Chapter 33: Sometimes I Think I Want
Sometimes I think I want,
Then again I think I don’t.
Sometimes I want to stay here.
Then again I want to leave here.
--“I Feel so Bad”
****
I flew to Metropolis and stood in front of the door to Lois’s apartment for ten minutes before I was actually able to gather the courage to knock. When she opened the door, I swept inside, speaking a hundred miles an hour. “I know that you know. Don’t ask how I know, but I know. Okay, so I might have looked at something it wasn’t my business looking at, but there it is.”
She raised an eyebrow and shut the door. “And I thought I babbled.” She crossed her arms and pinned me with a look. “I assume we’re talking about how you moonlight in tights?”
I sighed, feeling as if a sword had been shoved into my chest. “Yes. And I guess the first question I need to ask you is, ‘How mad are you?’”
“Am I mad? Yes. But am I so mad that I am going to kick you out of here instead of getting answers to my questions? No. And stop pacing before you wear a hole in the floor!”
I reluctantly slowed, looked around, and then sat on the couch. “What’s your first question?” I asked, feeling miserable. At least she hadn’t made me leave.
“Were you the Black Knight?”
Naturally, she had to ask that question first. The urge was strong to deny it—but to what end? My biggest secrets were now out in the open between us, so there seemed to be little point in hiding anything else from her. And so, I admitted, “Yes.”
“Why did you lie to me—to the public—about that?”
I wrung my hands. “I didn’t initially mean to do all this . . . to be Superman. And so the Black Knight seemed like he had something to hide—which he did . . . . Which I did. But I didn’t want Superman to seem like that. I just wanted to be able to lead a semi-normal life—”
“To lead two lives, you mean,” she inserted grouchily.
I shook my head. “That’s just it, Lois. Superman isn’t a person—he’s just something I can do. He’s a way for me to use my powers to help people. And that’s all he does—he doesn’t have a life. He doesn’t exist.”
She stared intently at me and took a few steps toward the couch. “Clark, I could feel your passion on Christmas when you kissed me. But I could also sense how reluctant you felt—and I wondered if it was because of the touch phobia . . . or because there was something else that made you hesitate.”
I opened my mouth to assure her it wasn’t that, but then she put up her hand to stop me from speaking.
“Did—did you not want a relationship with me because I didn’t know you were Superman?” she asked me.
I shook my head, feeling uncomfortable. “No. That’s not it.”
Lois looked down at her hands, a few of her fingers twitching.
I somehow knew what her next question was, and I hoped she wouldn’t ask it. But of course she did.
“It is because you are Superman?”
A great gulf of silence opened between us. Lies and truths warred in my head once again. But hadn’t I lied enough to her? Didn’t she deserve only the truth from now on?
I finally whispered, “Yes. I’m—I’m so afraid, Lois. I’m afraid I could . . . hurt you.” Just the thought of her broken body beside me was almost enough to break my heart.
Her head shot up. “Clark, we’ve touched so many times,” she told me, her brow furrowed in confusion. “You haven’t hurt me before—you’re the gentlest man I’ve ever met.”
“But Lois . . . ” I averted my eyes. My fear rose to the surface, and I allowed it to bubble out: “What if—what about intimate situations? What if I can’t . . . restrain my powers? Lois, the thought of accidentally hurting someone—of hurting you . . . And there is the meteor rock, but . . . ”
I wasn’t being very coherent, and Lois questioned, “The what? The ‘meteor rock’?”
I winced, my hand coming up to clutch the locket she had given me. “I do have one weakness. When I . . . came to Earth, these green meteor rocks came with me. When I’m exposed to them, they can take away all my powers and even . . . kill me. Before I became Superman, I used the meteor rock to take away my powers so I wouldn’t hurt people. But they always came back. That’s why I kept a shard of the rock in my locket . . . . And that’s why I was so upset when my first locket was destroyed.”
Lois frowned, still not understanding. “Why did you ever think you would hurt people?”
I exhaled heavily and stood, walking to the window to look outside at nothing in particular. As I flashed back to that terrible revelatory day in 1987, I began, “It’s all because of Africa.”
****
When I woke up in my bed in the morning, my head felt as if it were enshrouded in a cloud. It was only with extreme difficulty that I was able to remember any of what had happened the previous night.
