When I was six years old, I saw an episode of "Superman" on the television at my grandmother's house. the following day, I took a ratty old blanket and fastened it around my shoulders with an old horse blanket safety pin. From that moment forward, I forgot how to walk. I leapt, I ran, I flew everywhere I went.

My stint as the female equivalent of Superman (I hadn't heard about Supergirl yet) came to an abrupt end several days later when I punched that evildoer masquerading as my brother square in the nose and broke his new glasses. I was stripped of my cape and sent to the Fortress of Solitude without dinner. I didn't mind, though. I had Lois and Jimmy and the Chief to keep me company.

*********

"C'mon, Marcy, lighten up," I said. I was lyin' in the shade of a coconut palm wearin' a much larger man's clothes from one of the suitcases that washed up. I'm sure that Marcy thought I looked like a boy playing at being a man.

Marcy stood there in the sand, still dressed in that ridiculous flannel sheet with the bunnies and duckies. She crossed her sunburned arms over her chest. "For the last time, you fool, my name is Marcia!" In a way, I had to give her credit. She was still spunky enough to give me grief about that.

"Well, we're even then, 'cause I ain't a fool, I'm a jester." I tilted the straw hat I found over my face and crossed my arms beneath my head. I wasn't in the mood for her today.

Through the holes in the straw hat, I could see Marcy still standin' there, open-jawed. "So what are you doing now?" she demanded. "Are you just going to sleep?"

"Very perceptive." I yawned. "Now be a good girl and go back to your side of the flyspeck and let me get some shuteye."

*********

"There," I chuckled, putting my pen down. "Take *that*, Marcy!" I stood slowly and stretched, suddenly realizing how cramped my body had become after sitting hunched in my chair in the Fortress of Solitude, as Gene nicknamed my study in happier times, for the past six hours. I'd been recounting the adventures of Jack Heath, The Jester. Jack was stranded on a desert island with the lovely, but completely self-absorbed soap opera diva, Marcia Vanderbilt.

I'd become totally obsessed with Jack over the past couple of weeks I'd been working on this latest series. The story was told in Jack's dialect, a sort of rough, blue collar vernacular that construction workers were prone to use. I'd adopted it myself in an effort to make it feel more natural to me. Now my husband was avoiding me.

I looked at the clock and realized that he'd be home in twenty minutes. I hadn't even taken anything out of the freezer to defrost.

"Geez, Lilly, if you order pizza for dinner one more night, I'm divorcing you," Gene told me last night. I think he was more than a little serious about it.

Lately, we fought like this whenever I wrote longer pieces. Gene resented the concentration, the total absorption that this work demanded. He swore I was nuts, but I was convinced that it got worse when my protagonist was a man.

"You married a writer," I reminded him on more than one occasion, "and it goes with the territory, dear."

On good days, he'd grumble a resigned "Yeah, I know." On not-so-good days, he'd just give me a dirty look.

But last night, he'd threatened to divorce me, and I knew he'd meant it. Now, here I was with nothing to show for my day but more pages of Jack's story. I'd proved my guilt on the charge of neglecting Gene for my fiction by virtue of the fact that the bed wasn't made, I hadn't bathed or dressed yet and hadn't stepped foot in the kitchen all day.

The panic was just beginning to set in when I heard Gene's car pull into the garage. Coward that I am, I quickly stripped and jumped into the shower. The house was eerily quiet when I emerged, now armed with a game plan. I quickly dressed and made the bed, then calmly came downstairs. Gene was in the kitchen with a bottle of beer in one hand and my day's work in the other.

"I see you got a lot done today," he said, holding up the pages. Then, "I don't suppose you made it to town hall to pay our taxes, did you?"

"Damn!" I whispered, and closed my eyes. I'd completely forgotten, and this had been the last day to pay them without incurring a penalty. Gene had been nagging me about it every night for the last two weeks. "Oh, God, Gene, I'm sorry. Things were going so well this morning that I just lost track of time."

"I noticed," he said, holding up his arms as a gesture to indicate I hadn't done any cooking.

"I thought we could go out to dinner tonight. My treat," I said with a forced smile. "We haven't beenout to dinner in a long time."

He grunted. He wasn't over being angry at me, but he was too hungry to refuse on principle. We got into the car and drove to a local Italian restaurant in silence. We ordered drinks while we looked over the menu, and Gene had finished his before the waitress came back to take our order. He ordered another and went to the salad bar without saying a word to me.

My initial feelings of guilt were beginning to give in to annoyance at his rudeness, but I worked to keep it in check. I didn't want a fight unless it was completely unavoidable. Dinner was uncomfortable, and Gene didn't seem to want it any other way. My attempts at conversation were answered with grunts and single-word responses, and each course meant another drink for Gene.

I insisted on driving, and by that time, Gene knew he was too drunk to argue. He fell asleep in the car within a block of the restaurant, and I had to help him into the house when we arrived home. He was dead weight, but I managed to get him as far as the sofa, and covered him with an afghan.

I was too enervated to sleep, so I made myself a cup of tea and retired to the Fortress of Solitude to work for a couple of hours. I must have fallen asleep in my recliner as I was editing the pages I'd just written, because when I awoke, it was nearly nine and Gene was gone without a trace.

I usually slept later than Gene, that much wasn't anything new. But Gene had never left for work without saying goodbye. I thought about it over breakfast, but before I was finished, I had another idea for Jack's story and was off to the Fortress of Solitude, all misgivings about my marriage temporarily forgotten.

