COHESION

By Wesley Overhults

Lower East Side, Manhattan

He spun the chamber of the revolver just like he always did and then clicked the chamber back into place.  Christopher Colchiss kissed the barrel of the gun before putting it to his temple and bracing himself for the end.  He pulled the trigger and heard the painful click that meant he would have to live another day of his wretched existence.

“I really hate you,” he muttered to the revolver, sighing deeply and putting it back in the shoebox under his bed.

Chris finished putting on his clothes and then slung his backpack over his shoulder, resigned to his fate as if he was a condemned man about to face his execution.  It was his normal routine, the one he had cultivated for God only knew how long.  Every day, he prayed that it would be his last and so far there was no relief for this pain.  Life wasn’t so pretty for Chris.  Every day was a struggle to survive, a struggle he wanted nothing more than to lose so he could be free of everything.

“Your mother left again,” said Chris’s father as he sat at the kitchen table, a bottle of alcohol in hand.

“Yeah, I got that,” said Chris as he remembered the shouting match his parents had engaged in the previous night.

Chris’s father was as notoriously abusive as he was perpetually drunk, the two conditions feeding off one another in a symbiotic relationship.  It was only partly the reason why Chris constantly thought of taking his own life.  Listening to his parents fight every night had become as much a routine for him as playing his little game when it all got to him.  The insults his parents hurled at each other blurred into the constant hum of soul-crushing noise that he had to block out every day.

“Might be a little late picking you up,” murmured Chris’s father.

“Yeah, whatever,” replied Chris as he walked out of the house and headed for the corner to catch the bus.  He slipped the headphones of his iPod into his ears and let the heavy metal music drown out the chatter of the world around him.

The bus lurched to a stop at the corner and opened its doors to him.  He enjoyed imagining that the bus was some giant animal and that when he stepped inside it, he was being devoured by it.  It made sense in that weird, warped way that everything else made sense to him.  It wasn’t as if he was himself when he was at school anyway, so it was almost like the bus chewed him up and spat out what was left.  There was nothing left though and there hadn’t been for a long time. Chris’s life at home was only partly the reason he wanted to kill himself.  School was the other part, the two circles of hell combining and trapping him in an existence that was more imprisoning than promising.

Chris sat in the back of the bus, making sure he was the only one in the seat because he preferred his space.  The music from his iPod made the ride go quicker, made it so he could lose himself in a world that was easier to live in than the material one.  He had almost nodded off when the bus made an unfamiliar stop and someone equally unfamiliar got on.  Chris watched the Asian girl make her way down the aisle and his eyes instantly lowered.  Making eye contact only put him in someone else’s crosshairs, a fact he had learned the hard way more than once.  He muttered a curse when he noticed she stopped at his seat and pulled one of his headphones out of his ear.

“Do you care if I sit here?” asked the girl.

“Whatever,” answered Chris with a shrug of indifference before putting the headphone back in his ear and returning to the world only he inhabited.

“What’s your name?” asked the girl and she had to nudge him to get him to return to reality.

“Chris,” he replied.

“Mine’s Stephanie,” said the girl though he hadn’t even asked for her name.

Chris walked the halls like he was about to face a firing squad.  In fact, facing a firing squad was infinitely more preferable to lasting a day in high school.  It didn’t help that his locker was in the popular section.  He figured that God had a sick sense of humor by putting his locker in the midst of those occupied by the popular kids.  It did give him one small sense of satisfaction though.  Katherine Hightower was easily the most popular girl in school.  As head of the cheerleading squad, she commanded awe and jealousy just by stepping into any room.  Most girls of that age and stature were snotty, stuck-up bitches but Katherine was different.  She was perhaps the only girl in the entire school that was actually pleasant towards Chris for the entire ten seconds they interacted with one another every day.  For Chris it was very . . . refreshing.

“So jealous of you,” said one of the other cheerleaders.  “That guy just keeps coming back to you, Kat.”

