Chapter Ten
The Prankster
The Prankster fucking terrifies me. I’m insane, but that dude is batshit crazy. I don’t know how he manages to get himself dressed
in the morning, that’s how messed up he is; but, somewhere in all that evil
zaniness is a truly brilliant mind.
You all know his shtick by now. That mask.
That crazy, giant fanged smile taking up half the face, and the buggy,
crossed eyes the other half. I don’t
know who made that thing for him, but it covered his whole head, but he could
see okay apparently, and he didn’t sound muffled when he talked. No one had every seen him without it on. Not even me. And trust me, I’ve tried. I mean, I’m curious too. No one’s ever seen him eat or drink either. Otherwise, he was a pretty sharp dresser. In our meetings and enterprises together, he
would wear impeccably tailored suits, usually Italian, with thousand-dollar
dress shoes. Though, I have seen him in
jogging suits, swimsuits (apparently the mask is waterproof), overalls,
bathrobe (again, waterproof mask?), and once in a Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda
shorts. And, of course, his trademark yellow
gloves.
No one knows who the Prankster is or where he came
from. He is like some kind of force of
nature that arose like some emergent property of modern life in late stage
capitalism, not unlike the dark vigilante, Zorro, with whom he is locked into
an epic battle for the soul of the city of Chicago. I guess all superheroes and supervillains are
just another thing that had to happen for everything to unfold in the way that
it must. But, anyway, I’ve asked, Clarity,
my AI from the future, and she says no one ever finds out who he was. Mystery preserved. I guess, I could just run up, pull his mask
off have a peek, and put it back on him before he even noticed, but, frankly, I’m
kind of afraid of what I would see. That
and professional courtesy keeps his secret safe.
I hated working with him in the Secret Society of Supervillains. While he was often amusing, sometimes
downright funny, he was dreadfully unpredictable, often disregarded the
established plan. and “improvised.” For
some reason, Admiral Nemo was always putting us on gigs together. Probably because anyone else in the Society
would have killed him in about two minutes, but I was able to tolerate
him. We evil speedsters from the future
are surprisingly tolerant and easy-going.
“You shouldn’t smoke that stuff, Doc, it takes your
edge off,” he said to me one day, in a moment of seriousness that surprised me.
We were in New Bedford, Massachusetts, at the fishing
docks. Early morning in late October,
this was probably 2018. The sun wasn’t
up yet. We were waiting to receive some
banned tech from some commercial clammers turned smugglers. The lights from their boat were just now
coming into view from the dark and rolling sea.
I had my mask pulled up just above my mouth so I could
smoke a joint. I with a gesture I
offered him a toke.
He waved it off.
“Nah, I never touch the stuff. Like,
I said, you shouldn’t either.”
“I didn’t know you felt that strongly about it, Prankster. Sorry.
But you should know that my metabolism is very fast. I only stay high for the smallest part of a
second.”
“Oh, I don’t really care. I was just making conversation. That’s what people do, right?”
I just looked into those big, plastic bug eyes, and
shook my head.
“Did, I tell you? I killed Wonder Boy last week,” he
said, as he took the joint out of my hand, and held it up to his giant plastic smile
and pretended(?) to take a hit.
“No shit,” I replied.
He nodded.
“I’m gonna kill all those guys on that boat if it’s
okay with you?”
How could I say no? I got the tech, and, the Prankster followed through on this intention. Of course he did.
(c) Copyright 2019 Diana Hignutt
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