, but I have to supplement my income with teaching.”

“Well, it was nice meeting you, Adam the painter, but I have to get upstairs and change clothes. My shift starts soon.”

“It was nice meeting you too, Linda the waitress superhero” I said.

I didn’t run into Linda again the next day or even during the next week. It seemed like life had given me an opportunity for greatness by virtue of those two previous encounters, but I had failed to seize the moment and it had passed me by. It certainly wasn’t the first time that had happened to me.

Then, one day, she popped back into my life again, and I had another chance.

I was in a small art gallery in Brooklyn setting up some paintings I’d recently finished. There was a show coming up, and there were much better painters on display than me, but I was excited about the potential to sell a few pieces. People had been coming in and out of the gallery to look at other pieces while I was there, and then, out of the blue, Linda showed up.

“Hey, Adam.”

I turned at the sound of her familiar voice and saw Linda standing there – dressed in a blue sweater and blue jeans that appeared to be just a little bit too tight.

“Are you stalking me?” I asked, laughing.

Linda shook her head. “Nope. You wish.”

She had a point, but I wasn’t about to concede it.

“I was in the neighborhood and I saw you through the window,” she said. “I remembered that you told me you were a painter, so I thought I’d come in and check out your work.”

“Like anything you see? Even if you don’t, feel free to buy something.”

Linda looked around. “I’m a waitress. Remember? No money. Sorry.”

“Well, since you don’t have any money, why don’t I take you out to eat some time? If I sell something at this show.”

Linda moved closer to the painting I had just put up and examined it. “Okay. If you sell something, you can take me out to eat some time.”

And I did sell a painting at the show. In fact, I sold three. That’s how I started dating a superhero.

It’s easy to feel insecure in any relationship but even more so when you’re dating a superhero. I had enough problems as it was, being a struggling painter and all. Unfortunately, dating Linda only magnified the numerous insecurities I already had. I especially didn’t handle the dinner-conversation revelation that she had once dated El Diablo Loco very well.
“You used to date El Diablo Loco?” I asked. “The supervillain?”

Linda flipped her palms up and shrugged. “I was young. I didn’t know he was going to become El Diablo Loco. At the time he was just this guy named Pablo. It wasn’t like he was a supervillain when I dated him.”

And it wasn’t like he would always be a supervillain, I thought. Women loved bad boys because they could reform them, right? That was all I could think about right then. Linda was going to leave me and run back to El Diablo Loco and he was going to turn his back on his evil ways and that was going to be that. They would live together happily ever after and I would be stuck in my dumpy little apartment for the rest of my life just trying to get by. I’d be sixty and obsessively painting pictures of Linda over and over again.

“Are you okay?” Linda asked, seeing the obvious distress on my face.

“Yes,” I said. This was not entirely true.

“Look, Adam, this isn’t a big deal. I haven’t even seen him in, I dunno, years.”

Linda saw El Diablo Loco the very next day. So did I. We were together when it happened.

El Diablo Loco was a big guy. If he hadn’t been born with superpowers he probably would have become a UFC fighter or professional wrestler. When we ran into him he was wearing his usual black leather jacket with his trademark devil-face logo on the back. He also had on sunglasses, as if he didn’t look cool enough without them. By comparison, I had on jeans and my Yankees t-shirt. I also did not have any superpowers.

El Diablo Loco pushed his sunglasses up on top of his head at the sight of Linda. “Long time no see, sweetheart,” he said. He seemed to heat up as he spoke; you could literally see smoke coming off his body.

I tried my best to not look threatened, but I don’t think I did a very good job of it. I’m pretty sure I heard the sound of my own knees knocking. In the back of my mind I was thinking about how he could shoot flames out of his hands, and I couldn’t do much of anything. Even worse, I was flammable. If I wasn’t careful I’d be a smoking pile of ashes soon and El Diablo Loco would be walking away with my girlfriend.

“Shouldn’t you be in prison or something?” Linda asked.

El Diablo Loco laughed and looked at me. “Who is this skinny little man you are with?”

“This is my boyfriend, Adam.”

El Diablo Loco shook his head. “You should get back together with me.”

“Not a chance,” said Linda. She turned to me. “Come on, Adam, let’s go.”

We did. We went, and El Diablo Loco did not follow us or hurl any more insults our way. That didn’t make me feel any better, though. The whole experience had been humiliating for me, and even though it wasn’t her fault, a part of me resented Linda for it. If I hadn’t been dating her it never would have happened in the first place. I felt mismatched, out of place even. What was a superhero doing dating someone like me?

