The Mongoose

So this is a story I wrote a couple of years ago. It's pretty silly, and I didn't actually re-read the thing before I put it up here, so I'm sure there's plenty of long convoluted sentences (this was what I once considered my trademark before I started to realize it was just bad writing). Read if you like. I really just thought that since I started this thing, I may as well toss forth the first entry. And so...

THE MONGOOSE

By Kate Hutchens

“Well, you have to wonder why Bruce has that car of his and all those fancy gadgets. He’s got to have his issues, too, baby,” Alison’s voice came over the phone lines and into Mickey’s office. He assumed from the way her voice was fading in and out and the thwacking in the background that she was clamping the receiver between her shoulder and her jaw, chopping some ingredient for the meal she would have ready for him when he got home. The last dinner they had eaten apart had been before they had been married seven months earlier. The last time they had had sex had been their wedding night.

“Yeah, well…so I’ll probably be home in about an hour. I actually talked to ole’ Batty earlier, and he said he’d have tonight covered.” He lied again, pretending both that he had any business to be covered, and that he had even spoken to Bruce “Batman” Wayne since the wedding. In the last half-year, he had been professionally as he had been sexually – impotent. Mickey silently felt himself start to choke up, but composed himself. “I’ll bring home a nice bottle of wine – red or white?”

“Red, we’re having meatloaf. I read in a magazine somewhere that red meat is supposed to help bolster…things…”

Mickey let his forehead fall onto his desk. “Red it is.”

“Bye, hon.”

Mickey hung up the phone without saying goodbye. He had to just keep telling himself that superheroes don’t cry, superheroes don’t cry…

And Mickey Motterson was a superhero, technically. He had an official certificate emblazoned with the seal of the esteemed Mayor Linseed of Gotham City hanging in a frame over his desk, and a red phone, too. He had been The Mongoose. About three years ago, when he had had the monopoly on saving innocent Gothamites, there had been two more red phones in his secret lair, The Thicket, and a super secretary to answer them. But when Batman moved in on the town, everything changed. Mickey’s cut of the villainy dwindled as the Bat Signal became the beacon of choice. Bruce offered to take him on as a sidekick, but Mickey had his pride and he was determined to stay afloat on his own. Eventually, Mayor Linseed asked if Mickey would consider retiring as an official protector of the city. Having more than one superhero just was not necessary anymore, nor was it conducive to the kind of political atmosphere the mayor felt would be right for Gotham City.

Forced to take a hiatus, Mickey decided it would be the opportune time to settle down and marry his long-time love, a school teacher named Alison Sage. He tried to relax while on their lavish, two-week tropical honeymoon, funded by Alison’s inherited stock dividends, but when they came home and he found there had been no disasters or people in distress awaiting his assistance, he was quick to become bored and frustrated.

Since municipal work was no longer his jurisdiction, Mickey decided to begin anew and move into the private sector, retiring his sleek, beady-eyed costume for a suit and tie. He had never been anything but a superhero before, so his small-time, civilian vigilante service, Bargain Justice, was a venture attempted on a bank loan with no marketing skills or entrepreneurial know-how, whatsoever. The Thicket had been supported entirely by public funds, and there were only two things left that had not been repossessed with which he could furnish the small office he rented in a downtown Wayne Enterprises-owned building: his hero certificate, and his red phone. Having put an advertisement in the yellow pages under “Legal Services,” he went to work every day and sat at his desk, waiting with rapidly-waning patience for someone to need his help, waiting for the phone to ring. It did once – but only once – each day, when Alison called him from home after school. Every day Mickey lied to her and told her about how busy he’d been, and how he and “ole’ Batty” talked about such-and-such – you know, shop talk. The only thing with which he even virtually interacted throughout the day besides her was a hand-held electronic poker game.

This afternoon, on the phone, Mickey could have predicted the bit about the wine. For the past five weeks or so, Alison had dropped a hint or two a day of something she had read in a magazine or seen on a TV show discussing sexual dysfunction, but this had not started until almost four months after the first evidence that Mickey had a problem. Some time after the wedding (two months and thirty-seven dry runs later, to be exact), the attempts had ceased, and they had started just going to sleep at night. It also stopped coming up in conversation, or even when it did, Mickey just changed the subject.

As he drove home, he thought about this and hated himself for dreading the evening almost more than he had dreaded going to work that morning. Tonight was the anniversary of their first date – Alison liked to commemorate their relationship multiple times a year for multiple reasons – and he could not stop thinking of how unspectacular it was probably going to be.

