Earlier this year, Pretty Weird Art joined a writing group at our local library. The writing group is named "Prologue" and each time we meet, we participate in a writing prompt challenge. We're given a subject, words, or theme that we have to structure our assignment around.
For kicks and giggles, I'm sharing a few of our writing assignments from the class.
Writing Assignment #2: Pretend you're writing the biography of a superhero. Use the phrase"I never expected to become a superhero until the day I was bitten by a radioactive..." as your launching off point.
Below is the essay Ethan wrote based off the prompts. His idea for the project was to have a serious journalist attempt to write a newspaper article about an absurd superhero.
The Greatest Superhero You Never Heard Of
By Jimmy Olson
Contributor to the Daily Planet
Steven Dubois is the greatest superhero that you’ve never
heard of. For thirty years, he has waged an undefeated, one-man war on the
criminal underbelly of the United States. Until the writing of this article,
the only people that knew of his existence were the shell-shocked criminals he
put behind bars and his roommate Victor Grosnofsky. As far as I can tell, this
will be the first article ever written about him by the news media. What
follows is the bizarre tale of one of the greatest and most disturbing
superheroes to ever fight crime.
I first learned of
the enigmatic Steven Dubois when researching a story about forgotten “C-List”
supervillains from the 1980’s and 90’s. I was curious to research the
difference between the “C-list” villains that had rehabilitated successfully
and those that had not. During my research, I stumbled across an unusual trend.
Since the late 1970’s, roughly 10% of violent “C-List” supervillain offenders have
been brought to justice under “unusual” circumstances. There were direct signs
of super human heroic involvement, but no super hero was present to take credit
for the criminal’s arrest. When questioned by police, the criminals involved in
these cases all claimed that “Superman busted them”, despite there being no
corroborating evidence. After interrogation, the prisoners where then
immediately placed into solitary confinement and buried under governmental red
tape. When I pulled their casefiles, much of the information was either
deliberately boilerplate or redacted. Many of their criminal casefiles simply
disappeared. All signs pointed to there being collusion between the cops and
criminals over obscuring the identity of the costumed vigilante involved in the
cases. Why hide the identity of the crime fighter? The question burned in my
mind and I redoubled my efforts to find an answer.
I pulled some strings with the warden of Blackgate Prison,
the primary holding facility for super powered convicts in the United States,
and tried to arrange face to face interviews with several inmates. The prison
administration initially denied my requests, but eventually granted me phone
privileges with a handful or inmates. Every time I quizzed them about their
captures, they shut down the conversation immediately and refused to talk to me
again. Their insistence that “Superman did it” was an obvious lie.
In the fall of 2015, after six
months of running in circles with my story, I decided to change my tactics. I
smelled a conspiracy, so I released my research to the “conspiracy theorists”
of the “dark web” to see what information they could turn up for me. Most of
the responses I received were rubbish, but one anonymous email stood out in the
sea of white noise. Someone using TOR encryption software emailed me a single
photograph. It was of a 62-year-old man standing in the middle of a kudzu field.
Next to him was what looked to be a tombstone with the letters “S.D.” and the
number “23,334” carved into it.
That man turned out to Victor
Grosnofsky, a semi-retired recluse living in the foothills of North Carolina. I
contacted him by telephone and he begrudgingly agreed to meet me in person. A
week later I pulled into his driveway and he ushered me into his little mountain
cottage to talk about the mystery man I had been hunting.
Our conversation was awkward and
stilted at first, as if Victor was out of practice talking with other human
beings. His responses to my questions were terse, but once I showed him the
photograph with the tombstone on it, he seemed to find his voice. Tears glistened
in his eyes, but then the corners of his mouth twisted into a grin as if he
were holding back the punch line to a joke he had been waiting to tell for the
last 30 years.
“So you think there’s some big
conspiracy about them criminals you’ve been investigating, do you?” He
chuckled. “The cops and crooks ain’t tightlipped about what happened to them because
they’re protecting somebody, it’s ‘cause they’re embarrassed about what Steven
did to them. How he made them pay for their crimes. Want to know what he did to
them? He pissed on ‘em. Farted on ‘em. Puked all over ‘em and it took the fire right
out of their bellies…No criminal is ever going to tell a detective he was foiled
by a guy who pissed on him so hard he flew through a brick wall…”
At this point in the
conversation, I was convinced that Victor was mentally unstable but I let him
continue. The longer he talked, the wider his grin grew and the more outlandish
his story became.
“You see, Steven’s powers weren’t
flashy like Superman’s or that Green Lantern guy’s. His were gross. His were
downright vulgar. Obscene. He looked pretty normal on the outside but on the
inside, there was somethin’ seriously messed up about him. His insides weren’t
like a normal persons. It was like he was hollow and filled with piss, and
puke, and…well…sheer nastiness.”
I asked Victor when he first met
Steven.
“Well, I first met him when I was
20, in a suburb of Chicago. I was a sewage specialist, kinda’ like an emt for
busted sewer systems. Some pork processing plant’s drainage system got torn up
in a storm and the gunk from it ran into the city sewer system. Caused a stink
that would knock a man’s teeth out, even when wearing a ventilator. It was the
sort of stink that don’t scrub off of ya’. I got called in ‘cause I can’t smell
nothing. Not a damn thing. Never been able to. The stink didn’t bother me none.