I mentally traced that day from class to the Animal Reserve, from the car with Billy and Kenny to the hoodoo practitioner, and from the hoodoo practitioner to Constance. But all I could remember about what had happened when Constance and I were alone was something shiny.
I was disturbed, but I tried to clear my mind. Maybe I would start to remember things more clearly as the day went on.
I got up out of bed and stretched, thinking this was maybe one downside to not having a roommate: not knowing how you had gotten back home. But I wouldn’t change the situation. My parents and I always purposefully strove to ensure I was put in a single dorm room. Occasionally, I floated in my sleep, and that would have been an incredibly awkward conversation to have with anyone who didn’t know my secret. So, I was best off as I was.
I looked at my watch and grimaced. It was almost time for class.
I was dressed and out the door in a manner of five seconds. I sped outside the dormitory—or “res,” as they called it in South Africa—and jogged to the building where my class was. After entering the building, I noticed a commotion in the hallway. Seeing Anthony and Kenny talking, I hurried toward them.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Kenny turned to Anthony and waggled his eyebrows. “Anthony, you know what? You remind me of the babe.”
“Babe—what babe?”
“The babe with the power.”
“What power?”
“The power of hoodoo.”
“Who do?”
“You do.”
“Do what?”
“Remind me of the babe!”
I cleared my throat, and the two turned toward me. “I hate to break up your Labyrinth party, but what’s going on?”
Anthony answered, “Seems a hoodoo-doer was mysteriously killed, and the police aren’t telling anyone anything. I bet Kenny she was offed by a jealous ex-lover. What do you think?”
“I think I need to go,” I murmured, finding myself suddenly filled with dread. Were they talking about the woman I had seen the day before? How many other hoodoo practitioners were there nearby? It wasn’t a coincidence, was it?
Giving them a halfhearted wave goodbye, I turned and looked for Constance. She was about to disappear into a classroom, and I called out her name and jogged over to her.
She brightened upon seeing me. “Clark.”
I wasn’t nearly so cheerful. “Can I talk to you over there?” I nodded with my head toward a window at the end of the hall where there wasn’t much foot traffic.
“Anything you want, Clark,” she said demurely.
We walked to the area I had designated, and I wasted no time in getting to the point. “I think I killed that woman.”
“Clark, that’s crazy,” she asserted. She began to turn away, but I put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. She hadn’t asked what I was talking about, and it worried me.
“It’s not crazy. I don’t remember what I did last night.”
She shook her head. “Clark, trust me. That’s nonsense.”
“Do you know what happened?” I asked, pinning her with a hard look.
She lowered her eyes guiltily.
“Oh, no,” I whispered in a choked voice as my heart fell into my feet. It must have been me. I must have killed that man somehow. Why else would she be avoiding looking at me?
Was this . . . this blackout a natural part of my development as . . . whatever I was? Was it going to start happening frequently now? How could I have killed someone in cold blood without remembering it?
In a daze, I murmured, “I have to—to go tell someone.”
I walked away from her. I heard her following me, but I didn’t pay her any attention. I was too caught up in the horror of what I had done.
Before I knew it, I was out of the building and standing in front of a policeman who was looking at a parked car.
“Officer,” I said quietly, getting the man’s attention. “I think I killed that woman.” I needed to do time for my crime. I had to make up for this somehow. If I was a murderer, then I deserved to be treated as one. And if I was locked away, then I wouldn’t be able to harm anyone else. It was all for the best.
The policeman turned to me with an utterly confused expression. “What?”
“The woman who died—the hoodoo woman . . . I think I killed her, but I—I just can’t remember.”
He crossed his arms, looking skeptical. “Look, kid, I heard about what happened to that body—no man could have done that. Don’t waste my time.”
I was beginning to get agitated. “Officer, you’re wrong. I am strong enough to have done it. I may not look it, but—”
“Only a vicious and bloodthirsty animal would be capable of mutilating that woman like that,” the officer insisted. Then his mouth became a thin line, as if he had said too much.
My heart felt as if it had caved in. A vicious and bloodthirsty animal. Is that what I have become? I wondered. Is that what I am?
I was the strongest living thing on Earth. I had known that for a while. I was strong enough to pinch off a patch of skin someone’s skin, tear away a person’s arm, or even smash a body to the ground with more force than they would’ve gotten from jumping off the highest building in the world. My breath caught in my throat as a flash of what the woman’s body could look like went through my head. Bruised, broken, battered, bloodied, maimed, mutilated . . . I could have done worse things to her than any natural or artificial thing on Earth.