I went home and did a few pushups, but that didn’t make me feel any better. The next day I joined a gym, which also, strangely enough, did not make me feel any better. If I couldn’t become a superhero I wanted to become the next best thing – super powerful. There had to be some way to accomplish that, I thought. I needed to show Linda that I was worthy of her affection, but more importantly, I needed to convince myself.

That’s when I turned to the Internet. If I couldn’t find the solution to my problem there, I wouldn’t be able to find it anywhere. I found a website offering a do-it-yourself superhero kit, which was pretty shady. They sent you this bottle of stuff that, for all I knew, could be toxic waste, and they offered no real guarantee that the stuff would work. Basically, they said, depending on your generic makeup, drinking their “elixir” might endow you with super powers – temporarily. I thought long and hard about trying the stuff, but then I thought about how this stuff might do nothing more than cause bladder cancer or something. The risks seemed to outweigh the rewards, so I gave up on that idea.

The next thing I came across was a superhero “school.” This didn’t offer the quick fix solution I was looking for, but it was at least a little more reputable. The school couldn’t magically give you super powers, but it could train you to become the Batman kind of super hero, the kind that relied on smarts and gadgets to compensate for the lack of any superhuman abilities. I wasn’t sure I had the personality type or motivation required for such an endeavor, but I didn’t think it would cause any kind of organ cancer and I could quit if I didn’t like it, so that’s the direction I went in.

I did not tell Linda about this genius idea, of course. I knew she would try to talk me out of it, so I wasn’t going to give her that opportunity.

The next six months of my life were horrible.

Becoming a superhero is not easy. In fact, I wouldn’t recommend anyone try it. Unless you are born with super powers or stumble into radioactive waste that endows you with them, being a super hero is probably not for you. I’ve done some unpleasant things in my life, but none of them compare to trying to become a superhero. I won’t bore you with any of the details, but if you decide one day that you want to become a superhero try something easier first, like becoming a Navy SEAL or James Bond. That’s really the best piece of advice I can give anyone, and if you take nothing else from this story, take that.

Linda could tell something was wrong almost immediately, even though she didn’t know I was secretly trying to become a superhero. For one thing, I was always tired. For another, bruises started showing up in strange places on my body. There was the occasional black eye, too.

“What are you doing when I’m not around?” Linda asked me one night in early December as a heavy snowfall blanketed the city.

I couldn’t lie to her. “I, uh, I’ve been going to this superhero school,” I said.

“You what?”

“I’ve been going to this superhero school. It’s run by Ripley Couture.”

“Why would you do that?”

“I guess I’ve been feeling a little insecure,” I said. “I mean, you’re a superhero. I’ve never dated a superhero before.”

“So? I like you the way you are, Adam.”

I heard the words coming out of Linda’s mouth, but for some reason, I didn’t believe them. I had certain notions of what a relationship should be like, and this one was confusing me. I needed to be the hero in this relationship. Or any relationship. I didn’t want Linda to be my hero, and I didn’t want to be the damsel in distress that she had to rescue from time to time – and she would if we stayed together very long. Villains always tried to hurt you where you were most vulnerable. I didn’t want to be Linda’s weakness.

“Maybe I don’t like me the way I am,” I said.

“That’s crazy.”

Linda came over and hugged me. That didn’t make feel much better. If anything, it made me feel worse that I was so insecure.

“I don’t want you to leave me for some random superhero someday,” I said. “Or a supervillain.”

“That’s what’s worrying you?”

I nodded.

“I like you,” said Linda. “You don’t have to be a superhero.”

“But . . .”

“No, buts. All the superheroes I’ve met have been extremely high maintenance guys. You’re starting to become that way too. I don’t like high maintenance.”

That should have ended it right there. But it didn’t. I’m not that smart. Plus, even though I was listening, I didn’t really hear what she was saying.

I still had something to prove to myself. In addition to researching how to become a superhero, I had done some research on the Internet about Linda’s old boyfriend, El Diablo Loco. I found out all sorts of scandalous things about him that made me dislike him even more, and I found out that he showed up from time to time at a superhero fight club in the Bronx. The fact that Linda had once dated that scoundrel bothered me almost as much as the fact that I didn’t have super powers.

Obviously, I had to fight him. Only then could I move on with my life.

The only time I had ever gone to the Bronx was to watch the Yankees play, and even then I didn’t stray far from Yankees Stadium. In other words, I didn’t know my way around the Bronx. Luckily, the superhero fight club was supposedly located only about four blocks from Yankees Stadium. That still didn’t make it easy to find, though.

