A window curtain billows out into the dark night, and frankly, the even darker air of the High Street.
Colonel Drawes, who can’t sleep in a blanket for being too warm, but can’t be without one for being too cold, tossed aside the half of the duvet that was covering half his body, steps out of his long johns, removes his nightcap, from a coat hanger by his bed, he takes his red cape and ties around his neck, a little too tight the first time, he must redo it, which slightly twinges his heart to sigh. ‘Ah, another Day…’ He bends over to removes his socks and he is confronted by the pungent smell his body odour that has impregnated the room during the night, making his stomach cringe. Drawes scoots up to sit on the edge of his bed, he pinches some soft blubber that has rolled over other protruding parts of his belly; showing evidence of the existential sands of time. He sighs from the depths of his lungs and says ‘Okay’ to himself and moves to open his windowpane in a listless pang. He is a bit gauche getting his leg up; time and atrophy is but entropy. Out on the ledge, he shuts the window behind him, turns a key, clamps a latch closed and the window is locked. He looks down below. The life of a city street, seemingly oblivious and blissful, and him so obsolete and overlooked - or unseen altogether.
He leaps.
He allows himself enough free fall to feel the terminal wind whip past his balding scalp. His eyes shut like most morning commuters dreaming of a clock that does not tick, and like those suffers of routine, the Col. pleads for another five minutes, he’d even bargain down to two. But like the rest, it’s all in jest. As they must get out the train and onto their day, so too must the Col extend his right arm, his flying rudder, to take him high over the skyscrapers, gaining enough altitude to be inconspicuous within the clouds. Off to work once more…
From his drawers he pulls out a pair of sporting goggles with greatly tinted lenses - there is no sun at night, nor does it expose itself in the day’s of the weary month of wet May - the glasses are a safety precaution from UFOs that could rapidly become identified as they crash right into his eye and send him tumbling down to a mighty fall; more real than Adam’s. However, an experienced crime fighter with extraordinary abilities, like Col. Drawes, is no fool to allow such a thing to happen again. He remembers the incident at the cadet school where a one Longery Larry, a dear compatriot and confidant, fell right to his death because of a migrating feather caught in the same slipstream. Just so happened that the sharp end of the feather pierced his iris and distorted his acuity of vision. Now, a more experienced flyer would have gotten himself out of that mess, but Larry, like Drawes at the time, was too young into his apprenticeship - the class explaining the reasoning for wearing PPE was two days later. Sir said that Longery had not the acumen nor the stoicism desired in a crime fighting, said ‘If he can’t save himself, how can he save anyone else?’
Flying straight, he was caught in traffic behind an indecisive pigeon. Col. Drawes with a quizzical phiz asked, 'Traveling north?'
'I - Aye, I would like to very much - my damn compass is skewed, don’t trust her direction.' The compass looked at them both with wayward eyes and bashfully avoided any eye contact. 'North is my direction. Come aboard' And once the bird had stored away the compass (who was now professing her guilt and pleading for forgiveness) into his pocket and took his place on Drawes’ back. The pigeon found his most comfortable position after restlessly searching a brief moment. After only minutes of watching the scenes pass his view, the pigeon felt awkward, like most passengers in a taxicab. He tapped on Drawe's head with his wing, ‘Hey how come you fly with arm forward like that, dear friend?’ He added the dear friend out of customary politeness. 'Force of habit, it’s just the way we learn, in my days as a cadet this manner was general technique, though they've since changed that now can’t teach me a new trick, I suppose you could sympathise, - aha' The pigeon did not join Drawe's in laughter 'I feel you. I can’t see how it benefits flight though.'
'As I say, they since changed the technique.' Drawe's says shortly. 'Moreover, we aren’t like birds with the perfect evolution for aerodynamics, we are just ecclesiastical chosen ones with a random ability to fly. It is not as though the power is from evolution - it is supernatural. You see they call me Col. Drawes. The title refers to responsibilities granted by my power; the underpants are more of a calling card. Those like me have their own individual flare when it comes to this. You see in cadet school I was caught with the nickname captain underpants given my namesake...'
'I see...believe I have heard tell of you once before…' Pigeon responded as he looked at the pale legs behind him poking out of a fatty bottom wrapped in granny panties; he had never heard tell of such a tale, however. The two were met with a lull of awkward silence before Pigeon asks out of his politeness and pathos to his coachman, 'These powers you’ve been afforded, include responsibilities as a chauffeur?' The genial pigeon jovially opined. 'Well, it’s gone that way nowadays… Relegated to a taxi man, have not solved a crime or fought a bad guy in some time now.' Col. Drawe retired into a bashful silence. The pigeon acknowledged Drawes’ faded virility and felt sorry for the Col.
