Shimmer : A Superhero Fantasy

Even under three layers of clothing I shivered. Northern winters were never kind, especially to people who were living rough. The days weren’t so bad, especially if you were resourceful enough to not look homeless, at least then you could find a public area with heating, but the nights were frigid and unforgiving and scarce for refuge.

I looked to Chantal. “Maybe we should try one of the shelters,” she suggested blandly. Gods, even she didn’t want to entertain the thought, but as much as the scars and living nightmares haunted her they were preferable to starving and freezing to death.

Still, I shook my head to tell her that we weren’t that desperate: or rather I wasn’t that desperate. Even when all other options had run dry the shelter was the last place I’d ever go. When you’re homeless everything you have is public property, including your body. As the most vulnerable of the vulnerable the last thing we needed was to offer ours up in a packed house of potential predators.

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Hey guys,

Yeah, I know, it’s been a while, and some of you have been worried about me which is actually very sweet of you, and I’ve been very slack in letting you all know that right now I’m perfectly fine. I feel bad for taking so long in getting back to people, but there’s a myriad of reasons for that which I’m probably going to touch on in my little ramble here.

First thing is that I was recently caught up in a natural disaster. January was not a good time to live in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia with torrential rains and an overflowing dam flooding the entire city and putting entire suburbs underwater. I am very lucky to say that I was unaffected initially, mostly because I live on top of a very tall (and painful to walk) hill, but the areas geographically beneath me were utterly destroyed. No shops, no transport, and roads blocked for days. Couple that with a loss of power and clean water for a week and it was no picnic.

Things have mostly picked up since then. Actually I really am surprised by how fast a lot of the community is bouncing back. Some places you can’t even tell had been drowned out, but there they are now. Still, recovery has been going strong for a while and it doesn’t feel totally like a valid excuse to not return to writing.

The other thing which I’ve found myself focusing on is getting healthy mentally. It’s a hard thing to talk about, but at the same time it’s a profound thing to be able to express that I am not a well woman. A few of you that have done things like add me on Facebook and the like have gotten a glimpse at some of the issues I face, but here where I archive my stories there’s not really been a forum for it to come up.

I don’t want to sell this as a sob story, because that’s how a lot of people frame it when I put it out there. It’s just the truth. It’s what I’ve been focusing on the last two/three months. Still, here it goes.

For the past three years, roughly since the beginning of my transition, I’ve been dealing with social anxiety and panic disorder. Neither are very pleasant things. Not being able to walk outside ten feet without looking over your shoulder and feeling like your heart is literally going to explode in your chest with fear is not pleasant. At one point it was so bad that I couldn’t leave the confines of my home for six months. (Amazing what you can get done with the internet handy.)

It’s a terrible way to have to live, and I’m honestly ashamed of it, especially in light of the idiots who come up and say I didn’t go anywhere or do anything because I’m just lazy or lack the determination to do something. It’s a lonely way to live, even for someone like me who is blessed with an amazing, loving partner. It also leads to depression and eventually you become convinced that you’re the lesser of other people because you can’t do things everyone else can like go and get a slurpee from the 711 just around the corner. For a while it even lead to self-harm, and for anyone who has lived through it or watched someone live through you will know that’s a pretty dark road to go down.

That’s the not so pretty story. However I’m very fortunate to say that 2011 is looking like my year. This year I’ve finally found the help I need (medication also helps, despite some of the lectures I’ve received), and I’m well on the road to recovery. I’m more active, social and balanced, have started exercising, and have even applied for a number of jobs: the first I’ll have had in years. My sense of value as a human being has risen exponentially, and unfortunately the cost of that has been footed by some of my creative endeavors.

Shimmer will be back soon. It’s my baby, after all, and I’m probably going to be writing about Glimmer Girl forever (or at least until the elusive chapter 300 which is how far I’ve got things planned. No joke.) In the meantime I ask for your patience. Feel free to hate me a little bit (gods know I get impatient with me too), but it’s for a good cause.

For those of you who stick around, thanks for letting me know you care. It means something to me that even when I’m gone you still keep coming back. It makes this all feel worth it.

In the meantime I hope you’re well, and I’ll try get something out soon. No promises when, but soon.

Thanks,

Miranda Sparks

Some of you who’ve been following for a long time might remember this. Honestly it’s one of my favorites and it’s too good not to re-post.

For everyone who celebrates Christmas have a good one. For everyone else having an awesome holiday and enjoy the cookies while they last.

* * * *

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I had to get away. Vortex wasn’t going to waste any time. If I didn’t evade his grasp then he could easily… suddenly I lost my train of thought. What was I supposed to be doing?

Something was very, very wrong. Actually a lot of things were very, very wrong. For some reason my clothes were gone, replaced by soft, white Egyptian cotton sheets: the carpet was gone too, replaced by a large bed in a wide, empty room I hardly recognized. Where was I? Could it have been… my bedroom?

“Oh my gods,” I sighed, for a moment completely oblivious to the other naked form occupying the space beside me.

