Previously: Who Is Desmond Touche?
She did not come here often, to Africa, but she loved it. She rode into Capetown on the back of an elephant. “It is the Human Continent,” she told her husband, the Blue Spark, who was currently host-less and disincarnate. “The place where we began.”
“I did not begin here,” he said, buzzing about her head in the form of four micro-gods.
“There they are!” said Beast Mistress, pointing at two hapless street vendors on the corner. The vendors disappeared in a puff of black smoke and reappeared as the supervillains Mirror & Mirror.
Everybody fought. The heroes won.
In their hotel room that night, Beast Mistress said to Blue Spark, “I am so lonesome.”
Blue Spark said nothing, “I am here, my sweet.”
Beast Mistress said, “Why don’t you take on a host tonight? I need, you know, companionship.”
“I am here, my darling” said Blue Spark.
“You know what I mean.”
The Blue Spark could only take corporeal form by inhabiting the body of a willing human. His host would die after twenty-four hours. There was a long waiting list of people who wished to go out in a literal blaze of glory — cancer patients, mostly, and condemned prisoners. Calling up one of them for selfish reasons was out of the question.
“I can’t waste a host like that,” he said. “You know that I can’t.”
Beast Mistress dropped her garment to the floor.
“You call this a waste?” she said.
Outside, it rained. The rain fell in big soft warm drops on Africa, the Human Continent, kisses on the body of a woman. Quiet thunder came to the window.
“Oh well, okay,” he said.
But then the host whose number came up turned out to be gay. They all three laughed and laughed and laughed about it, and drank sharp local wine. They watched old movies on television.
Next: Chapter 3.1: Snap Out of It!
hehehe.
I especially like the ending. There’s something sweet about it.