Somewhere along the line the pigeon got off, thanked the Col. offering him a worm he’d been saving, Drawes refuted such grace with genial modesty.
Now alone, and lonely with himself, he studied his wristwatch, who had been quietly ticking on in rhythmic conversation that the Col. had missed given his occupancy with the pigeon. 'Ah look at that nearly quitting time already. Must have taken that pigeon a real long way.' He realised the distance as he dropped below the cloud cover to find he was a good 100 miles off Manhattan Island. Swiftly he returned and rested on the tallest building he saw first. Listlessly he tapped at his stomach fat and in a sigh, slipped his ass off the ledge, and landed featherlike on his feet on the street pavement.
A gal, fashioned in that old style but who was youthful behind her glasses, unattentively collided with the Col.'s back and as the Col. stepped forward the gal’s foot caught his cape, tugging at his neck causing some sharp discomfort. 'Pardon me sir-' she notices his ill cladded attire and makes a brisk escape into the sea of people. 'What all of a sudden, she's not sorry?' He thought as he cursed her under his breath 'What a bitch. Sworn to protect them and this is how they treat me. Well, they’re not to know I suppose. I did make big deal by going incognito. My own damn fault, maybe I’d be a lot happier if I felt I got the credit. Not some fictitious identity I made up. Alas. Quitting time... I wonder- no, I won’t change. What is the point changing horse’s mid-stream… But I’d be still as unknown in my super suit than in my ordinary garbs.' His inner monologue had blinded him of where his feet were taking him. Awaking abruptly from this state, he found his hands had pushed open some batwing doors. His ass had sat itself on a tall barstool, and his tongue had asked for a double whiskey and pint of bitter, to which, his mind could only infer was his body trying to get drunk again.
Drawes overhears some patrons chirping, finding the time to humour, perhaps to score a point over one another in a strange debate of agreement that sounds like disagreement; intellectual types…
‘The luxury of the Moonlight mirror, where one can look back at the self to find their figure realised - to analyse, this vista, is all there is...’
‘Only the space before the eye comes realistically inclining to faithful observers of the mirror. Secularists now ripping of the masking tape of deism for absence of social conform due to the mirror...! They come like a moth to candlelight, or a curious cat scratching an inward discovery. We’ve heard all tales, parables, varying sectarian’s beliefs, and we don’t believe it anymore. We don’t know the nature of this coincidence, but lest the answer comes inwardly – within the carpenters’ hands, taking responsibility away from the all sapient architect - coincidences are without meaning. Suppose one could argue that the coincidence of religion has been dissipated by introduction of the reflecting pool, where once one would give for a cause to praise and rejoice in newfound meaning, new evidence of Him – but now we know there is nothing! None but us. As if the souls of humanity can undergo moral refraction, the realm has ridden itself of that malodorous theistic pathogen which, if my name is frank, which it is - proved as obtrusive as showers at the picnic. Move away from what you assume to be a righteous sacrifice for the greater god; see the self, it’s all there is. Born and die alone in consciousness. I mean to say, the beauty of a blooming flower is such - A Blooming Flower - why does it need to contribute to this preternatural dominance that presupposes this precedent?’
The fella named Frank then quenched the flame off his tongue and recovered his breath, stilling his passionate chest to more subtle undulations. Perhaps to change the conversation or to reveal his lack of attention, Paul points out to Frank the caped figure at the bar. ‘See that man - in the cape, with eyes avoiding but fully aware?’ Frank nodded with lips dunked into his tankard and said, ‘A pitiful sight, probably lost all the marbles and mumbles he ever pocketed.’
‘But you are too quick to judge, Franky. You see, what you are seeing is the true legend of the west. The only masked vigilante that truly belongs in a mythical folkloric tale folks will sing about for humanity. But see they don’t. A true tragedy. A cancelled hero, resigned to flying with the birds because... of us, really. Some got into their heads about public indecency and gave him an ultimatum; that if he didn’t put on a shirt, he can’t be this moral figure one would read to their kids about. Frank, it makes me sad, frankly.’
