Kay was expecting it to be chilly
outside. And behold: late October, moon in the sky– it was chilly!
Night
had fallen upon the fair city of Toronto and the
cold breeze stung Kay’s hands.
It was times like those that Kay wondered if it was too early to
packing around some winter gloves–
would it seem wimpy?– but
he stuck his hands in his pockets and got marching home.
Maybe
I can get some biker gloves and add them to my classic rock look,
thought Kay. He drew up some
frustration, and pondered how formidable to cold temperatures his
water form was.
It was a quiet night, with all the mutterings of the city far off in
the distant, echoing over rooftops so that Kay never knew their
words. Cars drove by, briefly illuminating Kay in their headlights–
a stray soul walking the sidewalks in his lonesome. Light caught his
eyes so whenever he passed by the window of a house– inside
previewing for passersby– Kay had to look in. Discretely now, he
peer at a family watching a movie on TV. It might have been
or something; Kay didn’t know.
Heading back the way he came in, Kay passed by Harris Place, though,
and he wasn’t sure if it was shouting he heard coming up to place
but once he reached the corner of the building and had a view into
the parking lot, he looked into the parking lot to see a few people–
maybe young adults or older. They were shouting at each other with
Barry, a brash-looking young man, holding something in his hand that
Kay could not identify.
But that something in Barry’s hand looked like trouble, anyway.
There
was a veranda around the site of the building, an elevated porch over
looking the lot. Worried that
something was about to go down, Kay
crept up the stairs and shifted slowly towards the excitement,
hiding behind columns and using the darkness to hide his face. The
people in the parking lot didn’t hear him or see him. As
he got close– the weapon?
Kay saw that the weapon was a
“Oh god,” said Kay, quiet enough to be unheard by the party.
Brit, a woman with shoulder length red hair and wearing a dress, took
the front of Richie, a haggard young man with his suit flustered.
Richie stared daggers at Barry, and Barry returned a nasty look
himself.
“You don’t disrespect me like that!” shouted the brash man,
taking a step closer and knife gripped tight.
“Barry, forget about it,” said the woman. “Just go home!”
“You deserve nothing but disrespect,” said Richie. “It’s been
that way since you were a kid.”
Barry took a step forward. Brit and Richie retreated backward.
Brit
looked over her shoulder at Richie.
“Can you shut your mouth,
Rich?
You’re not helping anything!”
The blade shone in the moonlight. Barry’s pantomime of a stab
didn’t come off as a warning when he was holding an actual knife.
He was getting into arm’s length of the two others. Tension
consumed the parking lot.
Kay’s heart raced, likely as fast as the trio in the midst of the
tense situation about to see some bloodshed. Would he have to
interfere? He switched forms, taking his liquid shape. A water
elemental could take a stab a lot better than human flesh and with
Ghost Thing’s tricks, he could disarm Barry effortlessly. Or at
least he expected so.
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The liquid lad put his hands on the handrail, ready to pounce over
and intervene. At the very least, the shock of seeing a water monster
at night could have startled Barry into dropping the weapon.
Brit turned to Barry. “What’s everyone going to say if you hurt
someone, Barry?”
Barry
chuckled in a twisted sort of
way. “That had
it coming!”
Brit glanced at the knife and her voice squealed, “Look at
yourself! You are going to stab someone outside of a restaurant!”
Barry went still. He glanced at the knife. Suddenly he felt very
insecure, and his face sunk. He backed away a few steps. “It’s...
it’s not even a real knife,” he said sheepishly. He took a palm
to the end of the blade and the blade receded with a strained squeal.
It bounced back into place when Barry took away his hand. He put on a
smug smile, saying louder, “It’s not even a real knife!”
“Get
out of here!” the woman
ordered.
Barry went to a car nearby, a boxy red one. He opened the door and
got inside, starting the vehicle. Maybe Barry gave the others a dirty
look; Kay couldn’t see into the car very well when its light turned
off. Richie and Brit walked away. When Richie tried shouting
something at Barry’s car as it left the lot, the woman smacked the
haggard man in the stomach, cutting off his jest.
Ghost
Thing relaxed. The situation was resolved. It was a
situation, in the end.
A stage knife? Ghost Thing
found it insulting but was glad that there was no injuries after all.
Without noticing the liquid cryptid spying from the veranda, the
couple went back inside the building. Barry’s
car echoed off into the distance, and the parking lot went quiet.
Ghost Thing was left alone with his simmering
nerves.
He looked at himself. That’s how quick it was. One sign of danger
and Kay went from human to water lad. A shouting match and Kay
transformed. It had been some time since Ghost Thing had brought out
his watery form, at least in the public. Were any gang members around
to attack Ghost Thing?
Ghost
Thing took his hand up into the air and let moonlight strike through
his translucent shape. Light glowed on the surface of his hand and
danced through the tiny bubbles that floated through his mass, like
stars in the sky. In a way, his hand was like a galaxy. A
shimmer passed through him and on
the other side light danced
on the surface on the column, greeting
it with ethereal purple light.
And
Ghost Thing had to stop and revere in what a marvellous creature he
was. It had been some time since he was in that form, and being
relaxed he could take a good look at himself and ponder. He wiggled
his fingers and cranked his
thumb. He let the tips of his finger ride down the column.
He could feel the coarseness of the wood underneath the veneer of
paint. It was an arm of living water. What sent feeling back to his
brain? How did he control such a thing?
It
gave him anxiety for a second, worrying about his true nature, but
then awe returned to him, and let out a quiet but comfortable
chuckle. This was .
He was this living water creature and how beautiful and wonderful it
was to be it.
He took a careful look around, then Kay returned to his human form.
He walked back out to the sidewalk where he remembered that he had
his wallet on him when he transformed. Taking another look around to
make sure nobody was watching, he got out his wallet and looked
inside. His cards were still there; his money was still there. The
transformation didn’t send his items into the void, which was a
worry he carried since his powers first awakened? Perhaps his pockets
were safe when he transformed, although he wasn’t totally confident
that was the case.
Kay
went home, reassuring himself
he was fine every block of the way.
He had flashed
his water form out in the open and–
what do you know!– a
thousand ninjas didn’t spawn in to attack him! Whatever
gang was out there, they did not have an Orwellian brand of
surveillance across the city. Obvious
to most but Kay’s fear had gotten the better of him that last week.
Maybe
Kay could still be Ghost Thing after all.
It was late, though, comparatively anyway. That was not the night he
would test out how free could still be. His night would end with him
in his bedroom, relaxing.
So
Kay returned home, and when he popped into his apartment, he declared
“Back before !”
to the living room in which his mom responded with “Oh” and Urban
offered, “Well done, Kay”, not entirely sure what the context
was. Kay, discouraged that no one was impressed with how quickly he
went out to see a movie, went to his room quietly to spend the rest
of the night posting on forums on the internet.