Chris sighed as he fiddled with the combination to his locker.  The guy in question was Billy Cunningham, the all-star of the school’s football team.  It made sense that he and Katherine would be a couple but they weren’t exactly the happiest couple.  Chris could see the signs, the telltale signals that Katherine was being abused.  It was easy considering he had grown up seeing all of it with his parents.

“Yeah, he’s really sweet,” agreed Katherine, trying to hide her apprehension at the fact that she had “taken back” her boyfriend.  “Hey, Chris.”

“Katherine,” replied Chris, looking at her only a second before getting his textbook out of his locker and then closing the door.

“I told you that you can call me ‘Kat’,” reminded Katherine.

“Sorry,” apologized Chris.

“Move, Colchiss,” ordered Billy Cunningham as he put himself between Chris and Katherine.  “I gotta talk to my girl.”

“Billy, we were talking,” said Katherine.

“What, to him?” inquired Billy as he glared at Chris.  “You tryin’ to spit game at my girl, Colchiss.”

“What would you do if I was?” asked Chris, the self-deprecating courage of a man with nothing to lose rising up in the pit of his stomach.

“I’d beat the shit out of you,” answered Billy simply.  “I wouldn’t quit until you were nothing but a stain on the bottom of my shoe and then I’d wipe you off on the floor.”

“Promises, promises,” retorted Chris before walking away.  “See you later, Kat.”

He could feel Billy’s rage burning even as he walked away.  Chris wished that eventually Billy would make good on his usual threats.  It wasn’t as if he had anything else to live for.  The little half-smiles that Katherine gave him every day weren’t enough anymore.  Nothing was enough anymore.  It was like he had this hunger inside him and nothing would ever satisfy him.  Getting mad was too much effort though.  Chris let his eyes flick to the right and noticed that the new girl from the bus was staring at him.  He shrugged it off though.  If she wanted to stare at him, it was her problem.  It wasn’t as if he was something worth paying attention to anyway.

She was back by dinnertime just like always.  It was getting boring watching his mother come crawling back to his father over and over again.  He was drunk again, of course, out at some bar after work as usual.  His mother was in the kitchen fixing dinner and he was in his room trying to do his homework.  The music helped drown everything out and yet at the same time it amplified the pain.  Chris needed the pain, needed it to help him remember how to feel things.  The pain dulled the cloud of numbness that covered his body.  The pain made things real in a world that was slowly losing its reality.  He wondered most of the time if his life was just a bad dream, wondered if he could just close his eyes and wake up in some other life.  That probably would have been the only thing that would make him happy.

“I said you’re a worthless bitch!”

His father’s declaration broke through the haze that Chris had surrounded his mind with, reality intruding on happy fantasy.  It wasn’t anything he hadn’t heard his father say before.  It was normal now, so painfully average that he didn’t even bat an eye at it.  The shouting was getting louder though and it was keeping him from concentrating.  Chris abandoned his textbooks and pulled the shoebox out from under his bed.  He opened it up and stared at the revolver, picking it up and cradling it in his hands.  He had never played his game twice in the same day, never dared to push his luck that far.  The shouting continued and it pounded inside his head.  He grinned at the gun and then spun the chamber before locking it into place.  He kissed the barrel for luck and then put it to his temple.  One bullet was all he needed to stop the nightmare.  Chris Colchiss closed his eyes and pulled the trigger, trying desperately to wake himself up.  Only the faint click of an empty chamber answered his prayers.

“Stupid piece of shit,” he muttered to himself as he checked to see that it was loaded, which it was.

It was then that something broke inside his mind.  He was tired, so damn tired of listening to his parents and their idiotic squabbling.  He was tired of watching his father beat his mother and then drink away whatever guilt he still might have felt.  The searing anger broke through the numbness as Chris headed into the kitchen.  It was then that he realized he should’ve paid more attention to what was going on.

“Swear to Christ Almighty I’ll do it,” warned Chris’s father as he had the kitchen knife pressed dangerously close to his wife’s throat.

“Get away from her!” ordered Chris as he confronted his father.  He clutched his father’s arm and wrenched the knife from his grasp, letting it clatter across the floor.

