{"id":416,"date":"2018-01-08T17:43:44","date_gmt":"2018-01-08T17:43:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/?p=416"},"modified":"2024-10-18T12:42:13","modified_gmt":"2024-10-18T11:42:13","slug":"flash-fiction-apatheto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/2018\/01\/08\/flash-fiction-apatheto\/","title":{"rendered":"Apatheto"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fare slid in on to the backseat.\u00a0The car dipped so hard, on what was left of the suspension, I thought it was going to do a back-flip. Whole lot of man for one man. \u201cWhat\u2019s up, buddy? Where to?\u201d
\u201cD.C.,\u201d he said.
\u201cLAX?\u201d
\u201cNo. I said D.C.\u201d
\u201cYeah, I get that, heard you the first time. But it\u2019s not as if I\u2019m going to drive you the two-or-three-thousand-whatever-it-is miles there, so which airport we going to?\u201d
\u201cNone of them, unless you think you need a runway.\u201d
\u201cOkay, I don\u2019t have time for this. Get out of my cab.\u201d
\u201cTime, like so very many other things, is something you have in plenty.\u201d
\u201cFuck. What are you? A Jehovah? Scientologist? Whatever you\u2019re selling, I\u2019m not buying. Now out of my cab, now. Before-\u201c
\u201cBefore what? You throw me out? Now wouldn\u2019t that be something for all to witness.\u201d
Dick had a point. When I turned around, it was clear, even sitting, that he was closer to seven feet than six, and was somewhere around three hundred pounds. Not the lard ass I pictured either. He was hewn from solid rock. Figuratively speaking.
\u201cYou don\u2019t sound the way you look,\u201d I said.
\u201cAppearances. You can never can go by them. Take yourself, for example.\u201d
He allowed himself a little smile.
\u201cOkay,” I said. “I\u2019ll bite. Who are you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy name, that is unimportant, but you can ascertain, I\u2019m sure, the party to which I belong.\u201d
\u201cThe kind of party that usually wears a lot of spandex and likes their underwear outside their trousers, I\u2019m guessing.\u201d
\u201cSamuel, it is time to take your birthright and assume your father\u2019s mantel.\u201d
Oh. Shit. \u201cJesus, you always talk like that?\u201d
\u201cYour father-\u201c
\u201c-never asked me before deciding to bequeath all of his worldly possessions, i.e. his goddamn superpowers, to me before he died. I never wanted any part of his life. He was absent most of mine. I never wanted anything from my father. Because the only thing he ever gave my mother was stress and not much else. Turns out saving the world every day doesn\u2019t pay so good and governments the world over are happy to accept the services of someone who doesn\u2019t ask for anything in return.\u201d
\u201cSamuel, these are dark times. The people of this world need-\u201c
\u201c-to still get from A to B. Hence my current line of non-stress-related, your-problem-not-my-problem work. Meetings, hair appointments, hook-ups with their mistresses. That\u2019s what\u2019s big in real people\u2019s worlds. The shit you guys all get yourselves mixed up with? It doesn\u2019t touch any of them in this bubble you\u2019ve created for them to live out their simple lives in. The reality is whatever you\u2019re here to bug me about is not going to come within a million miles of their lives. Unless there\u2019s a warhead or two involved, in which case their shadows will be burnt into the pavement long before they have any idea they\u2019re being nuked to kingdom come. I kind of like being disconnected here with them.\u201d
\u201cHmmm. Well I\u2019m afraid, Samuel, you do not have that luxury of choice.\u201d
\u201cGo on then. I\u2019m all ears. Oh, and by the way, the meter\u2019s running.\u201d I pulled away from the curb.
\u201cI\u2019m sure if your father had the option, he would have bequeathed his abilities to someone in his bloodline more accommodating and, let\u2019s face it, deserving. But he did not have that option. It is the order of things with your kind. When his flame was extinguished, yours ignited.\u201d
\u201cHow poetic. And, believe me, I know. I was running along Venice beach when he must have popped his super-clogs. Clearly. I ended up two miles out into the Pacific. And nice crack about the runway earlier. FYI, I don\u2019t require one. The scare I got from instantaneously ending up out in the ocean launched me 10,000 feet straight up. Managed to get shit under some kind of control before I ended up in orbit. The speed, the flight, the invisibility, the strength, the rest of it. Handy for opening stubborn jars of pickles and the odd spot of shoplifting. But the novelty wore off quick enough. So spare me the whole \u2018with great power comes great responsibility\u2019 sermon. Plenty of people out there with the ability to run fast, but that doesn\u2019t mean they have to be Olympic sprinters.\u201d
\u201cThat\u2019s much too simplistic a view.\u201d
\u201cI\u2019m a very simplistic person. If I have no interest in doing something, I don\u2019t do it. Simple as.\u201d
\u201cThis is most disappointing.\u201d
\u201cI can imagine. Look, if I could pee in a cup, give you a blood sample, pass on this shit to somebody else, I would. But\u2026\u201d
Silence from the back seat.
Ah yes.
The deafening sound of thinking, deliberating, weighing up the pros and cons, the positives and negatives, the angel on the good shoulder debating with the devil on the bad.
\u201cI feel your frustration,\u201d I said. \u201cIt\u2019s palpable. The whole moral dilemma of what you\u2019re considering.\u201d
The silence continued.
For a guy his size, you couldn\u2019t even hear him breathe, but then he wasn\u2019t any normal guy.
And neither was I.
Thanks Dad.
I heard the synapses in his brain fire, then gave him the benefit of doubt in the microseconds that passed until the tendons and muscle in his right arm, his punching arm I have to gather, coiled. Before his fist was midway along its flightpath, I had caught it, with my eyes still fixed on the road, crushed it, and almost twisted it clean off the limb it was fixed to.
\u201cThe way you\u2019re clenching that comic book lantern jaw of yours tells me you\u2019ve never experienced pain before.\u201d
\u201cYour power\u2026\u201d
\u201cI know. Phenomenal, isn\u2019t it. And that\u2019s me being objective. Honest to God. Because I couldn\u2019t give two shits about it. Now, put out as I am about being lumbered with these abilities, this selection box of powers, I have no desire to die to pass them on to the next one in line, whoever that\u2019s supposed to be. Thankfully, dear old Dad didn\u2019t gift my mom with any other children.\u201d
I pulled in to the side of the road.
\u201cNot sure that it\u2019s of any use to you, whatever your name is, pardon my ignorance, but there\u2019s an emergency room just around the corner. I\u2019d drop you, but I assume you have no money to pay your fare and you\u2019ve already cost me ten bucks I\u2019m not going to get back.\u201d
He just stared at me.
\u201cKind of cold, I know. But my powers of apathy have been given a boost too.\u201d
\u201cYou know,\u201d he said, gathering his arm up, \u201cat least if you\u2019d taken those powers and used them to exact some kind of evil on the world, that would have preferable in some way. At least you\u2019d see the value in them, then.\u201d
He opened the door and stepped out on the sidewalk. \u201cBut the most dangerous thing to do with immeasurable power\u2026 is nothing at all.\u201d
\u201cAh-huh. Shut the door after you, man. Thanks.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fare slid in on to the backseat.\u00a0The car dipped so hard, on what was left of the suspension, I thought it was going to do a back-flip. Whole lot of man for one man. \u201cWhat\u2019s up, buddy? Where to?\u201d\u201cD.C.,\u201d he said.\u201cLAX?\u201d\u201cNo. I said D.C.\u201d\u201cYeah, I get that, heard you the first time. But it\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-flash-fiction","category-short-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1422,"href":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions\/1422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}