[LNHY/ACRA] The Daily Super Short-Short Story #29

[Saxon Brenton]

The Daily Super Short-Short Story #29
 
A Devil Came Down to Georgia 11
 
Last Time: Damian tried to play with Martin's mind again, but got caught.
 
     Damian wriggled in Martin's grasp. "Argh, no... Please don't hurt 
me," he begged. The wondersock wasn't actually in pain, or even in any 
danger of experiencing pain, but making the patsy think that he had some 
sort of control over Damian would make the spin that the sock put on his 
assorted half-truths seem more credible.
     Well, unless the patsy was really paranoid, of course - but he'd 
deal with that problem if it came up.
     "Well?" grated Martin, the nasty mechanical reverb in his voice 
becoming more pronounced.
     "I am here to help you with your Becoming," gasped the sock.
     Part of Martin was watching, fascinated, as the hollows and shadows 
in the sock's otherwise featureless form shifted, giving the suggestion 
of a moving mouth and evilly expressive eyes. Another part was trying to 
track down the elusive memory of where he'd heard of talking socks before. 
Still, he still had enough attention focused on the matter at hand to 
ask the obvious, "What do you mean, 'Becoming'?"
     "It's when you get yours powers, or break out, or whatever you want 
to call it. You see... Net.ahumanly powerful people have been turning up 
all through history, just not in as a big a number as now. And sometimes 
they get taken into the church as saints, but sometimes they get burnt at 
the stake as monsters... Remember all those witch scares? Yeah, well, 
that was the church chasing down mutants and burning them at the stake."
     Martin's eye narrowed. "I seem to recall that that's just the story 
that got passed down because it was exciting and pandered to conspiracy 
theories about a single cause for strife. The witch hunts were usually 
hysteria that sprang up in towns that were in trouble and didn't have 
strong government. In places with strong leadership the Catholic church... 
and the Protestants," he added grudgingly, "tried to keep the whole 
embarrassing thing from getting out of control."
     "No no no," disagreed Damian. "That's what it was like in Real Life, 
and maybe in the mainsteam Looniverse, but here on T-Bone, what with God 
being a bastard and all, the church was much more hardassed about going 
after sin, and... Uhm, poopie, I just broke the fourth wall, didn't I? 
Look, forget I said that. The thing is, that stuff about the witch hunts 
being just local yokel frenzies? Right, that just a *cover story*. Yeah. 
Actually, whether they call people witches and burn them at the stake, or 
claim that local riots are caused by ignorant peasants working themselves 
into a lather and have to be controlled with strong centralised religious 
authority - well, it all depends on what works on a case-by-case 
situation, and what's best for their reputation and interests."
     Martin snorted. "So what has this got to do with me? With so many 
mutants about these days, any religion that goes around screaming 'witch' 
at somebody with powers is going to have a serious PR problem."
     "Weeelll... That depends a bit on whether you can keep from being 
pinned with the rap for assault and attempted murder, doesn't it?"
     "HE was assaulting ME," said Martin, squeezing the sock in anger.
     "I know that! I know that!" squeaked the sock in fax distress. 
"Actually though, that isn't the big problem. See, the big problem is 
that you aren't a mutant."
     "What do you mean, I'm not a mutant? I haven't been bitten by any 
radioactive spiders, and I didn't come from another planet because I know 
I have the same blood type as my Dad."
     "It's an inheritance that's been dormant in your family. See, you've 
got Nephalim blood in you. You're one of the Teenaged Giant Halfbreed 
Angels."
 
Tomorrow: More spin from the sock, I think.
 
The Daily Super Short-Short Story series and the wondersocks created by 
Arthur Spitzer, and used with belated permission.
 
The Teenage Giant Halfbreed Angelsepithet for the Nephilim/Nephalim 
cooked up by Andrew Perron.
 
-----
Saxon Brenton    University of Technology, city library, Sydney Australia
     saxon.brenton at uts.edu.au 
The Eyrie Archives of Russ Allbery which collect the online superhero 
fiction of the rec.arts.comics.creative newsgroup can be found at:
     http://archives.eyrie.org/racc/