PART 1

  The Weekend of the winter lights

  2020

  Friday

  There was always something refreshing about running without bolting, so Barry climbed the entire set of stairs spiraling inside the building in what he liked to call ‘the earthly way’. It was a nice name, referring to the idea of soles of feet gripping the ground before launching into the race, like a cheetah’s un-retractable claws, and finding some kind of might from the earth itself. Opposed to what? He often wondered. As if his superpower came from, where? Space? An extraterrestrial origin, such as Superman’s in the comic books? Who cared, it was nice to think of it that way. Barry thrived to live a simple life with very straightforward fantasies.

  Plus, he didn’t feel the need to bolt all the time. At this point of his vigilante career, he was in flawless shape. Everything in him ran before he even thought of it, everything moved and swung with infinite grace, everything was strength, unfiltered, unaltered, unburdened strength. After running every day, jumping around, literally doing nothing else, his body had become a running and jumping machine. He felt often like he could fly, and sometimes, something whispered to his ear, while he was in the midst of the bolt’s blue iridescent lightnings, that perhaps he would.

  After conquering the stairs without using his power, Barry sighed with satisfaction and passed the little door leading to the cabinet at the threshold of the rooftop. The first thing he saw was the sparks glittering on the helmets of a row of a dozen droids, as the rain had lightly begun to fall. OH SHIT. The survival fear of the lizard part of his brain, under the cerebellum, flashed with distress, but he didn’t have time to reception it nor draw any kind of analysis from it, because one nanosecond after he entered the narrow hall, all the droids cannons fired at him.

  He hunched his shoulders forward and produced a strong bolt, his mind now devoted whole to slaloming between the hungry bullets which presented themselves as an eager wall of shiny dots, resembling some kind of passionate audience to greet his arrival and desiring to eat him up. It proved more difficult than he thought due to the large number of the shots but with a few back drops and twists of his spine, he rotated through all the projectiles with sophisticated moves. Landing in a superhero pause at the end of the motion, he turned around and faced the mrai moubmus, ready to kick some ass.

  Something caught his eye at this moment, while the bubble of the bolt around him hadn’t even completely dissolved yet. It was another bullet, still slowed down by his spell but advancing mercilessly towards him and the soapy shield around him. Oh fuck, Barry thought, oh no, and his hand slid forward in front of him in a reflex defensive move like he wished to swat the thing away or asked for rendition. At the same time, a red flashing alarm began to pour down through his brain and ring his ears. There wasn’t much that he could do except watch the sheltering bolt bubble evaporate and the tiny piece of metal continue its course. OH NO. They were locked on colliding paths and an instant of horror unfolded on Barry’s most recent log of deplorable things, and then something whispered in his ear, brace. The bubble melted in a cozy plic, its skinny wet membrane pierced at the last instant by the steel. “Motherfu” BRACE

  There was that. The shot cut him in half and projected him backwards against the wall behind him. The smash was spirit-scattering and he barely caught his fall midway, bounced back on the ground rockily, eyeing the window on the side, already bending his knees to aim at it. Barry ignored the quake wave that the impact had created and that was still in birth-motion through his body and limbs, thrusting himself into the leap. He was about to glide through it when a second detonation crackled behind him and another long needle of hot air went through the top part of his arm, spinning him like a ballet dancer while still in hopping mode, so Barry lost his footing and fell like a stone down the building he had just climbed. Such élan, he saw and, now, such disgrace.

  What the fuck, his neurons raced to compute how everything fit with everything else and nothing, but speed was no longer on his side. He fell down ten stories, went through a glass roof, then a different straw roof extension, then a laminated plastic umbrella before landing savagely at the back of a truck carrying some bags of sand. The crash spat the vehicle into some swerving madness on the side while meeting some upcoming traffic and, only because the driver must have been extremely skilled, it veered again and found a balance. The man hit the brakes in a mighty screech, three manoeuvres which sent Barry flying on all sides of the truck like the little ball of an ancient flipper station. Throwing an arm out blindly, he was able to take hold on the railing of the cargo and pull himself under its skinny refuge. He glued himself against the metal wall and waited without moving for what was to follow, deafened by the tremorous beats of his heart.

