Chapter 2
Seine Demons
Inaction Man shook his head as he relinquished Jardins des Plantes to the dark lords. He had been forced to hand over so much of Paris in the dismal year of 2013.
Walking backwards, he crossed the traffic lights and headed down the banks of the Seine. Inaction Man always took refuge near a river when he came across shape changers. Rivers are a source of life and anathema to most shape changers. In fact, he had once seen a shape changer who came too close to the river burst into flames, such is the power of running fresh water.
The smell of the water revived his spirits but made him lose concentration. The worn stone steps down to the embankment were treacherous enough when walking forward, but taken backwards, they required complete concentration. Inaction Man tumbled backwards and the nasty fall left his nose bloodied and his cheek grazed. He cursed the shape shifters and the power of his vexation acted as an invisible force field that repelled everyone in his vicinity.
The blood quickly congealed in his long and matted beard. Inaction Man took solace in the fact that the red added another colour to his grey and black beard, thereby adding to its rainbow power. Inaction Man rubbed the blood into his superbeard [sic] and ignored the pain.
His smile fell and he started to scratch the beard and furrough his brow when he remembered two shape changers who were not allergic to water. They wore the shape of common street thugs and beat him mercilessly in the dead of night under a lonely bridge, Le Petit Pont. As they were swept away by the joy of violence, and all shape changers are addicted to violence, their human mask slipped and they showed their true form – purple pigs with black tusks and snouts covered in wriggling worms. Inaction Man remembered the punches of their trotters and their squealing most of all.
Other memories crowded in. Shape changers were not the worst of the enemies Inaction Man had to face. The forces of evil was enlisting darker and darker forms. Archaic, primordial beings like spectres, goblins and demons had all fought with Inaction Man. In this age of light and reason, they clung to the shadows, waiting for the coming of the great darkness, when they would emerge to claim dominion. For now, they wore a cloak of invisibility but Inaction Man could see them.
They would appear from behind trees (always dead or dying trees) and drag themselves forward, using their bat-like wings to claw themselves nearer to him. Few of them could walk upright, squashed as they were between Hell and Earth, so they crawled rather than walked. They could not move very quickly, being dead and therefore largely inanimate, but to compensate they used their fear fog – a greenish mist that made it difficult to move. So, when Inaction Man fought one of the undead, it was a slow motion battle.
Only last night, an hour before dawn, as Inaction Man sat on a park bench, a demon pulled itself out of a crack in the pavement. It swelled from two to three dimensions, but gravity forced it downwards and it rested on its bony knees to gain strength. Using its long curving claws, it dragged itself towards Inaction Man, scraping along the pavement and then sliding along the grass.
The green fog of fear seeped from the monster’s anus and Inaction Man froze. As it came closer it spoke, using the power of its hypnotic wave speech to further immobilise Inaction Man.
“Come with me to the haunted tree. Let my wings embrace thee. Feel the eternal hug of death.”
Inaction Man managed to stand but could not walk away. He would have to fight where he stood.
The creature mustered all its strength and stood upright to face Inaction Man. It lifted one of its claw and prepared to lunge it into Inaction Man’s heart.
Our hero opened his belt and dropped his trousers. Pulling down his stained underpants, he unleashed his urine weaponry and took careful aim. Demons are allergic to superhero urine, but Inaction Man wasn’t sure that he had a sufficient supply at hand. He had to wait until the demon was almost upon him. At the very last moment, he pointed his mighty hose of virtue in the direction of the spectre.
His aim was true and a stream of uric acid burnt through the demon’s torso. Hatred seeped from his yellow bloodshot eyes, even in death and dissolution. The demon fell to earth and seeped into a drain with a malevolent hiss.
Inaction Man remembered his victory and patted the front of his trousers and thanked his kidneys for his urine firewall. A more open display of affection towards his member was unwise, especially here, on the banks of the Seine, with so many bystanders in view.
Every silver lining has a cloud and every victory is just a prelude to defeat. Inaction Man frowned and contemplated what might happen if the demons approached him while he slept. To guard against this eventuality, Inaction Man tried to sleep during the day when the sun’s radiation prevented the underworld creatures from shifting dimensions. Our hero patrolled the streets at night, when demons prowled, even watchful, ever suspicious of trees, and always with a ready supply of urine at hand in case of attack. He forced himself to imbibe large quantities of beer to maintain a full bladder.
The previous night’s attack had convinced him of the need to carry emergency supplies with him. He purloined a baby’s bottle from a sleeping infant and a water pistol from a distracted child, so that if he should be ambushed by a squad of demons, he would have a sufficient supply of superhero uric acid.
Inaction Man loaded his weapons, behind a bush, and continued ambling along the river, losing himself in thoughts of battles won and battles lost. He looked up and realised that he was under a bridge near Notre Dame. His superpower of not noticing things, of blanking out the external world, had brought him here, as it had brought him to so many other places, with a hidden purpose and with no memory of how he had come to be here.
