THE WOUNDED WORLD

A Story of Mantra
Written 2006 by Aladdin

Edited (with the permission of Aladdin) by Christopher Leeson
Revised, July 19, 2020
Revised Sept. 6, 2020
Revised July 27, 2021
Revised July 31, 2021

THE LITTLE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE

When God commanded this hand to write
In the studious hours of deep midnight,
He told me that all I wrote should prove
The bane of all that on Earth I love.

William Blake

When I started these secret memoirs, I never supposed that I’d have to write a memoir like this one. What I have gone through has been frightening, mind-boggling, even on the ultra scale. I keep asking myself whether it is finally over, asking, too, if I'm not tempting fate by subjecting it to an autopsy so early. But, honestly, some part of me is still afraid that it will all come alive again, come alive like the monster so often does in a bad horror movie, even while the closing credits are scrolling.

So, fear is one reason that I have begun writing this story in haste. Another is that I am only mortal. I have barely survived this recent experience and do not want the story of it to go untold, should some accident should end my life suddenly.

#

For me, the world as I knew it was drawing to its close late Thursday afternoon, September 14, when I took my family to the Mall. The Mall is the largest shopping center inside the L.A. suburb of Canoga Park. Gus and Evie were with me. They needed a few more school supplies that hadn’t been on the list that the kids were handed on opening day.

I was new to school shopping, just as I was still new to parenthood. I won’t digress into all that, since it makes up a a portion of the earlier installments of my memoirs. Suffice to say, after a rough start, my new life had started to feel approximately natural. We were at Target and I was actually having a good time with the kids. As we picked up the needed items, I started to think that it could be even more fun to take them out Christmas shopping later in the year.

I had missed the last two Christmases in the Blake house. The first had fallen when I was seriously considering giving up the Eden Blake identity and creating a new one. That spell of madness didn’t last too long, fortunately. But shortly before the next Christmas, the Godwheel Crisis kidnapped me to an artificial world on the other side of the Galaxy. I survived it, but returned to Earth until New Year’s Eve.

Little did I know then that something behind the scenes had occurred while I was at the Godwheel, something ghastly had been set into motion. By September 14, that motion had already built up such a head of steam that it was about to slam me in the face like a runaway locomotive.

We were passing by the writing supplies in the back-to-school section of Target when Evie asked me, “Mommy, can I get some eraser tops? I chewed the rubber off my favorite pencil.”

I frowned down at the dark-haired seven-year-old. "Evie! It's not healthy to chew on some dirty old pencil eraser. Do you want to get sick?"

"It wasn't my fault!" she answered back. "The eraser kept getting into my mouth and I chewed it without thinking about it."

"Pencils can't climb into people's mouths,” I said. “People have to put them there."

"I know, Mommy," she sighed glumly.

"Knowing is important," I told her, "but what good is knowing if you don't do the right thing once you know?"

"Do you always do the right thing, Mommy?"

She had me there! "Nobody can be right all the time," I finally said. "But everybody has to do the best he can. The world would be a terrible mess if most people weren't at least trying to do their best."

While the youngster seemed to consider this bit of wisdom, I scanned the pen and pencil display and espied a packet containing ten eraser heads. I took a pack and handed it to Evie. "Will this do?"

"Oh, yeah!" she chirped. Then she let her attention stray for the umpteenth time. "Look at the ultra tablets! They didn't have them in the other store."

I glanced down and saw several stacks of writing tablets with photographs of well-known ultra heroes on their covers. They represented the crème de la crème of the most popular vigilantes. Prime's stack had only a couple left, but Warstrike's didn't seem to be moving at all well. I noted that there was a Mantra cover, too, and that made me scowl. It showed a picture that I'd never posed for. The model was wearing cheap facsimile of my armor and she was, physically, no body double for Eden Blake. Another thing I noted was that Mantra's stack was higher than Prime's. That could have been a good thing, if there had been a rush on Mantra tablets and the shelf had already been restocked. If that wasn't the case, it could have been that using a skinny model had hurt sales.

"Evie, do you really need another tablet?"

"I like the pictures. Can I have a Contrary?"

I looked askance.

"She's pretty," Evie explained.

"Isn't Mantra pretty, too?"

The Evie wrinkled her nose uncomfortably. "Oh, sure. But Mantra is pretty like a mommy. She's not hot like Contrary!"

I was amazed. "Evie Blake, how do you know what's hot and what's not at your age?"

"The big guys say Contrary is hot."

"What big guys?"

"The fourth graders!"

I crossed my arms. "Well, that wolf-pack would certainly know what they're talking about. Doesn't anyone at school think that Mantra’is hot?"

"I do!" put in Gus, now entering our aisle. "Mantra's hotter than Contrary. And she sure doesn't look like anybody's mom!"

She looks like your mom, Junior, I thought. I regretted that my daughter was gushing over Contrary on the subject of – of charisma. But I was even more embarrassed to have my son ogling my alter-ego. If he ever put Mantra’s picture on the wall as a pin-up, well, I I'm not sure what I’d do.