  “What the hell fell into my truck?” the driver was infuriated but so were four or five other commuters who had to avoid a pileup and had been forced to park in a Tetris formation. The sounds of the voices of humans reached Barry’s ears, and he heard some car doors slam, some footsteps and some perplexed comments, theories, like, it was a bird, like an eagle, like a TV, like a grand piano, like a person. A person. Barry tucked himself closer to the meager wall. And yet in his brain, the urgency of the people gathering around him while he was in a vulnerable and exposed position was not met by the urgency of the predicament he knew he was carrying from his encounter with the robots at the top of the building.

  In his dispersed brain, there was a reality in which he had been shot in the arm, but he wasn’t sure which arm it was anymore, especially after tumbling like some dirty laundry on top of so many bags of hard sand, which had inverted the nodes in his brain. Nothing seemed to hinder any arm movements of his at this point and as adrenaline was still coursing through his veins, but there had been another shot, of greater concern, that had snapped him like a twig in the middle of his stomach. His hand brushed against it and he felt something warm and wet. Something very wet and sticky. Now was the time to completely freak out. Barry couldn’t think of what to do next because he knew that he was waiting for the pain.

  And it came right away. Without ceremony or outside trigger, the center of his abdomen exploded. Following this geyser of lava, the burst of fire dried out the air inside his lungs at once, expelling a drop of saliva in the air quite elegantly from his lips. He opened his mouth desperately to invite more oxygen in but, his feet kicking chaotically under the assault of the anguish, he managed only to push himself backwards and slide into a crevasse between some of the sandbags.

  He became engulfed by darkness and dust, sucked down and squeezed like some slime in the hands of a furious child. Thrashing around only helped bury him deeper until his butt hit something hard, the bottom of the truck. It was time to bolt, he saw, as the weight of the bags was too great and there was now a small crowd of people amassed around the truck. He could recognize where there weren’t any other options.

  Executing a bolt in the middle of civilians in a covert mission wasn’t so recommended, as there were many security cameras planted here and there on the street and modern technology was easily able to slow down a video to get acquainted with the details of a person trying to hide in supersonic speed, but Barry was running out of ideas. And in the middle of his current distress, he found the path to speed and force tedious. There was an absence of muscle memory he identified, swallowed entirely by the pain, and he couldn’t remember where his legs were, where his arms were. He couldn’t remember anything. A larger bag at the top of the pile under which he was stuck tilted down and collapsed on him, blocking any exit. You’ve got to be kidding mee

  “Bolt motherfucker bolt” he finally fumed enough to recover the gist of it and, with the energy of despair, produced another very small bubble that punched the sides of the sandbags and created a big enough opening. Using the electrical impulse from deep within him, Barry felt the ache become more distant, as if dulled itself by the sphere of magic around him. The sounds fainted sourdine, underwater-like and the dash propelled him up through the ample passage between the sacks, until he could climb up. At the top of the cargo, out of ideas, he rolled hopelessly off the railway but landed on the concrete road with learned grace. Upon hitting the hard ground, another blast of pain tore open inside of his stomach and he was forced to his knees in a hiccup, one fist down, before collapsing entirely on his side holding himself with both arms. His feet pedaled aimlessly in the void and his face melted against the asphalt.

  Barry curled into a fetal position. How was such suffering possible? How would he survive it? An owl-like moan escaped his lips, muffled by the dryness of the absence of air, breathe, breathe! But he couldn’t, he couldn’t even scream or call anyone, somewhere between his stomach and his mouth, the oxygen was cut off, forbidden, and all he was swallowing were little wheezes. He kept wheezing and suffocating, swung his head up and saw the dozen pairs of legs of the spectators still frozen into the bolt bubble around him, a lady pointing an accusatory finger at the truck, offended to have her evening plans interrupted by such nonsense.

  Help mee, Barry closed his eyes and seriously thought about sticking here and just letting time resume its course, abandoning his fate to the people at the scene and waiting for them to see that he was hurt and assist him, are you FUCKING INSANE, a voice thundered between his two cerebral hemispheres and, with it, the air returned. Surprisingly thick and warm. He opened his eyes wide and upwards and the air poured down Barry’s throat, burning, and the dusk sky poured into his eyes. It was some hot air, which drilled into his gut with more fire, particles of dust from the pollution, the sand and the rocky landscape of the road faults mixing with his own inside incendiaries, but it was air. Barry took a big gulp of it and breathed it avidly. His whole body started trembling at the passage of the air.

