Superham

A Superhuman Story by MadMikeMarsbergen

1

"Two weeks later and here you finally are, Frankie," Doc Strudelbäcker said, looking down his nose and through thick glasses at the human blimp sitting on the patient's table before him. "What took you so long? Your results came in"—he glanced at the chart in his hands—"three days following your last appointment with me. Do you not care about your health? What's the holdup?"

"Well, uh, Doc, you never said it was an emergency," said Frankie Phatt, oil mogul. There was a laugh attached to the reply, and it was a real boomer. The other patients in the hall probably wanted what Frankie was having—anything to make their own upcoming grim news all the more appealing. He was a big guy, he knew that, and often people called him "jolly." Guilty as charged, yeah. He fit that trope like a spandex suit. "So what's the poison? Give it to me."

"Well, it wasn't an emergency," Doc noted, eyebrows raised as he glossed over the chart displaying the detailed blood results of one Franklin Bartholomew Phatt, Junior. "But then you didn't see me for two weeks. And given your, shall we say, habits—"

"Give it to me straight, Doc," Frankie cut in. "I eat like shit and smoke like shit's baby. Go on and say it."

"Yes. Anyway, I suspect your levels are even worse by now, naturally. And if you don't change your habits—a big change in those habits, I might add—well, Frankie, I hate to say it but you might wind up a citizen of Heart-Attack City."

"Ouch." Frankie looked down at his ample gut. Couldn't even see his feet. How young had he been when he last saw his feet without his belly getting in the way? Eighteen or so? "It's that bad?" he asked.

"It's that bad," Doc confirmed. "And given your family history, I'd advise you to change those habits soon. Like, today."

Frankie cleared his throat. Not laughing now. It wasn't easy being a fat man. Doc Strudelbäcker had it easy—him being a stringbean and all. "No shortcuts or corners—"

"No, Frankie. None. There's no magical formula to instantaneously lose weight. Sure, we could suck the fat out of you, but what's the point when old habits die hard? We'd be delaying the inevitable. Slapping on a Band-Aid when we've got to do an amputation. Unless you make a change, I'll see you in the future for the same problem, or something worse. The time has come to avoid the McDonald's. And the smoking, for that matter. One more Big Mac or Camel—"

"Come on, Doc. You know I'm a Marlboro Man. Yeehaw," Frankie joked, but he wasn't laughing. Not really.

"One more and that might be it," Doc said. "Do you understand me? Don't do this to yourself, Frankie. Don't do it to Cheryl, either. Go for a walk every day. At some point, do some running. Do some swimming. Eat healthy. And before you know it you'll be a new man."

Frankie nodded. Just kept nodding. Would he change? Probably not. He'd been eating better lately—mind you, better for him was three trips to McDonald's a week, rather than seven. But he had been eating more vegetables. Damnit, he'd really been trying. "I'll try," he finally said. Harder, he didn't.

"Good. Please do." Doc held his hand out.

Frankie shook it, limply, and his hand suddenly felt to him like nothing but a wad of fat. Today's trip to the doctor had taken out most of his fight. Reduced him to a lesser man—and, sadly, not in terms of weight, haha. He wasn't laughing when he said goodbye, wasn't laughing when he penguin-walked past Jennifer the receptionist, wasn't laughing when he left the building and hopped into his red Corvette. Hell, he wasn't even laughing when he started the car and his favourite AC/DC song blared from the radio.

Heart-Attack City.

Man, did he not want to visit that hellhole.

2

No surprise, then, that Frankie popped into his favourite McDonald's restaurant. Billions and billions served, and billions more in the future, too. He knew why he was fat. Part of it was genetic—his dear dead dad; Mom had been thin as a rail—but a bigger part was because food comforted him. It eased his stress, and his was a world full of it.

Sucking oil from the ground wasn't exactly a cakewalk. Even less so when you were a guy who had operations across the whole country. Sure, he was no ExxonMobil, but he made a nice chunk of change each year. Not many realized he had such wealth, either. When people look at a fat guy they don't automatically think "success." And when people live just outside of Weird Place, Ontario, they generally aren't rolling in the dollars.

But Frankie wasn't like other mortal men. He was a tub o' lard and he lived on a nice-sized farm. And, Lordie-lord, he loved himself some McDonald's. It always had—other than the Marlboros—been his vice of choice. It's just when he'd finished high school all those Big Macs and Quarter Pounders finally caught up with him. Something about the process of eating was calming. But the real silence came when his belly was crammed with food and he had to undo a notch or three on his belt, when all he could do was lean back and embrace the feeling of being full.

It was a good problem to have, a rich man's problem. Too many in the world battled the problem of starvation. Frankie was lucky.

