the ladder - blueprint (part 5)

The Ladder – An experimental web-only fiction series that spans multiple story lines and characters…Tune in every Wednesday for a new installment.

The news was delivered by a tight-lipped doctor whose grim expression conveyed the need for condolences long before he spoke. Mrs. Robertson, already in tears from the agonizing wait, collapsed on the chair as the doctor explained that, for all their efforts, Aaron could not be saved from his overdose. Holding on to his mother, Eriq cried too, feeling an acid mixture of grief and anger churning within. This, then, was his brother’s end, and life was no comic book. Superman was not to be resurrected after dying at the hands of Doomsday. Captain America would not be revealed to have been displaced in time and space after his assassination. There was no Lazarus Pit to bring Aaron back.

Guilt at feeling relief that, at last, it was over was too much to bear. The full impact of realizing that Aaron, good and bad, would not even have the chance of returning to the family became equally suffocating. All Eriq could do was hang on to his mother.

Vlad stifled tears of his own, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, and he wondered: where do the Robersons go from here?

the ladder - blueprint (part 4)

The Ladder – An experimental web-only fiction series that spans multiple story lines and characters…Tune in every Wednesday for a new installment.

A waiting room like all waiting rooms – nondescript, inoffensive, with beach scenes on bleached wall and a vending machine filled, ironically, with candy bars and chips. The corridor bisecting the rows of chairs with worn blue cushions hummed with tight-lipped nurses and sour-faced doctors rushing along with insomniac medical residents, visitors, and the occasional shuffling or rolling patient. When they arrived, the overweight Latina handling phones, computers and impatient visitors like a calm octopus regretfully informed them that they would to wait for news. So they sat. And they waited.

While Mrs. Robertson retreated into quiet suffering, eyes moist but filled with resolve, Eriq sketched furiously on a large pad of paper. Vlad watched as vast scenes of superhero carnage unfolded in jagged black and white linework – caped muscle men and tightly-clothed women against armies of robot with volcanic eyes and the armament of a dozen Abrams tanks.

Waiting.

Mrs. Robertson stood up every so often to ask the receptionist for news, only to be told that the doctors were at work and would come out when ready.

Waiting.

Eriq was more angry than worried, fully expecting Aaron to bounce out of the intensive care like a doped-up tigger. What angered him was knowing that his brother would make yet another resolution to quit, yet another promise to his mother to be a good son, yet another attempt to do his part in healing the family. They’d been through it before, stuck in some hellish cycle of expectations and false hope.

Waiting.

Vladimir Kossakovsky remembered his years in the old Soviet Union, but only as if his memory were fogged in. He was nine when glasnost took hold and, in the euphoric freedom that emerged from a new age’s birth, his parents felt compelled to finally escape to the American Dream instead of suffering through the painful pangs of a transforming county. He had memories of that inimitable Russian stoicism, muted opinions, whispers, and a small candle to hold out against the looming shadow of the KGB. Why he thought of this now, he didn’t know, except perhaps for the fact that he caught a look between Eriq and Mrs. Roberson, a guilty exchange that suggested the familiar spectre of uncertainty.

Waiting.

What kind of mother was she? For a moment – a brief, stabbing moment – Mrs. Robertson wished Aaron would die, picturing him on a hospital bed lifeless and with tubes. Not out of punishment, only to spare him the wasted life of a junky or criminal. Oh dear God, she prayed. Why am thinking that? Of course she didn’t want him dead. She wanted him whole and returned to her. She wanted him living up to his potential. But if he wouldn’t listen to her or his brother or to the doctors – what hope did he have?

Waiting.

Eriq also thought of Aaron’s death – how it would be better for everyone – and the self-loathing bubbled up and burst from his pencil onto the page in the form of grotesque battle scenes. But what love did his brother have for him? When he needed someone older and stronger help fend off the bullies, someone more mature to dispense advice, where was Aaron?

Waiting.

the ladder - blueprint (part 3)

The Ladder – An experimental web-only fiction series that spans multiple story lines and characters…Tune in every Wednesday for a new installment.

The way to the hospital took them through residential neighbourhoods pitting flat-roofed houses and leftover bungalows against sizeable Ficus trees whose thick gnarly roots, pushing up and splitting concrete, wreaked havoc on the sidewalks. Eriq withdrew gloomily into himself, thinking of his brother, then trying not to think of him by cataloguing superheroes with addiction problems. Tony Stark, of course: Iron Man vs the “demon in the bottle.” Or before he was born, though he had many of those old issues, the Green Arrow’s sidekick Roy Harper, aka Speedy - Dennis O’Neal and Neal Adams’ memorable foray into the harrowing realm of heroin addiction. It was no Requiem for a Dream, but for comics it had been pretty intense. But Aaron was no hero. Just some punk with daddy issues. His mother would say the same of him. At least Eriq has his art. Aaron had shown an aptitude for math and science, but came to view it as pointless in light of his friends’ obsession with basketball and vandalism.