  He breathed more and allowed himself a few more seconds of being rolled into a ball. The middle of his body was now very wet, his hands slimy against his suit. He stuck one arm out of his lonely embrace and attempted to lift himself up on one elbow. It was simply impossible. A large piece of scorching rock was stuck diagonally inside his abdomen, making it impossible to move without it grating and scratching, stirring fire in fire. “Get up get up get uup” He dragged himself forward a little bit, like a slug rubbing its belly against the cement, pulled by his one free hand. Impossible, he swallowed hard, shook his head. This method of traveling wasn’t going to function either.

  Barry couldn’t accept this, or, if he did, then what? Between two impossibles he went ahead and fought the lesser of the two. Endangering his identity led to putting the ones of his teammates at risk and to adding catastrophe to disaster. Hanging out defeated and flat on the ground and letting the bubble of bolt dissipate and just waiting would bring threat to more than just himself. He had to get a grip. “Come ooon” he pushed firmly on his arm and hand again in a frustrated groan, let go of his abdomen and added the other hand into the motion and, finally he gained a little bit of altitude. Get uup!

  Huffing and puffing his newly restored breath, Barry sent another bolt wave around him, which undulated through the previous one while that one was sill closing in, and the soup of both was probably going to inflict some harm to the eardrums of the bystanders on its path and swelling. Nothing irreparable though, Barry thought with a mix of remorse and self-forgiveness, as he didn’t see how he could rise up again without the juice of his power. It did the trick indeed and gathered his knees under his butt, straightened them and boosted him standing up, one hand clinging to his stomach, and he fell against a parking meter, the top of his body crumbled on it for another precious second. Hanging forward, he felt two heavy tears drop from his eyes and watched them mix with a small puddle of very red blood that already seemed to follow his path. Jesus Christ.

  WALK, he did, but tripped on his own feet and fell on one knee once more, stopped his descent with one hand, used the bolting energy to stretch up again and then at last managed to take a few zigzag steps. He was in total disbelief of what was happening to him. How could you, one moment of your existence, stand tall and healthy and moving agilely through every day between sunrise to sunset and, the next, be vanquished ever so mercilessly and unable to align one foot after the other?

  Somewhere in this state of refusal and incredulity he felt the wetness of his stomach trickle under his knees and reach the heel of his left foot. There is some blood in my shoe. The fear of death crept up inside his heart. He knew this feeling, he had known it before, only one short time, soon passed, but he had been introduced to it.

  The physical manifestation of this fear before the intellectual idea followed, was enough in one’s chest to shake anyone in their boots and he felt his own heart squeezed by it and his teeth chatter inside his mouth. It was something that, even soon parted with, couldn’t be forgotten, something that an organism remembered in each cell, and it could become very paralyzing. The best advice about this phenomenon had come from Darlene, ‘don’t think about death’ He focused on walking, fell into a garbage container before hitting a mailbox and barely avoided collision with another car, then saw his destination in the distance between the brown trees: the Jolly Bar, which had opened just a few hours ago in the early afternoon.

  *

  So Barry tilted his head to frame the door of the bar as his main aim, managed to contort himself between it and one of the waiters who was holding it half open, the expression on the face of the man blocked mid-smile, then he found himself in the large dining hall full of customers. They had all been reached by the ripple of his time freeze so Barry had to be very careful, not to proceed too brutally and turn the place into a human bowling alley with all the people and chairs and table flying around. One slight twitch of his hand and every obstacle inanimate or human, would be swatted away at savage speed. Everyone’s hair in the hall was floating as if underwater between the flares of blue electricity in quite a beautiful scene, and Barry thought that it had been a while since last time he bolted through such an ample crowd.

  Bolting was such a rebirth, if done well, and Barry’s organism sucked avidly on the blue juice, orienting its use towards hyper-focus, his senses sharpened to cut through a massive flow of information and data, angles of movements, positions of people around him, aborted gestures to be able to identify the best course. His eyes landed on a black hooded sweatshirt neatly folded at the back of a chair where a very big man was sitting, his glass of beer suspended in its trip from the table to his mouth. Barry swiftly grabbed it and stuck it under his arm, then helped himself to the two towels at the side of the man.

  He had to be particularly cautious with his feet, any sudden turn or braking able to cause substantial damage in the flooring, and he was thinking about that when his ears intercepted the very faint slow-motion rubbing of something made of plastic, behind him. You are going TOO FAST, too fast, however, moved by the urgency of the situation, he set out to spin and U-turn. That was a spectacular move in such a tight space, equivalent to a train going 180 inside a closet and the heels of his feet dug into the floor, unfortunately projecting one or two tiles from the crust of it in the air. Could be worse. He would have shrugged if he had been able to, but every movement had to be considered with parsimony here.

