Eaglestar
I used to think my electric toothbrush was too loud, but now I can’t even hear it over the horde just outside my window.
I’d give a lot to have the hiccupping chortle of a dying electronic be the most annoying noise of my mornings again. Now, that award goes to the constant cry of, “MONSTER,” I get to hear before I’ve had my first sip of coffee. Ever since “Monster” Lady showed up and started screaming at my house, that one has seemed a little overboard to me. Even in her twisted view of whatever happened back at register number eleven, there’s no scenario where I turned Eaglestar’s perfect, movie star, skin into American cheese left on the hood of a scrapyard sedan under the August sun on purpose.
A “monster” would have loved Eaglestar’s screams as their master plan unfolded. This “monster” can’t stop thinking about how he sounded the second the organic vegan broccoli cheddar from Earth Foods leapt up and bit him. The only thing I’m thankful for is that the color of his soup of choice moderately camouflaged his overly-tanned skin bubbling just beneath it.
I load up my toothbrush and sit on the toilet. I zone out the crowd to focus on the brushing and shitting before I inevitably run back through the events of that day. Like I always do first thing in the morning.
The day I disfigured Eaglestar, I had my usual midweek diarrhea. I remember that well because I was already clinching before Eaglestar himself, Liam Harley, ever chose register number eleven. It’s probably the only thing about that day that I’m proud of, that I didn’t spray register number ten the second I heard his shrieks. Hearing a grown man make those noises could awaken a settled stomach. So the fact that his high notes didn’t dog whistle my diarrhea out of hiding is sure to be my one, and only, lifetime superhero moment.
The day I disfigured Eaglestar I wasn’t even supposed to be at register eleven. Bethany was. She always is. She called out that day. Wasn’t feeling well. Bethany probably has a lot more respect for register number ten than I do.
But instead, here I am, unable to leave my house because Eaglestar was craving an organic vegan broccoli cheddar soup from Earth Foods and that light was on above register number eleven. I’ve been living mostly off of canned soup and haven’t been beyond my own doorstep in nearly two months because one of the universe’s biggest movie stars just loves his organic vegan broccoli cheddar from Earth Foods. The same organic vegan broccoli cheddar from Earth Foods that was being kept summertime-seatbelt-buckle-accidentally-grazing-your-neck-hot because Eaglestar’s people had complained about the temperature just days before our incident.
His people, by the way, who should have been the ones picking up the soup, to begin with. I was always under the impression that one of the perks of being mega-famous is the cadre of latte-grabbing slave labor you get access to. Personal assistants. A concept so utterly untethered from the human experience that it could only go unnoticed in Hollywood. Are you a single mom trying to get your three kids to school before your shift? Figure that shit out. Are you a twenty-something with a popular internet video channel that desperately needs to get your asshole bleached today? Four people will get right on that.
But I’m sure Liam Harley says things in interviews like that he enjoys picking up his own groceries, to feel like he’s just a regular person. Like he’s still part of the experience. Celebrities love saying dumb shit like that. “It’s just freeing to fill up my gas tank, you know? Hand a crisp twenty to the cashier inside. Actually, throw in some gum, too. I like to get out and hit the road on my own for a while. The open road, baby.” What’s left out on those quotes is that they’re filling up the gas tank on a literal luxury tank and that when they hit the road, they’re not also driving through the mental obstacle course the rest of us do behind the wheel. Looping on how we’re going to make rent while trying not to be killed by the dickhead in the luxury tank riding our ass. That’s one of the prime talking points of most megastars. How they love those little moments of normalcy that make them feel grounded again. Away from the hordes that swarm their every move. I guess I know all about that second part now. I’m just not fortunate enough to call in the private chopper to scoop me from the hell outside my door and whisk me away for my own organic vegan broccoli cheddar from Earth Foods.
But my daring chopper rescue isn’t coming, so I spit the final glob of toothpaste between my legs and prepare to finish up.
***
The hallway is dark as I stumble through a groggy video call with my wife. She’s dialing in from her super-secret location with the kids. That super-secret location is her mom’s place two states away. We go through the same conversation we’ve been having for months. I tell her I’m hanging in there. She says she misses me. The kids, too. I tell her I miss them and that I’m working on a way out of this. We say “love you,” not even the kind with an “I” before it and I end the video call only actually believing one or two things we just said, none with any real passion.
