Fanboy
by Nathan St. Pierre

Young John Forsythe is a man of his own making. At the tender age of twenty-seven, he stands in his austere living room with a cup of coffee in hand like most men of his age and income. His bare feet ignore the cold of the hardwood floor, whose emptiness dominates what most would call a living space. His frosted gaze disregards the eggshell of his bare walls. While most men of his ilk would be watching the financial report or reading the sports page, he was surveying the latest comic book price guides and listening to nineties grunge music. Other twenty-seven-year-old urban professionals were carefully straightening their tie as he was checking the spines of his rare collection of first printings (all encased carefully in near-airtight packaging) and considering which superhero, musician, or video game character would grace his t-shirt today.
    John is a collector. In spite of the fact that he may not see himself as such, he has become an information-age enigma. His peers have striven for success from infancy to adulthood. Some have succeeded. Others, to the betterment or detriment of the remainder of their peers, have failed. John has chosen a line of work in which the boldest success can mean in other spheres the most humiliating of failures: where the most inconceivable of failures can mean only marginal loss to the rest of the world (including those who have taken responsibility for his finances). His stock-in-trade is escape, provided to a growing audience of self-proclaimed “geeks and freaks,” that incidentally grows in favor of corporate pandering by the minute.
    Like most days, he stands before the magnum opus of his collection habit, his addiction displayed before him like so much printed narcotic. John runs a disproportionately slender hand through his medium-length brown hair and blinks a few times. Unlike most days, he sighs in discontent. Today the bright pages of four-color glory no longer soothe his morning anxiety. The stacks of ancient video game cartridges do not entice him with their pixilated puerility. Nor does he wish to partake in their pixilated panoramas. He walks to the kitchen to deposit his empty coffee mug in the sink. He washes his hands, but bits of caked blood still stain the undersides of his fingernails. He shakes his head in disgust as he walks to the bathroom, which reeks of lye. He opens the door, and the sheer human urge to flee or strike something assaults him. Finding nothing to strike and nowhere to flee, he simply covers his nose with his forearm and draws the door to a crack.
    The eyes of the corpse peer through the crack accusingly. Surely there had been a better way to resolve their differences, it pleas. Surely there is still a way to make this right. Denial, John assures himself: a natural response. He clenches his jaw. No, this was necessity. John closes the door, and journeys onward to the garage to procure a shovel. En route, he spies a hacksaw. He is equally surprised by the fact that he owns a hacksaw and disgusted by the realization that he is considering using it on the carcass. Thinking better of it, he resolutely grips his shovel. December fifteenth of nineteen forty-seven, a mafia boss attempted to hide a corpse by having one of his henchmen saw the body into seventeen pieces and scatter them in unmarked graves in a public park. Unfortunately (for the mobster, his henchmen, three police officers,  and the victim), a loose seeing-eye dog unearthed all of these pieces and brought them to his master's park bench, where two off-duty cops were eating lunch with a fellow patrolman on break. John smiles, realizing that his back yard has a much lower rate of foot traffic and (to the best of his knowledge) no seeing-eye dogs.
    To understand why John could have found himself in a place such as this and thinking thoughts such as these, you might need to understand a little more about the man he is. The best way to distinguish who a man is now requires knowing the boy he once was.
    John was six when his parents made the subconscious decision to begin breaking one another down formulaically in front of him for the next six years. At twelve, John was less surprised by the divorce papers and their eventual conscious signatures than the signatories. John had developed an impregnable shell constructed entirely of video game boxes, comic book covers, compact disc jewel cases, and video tape boxes. This fortress protected his mind from sieges by the forces of conformity, peer pressure and ultimately normality. A child psychologist briefly accused him of sociopathic tendencies, before realizing that the aforementioned shell had been protecting a fiercely empathic core.