  He kept following the feeble sound of plastic squeaking, for he knew exactly what it was: tape. A bartender was using it, transfixed while rolling it around a pipe behind the counter at the back of a huge coffee machine. Barry shook his head, he didn’t have a choice, he needed that tape. The jump he performed over the counter, followed by a graceful glide, was a masterpiece of bolting manoeuvre and he smoothly seized the tape from the man’s hand while miraculously sparing all of his fingers from getting pulverized, but then, redirecting his course, he dropped it. It was a thick roll and cascaded in the air before landing in a row of wine glasses, tossing them into a circular glass halo which would, at the end of the bolt, probably send some of them to hook into the ceiling. Someone could walk in following such event and comment on the originality of the decoration.

  OH SHIT, Barry deplored, he had lost the tape! A multicolored spool of string caught his eye at the end of the bar, which was not as useful as tape but could be of assistance, so he seized it, unable to back down at this point. The restrooms were located at the bottom of a very narrow flight of stairs and Barry didn’t have any time or angle for that, so he held his breath and leaped it, once more causing some destruction to the concrete floor that welcomed him underground, I’m so sorry, he thought, unable to process his guilt about the property damage he was inflicting on this innocent bar and its people but, still in the race, he made a surgically precise intrusion into the women’s bathroom, one lady halted in the middle of the task of washing her hands. There, he banged against the dispenser for menstruation products.

  He was running dangerously low on adrenaline and bolting power and, inside his entrails, the pain was menacing to overcome everything again, so he gave up on gentleness, I’m so incredibly sorry, for fuck’s sake, punching against the dispenser to unhinge it from the wall. His exit from the women’s bathroom created a mini tornado from the spinning, lifting the woman’s dress. If anyone exited the stalls after time resumed at this moment, the details of her panties would be visible to all for a brief second.

  At last he braked in front of the toilet for handicapped users and straightened his spine, coming to a stop. He couldn’t risk damaging this door, it was his door, and the place where he wished to be was behind it. With the bolt finally coming to a close and shutting around him, retracting from the bar and its surroundings, a cacophony of glass breaking, tile hitting one another, the resuming of the loud music blasting from the place’s radio, shouts such as “where the fuck is my tape?” burst from the floor above him. Several women he had left behind in the ladies’ room screamed briefly.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  Resolved to ignore everything until later when he’d come back and possibly find a way to compensate the bar owners for all the wreck, Barry carefully opened the door of the handicapped quarters using his elbow on the handle to avoid leaving any trace of blood on his passage, slid into the room, praying no one with a handicap needed to use the toilet at the moment, locked the door behind him. He disintegrated against the wall and dropped on the ground with all his supplies like he was a rock to the sea.

  *

  Barry closed the door and worked on the lock for a good twenty-five seconds, and then the bolt faded in thin air and he liquefied against the wall, avalanched entirely on the floor with his supplies, holding himself with both hands. He buried his chin inside the collar of his suit and shouted “FUUUCK” Another shout came out from deep inside his throat but, this time, he shoved one hand between his teeth and chewed on his knuckles, trying to muffle the sound as much as possible. The little handicapped bathroom was now his shelter, but it was still a public place.

  How could events turn so bleak so quickly? Barry rubbed his forehead against the damp wallpaper, banged his head on it in an attempt to escape the anguish at the middle of his body, “fuuu fuuuuhh fuhh hohy hffhih” he whimpered with his hand in his mouth. His other hand clutching his stomach, he felt the dampness of his suit; it was soaked, and having spent a little while in a vertical position, the wetness had reached below his knees. Not good, not good AT ALL, “I know!” he yelled to himself, accidentally sending some electricity upward. It shook the little light bulb above him.

  “Aiille fuuck” he couldn’t avoid examining himself any longer. Barry inhaled sharply and looked down, slid his shaky hand away from his stomach, “ohmygod” A huge hole with shredded edges was gaping just above his belly button, slightly on the left side. He could already feel that small difference in a new order inside his body, sending some avid tongues of fire up his left flank, down to his waist and his leg. “Aiille fuuck ohmygod” the feeling of imminent vomiting fell heavy on his chest at the sight of the blood, which was really his main issue at the moment, and his drenched sticky fingers were no longer doing much for him. He re-positioned his hand on his abdomen and painfully launched the other to bring closer the little pile of supplies that had fallen near him.

