Through Neon Pink Colored Glasses

TW: sexual violence, physical violence, gore

Another news crew had caught the girl zipping by their studio. They didn’t get much. Just a horizontal flash of bright pink, and she was gone. The busted bar TV wasn’t helping either. A strip of see-through green ran down the flatscreen where a customer had thrown a plate upon the loss of his chosen hockey team.

“If you or anyone you know has any information on this individual, the Chrysalis Police Department and Superhero Council urge you to come forward,” the anchor said. “Here’s what Police Superintendent Johnson had to say.”

The image cut to the superintendent behind his podium at the most recent press conference concerning the girl.

“I’ve been saying this for the last two — three — months, but I’ll say it as many times as I need to. We are hunting a serial killer, so be on alert. Based on recent evidence, we believe they are using an ice pick. They work quickly. We typically find little evidence of struggle, save for that of the violent scenes they are breaking up,” the superintendent said. “While the individual has only been known to kill when intervening in an incident of sexual violence, according to victims of the originating crime, we encourage everyone to stay vigilant at all times and dial 911 in the event of an emergency.”

The image cut back to the news anchors. 

“That’s right. Stay alert, everybody,” said the same anchor as before.

That was all the girl needed, but she stayed to watch until the anchors would send her and all the other viewers to the commercial break. 

They still didn’t have much on her. It seemed clear to the authorities that she covers herself in pink and that she uses a pick. 

She had to smile at hearing herself called “the individual.” She wasn't a criminal. She didn’t think so. What she did was what needed to be done. 

After more reports on violent crimes flashed across the screen, the news cut to commercial, and the girl rose to exit the bar. She was grateful to have a place like Henry-Marshall’s where she could catch nighttime news. They were always just busy enough around this time of night — not so crowded she couldn’t hear the TV, and not so empty she’d be noticed by anyone but the waitstaff. 

After she waved goodbye to Sarah behind the bar, she pushed the already-heavy front door open against the force of the wind and felt herself being blown sideways as she exited. She pulled her pink overcoat closer. Flight would not be easy tonight. 

After checking for any passersby under the sidewalk’s steady lamp light, the girl ducked into the reprieve of an alleyway, where the wind ceased and cool shadow shrouded her. Though she could never truly hide under the cover of dark while she used her powers, shuffling behind a dumpster helped. 

She didn’t have to think hard to envision her outfit anymore. The pink coat disappeared, and in its place was a bright pink bodysuit, which covered her from her neck to her toes, with buttons that ran over the right side of her chest down to her waist to form a double breasted jacket opening. Where a moment ago, her black hair whipped in the wind, she now had pink hair, pulled neatly into a ponytail. Finally, her eyes and eyelashes glowed a bright pink. She shot upward into the night, casting a neon pink trail behind her. 

Fighting against the painful cold and the wind, she searched for the women — for where there were women, the men followed. 

***

The man had his genitals in his hand but not for long. The girl crashed down from the sky, taking his head from six feet high to zero as she smashed it onto the alleyway cobblestones below him. The women he was tormenting ran. They knew what to do. All the women knew what to do. 

When the girl picked him back up by the hair, she noticed precum stick to the ground where his penis had just been, trailing up in a grotesque line for a second before it snapped back down as the man rose. She debated whether or not to play with her food.

On one hand, she really didn’t want to have to touch this guy for longer than she had to. On the other, she knew this wasn’t this bull’s first rodeo. She could sense it in his confidence. She could smell it in his sober breath. After letting go of his hair to quickly grab his wrists, the girl stomped down on the precum, then lifted the same leg to kick the man in the face, the ball of her foot scraping upward on his cheek. 

He was saying something. Begging, maybe. She wasn’t paying enough attention to him to hear. Her focus, now that the women were a safe distance away, was on his fear and his death. Rough him up and take him out — that’s how this one had to go. 

While he was dazed from the kick, she drove him deeper into the alley, into the dark, with three forceful pushes to the chest. As she followed into black and shadow, her glow became more apparent with each step. Clothes, hair, and eyes flashed bright pink in the man’s face, and his breathing grew labored. She knew he knew what was about to happen next. 

She grabbed the back of his head and thrust an elbow toward his nose, pulling his face in to accelerate the impact. One, two, three hits. She was careful to levitate a few inches to be able to swing down, not up, so as not to end him just yet. He pushed her off and swung at her face, and her feet dropped back to the ground on impact as the blow reverberated through her body. Dazed, she barely had a second to stumble back before he followed and got another punch in. And another. On the fourth, she plucked up enough sense to duck, and as she crouched, she grabbed his fine linen slacks at the back of his knees and pulled, flipping him onto his back. She realized his penis was still out through all of this, and as he writhed on the ground, having had the wind knocked out of him, she stood and thought on what to do next. Manifesting her pick took no time at all these days — she had ample chances to practice — so she took a moment to twirl it around in her fingers as she went back and forth on her next torturous move. His hyperventilation brought her back to focus. She brought the glowing pick down on his genitals. 

He cried out. The girl stood and brought the pick up to her face to look at the blood while he struggled on the ground. She wouldn’t say she relished it — well, perhaps a part of her did — but there was something special about seeing the insides of these men when she took their agency. She had stolen something from him, something precious. 

“Please!” he wailed, his voice hoarse from fear and cold. “Please, please, don’t. Don’t. I know what you do. I have a daughter.”

Her eyes flicked back up to his pathetic form, lit just enough for her to see by her glow. She spat a gleaming glob of spit down on him.

“She’s better off,” the girl said.