His father turned and backhanded Chris across the face, sending him to the floor.  Chris quickly got to his feet but he could tell that his father was in such a drunken rage that he wouldn’t be denied in his insane quest to slaughter the woman he claimed to love.  Chris hit him, punched him square in the jaw with a blow that managed to draw a little blood.

“Yer just as worthless as her,” said Chris’s father as he hit Chris in retaliation.

Chris fell backwards and barely avoided hitting his head on the tile floor of the kitchen.  He rubbed his jaw and felt his own blood wet his fingertips.  He stared at that blood on his fingers, marveling that it had come from his own body.  He could feel the copper taste of it on his lips and that was when something inside him really began to change.  It wasn’t like before with the rage breaking through the clouds.  This was something else entirely.  He could feel something he never felt before: power.  He knew about rage but he had never felt the power to accompany that rage, not like this.  Chris hated his parents, hated them so severely that on some brief occasions he thought about turning that revolver on them instead of himself.  Now it seemed he had a far more powerful weapon in his personal arsenal than just a mere gun.

“I said get away from her,” repeated Chris and this time it wasn’t a shout but rather a low, sinister tone of a man who had nothing to lose and had just discovered the means of gaining everything.

Chris’s father turned his attention from his wife curled up in a ball against the cupboards and stared at his son.  Chris pushed whatever power was inside of him to the forefront of his mind and then hurled it at his father along with all his rage towards the man who had spawned him.  He could see it now, see what this power could really do.  Bit by bit, molecule by molecule even, his father was melting.  It was like watching some bad alien invasion movie only this wasn’t just some makeup and special effects.  This was real and it felt really good.  It felt better than anything and Chris Colchiss never wanted it to stop.  He watched his father, a once mighty and powerful man who commanded fear from him and his mother, dissolve into nothing but an ugly puddle on the kitchen floor.  The scream of agony stuck in the man’s throat and soon that scream was nothing but a gurgling noise, the kind a garbage disposal made when you tossed food into it while it was running.

“What did you do?” asked his mother in shock.  “What did you do with my husband?”

“What you never could,” retorted Chris, his wrath not sated in the least.  “You think I’m mad at just him, Mom?  Oh no, I’ve got plenty of anger left for you too. You were the one who wasn’t strong enough to stay gone.  You were the one who kept coming back.  You’re the one who’s weak and I’m tired of both of you.”

Chris could see his mother as she scrambled like a woman possessed for the knife that his father dropped.  She brought it towards him with the intent to stab him but it was a puddle in her hands by the time it reached him.  He didn’t stop with just the knife though.  He looked into his mother’s eyes as she melted away into the same puddle as his father and drank in her agony.  He watched the different colors of that puddle swirl in circles, the pinks, reds, and whites mixing with the greens and browns.  It looked like someone had vomited all over the floor and the stench it created would have made a normal person do just that.  Chris was far from normal now.  He finally had what he always wanted: power.  He could change things in his life, make his life everything he always wanted.  If anyone got in his way, he would simply melt them just as he had done to his miserable parents.  They didn’t deserve to live anyway.  He was the one who deserved to live and now he finally understood that.  Now it all made sense in that wonderfully weird and warped way.  Now he could finally rescue Katherine Hightower from that awful boyfriend of hers and they could be together.  Power was what she was attracted to and now he had way more of it than Billy Cunningham.

The bright lights of the football stadium greeted Chris Colchiss as he stepped inside.  He needed to stop calling himself that.  He was so much more than that now and he needed a new name to reflect that change.  He would dwell on that later for now there was more pressing concerns.  He could see Billy Cunningham on the field, prancing around like a king holding court.  He was adorned for battle in bright garments of blue and gold and he commanded respect from the rest of his teammates, his soldiers who fought in the same battle.  Chris didn’t care about him though.  His time would come soon but he first wanted to see the fair queen Katherine.  He had seen her in her cheerleading uniform before when she wore it during class on game days but he never got the chance to savor it while in its natural element.  Many were the times he had fantasized about what was under that uniform, about seeing her in all her perfection and glory.  That was before he had power though, back when he was but a lowly commoner unfit to even stand in the presence of a queen.  Now he was something else, something darker and far more powerful.

