ToC - for previous parts.
Waking a Miracle -- (Part 01/??)
The cicadas were keening. Dry soil cracked under young
Clark's feet, and aging tawny grass spread out into the
dying September fields like rotting carpet. The small off-
white farmhouse stood just up on the rise, framed in a halo
by the sun.
The world seemed to stretch into a flat, treeless eternity
before him, as though it were God's cruel joke to set him on
a treadmill. His father's bright red truck sat in the
distance, smoke billowing from the hood in lazy, bulbous
plumes. There was a man standing nearby on the road,
staring, but not helping. His arms were crossed before him
and his feet stood apart in a haughty, superior posture.
Clark felt his insides twist and the stretch of dusty road
before him snapped back into place like an over-taxed
rubber band. He was there at the truck, staring dumbly at
the occupants. He had never moved so fast in his life.
Dust was scattering upwards all the way from the farmhouse.
"Mom, Dad, wake up."
He approached the vehicle and nearly ripped the door off.
Metal screamed at him. "Mom?" His mother was at the seat
behind the wheel. Her eyes were closed and her chest wasn't
moving. She was still, like those mannequins at the
department stores in Wichita, except blood trickled down
over the crown of her forehead.
The smell of dry turf and smoke burned his nose.
"Dad?" His gut wrenched when he heard no reply. The bright
golds and sun hues that framed the late afternoon seemed to
fade into a bleak dullness. He should have been faster. He
had been in the kitchen when he heard the screeching of
metal. He could remember his father shouting something.
Shouting. He should have moved the second he had heard.
"Wake up, please."
But he hadn't moved.
"Please."
The man that had been standing on the road finally
approached. "Do you see now?" he asked.
Clark shook his head. No he didn't see. There was a
strange solid thing gathering in his throat. His breaths
shortened as he tried to inhale around it.
"Do you see now the pain you caused me when you took my
Sarah away?"
Clark blinked and turned. The man was tall. His face was
broad and unblemished, and his brown hair was very short.
He was wearing a dull gray jump-suit.
"Who are you?" he asked the man.
The man's eyes widened. "You have the audacity to ask me
who I am, Alien, after you already took pains to ruin my
life?"
The man wasn't making sense. He choked on his words, his
face turning scarlet and his eyes watery. "You killed my
Sarah, and now I'm showing you what will happen every time I
catch you using your powers. You freak. Alien. Scum."
The man was spitting, his words coiled and rolled in Clark's
stomach like a snake.
"Look there!" The man gestured to Clark's silent parents.
"That's your fault and yours alone." He leaned back into
his crossed-arms, haughty posture. "You don't understand
yet, do you?"
Clark felt the pricks of tears in the backs of his eyes, but
he wouldn't let them come. Not yet. The thing in his
throat wasn't going away either.
The man's lips slithered into a leer. "My name is Jason
Trask, little alien, and I will make you understand."
"Son?"
The word reverberated in his head for a few seconds as
though it were carried on the rumble of distant thunder.
"Son?" The voice repeated, but seemed to be a few pitches
higher this time.
Clark blinked his way back into the present and winced.
Calls for help, so numerous in this city, were taking their
toll on him. Every cry shot through him and seemed to set
his body into a quivery, nauseated, useless-feeling lump,
and always, there were the horrible flashbacks.
Noisy, horrible, Technicolor flashbacks.
He could still remember how long the road looked when he had
been trying to get to his parents. He could still remember
the sounds of their screams and the ripping of metal -- a
ghastly sound at that, as though someone were scraping nails
over glass.
But that was the past, and in the present, the room was
quiet, save for the sound of traffic lifting up through the
window panes like the scent of warm food wafting out from a
homey kitchen.
"I'm sorry, sir, what were you saying?" his voice sounded
weak, even to his own ears. Way to go, Clark, this was not
going to make a good impression, that was for sure. His
hands started to clam up a bit and the wood of his chair's
arms began to feel slippery. He forced himself not to make
any obvious gesture of wiping them dry. At least the room
wasn't blotted like a watercolor anymore. He blinked a few
more times.
