When the Villian Comes Home Read online

  “No,” Cathy repeated. “Please, forget what I said before. I was freaking out. This situation is bad, but not that bad. Somehow, we’ll get Paul out without you throwing away the life you want.”

  It pained Antoinette to see that now Cathy was upset for her as well as Paul. She hoped the truth would make that part of the situation better.

  “But I don’t want it,” she said. “I thought I did, but I was wrong. I mean, I want you and Paul. I love you, and I’ll miss you every day. But normal life...I’m not saying I’m too good for it. It’s probably too good for me. But all the boring parts, the disrespect, the little aggravations and disappointments...I don’t know how to put up with them anymore.”

  Cathy studied her face. Then she said, “Promise me you won’t hurt anybody.”

  “All right.” Antoinette wondered if she’d finally succeed in keeping a promise. She hadn’t done very well at it lately.

  They hugged again, and then Cathy left. As the door swung shut, Antoinette marveled that it was possible to feel such profound loss and relief at the same time. She also wondered how to throw together some semblance of her costume.

  RICHARD LEE BYERS is the author of forty horror and fantasy novels including Called to Darkness, Blind God’s Bluff, and Prophet of the Dead, all due out within the next year. “The Little Things” is set in the post-apocalyptic superhero universe of his ongoing eBook series The Impostor, only before the aliens invaded and everything went to hell. Readers interested in seeing more of Sweet Lady Q should seek her there.

  HEELS

  K.D. McEntire

  The heels sat on top of the trash, mocking me.

  You could be at work, they seemed to say. You could be exchanging quips or battling sidekicks. You could be having a sexy catfight with Lonely Locks, grabbing her by that ridiculous braid and swinging her smug face through a plate glass window. You could. You could. You could.

  “Shut up,” I told the heels, glaring at the trashcan. “I don’t need to listen to your broken…points. Toes. Whatever!” I was tempted to yell at the heels for breaking at the worst possible moment, for snapping like cheap kindling instead of the high-tech stilettos I’d spent a small fortune upgrading. Instead I grumped my way back to the couch and flung myself amid my mismatched throw cushions.

  I don’t even like shoes all that much. Shoe shopping was, is, and always will be a necessary chore, akin to stocking up on toilet paper and organic ketchup. But these shoes had been different. These shoes had been special.

  These shoes had been…the heels.

  There’s all sorts of drama involved with a lady’s choice of footwear. Birkenstocks lend themselves to the inevitable hippie comparisons. Sensible pumps give a gal an air of controlled businesslike acumen. Steel-toed boots mark you as the tough girl in any group, whereas ratty old sneakers give you an inescapable air of Girl Next Door.

  Heels, however…heels…

  Heels say something about a villain that sensible shoes do not. They say that I’m capable of donning footwear that is just as likely to cripple me as it is to kill you, but I’m fairly sure you’re the one going home in a body bag. Heels are pointy and hard; they cling to the foot and lift up the ass. Heels distract the sidekicks with the right curve of buttock but allow the hero to meet you eye to eye. Heels are…magical.

  At least, these heels were.

  I kicked my first hero ass in those heels. I scarred Pretty Boy Sam’s cute cheekbones with those heels. And the first time an argument with a hero ended with us tumbling in the hay, well, the heels stayed on the entire time.

  I could buy another pair of heels, sure. But, just as I knew these could be repaired, I knew it wouldn’t be the same. Maybe the heroes wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, but I’d spent years learning how to fight right in those heels.

  I’d know.

  I hadn’t even wanted to wear the heels at first—it’d been bossman Dr. G’s suggestion and he isn’t a master of any sort of martial arts. He had no clue how difficult it is to do a perfect roundhouse kick wearing heels, how hard it is to sprint. A flawless yoko geri to the cajones is normally impossible in heels…but Dr. G just liked the look with the catsuit.

  “I bet they’ll make you look foreboding,” he’d said, handing me my Welcome to the Team box, the tall black heels nestled primly on top amid pink—PINK!—tissue paper and tied together with a tiny white bow.

