The Helping Hand

1984:

Gwen lay on the grass in the circle of mushrooms, drawing Fae-touched Fran, her comic heroine. Like her, Fran was a recent high-school grad, just a hair over five feet tall, with strawberry blonde hair, one green and one brown eye, and a spattering of freckles across her pale face.

Unlike her, Fran had been given a gift by the fae, The Helping Hand, a pendant that allowed her to teleport anywhere she desired, that just as often took her instead to where she was needed. Fran had no other superpowers, instead relying on her knowledge and day-to-day skills and talents to solve problems.

Gwen knew the fae weren’t real, mushroom rings were caused by the spreading mycelium, and teleportation and magic were as fictional as the fae. Still, the setting helped put her in the right frame of mind for Fran’s origin story.

It was while she was putting together the panels where Fran first found the pendant that something in the grass caught her eye. A glint of something metallic, less than two feet from where she lay. Gwen reached out and picked it up. It was a length of silver chain with a pendant. She turned the pendant over. It looked exactly as she had drawn The Helping Hand.

A pendant with a hand would have been one consequence too many. With the hand in the complicated pose she’d drawn — she was quite proud of how it had turned out — it was too much.

With shaking hands, Gwen clasped the chain around her neck. She held her portfolio in her left hand, grabbed the pendant with her right and thought of her bedroom.

She didn’t have time to feel silly about it, as she had no sooner thought of her room than she was there. Through practice and experimentation Gwen learned a few things. She didn’t need to hold the pendant to teleport, she should pick a quiet place near where she meant to go that she could show up to avoid having to explain how she appeared out of nowhere, most of the help she showed up for was of the mundane sort of lift this or push that, and the fae were very, very real.

1986:

Gwen had enough of Fae-touched Fran complete to fill two eight-issue volumes. Since her portfolio went everywhere with her, every spare moment was spent expanding the world of Fran, her own experiences adding color and flavor to the series.

She left work one evening after the mall closed, found herself alone and too tired to walk home, so she teleported. Rather than her studio apartment, however, she found herself standing in front of a shocked man in a beige business suit, trying to balance on a rolling office chair to change a light.

Gwen dropped her case and held the chair steady. “Go ahead and finish what you’re doing,” she said. “I can explain later.”

The man changed the light bulb, taking far longer than he should have, owing to his watching her rather than what he was doing. When he stepped down, Gwen picked up her portfolio, ready to disappear from this unknown man’s life forever. She was stopped though, by his question.

“Are you a superhero?” he asked.

“What?”

“You just appeared out of thin air.” He cleared his throat and extended a hand. “Sorry. Mike Jeffkins, owner and managing editor of Martial Comics.”

Gwen shook his hand. “Gwen Brookes, shift manager, Central Mall food court. That’s in British Columbia, by the way. I take it we’re in New York?”

“Baltimore. You said you could explain?”

Gwen thought about showing him her work but felt it would be out of place. Instead, she started telling him the story of how she’d been drawing a comic and discovered the pendant.

He stopped her. “Is that what you have in the case — the comic?”

Gwen nodded. “It’s probably not good enough.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Mike said. “Let’s take a look.”

She laid her sketch pads on the desk, and he began to read. She watched as his fingers traced the lines just above the paper. He was feeling the flow of the panels as she had laid them out, with the lines in each leading into the next, bringing the eyes along.

He read through the entire volume one and started on volume two which opened with the flashback to Fran finding the pendant. Mike looked up from the page to the pendant hanging around Gwen’s neck.

“This is where you found the pendant?”

“I was drawing this panel,” she said, pointing at the panel where Fran dons the necklace, “when I saw it in the grass. But everything in these were drawn in the order you just read them.”

“I see the improvement in your confidence. The lines are bolder and flow even better than in the earlier pages. But,” he said, “if you found it then, how did…?”

“One thing I’ve learned, the fae exist and are fickle. They must’ve thought it would be a kick to make my silly story true.” Gwen shrugged. “I try not to think too hard about it. Besides, this thing rocks. Do you have any idea how useful it is to just teleport where you want to go?”

1998:

Martial Comics was bought out by one of the big publishers, and Fran was killed off in their massive team-up and cross-over series. Without responsibilities to her comic, Gwen found herself idle. She decided to take some local classes. Basic household maintenance classes included fixing leaking faucets, changing light fixtures, switches, and plugs. She learned basic automotive maintenance, gardening, and how to groom dogs.

She wished she hadn’t learned how to groom dogs when she teleported to a muddy dirt road somewhere in the Midwest. Before her stood a shivering husky puppy, his coat matted and caked with mud providing no protection against the cold rain. She carried the poor, bedraggled critter down the road to a veterinary office — with no groomers on staff, of course.

By the time she finished getting the pup clean, dry, and in the care of the vet, she’d missed her dinner date, and her new dress was ruined. After returning home to trash the torn, stained dress with piles of dog hair all over it, she removed the necklace and stuffed it under the jumble in the kitchen junk drawer.

When she woke in the morning, it was back around her neck. She left it at home on the nightstand while she took the four-hour drive to the coast for some much-needed relaxation. She was flying down the highway when it materialized around her neck again.