Perry White, editor of the Daily Planet, sat across from
Clark, looking at him with a piercing gaze. Mr. White was
wearing a dark set of pants, a light blue cotton shirt, and
a rumpled vest. His suit jacket was hung over the back of
his heavy wooden chair, and the sleeves of his shirt were
rolled up to the elbows. The smell of ink and new paper
hovered in the air, and his desk had marked up papers strewn
about as though a gust of wind had done the sorting.
Mr. White stared at him for a long set of moments, the
ticking of the office clock marking off the end of each long
second. One. Two. Three. Four. His eyebrows waggled
almost imperceptibly, and his pupils dilated a bit. Five.
Clark felt hot for a moment, as though he were under a
magnifying lens.
"Dan Carlton called me about you. He's a good friend of
mine, we used to go golfing on Sundays before he took that
editor position out in Kansas City at the Star."
Five seconds, and Mr. White had already no doubt formed an
opinion. The knowledge was daunting.
"Yes, sir, I worked for Mr. Carlton for a year after I got
back from Australia," he replied noncommittally.
Bad, this was going bad already.
He tried to shake off the last pound of the cold ball of
guilt clenched in the pit of his stomach. He couldn't help,
he had to tell himself repeatedly. Ignoring those cries was
the most help he could offer. If he tried to assist, more
would be hurt than if he just did nothing.
You're a coward, a voice said.
Perry grunted. "Sounds like you've done some traveling."
"Yes, sir," Clark cleared his throat, "Before Australia I
was in Nepal. I spent a few years after college traveling
everywhere I could. I'm conversationally fluent in pretty
much any language you can think of."
"A citizen of the world."
"I guess you could say that. Although this is my first time
in Metropolis." Liar, the voice said to him. But Mr. White
had no way of knowing that, he reasoned. His stomach
curled.
"And you hail from Smallville? That's..."
"Kansas, sir."
"Right, Kansas."
Mr. White flipped through Clark's writing samples. His lips
moved a bit as he read, and his eyes moved left to right as
he quickly skimmed the top article. His face got a bit
brighter.
Clark suppressed a small cheer. He had chosen that article
from the small handful he had written for the Kansas City
Star under Dan Carlton. That particular piece was about
corruption in the city's appellate courts. Several justices
had been taking bribes.
"Tell me, son, why is it that you want to be an
investigative reporter for the Daily Planet?" Mr. White
leaned back in his seat and clasped his hands in his lap.
He looked upwards and thought about the question.
Why did he want to be a reporter?
He remembered the warm feeling he had when the papers had
blitzed thank yous for and speculation about his amazing
feats across every front page from Metropolis to Borneo.
"Mysterious Saves = Miracle Man?" a bold headline had
screamed.
He recalled one article claiming, "For the past month or
more, this planet has been witness to an unending fountain
of miraculous turns of good fortune, from the Air France
jetliner that landed itself with no engines intact, to the
averted repeat of the Exxon Valdez disaster. There is no
seeming relationship between these events, but all witness
accounts are the same. A mysterious figure in black
appears, saves the day, and is gone before anyone can
determine surely if it's an apparition, hopeful
imaginations, or a flesh and blood individual. Regardless,
Miracle Man seems to be a dream come true, and a dream that
seems to be sticking around."
But it wasn't about that. Every time someone he had rescued
walked home on their own two feet, every time a loved one
got to say a few more words to their special someone because
of something he did...
He tried very hard not to leave indentations where his
fingers rested, clutching the dampened chair arms as though
they were life preservers.
Every time somebody got killed because you tried to help
someone, the voice screamed, because you thought if nobody
recognized you, you would be safe.
A small sound came from his throat, but Mr. White didn't
seem to notice. He had gone back to looking at the writing
samples. "Well, sir, if I can't..."
Mr. White looked up and Clark forced his voice to remain
even. His heart throbbed in his ears and it seemed much
hotter. "If I can't be some sort of Miracle Man, a symbolic
icon of all the right morals and values, fighting my way
through every injustice with my brawn, I'd like to do what I
can with my pen. The media is society's metaphorical
watchdog, for when the literal watchdogs aren't functioning.
Sir. And as for being at the Planet, any reporter would be
crazy for not wanting to work at the most widely read,
trusted, and distributed newspaper in the world."
Perry White smiled at that, and Clark felt the knots in his
taut muscles begin to loosen a bit.
*****
TBC...
(End Part 01/??)
