Chapter Eight
My Eighth Encounter with the Golden Speedster
His real name is Will Simms. If you get to find out my secret identity,
you get to find out his too. So, there
it is. Will Simms is the Golden
Speedster. Such a tool. He never knew that he was only ever a puppet;
his strings, pulled, and he danced.
Manipulated by powers he didn’t even know existed. Now, I do feel a lot of sympathy for the
guy. He never had a chance. But, back then, on that morning in May in
Philadelphia, I hated him.
Hatred is a weird thing. It drives a person to do insane things. It drives people to murder, and a society to
fascism and destruction. It’s a big
problem. But on this morning, as I ran
straight up the side of the Comcast Center Building, chasing that golden fucker,
I hated him with all my soul. I had him
on the run this time, and he knew it.
We ran all over the city. I don’t know if the people of Philadelphia
were getting used to our epic battles or not.
One minute they were all busy going about their business, and the next
everything shook, and an electrical storm took hold of their city, springing up
instantaneously, with incessant sonic booms punctuating our clash. Why did people even stay in that city? I mean the devastation that we dished out in
our battles was significant. Very significant. But, you know, where would they go? Platinum Man and his enemies were even worse
in the Big Apple. Chicago had Zorro and
the Prankster, and that whole rogue’s gallery.
Most cities had their heroes and villains fighting, turning the lives of
their citizens on their heads at unexpected times. It had become just another fact of modern
life.
Not that the Golden Speedster and I didn’t have
battles that covered the whole East Coast, of course, sometimes, the world; but
Will lived in Philly, and I was always going there to fuck with him. That was the gig.
On Broad Street, I threw a SEPTA bus at him. He had to save those people. Or try to.
While he attempted to do so, I hit him with so many punches he puked so
hard and fast his vomit took out a trash truck.
He went down. The bus crashed
into City Hall, and man, was there a boom.
The papers said I had killed 43 people in an instant. I was a murderer. The was some considerable mystery later about
how most of those people, some of whom had been in morgues, got on that
particular bus, and how it was that the driver and 12 people who claimed to
have been on that bus ended up in a diner in Conshohocken.
(c) Copyright 2019 Diana Hignutt
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