When I came to, I had a momentary hallucination that I was in the steam room at the gym. Though I was sweating like a pig, the illusion was foiled because I was fully dressed. In fact, the costume was virtually plastered to my skin by my own perspiration.
It slowly dawned on me that no steam room I’d ever been in had been quite so hellish. True, there was that same “hot air” smell all around, but it lacked the distinctive overtones of toasted menthol and over-heated chemical disinfectant that you find in most gym saunas. I tried to sit up, but the temperature was enervating, and I felt drowsy and weak.
It was only when I struggled in earnest to rise that I discovered that I was pinioned at the wrists and ankles, fixed in place by a very thin, very sturdy, strap around my chest. As the fog evaporated from my brain, I also noticed that my entire body was experiencing a tingling sensation that set my nerves on edge. I immediately understood that, even if I had the strength to snap the bindings, I’d still be caught in an electrical field.
My vision slowly swam into focus, though the electricity delayed that process quite a bit. Eventually, with a disproportionate amount of effort, I was able to turn my head slightly to look around. What I saw was not encouraging.
I was flat on my back at the bottom of a cavernous space, a huge factory with metal catwalks that bisected the open space high above me, crowned by a roof supported by steel beams that shimmered in the heat. I could see, as well as hear, a line of roaring furnaces stretching into the distance to my left. Opposite them, a row of giant cauldrons large enough to hold double-sized portions of elephant stew bubbled and simmered, filled with molten metal.
Oh, great. Roasted alive. Again. How original.
The Aphid had tried it once, without much success. During the process, I’d been in agony. Nevertheless, I’d emerged relatively unscathed except for a weeks-long lingering sunburn that no amount of aloe vera could soothe. If that was what Thanatos had in mind, I didn’t relish revisiting the experience.
Fully alert now, I realized that the throbbing hum that I’d assumed was part of the mechanical process of the furnaces was actually coming from inside my own head. The instant it registered on my consciousness, a headache blossomed. The noise from all the burbling, clanking, simmering, and creaking machinery was trying to convert it into a full-fledged migraine. It was a dull pain, rooted deep inside my skull, accompanied by very strong nausea. I dry-swallowed a few times to keep my gorge down. On my back as I was, trapped and unable to move, vomiting would not have been a good idea.
As if all that wasn’t bad enough, there were an alarming number of abandoned tools within my immediate view. On second thought, they were more like “implements,” as in “implements of torture.” Clamps and shears and picks and other objects with sharp edges were scattered all over the place, as if the workers had dropped them in a hurry and fled. Not being a particularly handy type myself, I didn’t know what most of them were supposed to be used for. But given that they were probably designed to rip through metal and to withstand molten heat, I had no doubt they could be easily re-purposed to cause a great deal of agony to tender Whirlwind skin.
The air was dusty and thick. Everything smelled horribly, horribly hot; that was the only way to describe it. It wasn’t a particularly appealing smell but, looking on the bright side, it was a welcome relief from having to inhale Bradley Harmon’s body odor. I sneezed.
“You’re awake. Good. We can begin.”
Those are not the words one wants to hear when one is vulnerable and tied to a table, no matter how hunky the speaker may be. One prefers something more akin to, “You just lay back, enjoy yourself, and let me do all the work.”
I tried to speak. I’d like to think I would have uttered something noble and heroic, albeit cliched, like, “Do what you will! I’ll resist you to the bitter end!” But the electric current made my mouth feel like it was filled with a wad of couch stuffing, and I couldn’t get my tongue to move properly. All that came out was a garbled grunt.
“Eloquent,” Thanatos observed.
He ran one finger slowly down the center of my chest, across my stomach, and stopped just short of the Happy Place before he moved outside of my range of vision. He fussed with something on a table and, when I heard the clatter of tools, I tensed my muscles as well as I could to prepare myself for impending torture.
“It’s a shame. Splayed out like a juicy side of beef. Seems a pity not to take advantage, doesn’t it?”
His meaning was clear and, to be honest, not completely objectionable. Much to my surprise, I discovered that there was at least one part of my body that was immune to the electric field. Evidently, Thanatos saw it too.
