The Superhero's Handbook

The world is in chaos and your hero is dead.

I'm all you have left. So of course that means you're all doomed.

I didn't want him to die. None of us did because the world needed him alive.

We needed him to save us from the bad guys but I'm afraid the enemy was too cunning this time.

He hit us where it hurt the most. He took everything we depended on, he poisoned the land where we grow our food, polluted our water and blew up our power source.

The world is in chaos, it's dark and cold and all seems hopeless. There is no one to save us because as I said, our hero is dead.

I had the burden of finding his body. He was on the floor of his lair, his Cape tangled around him like he had wanted to cocoon himself. To hide himself from an unexpected death.

Poison.

He must have struggled. Or at least I believe he had. Most heroes don't get the luxury of peaceful deaths.

His mouth was open and I couldn't help but wonder if he had been calling out for someone to help him.

But who? Who saves the hero when he's the one in danger?

I took his mask off his face. Not only had he died alone, he had died anonymously.

Not a soul would know which address to send flowers to. They wouldn't even know how to properly honour him because they had never even seen his face.

It fascinated me how the world could count on someone whom they had never truly known.

How could adoration be so blind? It enforced the belief I had always had, that humans would only ever love the ones who were capable of doing something for them.

I wanted to lay beside the poor hero, to hold his hand and let him know I was there but I knew that would be pointless. The dead couldn't hear us. The dead were just... gone.

So I did what he would have wanted me to. I put on his mask and strapped on his boots which were, of course, too big. But that didn't matter, the world was still in chaos and it still needed a hero.

I had studied and observed the hero long enough to know his playbook, to know his rules and his strategies, to know him. To become him.

I looked up at the distress signal that illuminated the sky even though I didn't need to see it to know everyone was in anguish. The screams of the people alerted me, they cried in terror, they cried for help, they cried for God.

I kissed the hero goodbye knowing that I was the only one who had ever truly seen him behind the mask. Knowing that no one would ever know that he was gone, other than me.

When I stepped out to let the world see me, adorning the heroes mask and costume, I knew they were relieved.

I was him now. I was their hero and I was here to deliver them from their afflictions.

They didn't even notice that the man behind the mask was different, not as tall, not even nearly as strong.

They needed a hero so they would see what their pain needed them to see.

I saved the day almost too easily.

They praised me and put me on a pedestal. They named me their leader. They bowed at my feet and I languished in it.

They built me a castle and named me their king, me, their savior.

I think of the hero often when I sit on the throne the people had placed me on. I think about how this could have been his life if he hadn't been too noble to take it.

I think about him and I wonder if he's looking at me from wherever he ended up. If he is, he's probably shaking his head in disappointment.

I don't mind one bit.

I had always seen him for who he was but he had never extended the favour. But to be fair, I had never allowed him to.

He was the hero of the story, he wore a mask of justice and honur.

I wore different masks... none that he would ever find flattering

He had always been a good man. And that was the problem. Good men never rule the world yet they have the power to.

Men like me? There's only one way to get the power men like him always take for granted.

We steal it.

We secretly throw the world into chaos.

We kill the world's heroes.

Then we steal the hero's power.

We save the day almost too effortlessly because we're the ones who put it in danger in the first place.

The world is too blind to separate the heroes and the villains. So one could easily pass as the other and no one would ever notice.

The world is too eager to accept salvation from strangers that they barely even see that all they're doing is submitting to an even greater evil.

I wear the hero's clothes but I am the villain. I always was.

As I said, your hero is dead. I'm all you have left. You're all doomed and you don't even realize it.

What you all fail to realize is that no one knows the hero better than his foe. I studied your hero, I memorized him. I knew him.

I knew the man behind the mask. He might have fought me in the dark but when the sun came up, I was his best friend, his number one confidant.

I almost laugh at the twist that I bet no one ever expected.

The sidekick is a lot of things, he's the fool, the joke, the nerd who sits on the sidelines.

No one ever realizes he is also the one person responsible for knowing the hero inside and out.

He runs the hero's affairs, he knows his strengths as well as his secrets.

The sidekick never turns out to be the villain.

Well not until now.