“You’re going to thank me for this,” he muttered to himself as he saw Katherine at the front of the cheerleading squad.  “You’re going to thank me for saving your life.”

If Chris’s parents had taught him anything, it was that love was a delusion.  It was as fake and as much of a lie as everything else in the world.  Everything had a melting point, that point where it would begin to just fall apart.  Maybe Billy loved Katherine once upon a time just like maybe Chris’s parents had loved one another once upon a time too but that time was long past.  Chris was done living in worlds of fantasy now that he knew he could make his reality so much better.

“You really shouldn’t do what you’re thinking about doing.”

Chris turned in irritation to see the new girl standing next to him.  He stared at her in bewilderment and wondered just who exactly she was.  It didn’t matter though.  If she tried to get in his way then he would melt her just like he had done to his parents and just like he was going to do to Billy Cunningham.

“You don’t know how long I’ve waited for a chance to do this,” he told her.  “I’m going to turn him into a puddle, Stephanie, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.  Why do you care anyway?  Why should anyone stop me from saving Kat’s life?”

“Because you’re not going to save her life,” corrected Stephanie.  “We’ve been watching you, Chris.  We know what you did to your parents.”

“Then you should’ve been smart enough not to get in my way,” retorted Chris bitterly as he reached out to Stephanie with his newfound powers.  “You’ll make a really pretty puddle.”

Stephanie raised her hand and a flash of light hit Chris in the eyes and stopped him from melting her.  He recoiled and staggered backwards, lashing out with his powers at everything that was close to him.  Neon barely managed to get out of the range of his powers but other bystanders weren’t so lucky.  There was complete panic and chaos in the stadium as people started to melt, their molecules losing their cohesion and turning into nothing more than jelly.  Chris managed to clear his vision and marveled at his handiwork.  He was really starting to like this new power but it seemed that it hadn’t gone over very well with the crowd in the stands.  No matter, this was just the opening act.  Now it was time for all his peers to see the power of Christopher Colchiss, to marvel in abject terror at the awesome force he commanded.

“I lost him in the panic but I’m trying to find him,” said Neon into her earpiece.  “We need to lock this place down before he gets away.”

Chris wasn’t intent on getting away, not when he still had the chance to win the hand of his fair maiden.  He hurried down the steps and made his way onto the field.  He wasn’t going to let either Billy or Katherine get away from him now.  He could see them fighting against the sea of humanity to get to one another.  He could see the look of panic in Billy’s eyes and for a moment Chris thought that maybe the king actually cared about his queen.  Oh they were good at acting, good at fooling everyone into thinking that they were so much better than everyone else.  Chris wasn’t falling for it though.  It was his time now, his turn to get what he wanted.

“She’s mine now,” he snarled as he swept Katherine up into his arms and melted a large chunk of the turf in front of him, creating a swampy marsh that would slow down anybody that tried to come near him or Katherine.  “You can’t have her!”

“Shoulda just broken you when I had the chance, Colchiss,” said Billy Cunningham as he tried desperately to get to Katherine and save her.  “Probably would’ve only taken one punch too.”

“Just like you break her?” snapped Chris as he held Katherine close enough to hear her whimpering with terror.  “I know what you do to her, Billy.  I know you like to smack her around and make sure she won’t tell anybody about it.  That’s why she keeps leaving you, dumbass.  I know she’s not strong enough to save herself though and that’s why I’m going to do it for her.  Once you’re gone, she and I will finally be together.  This time, I win.  This time, I’ll be the one who scrapes you off the bottom of my shoe.”

“Chris, please,” cried Katherine.  “I know we have our problems but I love Billy, okay?”

“No, it’s not okay!” snapped Chris, watching Billy wade through the messy turf.  “That’s it, Billy.  Crawl to her, crawl like the damn dog that you are.  You were always so worthless and you knew it.  That’s why you tried so hard to make her feel like such utter shit.  I’ll treat her so much better than you, Billy.  I’ll treat her like the queen that she is.”