‘He looks sad’ Frank opined, ‘The way he stares down his glass as a miner would a mine. I have heard of a Col. Drawes. I was privy to have him help my mother across town when she was late for her appointment with Dr Fritz Franz, the gastroenterologist, and might I say the best gastroenterologist this side of the river. I heard it wasn’t just the lewd getup. Heard it was the drink that really done him in. One night he was flying high stumbling about the sky drunk as can be, couldn’t see straight, couldn’t hear much more than the wind going by his ears. Beneath him a firebug had just set a flame to a high rise residential building, Drawes just flew right on by, never paying mind to the ladies throwing their babies out the window, lads hollering for help as they suck on smoke… frankly, Drawes can go to hell for that – don’t care if he heard me say it either. Responsibility, Paul, it is the meaning of his life.’ Frank pressed his drink to his lips, closed his eyes bitterly tight, and supped down a hearty swig. ‘Suppose he’s just a blooming flower too, same meaning as us all.’ Paul postulates. ‘Right you are,” Frank asserts, ‘No god gave him that power, hell, he’s no superhero, not a hero, not super in any way. I heard now he just flies up above the clouds and talks to the birds.’
The oil in their lantern that hung above them in their enclaved booth spitted and flicked in and out of illumination until the two were in a shadow. They addressed this in a silent motion of eyes from the lantern to each other. ‘Ask on it when we stand another pint, quite cosy now.’
‘Frankly, I’d agree with you, Frank.’ Frank leered back into the friendship they shared, Paul understood that now Frank had another piece of peace he could not hold forever. So, in an expelled thought:
‘Could He force a tree to fall on Baxter’s horse and cart while he slept? If he’s forcing his hand in everything...’
‘Didn’t Baxter shit himself in a doorway while chewing that China pipe...? Must we even wonder why...? Either way it ain’t too taboo to say that, that man was cloudy in the eyes, frayed and toothy in his smile. I chock it down to thus. There’s no power that can force such an act; and no hand to hold it.’
‘Even the deists believe in this, that at least Baxter’s fate was to be this way? Doesn’t Jim Baxter take this pathology; or rather didn’t he - believed as he breathed, his wife would agree, even as she grieved! I believe he would certainly say it thus if here drinking with us....’ Paul glugged down to up his hydration.
‘Are you insinuating that Col. Drawes has the power akin to that of an omnipotent god, superior nature controlling this natural realm? Makes more sense now; if Baxter lived the way reports claim, why, he deserved it none the less. You could see how Drawes would use his powers to smite Baxter for being a sorry sod, griping away his existence. Baxter was nothing special- hell he wasn’t even remarkable in the slightest of ways, but his laziness would be enough for a demigod like Drawes to force his hand in curing the world of the sheer benign nature of Baxter, God was he boring – nothing to add to anything.’ Paul returned his glass to the table, emptied save for the suds, ‘No, no Col. Drawes would not be capable, to fly is god like power, but I speak of Him, with the capital 'H'. He who makes us die crying for life, so to say. You must remember that Drawes is a human that can fly – not a demigod, not ever a quarter god. The same way a retard is different, is the same way Drawes differs from us. Either way, it makes no sense to puzzle why, when we know it will bring nothing. Born, but why? Die, but why? What does it mean when a blind horse kick you in the stomach? NOTHING.’
‘Language is such inconvenience, crying as you say connects us to a sinful way; as though when one walks Elmer Road, one follows assuming guilt, but what is sin, or guilt without the church? NOTHING.’
‘A man walking Elmer Road will only slowly see life and death realised - in age’s sentiment - perhaps only as he exits the road he sees the path he has laid and cringes, cries and in the bashfulness that he held in life - shits himself believing he didn’t. And infantile age remains…’
‘Right… should we dip?’
The lamppost shines the night’s rain, shards of glass coming down to smash wet against cobblestones. Steep inclinations take them onward, one home, the other to get stoned for the trip home, whistling a tune of ‘when will being me save me’, the other dreaming of what else me could be. In the harbour, a swan swims out to the sea to see what she could see. For Col. Drawes, whose thoughts led in motion to an overhaul of himself, finds that he sits in an allay, beer spilled down his bare chest and rests in a pool in his belly button, ass wet and for alcoholic numbness he could not care less. vaguely conscious, the caped man in underpants spies a rat come to lap at the puddle of beer in his belly's enclave. Says “doggone to my red eye soul, I’ll be getting drunk once more… where’s that Tom Cat at… I’ll lick him and his brother. The rat washes his face with his front paw and staggers and takes a pew on his hind legs by the Col. "long night sir?" the intoxicated rat says.
There is genius in this. Dad x
I lost it when he started talking to the pigeon!