He pulled into the driveway and sat in the car, staring at his hands on the steering wheel for almost two full minutes before remembering about the wine. Again, he almost cried – little things set him off these days – but then decided that he still had time to run to the store before Alison noticed he was late.

When he walked into the kitchen fifteen minutes later with the bottle of Yellowtail Merlot, he had expected to see Alison wearing her apron, pulling the meatloaf out of the oven. She was, in fact, wearing the apron…but that was all she was wearing, and the meatloaf was already served onto two plates. There were candles on the table, and soft rock murmured in from the living room.

“Well, hello there, Mr. Motterson.” Her voice was unexpectedly low, deliberately sexy. She raised one eyebrow mischievously and lifted her feet up, crossing her ankles and resting them on the corner of the table.

“Uhh…h-hi!” he stammered, almost missing the counter as he set down the bottle. He stopped and stared at his wife who sat across the table from him, smiling back. He pulled his chair out to join her, but she stood and strode toward him. He glanced at the meatloaf on the table.

“It’ll keep for a little while…and there’s more in the fridge, if it doesn’t,” she reassured him as she lightly touched his purple tie, then wrapped her hand around it and reeled him in to her. His mind went blank of everything except how gorgeous she was, and how her sudden boldness and surprise tactics were totally a turn…a flag went up in the back of his occupied mind, and one cohesive thought was conceived - he was, in fact, turned on right now. His mind shut off and instincts took over. He let her pull him along as she went hand over hand up his tie until their noses were touching.

“C’mere, my sexy hero man…”

And with that his mind flicked right back on to form one more cohesive thought, this one a memory of the phone call and the lie, and all the phone calls and lies. Instincts receded, and, for all his good intentions, he was now entirely turned off. Alison had sensed his momentary excitement and pushed into the kiss a little more, but Mickey backed out of it. She turned away, shaking her head slightly and giving a sarcastic sort of chuckle. Mickey was again surprised, now by this, her first real blatant display of frustration.

“What? What is it? What? I don’t get it, Mickey” she almost shouted, exasperated. “I know something was happening just then, so I’ll say that at least my all-out seduction was met with some response, but then…what went wrong? Mickey, I just don’t know what you want me to do.” She slumped into down in the chair behind the pile of cooling meatloaf, keeping her miffed and baffled eyes trained on him.

Mickey relegated his own gaze to the floor. “I…I don’t know…it’s not – ”

“It’s not you, it’s me, I know, I know.”

“It’s my problem, not yours.” He moved over to her and put his hand on her shoulder. She moved slightly, as if she had meant to shrug him off and then thought better of it.

“See, that’s the thing. It’s my problem, too.”

“But it’s not something that you’re doing wrong. It’s not really a problem that can be solved by your doing something. It’s really kinda my deal, you know?”

“Well, I don’t see you doing much, either. If there’s nothing that I can do, what do you think can be done?” He heard perfectly the words she hadn’t said, and knew her accusation was justified beyond what she intended. “Hon…Mickey…I think maybe if you would talk to somebody about this…like a professional, or maybe a group…?”

The feeling he had had earlier at his desk and in the car started to come back to him, and he was precariously perched on the verge of letting it all out. He prepared to tell her the truth, tell her that he was pretty sure what the problem was, and that it probably had something to do with what she didn’t know about the last five months…

“Look, this is kinda a private thing,” he began benignly, but, growing more defensive, snapped, “and I think we should just handle this on our own. I’ll take care of it, ok?” The harshness of his own words caught him off guard, but after he heard them and thought of all of the cop-outs they offered, he decided to sell it. “I mean, I’m supposed go to some whine-session and bitch about my defunct love life? I can’t get it up, help me, save me!” As he spat out this last part, he saw the look in his wife’s eyes, and he wasn’t sure if she wanted to apologize to him or if she was sorry for herself now that she had brought it up, but he went for the exposed nerve. “I’m the one that’s out there saving other people every day. Now I’ve got one little physical issue, and I need to go to somebody else for help? I’m fucking superhuman!”

“Well, you haven’t been quite so super for me, lately, have you?” Her mouth slammed shut, as if she too had been taken aback by her own churlishness, but then her jaw settled, having seemingly resolved that she was only being fair, given the immaturity of the whole argument.

“Hah! Oh, that’s real cute. Really fuckin’ funny.” Mickey left the kitchen and the house. He got into his car, wrenched the key in the ignition, and backed out onto the suburban street without looking. He drove north, towards downtown.