"She does so look like a mommy!" declared Evie to her brother.

"Ultra ladies don't become moms! I know because I read the comics."

"They could be moms, if they wanted to be!" the little girl insisted. "Even movie stars have babies!"

"The dumb ones do. Having kids is for dorks," Gus pontificated.

I picked up a Contrary tablet and handed it to Evie. I also took one of Mantra's for myself. I'm a sucker for Mantra collectibles.

"By your rules I'm a dork, too," I told Gus. "Thanks for setting me straight." I looked about. "You kids are getting loud; people are frowning our way."

"Just shove them!" declared Gus. "Why do we always have to worry about what other people think?"

I sighed. Junior was well on his way transforming into a grumpy teen.

"Because if you do wrong things people are going to dislike you," I explained. “Their opinion might be wrong, but it might also be right. So, if you get a chance to be either nice or nasty, be nice. Politeness won’t kill you and it could help you avoid some problems." He shook his head, pugnacious and unconvinced.

"Come on. We'll pay for this stuff and get something to eat at The Kids' Club before we go home."

The Club was on the Mall’s second floor. The serving line was a long one and Evie and Gus raced ahead to get in queue in front of me. Standing behind them, straining to see the menu, I funny feeling suddenly came over me. I’d felt that sensation many times before and it usually meant that I was being watched.

Shifting into my into my “on guard mode,” I peered around. There was nothing special to see. Just behind me was a short, stout man with a round face and red hair. He was staring directly at me, and he didn’t blench when my scolding eyes met his.

I sized him up as either being unusually bold for a suburban male or else exceptionally rude. I'm not especially thin-skinned about the little things, so I didn’t slug the guy. And I wouldn’t, not unless he did something stupid.

Though I feigned looking toward the front, I continued to watch him from the corner of my eye.

Ouch!

He’d moved fast and must have stuck me with something! I swung about, ready to floor him, but ---

But he wasn't there.

It surprised me because I hadn’t even taken my eyes off him, except for the half-second when the pain made me blink. So, how could a man of flesh and bone have disappeared so quickly? Something was screwy.
Worst than screwy. A strange feeling was sweeping over me.

Damn the luck! Had the creep injected me with some sort of drug? Poison, even?

To my amazement, the lunch line started moving like a sped-up film. The queue accelerated to the speed of a freight train, until everything and everyone around me started to fade into a blur. I was instantly afraid that I’d been injected with a hallucinogen.

Everything softened into a blur. I tried to see by an exercise of will, and when my eyes cleared up, I had a sunlit view of --

A parking lot.

#

As my senses cleared, I found myself leaning against a green sedan. I noted a motel sign in front of me. What was I doing here -- wherever here was? What could possibly have carried me away from a shopping mall and deposited me at some cheap motel?

And something else was wrong.

I had just glanced at my watch. It was seven after eight -- in the morning, obviously. What had happened to all those missing hours? Where were the kids? Because I have lived a life very unlike the rest of Earth’s population, a crazy thought jumped into mind.

Was I still myself?

The readers of my earlier journals know that I've been spontaneously switching from one body to another since long before Mohamed met the angel. Likewise, I got used to being thrown into strange locations and dangerous situations with neither warning nor preparation. The last time that such a thing had happened to me, I'd become a suburban mother of two.

If I had a new body, whose body did I have? It didn't take more than a downward glance to confirm that I was still a woman, but was I still Eden Blake?

I turned and squinted at my reflection in the car window. With relief, I recognized Eden's face.

Slightly calmed, I took stock. I wasn't wearing the jeans and pullover that I'd had on at the mall. Instead, I was dressed in a blue-skirted suit with a silk ascot, an outfit from my own closet. In my hand I held my familiar purse. But I couldn't remember changing my clothes. Was it possible that someone was controlling me, making me do things that I couldn't remember afterwards? Or was I sleepwalking?

There had to be a reason for my shift of place and time. What was it that the red-headed man had shoved into my bloodstream?

I didn't feel sleepy nor drugged, just confused -- and who wouldn't have been addled in a situation like mine?

Don't fly off the handle, Lukasz. Don't attract attention.

Okay, I was still Eden Blake. I felt fit and my face looked fine. As far as I could tell, nothing nefarious had been done to me. But some thirteen hours had passed and that time had to be accounted for. I took another look around. I was in front of a motel, an Econo Lodge, a franchise that often advertised its low prices. Well, that fit, considering as how my family wasn't in the upper 5%.

First things first. I needed to get the address of this place, so I walked toward the motel office. Under the shade of its canopy, I noticed a mailbox and noted the address stamped on it.

San Francisco.

What? How had I ended up in San Francisco?

The last I recalled, I had had no intention to go anywhere near the city.