I was worse than a vicious and bloodthirsty animal if I had killed her . . . mutilated her like that . . . . If I had done that . . . then I was a monster.
Constance, whose presence I had almost forgotten, spoke up. “He wasn’t the one who did it. I did it.”
I turned to her. “What?”
“Look, kids,” the officer cut in, “I can’t tell you anything else about what happened, but I can assure you this: neither of you killed that woman. No man or woman on earth could have done that. You two must have just had a little too much to drink last night.”
No man or woman on Earth, I thought. But that’s not what I am. I’m a monster.
A great sense of self-loathing welled up within me, and I began, “I didn’t drink anything—”
“Just move along, kid. You won’t be able to convince anyone you did it.”
I wanted to yell at him, to tell him he didn’t know me like he thought he did, but I strove to remain calm. “Can I see the body?”
“No,” the policeman answered flatly. “The mystery is solved, and the case is closed. Now, beat it, you two.”
I watched as he left. Desperation clenched my gut and twisted it. I needed to see that body—I needed more information.
Could I really have killed her and not known it? I wondered. What exactly happened last night?
The idea to bribe the policeman for more information came to me. But I didn’t have any money, and the notion of bribing a policeman was too corrupt a move for me to stomach it. The man was just doing his job. There was no need to try to tempt him.
Attempting to control my breathing and prevent myself from having a panic attack, I turned to Constance. “Constance, there’s something I need to know . . . . Did you do anything to me last night?”
“No, Clark,” she said in a strained voice as she avoided looking at me. “Why would I—” But she cut herself off and raised her eyes to meet mine. “Clark, I’m sorry . . . . I did hypnotize you. I knew I shouldn’t have—but I just couldn’t help myself. But Clark, you didn’t kill that woman.”
I gave her a hard look. Despite the mix of pain and love in her eyes, I realized I couldn’t believe anything she said. Mumbling something about not feeling good, I turned and left her. I could feel her gaze following my form the whole way. But one brutal thought kept running through my head: I am a monster.
****
I went outside the morgue to look for the body—but I couldn’t remember exactly what the woman had looked like. She had dark skin and long hair . . . and that was all I could recall. When I x-rayed the building, I couldn’t find any female body that looked like it had been monstrously beaten by someone with superhuman strength. I wasn’t even sure if her body had been moved to that particular morgue—maybe she had already been placed in a coffin or cremated.
All I knew was I couldn’t remember much about what had happened after Constance had pulled out that gleaming item which must have been her pocket watch.
I returned to my room and sat on my bed.
I had always thought of my powers as something that set me apart from others—something that made me different from other people. But I had never really thought about them in terms of their destructive capabilities.
I had done a lot of small things with my powers: quickly clean my room, light a fire for my parents, lift a tractor out of the mud . . . . I had used them for nobler purposes a few times, of course, but none of it had ever seemed to point to any greater goal. My goal had been to hide what I could do. I had never thought—apart from when my powers first started making themselves known—that I would have a problem controlling what I could do.
But now I could finally see things with a disturbing clarity. As I was now, I was a danger to the world. I might have ripped the life out of a woman with my bare hands—and if I had, she would have been completely powerless against my far superior strength. My powers could render her utterly unrecognizable with barely any exertion on my part.
I stood and walked over to my dresser and started removing items. I could pack at a speed much quicker than humans could, but I didn’t. There was just one last act I wanted to perform with my powers . . . And then . . . Then I had to prevent my powers from ever being used to hurt anyone else. The best option was probably going to be cutting myself off from the world entirely.
I couldn’t take the risk that I would lose control ever again.
I decided not to say goodbye to my friends. They would assume I had gotten sick again, and they probably wouldn’t check up on me until the next day. They would still have expected me to be around.
But when the brilliant eye that was the African sun peeked over the horizon the next day, I was long since gone. Had anyone chosen to investigate my absence, they would have discovered that Clark Jerome Kent was not registered on any airline flight.