    The only one to weep openly at the funeral of his self-admitted spinster great-aunt was he. The sole individual to smile and offer encouragement during his own extended custody proceedings was he. The singular adolescent to offer his allowance willingly to charities was he. And so the psychologist was perplexed by John’s delusional behavior, in which he would don a Halloween costume for weeks at a time in the summer. The therapist cautiously observed while John’s mother (incidentally the victor of the custody battle) reported that young Johnny had checked out not one but three books on serial killers from the local library. He began to see signs of psychopathic behavior, convincing himself that they were undeniable. But as any psychiatrist today will tell you, the first signs you see are the ones you are looking for, and his colleagues convinced him to set aside his bias (as well as the desire to find publishable evidence of sociopathic behavior in a pre-teen).
    John patiently sat through the intensive analytical sessions. Because they were the law, and he was a willing citizen of the law, he obeyed. As he explained to both the analyst and his mother, he honored his social contract with the established authorities. Thanks to his compliance, within days they began to look for signs of improvement in his psychological development, which suddenly materialized. Given a clean slate and a new lease on life, his teenage escapades in a costume were noble, as he went to children’s hospitals while incognito and entertained the children. His calm façade while being struck repeatedly by a bully had disheartened the bully’s entourage, until his ex-cronies dragged him away in shame and regret. Fate, it seemed, had intervened in time to save John. Perhaps karma had exacted justice on the bully years later when a freak car accident rendered him paraplegic.
    John–a quiet and introspective boy who achieved decent grades and was fairly adept at the game of chess–was “normal.” In John’s younger years, psychology had begun to learn great deals of information from neurology. Ironically, the development of theories progressed along at the same rate as John, who was forming the rational and moral centers of his brain just as scientists were discovering they existed. In the early twenties, a mass murderer volunteered his brain to science, so that they could understand the depths of his disorder. Unfortunately, the scientists had not yet dismissed phrenology as a science, and they spent all of their time trying to find what parts of his brain had pushed on his skull the most, ruining any samples they had by cutting unnecessary pieces from them.
    The psychologists' current disquiet had concerned the manner in which these particular regions developed. Previously, Freudian ideals dominated psychology, asserting that the mind came pre-organized into the id, ego, and super-ego. Presently, John’s various psychological analysts believed that the brain evolved from basic lower and higher brain functions. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until long after John had grown into an adult that they would draft theories upon what functions in which part of the brain were responsible for specific outward actions, and so they had no way of knowing what his mind could possibly achieve, nor what those achievements might mean.
    John had many friends, none of whom he would call his best. He, like most of his generation, spent a great deal of time in solitude. He read graphic novels and he participated in online video games. He witnessed the growth of the internet through the eyes of a gamer, from text adventures to fully three-dimensional worlds. It was here that he met his first girlfriend, and it was in this universe that he first connected with hundreds and thousands of other people. But he had a life in the outside world as well.
    John spent alternating weekends with his father, and they would talk of many things. John did not inherit a majority of the physical aspects of his father, such as a strong jaw or a broad back. But they shared an arctic cobalt gaze and tall stature. Where John’s father had an aptitude with all things mechanical, John displayed ability with the structure of words and shapes. While John’s father had been a man of immediate action, rushing into marriage and changing careers based on his relationship with his supervisor. John was a man of thought and introspection, and never acted until he had thought a plan through to the end. They did, however, share a patriotic idealism. Each Fourth of July they’d sit on the back porch of John’s father’s apartment, and watch the neighbors light off fireworks. John didn’t want to purchase or light any, as the district where they lived required a permit, but John’s father would occasionally convince him to light a firecracker or two.
    “The law isn’t always the law, kid. Sometimes, you have to throw some tea in the water to make things right,” he’d say with a glint in his cerulean eyes. John’s father would drink a beer, and offer him one as well. John would decline. John’s dad would say with mischief in his voice, “You’re old enough to be drafted, but not drink?” John’s flexibility with the rule of law grew. January fifteenth of nineteen seventy-five, a New York City police officer was busy writing a ticket to a jaywalker while a married couple were being stabbed to death in plain sight on the other side of the street. John realized that the letter of the law was not as important as the spirit.