  I almost threw them at his head.

  But then I tried them on. I swaggered around my new corner office, forced to pull the pleather of catsuit-1.0 out of my ass with every step; and yet, despite myself, I fell in love with those heels. Over the years I poured a lot of money into adapting the shoes for all sorts of conditions—snow, ice, metal, lava, blood—only stopping short at reinforcing them because titanium is not cheap. I should’ve done so anyway and damned the cost.

  Now they were gone.

  I hate girls who mope when they break a nail—I’ve dealt with them my whole life. I’ve seen villains lay low for shorter spans than the vain sorostitutes I’d gone to school with, and over what—jagged cuticles and a bad perm? If the streaks weren’t perfect those girls would hide out for weeks until they could fry, fry their hair again.

  Not for the likes of me, no ma’am.

  Yet here I was, sinking to the depths of despair over my shoes as if the world itself were ending. Not that that was the best analogy—honestly if the world were ending, I doubt that even the delightful douches in H.R. could keep me away from that going-away keg party, busted heels or no.

  I needed something to take my mind off my misery. What to do, what to do?

  If I was forbidden to work right now then there was no point in cracking the latest dossier, and I’d read everything in my apartment a hundred times.

  Watch TV? Absolutely not. I pirated cable like everyone else in the building, but I hardly ever watched it - no time. And I have it on excellent authority that reality television is literally soul-sucking.

  Go online? Hardly. With my catsuit, I can surf the net any time day or night with just a blink and a nudge. I’d carried out many a grand-larceny while simultaneously searching Snopes or browsing Wikipedia.

  For the first time in a very long time…I was at a loss.

  The problem with being a career-oriented villain on her way up in the world is that by time I get home most mornings I simply strip down, shower, and fling myself into bed. My last cat slipped out during the Battle of Barneby’s Bulge and got herself knocked up—I gave her away shortly after. It’s another reason I never incorporated a husband into my cover story; if I can’t keep a kitty from coming home pregnant, how would I manage a teenage girl?

  I’m not concerned about finding a man—Dr. G’s got enough mind-control devices and drugs littering his lair to field an army of bored suburban househusbands—it’s the knowledge that I’d probably start a garden and let it run to seed, or I’d borrow a neighbor’s mower and turn it into a doomsday device. I’d forget birthday parties, or buy the wrong type of card—one with a puff of poison gas, perchance—and heaven help the child of mine who tested me with “I’m bored.”

  Don’t get me wrong. I like the idea of a home—not an apartment, dingy and small and studded with surveillance equipment—but a home with a hearth and a patio and a room for guests…if I actually knew some.

  I closed my eyes, picturing it. I’d start with something simple and innocuous like New Year’s, or perhaps that big-deal football game with the commercials. I’d serve “my famous dip” that Dr. G would’ve concocted for me—by the end of the event I’d have them all eating out of my hand. Simple, elegant. Then, once I had a party full of drooling drones, I’d—

  Deep in my fantasies of sinking into a suburban life on my own terms, I dimly heard the phone in the kitchen ring once, twice, three times. I popped open an eye and grimaced. Only one person ever called me on the landline.<
br />
  Mother.

  Grumbling, I waved a hand and the sensor in the wall forwarded the call to my cell, still nestled in my cleavage. I fetched it and jammed the phone between the throw pillow and my ear, too grumpy to want to bother holding it.

  “Hi Mom,” I answered, not bothering to keep the boredom hidden. “What’s going on?”

  “Clarisa, dear,” my mother chirped from Wisconsin, speaking too loudly into the cell as always. I winced and shifted the phone a tiny bit south on the pillow. “I just got the most lovely call from your supervisor, Mr. Gerbraltior…Grebralitor…oh, you know.”

  No.

  He wouldn’t.

  Heart thudding, I sat up, clutching the phone hard against my ear. “You did? What’d he say?”

  “He said that you’d been given the next three weeks off and a promotion! Oh, honey, we’re so proud of you!”

  He did. That.Son.Of.A.Bitch.