While he drove, he wondered how that had just happened. Why didn’t he just tell the truth? What the hell was wrong with him? He’d had a chance to rectify things a little bit, maybe improve them, but now everything was just worse. He could only assume that Alison had said something very accurate when on his way out he’d heard her telling his back something about the difference between super powers and being an adult. Mickey needed a drink.

He parallel-parked in front of a bar he’d never seen on a street he wasn’t sure he’d ever driven. Just as he shut his door, a black, stretch limousine pulled up next to him and a window in the back rolled down. Bruce Wayne’s face pulled to a stop perfectly lined up with Mickey’s bellybutton.
“Mickey ‘the Mongoose’ Motterson, I’ll be damned!” Bruce was wearing a tuxedo and holding a glass of champagne, obviously on his way to or from a function of sorts. He appeared to be a bit tipsy. “I would’ve figured you’d left town, the way you’ve been eluding me. How’ve you been? How’s Alison? It’s been, what, five years?”

Mickey feigned friendliness. “Yeah, I’d say around there. But hey, I’ve gotta go meet some– ”

“Hear there isn’t a whole lot of action in the private sector, huh?” Vicky, Bruce’s on and off girlfriend, giggled from somewhere within the vehicle’s vast interior.

“I do okay. To be honest…” Mickey took a moment’s pause at this word and thought it the theme of the evening. “I’m pretty comfortable in the lower-pressure stuff. And I get to wear street clothes all the time.”

The inebriated Batman gave a sort of guffaw. “Yeah, well, the biz isn’t for everyone.” Then, in a loud drunken whisper, he said “I’ve gotta say, the whole rounded-ears, beady-eyes mask thing – not so formidable. More cute really. Villains sometimes wanted to pet you before they ran away, hah!”

“Brucey,” Vicky playfully reprimanded his rude joke.

“Huh,” Mickey laugh-shrugged. “Well…”

“Yeah,” said Bruce, “we best be on our way, right babe? Alright, catch you later, Mongoose!” The giant car was already pulling away as he finished his sentence. The window rolled up, and Mickey was left on the street with an urge to break something very large and expensive…and owned by Wayne Enterprises.

He couldn’t go in the bar, so he got back into the driver’s seat and stared at his hands again, thinking. He pushed the cigarette lighter. It was broken, and he knew he would not get hot, if he could even get it out again. He just wanted to push buttons. He washed the windshield. He popped the trunk, and then got an idea as he remembered what he had just unlocked.

He got out and walked to the back of the car. He lifted the trunk lid, which looked a little lighter blue than the rest of the body in this light, and looked at what he had hidden there, laid out and expectant: the Mongoose Suit.

He longed to put it on in a hurry, racing to get to the scene of whatever crime or calamity required his attention. The onyx-black, Lexan® plastic eyes embedded in the mask that would cover Mickey’s real ones like sunglasses glittered mischievously in the orange light of the streetlamps.

He thought about what would happen if something went catastrophically wrong in the city that night. “Brucey” was schnockered, so he probably wouldn’t get anywhere in time to do much of anything. For instance…should the good-sized apartment building across the street from his car happen to go up in flames from something like a match dropped with horrible carelessness into a spilled gallon of turpentine on the wooden back deck, the first person on the scene would indubitably be The Mongoose. It’d be easy, and he’d be a hero again. He’d be the hero, again…

He caught himself in his absurdity and slammed the trunk door. He got into the car once more and turned the ignition. Three seconds of sounds like a rhinoceros’s vibrato and he let go. He turned it again, this time with nothing at all.

“Damnit!” he growled and hit the steering wheel with both palms. For all his super quickness and strength, he knew nothing of the inner workings of an automobile, or how to reconcile them when they fell out of sync.

He left the car for the third time, slamming the door and kicking the tire. He looked up and down the street for the sign of a gas station or mechanic before he noticed for the first time the downtrodden neighborhood into which he had driven himself. He considered going into the bar and calling Alison to pick him up, but after their last interaction, he cringed at the thought of having to ring her up and ask her to come get him at this dirty bar on a street of which he did not know the name because he had no super powers in the category of Buick repair.

He looked right towards the lights of the shopping district, and then left towards the river. He decided that the fishy smell was exactly what he needed to complete the ambience of self-contempt, turned left, and walked down the spider-vein cracked sidewalk. There was a fog over the river, and the bridge was shrouded in an eerie haze like a giant bolt of tulle had been wrapped around it. As Mickey approached, there appeared to be the figure of a person standing on the cement ledge on the side of the bridge, and his first thought was that, if it was anything like the one on his side of town, a person would have to be suicidal to be hanging out up there.

