The bottom of a well

Hero or villain. Who gets to decide? Is it what we are who we’re seen as when our faces are used on toothpaste ad billboards or on the screens on the busy streets that broadcast staged footage or an interview from last week. Or is who we are behind closed doors a real glimpse to what we truly look like beneath our skin. The big men and 1%, they get to choose who we get to be, what is most convenient. Or is it perhaps something we do against that, a path we make ourselves that only a few will know if any get the chance. Do we make ourselves or do the masses. Do our actions or our reasons? Our ethics or our morales? The badge we wear with the spandex suits or the tie we wear with our cloth ones?

“Who are you willing to be?”

I toss a handful of breadcrumbs behind my back where a group of pigeons fight in the scorching sun for the remainder of the last batch scattered on the roof’s floors. My legs dangle off the roof ledge as I take another bite of the remainder of the baked pretzel bread long cold. Just another blistering day. Just another day. One more day. 

“Shhh. Don’t get back up. Please, ugh! C’mon rookie, I just want to get back home like the rest of us, don’t make my job any harder than it has to be. I’ll keep this under wraps with the boss, eh?” faster than I can process he’s broken my nose and I’m back on the ground. 

“We’ve already got them, they weren’t resisting. You can stop.” I wheeze through the blood clawing up my throat and the broken ribs. 

“You’re still new at this, you don’t understand that these creeps have violated a law, it doesn’t matter if they were saving helpless freaking puppies do you understand me? They were using their unregistered powers and so we should rough them up a bit to make sure they know to stay in line.” he laughs over the cigarette he chews and the screaming of the seventeen year old kid he’s kicking. 

What makes a monster? Is it time? A tragic backstory and the chance to become a hero which they made the mistake of avoiding, instead of turning to the life of all-consuming rage and crime? There are rules. And they exist to be followed, not questioned. This is the law. It is just. It is fair. 

It is not considerate. Not equitable or loving. It does not know the kindness of a spare spark in a human heart. Only vacancy. Unconditional cruelty and cold. It does not know the feeling of the alleys spent under the moons rigid rule and the vengefulness of the night, only cardboard and newspapers of us to warm it. It does not know the warmth only found in the soft folds of the memory of a mother’s touch, of a mother’s eyes and smile. It does not know us.

“Dude, you hit him pretty hard back there, you sure he’ll be alright.”

“Ah, whatever. Serves him right.” 

“Sooner or later he’ll have to learn to take orders. Doesn’t matter if that scum couldn’t afford to register he should have prioritized for the greater good.”

Soon the pigeons sing a broken chorus for more of my scattered dreams. I instead toss them the tiny torn crumbs from the last of my pretzel. I can’t quite remember how this story is supposed to go. Where it ends. Where the hero became the villain or where the villain became the hero. 

All I know is that evil is a dark staircase leading to darkness. Leading to nothing. But just before nothingness, lies anguish. Like the face now shown all over the news of a mugshot of a seventeen year old boy with a face too puffy from bruises and cuts to be recognized. And now also a sister too dead. 

Down and down the metal steps cascade. A myriad of pounding sounds and a chain of soldiers one by one. All identical. All too far away from themselves. There is no sun down here. No cloud or patch of sky seen. There is no one in this abyss until there is. 

The marching steps cease and whimpering and the clicking of chains begin. A chamber behind a chamber. One that every soldier before me could unlock. I can unlock. I can do it. If I. . . wanted to. I do want to. Wish to. To not care and do anything against this. The law chose to craft an underground warehouse of villains, souls with too much power that chose not to put it to use, being heroes, serving the system, and defeating evil. They were put away for a reason. To protect those vulnerable. Those above. Resistance is futile. Heroism is law. 

Until I short circuited their helmets and opened the door. 

They said chaos would ensue. That without their rule the world would be at an imbalance. That we would never know peace. Yet as the rest of their faces flash on the giant billboard news screen yet are nowhere to be seen terrorizing any streets. Faces instead forever scorned by fear whenever they walk alone in the new life they fled death for.

 As mine flashes soon after, I can’t seem to care. Only enough to stop their lies. Only a moment of focus and the power to the next block of strip malls and weapons against special abilities and police station blink away. The anchor’s face stills and glitches in an expression cracking to show the colours which promise violence before the breaking news billboard winks out. Until I am no longer seated at the edge of the roof with the sun befriending my skin. Until I fly off and glide down the side of the building passing the windows and gaining velocity. Not staring at my reflection but the people below me the ones I will float above that I will beg for change. Because I will not stop until the threat is gone. Even if I have to be a villain or a villain’s hero.