Prologue: You’re In a Cult and You Can’t Call Your Dad
I can remember very little, luckily. It comes back in little bits of bad dreams and the occasional flashback. I know we were well off, and then we weren’t. I know dad was frustrated and mom was scared. Not outwardly, the kind of scared you see mothers do when they want you to believe everything’s fine, and then they freak out when there’s no milk in the fridge or a glass is too close to the edge of a table. I remember crying and reassuring, and neither ever helped the other. I remember acting like I didn’t know what was going on, so my parents didn’t have to deal with my worry too.
And then it stopped. The crying stopped and smiles came, but not the kind of smiles that were commonplace. They were the smiles of someone who was posing for the 87th picture at a family reunion. They were uneasy, but whatever happened put money in the bank and seemed harmless. Only it wasn’t.
I remember men that came and went, and my parents coming and going with them. And I remember the day they showed up for the last time. They wanted all of us over for something, and my parents smiled like they just got asked to be in their 88th picture. I don’t remember the car ride, or walk to their barn of a church, or what they used to get us to enter. I only remember blood. I should remember screaming, but all I could think of was blood. I remember the last time I saw my parents’ faces. I remember the lifeless pale masks that they became after their life left them. I remember my brain convincing me that the before and after were somehow two different people. I remember a knife, a cut, a fall, the liquid I was dunked in, and then snaps.
Outside the barn
In the woods
Along the highway
In the police station
In the car to show them the barn
A courtroom
A foster home
The details of those didn’t really matter, but out of all of the lost bits of info, I remember one. 226 miles: that was the distance between the barn and the police station. I ran at sunset. I made it there before the moon fully rose
I think speed is overrated. We all want to travel fast, a mile a minute, and chase the speed of light. Everything expensive and flashy has to go fast. You know what else is expensive and flashy? The scars from where they picked all of the bone chips out of your leg, because you crashed your Lamborghini into a barrier late at night. 130 mph doesn’t mean shit if it kills you to get there.
It’s a lot like the foster system. I was taken in by a woman named Jane, and her husband, Ben, pretty quickly after I was put in the foster system. They said it was ‘to have me in a stable environment, so I could recuperate quicker’. In reality, I wonder if it wasn’t just cause I was a cute white girl who was acting “so strong and being so brave”. Not to say that I don’t like them; these two have been nothing but good to me, albeit a little hands off. They seemed to get the “quick” cases often. I saw a lot of them leave before their beds were worn in. Most had issues with schooling, others with parental authority, and a handful with me. I still remember the one kid that came in when I was 13: Leroy. He was a quick case after being found malnourished and scared in his apartment bathroom. His parents didn’t seem to want him I guess, which would be enough to scare any kid really. The thing about Leroy was that he never really stopped being afraid. We had lunch together, sharing macaroni out of a large bowl. I went for some extra before he did and he went in for my hand with his fork. Got me pretty good and I remember running halfway down the block to hide in the park. Jane found me, very confused as to how I got there exactly. I told her. She never really asked about it again.
Over the years, we started getting fewer quick cases. So I kinda became an only child, and eventually they adopted me. We stopped getting kids about 3 years ago, and I asked Jane why. She said, “We weren’t doing these kids any good, just being a place for them to stay quickly while they set up another place to stay briefly.”
Yes, speed is efficient. Speed is a skill. It can even be life saving, but you can’t just bring speed to the table. You gotta bring something that you can do well with that speed. I can run at speeds around 60 mph, so I learned to use that speed to be an effective knife fighter.
In retrospect, that sounds like less of a skill, and more of a habit that gets you arrested, but I don’t do it to kill people. I only do it to disarm and disable people from attacking, so they stop doing whatever they are about to be arrested for.
“Riot, I think we have to do this now.” Orphan was the only one here with me on this mission, which was less than ideal.
I was one of three: Riot, Orphan, and Paradox: a brooding group of young heroes who weren’t terrible at actually helping people. See, Paradox’s Father was a pretty well known hero that goes by King Cat, and despite being a “beacon of light for our city”, barely casts a ray into his own sons life. Paradox, in an attempt to get his old man’s attention, formed our little team to take care of the crime his father was too good for. This would be fantastic, if he was reliable in any way. See, being a vigilante was only one of his many unhealthy coping mechanisms. I can’t remember the last time I saw him when he wasn’t on some sort of upper or downer. I guess it was a downer day, which was why on the day of this very important mission, he was impossible to get a hold of.
