Anthology Two Presents

Mysteria
"Little Earthquakes"
(Winter Act I)
By Jacob Milnestein

"I've been looking for a saviour in these dirty streets,
Looking for a saviour beneath these dirty sheets,
I've been raising up my hands,
Drive another nail in,
Got enough guilt to start,
My own religion."
- Tori Amos,
'Crucify'
 

The fractured light of the television crossed over the insect's domed back, an uneasy reflection crossing the smooth, gold surface of its posterior.

Smoke rose slowly in a thin ivy trail from the tip of her cigarette.

She had been smoking for three months now, three months in which to encourage an addiction and make it look like she'd been doing it all her life.

She knew it was an addiction, knew it would lead to dependency and right now, more than anything, she knew she needed her addictions.

With shaking hands she raised the cigarette once more to dry, cracked lips and inhaled desperately.

The television set continued its kaleidoscopic display of images, fragments of possible memory and shameful revelations. She tried not to listen to them, tried to not to see but she could already feel the imposing glare of her father looking back at her with those warm hazel eyes.

It wasn't that her father had been a bad man that made him such an imposing figure, it was that he had genuinely cared for everyone around him.at least that's what Victoria believed, and anyone who said any different hadn't known him like she did.

The images changed once more, as a smiling picture of his heir, all gleaming white teeth and perfect hair replaced the warm black and white portrait of her father. Something cold inside her writhed and twisted. It was an old photograph, taken before ShadowWraith had damaged him but it still made her angry.

She remembered the day he had first appeared, only days after her father's death.

The rage and hurt that she felt was undeniable, even though her father had not worn the Millennium Man costume for nigh on 10 years it still hurt to see someone else pretending to be him.

"You never knew." She mouthed the words without actually speaking. "You never knew that I had learnt who you were...did you, Daddy?"

She thought of him once more writhing in illness upon his bed in the asylum. When the bomb had gone off it had taken an entire floor of a shopping centre with it. Those bastards had sacrificed or infected so many people with their disease just to get to Henry Burke that in some way it almost seemed like a compliment.

She smiled without emotion.

The image changed.

"Care to do an exclusive interview with PCN?"

The familiarity of the voice turned her attention back to the television screen once more.

"Not just yet, Miss Darling. There's still much to attend to."

The cold thing in the pit of her stomach twisted once more and her eyes narrowed.

"Please, just call me 'darling'."

"Ah-ha! Here you go, love, this is me card. Its got our hotel room and everything on it if you, you know, want to pop over when the wife's out doing the shopping or something."

A flicker of light played over the gold insect once more and it seemed to emit a low hum in response to her change in emotion.

"No thank you, Mister Winters, I'm only interested in real superheroes."

Victoria Burke reached out for her phone and dialled a number.

She let it ring for an age, oblivious of the time.

After a while, the phone picked up and groggy voice responded.

"Neil," She announced sharply. "I need you to do something for me."

The murmurs of Ashwood's wife hung angrily in the background.

"Miss Burke." He protested, sleepily. "Can't this wait?"

"Find me the hotel the Winters are staying at." She snapped angrily. "Find it and call back in 10 minutes."

She dropped the receiver back down into its cradle and stood up.

The beetle squirmed with anticipation.

Angela Ashwood rose awkwardly to her feet with the intent of making another cup of rosehip tea.

Her back screamed in protest and her smooth, usually calm face creased slightly, hands pressed against the base of her spine as she moved from the comfort and far too enticing warmth of the bed.

In his study, Neil's lamp burnt as bright as ever.

She cursed Victoria Burke beneath her breath.

Christ, she was seven months pregnant now; the last thing she needed was her husband being run ragged by that stuck-up cow.

Her husband's apologetic expression of abject despair as he had rose from the bed had said it all.

Victoria Burke had them both dangling from a financial noose and there was nothing either of them could do about it.

Seven months.

Even if she hadn't quit her teaching job they still wouldn't be able to afford the rent and secretly she believed Victoria Burke knew this.

Neil needed his job and in order to keep it he was forced to be at the beck and call of the grim faced Miss Burke whatever the hour - even 3: 30 a.m.

As she crossed the landing past the study she heard his lowered voice and guessed he must be on the telephone.

For a moment she entertained pausing a while and eavesdropping on the conversation or, more agreeably so, marching into the room, snatching up the phone and screaming at the top of her lungs until Victoria Burke finally realised that being on her payroll didn't mean being her slave.

She shook her head sadly and continued her slow, lonely path towards the kitchen.

Victoria Burke nodded and placed the telephone down.