I know she’s annoyed with me. How could she not be? I’m the grocery-bagging thirtysomething that upended her whole life by discovering the world’s favorite superhero’s one weakness was clumsy cashiers with diarrhea. I put my phone back into my pocket and take a long look at the lone family photo hanging in the hallway I’m walking down. I wonder how the folks outside can leave their kids for so many days at a time just to yell at me. But then I remember just how many of them have turned it into a family activity. And some of those little fuckers have the most annoying yells of anybody.
My kids are the only reason I knew anything about Eaglestar and the United before this went down. They love them. They’ve got all of the toys and Benjamin even went as Eaglestar for Halloween a few years back. I’d only ever seen any of the eight United movies in bits and pieces, the background babysitter while I was on dad duty. The movies are fine, I guess. It would be a whole lot easier to dismiss them as something that only kids like mine enjoy, but I’ve learned that’s far from the truth. My focus group outside includes all ages. And judging by the way I can hear them before I even reach the kitchen, I can tell the focus group is extra inspired today.
***
While I begin to pour my usual double cup of black coffee, an egg cracks into the side of the window. I don’t flinch. Not anymore, at least. The first time it happened, I rivaled Eaglestar’s post-soup pitch and it wasn’t until about a week in the foxhole that I became fully desensitized. I watch the yolk run down the window and stare at the crowd through my new yellow lens. I think this one came from Sweatsuit Guy. He usually has pretty good aim. He’s Sweatsuit Guy because I haven’t seen him wear anything else for the weeks he’s been outside. His hair is extra damp today. Sweatsuit Guy never takes a day off.
As I carry my huge cup of coffee from the kitchen, I can’t help but laugh. The idea that I need all of this caffeine to get through what my days have become is just absurd. I don’t know how “on” I need to be just to peer out my blinders for one of the United’s superfans to break the lazy police barrier and bang on my door. At least the double I’d suck back before a shift at Earth Foods would get me in the zone to withstand the afternoon crush of divorced yoga moms or the finance bros treating my lane like the conference room for the very important call they’re proudly having like the world’s most uninteresting exhibitionists.
A piece of porcelain pops beneath my feet as I enter the living room. It’s still a wreck from when my fans worked a drone inside a few days ago. That fucker was surprisingly hard to bring down. My TV screen is shot and Charlie’s tee-ball “Most Hustle” trophy is wrecked. Those are the ones my wife knows about. I’m still figuring out how to tell her that a replica United Starship knocked her grandfather’s ashes all over our carpet. And our cat.
***
“Work” starts after my coffee’s been finished and I’ve caught yesterday’s sports highlights from the chest-down on my newly-broken TV. I walk to the blinds and another egg splatters into the house. I came to learn that one man in the back, Foam Sword Guy, uses binoculars to spot any movement behind the shades and gives the signal when I’m on the move. Proudly serving as a modern-day artillery commander in this internet superfan field unit on the front lines.
I pull back my shades to find the usual crowd outside. Only, today’s Saturday, so it’s even bigger than the workday crew. A hundred, maybe a pinch more, heavily-costumed United fans gather on the edge of my lawn.
When this all started, one of the things that surprised me most wasn’t that I’d be forced to retreat inside of my home. I essentially knew the second that soup carton slipped from my hands that my life was over. I just had expected the media to be the ones that camped out the hardest. And of course, they did. But I was stunned at how quickly my address showed up online for everyone else. The fans beat the media to my door by a solid two hours. And they sure have stayed longer, too.
The first one to arrive couldn’t even say anything. He just began to shake and cry. I hugged him and called him a ride because he had walked here. He came back to the crowd a few days later and he’s since regained his voice.
I begin scanning the cul-de-sac for some of my greatest admirers. Monster Lady is front and center, like always. She’s one of the campers. The overnighters. Dressed in her usual Amazonia getup, she’s pretending like it doesn’t hurt as she accidentally slaps her face with her whip, performing the character’s signature taunt before the crowd. That stopped making me laugh a few weeks back, so I start looking for the new additions, the weekenders. The ones who presumably just had to make it through their workweek before they could get down to their new favorite hobby.
One of this week’s new additions is impossible to miss. That’s because he’s at least fifteen feet tall. Walking through the crowd, robotically, atop stilts is the United’s nemesis. I can’t remember his name. But I believe he’s a robot or an alien or a god or a robot alien god. I think he’s a robot alien god. He’s tall and looks like the bad guys in all of these movies. Slick, shiny red armor encases him all the way up to a pointy metal mask. I can’t say if I’m more impressed with his ability to walk on stilts or the fact that he must have had to rent a truck to haul all of this gear out here for the day.