According to the information I found on the Internet it should have been inside this abandoned looking building that had a padlock on the front door. When I got there, a shady looking guy – bald, tattooed, nose ring, super skinny – stood in front of the door cracking his knuckles and looking around nervously. He could have been a crackhead, a crack dealer, or the guy you had to impress to get inside. I couldn’t tell just by looking at him.

“I hear there’s a superhero fight club,” I said.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, bub.”

“Look, I may not strike you as a superhero, but I promise you I can fight.”

The guy laughed. “Everybody says that. Just like everybody thinks they could play professional football or baseball or any other pro sport. You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. Get out of here before you get yourself killed, okay?”

“I go to Ripley Couture’s superhero school,” I said.

The guy laughed some more. “You think I care?”

“It doesn’t matter to me if you care or not,” I said. “I just want a shot.”

The guy stood there shaking his head, and I started to think that I had wasted my time by coming down here. Just as I was about ready to leave he stopped laughing and looked me in the eyes.

“You really want to fight?”

“I do.”

“This aint the place,” said the guy. “But come back tomorrow and there’ll be a guy who takes you to the place.”

I smiled, thinking this was somehow a good thing. I was wrong, of course, as I often am. The next night I showed up and there was a guy, even rougher looking than the first one, who lead me to an empty warehouse not far from that first location. That night I fought my first fight in the superhero fight club. My opponent was this hairy guy called Lapdog. I somehow won the fight, but I took home a couple of broken ribs for my efforts.

Linda was not happy that I hurt myself. She was even less happy because I wasn’t entirely forthcoming about how I hurt myself. I told her I was out “doing superhero stuff,” and she didn’t find that to be a satisfactory answer.

“You’re not a superhero,” she said.

“But I can be,” I said.

“I wish you wouldn’t. I didn’t fall in love with Adam the Superhero. I fell in love with Adam the painter.”

I didn’t see why I couldn’t be both Adam the Superhero and Adam the painter, but I didn’t know how to get this across to Linda.

I continued training at Ripley Couture’s during the week and fighting at the superhero fight club on the weekends. They didn’t put me in against the toughest guys, but I started to climb the ladder in the club. Somehow I kept winning, and somehow I stayed alive. I was becoming a legitimate superhero, even though I didn’t have any actual super powers. I was more than a little proud of myself, even if Linda didn’t notice how good I was becoming at the superhero thing. Of course, mostly I was becoming good at fighting superheroes – and supervillains – and that wasn’t quite the same thing as being a superhero. I didn’t do anything heroic; I didn’t save people.

And then one day it happened. I showed up at the superhero fight club and got what I had been seeking all along.

“Tonight you fight him,” the guy who ran things said to me when I showed up that night. I looked across the room to where he was pointing and I smiled.

Finally. The fight I had been looking for from the moment I’d first heard that Linda used to date him. El Diablo Loco.

“You?” El Diablo Loco took off his famous black leather jacket and handed it to some guy in a black and red jumpsuit. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

I said nothing in response. I had nothing to say to the guy. Nothing except for what I planned to say with my fists.

There was no bell to signal the start of the fight, just a man standing between me and El Diablo Loco who indicated it was time to fight.

I charged forward, buoyed by reckless confidence born out of a string of unlikely victories. I had been cautious in those previous fights, though. Calculating, too. I fought smart, well aware that I was not the strongest person here.

Men like El Diablo Loco didn’t have to fight that way. They possessed gifts I could only dream about. Usually those gifts were enough on their own to defeat men like me.

El Diablo Loco punched me in the face – and broke my nose. This was not the start to the fight that I had envisioned countless times in my head. I backed up and tried acting like nothing had happened, like I hadn’t been hurt. Maybe I really believed I wasn’t; I had a lot of adrenaline going at the time.

Foolishly, I charged back in, hoping I would somehow land a knockout punch – against a supervillain. I threw a right cross that slammed into El Diablo Loco’s left cheek, but the impact didn’t seem to faze him at all.

That was the last punch I landed in the fight.

El Diablo Loco hit me with a combo of punches that had me seeing stars. He followed up with a kick to my head that knocked me on my back, and from what I’ve been told, he unleashed some brutal ground and pound after that. I remember the “referee” stepping in and calling El Diablo Loco off before he killed me. I do remember that.

It was over just like that. Everything I had worked so hard for, done. I had failed, and I had failed in epic fashion. Everything El Diablo Loco had thought about me the first time he saw me – and everything I had thought about myself – was true.

I was not a hero, and once the fog started to lift from my head I realized that. I didn’t want to be a sidekick, nor did I want to be the “damsel” in distress, and there were times when I had felt like both of those things with Linda. Like everyone else, I had always wanted to be the hero. Life sometimes hands you a different script, though, and you end up playing a different role than the one you wanted to audition for. I was cast in a role different than the one I had always wanted, and I wasn’t happy about it. But what could I do?

