{"id":2698,"date":"2024-08-10T15:34:17","date_gmt":"2024-08-10T22:34:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/?p=2698"},"modified":"2024-08-10T15:34:17","modified_gmt":"2024-08-10T22:34:17","slug":"the-rise-of-the-specter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/2024\/08\/10\/the-rise-of-the-specter\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rise of the Specter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

prompt: Write the origin story of a notorious villain.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

available at Reedsy<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the outside, my childhood was normal. Of course, \u201cnormal\u201d changes over time. The sounds of a paddle or belt coupled with the wails of a child was just \u201cnormal,\u201d 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\u2019s house was not one\u2019s business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The field in which the weird building sat had \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d signs on twelve-foot chain-link fences with razor wire on top, but they didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t like the small line that dropped down from the pole to a house, it was the entire<\/em> high-voltage line that fed right into the building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019d been seen and was about to get arrested. Instead, a car shot out from the other side of the building, zooming away from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything fell to perfect silence. I wondered if I\u2019d scared them off. Funny how my brain misfires when I\u2019m high \u2014 which is why I don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remember thinking more than once as I watched chunks of concrete and steel pass through me that I was definitely<\/em> dead this time. When it ended, I was standing knee-deep in the rubble \u2014 literally in<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t want anyone to see my PIN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had a job at an arcade, a small apartment, and I hadn\u2019t 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\u2019d had too much to drink and was in a deep sleep in his armchair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I spent the next three weeks working like normal, waiting for the feelings of guilt or remorse or something<\/em> to show up. When they didn\u2019t, I knew I\u2019d found my calling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201caccident.\u201d The last thing any of them saw was me, phasing through the floor of the car right before they lost control at highway speeds \u2014 or through the wall of the elevator right before it dropped all the way to the basement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s not to say there weren\u2019t still disagreements between the groups, but they all knew that the orders flowed from the top, and that was me \u2014 or rather, \u201cThe Specter\u201d as I had become known.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twelve years may sound like a long time, but it\u2019s nothing in the grand scheme of things. In the twenty-nine years since, I\u2019ve 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, \u201cJoin me or die.\u201d The leaders of those organizations that thought they were better off without me disappeared completely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the now seventy-thousand-plus members of the Global Initiative, perhaps a dozen still living have seen my face. That doesn\u2019t mean I don\u2019t still dole out the tragic accident or simple disappearance here and there when I\u2019m crossed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019ve given up the names of everyone else involved. I save the slow, painful deaths for those others \u2014 often playing \u201chow many sharp things can I phase into your body before you die\u201d \u2014 and then phase their corpse deep underground, past the crust into the mantle where it is destroyed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, saying a thing doesn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, that\u2019s me, \u201cThe Specter.\u201d For my next adventure, I look forward to meeting the super-powered members of the League of Heroes or whatever you\u2019re called these days. I have an offer for you. Join me for unimaginable wealth and luxury or die. Just remember, there\u2019s nothing<\/em> I can\u2019t phase through. Once, just for curiosity\u2019s sake, I phased through the Earth\u2019s core.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trust me, joining me is the safer bet. You might be bullet-proof, but that won\u2019t stop me from phasing a softball into your brain. And if that doesn\u2019t kill you outright, while you\u2019re disoriented and trying to heal, we\u2019ll take a trip to the core where I\u2019ll deposit you. Even if you somehow survive the heat and pressure, it\u2019ll be years before you make it to the surface, and I\u2019ll be there to drag you right back down again into your own personal hell. Doesn\u2019t your own private island sound a lot better?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

prompt: Write the origin story of a notorious villain. available at Reedsy From the outside, my childhood was normal. Of course, \u201cnormal\u201d changes over time. The sounds of a paddle or belt coupled with the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[208],"tags":[210,228,209,242],"class_list":["post-2698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trunk-stories","tag-fiction","tag-science-fiction","tag-short-story","tag-superhero"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pxT7i-Hw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2698"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2699,"href":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2698\/revisions\/2699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}