November: I Might Be A Superhero

018: Bradley Norman

It was a Friday afternoon and Sheriff Brightside was going through some paper works at the station. Drinking as cold coffee and muttering incoherent distasteful words. At least he was at the office and some maniac wasn't trying to stab him with a fishing hook.

His junior colleague, Duncan sat opposite him, going through the criminal record of a man who just stabbed someone over a fight. He was seated with the cuff on his left hand hung at the protector behind him. At his side was his victim who had bandages over his face and on the arm he got stabbed.

"You've been arrested more than your age, Kyle. Aren't you getting tired already? Spending months in jail more than your home?" Duncan glanced at him briefly.

"This piece of shit beside me insulted my mama." The said person fumed out.

"You're not a kid, you're a full-grown adult of thirty-one, we don't have to keep reminding you that it's wrong to stab people, pickpocket, break into malls to smuggle food, and go about creating problems!" Sheriff Brightside yelled from where he had his eyes skimming through the paperwork as he fixed some things.

"Damn right I know, Sheriff. You don't expect the world to be a good place with motherfuckers worse than myself." Kyle glared at his victim who shifted his butt on the bench, away from him. It was as if he was scared of getting hurt again.

Kyle slipped a piece of gum from his pocket and the cop by his side swatted it away from his hand, earning a glower in return.

"I'll be needing to hear the story from your side," Duncan shifted his gaze to the victim, Ronan.

"He ordered fish pizza which I took to his house, and when he came to answer me after I had knocked, he told me he didn't request fish pizza when he damned right did," Ronan informed Sheriff Brightside and Duncan.

"Oh, so you're a pizza delivery boy?" Sherrif Brightside queried.

"Yes, for seven months now. I'm saving for college funds," Ronan unzipped his cardigan to show the orange pizza customized shirt.

"So how did you get stabbed?" 

"Well, we argued for some time, attracted the attention of people around his neighbor. I got fed up, told him to bring half of the money, and I'll add half and then give him the pizza since I was in a hurry to go on another delivery." Kyle grimaced at the last word and was moving his hand to place it on his shoulder, where he got stabbed as if to ease the pain.

"Don't touch it," Duncan instructed and the boy obliged.

"Continue, boy." Sherrif Brightside I urged him, suddenly getting interested.

"Then he spat on me, told me I was a product of a leaked condom."

Upon hearing this, Sheriff Brightside clenched his jaw to restrain from laughing, and his junior Duncan had his hand covering his mouth.

"So," Sheriff Brightside paused to clear his throat to shake off the laughter bubbling in his throat, "you insulted his mom and he stabbed you."

Ronan nodded.

"He kicked me and I fell, hitting my head hard on the floor. I was lucky I held my arm up to cover my face because he was aiming for my eye."

"That's horrible of you, Kyle. You'll stay in jail for…" Sheriff Brightside got interrupted when a cop barged into his office, with a guy in clutches.

"My apologies for the interruption, but this guy there has a very bizarre report." The cop informed them.

"We're busy, so he'll have to wait," Duncan said.

"No!" The man in clutches interjected, attracting everyone's eyes to him immediately. "Marion's county is on fire!" He screamed.

"What do you mean by that?" Sherrif Brightside kept his own down and squinted.

"There's this guy who attacked me on my way to work, he tried to rob me. Stopped in the middle of the road, and requested I hand him my car keys and get out of the car so that he wouldn't hurt me. Of course, I told him he had gone bonkers, but then he grew thirty feet tall, his body was as big as the Hulk, scared the shit out of everyone. And then he raised my car along with me in it, asked me to unbuckle my seat belt or he'd throw me down the bridge. I was so scared, I did as he asked and then he opened the car door and made sure I fell out, that was how I got injured." The guy concluded breathlessly.

Everyone in the office was dumbstruck.

"Wait a minute, is this a story you cooked up or what?" Duncan asked.

"Does this looks like a joke to you?" The man yelled, showing them his broken leg that was clad in bandages and hung in a totally different direction. "I have proof,"

"Hold on a minute," Sheriff Brightside placed his elbows on his desk, intertwined his fingers together, and propped his chin on top of them, "you said he's a man?"

"Yes, he's a man. Around this guy's age," A hand was pointed at an inpatient Kyle who was impatiently waiting to be given his jail time.

"And he could transform into this giant?"

"Yes."

