The Vanishing Wave, part four

featuring Johnny Storm and characters from TRANZ Troy, a teenaged runaway . I have a completely dope drawing in mind, as I get away from it all: let Rex and Carina kill each other. Three Sister Tattoo Parlor could be gone tomorrow, but I’ve learned not to worry. People disappear. The more free they want to be, the more they gamble away the chains that keep them in this world...but I’m not just looking for some other people I don’t know, I think at the moment, my existence is caught up in this city that natives complain is just vanishing by the day. It is a part of my own vanishing. That’s why I love to walk to this cluster of woods, rarely seen, draw out the thousand bad drawings, drop out this year’s masterpiece in my little sketch book no one else sees, keeping the secrets of what I really wonder in wordless form. I look again at the box, the one that inspired me to tie in the Viking people I started the same day...I must’ve laid them out a dozen times, they were made to go with the box. And the box...it’s Pandora’s Box shut tight, ready to radioactively explode, I dunno how you say it, it’s just pure evil and the cause of all loss, everything that loses us the world we could have if we all agreed to try...and I just want to spot its blacks, realize it, possess it. We only live outside the box. We have to know the Box to be free. I’m making some kind of face when I notice the blond guy in the black jacket with the red flames, and then I shut my book defensively, and become irritated when I see it’s that celebrity scene chewer Johnny Storm. “Hey, relax, amigo,” he says, easing his hands downward, pressing. This could be as bad as running into a cop combined with an ultra level of cheesiness. This smug poster boy has everything the system can offer, ‘cause of a lucky break... “No rule against sitting out in the woods,” I say. “Yeah, I’m doing somethin more important than trespassing, kid,” he retorts. “Don’t you realize what’s going on?” “Sure,” I said, positive I want no part in this. I look over his shoulder as he absorbs my sarcasm, and notice the slightest motion from a figure utilizing the shadows of the woods, pulling a bow taut maybe thirty yards away. I can’t get the words out of my mouth when there’s something the eye cannot follow between them, then the figure vanishes. When the “arrow” hits the Torch, he shudders visibly, then this look in his eye seems to collapse into... A neutron star of radiation, and with glowing black eyes he grabs my pants leg, and begins to ignite it. "Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!" He takes me down on my back with one pull, and suddenly I’m looking up breathlessly, unable to voice the scream I want to make. I crawl away and roll, facing one of my worse fears, dazed, stunned, and alone with the scariest version of the Human Torch I never wanted to imagine. He laughs, like an excited bully, and runs after me as I scamper for life. I hear the limbs of trees begin to crackle with death behind me, now Run! Run! Run! Dad’s worst nightmare: a forest fire. And it’s funny that I think of him, sitting in his jail cell for helpin bomb a ski resort development, and how much he hates smoke, and how many months I’ve made it outside the system, I lived on rooftops until I could raise the money to for real get out of Indianapolis, and I take a long shot and get to sleep on the floor of a tattoo parlor training me to manage and I don’t care what attitudes get tossed around, it’s the closest thing to home sweet home that I cling to as I flee this flaming maniac. Why he doesn’t just fly over me and burn me to cinders? I scan the woods for split second directions, while I dread unimaginable suffering at the hands of this flaming sadist. I hear him bellow behind me, in a way that barely sounds human at all. Some part of me tugs me to look. There, he crawls now towards me, across the ground, clawing the ground as his skin becomes blackened and gray and almost mold colored, no flames unless you count the ones spreading through this dry timber. Whatever did this to him is still out here, too, I thought it was just a figment of my imagination...just as I refuse to believe in the pillar of flame slowly hovering and expanding towards me from the smoldering, fallen wreck of what was supposed to be a superhero.. .and I may think Torch is a jerk, but I’m pulling for him right now to shake this off, or I get cremated before I even die!