  “Yeah. Haha. Promotion.” I clenched my fists and leaned forward, resting my forehead against my knees. “I guess that means you want me to visit, huh?”

  Could I still disassemble a short-range pistol and sneak it past security, I wondered. I hadn’t had to for so long—I could try for something larger caliber, but I sincerely doubted that I’d need a bigger gun for just a week with the family…

  “Oh darling, that’d be wonderful. Your cousin’s wedding is this weekend and I just know she’d love for you to be there—a surprise visit! Oh how fun!”

  “Will a BulkCo gift certificate be enough for a gift?” I’d gotten Sherri’s Save The Date and Wedding Invitations—one of those clever little missives with two strings that tied into a knot as you opened the invite—but I couldn’t remember where Sherri had registered and I’d already thrown the scraps of pastel cardboard away.

  Approval. “That’d be lovely, dear.” Then, faintly probing, “So, Miss BusyPants, talk about this promotion! How’d you get it? Did you put the fear of God into that Captain Fabulo—”

  “MOM.” I was overwhelmed with the same rush of mingled annoyance and humiliation as when she’d rushed an industrial-sized box of tampons to my Junior Prom. She’d been doing me a favor, but it was the execution that had been lacking. The last thing I wanted was Dad walking in and overhearing her.

  “I’m sorry, honey.” She cleared her throat and tried again, even louder, “I haven’t watched the news today. Did you finally give ‘that guy’ what for?”

  My mother knows about my career. My father doesn’t—he still firmly believes in Uncle Sam, mandated heroes, and apple pie. My mother, a former hippie, is more open-minded though she doesn’t entirely approve of my choice of work. Sometimes I think she’d have preferred if I’d become an escort or a lawyer. At least then she’d be able to talk about my accomplishments to her friends instead of resorting to bragging about my younger brother Kenny.

  Kenny runs the Hot Dogger kiosk in the mall.

  Bragging about his job takes imagination.

  “No, Mother, I did not, in fact, give ‘that guy’ any sort of for, what or otherwise,” I said, trying not to brood on Dr. G’s gentle insistence that I should go home for the rest of the day, that I should take a break and think about my position as his number one right-hand henchwoman. “I kicked ‘that guy’ in the face and his face broke my heels.”

  I’d limped out of Dr. G’s office, head held high, a ‘furious underling’ expression plastered across my face, but inside I was…hurt. I’d been with Dr. G for forever. Literally—we’d been to the end of time together and back again during his quantum-mechanics phase—and the thought that I could be so easily sent home to think about what I’d done aggravated me.

  “Oh no! Those expensive heels I always see you wearing on TV?” For the first time my mother registered my tone. I would have been offended by that except that I’m normally grouchy when we speak—she had no way of knowing this was much, much worse than normal. “Honey, you should register a complaint.”

  I snorted. “A complaint, Mom? Really? Who to?”

  “That Heroic property damage company’s hotline—”

  “Isn’t quite the same thing,” I said, but amused myself with the image of trying to wrangle the price of my heels out of the assessors at the Heroes Insurance Initiative. I was tempted to go ahead and do it, if only for shits and giggles. “But thanks for the suggestion.”

  “Well, all right,” she said and I heard the scratch of pen on paper across the line. I smiled to myself, touched. Mom was going to buy me new shoes, probably for Christmas, possibly as a ‘what the hell’ gift, I just knew it. They wouldn’t be the same, she might get the size wrong, and they had a 50/50 chance of being atrocious…but it was the thought that counted.

  “Well, honey, I gotta boogie,” Mom said. “Lunch is almost done and you know how your father hates to wait these days.”

  “Okay, Mom,” I agreed before the talk could turn to Dad’s recent retirement. “I’ll let you know which flight I’m on.”

  “Love you. Be safe.”

  “Love you too, Mom. Bye.”

  Inexplicably, I felt better after the conversation was done. I hated being forced into a break but going home might clear my head, give me some much-needed direction. Besides, I knew for a fact that Sampsoknight was going to be at the wedding in his day-to-day disguise; tweaking him while off-duty was always fun.