  A roll of shoelaces, some women’s pads snatched from the entrance dispenser, two rags including one that was still covered in breadcrumbs, a huge navy-blue hooded sweatshirt, that’s all he had managed to gather as necessities in this escape-slash-rebound slaloming mission. He shook his head, disappointed. The sight of the things wasn’t as comforting as he would have thought.

  Really? You have been shot by a gun and now you’re going to rotisserie chicken yourself?

  He really had to discontinue scolding himself so harshly right now, “it’s okay” he said. With his one free hand, he grabbed the roll of laces and scratched out the tip from it, placed it between his teeth. Some families of ants were strolling up and down his left arm, they were wearing some sharp little shoes, and he guessed it was the arm where he had been shot just before dropping from the top of the building, but he could still move quite normally, so Barry did his best to ignore the situation. He pressed one of the napkins against his stomach, stiffened and bit his lips and then waited a couple of minutes for the pain to recede.

  Well that’s too bad ‘cause the pain won’t recede. Indeed it would not recede, he saw sadly, so he went to the next step and tied the clean rag on top of the pad, “Jesuus aiille fuuck ohmygod” the tightness was really an agony, but he had to go on, it was now time for rapid action, as his butt was marinating in some fresh blood, so he rolled himself into the thin string, braced for the knot, “motherf—” His feet kicked the emptiness, stomped on the floor. His exhausted arm fell on his side. Now what? He heard his own breath wheezing at the exit of his mouth. Now what.

  A break, he thought, blowing some hot air and closing his eyes. He let his head fall back against the wall behind him.

  Now what? The voice insisted.

  Maybe I need to go to a hospital.

  Are. You. Fucking. Nuts?

  Yeah no, okay, you’re right, he shook his head, felt the tears bite into his sinuses. He had nowhere to go, nowhere to spread himself on the ground and get assistance, nowhere to find his team. He was hurt and he was completely on his own. He blinked some eye water away and squinted through the dust floating in the bathroom, observed the slit-like window carved at the top of the wall above the toilet, which opened to the ground level of the street adjacent to the bar. The familiar chiming of a bus rang through the business of the avenue. The dimming light from outside was carving a path of glitter like a hanging line through the bathroom, reminding Barry of the existence of the world around him. He knew exactly where he had ended, as he was very acquainted with that specific intersection. He closed his eyes again, as moving them inside their globes in the open air hurt too.

  I’m going to go there, I don’t have another option.

  Against all odds, the voice wasn’t critical of this idea, however crazy it was. Walk there, Barry heard.

  I can’t walk.

  You can bolt.

  I can’t move my ass, he sighed.

  You can bolt! You can always bolt, Barry Masquevert.

  I can bolt, alright, he let the tears fall freely on his cheeks. They too seemed possessed by some fire and burned through the dirt on his skin. Stop this pain, stop this anguish, he begged.

  Stop thinking about how much you are hurting, a sorry remark came to him once more. Remember, replacing movement by movement, it’s easier than moving out of stillness.

  What the fuck does that even mean

  Barry nodded to the voice and its unexpected wisdom, remember, just don’t stop moving, “I got it OKAY?” he snapped at the messenger inside his head, exasperated, and extended a leg to attempt to bring the large dark sweater he had snatched from one of the bar’s patrons on his bolt through the dining hall. That leg was stuck half bent, it was really throbbing from the crooked path of the bullet inside his gut, so he tried with his other leg.

  Success! With great difficulty, he coiffed himself with the hood and looked up at the small sink on his left. The plan was slowly materializing in his brain. He would wash up so as to look presentable to the outside for a very temporary adventure on the street, and then he would bolt, and the bolt would carry him to the bus, and then, motherfucker, you can’ t be serious, he would take the bus. His spirit broke at the idea of himself, a speed-of-light type of person, a superhero from the racing kind of them, forced to use public transportation. While he was deploring his current fate and without letting go of his stomach, Barry tossed one hand up and hooked it on the sink. He took a quivering breath and pulled, “motherfu—” Impossible again. Two hands, probably, were necessary. Some leg power as well.