"But only sixteen-year-old teens got the alien virus. How is it possible?" Sheriff Brightside pondered deeply.

"Where's your proof?" Duncan asked, and the man immediately slipped out a photo and smacked it on the table.

"People took shots of him with their phones and camera."

"Holy crap, fuck me." Duncan whose eyes seemed as if they wanted to pop right out of their sockets, unknowingly cursed after taking one look at the picture. And he pushed it to Sheriff Brightside.

The man in the picture was exactly the way the guy in clutches had described. He was 30 feet tall, huge, and clad in all black, and his skin appeared reddish, almost like he was molded with clay. Completely inhumane. More like a beast who liked stealing because in the photo, he was bent inside a mall and people were running away. His face was sort of familiar to Sheriff Brightside, but he couldn't recall where he had seen it.

His attention got pulled away from the photo when another set of cops and a black woman stormed into his office.

"Catherine?" Sheriff Brightside immediately stood up when he recognized the chubby woman. She was his bank manager.

"Sheriff, I have a case to report to you." She stood in front of his desk, looking really frightened and frustrated at the same time.

"Go ahead, Catherine. You don't seem okay."

"Not at all, Sheriff. Something strange happened at the bank barely thirty minutes ago." She slipped some pictures from her bag, "here, this monster stormed into the bank as a normal person. Side-stepped the queue, asked my staff to give him three million dollars, and when they called in security to take him away, he transformed into this giant beast," she slapped the pictures to his desk.

"And threw people around like toys, caused a lot of chaos. Five people are dead and seventeen are injured and at the hospital as I speak." 

"Shit." Sheriff Brightside cursed under his breath after taking one look at the picture.

"Wait a minute, let me have a look." The guy on clutches stretched his neck and upon seeing it, his jaw touched the floor. 

"That's him! That's the monster who did this to me!" He bellowed at the top of his lungs.

"Unbelievable." Duncan said aloud in an incredulous manner, and Kyle from his spot, tried to take a look because he was curious, but he ended up getting pushed back to his seat by the cop beside him.

"He held me up and asked me to give him the three million dollars, or he would break me into two." Catherine continued, trembling "I was so god-damned scared and so I did as I was told. That's why I'm still alive."

***

Tuning After Dark by Mr.Kittu high, Bradley Norman swung his head around as he shook his shoulders to the melodies and the catchy rhythm of this dark electronic and synthwave music. The song had been his favorite since its release and he used it to celebrate a successful round of  stealing well done. It had been so long because he spent the last five years in prison.

He gurgled the last of his vodka and slammed the bottle against the wall, crashing into pieces and pausing to laugh heartily.

♪I've been waiting for this moment, now finally we're alone♪

♪I turned to ask that question, so anxious were my thoughts♪

Bradley sang along with Mr.Kitty, whispering the song's lyrics to perfection as he bent over the black bags and hugged them because they were precious to him.

When he stood on his full height, he unzipped one bag, revealing bundles of dollars properly arranged in it. There were six more bags, and he slipped five bundles, tearing the currency strap and throwing them all in the air.

Bradley pushed his head backward, closed his eyes, and spread his arms wide to feel fly as the money descended on him.

"I'm rich! I'm freaking rich motherfuckers!" He shouted at the top of his lungs and then danced a little to the song.

"How it fucking feels like to be a motherfucking millionaire!" He ended this with a harsh bark of malicious laughter, before letting his hand take the form of a giant.

"All thanks to you!" He pressed an urgent kiss on the arm, and then carried on laughing as he sniffed the hundred-dollar notes.

On the night the alien invasion took place, Bradley Normal just escaped from prison after killing a cop. He was yet to serve six more years for killing a man. Somehow he had devised a plan to escape and it worked just fine for him.

He wore the dead prison guard his prison uniform and dressed himself in the guards uniform, before escaping and running away to steal clothes from a shop.

Bradley went ahead to steal someone's bike and was running away with it, laughing at the owner who couldn't keep up with him, when the alien invasion took place.

It sucked him up with his bike and popped several injections into his body, before letting his bloated unconscious body fall to the ground. He woke up the next morning and figured he could transform himself into a thirty feet giant. At first, it was weird to him, but when he figured he could use it to his advantage, he felt grateful to the aliens for invading Indianapolis. He could steal as much as he wanted.

"This is just the beginning, Marion County. I do not need a gun, my quirk is enough." Bradley smiled inauspiciously. For him, it was just the beginning.