Minister Faust by From (html) (best ereader for pdf txt) 📗

durn near everybody in creation did. So y’know I led a quiet life as a grade-school teacher.”

“But what about writing, Wally?”

“What about it?”

“You also—as I’ve learned,” I said, flipping through the files, “worked at a small newspaper in Blandton—”

“Now where in tarnation j’ever hear suh’m so silly?”

“—where you were apparently known as a shy and awkward proofreader named Willis Nesbin. But Nesbin was secretly the writer behind the popular syndicated advice column ‘Ask Aunt Edna.’ Which means this additional secret identity of yours was actually a two-for-one.”

“Who toldj’all that?”

“You even rented an apartment under this Nesbin persona. Your neighbors there describe Nesbin as—I’ve got it here: quote, Quiet and polite, but not in that creepy serial-killer way, end quote.”

“What, Doc, you been spyin on me?”

“So you admit it’s true.”

“No, consarn it! I mean, you been spyin on somebody else but thankin it were me, when in reality—”

“In fact, Wally,” I said, taking out a set of photographs from Mr. Piltdown’s folder, “you seem to have a great number of secret identities.” I held up photos one at a time, each one paper-clipped with relevant news printouts on its back, and then set them on the coffee table between us.

“Billionaire playboy Ricky R. Bustow… pious conservative televangelist Jebedai ‘Crawdad’ Crocket, ruthless fight promoter Francis ‘The Musk Ox’ Miller.

“Since your resignation, Wally, no one’s heard a peep from any of them.”

He stared back at me emptily.

“And earlier today,” I continued, “you carved portraits into the frost you made on my window. Portraits of these men, who, despite slight differences in hairstyles, glasses, and so forth, all look remarkably like you.”

“Doc, you’d hafta have a sweater th’size a Kentucky t’pull that much wool over th’eyes of th’Merican people. How could I be all those men an still be me?”

“Only someone with powers beyond those of mortal men could do such a thing.”

“Well, why would I even wanna?”

“How terrified are you of rejection, Wally? Mercilessly esteem-hammered by Festus, rejected by your own father who cast you out of his entire world, a misfit in your adopted hometown, a fraud in the field of superheroics, no known romantic relationships to speak of? So if you can hide who you really are and become something that is appealing to enough people—”

“Doc, I’m loved over this whole tadpoled planet! Why should I need any more adulation than I already got?”

“You tell me, Wally. Tell me why it’s never enough.”

“I never said it wun’t! Now you jess quit all this crazy talkin! So what if I look like summa them fellas? Jess a coincidence! I’m Wally W. Watchtower, Karojun-Ya, last son of Argon…well, okay, maybe not th’last, but—th’invincible Omnipotent Man. That’s it, that’s all, no more!”

“Wally…are you saying…are you saying that you actually don’t know about these other identities?”

“Doc, I jess said—”

“Maybe…originally you had yourself in check, this craving of yours for validation, but the more the public fed you, the hungrier you got—as if you had a tapeworm burrowed in your psychemotional gut—and the emptier you felt. So you found something you thought could fill you up. But what you didn’t know is how much that very something would fracture you further.”

At that moment, I reached beneath the coffee table to produce a leaden gray lockbox no larger than a lunch box. I opened it and placed it on the coffee table between us.

Wally blinked, his nostrils flaring, his lips crimping inside his mouth.

The stench of ozone wafted from the interior of the gray box, which glowed electric blue.

“Obtained courtesy of the F*O*O*J laboratories,” I said. “Fifty-five grams of powdered argonium.”

“I’d reckon it,” he said after a taut twenty seconds, his eyes nailed onto the box, “more like fifty-four.”

Supervillains Might Be a Reason, but They’re Never an Excuse

I reached to close the box. Wally jerked nearly all the way out of his chair before he looked at me and stopped himself; his eyes locked on the box and then came back to me. He settled himself back, his face looking as if the iconic masks of comedy and tragedy were battling upon it for supremacy.

I waited with the powdered argonium open and available in front of him, counting out the seconds and then the minutes on the clock beyond his shoulder.

All the while, Wally’s face and body clicked and contorted through a chaos of tics and spasms.

Finally, his lower lip trembling, he almost begged me. “Doc…y’know—please—”

“I will help you,” I whispered. “Wally, did you know that one of the effects of argonium use is personality fragmentation?”

His eyes flickered over me, over the photos arranged before him, over to the window where his frost portraits no longer were.

He sniffed and nodded, defeated.

“And I can’t help but wonder whether it might also induce delimbification in Argonians. How long has argonium use been affecting your work?”

“I’ont thank it affected m’work, ma’am,” he growled. “I always showed up, I always—”

“Was that why the attack on the Allied ships, and saving the U-boat?”

“Naw, naw, naw—back before the war I aint even ever heard about no argonium. That was jess a mistake is all.”

“So when did you first begin using—”

“Rex Mirthless,” he said.

“The Vocabularian?”

“One an th’same,” he said, drawing in a long, ragged breath. “M’first real superopponent…a true archvillain. We’d been havin these off-an-on melees for about a decade already, him always managing to slip away, like a coon dipped in bacon grease. Now Rex, he were this snootified, citified, sissified N’Englander. Wore a, whaddayacall them thangs—a cravat, c’n you b’lieve it? Wellsir, this was back in ’58, an he were threat-nin to take control a th’energy market, introduce some sorta sun-powered thang. It woulda destroyed th’whole economy. So I stormed his fortress—he had this base inside a volcano, an he was wearin one a them Beatle-type jackets, on’y it were white—”

“A Nehru?”

“Right, a Nero. He was th’first guy to do that, by th’way, th’whole volcana an white jacket dealy. Evr’body after that was jess copyin im. So he tricked me, knocked me out with some kinda cosmic beam, an then