I most certainly am not acting out, I inform Mom via ESP, as she silently bids me to exercise her extolled virtue of impulse control. Across from us at the dinner table looms a leering lech planning a hostile takeover of our domicile since his arrival exactly 5.237 minutes ago. Do not fall for his tricks, I exhort, but to no avail. She continues to sit in silent rapture, pretending that all is well and good in her Betty Crocker world.
Steam rises in wisps above the intruder’s brew—from a mug that I myself selected from last year’s post-Christmas sale to ensure Mom picked the right gift for me this season. Purchased on clearance and thus 150% mine, its rim is violated by his fleshy, pickled-ginger-pink lips. He smiles salaciously in between sips.
In particular, be aware of his man tricks, I advise.
Rather than rally forces with me against the stranger, Mom places her elbow on the table and cups her face in an open palm. There are other serious, serious infractions in the house—ones I will gallantly bring to her attention and thus prevent her from committing dereliction: Dust on the rug in the living room; a microscopic chip in the window (albeit from an experiment I conducted outside to determine the knots I could produce from swinging a wiffle bat at warp-human speed when she was out duly running errands); blue-green water droplets that stain the tile floor. I crease my brow and point with both hands at these breaches in decorum, but the woman proves insensible.
All is lost on this front.
I shall call in my legion, my personal band of Argonauts to recapture her complete devotion and send this suitor forthwith onto his derriere. As I rise, I wipe aside saturated locks of hair for a full view of options of contact in the washroom adjoining our kitchen.
“Hello, hello, hello!” I blast through my glass helmet into the receiver. “This is an emergency. This is an emergency. We need boots on the ground. We are under attack. I repeat: We are under attack.” Thus, apprised of key details about the national conflict, the first respondent shall contact second in command. And then Weinberger will immediately brief President Reagan about the severity of this situation. The line breaks up, then goes dead. I glare through the kitchen walls at the assailant clearly employing kinetic powers to cut off our connection with the outside world.
When I reenter the kitchen, the colonizer turns to me and actually smiles. What kind of moron is affable with an adversary with a fish tank over his head? I shake my body vigorously to make the point and green algae splatters over the dinner napkins which, I realize upon inspection, bear tags with fluorescent yellow stickers. Each screams: “30% off!” My internal temperature rises, so high I might prove human combustion and splatter all of my being onto Mom’s also-new tablecloth. I breathe and count to twenty as advised by Dr. Pedersen in such moments to take stock of the situation and determine if I am truly in peril—if this spontaneous visit in fact constitutes a potential disaster to humankind. Then I espy another tag: “An additional 20% off!” blaring in fluorescent orange, the same shade of explosive tangerine that enhances the incandescence of the red bulb at intersections, the tip of Mom’s cigarettes as she inhales them whole after school before mollified into smoked paprika—the very spice which she knows is anathema to my senses!
I inhale deeply and count zohn, nehn, akhkhkht to lower my heart beat. Because it already thumps at a supernaturally high rate, I must be especially diligent to retard its frenetic rhythm, but as I do so I discover more proof of her apostasy: failure to remove government secrets embossed on tags and conceal them in her private drawer. This constitutes in truth a compendium of threats. Mother must have been in such a rush to get here after picking me up early from school [again to discuss privately with Principal Pickle his employees’ inability to hold my attention in class (and thus their incompetence)] that she didn’t even bother to remove the tags. Everyone knows that UPC’s must at all cost must be removed from purchased goods because their embedded codes covertly disperse information to citizens of dangers from beyond. That Mother would be so cavalier about national security and allow this intruder access to them irks me to no end.
I shake my head again, a virtual Neptune watching over his domain, but my trident is nowhere to be found. I must remedy this situation, this affront to my supremacy and go to my room to retrieve it.
“Sit down, Dmitri,” she says.
Mother never calls me by my birth name. The woman has clearly become daft from inhaling fumes from the nether-regions of the house. She has always claimed to possess the gift of oracle and to be able to foresee what my future brings. Little does she know my status within the pantheon—a fact I must daily and duly withhold from her so as not to burn her to smithereens. She is ignorant too of the fact that said powers are daily nurtured by my father—the very man whose identity she intentionally hides from me, fearful I will realize my full potential.
It shames me to admit this, but the woman has declared war.
This . . . this harlot actually believes that after serving delicacies intended for and only to be enjoyed by me, I will be dismissed and engage in technological escapism. I study the intruder’s squint (doth he squiny at me?) as well as his leer as it widens, nearly the breadth of his nostrils, revealing parallel jungles. He inhales deeply, taking in the cloves and cardamom—my microscopic particles—also wafting in the air. I intensify my glare, threaten him with imminent destruction for presuming to play piddle fingers with my natural resources, then slap my hand on the table in fury at the Secretary of State Weinberger’s lack of follow-through in sending in forces. Ronald and I will have words regarding his own dereliction since this only hastens the incursion of the Red Bear, a beast whom I alone will slay once its minions here are laid waste. I will engage and humiliate—but not only him. For her, I will reserve special discipline for daring to have repast with a foe. Sugary tidbits—dessert—with another?! Super-Sweet with mine enemy? The only thing the woman will ever taste is the sharpened edge of my blade.