Perplexedly, I passed through the glass doors and entered the smallish lobby, hoping that something that I'd see would bring back pieces of my missing memory. The clerk, a Latino lady, glanced up brightly. "Meesees Blake, isn't eet? How are you thees morning?"

She knew me. Random motel clerks didn't know out-of-towners, not unless they're current guests. On impulse, I checked my purse and found a motel key. The Econo Lodge logos and a room number were embossed on the plastic key paddle. I glanced back at the clerk. "Oh, I'm fine," I said. "I just thought for a minute that I'd lost my key, but here it is under some tissues."

The clerk smiled blandly and nodded. I turned and went back outside. There was no obvious menace in sight, so I decided to check out the room that, apparently, I had rented.

In front of my unit our family car was parked. I had to be alert. Chances were that some sort of game was afoot, and when strangers railroad me into their crazy schemes, it usually turns out to be both painful and bloody.

I put the key into the lock and turned it. At the last instant, I decided to summon up my magical force-field. An ultra never knows when he’ll be walking into a hail of machine-gun slugs, or something worse.
That is, I tried to call up my shielding, but nothing happened. To my dismay, I felt as inert as a stick of firewood. The magic just wasn't coming. Concentrating harder failed to light the spark. I didn't like this one little bit! What was wrong with me?

As I tottered there on high heels, someone inside must have heard me or seen me through the window. The door now opened. The knob, as it swung away, slipped from my fumbling grasp and I found myself looking into a face that I knew well.

Very, very well.

#

My daughter Evie was gazing up at me nonplussed. Glancing over her head, I saw that she was alone; also, the room seemed to be crammed with luggage. Whatever was going on, our inexplicable relocation seemed to have been a serious one.

"You just left, Mommy. Did you forget something?"

Oh, brother, had I!

I stepped past the little girl, trying to make sense of things. The queen-sized bed, newly made, was the only furnishing not loaded with boxes and suitcases. What had happened? Just the evening before, we had had no plans to go out of town, and yet here we were -- in San Francisco, no less -- with enough luggage to fill a pickup. Was I on the run? Had someone discovered my Mantra identity and forced me to go to ground? I sat down on the bed, bemused. Evie then stepped up, her brow arched with uncertainty.

"Wasn't the Jack-in-the-Box open?" she asked.

The Jack-in-the-Box was a fast food franchise, I knew. "Oh, you want breakfast?"

"Yeah."

"Sorry. I didn't get over there yet. I wanted to...to look in on you. Is everything all right?"

I saw some slight hesitation in her wide blue eyes. "I guess so. Did you see something bad outside, Mommy? Is that why you came back?"
Something bad? Was that it? Were Evie and I hiding from danger? I decided to ask nonchalantly about the rest of the family. "How are Grandma and Gus?"

Evie looked at me wonderingly. "Grandma was okay last night. We talked to her, remember? And Gus, he's still in jail, isn't he?"
"Jail?"

If I was trying to sound nonchalant, I wasn't doing a bang-up job of it. Without subtlety, I asked, "Evie, these questions of mine sound funny, don't they?"

She nodded.

"Something just happened."

"Something scary?" Her little hands tightened into fists.

I enveloped her into my arms. "Evie, there’s nothing very bad wrong, but I sort of need your help."

She spoke to my shoulder. "Are you okay? You don't feel sick, do you?"
I rested my chin on her shampoo-scented head. "Shhh, I feel okay. It's just that I -- I suddenly seem to have...forgotten a few things. Did I seem all right – before...before I went out to the Jack-in-the-Box?"

"You seemed okay, 'cept that you still weren't Mantra."

Still wasn't Mantra? Could that mean that my powers hadn't just glitched out momentarily? What ever happened to them, they'd been missing long enough for Evie to have found out about it.

"Evie, about that help I need. The last thing I remember was us being in the Mall last night, standing in line to buy dinner at the Kids' Club."
She gave a jump. "No, Mommy! That was last Thursday!"
She'd said Thursday like it was a hundred years ago. "What day is it now?" I asked.

"It's Wednesday."

"Wednesday the twentieth?"

"Yeah!"

This was getting scarier and scarier.

"Darling, did something...bad...happen since Thursday? I can't remember that far back."

I felt her tremble. "You can't have forgot, Mommy!"

"Please, sweetie, tell me what I've forgotten."

“Did you forget Friday, too?”

“I’m afraid that I have.”

"It happened right after you got home after work! It was the most awful thing ever!"

What a reaction! Evie had always been amazingly brave. What in Creation could have frightened her so much? Did it have anything to do with my sudden loss of magic?

Gently, I asked, "Evie, is there some grownup who knows about the awful thing that happened? I'd like to talk to that person, so you won't have to remember it and be afraid."

She shook her head. "There's just Lauren. Gus tried to kill her, too."

"G-Gus? Gus tried to kill his babysitter – and somebody else?"

She nodded.

Oh, brother! What kind of mad world had I awakened into?

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 2....