Her hands shook as she reached for Magenta's scarab and added it to her long velvet cloak. Ever since her fight against the Imperial Magistrate she had been too terrified to use the scarab's power.

The shock of losing herself in the divine power it unleashed was too much and had, during the days immediately after the Magistrate's defeat, threatened to shatter her fragile sanity on more than one occasion.

She looked at her own sorrowful reflection as she adjusted her domino mask.

"God, Anna, where are you?" She whispered.

Mysteria did not reply; she simply stood there, staring back from behind the glass.

She remained there for a moment longer, transfixed by the reflection of the super heroine, her alter ego.

A sudden anger welled inside of her and exploded in a violent burst of energy about her.

"I hate you!" She screamed at the reflection.

Her hair flickered blonde for a moment and then the glass of the penthouse shattered and fell like crystal rain into the night outside.

The energy dulled to a whisper and her hair resumed its normal, if not dishevelled, shape and colour.

"I hate you." She whispered once more to her absent reflection and then softly moved out into the night beyond, her outline fading away as the shadows embraced her.

Charlie Winters picked absently at his few remaining French Fries and sipped slowly through the green tinted straw that ran down into the large paper cup. Ice cracked between his teeth and the straw made slurping noises.

His wife cast a disapproving glare at him, which soon softened as she saw the look of complete childlike innocence settle on his face.

They walked together, hand in hand, through the crowded Pacific City streets, pushing past over-excited late night shoppers in search of the next ever-elusive bargain.

"Do you think Michael's going to be alright?" Shirley asked suddenly.

Charlie shrugged, refusing to commit himself to a definite opinion.

"Define 'alright'."

"You know what I mean." She said, her voice taking on an edge of frustration and worry.

"If you mean do I think he's going to go bananas and start taking pot shots at passing shoppers, then no, I didn't think he'll do that. If however, you mean, do you think he's ever going to recover from smashing his best friend's face into a bloody pulp and waggling his fingers about inside the poor sod's grey matter, then no, I don't think he's going to be alright with that either."

Shirley Winters sighed with frustration.

"He's going to keep beating himself up over it, isn't he?"

Charlie took another sip from the empty paper cup before tossing it over his shoulder and contending with the last few fries.

"Yep." He answered absently.

"And that means he's going to be crap as Millennium Man, doesn't it?" Shirley said anxiously.

They stopped in the street, the crowds continuing to move around them.

"That means there isn't going to be a Millennium Man." Charlie Winters answered in a serious voice.

She held his gaze for a moment and then turned away angrily.

"Shit." She snapped, clenching her free hand into a fist. "After all this time, all this work. Christ, Johnny and Frederic died to get him this far and some stupid arsehole with a grudge against his old boss comes along a screws everything up." She paused and turned to face him again. "We're going to have to go to Plan B aren't we?"

Charlie shook his head.

"No way. The last thing I want to do is have to talk to her. She's pissed off with us as it is. Don't count Mikey out the game just yet. Give it a little time."

Shirley nodded but her expression remained unconvinced.

"I hope you're right, love," She whispered. "I really hope you're right."

The hotel receptionist turned white as she phased into view, her velvet cloak still one with the shadows beneath the staircase where the light bulb had blown several days earlier. The golden scarab she wore as a pin glinted as she moved closer towards the light.

Her boots clacked on the black and white chessboard tiles of the reception area, long fingers moving up and pushing her cowl back to reveal the thin black domino mask and her shoulder length brown hair.

"The Winters' room." She announced, her voice cold. "Give me the key."

The receptionist stared at her for a moment, his old heart beating in his chest.

"I can't, miss. Its...its against regulations."

She leant forwards, pushing her gloved hands down against the counter.

"Give me the key." She reiterated.

He stared at her, frozen somewhere between fear and desire as he glanced down at the delicate boots and fishnet stockings then back up to her cold, expressionless face.

He sighed and turned round, taking the spare key for room 15 out from its storage place with the other spare sets.

Once more he turned to face her.

She held her hand out and shakily he pushed the keys down into her gloved palm.

For a moment longer she stood there, watching him as if expecting him to say something before finally stepping away from the desk, her substance seeping slowly away.

The receptionist stood there for a moment, watching the empty space where she had been and then, with shattered nerves and shaking hands, reached out for his cigarettes.

Neil Ashwood drummed his bitten down nails against the worn surface of the desk. It had been over two weeks since he had given up smoking and already he was regretting it.