“I hate to disappoint you, but rape is not on the menu.”
Before meeting Peter, I would have been drooling at the prospect. Now though, I was just drooling. Mostly because my saliva glands were screwy from the electricity as well.
“I hope you don’t mind that I had to take off my cape.”
He stepped forward so that I could see him again. There was something about the way he was standing that seemed odd. Then, it hit me.
The arrogant bastard was posing! His back was arched slightly to make his chest seem even bigger, and he was standing with one leg slightly turned out to better display his thigh muscles. The clincher was the way he kept flexing both his biceps, not enough to be overtly obvious, but enough to make his arms bulge. Not that I’d had any doubts since our tete a tete on the water tower, but I again saw how easy it was to be tricked into thinking he wore body armor.
“It sometimes gets in the way when I’m involved in more delicate operations.”
Delicate operations?
I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that. Being tortured was kind of my stock in trade. Ever since the Whirlwind first came on the scene, one bad guy or another had been trying to kill him, and there seemed to be an unspoken competition to see which of them could come up with the most bizarre, or painful, way to do it. So, it wasn’t like I wasn’t used to the idea. But when he said “delicate operations,” I got this weird feeling, like he was going to extract a few of my internal parts and sell them to Central American organ smugglers.
“Also, it’s muggy in here.”
Muggy? Thanatos was a master of understatement. I’d have chosen words like stifling, searing, and blistering. Although, since it was very possible that my skin and those adjectives might become better acquainted in a very few minutes, perhaps muggy was just a dandy way to put it.
“And the cape doesn’t breathe very well.”
That made two of us.
He ceased his flexing and came closer. In one hand, he held an opened container that looked a lot like a quart-sized paint can.
“I wouldn’t confess this to just anyone, you understand. But I’m susceptible to heat rash.” He winked behind the mask. “It’s a very unattractive condition.”
Who was he kidding? Unattractive? Thanatos could have posed for a centerfold even if he’d had leprosy.
He loomed over me and, for an instant, I thought maybe he’d reconsidered the not-taking-advantage part. Sadly, his intentions were much different.
“Look,” he said, and there was a new quality to his voice, a regret that sounded very sincere. “I know you felt the same way I did when we met. Please believe me that if there was any other way but this…”
He stopped. If he hadn’t been a lunatic about to try and kill me, I’d have sworn that he’d gotten a little choked up.
“I’m not evil,” he said. “Not like those others. Not like that old lady who melts people and that crazy guy with the blimp.”
“Captain Dirigible,” I tried to say. But it came out sounding more like “Cuppin’ Thimble”.
“I really need you to understand that. I don’t want you to die thinking that I’m just another bad guy.”
It was kind of sweet in its own psychotic kind of way. However, as I quickly reminded myself, there were many, many other ways of showing someone how sweet you could be. In fact, freeing the hero and letting him live would be, I thought, an excellent way to demonstrate some sweetness.
“The truth is, if there was any way to make this easier for you, I would.”
He dipped his fingers into the jar, scooped up a glob of something, and plopped it onto the center of my chest.
“At least this first part won’t hurt at all.”
He was right about that. In fact, as he continued to cover my chest with the goo, working it over my arms, and smoothing it onto my stomach and lower parts, I found myself thinking that, as massages go, this probably wasn’t a bad one at all. Of course, it would have been a lot more pleasurable if I had some feeling left in my body. With that thought, a different one occurred to me:
What he’d said about the first part not hurting was troublesome.
What about the second part?
Or the third?
As he continued to spread the goo, I tried to struggle. It accomplished nothing other than some sympathetic, soothing noises from him. I think he thought he was helping me not to be afraid of dying. He had no idea how wrong he was.
I’d always known that the Whirlwind’s career could be cut tragically short without much warning. I’d dealt with the possibility of my own death a long time ago and, to be frank, it didn’t bother me much. I have always been, as one Courier reporter once wrote after an interview that hadn’t gone nearly as well as it should have, a “reluctant” hero. The Whirlwind’s death was no biggie, as far as I was concerned. I’d have gladly hung up the turquoise tights in favor of a normal life with Peter. It was only my damnable sense of responsibility and, let’s face it, guilt, that made me continue with the Whirlwind schtick.