Lunging forward, she landed with a foot on his chest, her hand clamping his head to the ground, and tore her pick through his throat. His voice was marred by the gurgle of blood in his esophagus as she shot up into the night. She looked down at her bloody pick, demanifested it — the red that covered it slipping back down to the bricks below as it disappeared — and began her scan for another perch to sit and wait for the next scream.

***

The end of the night was, at the same time, a relief and a distress. The morning sun meant rest for the girl and rest for all of the women. But it also meant the nightmares would return. Still. Whatever sleep she could get was just more energy to use the next night. 

She flew toward the sun, which was about to crawl over the horizon, and she passed the boy who smoked on the roof of the Diamond Towers apartment building. His face tilted up toward her as it always did. When she saw him, she knew she flew over the road that led to home. It was easy to get turned around among the beige and gray and clay colored buildings when fatigue weighed her mind down. 

As the sun’s beams peeked over the Earth, the girl’s rosy glow faded into the rest of the light. She zipped over the boy and toward the lake that lined the East and South edges of the city — past the docks and the scant early-morning fishers and the buoys — until she came to her haven. The lighthouse, only accessible by a thin strip of concrete that stretched from a pier that was virtually unpopulated in the winter, stood steady and strong, outlined by the golden-pink glow of the sun. Like landing gear on a plane, her legs flung under her instinctively as she floated down to the wild grass that surrounded the lighthouse — not yet turned brown by the mild winter — and she jogged in a rolling land straight up to the building’s brick siding. 

The girl pressed her cheek to the cool, white paint and closed her eyes. A moment to rest. Any other time, when she closed her eyes, images of the men flashed in the dark underneath her eyelids. But the morning cold on the lighthouse paint pressed into the flush of the girl’s cheek and brought solace and distraction, if only for a moment. When her cheek warmed the spot where she rested, she knew it was time to go to sleep. 

She pushed off the wall and walked down to the dock at the edge of the lighthouse lawn. At the line where grass turned to sharp rock, the aging wood of the lighthouse’s tiny dock reached out over the lake. No one but her ever populated that space, and she loved this patch of land in the city that she called all her own. She crawled down onto the black, jagged rocks and sat by the water’s edge, focusing on creating her pod. 

Before her in the water, under the cover of the dock, manifested a pink pod about the size of a body pillow. It had an open lid and a thick, pink rope that attached it to the wood dock poles that dipped into the lake. The girl lowered herself into the pod and felt herself rock with the waves. She demanifested her suit, laid down, and, looking out to the sun once more before closing her drooping eyelids for the day in hopes that its light would somehow ward off the nightmares to come, closed the lid.

***

Henry-Marshall’s felt different tonight. Nothing inside had changed. Same busted TV. Same buzzing crowd. Same news channel. But what was on the news was different. And that changed everything for the girl. Just his face was enough to make her neck clammy.

The head of the Superhero Council’s stern-set jaw and analytical eyes showed on the television underneath the translucent green strip.

Superintendent Johnson spoke on the girl’s “wrongdoings” again and then, remarking that the Superhero Council would now be working in conjunction with the police on this case, introduced Head Councilman Adam Rite. Well, right now he was Head Councilman Adam Rite. As soon as he put his mask on, he would be better known as The Righteous.  

“Thank you, Superintendent,” Adam Rite said, stepping forward to the podium — his red, white, and blue camo uniform gleaming in the setting sun. “Ladies and gentlemen, you may have heard we have lost one of our own. Councilman Evan Davis was struck down last night outside of what is supposed to be a place of merriment for our members — Club 360, which you may know is a favorite among our fighting corps.” 

The girl’s jaw dropped. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed she was there at some point last night. Whatever. It didn’t matter. Whether she was in the vicinity of the Superhero Council’s favorite hangouts or not, she knew her job, and she did it. 

“Councilman Davis was not a superhero,” Adam Rite continued. “Well, at least not in the traditional sense. He was a scholar and a lifelong student — and a father.”

The girl rolled her eyes. Of course it was the father. Didn’t they remember what it meant when she took her pick to someone’s throat, what it meant they had been doing just moments before?

“Where we bring our strength and superhuman power to the streets every day, he fought the good fight with his mind, studying supers and their habits and abilities. He was one of the foremost experts on superhumans in our great city. And we lost him last night. We lost him to senseless violence and vigilante injustice. We had been working toward taking on this case as evidence surfaced to support our theory that the individual is superpowered, and the loss of our dear councilman bolsters this initiative. The fear this Neon Menace has brought to our streets must end now.” Adam Rite brought a rock-hard fist down onto the podium. “Alive or dead, we will bring this person in and make sure they pay for Councilman Davis’s passing and for all the other fathers and grandfathers and uncles and cousins and spouses they have taken from us.” 

Clapping sounded from the TV speakers as Adam Rite riled those in attendance. There were even some whistles and slaps on the bar counter coming from the regulars in Henry-Marshall’s.

Neon Menace… What kind of a superhero name is that? the girl thought. Well, I guess they think I’m a villain, but still. Stupid.

“This began with blood, and it will end in blood!” Adam Rite cried out into the microphone. With that, he pulled his mask on — blue with white eyes and two silver stripes running parallel up his face — and became The Righteous. 

The girl peered down at her overcoat to see if she was giving off a tell-tale pink glow. Not in this light, thankfully. The bar’s light was always enough to keep the glow at bay, but being too careful still felt like not enough. She could imagine pitchforks and broken bottles wielded by the neck in the hands of the bar attendants.

But as much as this startled her, as clammy as the back of her neck had just become, she had to be honest with herself. She knew this day was coming eventually.

All I'm doing, she reminded herself, is what needs to be done.