He begins working his way through the crowd to a chorus of cheers. They part and let him through. He wobbles and stabilizes himself on the post my mailbox used to sit atop. He raises his arms and the crowd goes silent. His huge metal mouth begins to slowly open. He then points one arm towards my window. Right at me. A light begins to turn on inside of his mouth. It’s bright blue.
But as the light begins to grow in strength, it starts to fizzle and strobe before dying completely. He lowers his stiff arm from my two-bedroom home and then uses it to push a frail man that’s been following him. The frail man holds a backpack of cables and cords attached to the robot alien god. The frail man frantically unplugs his connections and plugs them back in.
The blue light turns back on. This time, it stays on. No brighter than your neighbor’s third most aggressive Christmas decoration, the light shoots from the robot alien god’s mouth to my window. The crowd goes nuts. Monster Lady most of all.
I guess in this, the ninth United movie for these folks, they’ve teamed up with their most-hated foe to battle a force far more diabolical and evil than robot alien god: Dave from register number eleven. I close the blinds and turn back to my living room. The blue light doesn’t make it through the shades.
***
I don’t know why I picked up Eaglestar’s hot soup with both hands, outstretched like a boy beggar in fictional portrayals of 19th century England. But I did. That was mistake number one. Mistake number two was number two. I wouldn’t say I was starstruck, but I still had the usual nerves of being around such an important person and those went straight to my bowels. I was off-balance. Shifting around in that little dance you do when the door downstairs is being kicked in. I can still feel the plastic bending in around my hands when I squeezed too tight. Worse even, I can hear the crinkling it made just before the top blew.
The round plastic lid bailed out from what was to follow like that one friend who always knew exactly when to leave an underage drinking party. Dipping just before the cops show. A superpower-like prescience that has no uses beyond adolescence. The lid was already parked in its parents’ carport by the time the boiling soup busted in with excessive force.
People like to say these kinds of things happen in slow motion. That’s bullshit. Life has never gone from zero to sixty fucking thousand for me like this. That soup goddamn jumped out of the container. It grew hands and grabbed Harley’s face and neck with purpose. Malice. Like he had fucked its soup-wife. I can’t be convinced otherwise.
It didn’t help that my fumbling hands just made it propel even further with a last-second grasp to maintain control. A squeeze that shot the broccoli-tinted lava into his face with even more force than it needed to get the job done.
I wish it all happened in slow motion. Like a scene from a United movie with Timedancer. Where everything stops around him so he can move about freely. I’d have watched the hot soup slowly heat-seek to Eaglestar’s face like an alien lifeform beelining to its host as I got the fuck out of there. I’d have already shit in the manager’s bathroom and taken a rotisserie chicken on my way to the car before it even hit if things like this happened in slow motion.
Here’s the thing, they don’t. Everything that happened next was one big awful flipbook. In a flash, Eaglestar was screaming, fans were trying to help him pick up the skin off of the floor, he was crying, I was crying, I was in handcuffs, and then I was here on month two trapped inside of my house without my wife and kids. That was it. It was that fast.
***
Making my way through my afternoon rounds on the internet is yielding my usual results. The Liam Harley story has dropped from the front page of most traditional news sources by now, but that’s not where it matters. The people outside congregate in far more… focused… corners of the internet. But even still, I make an appearance in the standard places. At the bottom of this article about a failed attempt to save the last known colony of bees in Florida, I’m front and center. In the comments section. Still the top meme and top comment on anything with the option to do so. DAVE REYNOLDS DISFIGURED EAGLESTAR, NEVER FORGET. UNITED MOVE AS ONE!
I close out the article about the doomed bees and move to my clogged email inbox. I try to spot anything from my lawyer sandwiched between the hate mail. This new sea of digital death threats is almost a welcomed change to the tumbleweeds of unanswered job listings that used to roll through this thing.
When I do finally locate the message from my lawyer, he has nothing new to share. The same thing as always, differently wrapped. “Stay put.” “Hang in there.” “They’ve got legal rights to be out there for now.” “We’re talking to Earth Foods about your severance package.” “Harley’s people are coming for absolutely everything you (editor’s note: don’t) have.” “I’ll be out all next week on vacation to Italy, so I’m forwarding your emails to my assistant until I return.”
I reply to his email, “Thanks,” and back out. I hover over the subject lines of pure visceral hatred flowing in at real-time from all over the world. I shouldn’t click. This never leads to anything productive. They’re all more or less the same. I’m not going to click this time. No chance.
I click on the subject line, “You’ll Pay For This… FUCK NUT!”
A good fifty percent of the messages I get are death threats, that’s nothing new. But I haven’t even read the phrase Fuck Nut before, so this guy got me.