Before now, I’d had no doubt that, whatever awful fate Erica, or the Aphid, or Doctor Dire had planned for me, the Whirlwind would always find a way to triumph. But this predicament with Thanatos was different. I could see no way out. Death seemed inevitable. For the very first time, it occurred to me that, if the Whirlwind perished, Alec Archer was equally as doomed. To my surprise, no matter how bravely the Whirlwind was ready to face his fate, the Alec part of me was a wreck.
Death is death is death. When it happens, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it. It was the thought of never seeing Peter again, of not being able to make sure he knew how much I loved him, of not being able to apologize for hiding such a big part of my life from him, even if it was only to keep him safe…that was the unbearable part. Alec Archer was a gibbering, blubbering mess, ready to beg, to plead, to bargain, to do anything if only he could avoid death and give him the chance to be with his husband again.
But the Whirlwind part of me weighed in as well. As much as Whirlwind grumbled about having to do what he did, he always took a certain pride in wearing the mask. And the mask was still in place. Pride, I guess, helped make him a lot stronger than Alec. And not just physically.
Even so, it was a struggle for me. The only way to keep the screaming young man inside me from being unleashed was to concentrate on something else. The electric field held me paralyzed; finding a way to shut it down seemed impossible. Given that escape was not an option, I concentrated on Thanatos himself, not just because he was so damned beautiful, but because it distracted the Alec part of my mind from thinking about whatever Fate had in store.
“It’s traditional, I believe, to tell the hero exactly how he’s going to die.”
He leaned over me and the reflected flames from the furnaces glinted off the makeup under the mask, distorting the color of his irises even further. I don’t know if it’s common for people who are facing death to obsess about trivial things, but I felt a weird compulsion to learn the true color of Thanatos’ eyes. It had suddenly become the most important thing in the universe for me.
“Do you know how stunning you are?” he whispered to me. “From the beginning, I struggled with what to do about you. I always felt destroying something so beautiful would be a crime.”
Right. Like contaminating innocent people with a fatal virus was not a crime?
“It complicated my plans, and made things a lot more difficult for me. But I finally came up with a way of preserving your looks.”
He fetched a heavy rolling cart. The boxy machinery on top had a wand attachment that reminded me a lot of an airbrush, or a tattoo needle. It was attached to something like looked like an air compressor.
“Greene Genes technology.” He patted the machine with affection. “Usually, you need to immerse the…um…object in a salt solution. For more intricate work, you can use an inert gas. But since human flesh is a very poor conductor, I’ll need to keep the current running through your body throughout the entire procedure. Unfortunately, it will take a while.”
He sighed, and I sensed his regret wasn’t just an act.
“I really, really tried to make it as painless as possible.” He flashed me a weak smile. “But technology has its limits.”
My confusion must have showed through the paralysis.
“Electroplating,” he explained.
Well, that was certainly a new one!
“You’ll become a statue. Both beautiful and precious. I managed to…er…liberate a small stash of gold plating. It’s not a lot but it’s enough, I think, to do you justice. Enough to coat you completely, but not so much that the details won’t show through. Besides, as long as the coating is thin enough, the process I’m using will keep you malleable for a while.”
Malleable? I had no idea what that meant.
“I’ll be able to pose you,” he explained. “Until the gold sets up and hardens.”
He positioned the nozzle so it pointed directly at my chest, and fiddled with the knobs on the box. When everything was arranged to his satisfaction, he pushed a button. A light mist sprayed across my body. On the bright side, the mist was a refreshing respite from the incessant heat.
“We have time,” he assured me, “to get to know each other. Maybe a few hours. I realize that you can’t talk while the current’s flowing so, I suppose, it’ll have to be a monologue.”
The cooling mist started to sting a little and demanded more of my attention.
“If only we had met under different circumstances, I think I might have been able to love you.”
He leaned over, as if he meant to kiss me, and stopped just outside the range of the golden spray. He was close enough so that the warmth of his breath took the edge off the stinging mist where it settled against my cheek. He was perspiring almost as much as I was. His sweat had smudged the dark makeup around his eyes, and made it run. For the first time, I could clearly see their color.