The magazine editor who'd bought this series had given me a deadline of five p.m. that afternoon for this latest installment, so I worked dilligently until around four to get it ready for submission. At four-fifteen, I pressed the send button on my e-mail program and shipped it off. Then, driving like a madwoman, I made it to town hall before they closed at five and paid our taxes. When I got home, there was a message from the editor telling me how much he'd loved the story and ordering another four installments.

Given the situation with Gene, I hesitated. But we needed the money, and I was still fascinated with Jack. When the editor offered another twenty percent for the four pieces, I accepted.

Feeling a little guilty about it, I went to the kitchen and cooked a dinner of all Gene's favorite foods. I set the dining room table, showered and changed into one of Gene's favorite dresses and ran downstairs to wait for him. At seven, when Gene still hadn't come home, I called his office. He hadn't gone to work that day.

I began calling his family, then his friends. No one had seen Gene. Not knowing what else to do, I waited. I must have fallen asleep while I was waiting, because when I woke, it was after midnight. I went upstairs, undressed and slipped into bed. I checked the bedside phone to make sure we had dial tone and turned out the light.

But sleep wouldn't come, and despite my worry over Gene's disappearance, thoughts of Jack -- fantasies, really -- filtered into my consciousness. I gave up on sleep around two-thirty, made a pot of coffee and turned on my computer.

The next time I looked up, the sun was about to come up and the birds were chirping outside. The neighborhood was silent except for the paper delivery person (I had no idea whether it was a man or woman) driving to each house in turn to slip a paper into the tube. The pot of coffee had been finished some time ago, and I made another. I set the alarm in the Fortress to nine-thirty, and went back to my story.

At nine-thirty-five, I called Gene's office. No, his receptionist told me with a giggle she couldn't quite keep out of her voice, Mr. Benton hadn't come in or called. His boss was looking for him too. Yes, if she heard from him, she'd be sure to remind Mr. Benton to call home. I hung up realizing that I was starting a scandal for Gene which might very well get him fired, but I didn't care. My guilt and fear were slowly turning to anger, and when my anger started building, it suddenly converted itself back to guilt and fear.

Fatigue overwhelmed me by noon, and despite the fact that Jack's story was flowing through me powerfully, I had to relent and take a nap. I made sure that the phone was still working, pulled the shades and crawled back into bed for some sleep.

*********

We'd crawled into this damned dimple in one of the huge rocks on the edge of the beach. You couldn't call it a cave, really, it was more like the thumbprint you stick in a peanut butter cookie before you bake it so's you have somewhere to put the Hershey's Kiss when it comes outta the oven. But it was keepin' us dry until the wind started roarin' and now the spray was comin' straight at us.

We'd been here, twice in fact. There wasn't anything else we could use to keep the rain off us. I'd thought about puttin' up a shelter of some kind, and God knows Marcy had done enough naggin' about it. But I thought buildin' a house seemed like resignin' myself to stayin' here a lot longer than I wanted to. And I hated to admit it, but right now, I wished I'd listened to Marcy.

She was blubberin' again, sittin' on the bottom of our hiding place and rockin' back and forth while something thicker than water dripped down her chin. Whether it was drool or snot I didn't wanna know. "Quit your bawlin'," I told her. "It ain't gettin' us nowhere." But she didn't pay any attention to me. She looked like she wanted her mommy. To tell the truth, so did I.

The rain wasn't cold or nothin', it was really pretty warm. But it was wet, and I was sick of bein' wet. Not to mention the lightnin' that kept lightin' up the joint. One bolt close to us and we were sure to fry.

*********

On the third day, I called the police and filed a missing persons report. I did admit to the officer that showed up at my door that we'd had a fight, and when he asked me if we'd been having "marital difficulties," I nodded. He flipped his book shut and stood up quickly, and I got the impression that he thought I was wasting his time. You'd think I'd told him that Gene had been abducted by aliens.

Other than that, I just waited and worked. The series of stories I'd been working on was going incredibly well, and within a week, I'd finished what the editor had assigned to me. But I couldn't leave Jack and move on to another project. Jack was inside me now, and most of my time was spent having imaginery conversations with him. One of these internal dialogs took an erotic turn, and before I knew it, I was in the shower with my hands -- Jack's hands, I imagined -- running all over my body.

Life went on without Gene. And over time, I stopped missing him. I had Jack, and that was enough for me. Of course, Marcy had to go. I wasn't going to share Jack with anyone. I had him take care of it right around Chapter Six. Oh, didn't I tell you? I'm writing a novel about Jack, and have ideas enough for a whole series of them. I have an agent now, and she's been shopping the first chapter around to some of the larger publishing houses.

The series of short stories I did for the magazine editor were very popular, and had even been nominated for a Pushcart prize. I was earning better money than ever now, and didn't miss Gene's paycheck any more. I had an accountant to handle all the mundane stuff like paying the property taxes, and I have a really good life.

Jack has been rescued from the island, and is now involved with a woman named Lila who is helping him write his story. I've filed the papers to dissolve my marriage to Gene, although I do keep up payments on his life insurance policy, just in case. The police were never able to find him, but I've hired a private investigator who thinks it's only a matter of time.

When we talk about it at all, Jack says not to worry about Gene, that even if he comes back, Jack won't leave me. And when I wonder aloud about what has become of him, Jack just gives me that crooked smile, as if to say he knows but ain't tellin'.

Jack and I don't go out much these days. We spend most of our time in the Fortress of Solitude.

For more of Jack's adventures, see April Fool.

Props to the CHPercolator List for the inspiration
April 8, 2001
3525 words