In the end, Superman flies around planet Earth and makes everything alright again.
In the end, Superman flies around planet Earth and makes everything alright again. In the middle, and at the beginning, life isn’t that great. There is hope though.
Yes. The moon came early and defiantly. It’s polished surface almost too bright. It emptied the eastern sky of stars and diluted the shadows upon the earth. Night, this night, would be exposed.
Yes. I was standing in a graveyard with my mother. We had walked over farm fields together – frozen mud crunching. Now we stood in the graveyard and she was reading a stone. I was looking outward over the fields we had crossed. They appeared white and endless, the fields we had crossed. Beyond a line of trees the river was gorging. The trees scratched at the sky. I heard my mother’s voice. She bathed it in the brightness of the moon.
“Do you ever think of Nan and Pop?”
I was angry that she had asked this of me, here, the river gorging beyond a line of trees. I stamped about on the sacred ground. It was unyielding and I could feel the chill of it in my shoes. My voice did not express warmth.
“Do I ever think of Nan and Pop? No, I guess not.”
“Never?”
“No. I don’t know why. I just never really think about them.”
“You remember how good they were to us?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And what do you think we would have done without them?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“No one else cared enough about us.”
"I know, I know. But it was a long time ago.”
“That doesn’t matter. That doesn’t mean you just forget about them.”
“I haven’t forgotten them, I just don’t really think about them very often.”
“You don’t seem to think about anyone but yourself, it amazes me.”
“God! That’s not true.”
There once was a very long and broad road. Along one side of this road there were bungalows, all grey, all slightly decrepit, with wildly flourishing gardens. On the other side of the road there was a continuous wire mesh fence. Over the fence, through the mesh, there was a totalled landscape. A wasteland.
Out on the wasteland, in the far distance, a grim castle churned out black acrid smoke night and day. They looked out onto this, the bungalows.
Nan and Pop occupied one of them. Each was a preserved moment in time, décor specific to that moment.
In the back garden: outhouses. I liked this. I liked the idea of going to the toilet in a room located in the garden.
The outhouse had a very small high window with a cracked pane. I had placed Superman up there, on the ledge in the light. I had aimed him outwards. He was perpetually smashing through the glass without ever making contact with the actual glass. He had come from the garden – I had dug him up. In the summer I spent a lot of time digging things up. I would conjure things out of the dirt; a cracked piece of china; a toy car; an old coin; a small green soldier. Always something. Dragonflies would hover in the yellow light watching me do this. They were my audience.
Then one day I unearthed him, the ultimate treasure: Superman.
“I don’t understand why you’ve turned out to be so cold, so heartless. You used to be such a happy child. You used to talk to me. But now you’re just miserable… I feel like I don’t know you.”
“Mum, please. There’s no need to be so dramatic. Don’t. I’m sorry. I’ll… try. I just… I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I just feel empty.”
“Empty! Why do you feel empty? You’ve had lots of love. I’ve tried to help you. I’ve tried to be your friend. But you wont confide in me, you never would. I just want to understand. I want to help.”
“I don’t want your help. I don’t need help. This is insane. I’m sick of having the same argument over and over again. Why does it have to be like this? Can’t we just go out for a walk without this? Can’t we forget about that stuff and talk about something else? Why does it always have to end with you crying?”
“Why, why, why? You break my heart that’s why.”
“It’s not my fault – I don’t know why I’m like this. I don’t know why I… I don’t feel anything. I can’t explain it. Everything just seems to fade.”
There was a free bus, a supermarket bus. Back and forth, along the road, it conveyed units of custom. Nan would flag it down at the same moment each week. Her unit of custom was a very full and dependable thing. On board everything was chequered brown/beige, the seats the people. The smell of piss and rags would waft down the aisle. It must have been a hundred years old, the bus. And it was senile.
We would board, Nan and me, and she would disappear into the check. I would leave the piss and rags behind and climb, sliding my back against the wall, the stairs. I would sit in the front seat beneath the convex mirror. I would be alone up there, in the mirror, with all the empty seats shuddering and bending behind me. And I would be looking down upon myself.
At the end of the road there was a big red supermarket in a blank tarmac sea. The bus would drift to the entrance of the big red supermarket. The old people would disembark like ghosts, floating off the bus into the supermarket. And that was that.
There was only one bit of the supermarket I liked and that was the freezer section. The freezer section was an enclosed and secretive space. It was smoky with coldness. To get in there you had to walk through a heavy plastic curtain. I would close my eyes and walk into the plastic and it would slide stiffly off my face, parting. Inside, I would put my hands into the iceboxes and scrape at the ice. I would do this until my fingers became brittle with frost. I would imagine I was freezing to death.
This scenario would be repeated over and over. I would walk in one end warm and come out the other end cold, shivering, the plastic sliding stiffly off my face.
(She came for me in the night. Whispering, she came. She drew me out of sleep. She kissed my cheek, hushing. Don’t cry, be brave, she pleaded. And she stooped. She wrapped me in quilt. She wrapped wholly, embracing.
She descended, each step afraid. A creak. Our heart stopped beating. We did not breathe…)
I am on the floor in a dark room watching television. The television has a small screen and a turn-dial. It’s light flickers warmly. It is speaking to me. It is introducing me to my first superhero…
Superman does the absolute best superhuman trick ever. He flies out into space and begins circling the planet. Slow at first but he builds and builds, getting faster and faster, until he is nothing but a streak of white. It is unbelievable to see this, to see fury channelled in this way. Louis Lane drowned in dirt, Superman too late. But this is not the end. Superman refuses this end.
He is stretching. Is unleashing. Is burning. He is tearing through it. And he is reversing the roll of the planet – of the entire fucking planet. He is reversing and, holy shit, he is resurrecting. Everything is moving backwards. Everything is returning to its former state. Unbelievable. Unfuckingbelievable.