They were green. Dark green.
And the grassy, heathery musk scent rising from his body was hauntingly familiar.
The shock paralyzed me even more effectively than the electric field. I was stunned when all of the recent events fell horribly, tragically into place. Thanatos’ familiarity with Greene Genes research. The powerful attraction we’d felt for each other. My reluctance to beat him to a pulp when I’d had the chance. Suddenly, all of it made sense.
I couldn’t help myself; I started to cry.
Thanatos immediately sensed there was something wrong. That is, he sensed there was something wrong other than the fact that he was halfway to Simonizing me to death. My tears puzzled him and, now, it was his turn to look deeply into my eyes. I think he understood that there was something important I was trying to tell him, and he was curious about it.
The instant our gazes locked, he froze. He knew.
For whatever little of my life I had left, I could not fathom how either one of us was going to extricate ourselves from this terrible situation.
“Alec?” he whispered. Then as the initial surprise faded, he breathed, “Oh, my God!”
Panicked, he jabbed at the buttons on the machine but he was still reeling with the shock of his discovery. It made him clumsy. I truly believe he intended to turn off the compressor. The spray from the nozzle actually trickled and almost died, but an instant later it started up again, even stronger than before. Even if I’d been able to speak, even if I could have told him he’d accidentally hit the wrong switch, or twisted a knob the wrong way, I was weeping too heavily for him to possibly understand me.
The pain was not physical, but it was no less palpable. I would have gladly perished in excruciating agony if I could only have spared myself what I’d just learned. No matter what happened in the next few minutes, I could never un-know it. All at once, dying as soon as possible seemed a welcome choice.
“Alec,” he whispered again, “Oh, Alec! You don’t understand.”
I didn’t, of course. Not yet. Not then. My mind was still struggling with the revelation that the maniac who had held Centerport hostage, who had blown up half a dozen people, who had kidnaped Bradley Harmon and who had, very probably, murdered a man who had been like a father to him, in fact, the same madman who was on the verge of turning me into a garden ornament…was my beloved husband, Peter.
What I did next was perhaps the most difficult thing I’d ever done in my life, not only because I was already grieving, but also because my mouth still wouldn’t work. Nevertheless, after tremendous effort, I succeeded in forming a single, garbled word.
“Why?”
Thanatos…Peter didn’t need to hear me to understand the question. His features twisted with the agony of his emotions and he, too, burst into tears. He formed his hands into fists, crammed his knuckles into his mouth to keep from screaming, and bit down on them hard enough to draw blood. As horrible as it was for me to recognize Thanatos, Peter’s turmoil upon realizing that I was the Whirlwind was infinitely worse.
“For you, Alec,” he breathed. The words were so incongruous, I thought I’d misheard. “I did it for you. For us.”
If only he’d had the presence of mind to realize the compressor was still going. If only he’d tried to turn off the electrical field again. If only he’d done any one of half a dozen other possible things, maybe everything could have worked out differently. I like to think that’s true. But both of us were so wrapped up in our discoveries that neither one stopped to consider that I was still trapped and unable to move.
“I love you, Alec. You know that. You have to know that!”
Neck muscles straining, I managed to incline my head a fraction of an inch. Encouraged, he went on.
“Oh, my sweet baby, when I found you, when I first saw you, do you know what I thought?”
I waited, figuring he’d tell me even if I couldn’t shake my head.
“I thought, there is the most amazing and beautiful man I have ever seen. After that first night, I knew it wasn’t just on the surface. It goes all the way through. To here.”
He made as if to place his palm on the center of my chest but he snatched his hand away. I understood my husband well enough to know that it had nothing to do with the current. He was afraid to touch me, afraid he’d further defile our relationship. He was embarrassed and ashamed of himself.
“The very next morning, I knew I had to spend the rest of my life with you. That’s the God’s honest truth. I knew it that soon.”
His head bobbed up and down rapidly as if, by nodding so strenuously, he would make what he said even more true. With a frisson of unease, I saw that his eyes held more than a hint of hysteria in them.
“But you were a hooker, Alec. A whore!”