Locking it in a fire safe didn’t work. The bank’s safe deposit box didn’t fare any better. She tried shipping it to a paranormal investigator halfway across the country, but before she got home from the post office, it was back around her neck.

She looked at it in the mirror. “Why won’t you leave me alone?” she asked. “I’m sick of you.”

2011:

Gwen had begun approaching it like a job a few years prior. Five days a week she would teleport somewhere three or four times, until she inevitably ended up somewhere she didn’t expect. Once there, she did whatever had to be done and teleported back home.

She’d talked more than one person down from the figurative ledge, and a young woman from a literal one. She coddled infants while their overwhelmed mothers got a break, tended toddlers while the day-care workers located the source of smoke or held off a non-custodial parent, and helped teens deal with their angst in healthy ways.

She’d changed countless tires and repaired switches and outlets in everything from single-wide mobile homes to mansions. She had to stifle her laughter after fixing a dripping faucet in a multi-million-dollar home led to the owner being so relieved he cried. The faucet stopped dripping, but now he is, she thought.

On days when she wasn’t teleporting here and there, she sought out mushroom circles and sat in them in hopes that the fae would return and take the burden from her. When that didn’t happen, she resigned herself to her burden.

The publisher that had killed off Fran decided to bring her back in a teen dramedy, and Gwen was invited as a writer. The new owners of the publisher were fans and wanted her pure vision.

The entire run of Fae-touched Fran was re-released under a renewed Martial Comics banner, providing Gwen with more royalties in a year than she’d gotten from the original Martial Comics in twelve. She maintained her simple lifestyle though, and the money she didn’t need went to charity at the end of each month.

2024:

Gwen had just finished helping a farmer get her tractor running in Iowa and tried to teleport back home, only to find herself in a hospital room. Red tape with the letters “DNR” in white was stuck to the headboard, the heart monitor, and the chart on the wall. In the bed next to her lay a grey, pallid old man with a familiarity she couldn’t place, until he opened his eyes.

“Mike?”

“Gwen,” his voice was just above a whisper and wavered as if it took all his strength to talk. “I was wishing you were here, and now you are.”

She pulled a chair next to the bed, sat, and held his hand. “I’m here, Mike. I’m sorry I haven’t written or called in so long. I didn’t even know you were sick.”

“I’m just as bad,” he said. “After my brother died last year, I’ve been so alone. I thought about calling you a thousand times but thought it would’ve been weird.”

“No weirder than me popping up out of nowhere twice in your life.” Gwen sighed. “Most of what I do amounts to little more than I did for you — holding a chair so you didn’t fall.”

“You did more than that.”

“Well, sure. I’ve helped a few people at least with bigger things. Most cases, though, it’s nothing more than a couple minutes of simple assistance.” Her vision blurred behind tears. She knew why she was there and hoped it would be more than a couple minutes.

“I don’t think you understand,” he said. “Holding the chair wasn’t what I needed, Fran was what I needed. Without it, Martial would’ve gone bankrupt long before the big boys swooped in and bought it out. You saved me, in a very literal sense.”

“I wish I could do something now,” she said.

“You are. I sat with my brother, hard as it was, to make sure he didn’t die alone. Now I won’t die alone, right?”

“You won’t. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I saw the show, thought it was pretty good.” He closed his eyes, and a slight smile crossed his face. “They were smart to put you on the writing team for it. I knew it was your work in the first two minutes of the first episode. It wouldn’t be the same without you.”

“Thanks, Mike. Your opinion means more to me than anyone else’s. You saw my raw talent and took on an untrained kid.” Tears began to trek down her cheeks unbidden. “You saved me, at least as much as I saved you.”

“Fine, kid. We’re even. I’m glad you’re still doing it,” he said, “but for the life of me I can’t figure out why. I would’ve given up on teleporting years ago if it meant I’d keep getting flung to the ends of the earth to help strangers hold a ladder or whatever. Why?”

“Why am I still doing it?” Gwen patted his hand. “I tried quitting, more than once. The longest I got was five weeks. It’s not even about the teleporting. I knew I could help people, and yet I wasn’t. That made me despise myself. So, I decided to keep doing it as long as I’m able.”

“I’m glad, because it means you’re here now. I never told you this, but I always thought of you as the daughter I never had. Every success of yours made me proud.”

“You know the entire crew at Martial called you ‘Dad’ behind your back, right?” she asked.

“I knew. It felt good, like maybe I was important to someone.”

“Ever since that first meeting you’ve been important to me,” Gwen said.

Mike winced and let out a long breath.

“What is it?”

“I’m just tired,” he said.

“I’ll let you sleep,” she said, holding his hand in both of hers, “and I’ll be right here holding your hand.”

Gwen held his hand and listened as his breathing slowed and eventually stopped. She didn’t release his hand until the doctor came in and turned off the monitors. She felt the weight of the pendant against her chest as she made her way to the nearest restroom to teleport out unseen.

She stood in her living room trying to decide what the pendant was to her now. It had started as the best thing ever, turned into a curse, a burden, and now, she realized, it was as natural to her as breathing. The Helping Hand, she decided, just — was.