Vlad also thought of superheroes, noting that even the movie Hancock staked a claim for itself with an alcoholic superhero. But other than stories of heroics directed against drug dealers and powerful cartels, or the personal drama of overcoming addiction, what more was there to say? What kind of hero could rescue a drug addict from addiction?

Eriq considered a superhero with mind control abilities. Or maybe a superhero who could cure addiction by entering into people’s dreams. Certainly his dad wouldn’t be the hero Aaron needed, and his mother was overwhelmed. A story told thousands of times before – broken homes, devils in small plastic bags, all the usual heartaches. It all sucked. Stupid Aaron. He should know better – look at why Dad ran out.

Vlad didn’t entertain fantasies about a superhero who could rescue Aaron. It struck him as condescending, however much he had to admit it fit the challenge of coming up with a better Superman than Superman. As the trope went, we want to look up to heroes whose moral steadfastness inspires us to greatness. But it needed to be more than that. It needed to be…something. He didn’t know what. His own family background – Russian immigrants to the New World – was relatively free of the stuff of unnatural tragedy. Papa Kossakovsky, an autodidact librarian, and Mama, a housewife who had taken to gardening as a hobby and then a business, were ever-fixed marks that remained firmly unshaken by storm and

In the back seat, Mrs. Robertson stared out the window of Vlad’s venerable Jetta, chewing her lip and unconsciously removing her dark cherry lipstick. No thoughts of implausibly proportioned costumed heroes. No adventures in space or parallel dimensions. No saviour, except for a Jesus Christ who seemed ever more a fading wish. Only memories of a young girl in the community college’s nursing program, the handsome young English major with literary ambitions, an impetuous night in the janitor’s closet making love to the scent of pine-sol and rusty pipes. But forget all that: her baby was in the hospital, overdosed on whatever flavour-of-the-month of poison he’d ingested.

the ladder - blueprint (part 2)

The Ladder – An experimental web-only fiction series that spans multiple story lines and characters…Tune in every Wednesday for a new installment.

Vlad’s blue eyes – icy but vivid – were anything but windows to the soul. The writer, who disdained metaphysics as, would have scoffed at the very notion of a soul let alone the idea that a glance into the eyes could reveal character. Eriq disagreed, of course; eyes, he often said, were an artist’s best means of revealing character in the printed page. Vlad would retort that living people weren’t drawings on paper and that “ocular fenestration” was only meaningful in the context of body language. It was one of many arguments they never resolved. But for all of Vlad’s disdain, Eriq could tell his friend was churning with ambition and worry beneath the glacial, haughty expression on his face.

“Superman,” said Vlad, reverently but also with clear distaste.

“Break it down for me.”

Not even Vlad could resist the pull of the Superman mythology or, at least, the idea of a Superman resplendent in his strength and power of flight. The steadfastly good hero all but invulnerable to evil, a desirable mirror image to that of unstoppable malevolence. The powerful saviour of the powerless. Even, of course, with the collateral risks of superpowers, dissected and analyzed countless times in comics and essays, Superman still possessed a kind of irresistible majesty. Vlad, raised on Superman and Batman and all the other icons just as Eriq had been, soaked up the fantastical promise of superheroism while aware that superheroes could just as easily be surrogate gods, harbingers of doom for a dependent humanity, catalysts of profound change. But he hated comics. At least, he hated the storytelling that often made comics little more than soap operas.

“It’s the lack of rules,” he said, animated in the peculiar way that only discussing comics or politics could evoke. “People die, they come back to life. You have magic, and aliens, and science fiction, and all these different genres mashed altogether. The Multiverse? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Just totally fucking kidding. It’s an excuse to do anything at any time. It’s ridiculous. Nothing means anything. Why do all stories have to quote ‘exist’ unquote in the same universe? But that’s not life. Right? That’s not life.”

And so on. That Superman was also an alien instead of a human irritated him to no end. “It’s like Von Daniken and his aliens-built-the-pyramids crap. Are humans really too dumb to do anything for themselves?”

“It’s a metaphor,” Eriq said, knowing full well that if anyone metaphor he didn’t like, it was Vlad. Distantly, he heard the phone ring – he didn’t keep one in his room because he hated the shrill disruption of his concentration while drawing. He ignored it.

“Yeah, yeah. Immigration to the US and all that. Of course I understand that. I’d still be in Russia otherwise. But think about it: Superman is superheroic because he isn’t human, and no human could ever hope to be Superman.”

Eriq was about to speak – he had a glimmer of an idea – when his mother’s voice jolted him. “Come down, Eriq! For God’s sake, get down here.”