He turned, rolled onto one arm and reluctantly opened a single hazy eye to greet me. “Good morning,” he moaned cheerily. He was definitely a lot happier to see me than I was to see him. Part of me wondered if I should scream or not. I didn’t think so: he didn’t seem out of place even though I couldn’t for the life of me remember his name.

“Uh… who are you again?”

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“Call it what it is,” she roared. “This is outright discrimination, and if you think we’re going to stand for it you’ve got another thing coming!”

Assistant Principal Ferguson urged her to be calm, but that was probably because he was new. Little did he realize that he’d started a war and that telling the scary woman with throbbing neck veins to cool her jets was the last thing that was going to help, not that I felt much sympathy: it was oddly satisfying to see him squirm, especially after the smug talk he’d given me when we were alone.

“Mrs. Cade,” he began again, “I can understand you’re upset,” (bull$#@%), “but there’s a specific code of conduct here at Andrew Jackson that all students are expected to adhere to. One of those expectations is to follow the basic dress code, which I am sad to say Justin is not.”

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Tanya’s story
Now:

“You’ve got to kick this guy’s ass,” she said, as if it were some kind of simple thing. I don’t know if any of you know this, but contract assassins are relentless badasses who know what they’re doing; not like me, the hostage with borrowed powers.

Shot after shot rang out, blasting KC and me into a million pieces. It should have hurt, but for some reason it didn’t. We just kept coming back time and time again like a character in a video game with infinite lives, or at least as many lives as Glimmer Girl could manage. By the sounds of things she was struggling and could barely keep us a few feet off the ground.

There was no time for shock between recoveries, not like the first few times. “Why aren’t we running?” I demanded. She was the one guiding our flight path even though we were joined and sharing powers.

“Why aren’t you shoo-“

BLAM!

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Tanya’s story
Now:

It was so unreal, like my mind had stepped out onto the street and was only watching while somebody else flailed in the grip of that monster tentacle. If it were me up there I would have been screaming for him to let me go or started crying like a kid, but instead that little voice, the one that tells you to call a cab when you’re face down drunk in the street, the one that nags about that thing you do that’s pissing off someone you care about, the one that stays completely sane when nothing else makes sense, took the reins and kept me from shaking apart. Anything after that was between Hardcastle and Glimmer Girl.

Why was this happening!? $#&% like this didn’t take place in real life, or at least so I thought. Like countless distant wars, poverty and disease heroes and villains had only ever existed on TV, then Kaira of all people opened the door and let it all come spilling out. I knew, even then in the throes of terror, that nothing was ever going to be the same because of this.

The jerk on the ground connected to the tentacle was named Aaron Hardcastle, I think. It would make perfect sense if he was. His story was that he was a contract assassin out to finish off Glimmer Girl, aka my best friend Kaira, which was why because of an earlier attempt she’d spent the better part of a half hour throwing up and trying to stay awake in the back of my banged up old beetle. Yeah, TV dramas had nothing on me.

“Don’t panic. This’ll be over soon enough,” he told me, not that it was all that comforting coming from the lips of a full-time murderer.

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Hey all,

Just a quick heads up to tell you a couple of things: First, I am not dead, lost at sea, or any other of a million things: just horribly distracted. Again, I apologize for taking too long to post anything, and will push something out once Andy and Tanya stop kicking my ass.

Secondly, we’re currently being featured by our friends at ErgoFiction, where you can also find a guest post by yours truly: Heroes vs. Gender – The Shimmer Manifesto, in which is discussed Glimmer Girl, her gender identity and place in the wider superhero mythos. I certainly hope you will find it a compelling read.

That’s all for now, Shimmerphiles. Hope to see you back here soon.

~Miranda Sparks

Okay, here’s the deal: ever have one of those experiences where everything you thought you knew about someone was turned completely upside down? That’s what’s happened to me in as many months the times my best friend came out to me: first to tell me that she wasn’t really a guy like I’d always thought, and now this!

Racing down the freeway I kept trying to steal glances of her in the mirror. She was glowing, and not in the way you might glow after having a really awesome day. No, this was more like a Christmas tree or dim mood lighting, the kind of glow that no human being without sipping a healthy dose of uranium in their chai should be able to produce.

Eyes on the road. It was hard not to look back. Her breathing was starting to get more and more shallow, even worse than it had been when I first found her curled up in the back seat. Why she picked that spot to start dying I’ll never know.

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Kraisse looked on with depraved indifference as the executioners did their work. To witness a living being suffer until death didn’t faze him: it was only a human after all, a sentient parasite of which there were billions. What did one matter against their purpose? Crell justice had to be delivered both quickly and quietly without the cosmic balance being disturbed.

The other captive prisoner disagreed entirely. Even then Ari fumbled at the wall trying to find a switch, panel or anything else he could use to break free. Such a thing was highly unlikely, however, for even an engineering savant such as himself was only as good as his tools at his disposal, namely the soft, fleshy paws imbued to him at birth. Pathetic.

Of the crell soldiers one grew frustrated with his weapon, enough so that he dared to speak out of turn. Still, he had been loyal. Kraisse could make this one allowance. “This has been going on for minutes. Why won’t this human die!?”

“Patience,” the warden declared. “This one has a high degree of regenerative ability. The usual methods will work but only if you give it time.”

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