  He retreated into the darkness inside again: now he was seeing the importance of his inner voice focus on movement. Stiffness was waiting hungrily at him, to stop moving and to perish, to freeze on his spot and be devoured by the floor. It was like quicksand, in a way, conquering one part of his organism after the other. In the end he would drown in stillness if he didn’t keep moving.

  Transform movement into movement, adjust direction. All this was all fine, all sound advice. Clutching the little sink with two hands this time, he wriggled his feet through the pain and brought them up, “aiille fuuuck” pushed on his soles, “sonofab—” unable to utter a finalized cuss word as the only breathing that was presently allowed to him was a very shallow one. Miraculously, the pushing and tugging proved efficient and, claiming a little bit of altitude, he felt ready to raise himself upwards, “Jesus Jesus Chr—” or pass out, that was also a possibility. His vision blurred and was soon invaded by some very dark butterflies with some very thick wings. He drew a deep breath and tried to recenter. He bent his elbows and reached the sink, on top of which he crumbled again. Hopefully this thing was strongly drilled into the wall.

  After what felt like another reckless eternity granted to the passing of time, Barry lifted his head first, secured his forearms as well as he could on the edges of the sink and launched the top part of his body up. He banged his forehead against the mirror surmounting the sink but, correcting his aim, finally caught sight of his reflection. “Oh lord” he gasped, “holy shit” His face was glistening in blood, his skin the color of filthy snow under the layer of crimson, paleness that was accentuated by the dark hue of the hood he had brought down on his skull. Under his mad eyes, some thick grey circles were digging themselves as if his eyes were making a hole around themselves to disappear into. He looked like a creature from the swamps.

  “Come on work, work” he encouraged the tap, “give me some water, some nice water” and it did. It worked very smoothly and with a blessed soft flow. The fresh water he splashed on his face was quite a nice feeling so Barry permitted himself a few minutes of suspension, shook his head under the drip, wiping the filth off his skin the best way he could. In a grunt, he lifted himself to the mirror again, saw a small improvement in his appearance, but he couldn’t linger too much there, as his current position was simply too excruciating, the edge of the sink biting into his stomach. He pushed himself away from it and used the wall to hold himself up, aimed tediously at one of the sweater’s sleeves with a trembling hand. One hand, the other, now, the other one. Put your hand inside the sleeve Barry.

  Before zipping up, he darted an eye down at himself again, found that the makeshift roll he had tied around his abdomen wasn’t yet soggy with new blood. It was possible that the tide was finally turning after all, just a little bit, but he had to keep his concentration up and the butterflies with their dark wings at bay. Each one of his thundering heart beats was sending waves of fire through his entire body, and he knew he had to face a very new but real threat of just fainting. How many bolts could he still have in store before consciousness would become a confiscated thing? Maybe two, maybe three.

  It seemed inconceivable that he would put one foot in front of the other and be able to walk to the destination that he had in mind, however, with the energy of a new bolt bubble, he could realistically hope for a reasonable stroll. If only he managed to do away with the agony that was munching at his stomach, tearing through his legs, curling around his shoulders. That, he saw, wouldn’t be the bolt, rather, it would be what George called mind over matter.

  *

  An old lady entered the bus and looked to her right, spotted the hooded figure slumped at the back of it and decided against it, moved closer to the middle of the vehicle. Barry couldn’t blame her, as he wouldn’t have wanted to sit near himself either. He looked like one of those people occupying three seats at the end of public transportation who triggered other passengers to dial the ‘See Something Suspicious?’ number on the window stickers.

  Doing all he could to not slouch further down, he held himself sat up with the pole next to the seat, his other hand pushing against his stomach, where things were relatively dry. At least, drier than he would have thought. The sitting position, in a ninety-degree angle forced by the shape of the back row, was absolutely unbearable, but the cobblestones of the road were really adding some challenge. “Motherffff” he cussed through his teeth, clinging to the pole like it was sticking out in the middle of a tornado. It was early evening and not so light outside anymore and, thankfully, some very dark clouds had gathered in the sky, dimming all the surroundings of the road through which Barry was travelling towards downtown Indianapolis. The darkness was his friend, he saw, keeping some corners of the bus in a blessed obscurity.

