My Super Secret Life-24.

Chapter 24

Darkness, it’s all darkness and pain and muffled noises and the sense of movement. I think that I hear sirens. Them I’m pulled down back into the darkness again.

I don’t want to die.

They say that your life flashes before your eyes when stuff like that happens and it’s sort of true. You think, I think before you die about all the stuff that you did and whether or not you’re a decent person. Did I do good with the life that I was given?

No…

I had spent the first…no mot of my life in this haze of being spun, and ditzy and a lot of it was on purpose. No I mean I was a ditz sort of but I know that I walked right into that place and way of being because being smart or just not like Sunny would be hard and scary and why should I have gone through the pain and the bullshit when I could giggle and screw my way through life and have a good time.

I had taken any guilty little twinges I might have gotten like that and buried them under sex and parties and clothes and being just like the other girls that were just like me.

Because if there’s so many of us just like me then I’m normal, there’s nothing wrong with me being like this.

But now that stuff hurts my soul. I wish, really wish that I was a better person.

And now it’s not just Sunny.

Titan me is kind of turning into a guy that I’m not sure the me I am not likes. I mean I guess I’m an okay hero rookie but I’m a rookie or I was. But I’ve let sex and hormones and just being a guy run away with me.

There’s this golden light there sort of forming into a shape in front of me…

It looks like Titan me…but like golden light me, like when I change…

~Titan?~

~I guess, that’s been my name you’ve been going with.~

~Am I going nuts?~

~Everyone’s a little nutty in their own way Sunny.~

Suddenly I’m me and we’re on a beach someplace sitting on the sand, it’s a funny color sand there’s a rainbow sheen in it? He’s looking up at the evening sky, at the three moons. We don’t have three moons on New Haven.

~Where are we?~

~Home.~

~Home?~

~Atlas Colony.~

~I’ve never heard of it.~

~No…It’s gone, I can feel that.~

~You talk like we’re separate people?~

~Yeah well it’s your head.~

~So I am going crazy.~

He shrugs. ~No…I think…mind you I’m still you…but it’s not going crazy.~

~Then what is it, this?~

~I don’t know, you trying to come to grips with being me.~

~Like this?~

He shrugs. ~Women like to talk things out, maybe this is easier than talking to yourself so I’m here?~

~Okay that makes sense sort of…I just feel this disconnect when I’m you.~

He laughs this soft kind of laugh. So weird because it’s mine but masculanized. ~No duh.~

~But here?~

He shrugs. ~I don’t get it either. Neutral ground in your head?~

~Okay, but why any of this? Why you and me here?~

~Because you hate how things are going. You don’t like how things are going in your life or in my life.~

~Yeah…it’s just falling apart. I feel like I can’t get a grip on being you…the whole thing is just so alien I don’t know how to act as a guy and it’s seeping into my life.~

~That’s just it you’re acting.~

~Huh?~

He gives me this don’t be thick look that Mom gives me. And y’know that’s the first time I’ve seen any family resemblance between my family and being Titan.

~Stop acting Sunny, you might become me but you’re still you. You trying to be me isn’t us at all it’s you tossing up some actors idea of who I’m supposed to be and that’s not who I am at all.~

~Who are you then?~

~I’m you.~

~Not helping Titan.~

~Tyler.~

~What?~

~Titan isn’t a real name, it’s a cover a title it’s something you call something. Tyler…I want a real name.~

~Why?~

~Because it makes me, us more real as a person. We need to feel that.~

~Why?~

~Because we can’t hide behind “I’m Titan” when we’re being a super powered dick.~

~You’re being pretty hard on us.~

~Like you’re not. You’re so focused like this on being who you think we should be as a guy that we’re repeating the stuff we did before you took the serum.~

~I…~

~I want to be a person just like you Sunny, I am you. But I don’t want to be the male equivalent of a…. I don’t want to be some Himbo…”Ooh look at my muscles, see I’m strong and look I’ve got a dick…let’s fuck everything in sight.” I’m more than that Sunny, we’re more than that.~

Okay he rants and air quotes like I do.

He looks me right in the eyes. Holds me there with his stare.

~I want to be a guy I can be proud of being Sunny, I want…I need to be the guy that you have inside your head that’s the guy that you wished that guys were. Not the guy that you think you know that guys are…~

It hits kind of hard because it’s there in his voice, in my voice that need to be that. To not be the guy that I’ve been lately but to be the guy he knows we can be. Just like…just exactly like me not wanting to be that Pre-Serum Sunny.

I look him in the eyes and we kind of both turn to face each other and stare into each others eyes and it’s so like seeing myself in a different mirror but still me though, still the same sort of fears and hang ups and feelings and wants and we hold our hands up and lace our fingers together and lean in until our foreheads are touching and just keep staring.

~I get it now, I get it Tyler…I want to be a better man too, a better person…I need it too.~

~Promise?~

~Promise.~

~Good…~

………………………………...........It’s so strange yet not because we shine golden in that light when we change and we stops and becomes me. And I feel like I dropped some weight off my chest or something…Like when I feel better when I wasn’t really aware of feeling that bad to begin with.

I wake up and open my eyes and Mom’s there and I’m in the hospital section of The Tower.

I’m still Titan, no…Tyler.

“Mom?” Oh my mouth is dry.

She looks up quickly from the work stuff she was making note on and hugs me. “Oh honey! Thank god you’re okay! We’ve been scared to death that you weren’t going to come out of it!”

“Coma?”

“Yes…How’d you know…?” She leans back to look at me.

I shrug and sort of feel oddly tickled by doing that because it felt right, like me. “Felt like a coma.”

“Felt like a…I’m calling for the doctor Sunny.”

“Okay…Mom?”

“Yes sweetie.” It’s alright for her to call me that, she’s my mom. She gets to have that right.

“Is it alright if when I’m like this if you call me Tyler?”

She smiles and wipes some tears away. “Y..Yes honey it really, really is…”

“Mom?…what’s wrong?”

“Nothing honey, nothing bad…it’s just that was you uncles name.”

“My uncle? On what side?”

“Mine, he was my big brother and he…he was killed a long long time ago when we had a car accident one winter. He was ten and I was six and there was black ice and dad couldn’t get the car stopped in time and it went over the guard rail….Tyler was thrown from the car…”

There’s tears pouring from her eyes and I sit up. I shouldn’t but I can’t help myself and I reach over and pull Mom into this great big hug.

“Was he a good big brother?”

(Sniffle-sob.) “He was the best, he was the best big brother a little girl could have. It..it..was what I was going to name you if you’d have been a boy….”

She leans back enough to look at me and I smile at her and yeah I am so crying too right now guy or not. “Can I…Can I try to live up to that Mum?”

She gives me this look, this kind of look of touched-hurt-happy-and proud that I’ve never seen before on her face and she just nods and we hug each other some more because we’re both too choked up to talk.

I get that from her.