He parked the 'Vette into a space at the end, next to a big black Escalade with tinted windows, got out and waddled into the store. He had his gut set on a Double Big Mac with the works, some McNuggets, large fries and a Diet Coke. Nothing ho-ho-ho about that, either, though he knew the old joke always ran through the minds of every kid who served him. He just preferred the taste of Diet Coke, was all.

The restaurant's TV was on and blasting some story about costumed vigilantes running around town and fighting petty crime. The shit the real heroes in town—the police—didn't bother with. Nobody was really paying any attention and Frankie wasn't, either. Who cared about someone shoplifting a chocolate bar or tagging up an abandoned building?

The line wasn't too bad, just two people ahead. Frankie glanced around at the other diners: a mom and two kids, a teenaged couple, some harmless loners here and there, and a pair of men in black suits and sunglasses who seemed to be staring at him. Looked like government agents, or something. Frankie nodded at them but they didn't return the gesture. He turned away and the server asked him what he wanted.

"Take a wild guess, Raoul," he said, grinning. Raoul had served him frequently over the past year.

"The usual large Double Big Mac combo with a Diet Coke?" Raoul proceeded to key it in.

"And tack on a six-pack of nuggets, champ."

"Celebrating?"

"Mourning."

Raoul stopped and looked up. "Oh?"

"Nothing major, kid," Frankie said, laughing. "Just the death of my regular visits to your fine establishment."

"Probably for the best," Raoul added, his eyes resting on Frankie's belly.

When he got his order, he took it to his usual corner and took a traditional slurp off his drink, always the first thing he did. He sat down and marveled at the enormous burger before him. The first bite was delicious and exactly what he'd been needing. The only thing that would have made it better would have been a nice smoke.

The second bite he started feeling more than a little sick.

The third bite and Frankie Phatt was on the floor, vision fading in and out, whimpering about how much he missed his mother.

3

He woke up here and there, but only for a few seconds at a time. And then the pain would be too much and he'd doze off again. He was being driven somewhere but he didn't know where. It was a roomy vehicle. An SUV. Tinted windows. And the guys in the front seats wore suits and sunglasses. When he'd wake, the guy in the passenger seat would turn to look at him, stare at him mutely, and look away just before he faded out. Like he didn't really care.

4

The next time he woke, he was in a cold, wet grey room with brown patches on the floor and walls. He was naked and his fat was white and everywhere. Every part of him was so damn flabby and the light shone down on him, making his skin so bright, and he was disgusted with himself. The guys in the shades would check on him and then go away again afterward. They didn't say a thing to him.

He blacked out again.

5

Now he saw them sticking an IV into his arm, and all kinds of wires ran out of him to a machine beside. He asked them what was happening but he didn't know if they'd heard him or if he'd even made a sound. They didn't answer.

Black.

6

He came to and they were telling him to drink something. It was green and vile-looking and he refused, but still they pressured him, tried to tip his head back and force him to drink. Eventually they succeeded, and it burned the inside of his mouth at first but then he didn't feel anything. The green shit went down and he thought he might throw up but he didn't. He felt fine, though he tried to think himself sick. It didn't work.

They gave him another glass from the bottle it came from. He saw a hazard sign on the side of the bottle. The skull and crossbones.

DANGER.

POISON.

7

Frankie's eyes opened. Sweat poured from his forehead and he glanced around for a clock. He saw one on the table beside but nothing looked familiar. 7 AM. He felt around for his phone and saw—amidst the probably hundreds of texts from Cheryl—it was the next morning. The hell had happened? He felt so slow and hazy, like he was lost in fog.

Or a bad dream.

He stumbled out of bed to the window and peeked through the lowered blinds. An empty parking lot. Looked like a motel, with rooms upon rooms evenly spaced in typical U-shaped form. His Corvette sat out in front of his room.

"Feels like I've been hit by a truck..." he mumbled, throwing up the shades and blinking away the sting of sunlight. Remembering only bits and pieces of what happened after McDonald's, really all he could remember for sure was beginning to eat that burger. And then—

"Hello, Mr. Phatt," says the old man in the lab coat. "Do you know why you're here?"

Frankie shakes his head, which swims with slippery thoughts he can't get a proper hold on.

"An experiment. We're going to change your life." The old man laughs, and his teeth are yellow and shiny with spit.

He gasped and almost tripped over a chair as he reached out to steady himself. The vision... it felt so real, like he'd lived it. And he knew he had. Those... those suits. They'd drugged him and taken him. Why? An experiment? For what purpose? And he remembered the poison they'd made him drink.