The church bells tolled and Inaction Man placed his superpowers of perception into fifth gear. The first thing he noticed was that day had changed to night. The dead of night, the witching hour. This was when the forces of darkness are at their most powerful. He drank another beer to help him concentrate and keep him alert and to help him see through the fog.
A figure emerged through the brume. From a distance it looked human, but as it got nearer, the shuffling gait told Inaction Man that something was awry.
Inaction Man stood perfectly still and waited for evil to make its move. He fought the fear rising inside him and took it as a sign that a netherworld agent was closing in.
The defender of the Earth put his hand in his trouser pocket and clasped his manhood, ready at a moment’s notice to unleash his weapon should the need arise. He had to be careful though. There had been several regrettable incidents recently in which Inaction Man had unleashed his urine hose of demon death too soon. Many had taken great offense at being exposed to it, and none were reassured by Inaction Man’s explanation that he had mistaken their poor posture for the attack of a black sun spectre.
The creature approached and stopped right in front of him. She was a changeling, Inaction Man surmised, using his superpower of intuition. Her clothes were filthy and she smelled rank. She removed the hood of her tracksuit and met his eyes. She was shaking and jittery, having already lost that human poise and grace that marks the living from the dead.
It is the eyes of the dead that mark them out most, Inaction Man knew, even when they walk among us. There is a glazed and unfeeling aspect to them; a joylessness in these eyes that cannot love. Her skin showed the decay of death, with a most unnatural plasticity. Trapped as she was between life and death, between light and darkness, there was an all pervasive greyness about her.
Her mouth opened and Inaction Man noticed that the decay had spread to her teeth, which were rotten and barely held in place by purple gums. He also saw how gaunt she was. So thin, in fact, that her skin seemed to be tied around her bones.
This changeling, Inaction Man judged from her eyes, had little human left in her. The process had gone too far and could not be reversed. However, she was not yet fully undead, so his urine would be powerless against her. He needed to be extra vigilant.
It wa
s the changeling who spoke first, with a raspy and broken voice that knew only pain and suffering.
“Avez vous un pièce, monsieur?”
She held out the palm of her hand and Inaction Man noticed the marks running down the veins of her porcelain wrist. He knew these were not the tracks of a drug addict. These marks had been made by the tiny incisors of a vampire rat – a blood sucking creature of darkness, a predator that grew ever more common in the sewers of Paris.
He looked down at the cobblestones, making sure not to look at her face. To avoid a changeling hypnosis one must avoid dead-eye contact. He also kept an ear out for vampire rats which might be lurking in their hundreds in the sewers under his feet.
He spoke to her with a false air of confidence, masking a quiver in his voice by bellowing.
“I name you, changeling. I am Inaction Man, knower of many things.”
“Tu me dis quoi!?”
Suddenly the changeling’s demeanour altered. She smiled slyly and moved closer to Inaction Man.
Rather than transcribe the young lady’s words in guttural French, I shall henceforth render them in English.
“Hey, you’re off your head, aren’t you? What’re you on, man? Got some to spare? I really need a hit. I’m sick, man. Real sick.”
Inaction Man heard rustling in the bushes. Fearful of a sewer rat ambush, he stuffed his right hand into his trouser pocket and grabbed his urine hose, ready to blast the vampire rodents with an acid jet if they should try to swarm him.
The girl misunderstood his behaviour entirely.
“You feelin’ frisky, dood? I’ll do anything you want, man. I’m desperate. Anything you want, man.”
She reached out and stroked Inaction Man’s arm. She leaned closer to him. It was so cold that Inaction Man could see the condensation of her breath. It stank of death but it told Inaction Man that she was still human enough to be invulnerable to any urine attack he might unleash on her. He would have to banish her with bombast.
“Be gone, pitiful changeling wretch! You are beyond hope, beyond the light. I can offer you no salvation.”
The changeling recognised the powers of Inaction Man and staggered off into the darkness, clutching her stomach and swallowing the night. She disappeared into it, vanished into nothingness.
It was another epic victory for Inaction Man. A victory of reason over fear, a victory of good over evil. And yet the victory brought him little solace. He felt depressed and brow-beaten as he walked along the deserted banks of the Seine. A lone figure, a tattered coat upon a stick, he hugged the river’s bank as the cold November wind fought with the water, trying to push it underground.
Every so often he could make out the rustle of vampire rats in the undergrowth, waiting for him to fall asleep, ready to pounce.
The forces of evil grew ever stronger. On this day alone, he had met two shape changers in Jardins des Plants and battled a changeling by Notre Dame. There were monsters all around him. For every one you defeated there were ten more ready to take its place. In contrast, he was alone. Earth’s only superhero, its one defender and champion.
The sun rose and Inaction Man prepared to end his nightly travails and return to the solace of sleep. He knew the day of reckoning was close at hand. He knew he must struggle even harder to prevent that day. He had to spread inaction before it was too late.
He knew what needed to be done, but he had no idea how to do it.