Murray Hill || A Superhuman Tale - 1

Chapter Twelve

Rhonda was in high school in 1991. The sensation of horror in that year, the feeling that the world was coming to an end, had been real and palpable. She'd never doubted the existence of those with Gifts. Who could, who had lived in the City then? But the fact she was living with such a person, deeply in love with him, in fact, was still sinking in. Her long tête-à-tête about it with Tommy had begun nearly three weeks earlier in the same bed in which she now lay.

She settled back and listened. There was no sound of her man.

As long as Rhonda had been on night shift, she'd been a bi-phase sleeper. She usually would be in bed by 7:30 in the morning, sleep until noon or a little after, and then, after puttering around the house for an hour or three, would grab another nap before heading back to work in the evening. That time between her first and second sleep was her "me" time, the only time in her otherwise hectic day that was totally hers. It was a great schedule.

She checked the clock: 12:34. My peak of power. She pondered getting up, but realized she wasn't yet hungry enough. The world would spin on if she lounged abed for another half an hour. Stretching out, Rhonda scratched her butt and thought.

***

Those three weeks gone, she had lain in the self-same spot, her feet propped up on Tommy's belly, where he lay naked at the foot of the bed. They'd spent part of the day rolling about in the sheets, the way grownups sometimes did, and she had felt happy and satisfied.

"So, I'm not saying you're fugly or anything," she began, "but what is it with you and women?"

Those words were the first volley in a long conversation that still was taking place between them, one that she struggled to understand and to process.

Tommy promised that he would make clear the "woman thing" in short order, but pleaded Rhonda's patience. His story, he claimed, was long and complicated, and it would require a running start to address such a fine detail.

So, he started his long and winding tale.

The beginning of Tommy's story was the hardest for her to absorb—and it remained the most difficult for her to credit. On its face, it simply was unbelievable.

"Most people like me," he said, "live a normal span of years. And most all of us are born with a single Gift—or, at the very most, a related set of Gifts. My Gift, my first Gift, wasn't superhuman strength or exceptional speed. It was great longevity. It was only through time and great luck that I learned how to do other things."

He went on to explain that he was born a very long time ago. At first, he avoided saying precisely how long, arguing that he didn't know his precise age—it was the one time that she thought he might have been beating around the bush—but he ultimately revealed his birth to have occurred sometime before the invention of the written word.

How long before? He couldn't say. But she'd promised to keep an open mind, and, despite her robust skepticism, she decided neither to accept nor reject his claim. It was easier merely to hold onto it while attempting to grasp the rest of his story.

The next morsels, though, were no less hard to swallow.

When he was young, he'd possessed of no special abilities. He always had been bigger, stronger, and more aggressive than the other lads, but nothing he did as a boy, or later as a young man, could have been called extraordinary or superhuman.

Then, about the time he'd reached his early adult years, he simply had stopped aging. That fact hadn't been readily apparent, but close family members eventually had discerned his difference. He soon after left his tribal group.