The Grim Creeper

I went on a brief midday patrol this afternoon. Told my mother I was going to straighten some things up at work, took off in my car, ditched it downtown, then took to running rooftops.

Long story short, I end up in a fight with an aspiring supervillain in a slaughterhouse.

I swear I can't make this stuff up.

The call came out over the police scanner and I took off toward this slaughterhouse and butcher shop way out in the county. What he was doing there, I have no idea, but apparently sides of beef have made contact with policemen and police cars.

Yes, a madman throwing meat.

This is my favorite type of fight. Battling another dude with super strength always gets me in a great mood because I just love to brawl like hell.

Luckily for me, the best entrance was to fly in over the cop cars, so I was able to fly. This is always great for me. Since, for some reason, everything in my life goes back to video games, I have to run really fast for a little bit. Then, invariably, my feet lift up off the ground, EXACTLY like in Super Mario Bros. 3. I always imagine as I'm running that at some point there's a high-pitched trill and I have a raccoon tail.

The few people who know who and what I am always ask me what it's like to fly. I describe it as such:

Imagine being eight years old and you wake up on the first day of winter break and you realize it's been snowing all night. Good, solid, wet snow. The first thing you do after your mom makes you eat breakfast is you throw on your boots, your coat, and your hat, and you rush outside toward the biggest hill in town. At the top you throw your sled down and dive onto it, belly first, letting your momentum push the sled down the hill.

It's a lot like that only it's not always cold, it's not always wet, and you're going up instead of down, and also you're not laying on anything.

So I'm flying above the city of Vincennes following the cop cars out because I forget exactly where the abbatoir in question is. I spot the squad cars in the distance and speed up because now I know where I'm going. One car is nearly bent in half and there's a big hunk of meat sticking out of it.

This is going to be awesome.

I'm starting to descend in my flight now, and I think it's time to come back to the sled analogy.

The biggest hill in my town is an old Indian burial mound, and I've been sledding on it many times in my life. It's pretty steep, and I'd say a good 20 feet above regular ground level.

The ground does not level out gradually. It's pretty abrupt.

Imagine you're on your little plastic sled, speeding down the side of the Indian mound, and you're getting close to the bottom. The wind is whipping through your hair and the cold stings your cheeks and you're hooting and hollaring and carrying on like kids do. Suddenly you get to the bottom of the hill and the sled stops. Again, your momentum works on you, but not in your favor this time. You fly off the sled and hit your head and decide to just go home because that REALLY sucked.

That's what landing is like for me. I don't know how it is for other super heroes, but for me, I can only fly when I have to. That means I don't get much practice landing.

I can hear an officer shouting through the loudspeaker in his squad car, "Put down the meat and come outside! We aren't going to hurt you. We just need to take you into custodWHAT THE HELL IS THAT !?"

I'm probably flying about 80 miles per hour as I whip over the heads of the police and crash through one of the factory windows of the slaughterhouse. I hit a concrete wall on the other side and crash onto a table covered in saw blades.

I'm so glad super strength comes as a package deal with resiliance. I think I'd have broken my neck otherwise.

I shake off the cobwebs (literally) and the concrete dust and get to my feet. There's some odd noise somewhere nearby and I start poking around. This is what I came across:

On the floor is some goy crouched on his haunches with his legs akimbo. He's greedily shoving things into his mouth. His hair is styled in three vertical spikes and for a moment, I fear it's the vengeful spirit of Klaus Nomi.

I do not want to fight an undead 80's pop/opera singer.

Otherwise he's dressed all in black with a coat that's got little dips in it like Batman's cape.

He didn't hear me break the window or crash into the wall, so I clear my throat and say "Before I pound your face into hamburger, you should tell me what you want to be called so they can get it right in the papers."

Then (again, I can't make this stuff up), he spins around to face me. He opens his mouth wide, revealing rows of filed, sharpened teeth behind black-lipsticked lips. He's got heavy eyeshadow on, and under one eye he's painted the Eye of Osiris. I'm unnerved by his eyes for a moment before I realize they're those expensive yellow cat-eye effect contacts.

Then, I swear to God, he hisses at me. Like a vampire in a bad movie. Here's an artist's (my) depiction of the scene:



He didn't say that last thing, but it wouldn't have surprised me.

In front of him, the stuff he was eating, is a pile of ripped and torn meat with bones sticking out of it. He stands and straightens his dark coat he's wearing over his NIN t-shirt (I swear to God, a new supervillain wearing a Nine Inch Nails shirt), and says, in his best Bela Lugosi impersonation, I'm sure, "They call me... The Grim Creeper."

Daintily, he wipes a spot of chewed meat off his lip with his thumb...

(TO BE CONTINUED!)