When I got onsite, Steven was already there knee deep in pig guts. All the
other waste disposal guys were wearing level 4 hazmat suits to keep the stink
out. Steven was wearing one to keep his own stink in. Me and him it off pretty
good. When we wrapped up things on the jobsite, I asked him if he wanted to be
my roommate. He didn’t like the idea at first. Said he was afraid his smell
alone would kill me if I were in the same room as him without a rubber suit on.
He changed his tune when he found out my nose don’t work. We moved in together
and been roommates ever since.”
“Did Steven ever tell you if he
was born with his condition or if it emerged later in life?”
“He wasn’t born with it, I can
tell you that. If he had been, his first dirty diaper would’a wiped out the
entire maternity ward. He wouldn’t tell me for the longest time what happened
to him, but one day I got him good and liquored up and wrangled the story out
of him. His parents ran a medical clinic that did drug tests for the Lexcorp
nuclear plant. One summer the plant’s manager ran surprise drug tests on all
the employees. Steven’s parents made him handle the blood and pee jugs since
they were short staffed. Somebody at Lexcorp didn’t want the results of those
tests to go public. They hired an idiotic supervillain named “Bomb-For-A-Head”
to blow up the testing center. Steven’s folks were killed in the blast, but he
survived. Next thing he remembered after the explosion was waking up in the
hospital with a nurse trying to stuff a catheter into his manhood…he pissed
himself so hard it blew the nurse out the 2nd story window. After
that came the smell…his burps and farts were toxic. His feet stank so bad that
if he walked down the center of town, everyone in the street would keel over
and lose their lunches. He was so freaked out by his own body, he ran off into
the woods. Lived like a wild man for a couple of months until he learned how to
control his stench. By the time I’d met him, he’d figured out how to mix all
these chemicals together into a bathtub. If he soaked in the bathtub overnight,
he’d be able to move around in public the next day without causing people to
upchuck their Cheerios.”
At this point, Victor pulled out
a box filled notebooks and photo albums. He handed me a bundle of blueprints
and sketches that showed the various evolutions of Steven’s crime fighting
gear.
“After we became roommates, I
tinkered around with making him something he could wear in public so he didn’t
have to always pickle himself in the tub. I was pretty handy with tools back
then. Tried to make him an airtight space suit thing that he could wear under a
trench coat. When I found out he wanted to be Batman, I changed the design,
added tubes and openings he could use to funnel his powers through. Channel
them so he could aim ‘em without causing collateral damage. I had to invent
some new things to make the suit. Ended up patenting what I came up with. Made
good money off it too. Used the money to pay for Steven’s war on crime.”
“What motivated him to become a
superhero”, I asked. “The death of his parents?”
He placed box on the floor,
pulled a black leather journal from it, and stared at it sentimentally as he
spoke. “Probably. His first fight was with that Bomb-Head guy that killed ‘em.
Steven tracked the guy to his hideout. Broke in at night and…”Victor paused,
trying to find the right words to describe what happened…”I’m trying not to be
crude Mr. Olson, but I don’t know how to put it politely….he excreted all over
that dude so bad that the jaws of life had to be used to get him back to
normal. After that, Steven hunted down the bad guys the cops couldn’t handle
and the capes didn’t have time to mess with. It was easy for Steven do. He’d
just find out where the guy hid out and then walk in and let loose a shart that
broke the sound barrier. Bad guy would be out light a light in 5 seconds flat. He’d
plant incriminating evidence, call the police, and take off. The police always
had to put the criminals into solitary confinement because they smelled so bad
afterwards. The worse the bad guy, the more Steven cut loose on them. The more
humiliating the results. Conspiracy theory nut jobs on the internet claimed
aliens were responsible for his actions. The government suits seemed to agree. During daylight hours, we’d fix busted pipes
and at night he was a superhero. It was a good gig until I retired and he bit
off more than he could chew last year.”
He gestured towards the photo of
the tombstone and his smile faded slightly.
“We always checked out the super
villains before he confronted them. Made sure they weren’t aliens or some
weirdo that didn’t need to breathe. Didn’t want to take any chances that
Steven’s weaponized BO wouldn’t work. Apparently, the last guy he confronted
was a cyborg. Had an engine inside his chest powered by those rocks that kill
Superman. He was a tuff nut to crack, but Steven cracked him. Problem was that
those rocks are radioactive. The rocks did something to Steven that…well…you
see what happened to him.”
He trailed off and stared into
space for a bit. I asked him if I could ask him one more question. “What’s the
significance of the numbers on his tombstone?”
Victor’s smile returned. “That’s
the number of fights he won. Never lost a single one. Not even to that blasted
Cyborg. One of my last conversations with Steven was about what he wanted on
his tombstone. He said “I never expected to be a superhero until I got bit by a
radioactive pee jug.” I asked him if he wanted that engraved on his stone and
said “Hell no. Just put my name on it and the number of fights I won”. So
that’s what I did. Tombstone says “SD” for Stephen Dubois and “23,334” for the
number of battles he fought and won.”
There is more to the story of
Steven Dubois, but I will leave the rest of the details to be told on another
day by the man that knew him better than anyone else in the world. For now,
just remember that Stephen Dubois was more than an elaborate “poop joke”, he
was a man who made the best of a terrible situation and made the world a better
place.
