markwildyr.com,
Post #69
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| Courtesy of cliparts.free.net |
So far, “Marco? Polo!” is getting good hits… some of them
from the “unknown region” I mentioned earlier. Really would like to know who that is.
Let’s try a little flash fiction whimsy this time.
*****
CAPTAIN CHICKEN HAWK
The life of a superhero ain’t
all it’s cracked up to be! Might not be so bad if I could just yell “Shazam!” or “Cream Cheese”
or something, but like that guy in the blue union suit and red briefs, I gotta
find a phone booth or some nook or cranny before I go into action. And I don’t
like wearing my superhero gear under my street clothes… it itches too much.
Superman’s lucky he’s in Gotham City with lots of booths. Albuquerque doesn’t have a single one. All we have are these kiosk
things, and there’s precious little privacy there.
Once, as I changed into my uniform, some
blue-haired old lady set up such a screech that I had to take off half-dressed.
It gets chilly flying around with your fanny hanging out. Tired of losing
wallets to thieves while performing heroic deeds, I now hang my street
clothes in a tree or from a tall building somewhere. Oh, yeah, and I’m gay.
Only superhero who admits to it… but I have my suspicions about Batman
and that cute Robin.
Guess I should say something
about my superhero name. I've always been drawn to noble birds, you know, eagles and hawks,
but I rejected ‘Eagle’ because it calls to mind this big, bald-headed bird.
Definitely uncool. Since there’s already a guy calling himself Hawk, I settled
on “Falcon” and added the Captain part to give it some pizzazz.
My mom, the only soul in the
universe who knew my secrets—well, one of my secrets—was totally
ignorant of feathered raptors, so she copied a bird from a book and emblazoned
it on the chest of the uniform she whipped up. Wouldn’t you know? It wasn’t a
falcon; it was a hawk! Worse, some bird-watcher freak recognized it as a chicken hawk, and that was that. Little
did anyone understand how appropriate that name was.
Mom was also the only person
who knew where my powers come from, but she wouldn't spill the beans, not even to
me. She’s mentioned my absent father exactly once to say he is ‘one of a kind.’
Was I sired by an alien being?
I spent most of my time
soaring over the town keeping an eagle … uh, hawk-eye … out for misbehaving
miscreants. Did I draw excited squeals from little kids? “Look! It’s a
bird! It’s a plane! No! It’s Captain Chicken Hawk!”
I observed a west side drive-by shooting one day and followed the shooter’s red ’57 Impala to a semi-rural area near the Bosque. When I landed on the road in front of
the driver, he screeched to a halt, and with my supervision I saw the lean, young face behind the
windscreen harden.
The kid tromped on the
accelerator, and the Chevy shot forward. I executed a
somersault over the speeding car and grabbed the rear bumper, twisting the
vehicle so that it left the road and bumped across a rough field where it
became mired in the sandy soil. The driver bailed and bolted.
Once again, I took flight and
landed in front of the youth. His look went from surprise to panic as he
snatched a pistol from his belt and leveled it at me. “Get outta my way!” he
yelled in a baritone gone shrill.
Oh, crap! Not that. I hate
guns. Bullets sting like crazy. So I obeyed him. Performing another graceful
somersault, I landed behind the startled gunman and grabbed the black
thirty-eight revolver from his hand. Seizing him by the scruff of his neck, I took off. Fantastic! I not only had the shooter but also the
weapon used in the drive-by. A slam dunk for the cops!
The little bastard had
other ideas. He immediately shrugged out of his muscle-shirt and landed in a
heap on the ground. He scrambled to his feet and loped across the field,
limping slightly. I hovered above him, admiring the kid’s spunk … not to
mention those wiry back muscles that rippled nicely as he ran.
The kid was slender, almost
thin, but his torso had decent definition. Brown skin wet with the sweat of his
efforts and fear, glistened in the afternoon sun. He was about to reach cover, so I
swooped down and latched onto his belt, angling for some quick altitude to
intimidate the kid.
Didn’t work. Before we were
ten feet in the air, he slipped headfirst right out of his baggy, gangsta
britches and fell back to earth. If the guy was fetching before, now he was
downright sexy. As I dropped in front of him, he came to another quick stop,
panting and glaring at me wild-eyed. His chest heaved deeply … erotically. Why
would a handsome kid like this shoot another human being? The ink on both
arms might have been clues, but I didn't read Tattoo.
“Who … who are you?” he
demanded breathlessly. "That Captain … uh,
Captain…”
“Hawk,” I supplied helpfully.
“Chicken Hawk,” he corrected contemptuously.
“I’m your worst nightmare kid,”
I replied with as much decorum as I could muster “I’m going to bring you before
the bar of justice.”
The little punk laughed. “You
talk like a comic book or something! Hell, you look like a comic book.”
“That’s the way superheroes
talk,” I sputtered indignantly. “Now it’s time to see you to the authorities to
answer for shooting an innocent pedestrian.”
The guy didn’t learn very
fast. He made another run for it. I snatched at his shorts, but he ran right
out of them. There wasn’t anything to do but hug the naked thug, so I clasped
him around the waist and lifted off, heading straight for the cops at the scene of the crime. After handing over the
revolver and explaining where they could find the kid’s car, I prepared to take my leave. An officer stopped me by handing over a piece of paper.
What's this?" I demanded.
"A ticket for indecent exposure. I figure the perp didn't arrive that way voluntarily. So you're to blame."
I snatched the ticket and soared away, not to the usual hurrahs of admiring officers of the law ringing in my ears, but with laughter following me into the sky. A reminder not to
deliver a naked suspect again. The cops were kinda particular about that kind of thing.
I know it’s ridiculous, but I had some fun with it. Hope
you did, too.
Amazon permits you to read a short passage of my novels, Cut Hand and Johnny Two-Guns.. I also believe the STARbooks-published River Otter, Echoes of the Flute, and Medicine Hair are still up. I sure would
like to get the final book in the Cut Hand Series, Wastelakapi… Beloved, published, but it’ll take some help from
readers to get Dreamspinner interested.
My contact
information is provided below in case anyone wants to drop me a line:
Website and blog: markwildyr.com
Email: markwildyr@aol.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/mark.wildyr
Twitter: @markwildyr
The
following are buy links for CUT HAND:
And now my mantra: Keep
on reading. Keep on writing. You have something to say, so say it!
Until next time.
Mark
New posts at 6:00
a.m. on the first and third Thursdays of each month.
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