It was going to be perfect.  The second that Billy got even a fingertip on her, Chris was going to melt him.  It was fitting in a way, poetic almost.  Billy was always jerking Katherine away from Chris, always taunting him by having the one thing he wanted most in life.  Chris could feel it even now, could feel that rightness inside as he held Katherine in his arms.  She looked amazing in that cheerleading uniform, the material clinging to her body just enough to help her show it off. That body curved in all the right places and Chris had spent so long wishing nothing but to hold it in his arms.  He was going to savor this moment for everything it was worth because finally at long last he was going to learn what it was like to feel again.

“Billy don’t,” warned Katherine as she realized the sick intentions that Chris had for her boyfriend.

“Come closer, Billy,” jeered Chris.  “Come rescue your queen from the wicked sorcerer.  You see I’m not Chris Colchiss anymore.  I’m not the dog that you can just kick around the way you kicked her around.  I’m something so much more and I’ve thought up a new name for myself.  You can call me the Melter for the couple of seconds you still have a working throat.  I’m going to enjoy hearing you scream.”

Billy’s fingers were so tantalizingly close to Katherine and Melter watched as he managed to clutch at the hem of her skirt.  It was all the motivation he needed to focus his melting ability on the football star.  He could hear Katherine’s scream of terror ring loud and long as she watched her boyfriend melt before her very eyes.  Melter knew she would love him in time.  After all, he was the one who had rescued her from such a vile and terrible creature.

“Big mistake, kid,” warned a voice.

Melter broke himself out of his transcendent state long enough to see a very large stream of water hurtling towards him.  He instinctively shoved Katherine away from him, not wanting his prize to undergo any sort of damage.  The blast of water struck him full in the chest and propelled him across the football field.  He sputtered as he tried to get back to his feet and figure out what was going on.

“I don’t know who the hell you people are but I’ve fought way too hard to give her up now,” he said to Wipeout.  “I wonder what kind of puddle you’ll make when I melt you.”

“I’m already a puddle, you psycho,” retorted Wipeout as Melter tried to melt him and realized that it wasn’t working very well.

Melter continued to focus on Wipeout and could feel the boy’s body begin to dissolve.  Everything was going fine until there was a flash of magical energy behind him and then something hit him in the back of the head.  Finesse stood there holding the crackling staff of energy in both hands.  Melter turned around to face her and she hit him first in the knees and then jabbed him in the throat with the bo staff.  Colchiss went down coughing and one good strike to the back of his head put him down for good.

“We couldn’t contain the crowd fast enough to get here in time,” said Wipeout as he looked over to where Composite had Katherine Hightower cradled against him while she sobbed.  “This guy is one sick bastard, I’ll give him that.  Wouldn’t mind seeing you in one of those cheerleader outfits, Finesse.”

“Nice try,” retorted Finesse.  “I suppose she’ll have to settle for knowing that this jackass will be spending the rest of his life in prison and will probably get the death penalty.  I can’t say I feel especially sorry for him.”

“We can thank Detective Manheim for putting us onto Colchiss’s trail,” said Quake in the Warriors’ ears.  “He said that this kid was a time bomb waiting to go off, what with his parents’ problems and all.  The fact that the blood tests from his last physical exam showed a positive x-factor gene was just icing on the cake.  If we hadn’t have been watching him, things tonight would’ve been worse.”

“I should’ve stopped him back there though,” admitted Neon as she came over to join the Warriors who were guarding Melter’s unconscious body.  “I should’ve known not to spook him but I let things get way out of hand.”

“You acted on instinct and your instinct was what saved your life,” corrected Finesse.  “You take too much responsibility for things.  Being self-centered is a sign of great immaturity.”

“Really, you just went there?” asked Neon.  “Last time I checked, you were the most self-centered out of all of us.”

