Free Supervillainess (Part One) by Lizzy Ford

wasn’t that Kimber didn’t see the appeal.
She was beautiful, with the kind of hourglass shape only found on
women in comic books, and her father’s website listed her martial
arts and other weapons training. She was probably pretty badass in
a fight, assuming any of it was true. Her personality was a
challenge, but she wasn’t a completely delusional asshole like he
first thought. She seemed almost … naive, as if she had never been
exposed to the world outside of her warped reality.
    Kimber had seen genuine hurt in her eyes
when she mentioned her brother. Was this why he couldn’t expel her
from his mind? Because, for a moment, they had shared a sense of
loss and heartache he had never let his guard down long enough to
experience with anyone else?
    Or was it the confusion he saw cross her
features when he called her beautiful? While true, it had slipped
out, and her reaction was not what he expected. Why did he have the
feeling she’d never been complimented before?
    “Drop it, Kimber,” he ordered himself and
closed the open browsers on his laptop. As far as he was concerned,
she was a patient, like any other. There was not meant to be any
lasting personal connection between them once she was healed. It
was for her sake as much as his.
    He set his laptop aside and searched his
depressing apartment visually for something else to do. If he had
games, they were in the guestroom, and he wasn’t venturing there
again. Their conversation earlier left him uncomfortable for more
reasons than because she was clearly disturbed. He was unwilling to
think about what else bothered him.
    Never had Kimber been so anxious to return
to work. He turned off the television and went to his room. He was
about a year short on sleep; if nothing else, he could slumber the
downtime away.
     

     
    Sometime later, past midnight, glassware
shattering against the hard floor of the kitchen awoke him with a
start. He lay in bed, disoriented as he tried to make sense of the
sound. It was soon followed by the wall at the head of his bed
trembling as something heavy was thrown into it.
    Now what? Kimber launched out of bed, determined to save
what he could of his miserable apartment from Keladry’s
insanity.
    He opened the door to his bedroom and
flipped on the hall light.
    A body garbed all in black was on the floor
at the end of the hall.
    He turned off the lights, thinking he had to
be mistaking, and then turned them back on.
    The body remained.
    Alarm shot through him, and he hurried down
the hallway, kneeling to check on whether or not the man in black
was hurt.
    Kimber felt for a pulse before the angle of
the man’s broken neck fully registered. It wasn’t possible for
anyone to live through that, and the lack of pulse confirmed his
hunch.
    Returning to his room, Kimber grabbed his
phone off the nightstand to call the police, only to see the
battery was out again.
    “Fuck!” he muttered. He plugged it in and
tried to turn it on. The dead battery symbol popped up.
    The wall shuddered again, and his thoughts
shifted from dialing for help to wondering who the hell had killed
the man in his hallway.
    Grabbing the baseball bat he kept under his
bed, Kimber left his room and strode once more down the hallway.
His body assumed the tension and light stance he learned in
college, preparing to absorb a tackle by an offensive
linebacker.
    He reached the end of the hallway and turned
the corner. It was impossible to tell what was going on in the
dark, but it appeared as if there was a violent dance party in the
middle of his living room. People were thrashing into the walls,
the sofa, knocking over lamps …
    Who the hell is
fighting? He went to the kitchen and turned
on the light. Glass shards sparkled on the floor, where Keladry’s
makeshift alarm had smashed into bits. The light was enough to
illuminate what was happening in the living room, and he froze,
beginning to suspect this was a dream.
    Dressed in his boxers and a t-shirt, and
wielding