“What happened to you?” Linda asked the moment I walked through the front door later that night. I hadn’t looked in a mirror since the fight, but I knew I didn’t look good. One of my eyes was swollen shut, and there was no telling what the rest of my face looked like. If it looked anything like it felt, then it definitely didn’t look good.

“What does it look like?”

“It looks like someone beat you to within an inch of your life,” said Linda. “That doesn’t tell me what happened, though.”

I couldn’t lie to her or keep secrets from her any longer, not if I wanted our relationship to continue. “I’ve been going to this superhero fight club,” I said.

“You what?!”

“Tonight I fought El Diablo Loco.”

“What were you thinking?”

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” I said. “On some level, I guess I wanted to prove to you that I’m just as good as he is.”

“Who? El Diablo Loco? Are you insane? That guy is a creep. You don’t have to fight him to prove that you’re better than he is.”

“But I’m not a superhero,” I said. “At least I wasn’t before.”

“And I liked you a whole lot better back then,” said Linda. “I don’t understand why you’re doing this, and I don’t think this relationship is going to work if you insist on doing this.”

I didn’t think I couldn’t stop being a superhero. I didn’t want to stop being a superhero, even though I had just gotten beaten up and I still hadn’t actually done anything superheroic. So I stood my ground, and Linda did the right thing and broke up with me.

Have I mentioned that I’m kind of a moron?

Instead of becoming depressed, I became a superhero. A real superhero. And, okay, I was depressed; I just wasn’t dealing with it very well. I thought if I threw myself into something – really threw myself into something – I would be able to forget all about Linda. It didn’t work, of course. I probably should have thrown myself into painting, but I didn’t.

My efforts at being a superhero started small. I broke up some fights and stopped a couple of robberies. It was the kind of stuff that wouldn’t even make the papers, but there are a lot of superheroes in New York. The good ones already have the big stuff covered. I was lucky to find anything to do.

That’s how it went for a few months. Money started to get tight then, and I realized I needed to start spending more time painting and less time doing things for free that the police got paid to do. The thought actually crossed my mind to give up and join the NYPD, but I’m not real good at meeting deadlines or showing up on time or following orders. If I was good at that stuff I wouldn’t have become a painter in the first place.

I was almost ready to hang up my tights for good when I stumbled upon El Diablo Loco again. This time he was trying to take over NBC. It was kind of a fluke that I even stumbled across him. I had been in Times Square that day, just lending a helping hand to the police whenever the opportunity arose and not really expecting anything eventful to occur. (If you’re a superhero in New York it helps to get on the NYPD’s good side. Anything you can do to garner some good will with them is worth the effort.)

Ordinarily, a supervillain taking over a national television network would be a job for one of the more high profile superheroes. It was just a lucky break for me that I happened to be there close to the time El Diablo Loco launched his attack. I saw people running out of 30 Rock screaming and I heard some loud crashing sounds coming from within the building, so I rushed in without thinking.

“It’s El Diablo Loco!” the security guard slumped down by the front desk told me. He looked like he had already been pummeled pretty good by the supervillain.

I followed a trail of destruction that led me to the roof of the building. Once I got there, I found El Diablo Loco holding star news anchor Alexis Green hostage.

“Let her go!” I said.

“You can’t stop me,” said El Diablo Loco. He kept one arm wrapped tightly around Alexis Green and raised his other hand, ready to shoot flames at me. You could see the fire rising slowly from his fingertips.

“Maybe not, but I can,” said Linda. I watched her fly over the ledge behind El Diablo Loco and land quietly.

El Diablo Loco turned and saw Linda crouched behind him. Surprised, he released his grip on Alexis, and Linda delivered a swift kick to his face. He stumbled backward, but the kick wasn’t enough to take him out. All it really did was push him into my arms. I tried to lock in the neck crank they’d been teaching me at Ripley Couture’s, hoping I could put El Diablo Loco to sleep and end this fight before it really got started.

It didn’t work out that way, of course. It never does.

I could feel El Diablo Loco’s body heating up, even though it seemed like he was too dazed to consciously do anything. He wasn’t dazed for long, though. As his body heated up he seemed to be regaining his senses.

I tried my best to lock in my neck crank, but El Diablo Loco flipped me over his back before I got my hooks properly locked in. I couldn’t see him as I slammed into the ground, but I could feel him, or at least the massive amount of heat he was generating. If I didn’t know better I would have thought that a star was about to explode.