“Then I should be the one to give you that advice since I’m the most experienced,” retorted Finesse.  “I trust you enjoyed your brief stint as a normal girl again, Stephanie.  I would hate to think that you obtained nothing of note from this whole mission.

“Yeah, being a regular teenager for a single day was pretty good,” admitted Neon.  “Almost made me forget what a pleasure it is to get insulted by you every day.”

“Oh trust me, when it comes to that the pleasure is all mine,” assured Finesse before glancing at the unconscious body at her feet.  “Someone needs to clean him up off the ground.  I’m getting sick just looking at him.”

“Why me?”

Christopher Colchiss looked up from his listless stupor and saw her standing there.  He couldn’t forget how she had looked in that uniform, that look of fear in her eyes so intoxicating.  She wasn’t afraid anymore and she had no reason to be.  After all, with the special manacles he was wearing, Melter was powerless to do anything to hurt her.  He sat there in a straightjacket and waited for SHIELD to take him fully into their custody.  He would be heading to Detention where he would be fully evaluated by the psychiatrists there.  He had no doubt they would eventually give him the death penalty if he ever went to trial.  He would actually get what he wanted anyway.  He finally would be free of the burden of living another day in this wretched existence.

“That’s good, confront your attacker,” he jeered at Katherine Hightower.  “That’s what all abuse victims are supposed to do, right?”

“I was always nice to you,” said Katherine, trying stubbornly to hold back the tears.  “I thought you and I were friends, Chris.”

“Right, that’s what we were,” he said with a sneer.  “Why you?  It’s for exactly the reason you just mentioned, Kat.  You were nice to me.  You treated me like a human being and no one else ever has or ever will.  I wanted to do something nice for you in return but now I can see the truth.  You’re not worth that and you never will be.”

“Billy didn’t treat me right but that was no reason to kill him,” countered Katherine.  “There’s never a good reason for that.”

“It was every reason,” said Melter.  “You don’t know what he was doing to you, Kat.  I’ve lived with that kind of pain all my life.  My father used to beat on my mom the same way Billy did to you.  He got what he deserved in the end though and so did she.  They couldn’t hold their marriage together so I blew it apart when I melted them.  I did the same thing to Billy.  He couldn’t hold onto you so I made sure he couldn’t hold onto anything anymore, even his own molecules. You can thank me for saving your life, Kat.  I did all this for you, after all.  I would do anything for you and you should know that too.”

“I can’t believe I actually thought about asking you out after I finally ended things with Billy,” admitted Katherine, turning her back on Melter and leaving the room while he sat in his holding cell.  “Have a miserable life, Chris.  It’s what you deserve after you completely ruined mine.”

“That’s right, crawl away,” retorted Melter angrily, realizing for perhaps the first time that he was the one responsible for his own misfortune.  “You’re just like him, Kat!  You’re just like all of them and when I get out of here you’re going to be the first one that I melt.  You hear me, Kat?  I’m going to kill you when I get out of here, you worthless bitch!”

It wasn’t true, couldn’t possibly be true.  She was going to ask him out?  No, she was just playing the same game that Billy Cunningham was.  She was just dangling that hope in front of him and then snatching it away just to watch him hurt.  She was just like his simpering excuse for a mother.  There was no strength in her, no toughness, no backbone.  She would fall apart just like everyone else, would dissolve right before his eyes when he finally got the chance to make her melt.  He could wait though, could have enough strength of mind to hold everything together while he rotted away in jail.

Christopher Colchiss closed his eyes and began to enter that space that he knew so well.  It was the space he lived in where he could shut out the rest of the world.  He let his music play in his head since he didn’t have any headphones or an iPod to help him out.  It didn’t take long for his usual fantasy to form, the one that involved Katherine Hightower.  She did look amazing in that uniform but something was different about the fantasy now.  This time, Melter was interested in doing other things with her.  He watched her in his mind, watched her begin to dissolve into nothing more than a puddle of goo.  He watched her lose cohesion and he could certainly sympathize with that.

Next Issue: Everyone knows who Requiem’s father is but nobody knew anything about his mother until now.