He stopped moving, and even though nobody would have seen him, he scrounged inside himself for all the politeness and decency he could muster to keep himself from smiling at the thought that someone, right here, right now, needed saving, and that he, by no fault of his own, was the only one there to come to the rescue. In that moment of pause, he decided it was absolutely necessary retrieve the outfit from the back of his car. He sensed some faulty reasoning in his own rationalization that he was, after all, super fast, and the person had been there for a few seconds already, so was obviously not in an exceptional hurry to jump.

In the ten seconds Mickey took to dart the sixty yards back to his car, pull on the disguise (so the rescuee would be sure to know who his rescuer was), and get back to the bridge, he fantasized about the gratitude he was about to receive and that he had craved for so long.

“Oh thank you, thank you so much,” the person would say after Mickey had taken his hand and reminded him of all the things for which life was worth living. The person would embrace Mickey, clinging to the bulk of strength and integrity clad in the flouroelastomer rubber, muscle-covered likeness of the “Snake Hunter” and, weeping tears of joy and relief, say, “I don’t know what I was thinking. You saved my life, Mr. Mysterious Rodent-esque Superhero! Who are…wait, I know who you are!” And the person would smile in delighted disbelief. “You’re The Mongoose! Hey everybody, The Mongoose is back!”

“The Mongoose?!” a reporter would shout as he ran onto the scene, snapping pictures. A cheering crowd would gather, and all the citizenry would be ecstatic to read in the papers the next morning about the return of their favorite superhero. Mayor Linseed would officially proclaim that The Mongoose was to be reinstated as Gotham’s Guardian, and that he was officially “cooler than Batman.”

All this played out in Mickey’s head as he raced back to the bridge. When he had gotten closer, he saw that yes, indeed, it was a person standing on the ledge, looking down at the cold, watery death he did not know was to be imminently thwarted. Mickey halted approximately ten feet from the figure, posed – one fist on his hip, the other hand raised like he was trying to stop traffic – and shouted in his most authoritative but benevolent voice, “WAIT, good citizen! Don’t do it! There is so much to live for! Don’t jump!”

“Whatha hell…” A very disheveled, very drunken man finished peeing off the bridge and turned to face Mickey. “W’tha fuck’s wrong witchu, buddy? Whaddayou, some kinda sicko, dressin up like a rat? Whaddaya think, you’re some kinda giant ninjer rat, ersomethin?” The man half fell, half jumped down from the ledge and stumbled for a couple of steps.

Mickey was unable to move from what he realized was a pose that surely made him look like twice the unwanted intruder he would have been in the “rat” suit alone.

“Jus’ go mind yo’ own fuckin’ business, ya sicko rat freak!” This was the last thing the man yelled as he continued to stagger down the street, though Mickey could hear him still grumbling a good distance away, and the loud words seemed to echo off the millions of water droplets still hanging in the air.

Mickey sat right there in the street. He forgot his stupid rule, and cried. He sobbed. He pulled off his mask and threw it down on the ground like a child removing his clothes in a tantrum. He heard a car coming, grabbed the mask, and jumped up onto the sidewalk. He realized as it passed on the other side of the street that it would not have hit him anyway.

He plodded back towards his car, and then past it towards the busier streets. He came to the one which led to his office building and was able to orient himself. He plodded towards home. He wore the rubber suit and carried the mask with its black plastic eyes the whole seven miles, not making eye contact with what he was sure were the hundreds of people who were staring at him and whispering or giggling because they had forgotten who he was, or why he might wear such a ridiculous outfit.

When he reached their front door, he knocked. Alison opened it and said nothing as Mickey did not meet her worried eyes with his bleary ones. He plodded into their living room and sat slowly on the couch, examining the mask in his hands. Alison sat next to him, but not too close. After a moment, she put her hand on his arm. He wanted to pull it away, but could only stare. The stare moved up dilatorily, his eyes observing the tension in her whole body, from her fingers up to where they stopped on her lips. He leveled with her now very anxious gaze. He opened his mouth to tell her everything she did not know…but kissed her instead.

They made love on the couch like it was their first time – clumsily (amplified by the cumbersome rubber body suit), and too passionately – but it satisfied. Alison caressed the back of Mickey’s neck as he lay on top of her and cried quietly until they both fell asleep without noticing.