"I should be dead," he said absently. Frankie patted the immense flab hanging from his front end. "Hell yeah, I should be fuckin' dead!"

Laughing, Frankie Phatt found his keys and got in his car and drove away from the motel. He needed a BLT from Tim Horton's. His gut was growling like no tomorrow, and it wasn't looking forward to the conversation he'd be having with his wife.

8

Things took a turn for the weirder at the Tim Horton's just outside of Weird Place. Frankie sat at a corner table, eating his BLT, when a pair wearing pantyhose on their heads bumbled inside. Their vision obviously affected, they knocked over a wet-floor sign, slid in the water, slipped, failed to grip one another for support, and landed flat on their asses. They got up, slipped again, and then crawled out from the water-slick area up to the cash register.

One of them pulled out a knife. The other a little gun, some kind of pistol.

"Give us all your fuckin' money or I'll kill the shit out of you, man!" Knife.

This wasn't good. Frankie felt his natural instinct to help—to talk people down from the ledge they were on—kick in. It was part of being a good boss, to know the mental health of your employees and to ensure, any way possible, that it was pristine. It was also simply in his nature to want to right wrongs. Which was funny, considering his inability to right his own wrong weight.

He got up and slowly, carefully, walked over to the scared server and the two would-be robbers. Cheryl would kill him if she found out. If he didn't get himself killed by these two, of course.

"Raphael, we've got company," Gun said to Knife, slapping him so suddenly on the arm that Knife (Raphael, apparently) jumped a foot in the air and dropped his weapon.

Raphael crouched for a split second to grab the knife. "I told you not to use my fuckin' name, Donatello!"

Donatello, Gun's name it seemed, raised his arms in a what-the-hell gesture. "Then why'd you just use my name!"

"To show you how it felt, dumbass!"

"Well screw you, Raphael. I'm gonna go wait with Leonardo in the getaway car."

"Why the fuck did you drag Leo into this mess? Next you'll mention Michelangelo pretending to be a blind man outside, waiting to trip any guards as they come in, you fucking tool."

"What the fuck! You just did that, not me!"

Frankie could hardly stop himself from laughing. "Hey, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, this doesn't look like it's working out as planned. Why don't you guys get out of here before things get any worse?"

Raphael snorted. "And who the fuck is gonna stop us? You, fatso? Who are you, Buttman?"

"Heh, because he has a huge, fat ass," Donatello said.

"Yeah, that was the joke, dipshit."

"I'm not gonna lecture you," Frankie said, "but it's very clear you two are new to this sort of thing. You didn't realize the silent alarm has already been triggered. The cops are on their way." As far as he knew this could've been true, but he thought telling the two such a thing—even if it weren't—might be enough to get them to clear out fast.

"You know what? Fuck this shit!" Raphael growled and plunged the knife into Frankie's stomach.

It might've been lethal.

Only the knife didn't cut through Frankie's skin. Instead it bounced off his stomach, flipped around and stabbed itself handle-deep in Raphael's palm.

"AAAAAH! WHAT THE FUCK! MY BEAUTIFUL HAND! YOU'VE KILLED ME! I'M DEAD!" Raphael collapsed, grabbing the counter to keep himself from hitting the floor. Blood spilled everywhere.

Eyes wide, Frankie felt some courage running through his veins. He puffed his chest out and said to Donatello, "Last chance to get out without making more of a mess of things."

"Fuckin' shoot him!" screamed Raphael.

Donatello aimed his pistol sideways and fired two barking-loud shots. "OW! MY EYES!"

Yeah, the bullets had bounced off Frankie's chest and ricocheted right into Donatello's poor eyeballs. It was a wonder he was still alive.

Outside, a car door thudded shut. An engine roared and tires squealed.

Inside, Frankie grinned at the trembling server, eyeballing the messed-up guys crying on the floor, wondering what on Earth had happened to him.

And what the hell he'd tell Cheryl.

9

His act of heroism made the news that day, not only as a breaking-news story, but also the dinnertime news, the eleven-o'clock news, and the news for the rest of the week. He'd been asked to do numerous interviews, which he did, but he didn't tell the whole story.

How could he? It was crazy as hell.

He did, however, tell Cheryl what had really happened to him and why he'd gone missing the previous night. Strange, potentially government kidnapping and experimental procedures? It was better than the alternative. Her fear was that he'd been cheating on her. And there was no way he'd go along with such a heartbreaking lie.

10

A week later Frankie took his first "walk." One would think, what with him living on a farm, that walking would be a regular thing. But normally he'd drive a small tractor around the property. No, this time he actually walked.

It was on this walk he was introduced to a pair who were just like him: superhuman—which he'd realized was an appropriate term for his... abilities. After all, what else was a man who was impervious to knives and bullets, and could drink poison straight without any complications?