    And so, John’s mother watched as he matured from an awkward lanky teen into an ill at ease, slightly overweight adult. Like many young men of his generation, he attended a junior college, and like slightly fewer of his generation, he received his associate's degree. His mother and father were the only two who came to watch him walk the stage; an act even rarer for men his age, especially for this degree. John used this degree to leverage a pay raise at his job as a manager of a comic book store. It wasn’t until he got into a physical fight with a thieving customer that he was finally fired and forced to find a new way to make money.
    Realizing that his addiction was shared among a growing audience of men (and a few women) with increasing amounts of disposable income, John became the proprietor of an online business distributing and selling rare and hard-to-find pop culture miscellanea. His knowledge of subculture minutia served him well, moving him from a one-bedroom apartment to a three-bedroom house in under a year. Attending conventions and opening up a small physical store, he became the social butterfly his mother had always dreamed. Perhaps this is when John began to see himself as more than another fish in a vast sea of cultural vagrants. Self-styled philistines against the cultural media that they rejected, he championed the graphic novel until it became more than an art form to him: it was an ideal.
    John thinks to himself about how this all started as he moves pound after pound of hard, cold earth. He’s realizing that each shovel-full of stinking peat and clay bring him a little closer to something he wasn’t before. This doesn’t scare him. Fear has left John, and now he is at peace, unlike last night. Heroes aren’t scared, he remembers telling himself. Heroes fight fear while they defeat injustice. Despite the late morning sun, a cold chill runs through his entire body.
    It was cold, and the night air clung to the city street for warmth. John pushed down with his hands, which were secured in the pockets of his jacket, hoping to trap in some of his body heat. It was no use, the cold was too insistent. He couldn’t wait to get out of this freezing Chicago winter.
    “John!” yelled a high-pitched voice behind him. He whirled in time to see bouncing red ponytails and a skinny, acne-scarred face. He grimaced and then forced his face into a smile while staring at her knitted hat featuring a Japanese comic book character (incidentally, a talking rat that shot lightning from its eyes).
    “Hey there, Jessica,” he replied as he groped for his car keys. The fact his car was another two blocks away was known only to him. Jessica was a fellow merchant from “the pit,” or the area of the convention devoted solely to comic book sales. He knew her from years ago as a competitor in the online trade, and she had followed his success to the convention floor. Step for step, in fact. She was his chief competitor.
    “Crazy cold out here, huh?” she asked. Jessica huffed clouds of vapor as she giggled.
    “Yeah, it’s like . . . really cold,” he stumbled. She made him uncomfortable on many levels. John had grown up during the beginning of the modern age of American comics. Captain America, the definitive paragon of a patriotic icon, and Wolverine, the prototype for every future anti-hero in his favorite comics, were of equal value in his mind. They easily helped him to ignore the growing trend of Japanese cultural phenomena in comic books. He found their bug-like, vacant expressions to be startling, and was greatly disturbed by their fans, who were devoted to owning every issue of Manga and Anime that they could find with their favorite characters. Jessica was not only one of the largest fans of this genre that he knew, she also resembled the characters in her outward appearance. He couldn’t stand being around her.
    “How did your sales go?” she asked. Jessica came closer to him to wrap her arm within his. This was even more awkward for John as he was over six feet tall and she was slightly less than five feet tall. Her physicality with her colleagues had also always disturbed him. She had also blocked his arm from bringing his car keys into view.
    “Better than I had hoped, but not enough for retirement yet,” he answered, shaking off enough nervousness to form a cogent response. Her high-pitched giggle in response was like a spider crawling between his vertebrae.
    “Oh John, when will you grow up?” she bubbled forth, her dark blue eyes gleaming. He could almost see the “pwing” sound effect printed above her, signifying the glint in her stare. John was even more uncomfortable. His glance remained blank as he continued the trek to his car.
    "So how did your sales go," he replied courteously, dreading the response. Before the full "o" at the end of the sentence could be formed, she was squirming with excitement, like some kind of maddening worm caught beneath his foot.