Puzzled, Eric rushed down the stairs followed by Vlad, who wasn’t in quite the same hurry. They found Mrs. Robertson with the old-fashioned phone receiver in her hand, arm loose by her side. The expression on her face, one of corked anger and despair, put her at odds with the cheery peaches-and-cream décor of the living room. Eriq’s irritation turned to worry, then to resignation.

Mrs. Robertson wept. “It’s Aaron. He did it again. He…”
“That…” Eriq started before choosing instead to swallow the angry expletive. Vlad, who kept his expression neutral, remembered that the Robertson’s car was undergoing repairs at the dealer.

“I’ll drive,” he said.

the ladder - blueprint (part 1)

The Ladder - An experimental web-only fiction series that spans multiple story lines and characters…Tune in every Wednesday for a new installment!

The doorbell chimed an off-key Big Ben. Eriq stomped down the small stairs – the elephantine racket earned him disapproval, shot across the living room by a woman who could stare down a stampede of Pamplona bulls without flinching – and nearly pulled the front door off its hinges. On the porch of the small side-gabled California bungalow stood a mod young man, twenty-something, short blue-black hair, rugged east European face whose paleness was accentuated by the black jeans and smoothly-cut blazer. Buddha as a well-dressed vampire.

Eriq put out a hearty hug. “What’s up mah niggah?”

“Hey there, honky!”

From the couch, Mrs. Robertson furrowed her brow, creases appearing in her otherwise smooth dark skin, lips tightened together. She set down her copy of the LA Times and looked over her turtle-shell reading glasses, dark eyes serious but not without a twinkle. “I wish you boys would stop that.”

“We’re just taking back the power of words, Mom,” Eriq grinned. “C’mon, Vlad mah niggah, let’s hit the headquarters.”

Bemused yet despairing, Mrs. Robertson watched them climb the creaky stairs to the attic space, shaking her head, then returned to her newspaper when they disappeared from view.

“You’re such a fucking stereotype,” said Vlad when he emerged from the narrow stairwell. The attic space that served as Eriq’s bedroom was a tight space further enclosed by stacks of comics, piles of randomly strewn clothes, and tattered, layered posters of everything from Star Wars to the Hulk movie. It was a slovenly artist’s den; the only reasonable fragment of space was the large drawing table next to which was a cabinet of neatly ordered drawing pencils, sketchpads, and other supplies. Eriq himself was no great embodiment of tidiness. The proud bearer of an old-school Afro and three-day old stubble, he wore carelessly maintained, torn blue Levi’s and a white t-shirt on which was written in thin red letters “ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.”

“Yeah, yeah. Fuck that. Let’s talk about this mess you’ve gotten us into.”

A quick phone conversation the night before – Vlad talking at an amped-up pace, barely remembering to breathe. The announcement was shocking, like winning the lottery or finally being rid of a Republican president. After months of carefully cultivating contacts sown at Comic-Con and through various friends at the major houses, Vlad succeeded in arranging a meeting with a muckety-muck who had the power to make shit happen. But that wasn’t the shock. The shock came from learning that the pitch for a new comic book character, vaguely worded and stuffed with lofty visions, had worked. Eriq and Vlad, the artist and the writer, didn’t have long to work up a fully-developed proposal.

“Mess, huh. You’d rather keep doing those cheap porno comics you won’t tell your mom about?”

“That’s low, man. Boobella is not cheap porno.” Then, mumbling, eyes cast down towards a floor covered in a stained beige carpet: “And that was way before we did The Grave Captain’s Chronicles.”

Vlad laughed, muttered something about photocopies distributed to rockers coming out of concerts on Sunset Boulevard, then became serious when it seemed like Eriq would pull one of his notorious mopey faces. That was never a good sign for getting productive work done.

“All right, then,” said Vlad. He looked around for a place to sit while Eriq took to the squat stool in front of the drawing board; Foam stuffing from the stool’s cushion poured out of a tear when Eriq sat down. Vlad merely looked for a place to sit that could be cleared off without touching any of Eriq’s laundry.

“So what did we promise the suit?” Eriq said. “What are we supposed to do exactly?”

“He wasn’t a suit, honky. And let’s please not have the kind of conversation a bad writer would inject into a story. The kind in which two characters obviously know what they’re talking about but talk about it anyway for the benefit of readers.”

Eriq’s eyes, alert and restless, settled on Vlad with an intensity worthy of his mother. Unperturbed, Vlad returned the stare as if possessed of an infinite reservoir of cool.

“All I remember is our mouths going blah, blah, blah and the suit nodding his head and going blah, blah, blah.”

Vlad sighed. “At least you remember we promised to deliver something huge, right? I mean, fucking huge?”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.” All mockery suddenly stripped from his voice, he asked with great concern, “But how are we going to create a better Superman in less than two months? For Christ’s sake…a Superman better than Superman!”