prompt: Write the origin story of a notorious villain.
available at Reedsy
From the outside, my childhood was normal. Of course, “normal” changes over time. The sounds of a paddle or belt coupled with the wails of a child was just “normal,” then. What should have garnered attention was the frequency and severity of my corporal punishment. The sense of the time was, though, that what happens in a neighbor’s house was not one’s business.
That is not to say I blame my parents for who I turned out to be. Just to say that I learned a lot about hiding in my early childhood. With a hot-heated father that looked for any reason to strike a child, I learned to be sneaky. I was almost never punished for my actions, just his flimsy excuses.
The day after graduation, while I was meant to be job hunting, I was hiding out getting high behind the weird government building that was out in the middle of nowhere. That was the day that everything changed.
The field in which the weird building sat had “No Trespassing” signs on twelve-foot chain-link fences with razor wire on top, but they didn’t take into account the largely unexplored lava tubes that ran under most of the area. I found one that led into a stand of juniper trees, away from the guards, on the opposite side of the property from the dirt road that led to the entrance.
Usually, I would just come out, sit under the junipers, and get high. That day, though, I wanted to get a closer look at the building. It looked like a concrete warehouse from the outside, until I got closer and saw the power connection. It wasn’t like the small line that dropped down from the pole to a house, it was the entire high-voltage line that fed right into the building.
Of course, I wanted to find a way in to see what was going on. Only problem was, I was high already, and not thinking too clearly. As I made my way around the building, an alarm sounded, one of those klaxon type alarms that made three loud blasts. I thought I’d been seen and was about to get arrested. Instead, a car shot out from the other side of the building, zooming away from it.
Everything fell to perfect silence. I wondered if I’d scared them off. Funny how my brain misfires when I’m high — which is why I don’t do that anymore. Anyway, that perfect silence was broken by an electrical hum from the power line. My hair stood on end, and I felt waves of energy wash over me. The walls went transparent, and I could see a huge machine pulsing in the center of the otherwise empty building. Then it blew up.
I remember thinking more than once as I watched chunks of concrete and steel pass through me that I was definitely dead this time. When it ended, I was standing knee-deep in the rubble — literally in the rubble. I began walking and my legs just passed through the rubble as if were water. I had gained the ability to phase through solid materials.
The logical choice for me would be to become a world-class thief, right? I mean, it makes sense when you think about it for even a moment. That also makes it the most idiotic thing I could do. The fact that I thought of it while I was stoned out my gourd and traumatized was enough to convince me that anyone who found out I had this power would put it together right away.
Remember, I had an entire childhood spent learning how to be sneaky. Something that could point back at me right away was off the table. Instead, I needed a way to put my new-found power to work without being obvious about it.
Does it mean I never used it to steal? No, of course not. I slipped my hand into the odd ATM here and there and pulled out a wad of bills. The trick is to block the cameras, like I don’t want anyone to see my PIN.
Still, it must seem like a leap from the ability to phase to leader of the largest criminal organization in the world. Not so much, though. One gets to the top of such enterprises by killing their way there. I thought maybe I could do that with practice, and I already had a target in mind, as if that was a surprise.
I had a job at an arcade, a small apartment, and I hadn’t seen the old man for nearly a year when I struck. I had some blood clotting powder in my first aid kit, and a pair of tweezers. That was all I needed, along with a night when he’d had too much to drink and was in a deep sleep in his armchair.
I watched for several nights until the time was right. I pinched a small amount of the powder with the tweezers, phased into the house, and phased the tip of the tweezers into the big vein that stuck out on his neck whenever he yelled or snored. By letting the tweezers open a bit, some of the powder lost contact and was no longer in a phased state. That little bit of powder started a clot that worked its way down to his heart by the time I phased back out of the house.
Natural causes were the official findings of the autopsy. A heavy drinker with a short fuse and signs of high blood pressure threw a clot and had a heart attack? Yeah, no surprise there.
I spent the next three weeks working like normal, waiting for the feelings of guilt or remorse or something to show up. When they didn’t, I knew I’d found my calling.
I moved to the Big Apple to get myself involved in organized crime. I did that by starting a war between the street gangs and their supplier, one of the minor crime families. It wasn’t hard. I followed the street gang runner to where they did their drug pickup. After dark, I phased into the basement beneath the junk store where the mafia kept their stash. I replaced three-quarters of the bricks with bricks of baby powder.
The war started the next day when the gangs accused the mafia of delivering bunk, and the mafia accusing the gangs of ripping them off. While tensions were high, I stopped a lower-rung mafioso and told him that the gangs had their drugs hidden in their hang-out. When they showed up, of course, the drugs were there.
That was enough to get me a meeting with the local boss. He offered me a job as an informant, and I took it. I made sure that anyone who crossed me had a tragic “accident.” The last thing any of them saw was me, phasing through the floor of the car right before they lost control at highway speeds — or through the wall of the elevator right before it dropped all the way to the basement.
No one could pin it to me directly, but it was understood that if I was crossed, terrible things happened. It helped that a lot of the mafia was riddled with superstitions, and I just became another of those things about which to be superstitious.
It took twelve years of hard work to consolidate the Italian families, the Russian mob, and the New York City branches of the Tong, Yakuza, and the two outlaw motorcycle clubs active in the city. That’s not to say there weren’t still disagreements between the groups, but they all knew that the orders flowed from the top, and that was me — or rather, “The Specter” as I had become known.
Twelve years may sound like a long time, but it’s nothing in the grand scheme of things. In the twenty-nine years since, I’ve taken control of mobs, crime families, clubs, gangs, and groups of disaffected youths all over the globe. Once the ball was rolling, it was enough to say, “Join me or die.” The leaders of those organizations that thought they were better off without me disappeared completely.
Of the now seventy-thousand-plus members of the Global Initiative, perhaps a dozen still living have seen my face. That doesn’t mean I don’t still dole out the tragic accident or simple disappearance here and there when I’m crossed.
My instant, reflexive phasing when hit with anything that could injure me has resulted in over thirty instances of me being shot, stabbed, blown up, and other attempts on my life that always end in the same result; the death of the assailant after they’ve given up the names of everyone else involved. I save the slow, painful deaths for those others — often playing “how many sharp things can I phase into your body before you die” — and then phase their corpse deep underground, past the crust into the mantle where it is destroyed.
Of course, saying a thing doesn’t prove it, but the loyalty of my followers, whether they consider me a ghost, a phantom, a demon, or some undead entity, speaks volumes for how I get things done.
So, that’s me, “The Specter.” For my next adventure, I look forward to meeting the super-powered members of the League of Heroes or whatever you’re called these days. I have an offer for you. Join me for unimaginable wealth and luxury or die. Just remember, there’s nothing I can’t phase through. Once, just for curiosity’s sake, I phased through the Earth’s core.
Trust me, joining me is the safer bet. You might be bullet-proof, but that won’t stop me from phasing a softball into your brain. And if that doesn’t kill you outright, while you’re disoriented and trying to heal, we’ll take a trip to the core where I’ll deposit you. Even if you somehow survive the heat and pressure, it’ll be years before you make it to the surface, and I’ll be there to drag you right back down again into your own personal hell. Doesn’t your own private island sound a lot better?