He spat the word. My heart felt like it was being crushed like an old tin can.
There are certain moments in everyone’s life that we remember as if they were orchestrated by Disney. We imagine that there’s music swelling and that little cartoon bunnies and butterflies are cavorting just outside the frame. The day I met Peter, I’d felt like that.
“I thought to myself, how can I possibly marry him?”
The bunnies fell dead; the butterflies fell to the ground with shriveled wings; the strings on the violins warped and snapped.
“But I still loved you! So, I did it anyway. But then, Alec…then…”
He was still wearing that awful skull mask so I couldn’t see the nuances of his expression, but something struck me as terribly, terribly wrong. There was an unsettling tightness in his voice, and a glint of irrational panic in his eye. I was suddenly far more afraid for him than I was for myself. If I could have spoken, I would have told him that everything would be all right.
It would have been a lie, but I would have said it anyway.
“Then Ritchie passed that ridiculous law. Just when I thought we could have a normal life, that we could put your ugly past behind us, you opened the agency. You went from whore to pimp, Alec. How was I supposed to deal with that? You’re my husband, for Christ’s sake!”
Peter clenched his fists and threw back his head. Every muscle in his neck was corded with tension when he gave vent to a terrifying shriek of abject misery.
“You didn’t have to work, Alec! You had Mary’s. We could have re-opened it if you wanted, or if you felt you needed something to keep you busy. We would have been happier, so much happier, if you’d just stayed home and given up that filthy rotten business. Even if you just hung around the house all day. I would have found a way to make sure that the only thing you had to do was love me.”
My head was spinning and I had cramps in my stomach. Neither had anything to do with the fact that I was being encased in precious metal. I continued to sob. Even when the tiny particles of gold clogged my tear ducts, I wept on the inside.
“I did it for the money, Alec. That was the only reason. I planned on telling you that I’d inherited it from some relative I never knew I had. You never would have found out how much it really was. It would have been enough… Enough!”
He shouted that last.
“Enough for you to quit the agency. Enough for us to move away. Some place with a beach. Anywhere! Just as long as it was far enough so that neither of us would ever have to look at a street corner where you once prostituted yourself and feel ashamed by it. Far enough so that we wouldn’t be tarnished by those memories.”
Tarnished?
How could I have been so oblivious, so stupid? I’d thought our marriage was perfect. Yet, since the very day we met, Peter had been unable to get past my being a rent boy. Why did he never say anything? If I’d only known, I would have done anything he wanted. I’d have given up the agency in a heartbeat. He’d have only had to ask.
But he hadn’t.
Even though my heart was breaking, I couldn’t keep a righteous anger from bubbling up. All those years ago, I took to the streets because I hadn’t had a choice. I wasn’t much more than a kid when my parents threw me out. Travis tried to help me out, but I was still raw from my family. I thought the only person you could rely on was yourself.
And dammit, I had!
Not only did I survive, I thrived. Now, I had a respectable business to show for it! How dare Peter look at me like I was filth, like everything I’d worked for was something tawdry and dirty? If I’d been able to speak, God knows what I would have said to him. Awful things probably, things that I would have regretted.
Fortunately, the field kept me mute. I could only whimper and, in a few seconds, my rage faded and I was left feeling empty and numb.
“We can’t…I can’t go on like this Alec. I could have killed you, baby! I’d cut my own arms and legs off before I’d let anything hurt you!”
He bent toward me as if for a kiss, but the electric field stopped him. He drew back and seemed confused, as if he didn’t know what he should do next. His eyelids fluttered beneath the mask, as if he was blinking in confusion. Then he became quite still and stood for a long time, doing nothing more than looking down at my helpless body. It was then that it truly dawned on him what he’d almost done, what he had done.
He clenched both fists and his body stiffened. His shriek was even louder and more tortured than before. Looking back, I desperately want to believe that it was the sound of Peter’s mind refusing to cope, that in that moment something inside him broke. I pray that the part of him that I loved simply…went away, and that he no longer knew what he was doing.
But I’ll never be sure.