I remember my first meeting with Paradox. I was about 15, with a sprained wrist from a biking accident (turns out if you can run 60 miles per hour, you can peddle even faster, and stray bumps on the path are even harder to see). He was the same age, both with a lot of childhood hang ups. For everything I solved with avoidance, he solved with hatred. When he first saw my wrapped arm, I think he got excited because he thought I had been in a fight. When it turned out I hadn’t gotten into a fight, thought he was weird and told him to buzz off, he got angry. That led to him trying to sprain my other wrist, which made me smack him off with scared force. I ended up breaking his elbow. We were dragged into the principal’s office, and after some weird forced apologies, we actually ended up joking about it and becoming friends. I guess I stopped telling him to leave me alone at some point, and we told each other about what we could do. Eventually, we met Orphan and decided to do something with our powers. Paradox was still angry, but I thought it might help him fight better.
I probably put up with more than I should have because I didn’t have many friends. I kept to myself mostly, it’s just my nature. I get most of my non superhero interaction from internet forums and my tortoise named Wally. I think I talked to both about the same amount. I’ve met a few friends, even a few people I would call more than friends, but it’s easy to lose touch when you don’t see people face to face. So in reality, I have two friends.
“We can’t wait like two more minutes?” I ask, in no hurry to end up blindsided in the middle of a rescue. Orphan didn’t answer. Instead I got the reply in the form of a victim screeching. We were here to stop a kidnapping turned into possible human trafficking bust, but I guess the victims wanted to take things into their own hands.
One girl was screaming and kicking as she was being moved from one vehicle to another, like about 3 girls before her. With a bite to one of the men restraining her and a lot of leg flailing, she has instigated every man in the parking lot to silence her.
“I’ll get the perimeter. You secure the girl.”
“Go.”
With that, Orphan jumped forward and I slid down the nearest fire escape ladder fast as I could go. I slashed at the legs and shoulders of each human trafficker with my trench knives and speed. I knocked them to the ground, but with non lethal blows; they didn’t all stay down. The first couple of guys went down and stayed down due to the unexpected shock, but the guys that saw me before they got hit were harder to keep down. By about halfway through, they know what’s coming. They will always try and trip me or clothesline me. I can usually get around these moves deftly, but then, smack. A pipe hit me in the back of the knees and I fell forward, ripping my knees open. The same guy smacked me in the back of the head with the pipe. It hurt like hell, and made me regret not wearing a helmet, but I still turned quickly, cut the guy’s thigh open, and kicked him over.
Just when I thought I was making headway against this gang, two more fuckers would come at me from seemingly nowhere. In pain, and overwhelmed, I just kept fighting. In a blur of what felt like fifty men, I finally got enough guys to run or stay on the ground so I could focus on the girls we were trying to save. I looked towards the van and Orphan. Orphan was trying to keep one girl from going into complete shock. I move to look in the back of the van, and see why. The van, that we were both too busy to watch, was covered from floor to ceiling in the blood of those poor girls, so close to being rescued. One thug who had taken them out, and then slit his own throat to keep quiet. Some of those girls had been reported missing only days ago, some weeks ago, and some didn’t have enough people that cared about them to report them gone. All 10 were under 19, with the youngest only being 12. It was the second time I had seen those pale frozen faces and it was the second time I couldn’t do anything to help.
We call the police, they take the men into custody, some needing to be taken away in ambulances. Pictures were snapped and lines were tapped. Families had to be called. The one girl left got taken to a hospital near her home. I could barely pay attention to the police questions. I had to leave. I needed to find Paradox, because he needed to tell me why he wasn’t here today.
Every car was in his driveway. His curtains were drawn . I climbed in his window and pushed all his noisy bead curtains aside. His eyes glazed and he was covered in a thin layer of sweat, there were needles and papers and pills on every surface. It’s impossible to say what he was even high on at this point. He had the news on in the background of his high. His head rolled to look at me. With a distant glance he said the words. “I’m glad you got one. Getting none would have made a real shit show.” His head rolled back. I left.
Speed of Strife, written by A.B. Cunningham, is set to release on our Etsy store on March 31st, 2021.