The plan had been to walk down the road after a nice, healthy breakfast of fresh grapefruit, low-fat bacon and low-in-salt toast. The grapefruit needed a heaping spoonful of sugar, but Cheryl wouldn't hear of it. "It's exactly like getting a Diet Coke with your Double Big Mac!" she'd told him, taking the sugar and spoon away like he was a child. It had taken some getting used to, but he had to admit his taste buds had been tickled.

So there he was, feeling good—no, great—and doing some walking, just like Doc had told him to, when a woman and—possibly—a man emerged from the bushes along the barren dirt road.

"Frankie Phatt?" the woman asked.

He stopped and sized up the pair. The woman was rail-thin and looked rather sickly, with dark shadows under her eyes and cheeks so hollow they were skeletal. The man, assuming they were a man, had vaguely feminine features, brown skin, and they wore their hair in that trendy way where one side was long and the other side was shaved bare. "What do you want?" he finally said, deciding they weren't a threat.

"We're putting together a team," the guy said in a fairly high-pitched voice.

"A team? Like a... sports team, or...? As you can tell, I won't be winning any speed-skating competitions anytime soon."

"A superhero team," said the girl.

Frankie took a reflexive step back. "What—"

How could they know?

"C'mon, Frankie. The story you told the papers didn't add up." She smiled. "You're just like us. Admit it."

He chuckled, more than a little uncomfortably. "What if I am? This isn't a movie. Don't tell me you two are those useless vigilantes runnin' around out there, busting kids for stealing candy."

"Of course not," said the guy. "We operate behind the scenes, taking out pimps and pedophiles." That last word spoken with a grimace.

"I— I'm not the guy you're—"

"Come with us first," the girl said before he could finish. "Listen to what we have to say."

"Tell me what you have to say right here, thanks. Maybe start with your names."

"Petra." She pointed at the guy. "And this is Bob."

"Bob?"

"Formerly Barbara," said Bob, putting his hands on his hips. "Yeah, I used to be a chick. Now I got a dick. Got a problem with that?"

"Nope. Whatever wets your whistle."

"I'm also vegan, practice socialism but also happen to love capitalism when it suits me, do yoga on horses, suck a mean dick and fucking love giving rimjobs, and did I mention I identify as a proto-feminist, grassroots bisexual who gets turned on by a big fat gun?"

"I don't think you did."

"Well," Bob continued, "I am quarter Swahili, Chinese, Ecuadorian and Norwegian."

"You tick all the boxes," Frankie said automatically.

"Damn right I do. My superhero name is Politico Correcto. Yeah, that's right. I've got a sense of humour, too." Bob raised a fist. "Got a problem with that?"

A little worried Bob was mentally unstable, Frankie said nothing. Instead he turned to Petra and asked her what her "superhero name" was.

"Slider-Hurl."

"Come again?"

"Slider-Hurl. It's a play on Spider-Girl. My name's Petra, Spider-Man's name was Peter. Y'know. And my powers..."

"Which are?"

"You're in for a treat," Bob said, smiling a mouthful of teeth that'd been filed down to shark fangs.

Petra took a deep breath, in, out, in, out. Then she blinked twice and projectile-vomited into the street. It splashed pink and brown, with chunks of undigested food, and the dirt steamed and sizzled. She wiped her mouth and grinned.

"Was that your power?" Frankie asked, unsure. Either that was it, or the poor girl had eaten a bad breakfast.

"Yeah, I can puke on command! It works even better if I eat burgers first!"

"What are your powers?" he asked Bob.

"Quack like a duck. Got a problem with that?"

"Quack-quack!" The perfectly mimicked sound had just escaped him and Frankie suddenly felt quite foolish. "Wait, what happened?"

"I can influence people. Kinda like mind control. Got a problem with that?"

"Definitely not." A moment of silence passed. "So if you guys have names, what the hell should mine be? My superhero education ended with Superman, I'm afraid to say."

Petra's face brightened. "How about 'Superham'?"

"Or 'The Inedible Bulk,'" Bob suggested.

"We'll settle on the first one," Frankie said, laughing. "You guys wear masks at all? I can't exactly do my superheroing maskless. I'm a bit of a local legend."

"We've got suits, yeah. We even made a prototype for you based on how you looked on TV. It should fit. Come back to our hideout with us."

Frankie scanned the bushes. "Got a car somewhere?"

Bob crouched and Petra climbed aboard. "I can also fly. So get the fuck on, buddy, or I'll tongue your ass so deep you'll taste last night's dinner on your lips. Got a problem with that?"

