The Inaction Man Read online

  Chapter 10

  The Illogical Woman

  After administering the medication, the nurse brought Inaction Man to a place which bore the sign Recreation Room. It contained fifteen men and woman of various ages and in varying states of disrepair. There was an overpowering smell of disinfectant, but under that, lurked the whiff disease.

  “What fresh Hell is this?” he asked the nurse.

  “Now, now, Patient X. Let’s have none of that kind of talk in the rec room,” the Nurse said. “Some of our patients get all worked up when newcomers start talking about Hell and whatnot. Hell is a four-letter word in these parts, you know,” she said and laughed at her own joke.

  She nodded at three women in white uniforms who watched over the room. When Inaction Man first saw them it was out of the corner of his eye, and with this enhanced vision, he noted that they had only one body but three heads. When he faced them directly they had one body apiece. Shape changers, clearly. Inaction Man knew they bore a special malice toward him. He looked around the room for a door to escape through.

  “Tell me, in the name of all that’s true, where is the exit from this pit of demons?” he asked the nurse who had brought him.

  “Exit? But you’ve only just entered.”

  He wanted to protest but his mind was sluggish and he had difficulty forming thoughts and even more difficulty translating them into words. His powers were being affected by the psychotropic medication and he could not be sure of anything. In a moment of horrific confusion, he even doubted that he alone could see reality as it really was. Could he even be completely sure he was Inaction Man, defender of the Earth? Ghosts of his former personality spread poison doubts through the contours of his brain. He was losing focus, in danger of forgetting his mission.

  “Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am. Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am,” he repeated to himself, in an attempt to protect his identity.

  “Do you think you could think you are a bit more quietly?” said the nurse.

  Inaction Man surveyed his prison with growing alarm. Shape changers he could fight. Three would be difficult, he knew, especially as they were armed with hypodermic syringes, but his bladder was full and his ardour stronger still. It was the other people in the room that truly frightened Inaction Man. They behaved very strangely indeed. Some of them spoke gibberish to themselves continuously, but they appeared to believe they were talking to real people. Others rocked back and forth and sang the same refrains over and over. Inaction Man wondered why he had been placed among such obviously deranged company.

  “Nurse, why have you placed me in the company of these mad men? I am Inaction Man, defender of…” began our hero, but an involuntary yawn interrupted him.

  “Just sit here with the catatonics, Patient X. Let the medicine work its magic,” the nurse said.

  “Black magic. I am Inaction…” but another yawn crippled his power of speech.

  “Shh… Don’t speak. Close your eyes and relax. Let the medication wash all this nonsense out of you. Soon enough you’ll be back to yourself again,” the nurse said and left Inaction Man on the armchair.

  A great many patients stared into space and did not move at all, and the nurse sat Inaction Man among them. He struggled to retain control of his own mind. “I am Inaction Man,” he said to himself, over and over.

  One of the patients at the other side of the room stared at him. It unnerved him, that stare and those unblinking eyes. She had jet black hair and the greenest eyes he had ever seen. Her skin, in contrast, was as white as a snow cloud. Her long tapered nose and thin pursed lips made her look rather raven-like, and she sat perched on the edge of her chair, as though she would swoop down on him at any moment.

  Her lips moved constantly but Inaction Man was too far away to make out what she was saying. As drugged and confused as he was, he was still compus mentis enough to realise that she was not a shape changer or a changeling. She was human, he was sure of that, and yet somehow more than human. He noted the overpowering and intoxicating sense of attraction he felt towards her.

  After what felt like a lifetime of staring she approached him. She sat behind him and spoke to the back of his head. She whispered verse in his right ear and at the same time tapped his left ear gently with her rolling finger tips, as if to mark out the rhythm of what she said. At the end of each line, she wiggled her little finger in his ear canal. It was an unusual form of communication and one Inaction Man had never encountered before, not even in vision time or on dream journeys, but it was also deeply hypnotic. More importantly, it helped him to stay awake and fight the power of the drugs that threatened to drown him.

  “Words of fear draw near you hear

  Sights of fright unite in bite

  Serpents low unfold all foe

  Into darkness must not go”

  Inaction Man’s curiosity rose with each line. He was sure that if he could look beyond the surface meaning of her words that he would find the deeper meaning.

  He struggled against his drooping eyelids and forced his lolling tongue to form a question.

 

  “Tell me, young maid. What do you know of darkness, fear and serpents? Have you seen the harbingers of the dark lords?”

  “Darkness falls not with night

  Demons, trolls, changelings, fright

  Black holes in darkness sings

  Cracks inside a frightened thing

  Who would be king

  Who would be king”

  She started to wring her hands at this point, and rocked her head to the left and right, but she was behind Inaction Man, so he didn’t notice.

  Her words and the poking of his ear canal had unblocked the prison in which Inaction Man had hidden his dream of the night before his incarceration. The dark lords had spoken of two superheroes to defend Earth – the Inaction Man and the Illogical Woman. Could this be her? He had to ask her.

  “Are you the Illogical Woman?”

  “Logic comes alone to she

  Logic born of woman tree

  Logic in its own defence

  Born of mortal ignorance

  Know you me

  I can see”

  There could be no doubt. Her words were as clear as they could possibly be, given the nature of her power of illogicality. This was the Illogical Woman, his superhero partner.

  A brief moment of joy was followed by a pang of fear. Union was achieved but at what cost? The world’s two superheroes were imprisoned in a chamber of terrors and surrounded by the insane. Was this a dark lord trap? They were being closely watched by three nurses, all shape changers, who took notes on clipboards and were far too interested in Inaction Man and Illogical Woman.

  He felt the eyes of the dark lords upon him. Waiting for their time to strike, waiting for the night to fall, waiting for the darkness to come.