  Focus, focus. It was really arduous to figure out a specific plan in his current state, the pain monopolizing all his attention. Bolting from the bar’s bathroom to the bus stop to remain incognito had restored a freshness and alertness in Barry’s brain, which was welcome, but he couldn’t think straight in the absence of relief from his body. He knew one thing, and that was that he didn’t have a lot of wiggle room in his plan. It was a desperate plan that relied on a lot of luck and a lot of gambling on one person, and that person was Ms Eugenie White, his former Geography teacher.

  Barry allowed himself a few seconds of reminiscing. Because, why not? There were still at least fifteen more minutes of bus trip to survive, and any distraction was welcome. The big vehicle hit another pothole and the commotion bumped through the seats with all the passengers, bending the accordion in the middle of the two bus wagons like a crazy caterpillar, “fuuck aiille ohmygod” It had been some five to six years since he had been in Ms White’s classroom, an eternity. He thought it possible that she had completely forgotten about him, which he saw could be an advantage, as she had not so much enjoyed the endless pushing of her buttons he had inflicted to her between freshman and junior year. It had been all in good spirit and nothing extravagant, but would she see it this way?

  Barry knew a lot of things about Eugenie White, which she wouldn’t have spontaneously volunteered to the crowd of her students, and one of these things was that she had been a nurse in a distant past.

  *

  In the storm that picked his dirty corner of the urban world to stop by and drop a shitload of water on him, there was a blessing carried. The time and the place were impeccable, the weather was punctual. If not for all that crashing and bursting in the sky, if not for the icy wind which was cutting down the boulevard, there would have been more people outside. Barry easily resembled the usual wanderers of the neighborhood, the hunched drug addicts getting lost around the corner he was trying to conquer, but normal people still stared or, if bored, reported things to the police.

  If not for the tumult dropping from the fluffy black clouds, someone could have heard the cussing and swearing he was delivering inside the hood of his sweater. But most of all, he saw, if it was not for the ocean of water poured on the street, coursing down in the direction opposite to his, there would have been blood, blood steps, blood smears following him like a shadow, bloody hand prints on the bricks of the wall he was clinging to. Instead of leaving a trace, Barry was swimming, up a current of despair, towards hope. It was a good omen, if such thing still existed in his circumstances.

  Swimming, the word made him smile, although his face didn’t welcome the expression since the muscles around his mouth and nose and eyes and everywhere were aching and brushing with fire. He smiled inside. He felt clean, strangely. He was not swimming, he was not entirely walking either, no, at this point, he couldn’t walk. The tiny ball of metal that had dug through his stomach had traveled slightly on the left side and was weighing heavier on his left leg, making it impossible to land a full sole on the ground. He was dragging and wobbling, but he was making progress. Without a doubt, the peak of frustration for a person like himself, the Bolt, who was accustomed to high speeds in his existence, to have to advance at such a snail’s pace, but he had to be patient. First, the bus, he sighed, and now, this pedestrian situation.

  I would be more patient if there wasn’t blood in my shoe, he thought back to the voice, subjugated at how negative and victim-shaming his inner dialogue was while he believed that he deserved, if not respect, at least mercy. If you haven’t noticed, a jolt of pain darted up from his belly, imprisoned his flank in some burning teeth, so he paused for a couple of seconds, leaning forward with one hand on his knee. No fuck, not on that knee, that knee was shaky as hell. He closed his eyes, let the electricity from the sky hover and mix with his own, basked into several consecutive rolls of thunder. There is blood in my shoe.

  Barry Masquevert, walk, for the love of God. There were only twenty more meters left before reaching his destination, “walk, walk” He used a pipe sticking out of the wall to lift himself back to ninety percent of a bipedal position, pushed himself forward with an old rusty mailbox. So. SLOW. One foot. The other foot.

  The pain at the centre of his body was so complete that it climbed up and rolled itself around his neck like a scarf, caressing the back of his skull. It scooped him low, vibrating through his lower abdomen, threatening him to pee his pants, THAT is a big no-no, Masquevert, you hear me? Get your shit together RIGHT NOW He managed to get himself back into the walk without such catastrophe and, patiently, he won the distance to the door he had been so desperate to reach. Finally. He had visited that very spot many times before, kind of aimlessly, which in itself constituted a change: he couldn’t say that he was aimless anymore. For sure, his aim had grown with the urgency that was presently his. He found the name on the list of inhabitants of the building, experienced a moment of hesitation in front of the bell.