11

The suit was red-and-blue spandex, just like the classic Superman costume albeit with a little more paunch, and Frankie had only been wearing it for all of five minutes when Petra's police scanner reported something about a man in the neighbouring town of Burrel attempting suicide via a large crane.

"This is why my flight power comes in handy," Bob said, strapping on his glass-dome helmet. The rest of his suit was green and purple and had lots of sparkles. As well as nipples. He grinned from inside the frosty glass. Looked like he had half an afro.

Petra—wearing red-and-black full-body tights with a zipper over the mouth—put her arms around Bob's neck and Frankie got on behind her. Made him feel like he was part of some cheap porn parody, or something.

They shot out of the abandoned warehouse through the open slide-shut door, ascending at a rate of five feet per second. The hideout Bob said was given to him out-of-court in a failed rape-claim stunt. He'd been going steady with a girl, nailing her daily, when he was suddenly faced with a report his sperm had been found in all of the girl's holes. She'd claimed he'd raped her one long, horrible night. Without anyone to support an alibi, it wasn't looking good for him. But then, miraculously, the accusation was retracted when it was discovered Bob's genitals weren't real, and that he lacked the ability to create sperm. The girl admitted she'd made the whole thing up, and then begged Bob not to press retaliatory charges. The case was dropped. In exchange, she gave him the warehouse where she'd been cooking meth.

It had all worked out.

As they flew through the sky towards Burrel, the three exchanged origin stories. As it turned out, all of them had been experimented on by what might've been government agents.

Petra had once been a bulimic model, and one day after a shoot she found a line of powder on the coffee table. No stranger to a little nose candy, naturally she plugged a nostril and took a sniff. She went out in seconds and woke up with two suited guys taking her to a facility. She was force-fed burgers until she puked into a glass beaker, which promptly melted as if pure acid had been inside her.

Bob went to have his last breast removed and instead received an injection in his forehead. He woke up with a booming headache, two suited guys playing cards, and a deranged scientist taking measurements of his skull. He was told to try controlling the suits' minds. His response: "Go fuck yourselves. Got a problem with that?" They didn't, and the two suits fucked themselves all night until he felt like telling them to stop.

Just as Frankie finished telling his story of the McDonald's trip from Hell, they saw the suicide-attempter dangling from the top of the massive crane, which sat atop a fifteen-storey building. He held something, looked like a sign but they had to get closer to read it.

"What's it say?" Petra asked.

"'You did this to me,'" Frankie read. "Ex-lover, maybe?"

Bob brought them in closer so they could get try and get the poor guy down. The guy hung from his shoelace, spinning and swinging with the wind. It was a wonder he hadn't fallen.

Maybe too much of a wonder.

Because as they got near enough, the guy tossed his sign, shot a blade out from his mangled hand and cut the shoelace that'd been hooking him to the crane. He dropped but didn't fall, simply seemed to hover there, grinning twistedly through a face covered in pasty white makeup. "HAHAHAHA! FOOLS! IT IS I, THE TOKER!" he screamed, then took out a vape pen, sucked on it and blew clouds of vanilla-scented vapour in the direction of their faces.

Bob sputtered through his helmet and muttered something about being gluten-intolerant, and suddenly they were falling, falling back down to the city street below.

Thirty feet. Falling faster. Twenty feet. Ten feet. Soon they'd be roadkill and look like something out of Petra's mouth.

Bob inhaled sharply, caught his breath, and slowed their descent just enough to leave bruises.

The Toker landed beside, caving in the concrete with his landing. He swung the blade around, whistling it through the air. The arc missed Petra—just—but struck Frankie in the belly. The blade bent like it was made of rubber.

"WHA-HUUUUUH!?" The Toker's eyes popped out comically and he stared at Frankie. "YOU!"

Frankie squinted and tried to imagine some pantyhose around the freak's head. "Raphael? That you, bud?"

The Toker stumbled back like he'd been punched and Petra unzipped her facemask, let out a nasty-smelling burp, then hurled all over him.

The goon's face melted just as the cops came, lights flashing, sirens blasting. But they were too late. The day had already been saved, and the three flew away on Bob's back before the TV crew could arrive for a clever soundbite.

Epilogue

"Give it to me straight, Doc," Frankie said.

Doc stared at the lab results and just kept blinking. "I... I don't understand it. You haven't dropped a pound, but according to these results you're as fit as a healthy guy in his early twenties!"

Frankie grinned. "What can I say? I've been eating better and doing some walking, too." And later, he thought but didn't say, I'll be fighting some crime with my new friends. Add that to your list of recommended activities.

"Well this is just... super!"

"I couldn't have said it better myself."