“John teaches high-school English,” Mata Hari informs to divert me from the necessary.
“Of course he does! He couldn’t teach something manly including mathematical computations and prove actual virility like me!” I rub my palms together, thinking of how easy it will be to dispose of him.
Mother looks at me with Dom and Tom, her eyebrows in perpetual life-long combat with one another, raised so high they are competing with her hairline. They too demand that I show an interest in this mortal dweeb. I look at her and issue perfectly cadenced words to ensure full enunciation for my audience. This is another dictum issued to me by her person and Dr. Pedersen whenever I speak to anyone of inferior intellect. “That-is-very-in-ter-es-ting-Mis-ter-John-what-books-are-you-tea-ching-youth-of-ex-act-ly-40-I.-Q.-now?” I turn to her to discern her reaction (and thus her appreciation of my efforts to be civil), when I detect more hostility from the colonizer.
With unnecessary vehemence, he flings a dagger my way: “What is your favorite book, Dmitri?”
I could rattle off scores of tomes this peon has never heard of, but to show pity, I consider a title even he might have heard of when one of his eyes turns to the wall. I blink to ensure clarity of vision. Yes: His left eye indeed is turned in his head in a westwardly fashion. This is clearly a diversion, and yet it is strangely compelling. The single eyeball rotates within the socket, swiveling on its own while the other remains fixed, watching me. I am loathe to admit this, chief of the Argonauts though I am, but I am transfixed. I cannot decide to look directly at him or at the eye that proceeds to do somersaults the longer I look.
I consider various strategies. Engage the eye whose focus is on me with civil discourse, then barrel him with queries: Have you read all of the Star Wars trilogy novels backwards? What Samurai sword do you have under your bed, and sharpened by daily bouts with a Ginsu knife-handler? Have you in fact dissected a live orangutang using only three fingers in your left hand—and without a glove? As I highlight his sheer lack and thus pick at the wounds he will no doubt lick later (challenged schnitzel that he is), I will mount my offensive: A round-house tiger claw to his right temple that will make him moan in pain and retreat with his tail between his legs, followed by a swift kick to where his genitals once hung.
But then, the squeal of tires—minute—but which my heightened senses allow me to hear above the normal human range. Weinberger has finally sent in forces, aware that back-up is necessary given the severity of this menace. He clearly knows the risk my loss will pose to the nation.
I think of a ruse to leave the table, and decide to employ etiquette as a distraction. “I must relieve myself,” I inform the hostess and sneak to the front door, especially high on my toes, its muscles fortified from years of training in clandestine operations. The doorbell rings, then through the peephole I discover a youth of my age bedecked in a baseball cap, holding a broad, flat, rectangular object whose 1.95-inch width promises a vast array of scimitars for other operatives who doubtless circle the house as I speak. His hat likely conceals at least one grenade.
“Pizza delivery!” he intones, but everyone with due bearing heeds this as code for “All ye who be men, prepare for attack!”
But before I have a chance to open the door and confirm tactics we are to employ, Mother appears behind me, at exactly the 45-degree angle that I have advised her never to approach me from in order to protect her from my lightning-quick reflexes.
“Oh, hi, Gregory! I didn’t know you did pizza deliveries.”
A lump expands in my throat. It grows as large as the LZ 129 Hindenberg balloon that exploded on May 6, 1937—so large that it requires immediate medical attention. How am I to undertake an operation involving a foreign predator with a single Dungeons and Dragons adventurer—and one who lacks the same operative training as my person?
“Dude,” Gregory declares when Mother opens the door wider, turning to retrieve her purse.
“Dude,” I echo him, studying his trigger finger tapping against the side of his box. Gregory is composing Morse code—two different ones, in fact—each with a frenetic tempo demanding me to heed both fully: He has been training all summer in hand-to-hand combat at the Civil War Reenactments in Georgia and Ohio both, and I am to commit to a greater task once the hostile invader is subdued. My heart rate normalizes to its super-normal pace and despite the fog that limits my vision, a sudden calm suffuses my body as the second message continues in spurts as Mother hands him money. Weinberger commands that I continue gathering intel since a larger front threatening all of our cherished American values has seeped in past our borders. I am to continue with my daily reconnaissance missions to see how our freedoms are being hampered as average citizens go about their daily routines in sheer ignorance of such dangers. But I must do so feigning mediocrity which requires me to squelch my extraordinary skills. For the sake of kith and country, I shall abide.
My airways expand as I step back into the wall. Even my temporomandibular joints slacken, dropping my lower jaw at the Secretary of Defense’s foresight. The man’s genius knows no end.