  No, you fucking idiot, you’re not going to ring the bell. Barry waited for one more pang of fire to have completed its lap inside his entrails to open his eyes and look up. Ms White lived on the first floor, which was why she had had some rolled down shutters installed in some sleek boxes on top of her windows with the French doors. But she rarely used them, he knew, because she had a cat and she let him watch the street at night when she was sleeping. Only once had he known her to roll down the thin metal curtain, and it had been the big looting weekend of 2020, when people went crazy for toilet paper and found the shops empty, bought some guns instead. He had watched intensely back then, making sure no one would break into her flat. He didn’t trust those metal shutters.

  As he lifted his eyes up, a lot of water from the sky filled them and menaced to drown him on the spot, but he saw it. The iron fence around the little balcony, it was only two meters above him. Barry knew he had to act fast, before the storm passed, so he shut his eyes and summoned all the focus he could, listen you little shit, you will only have one go, he kept on calling himself some bird names and pep-talking with himself in the most aggressive manner but, focusing indeed, he was successful in summoning a few wires of blue light. The meteorological conditions were optimal for this kind of vertical bolting, meeting between clouds and concrete crust, creating invisible buzzing steps in the air, so Barry took that and, to the people around the scene, he disappeared from sight.

  Launched by the electricity, he saw the wall become his new ground, sensed his knees regain flexibility, bend, and his arms thrown forward slid through the air, both his hands locking on the balcony railing. The anguish that had been wringing out his stomach was relegated to the back, some bottom of consciousness and some dulled down corner of his awareness, and Barry soaked up the relish, closed his eyes, breathed in some wet and cold air, no relishing, no blissing, no relief, the voice said, WHAT? The pampering force of the bolt suddenly dried out without warning, leaving him prey to the gravity under him. He felt himself fall downward again, horrified, tightened his hands on the rail.

  His own weight pulled hard and the middle of his body burst in pain from the jerk, one of his hands let go of its grip, “NO!” he yelled, horrified, “no please!” With monumental effort, he flung his hand up again and felt it close on the iron bar, but that was not going to hold long, especially not with all that water making everything slippery. Barry followed the swinging of his current motion, hanging on the side of the balcony, and threw his right leg up too, then the left one, gasping through the agony. He was able to glue himself against the railing. He expelled some burning air from his lungs, hugged the balustrade desperately in a mix of grunts and sobs and then he tumbled over it. At last, he crashed flat in the center of the balcony, one foot inside a plant pot, the other dangling down.

  As much as he desired immensely to take a break, Barry knew he couldn’t lie there defeated under the water and between the urban garden Ms White had quite poorly recreated on her balcony. The storm had again dissimulated his very raucous invasion but the weather wasn’t going to stay this benevolent forever. “Move, move” he said to himself in a raspy breath, rolled heavily on his right side, spent another minute un-tucking his left arm from under his body and then he pulled himself up next to the tall window, pasted against the wall to remain as unseen as possible.

  He straightened his knees, gained altitude, one hand gripping his stomach in misery. There was a bulky and burning piece of concrete stuck diagonally in the middle of his gut. Like the times the metaphorical dumb kid was touching the hot stove and reflex-removed his hand right away in a warning tale, only the stove was inside his abdomen and he couldn’t remove anything. Enough with the pessimism, get your game on. It was now. He was at the right height, at the right angle, just behind the glass. Out of breath, he leaned and introduced his nose into the frame of the window, his heart exploding in his chest. What would he see?

  He knew the details of the apartment but the first thing he noticed was that Ms White must have gotten rid of the ugly peacock fresco she had chosen to display before just above her couch in the living room, and had replaced it with an ornament of cozy lights, some warm colors. She was sitting underneath, typing something on her laptop with a glass of wine on the side. He noticed her old cat napping next to her, the shape of his body similar to a bread loaf; he knew the animal was completely deaf, which would probably be nice for what was to come.

  Barry didn’t have a choice anymore. First of all because he had come all this way and he didn’t have any other agenda, any other solution to his ordeal, not one teammate left on Earth, but more and more because he felt on the verge of passing out. Running out of time, he observed sadly. The pain was gnawing at him, the edges of his eyes obscured by the dark butterflies. For certain, he would not be able to change his mind and climb down this balcony in any other way than falling, so it was out of the question. The bolting power had deserted his organism and he was empty. No more magic.

  He tried to relax his shoulders, extended a shaky arm towards the glass of the window, hid his bloody fingers inside the sleeve and simply knocked. Two little but forceful knocks.