Super Meals: Part Six

Walter had sat with his head in his hands for several minutes before the stench of vomit wafted over to him. The vomit was two days old at this point, and stray animals and rodents had consumed much of it, but that kind of smell lingers, and eventually it came to linger in Walter’s nose.

Looking around, he didn’t see where it was coming from at first, but it led him, like a trail of breadcrumbs, around the corner of the highway overpass to where the dead transient had been found. The remains of a makeshift campsite were still there – some garbage was strewn around, a heavily-patched tent was battered and overturned, a small fire pit was cold and black with the ashes of scrap wood – and a few feet away from it there was police tape cordoning off a private square of land within a small copse of trees.

Curious, Walter approached the campsite. He didn’t know if there were any more people around, but as soon as he began to fear getting jumped and mugged by a hobo, something in the back of his head reminded him that he was super strong now, so maybe he shouldn’t be afraid after all.

(Like most people, Walter had less moral compunction about harming or being harmed by humans than dogs. He’d be totally comfortable punching a human in the face, but he’d hate himself if he ever had to hit or kick a dog.)

He crept across the ground, doing his best to sidestep around the debris that was spread out, and made his way towards the police cordon. When he got there, he saw that the police had spray-painted a body outline on the ground (chalk wouldn’t have worked on the wet grass and dirt, and tape wouldn’t stick) near a hole with a small hand-shovel next to it, and a roll of now-soggy toilet paper on the handle. The stink was stronger now, and from the edge of the taped-off area, Walter could see that whoever had died had fallen over near the whole, facing away from it.

The vomit remains were near the head of the outline, and between the hole in the ground and the outline’s ass-end was blood.

A lot of blood.

Walter put the scene together in his head and felt the urge to throw up, himself.

He did.

Walter Elliot didn’t want to be outside anymore, he wanted to go home. He had to work in the morning, after all, and throwing up had taken a lot out of him, so he decided to head back to his apartment.

Glancing around to make sure nobody was watching, he took off at a run towards home. From the overpass to his apartment was only a mile and a half, so he expected it to pass quite quickly.

He was out of breath with a stitch in his side after two blocks, and had to slow to a walk. He was tired, his stomach was cramping, and his legs hurt; he hadn’t had that much exercise in years, to be honest.

He was also extremely confused.

He had possessed superhuman strength for about an hour, and now it was gone. He was drained, completely sapped, and wanted to sleep. He was passing by a park and thought maybe he should sit down for just a few minutes, to get his breath back and let his legs recover.

He half-stumbled over to the swings and sat down, leaning his head against the chain. Within two minutes, he was asleep. He didn’t even wake up when he fell backwards off the swing, he just lay there with one foot suspended on the rubber strap that was the seat, and one foot cocked to the side.

It began to grow dark.