I heard Linda say “Watch out” and then a felt a blast of wind rush by which must have been Linda moving past me to stop El Diablo Loco.

Linda tackled El Diablo Loco and the two of them tumbled over the ledge and disappeared from sight.

“Are they going to be okay?” Alexis asked.

“Yeah. Both of them can fly. They’ll be okay.”

Seconds later they emerged in the air over the ledge, El Diablo Loco seemingly in control this time and holding Linda aloft. He threw her over the ledge and she slammed into the roof not far from where I stood. My first instinct was to rush to her side and see if she was okay, but I couldn’t do that. El Diablo Loco would incinerate us both.

“You shouldn’t have interfered,” El Diablo Loco said to both me and Linda.

Without saying anything, Linda hopped up and flew back into the air above the building. At first I wasn’t sure what she was doing, but then I realized she had created space between me, her, and Alexis. Now El Diablo Loco didn’t have an easy target. He could go after one of us, but he couldn’t get two or three of us at the same time.

El Diablo Loco’s eyes followed Linda into the air. He obviously saw her as the greatest threat, so that’s where he focused his attention. I took advantage of the situation and maneuvered myself behind him. He shot fire at Linda while I was moving, but Linda swerved out of the way and came out unharmed.

Linda zoomed down at El Diablo Loco and drove him back into the rooftop of 30 Rock. She moved with the speed of a ghost, so El Diablo Loco wasn’t able to get out of the way. He came to a crash less than two feet from where I stood.

I swooped in and made my second attempt at a neck crank. There was simply no way I could defeat El Diablo Loco in a fair fight, but if I used some of the tricks and techniques I had learned at Ripley Couture’s I had a chance.

This time I got my hooks in properly, and I could feel El Diablo Loco slipping away. Instead of heating up he was fading away. Linda struggled to her feet and waited to see what happened. She was ready to jump in if needed, but she didn’t want to mess up what I was trying to do.

El Diablo Loco lost consciousness and I felt his heavy body go limp in my arms. I kept my arms locked in place around his neck just in case he was faking. Once I determined it was safe to let go I did.

“You did good,” said Linda.

Alexis jumped in between us, oblivious that Linda and I had a complicated history together and might be on the verge of working something out. “That was amazing!” she said. “I can’t thank you two enough for saving me from that creep. Do you think I could get an interview with you?”

I heard sirens blaring on the street below, and I looked into Linda’s eyes. I wanted to talk to her, not Alexis. And I certainly didn’t want to do an interview.

“I miss you,” I said to Linda. I hoped that the look on my face conveyed more than those three simple words did. I miss you could mean almost anything, but the look on my face told her how I really felt.

“That was brave of you,” she said. “Or stupid. I don’t know.”

“I’m going with brave.”

“You realize I don’t need you to be brave, right? I don’t need you to prove anything to me.”

“I needed to prove something to myself,” I said. And I had. I had proven that I wasn’t quite complete without Linda. I had also proven that I didn’t need a superhero girlfriend; but I sure did want one.

“Umm, hello? About that interview?” Alexis looked aggravated that she was being ignored. She didn’t seem to know how to handle that.

“I’d rather not,” I said. “She’s the real hero here. You can interview her if you’d like.”

“Whatever,” said Alexis. “Just as long as I get an exclusive.”

“Maybe later,” said Linda. She walked away from Alexis, and so did I.

Once we were out of Alexis’s hearing range we resumed our conversation. “I recognize that I was extremely stubborn,” I said. “I was insecure and jealous and crazy. But I’ve changed, and I don’t necessarily want to go back to who I was before I met you. I kind of like being a superhero.”

“That’s fair,” said Linda. “You’ve gotten a lot better at being a hero. I should have been more supportive of you instead of telling you not to become a superhero.”

“Do you think . . .”

Linda started nodding her head before I finished asking my question. “I’ve got a little free time before I have to go to work tonight,” she said.

“Coffee? I saw a Starbucks not far from here.”

“That sounds good.”

We went to Starbucks and got coffee, and we’ve been together ever since. In fact, we’ve become a crime fighting team. We realized after that fight with El Diablo Loco that we worked well together. With us there’s no hero and no sidekick. There’s just the Crimson Ghost and the Crimson Avenger. Someday there might even be a crimson baby or two. Who knows? Maybe we’ll become a crime-fighting family of superheroes.

I won’t say that things are always easy between us now; no relationship is like that. Some days are better than others, but I’ve got a good feeling about this one. We may have gotten off to a rocky start, but I’m doing everything I can to make things work with the superhero next door.

* * * * THE END * * * *

Copyright Daniel Slaten 2014