****
“After I learned that woman had died, I wanted to hide myself away from everyone, but my parents were so against that idea that I decided to use the meteor rock to take away my powers,” I told Lois, daring to glance into her eyes, which were still steadily gazing at me. So far, I had seen nothing to suggest that what I’d told her disgusted her, and it gave me a strange sort of hope.
I could still remember with awful vividness that fight I had had with my parents about my decision. But I had been unrelenting. I had known that with my powers, I was a danger to everyone—I had known that it was either cut myself off from all humans or make myself just as weak as them. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I had hurt or killed a person. It was bad enough when I couldn’t remember hurting anyone and I had only the brutish pictures of my imagination and nightmares—if I had ever been conscious while hurting another living being, it would have completely destroyed me.
“I know now that I didn’t kill her,” I continued, turning toward Lois. “But I didn’t know it at the time—and the thought that someone could control me like I believed Constance had was terrifying. I couldn’t let myself keep these powers unless I could be certain that I would always maintain control over them. I saw them as a curse . . . until you came along.” I gave her a small smile. “You helped me realize that my powers could be a gift—I could use them to bring hope instead of destruction. That was a hard realization to make. But I finally decided to stop using the shard to take away my powers. The lead paint on the locket blocked the shard’s effects until I opened it. And I had to open it every day to ensure I was without my powers.”
“Clark—”
“But even if I can use my abilities for good,” I continued, cutting her off, “I still have to be careful. I need to remain calm and collected when I save people. But I couldn’t be that way in . . . bed.” The last word was spoken softly.
“Clark, you’re an idiot.”
“What?” I asked stupidly, blinking at her.
“You say that you remain calm and collected—but I know you’re affected any time you see someone suffering, even if you try to hide it. I know you would be just as unlikely to hurt a . . . a lover . . . as you would a child you were removing from the wreckage of a car.” She crossed her arms. “And besides, shouldn’t it be the choice of your . . . your lover whether or not she wanted to be put at risk—if indeed there is a risk? Isn’t it unfair for one person to make all the decisions in a relationship?”
Protesting, I said, “Lois—”
“Clark,” she cut me off. “Not even Superman can stand alone.” She gave me a stern glance.
I looked down at my hands uncomfortably. I had been trying to stand alone for so long—it was difficult to think about leaning on others again. But I did want to. I really did.
“So, you . . . kept that poisonous stone in your locket?” she asked me, staring at my necklace.
I winced. “Yes.”
“And it . . . hurts you?”
“Yeah,” I said softly.
Lois hesitated. “I guess . . . I guess I understand why you used it. It must have been hard to think you had . . . killed someone like that.”
I closed my eyes, my chest feeling tight. “You have no idea.” All those years of anguish . . .
She touched my arm, and I opened my eyes, strangely surprised by the sensation.
“Thank you for telling me about all this, Clark,” she told me.
I gave her a small smile. “It feels good to tell you things.” It was the truth. It felt wonderful to no longer be hiding anything from her.
“I’m glad.” She crossed her arms. “Because you’re going to be telling me a lot of other things in the future.”
“Lois—”
“Clark,” she returned, her gaze still on the locket. She abruptly stepped forward and put her arms around my neck.
“Lois?” I asked in confusion, resisting the urge to step backward.
And then she had unclasped the locket and was clutching it in her hand.
“Lois—” I said, feeling the rise of panic.
“It’s okay, Clark. You don’t need that shard anymore. You can trust yourself.”
I stared at her, protests caught in my throat. But as she stared at me with that characteristic fire in her eyes, I forced myself to simply accept the loss of the locket. There was no need for me to wear it. And though the loss of my grandmother’s picture might be a little saddening, I had other pictures of her. It was time to let the shard go.
I gave Lois a half smile, but before I could say anything, Lois was telling me, “But you can’t just take everything on yourself, Clark. For a relationship to work, both people have to be involved in decisions.”
But the fear of hurting her still gripped at my heart, and I whispered, “Lois—”
“Clark, just go home and think about it.”
“Lois—” I tried again.
“I said go home and think about it.”
I sighed, poised to argue with her, but she looked so resolute that I finally turned and walked to the door. “Good night, Lois.”
I went home, but I didn’t get much sleep that night. I kept running into the same question: Was Lois right that I shouldn’t be making the decision by myself that we couldn’t be in a relationship? I didn’t know the answer. But the more I thought about having a future with Lois, the more I knew that it was what I wanted more than anything else in the world.