This one reads,
Hello David,
Right away, I’m disturbed. Anyone that uses “Hello” in favor of “Hey” or even “Hi” has the capacity to kill. It continues,
These are not comic book characters to us. These are not movie characters to us. These are family members. And you don’t fuck with family.
Pretty standard so far.
Eaglestar was more than the leader of The United… he was our North Star.
I always kind of felt like a black hole to those around me, but apparently, I’m turning into a literal one these days.
I’ve seen your face. You’re fucking hideous. Liam Harley was gorgeous. He was perfect. Hot soup to your mug may be an improvement.
I reach onto the coffee table and grab my phone. I open up the selfie camera and take a look. I quickly lock my phone and go back to the email.
You’ll feel the pain that every one of us in The Unitedverse is sharing.
Fantastic.
I’ll see you soon, David.
***
Stepping outside for my daily lunch delivery is always the biggest adventure of my day. I take a deep breath and grab the front doorknob. The Power Stones immediately begin flying in. The Power Stones are something that the United have that gives them… more power. The Power Stones, as I’ve come to find out are the lifeblood of every one of the United. The Power Stones are the lynchpin of everything in The Unitedverse. The Power Stones that my admirers are throwing are eggs that have been painted neon colors.
They all miss. They have always missed.
I nod at the deputy stuck with guard duty today. It’s Ricky.
“Big crowd today, huh?” I say.
Ricky just nods. He’s pretty young. The youngest on the shitty detail of guarding me through this ordeal. I can only assume he’s a United fan. I can only assume that because the pickup truck he drives to his shift has a Destroyer sticker covering the back windshield. The Destroyer is the mercenary badass the United are sometimes forced to work with.
Ricky’s the mercenary badass guarding the front door of a cashier’s rental home from a mob with questionable egg-throwing accuracy. Ricky the Destroyer nods dismissively at me as I walk my food back inside.
***
My delivery burrito is dog shit. I hope. I’m going to go with dog shit so I don’t vomit. This happens fifty percent of the time. Maybe more lately. I’ll not even guess how many of my deliveries have undergone the more discreet spitting or pube-topping treatment.
As I wrap the burrito bag in another bag and toss it from my kitchen window to the trash piling up outside, I have to admire the dedication. Those burritos seem combustible enough with the usual fixings inside of them, I have no clue how they tucked the dogshit in there so nicely. They even included the guac I paid extra for.
***
The tray inside the microwave lightly bangs as it spins slightly off the tracks while my canned soup is being prepared for dinner. My appetite has returned after my attempt at lunch. I zone out staring at the microwave countdown. The big questions in life always hit on an empty stomach. I wonder if I could kill a home intruder with the jagged lid of a soup can before I start to drift on why the fuck they had to choose Archibald for filming this thing anyway?
The logical answer is the massive tax breaks the state gave to bring more film productions here. The answer I’ve come to form in my head is because the aliens running the simulation drunkenly filled in Archibald for “town name” and idiot cashier for “person who’s life gets ruined” into their forms.
The beeping of the microwave zaps me out of my deep thinking. Or maybe it was the Power Stone that smashed into my bird feeder on the windowsill at the same time. I grab the hot soup between two oven mitts and march it towards the table.
***
The summer air is still thick and damp up on my roof at night. Every once in a while I like to climb up here. Sneak out my bathroom window and up to the backside of the roof, away from the crowd. Before this happened, we couldn’t even spend ten minutes out here before surrendering to the army of mosquitos pouring from the forest out back. Now I’m happy to scratch away in bed if it bought me an hour out of the house.
I squint at the lone star or planet visible in the sky above, trying to remember the last time I could even see a star from here. But then I remember the headline of the article above the one about the dead bees. “OuterZ’s First Ultrafast Internet Satellite for Will Be Visible In the Sky Tonight.”
The insects might by chirping in the woods, but I would never know. The crowd is having a United marathon on their theater-grade speakers out front. A mosquito lands on my neck and I give it a slap. My palm returns covered in blood.
I push the mosquito around with my pointer finger for a second before I wipe it away on my shorts. The sound of the movie gives way to the broken trumpet of another mosquito twirling into my ear. It sticks the landing and leaves me with the United once more.
***
The exhaled smoke from my bowl dances between my legs. I try to aim my exhaust as far down towards the roof as possible. I learned the hard way about not sending up any signals to the crowd a few weeks ago. They may not be great at egg-throwing, but whoever’s manning the piss balloon slingshot was on that day.
