What Lies In The Hearts Of Men?

The clouds rumbled over the apartments again, it was something that seemed to be happening a lot around them. The building was built over fifty or so plus years ago, it was a mixture of the Gothic age of sandstone and iron works that rose to the sky, and the last time anyone had tried to improve on it was the atomic age and googie style chrome and siding that was colorful and shiny at one time, but was dirty, old, and rusted now. The heads of the "saucer men" with their rocket jokey helmets and fender like builds on their helmets seemed to be weeping as water ran down them. Justin placed his hand on the glass door and entered. When he last came in this way, he'd been in character as one of his many personas and the adrenaline was coursing through his veins. In this case however, he was coming home from school. The buzz on his little show, seemingly died off. 'This is how it is, this is how it will always be. The next biggest thing in popular consciousnesses once upon a time would last for weeks or even the entirety of a decade. Ant farms in boy's bedrooms sold twelve million units from 56 to 67, break dancing originated in the 70's and lasted up to the early 90's. Now some jackass gets hit in the nuts with a golf ball, posts it on YouTube, and gets a million hits. popularity lasting only three weeks at best. Memes die off so fast its pathetic how the industry of entertainment tries to cash in on them. Grumpy cat gets a movie, Fred a TV show panned more than an Ed Wood movie, I feel like a shadow out of  my own damn time.'

His feet shuffle on the wooden steps with their carpets as many thoughts course through his head. The things he's seen or heard about, from the exploitation of his own mother. He looks at the apartment for rent, Six weeks ago, it belonged to the Patterson's. They had a little daughter in Catholic school, had her whole life ahead of her, until some snake who dropped out of school sold her some PCP. Her heart stopped beating after she haulicainted screaming about the snakes, the snakes. Snakes crawling through the rusty skeleton of the radiator in her class room before slithering cold into her belly. The Sisters rushed her to the Emergency Room, but she died. The Paterson's had to bury their only child, only daughter and that scum bag was still out there. He took up the mantle of The Shadow when he found out and saw Mrs. Patterson crying her eyes out in the hallway, her husband had to give her a sedative to get her to calm down and eventually they left town.

"Hey! Don't I know you?" Justin asked a yellowish girl with pink soft hair curled over her eyes, she had a tee shirt with 'meals on wheels' on the front and she held a plastic tray of hot food in her hands, more trays on the cart she had wheeled in the hallway. "Aren't you Fluttershy from School?" He asks as he starts to follow her to the first door on her rounds. The girl makes a soft chirping them whimpering softly.

"Oh uhm yes..I am, I was just...doing my volunteer work bringing food to the elderly residents of this address." She says struggling to reach and knock on the door. He smiles softly reaching out and hitting the door a few times as she holds the food tray nice and steady in her hands. Mr. Miller, the resident of the apartment, opens the door and greets them both with a smile. His face is full of creases and lines, and his head only has a ring of white hair and big round glasses, but it was a face that felt so warm and comforting, like an uncle with a box of cookies for you at Christmas.

"Well hello Ms. Fluttershy, coming to bring an old man like myself his dinner? And Justin, I haven't seen you in ages, but its so nice to see you doing good in the building."

"Oh Sir I'm not." He says but the old man seems to not hear or want to hear it.

"It warms my heart to see young people doing good in this day and age, ahh it makes me realize that though the good lord will call me home soon, I'll be leaving his world to good Shepard's." He says as Fluttershy hands him his dinner tray and she smiles warmly.

"So...Do you want to help me make my rounds?" She says swirling a lock of her soft bubble gum like hair.

"Sure." He says as he takes the cart and wheels it as she delivers the food. For a brief moment he's remind that a hero isn't made by holding the leader of a gang living and operating out of crack house, over the roof OF said house and then dropping him four floors to the porch where his skull splatters brains all over the steps. It's not heroic to drop the mob Kapo running a chop shop into the car crusher and hitting the start button and listening to his screams, and it's not wearing the V for vendetta Guy Fawkes mask and cutting a Z into the face of an Armenian guy in a red and white track suit, telling him to give the guys selling meth in his strip club the boot, and turn it from that to a bar. Drinking  and wasting lives in sloth is a harmless vice, the exploitation of vulnerable women...Only makes his blood boil. Makes him long to be able to just God in the face and slap him in the cheeks even if it'll make God strike him down with thunder bolts and a thousand damnation's to Hell.

   "I think you'd be really great helping me do this regularly Justin." Flutershy says as as Mr. O'Neil accepts his meal, he's not old, but lost his legs in a car accident when he was a College Athlete destined for the NFL. Seeing young people like he had once been support him and take time out of their lives to ease the pain in his, made his life all the more bearable even after the cruel fate he endured many years ago.

"You think someone like me could be as kind and good as you Fluttershy?" He asks realizing he's mostly let slip a bit of his dark and wretched double life. She looks a bit confused at him saying that as if he's some kind of criminal.

"Of course I do silly! Why would you ever say something like that?" She asks with curious intent. As she takes the now empty cart and prepares to leave.

"Just...comparing myself to someone like you." He says realizing that it only takes a single act of good in the world to make a difference in the world, not being vengeful sociopath, that...is what he was becoming...or was he? Justin wished Fluttershy a goodnight as she left the apartments and he made his way back to his own. His mother wasn't home yet, good. Enough time to start dinner, not some cheap microwave food or macaroni and cheese, but first...He made his way to his bed room, with its hardwood floor, the bookshelf holding all those trade collections of comic books and graphic novels. From 300 to Sin City, and The Dark knight Returns and Old Man Logan. The collection pales in comparison to the likes of say Turner or the school library, and its supplemented with classics of literature, again paled in comparison to say the likes of one Ms. Twilight Sparkle, but still a notable collection never less.

Posters for The Rocketeer, and The Shadow movie from the 90's, and several drawings of his very mentors, hung up on the walls. Justin pulled up a throw rung from the floor and revealed a floor safe, when he opened it up, inside was the ill gotten money from all this horse hockey. From Drug dealers pockets picked after giving them compound fractures or worse to  saving made from running odd jobs like a good High school late teenager. "Almost time to make another withdrawal, got to be no more than a few grand to less than a million left, sounds like a lot yes, but this safe had held ten million or so when I started this whole thing." He closed the safe and sighed heavily as the face of Guy Fawkes looked at him hanging in the closet. Shinny, polished swords glimmering softly, partly calling to its master to try it one, partly mocking him with the smile of Fawkes.

"You choose this path, you know what you've done, and you have to face what you've got to live with." The mocking voice of Hugo Weaving from the V For Vendetta movie saying as the mask sat silently in the closet.

"Leave me alone, I'm taking a break from this until I need more money, I have enough to sustain on...for now."

"You'll be back, you know you can't live without the thrill of it, the rush of becoming an entirely differently person and fulfilling those adolescent power fantasies that, lets face it. Are all a majority of us are. Heroes? HA! Fool, just given in to your desires like the hormonal and wild desires like the high strung, wired teenager you are." He silences the mask's voices in his head and lays on the bed, the hours pass him by and the silence is his only solace.