A thin line of ash remained between the space bar and the last row of letters on his keyboard and, whilst he hadn't actually smoked in the apartment since they had discovered Angela was pregnant, to his nicotine deprived senses the stench seemed to hang heavy in the air around him.

"Damn it!" He snapped, angrily pulling his glasses off and tossing them down besides the keyboard.

The computer monitor's expression remained blank and he began to feel the weight of all his frustrations and needs pushing down on him once more.

Smooth, slender fingers slipped their way beneath the anger and took hold of his shoulders, pushing down and out in a relaxed rhythm.

Instantly the anger began to ease.

"That better?" Angela asked, half suppressing a yawn as she rubbed her husband's shoulders with her tired hands.

He tried to relax but his anger still struggled to retain a foothold.

"Damn it." He repeated with considerably less volume than before.

His eyes, against the rants of that remaining anger, began to close.

"What did she want this time?" Angela whispered, her voice calm yet unyielding.

"Some address. Some stupid address. Can you believe that?" He made to turn but Angela forced him back and continued to knot the tired muscles of his shoulders. "She could have waited till the morning.better yet she could have picked up the phone book and called the hotels herself, God knows there aren't that many of them."

"Yeah, well, she's not like that, is she?" Angela said with a slight tinge of anger, her native Belfast accent rising to the dialectical surface. "She's a spoilt little rich girl with too much time on her hands."

"I know." He whispered, his voice hoarse. "But sometimes I feel sorry for her."

Angela rolled her eyes.

"Don't you start feeling sympathy for her. She knows exactly what she's doing and she knows that she has no right to treat you the way she does. Don't be a doormat, Neil."

He sighed deeply and gave into his exhaustion.

She stood silent for a moment, the calm that surrounded her slowly growing into claustrophobia.

The hotel room was silent, a solitary light burning above, forming a halo above her head and casting a strange light against her reflection in the mirror.

The anxiety and claustrophobia grew.

Her eyes snapped upon and with a scream she lashed out, shattering the mirror where it stood on the dresser and knocking the various personal items collected on the desk across the room.

She turned, fingers coiling around the desk's edges and pulling it up into the air over her head.

Ages passed in which she stood there, paper and clutter falling from the upside down drawers, the desk suspended above her before finally, with a triumphant roar, she tossed it out towards the smooth, clean glass of the window.

The glass exploded and the desk plummeted several stories down before breaking apart like useless matchwood against the pavement below.

She heard footsteps outside, the sound of the lift moving: hotel security no doubt. It didn't matter. All that mattered was delivering her message.

Bending down she took hold of the large, king size bed and lifted it up, mattress and all, before swinging it around in the tiny cramped hotel room and knocking the television set from its stand. The television crashed face down against the floor as she let go of the bed, smashing it into the door.

The wood cracked and splintered, plaster falling from the walls.

Without thinking she walked forwards, kicking the television out of the window as she did so and pulling down wardrobes and scattering clothes about the floor.

A single punch shattered the glass shower door and the bathtub soon lay unturned near the shattered toilet bowl and sink.

It took less than 10 minutes to shred what little personal items she had found. Smiling cruelly she lifted up a framed photograph of Shirley Winters' deceased brother, Johnny Chambers. With a single gesture she had burnt a hole through the portrait's face and shattered the glass in which the picture was kept.

A dangerous laugh escaped her lips, as she stood alone amongst the debris of the Winters' former living space.

She could hear the security guards hammering against the splintered door as they tried to push the bed aside. They'd be inside soon enough, she reflected.

Silently she turned and set about carving a final message into the walls of the hotel room before fading solemnly into thin air and disappearing through the mouth of broken glass in the building's side.

"Jesus." Charlie Winters whispered, his cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.

Shirley Winters crouched down and picked up the burnt and damaged photograph of her brother, glass crunching beneath her feet.

Above her arched form the letters 'I'm going to kill you' were carved into the plaster as high as the ceiling itself.

A flurry of police officers and hotel staff flittered around them but Charlie paid them no heed.

Shirley turned, her expression distant.

"You know who did this, don't you?" She whispered, her voice quivering with pain and anger.

Charlie Winters nodded, not taking his eyes off the legend carved into the wall.

"Yeah." He said, his voice dry and solemn. "Yeah, I think I can guess."

Shirley Winters looked down at the ruined picture of her brother, a single tear running down her cheek and spilling over onto the plaster stained carpet.

"Bitch." She whispered, shaking her head from side to side.

Something snapped at the back of Charlie's mind and his expression hardened.

"Get up." He said, his voice level and dangerous.

Shirley Winters rose slowly to her feet and looked at him uncertainly.

