FOR A MAN with the power of six-hundred thousand light bulbs or whatever the fuck the advert says, I am feeling kinda wrecked as I stumble up the steps at Halogen, fingers clawing into Red Monolith’s designer cloak as we make a show of laughing and clowning good-naturedly for the cameras. Actresses swirl around us like blowflies on a dead cow, minor grade, firm-bodied, their post-operative breasts stacked and racked as beautifully as the season’s evening wear can hope to provide for, and it isn’t like I am slapping them away. It’s times like these – which means yeah, pretty much every time I stumble into Halogen or the Flyaway or Silver Tower, or sneak in through the back at Transit or Aubergine – that I think about Elisabeth. Funny how someone you love so much can seem like such a nuisance. I blame it on my inner child, knowing she would as well.

Inside, Darkstorm is talking to Lady Macbeth and I wonder what the hell a villainess is doing in here and whether I should kick up a stink, but actually I’m craning my head above the crowd wondering if Twilight has made a show. I see Black Honey talking to Demi Moore and Tony Sabato Jr, and Eric Clapton goes past and high fives me and then immediately makes a face aghast like he mistook me for someone else. I quickly turn my shoulder on Black Honey, knowing if she’s here, then her other low-level pals won’t be far away.

I can’t see Twilight anywhere, though the club is pretty packed and my ears must be blocked or something because it seems like either the pounding music has rendered me instantly deaf or else I’m hearing something else beneath it, because the music and its accompanying vibrations seem somehow underneath us, and I brush past Lady Macbeth and she makes a face at me, bares her teeth, and I’m just about to power up and slug her one when Red Monolith appears, grabbing me by the wrist and pretty much ignoring the latent static charge he gets in return.

“Hey man,” Monolith grins in that stupid surfer voice of his. “Ease off the Lady, Zeph. Haven’t you heard? The Lady turned.”

I look at the tall blonde again, fairly graceful despite her age, and realise the snarling thing is her attempt at playing the coquette. She’s winking at me as I transfer my gaze with difficulty between her magnetic blue eyes and the dark sheen of Red Monolith’s visor.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Lady Macbeth leans in and does this weird wiggly dance and then starts talking like in the voice of a black woman, which again, maybe I’m a little slow on the uptake, I realise is totally a performance for my benefit.

“Ain’t you heard, Mr Zephyr? I’m turned.”

“Turned?”

“Apparently Think-Tank fucked up,” Monolith shrugs. “Get Lady to tell you about it.”

I wince because even under the seven-foot-tall hero’s red-and-black motorcycle helmet I can tell he’s making wildly suggestive motions with his eyebrows and nudging me too, and even if her brain molecules are still recovering from being re-organised by one of my old enemies, the Lady still gets the drift and gives a look of discomfort, finding someone she knows in the crowd and immediately disappearing. On reflex I turn to check out her ass and I have to concede she’s in pretty good shape. The split-leg black evening gown helps. She hails down Antonio Banderas like he’s a taxi or something, but the sneaky bastard turns and pretty quickly opens his arms for a hug. It’s not like she’s a mass murderer or anything, so I guess it’s fairly easy to forgive and forget. Especially for actors.

“Man, have you seen Twilight?”

“What’s that?” Red Monolith leans in and offers me the side of his head like I might speak right into his ear. Resisting the urge to pull off his helmet if not his head and throw it across the room, I calmly repeat myself more loudly.

“Oh no, I have no idea.”

“Okay.”

“Beer?”

“Stoli,” I reply.

I’m not going to the bar tonight after an incident the previous week that I can only remember in flashbacks. I also don’t have any money. I could flash fry an automatic teller or yank one of the damn things out of the fucking wall, but for some reason I have not. Yet. I’m one of the good guys. It’s a mantra for me. It’s worked so far. It also helps me not forget.

The press and push of the crowd is a little sickening. The air’s moist like we are in the presence of a giant fourth-dimensional armpit, though I know the smell, if I’m not imagining it, comes mostly from the carpeted floor. I’ve been here in the daytime – woken up in a corner, in fact – and it’s not one of the prettiest sights.

I retain the curious conviction that if I keep looking long enough I might find Twilight, so I move along under the awning beneath the DJ booth and nod hello to the guy from Ned and Stacy and one of the Ramones and a girl called Constance who I saved once from a burning tenement, which she has used ever since as her excuse to get into exclusive clubs like these. It is possible that after saving her, Constance gave me a blowjob, but since I was out of my skull on horse tranquilisers at the time I can’t really recall. She says hi, does a little wave. I pull my hard face, eyes far away as I shoulder past her like a man with an important engagement – like I have to return some videos or something.

 

RED MONOLITH FINDS me lurking like a sex offender beside the doors to the girls’ toilets. He passes me the cold bottle and I drink half the thing straight off, knowing there’s no way in hell my constitution will allow me to do something as unhelpful as get drunk. Tired as I am, thanks to a police station siege, an overturned fuel carrier, a weakened bridge in Old Brooklyn and two separate corner store hold-ups today, I can practically feel the little bubbles of sweet liquor pounced on by my hyper-charged enzymes and converted immediately into latent energy, incorporated into the living battery that is my endocrine system – “recruited to the cause,” as I sometimes think about it.