He moved outside my field of vision. I had no idea what he intended to do, but I knew that one of us would regret it. A few moments later, I heard his voice coming from high above me. With a Herculean effort I managed to move my head just enough to catch a glimpse of him from the corner of my eye. He had finally cast that horrid mask aside and stood on a catwalk some twenty or thirty feet above the foundry floor. The light from the vat of molten liquid below him washed over his body in its black costume. He looked like the glistening statue of a young god carved from flawless onyx.
“I love you, Alec!” he cried. “I want you to always remember that!”
I tried to close my eyes. I didn’t want to see what came next. At the same time, I wanted to keep looking at Peter for as long as possible. I think I knew it would be my last chance.
His dive was as perfect as that of any Olympic champion. Peter’s body arched into the air and unfolded beautifully, a moving work of art. He soared below my line of sight and I knew he was gone. There was not even a splash to mark his passing, only the furnace which coincidentally belched a little before subsiding. Fortunately, he didn’t scream.
I don’t think I could have handled it if he had.
I lay there for hours, imagining I could feel the molecules of gold adhering to my skin. The pain was minor at first, but soon became unbearable, even through the suit. A fusillade of red-hot microscopic pellets seemed to sand-blast my skin, flaying me alive. Even worse was the pain of Peter’s last words, gnawing at my soul.
Whore, he’d called me, and pimp.
I didn’t want to die; I wanted to be already dead. If I could have gotten free, I honestly can’t say that I would not have hurled myself into the same vat as Peter had. Maybe, if I forced myself to stay beneath the molten metal for long enough, I could accomplish what the Caterpillar and the Marauder and all the others had failed to do. Maybe the atoms that had once made up Alec Archer would be broken down and dissipated in the fiery liquid. Maybe they would mingle with the atoms that had once been part of Peter Camry. Eventually, when the sludge cooled, maybe Peter and I would be inextricably linked for all time.
Neither Man nor God would be able to separate us. There were less desirable ways I could have chosen to spend eternity.
A long time later, the gold ran out. The machine continued to try and pump nothingness and, with no one to turn it off, the compressor eventually overheated. I smelled the oily smoke before I saw it, but I found it impossible to care. When it blew up, I only half noticed. It wasn’t until the flames reached me that I paid any attention at all. Even then, it was only to urge them to burn hotter in the hope that, by some miracle, they would sear away the deeper pain.
The foundry had been built to withstand high temperatures, but its architects had never anticipated an inferno like this. Glass flowed from the windows like water and anything that wasn’t metal was reduced to ash. When the structural supports warped and collapsed, the roof caved in and provided more fuel to the blaze. Only some of the vats, the ones built to contain molten metal, survived.
And me, of course. Pity.
I have a dim recollection of hearing sirens, barely discernable over the fire’s roar. I’m told it was one of the worst conflagrations Centerport had ever seen. It raged through the night and well into the next morning before it was extinguished. Close to a dozen firefighters were injured. When a police officer spotted Thanatos’ scooter parked near the building, Gretchen called Travis. The two of them spent several harried days, waiting for the wreckage to cool down enough so they could search for my body.
Poetically, it was Travis who found me. In his protective clothing, he looked like a huge silver version of the Pillsbury Dough Boy. He was crying behind the plastic mask when he lifted me in his burly arms. I remember wondering if he was so upset because I’d damaged the Whirlwind’s suit again. At some point, the heat had been intense enough to defeat even Travis’ ingenuity. The fabric had literally boiled away from my skin. I was stark naked when he carried me from the wreckage. It took some doing on Gretchen’s part to make sure that photos of the Whirlwind’s junk weren’t displayed on the front page of the Courier.
For days, I drifted in and out of consciousness. Though my body was severely damaged, I overheard Travis tell Gretchen that the worst injuries were emotional. Physically, I appeared to heal in a remarkably short period of time, even for me. Nevertheless, there was some residual trauma that wasn’t as obvious as burn scars would have been. For months afterward, I would be doing something mundane like making a cup of coffee and my hands would start to shake. The cup would smash and I’d find myself on my hands and knees, weeping uncontrollably while I struggled to clean up the mess. Travis claimed there was nothing organically wrong with me, but I knew better.
What could be more organic than a ravaged soul?