    "Incredible! This one guy bought out a whole stack of my first prints! I wanted to kiss him, but he seemed kind of awkward, so I just hugged him and said thanks. He was such a nice guy!" She continued on in this way until John had completely lost track of all time or meaning. His company car, complete with logos and insignia was in full view. He was so close! he kept telling himself. But then Jessica started to slow her pace. The superficial aspect of her voice and manner suddenly dropped as she stopped and let her arm slip from his. She seemed to start and stop a few times as he walked further from her, until finally she spoke. “You aren’t still mad at me are you?”
    John froze in place, his foot hovering mid-step. His blood felt as though it might boil through his skin. “No, Jessica,” he lied to her. He hated to lie, but he knew that she wouldn’t accept any other answer without a barrage of questions. He knew it wasn’t her fault that she had stolen a great deal of his business. He knew that the trend towards comics he didn’t carry (namely of the Japanese variety) was hurting his business and he refused to change. He knew that not being able to afford the procedure that may have saved his father’s life was in no way Jessica’s fault. He knew that his father’s lifestyle the past few years was eventually leading to collapse. No amount of liver transplants would save him from eventually succumbing to massive organ failure. He knew that if he destroyed her personally and professionally, it wouldn’t solve any problems. But the desire to do so still existed. He spun to face her. She walked to close the distance.
    She looked up at him incredulously, as he stared back down at her with a sub-zero glower. Her eyes seemed to well up with tears, and he felt nausea welling in his stomach. She was so weak; she could never understand what he had gone through. Her compassion for him was misplaced, just a manifestation of her guilt. Finally, a tear rolled down her cheek, leaving behind a salty trail. John snapped.
    John wipes a good deal of sweat from his brow. Burying the body at mid-day may have been a mistake, but he knows that if he waits until night he risks someone discovering the body in his home. Selling comics out of his house is challenging, especially since he values privacy. Fortunately, this house has a large back yard complete with a privacy fence and trees. There was little to no chance of his neighbors seeing him, even if they had been home from work in the middle of the day.
    He walks to the kitchen to get a cold glass of water, but not before throwing a tarp over the impromptu grave. He stops in his tracks, noticing a trail of blood leading out the back door to the rear stoop. This won’t do, he says to himself, searching for a towel. He discards the shovel to rummage through the hallway closet, finding three hand towels and finally a large blue beach towel. The blue is light but when it soaks up the blood, it becomes both light and dark, like a lunar eclipse. Like her eyes. He shakes as he stands.
    The tears made her eyes baleful and even more lustrous than before. He imagined his blood finally exploding from his body, a piece of meat dropped into a deep fryer too fast. In that moment, everything froze. He reached down with his right hand and put it around her neck, his whole body shaking. She shivered, possibly from the cold, or his gaze, or because he shook too.
    He embraced her, pulling her up off her feet. And he wept. Confused, she embraced him back. Her auburn hair covered his face, and his body rocked with the sobbing.
    “It’s not your fault,” he said to her, for the first time aloud. She sobbed with him, and he slowly lowered her to look in her eyes. The depth within was like nothing he’d ever seen before, and in the last place he’d expected to find it. He could see relief and honesty in her eyes. He thought to himself that it was the first time anyone, including his mother, had seemed to grasp the depth of his loss.
    “I know,” she started, as she wiped the tears from her cheeks. “But I don’t know how to make it better. I’d never offer you cash, and I know you’d never take it.”
    “I don’t need money,” he said calmly. “I don’t need any of this.” He brushed away the tears with the sleeve of his coat.
    “I know,” she started again. “I just–tell me what to do!” she sobbed again.
    John thought for a second, and then he leaned down. John had dabbled in girlfriends, and attempted relations with the opposite sex, but all had ended in shame and silence. Never had he been so eerily comfortable. He kissed her, and for the first time, his mind did not ask if he was doing it right. He began to withdraw, and she pulled him in with both of her hands, and continued to kiss him. His mind raced. How long had they been kissing? Where were they? Why wasn’t it cold any more? He instantly forgot the questions, and his mind didn’t tarry long enough to search for an answer.