  “Guess I have to go shopping now,” I grumbled, unzipping the long silver zipper at my throat.

  Yes, it’s currently fashionable to be one of those villains that flashes sideboob at the least provocation, but I work more efficiently in my catsuit and heels than I ever did distracting the heroes with a pair of daunting double D’s.

  Also, tight as it is, the catsuit still conceals my very practical sports bra quite nicely. You’ve never known pain until you’ve had to parkour your way across the city in anything less than the best. Pricey? You betcha, but worth every penny to keep me from blacking both my eyes fleeing from Quickstart.

  Plus, it granted added bonus of looking like I’ve had a little work done without actually having to admit that the ladies are one hundred percent nauseatingly natural. I’ve contemplated getting reduced since puberty but, alas, along with the shoes, a reduction isn’t exactly covered by Evil Insurance Inc.

  Maybe, I thought, maybe this break won’t be such a bad thing. Maybe Dr. G was right. Maybe I needed a dose of the real world, the civvies surrounding me, to really appreciate what I had with him and Evil Corps. It wasn’t as if I’d just fallen into henching—I’d chosen it, it hadn’t chosen me—but after the hubbub of this morning maybe…maybe I wasn’t cut out for it anymore.

  I eyed the heels in the trash. They were perfect; they were everything I was known for as a villain, the tap of them on tile was my terror-inducing calling card.

  At what point is a villain too old for henching? I wondered. At what point did you have to either strike out on your own, begin your own reign of terror or forever play second banana to crazy madmen in snazzy suits?

  My catsuit peeled off, smelling of baby powder and sweat, and was immediately launched into the laundry basket. Unlike my broken heels, the good doctor was more than willing to supply me with a new suit if this one were ever to do the unimaginable and rip. He viewed it as an investment in a competent second-in-command—the catsuit bore enough tech to protect me from all but the most powerful of the Captain’s blows.

  But did I want to be an entrepreneur? It was so much work and hassle, and hiring henchmen was so annoyingly tedious. I couldn’t imagine having to build an organization from the ground up the way Dr. G had. Not to mention wrangling the permits out of the Evil Corps—obtaining the bribe money would only take a few successful bank jobs, but then you risked getting fined by the Corps for operating a heist without a permit.

  Grumbling to myself, I poked through my closet. No, I decided, running an Evil Org wa
sn’t my style. I liked kicking ass and taking names, not taking names and masterminding. But if I wasn’t going to go into business for myself, then what?

  I brooded over my future while I chose what to wear out and about. Civilian dressing is always fast and simple—sandals, flippy skirt, and clingy tee with a sarcastic meme—it’s the accessories that hide who I really am.

  Glasses? Check. Flamboyant purse with a slot for a yap-yap dog? Check. Bleached blonde wig? Check.

  Concerns still nagging at the back of my mind, I was out the door and down the street in ten minutes flat. In the downtown distance I could hear the wail of air sirens, the scream of the crowd. The battle for the bridge was still raging on but at least I could take comfort in the fact that Captain Fabulouso was out of the fight too.

  He broke my heels, but I broke his image.

  Tit for tat really.

  Despite the chaos raging not five miles south, the Paragon Mall was still doing a brisk business. I passed a bank of TVs entering through Sears—and there he was in all his Star-Spangled-Apple-Pie glory, front and center, Captain Fabulouso screaming his bloody head off at me, dangling me by my hair high above the metropolis and threatening to drop me if I so much as squeaked the wrong way.

  His display was such the exact opposite of the prim and proper, uptight gladiator of justice that the media was just about creaming themselves over the controversy. The TVs blared. The pundits were out in force.

  “What about when your average civilian upsets him? I know she’s a villain, but does the Red Rebel really deserve that sort of treatment from someone who is supposed to uphold­—”

  “Red Rebel was rescued by none other than the infamous mad Dr. Gibraltar himself, flying in on—”

  “I tell you, in all the decades I spent henching and then villaining, I never would have allowed my superior to sweep in and rescue—”