I don’t like to think about it that way, I just do.

I upend my bottle and when Monolith asks “Another?” I nod and he laughs, producing a second Stoli with a flourish from under his legionnaire’s cape.

“Oh so that’s why you wear that thing? Are you sure Calvin approves?”

“No, man. Come on Zephyr, you know I just wanna be like you.”

I take a quick glance to see if he’s joking and of course he is.

“Like me?” I motion obliquely. The leather bodysuit fits like the proverbial glove, a bright red zed like a lightning bolt in the middle of my chest descending to the buckle. “I gave up that spandex shit years ago.”

“I liked your old costume man, seriously,” Red Monolith says and I frown because now I think he’s being honest. Yet I know if I give in to it, the joke’ll still be on me somehow. I glance away and take in his helmeted head two or three times and wonder suddenly how the hell it is I am able to read his expression given his face is covered by a ballistic carbon shield.

“You know the Red Monolith and the old Zephyr, man, we were like colour co-ordinated,” he says.

“My costume was red and white,” I answer. “You’re red and black . . . and you’ve got those yellow panels.”

Monolith motions under his armpits. The actor who used to be known as Tom Cruise walks past holding hands with Richard Gere. A dreadlocked kid raises an eyebrow at us and I make a spark leap from my finger so that he goes away. Fucking drug dealers – never around when we need one, and pulling Uzis on us when we do. On a good day I might bust him. On a better day I’d find he was carrying something that might actually get me high.

“I’m thinking about gettin’ rid of the yellow panels, man,” Monolith says, bringing me back to the dingy reality of the club at its zenith.

“Really? Man, you should.” I try not to sound so earnest, but it comes out of me in a rush like I’ve spent every waking hour chewing nails over Red Monolith’s costume, so I give up completely, hoping he’ll read my reaction as irony as I add, “I’ve been wanting to say something for ages, but I didn’t know how to bring it up.”

“Zephyr, man,” Monolith answers earnestly. “We’re friends, aren’t we? You saved me from Doctor Octopus, remember?”

“Doctor Octopus is a comic book character. I’ve told you that a hundred times. It was Doctor Nefarious, OK?”

“Nefarious, OK,” Monolith half-chants to himself. “Then why did he have those mechanical arms?”

“I don’t know.” I sigh, swear beneath my breath and look away.

Drew Barrymore and her girlfriend emerge from the toilets and I know they’re big fans so I hide as quick as I can, leaving Red Monolith’s bulk as a distraction. Then, sipping my Stoli, I scan the room again wondering if Twilight has arrived while Monolith was talking shit. There’s no sign, no trace. I flex my gloved fingers and a crackle of static emanates across the room, one in five girls feeling a gentle shock, nipples hardening, hair standing up on arms. Demi Moore looks my way and I shake my head, and Black Honey, her new costume or at least her outfit for the night made of shiny PVC instead of the usual black leather, glares at me like she could make something of it. We both know her heightened agility and acrobatics won’t mean shit the day I decide to cram thirty thousand volts of lightning up her rear end. I do the sparking eyes thing, which even I have to admit looks extra cool with the domino mask, and Honey looks quickly away. I notice David Hasselhoff and the moment he sees me he flinches like a beaten dog and scurries out of sight – as well he should.

The guy comes out of nowhere, all Clark Kent with his slicked black hair, lantern jaw and wire-frame glasses. He has the nerdy dress code too. I can’t imagine how he even got in here.

“Uh, Mr Zephyr?”

“I know it’s hard when you’re dealing with someone with one name, but it’s just Zephyr, kid,” and I throw off the hand he tries put on my arm.

“I’ve got to speak to you.”

I look over my shoulder and I can’t see Twilight anywhere and I’m thinking that if he’s stayed home, maybe he made the right call. I should be at home too, but if I was Twilight, with a sixteen-bedroom mansion on the bay, I’d definitely skip Halogen if there was something better on offer.

“I’m not buying, sorry.”

I turn my back on the kid and start away and I am totally unprepared for him to grab me by the shoulder and try to turn me around. I resist the urge to flash-fry his balls and whirl back, my practised badass look made supreme in the leather bodysuit, all the static in the air congealing in my hair which is already standing straight up.

“Get your fucking hands off me.”

“But, I . . . need to speak to a hero.”

The young guy’s face is kind of lame and he’s as embarrassed as I am, knowing he nearly said the line from that song. I gesture around.

“The club’s full of ‘em. Knock yourself out.”

And I know he’s going to tell me that there’s no-one like me, that Paragon and Stiletto and Black Honey and even Red Monolith can’t match the legendary Zephyr, and he’s right, but suddenly I just don’t want to be there unless I can be drunk, and I can’t be drunk because it’s years since I even tried, playing skal with two cases of mixers and pissing like a racehorse as a result. So I just walk. The kid follows. I’m calling him a kid because he’s so clean shaven, but I’m thirty-five and in superhero years that makes me his grandpa. And he can follow all he likes because the moment I hit the chain and Leonardo inclines his shiny black head at me and parts the rope, I do the crouch thing and disappear with a whoosh into the sky.

Zephyr 1.1 “Bright Red Zed” is a post from: Zephyr - a webcomic in prose