    Drunk, or high, or in any other way intoxicated, they walked arm in arm down the street, talking about their mutual interests. It seemed so obvious. For years, he had searched for a woman who wasn’t instantly turned off by the fact he was a comic book mogul, or that his encyclopedic knowledge of alternate realities was useful to him in some way. His fiercest rival was the ideal candidate for his affection. To him, it seemed as though it had always been there, just beneath the surface of his hatred of her. And to both of their strange, science fiction and fantasy-adapted minds, it was in no way bizarre. John laughed as he spoke, which was something new for him. Jessica listened intently without interrupting, which was new for her. They stumbled upon a pizza place and ordered a large Chicago-style deep dish, something neither of them had ever done before. John's hatred of her drew further away until he couldn't even imagine it in the periphery of his mind's eye.
    For hours, they held hands and spoke. It was all John could do to keep from laughing in relief. It was as though a facade he had built for years was crumbling away leaving behind a smile. Jessica agreed, her spunky exterior had for years been something that she'd brandished before her like a shield. They spoke of comics, and he learned about her favorite characters. She learned a great deal about his favorite books, and why he loved them. They spoke of their favorite video games and began to discuss playing some that John had taken with him. They begrudgingly paid their bill and went out to the street, taking a circuitous route through the city streets. They eventually made their way back to the convention hall to take John's car to his hotel.
    Unfortunately for John and Jessica, certain promotional techniques can have dire circumstances. In 1983, a life-sized steel model of a bear that advertised camping equipment toppled and landed on two schoolchildren and their father. There were no survivors. At approximately 11:15 on that evening, a young man in a black sweater emblazoned with a white skull stood menacingly in front of John's fully decorated hatchback, hands in his pockets. He wore a dark stocking cap and his long black hair obscured most of his face. John looked at him confusedly, but Jessica laughed as she walked closer.
    "Hey buddy! How are you tonight? This is the guy I told you about, John." She moved forward to hug him, but froze in her tracks. The young man flinched, and he began to shake his head, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground in front of John and Jessica, his hands firmly in his pockets.
    "I watched you. You left, and you walked with him all over the city." Ice began to clutch John's stomach, the street beneath him seeming to crater. "I asked for the comic nicely. I had money, I would have paid," he continued, pulling one hand slowly out of his pocket to scratch next to his nose. John felt as though his shoes had melted, affixing him to the pavement, the chill in his stomach slowly expanded up his spine. John slowly rotated his head to check on Jessica, and saw that her jaw had expanded as far as it possibly could, her eyes glazed over. He thought for a moment how only a few hours ago she'd looked at him with those eyes, and suddenly the ice halted. The smell of gunpowder burning, the crack of bone followed by a few wet thuds. A wail that pierced the frigid air, visible in steam. These things, John perceived with his ears and nose. What he saw, however, was the diabolical gaze of an evil scientist. Three crimson blasts from a laser pistol. A cape fluttering in the wind between carefully placed punches and movements. A fellow injured hero cowering behind a car, begging for help from her new partner.
    John washes his hands. He does not see blood beneath his fingernails; he sees only crimson gloves that reach down to his forearms. He looks in the mirror and does not see an icy blue stare that looks beyond an overweight frame; he sees a fierce jaw and shock of blonde hair going down to a brightly dyed golden cape. And when he speaks, he does not hear a breaking, cracking response; he hears a booming laugh that offers a challenge to anyone foolish enough to cross him. He does not see a frantically scribbled note from his new girlfriend about her leaving the country; he sees a love note from his partner in crime fighting.
    He walks to his back yard, where the evening light has cast long shadows across his lawn. He sees a monument to a worthy fallen adversary, and he walks to the front yard. The police have come to congratulate him, and he feels a seldom-shed single tear drip saltily down his cheek. "It's about time," he says, wiping the tear away with a gloved fist.

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