"What are we going to do?" She whispered.

A dark smile crossed Winters' face.

"We're going to get her before she gets us." He answered sharply.

She sat alone upon the rooftop; a dull yellowing aura of flame fading gradually about her person as her hair was gathered up by thick fingers of wind and tossed from side to side, obscuring her vision.

It didn't matter.

She didn't need to see to know that she was already half way towards cleansing her father's city and redeeming his sullied memory.

Hatred and anger welled up inside of her, as she thought of the two of them, living on beneath the spires and towers of the city as if nothing had happened but not for much longer.

Soon they would be silenced forever, just as her father now lay humbled six feet beneath the soil, so would his killers. She would avenge his death and all those that had perished with them.

"I'm coming for you." She whispered softly to herself. "And when I find you, I'm going to kill you."

The wind howled in sympathy.

Several of Commissioner Jordan's finest lay sprawled out dead in the corridor.

Charlie and Shirley Winters continued to march forwards, clothes caked in blood and shoes leaving muddy stains upon the cold metal floor as they came to a division in the corridor.

Shirley paused and looked both ways.

"Which way?" She inquired.

"Right should lead to the outside lot, I think." Charlie answered, his voice full of worry and concern.

Solemnly they ventured on, running the stolen security card through the scanner and forcing the large door open.

The sun was red on the horizon, light playing between the tall buildings of the Pacific City background and striking the ruined helicar in a curious light.

Charlie Winters smiled triumphantly.

"See, I told you they'd have it here. What kind of a police pound would they be if they didn't repossess supervillain property as well?"

Still smiling he walked up to the shattered husk of the helicar and patted his hand lovingly against its side.

"There you are, old girl." He whispered quietly. "Sorry we left you for so long."

"You're not seriously thinking of trying to drag this back to the hotel parking lot are you?" Shirley asked, anxiously looking around.

The building behind them was now a graveyard of police officers and she found it odd that reinforcements had yet to arrive.

"No," He shook his head a little sadly. "But there's got to be something inside that'll help us, right? If she's as powerful as she looked during that whole Imperial Magistrate business I don't want to be taking any chances."

Sorrowfully, Charlie Winters pulled aside the crumpled metal and clambered within.

Shirley lit a cigarette and looked nervously around.

Something wasn't right, she could feel it in her stomach.

A sudden blow against her shoulders sent her stumbling forwards onto her hands and knees, the cigarette falling from her mouth. It wasn't enough to knock her out but it was enough to stun her.

"I knew you two couldn't be trusted." An angry voice snapped, its English pronounced with a curiously soft accent.

Picking up her cigarette, Shirley Winters turned slowly.

Standing before her was a man dressed in a grey costume. He had adopted a fighting stance, which she recognised as being significant of one or another of the Chinese martial arts though she wasn't sure which. Upon his chest was a large yin-yang symbol.

She inhaled deeply.

"You're Silver Shadow." She mused thoughtfully.

The hero looked over her blood stained clothing.

"And you're Shirley Winters, currently wanted for butchering the entire staff of a police facility."

Shirley Winters dropped into a fighting stance of her own.

"They had something of ours. We wanted it back." She snarled.

"So you killed them all." Silver Shadow laughed mirthlessly. "I don't what it is you've told Millennium Man or how you got him so easily under your thumb but I can see right through you. You're still the same cold-blooded killers as you were when you first arrived."

"And what would you know about that? You weren't even there, you pussy." She smirked and darted forwards.

The air blurred as Silver Shadow parried her blows with ease.

"Your fighting skill is lazy." He remarked jumping a few feet back.

Shirley smiled and shrugged.

"It wasn't my fighting skill I was trying to impress you with."

A sudden burst of pain filled the Shadow's mind as he felt blades of thought drive into his brain. He gasped and staggered, blood welling up in his nose and eyes bulging.

Charlie Winters emerged from the sanctuary of the wrecked helicar, his arms cradling an array of arcane pieces and obscure technology.

He looked from his wife to the staggered form of the Silver Shadow.

"That's Silver Shadow, I take it?" He asked.

Shirley nodded.

"He's an arrogant sod, this one." She said darkly.

Together they began walking back towards the open door of the police facility.

"Well, we'll have to put a stop to that." Charlie beamed and lashed out with his foot.

His large boot connected with the Shadow's ankle and as he applied pressure he heard the satisfying crunch of breaking bone.

Silver Shadow cried and fell backwards against the concrete.

Charlie Winters smiled and began to hum Kung-Fu Fighting loudly as both he and his wife made good their escape.