Just one hit tonight. Another lesson I learned the hard way. My day is already an anxiety death march, being stupid fucking stoned on top of that was a nightmare. I tuck my piece back into my pocket and slip over onto my stomach. In a slow army crawl, I pull myself to the crest of the rooftop for a quick look.
Honestly, it looks pretty fun. The crowd is full of smiling faces. Not dissimilar from a music festival, I guess. Kindred spirits in their element doing what they love. Together. I zone out for a second and watch them. My stoned ass can’t help but be envious. They must be having so much fun. Giving that guy the business.
A sharp zap on my neck reminds me that I’m that guy and that these mosquitos have their own gathering going on. I flail and slap at my neck again. I kill the mosquito and fuck up at the same time. They saw me. The crowd’s attention spins to my house. I scramble to get back to the safer side of the roof as the movie behind me stops. They’re just shouting once more. I start inching my way down the coarse rooftop towards my window. Before I can reach the exit, I find out that the piss balloon commander is back on duty once again.
***
I wake up in the middle of the night to a masked man standing in my darkened doorway. My bedroom’s only lighting comes from the dull glow emitting from the floodlights illuminating the new effigy the crowd has made in my honor outside. I believe they were ripping off my left testicle tonight.
But inside, I’ve got both balls and a man in my doorway. There’s just barely enough light to tell that he’s holding something in his hand and pointing it towards me.
“Alright, man… just take it easy.” I begin as I try to rise up more in my bed.
He takes a step towards me. I slink back down in my bed. When I pictured someone finally slipping through security to get to me, I always figured I’d be more scared. I’m not trying to say that I’m feeling like some big tough guy in this moment, I just can’t understand why I’m not at least shaking.
“Can we just talk through whatever it is you’re here for?” I ask.
He shakes his head, no. I squint and try to make out more details on the masked man. Most importantly, I try to figure out what’s in his hand. I’m not a big gun guy, but I can’t write it off as a pistol by any means.
He begins slowly walking my way.
You know what? That’s starting to look a lot like a pistol, actually.
“Okay, hold up. Just hold up. You really don’t need to do this.” I plead, my numbness from before wearing off as my mind has completely turned the fuzzy, darkened thing into his hand from a curious object into a full-blown super revolver with teeth.
I put my hands in front of my face as he continues moving silently towards me, “Don’t fucking shoot me, dude! I didn’t mean to burn him!” I say as I peer through my hands to find he’s come to stop at the foot of my bed. He lowers the object in my direction.
I close my eyes.
No life flashes before them. No snapshots of my family. Of the nicer times. I don’t get whipped through a slideshow of the top ten slices of pizza I’ve had in my time on this planet. None of the good shit. I just sit there and try to picture anything at all and I go purely blank.
A bright light shines. It takes me a moment to realize that if this were a muzzle flash, I’d probably already be eating a bottom ten slice of pizza with the devil. I put down my hands to find that the masked intruder’s just a costumed man dressed as the United’s gadget expert, Eureka. More importantly, I find that the dark toothy hell gun was just his phone. And its flash is blinding me as he begins to record a video.
He steps to within three feet of me, saying, “For Eaglestar! United move as one!”
He fumbles with a satchel draped around his hip before he pulls out a couple of Power Stones. He loads back and throws the first. It misses.
“Take another, FUCK NUT!” He says as he throws the second Power Stone, this one missing by an even larger margin.
He spins and runs towards the door. As he’s about to pass through the doorway, his cape catches the edge of my dresser. His head rips backward and bashes off the corner of the dresser as he smashes to the ground.
“Oh SHIT. You alright?” I ask, rising from my bed.
As I approach, the man comes to. He pats his hands around on the dark floor for his mask, but it’s back with the dresser now. Blood is already streaming from his wound. He rises to his feet and puts his hands over the cut. He’s about to run again when he notices the phone on the floor. He reaches a bloody hand down to pick it up and bolts down the living room stairs.
I listen to the front door slam to a chorus of muffled cheers. While the crowd grows louder outside, I turn back to my bed. My twelve-year-old cat, Rufus, sits shell-shocked on my pillow, covered in egg yolk.
***
The next afternoon, I’m back doing my usual rounds online. I’m in the thumbnail of the top video on TooReel. This is hardly new, but this video’s from inside my home. From last night. I grab Rufus and a comb to begin scraping the remaining egg from his fur and look at the title, “I Totally Nailed Dave Reynolds’ cat with a perfect Power Stone throw during midnight raid.” It already has fifty million views.
I make it 50,000,001.
