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The fluorescent grocery-store lights were giving her a headache. The speakers overhead were spitting out "Eye of the Tiger," not at listening-level but just below, barely loud enough to make the song recognizable and to make her ears strain to hear the lyrics, even though she knew them and didn't really want to hear them again.
And realization hit her forcefully in that moment, slamming into her consciousness like The Irish Juggerbot knocking over a liquor store: she, Sheila, Queen Etheria, was not happy.
Hamilton was bending over, invisible fingers fiddling with his glasses, reading the price labels tacked onto the shelves. He was reading the prices, for chrissakes. With all the money and power the Phantom Limb had at his disposal, he was reading the prices. It was annoying.
"Look at this, my queen," he spoke up. The arm of his trench coat hovered near one of the lower shelves. The cheap shelves. Sheila's eyes followed the general line of the coat, since she couldn't see his hand, and saw-- what was she supposed to be looking at?
"Look at what?" she finally asked.
"The Gregorian Hills Pinot Grigio, my queen. If I buy three bottles, they're ten percent off."
She clenched her fingernails into her palms and resisted the urge to scream. "Oh. Fine."
"Would you prefer something else? Look, this Red-Eared Lemur Sauvignon Blanc has an 88 rating, and it's only $8.99. Of course, the Greenwich Vines Pinot Noir has an 86 rating, and it's only $7.99."
"I don't care," she said. They were supposed to be buying wine for a party at the Offensive Messiah's house, later. But she wasn't happy, hadn't been for a while, and she just wanted to leave, now. "Get a couple of reds, a couple of whites, and let's go."
"Patience, my dear. Wine is an art," Hamilton told her. "Listen to this: 'Rich and leggy, this early varietal has hints of strawberry on the nose, and oak and blackberry on the palate, and will complement your pasta or steak dishes...'"
Rising up to the challenge of our rival... the speakers sang.
"Who sings this song?" Sheila interrupted.
"Hmm? I can't hear it. Oh, look at this one--"
A couple of male shoppers sauntered behind them, staring Queen Etheria up and down quite interestedly. She pulled her jacket more tightly around her nearly-nonexistent white-and-mesh costume. She didn't normally mind the stares, but they were in a grocery store, Save-On, for chrissakes. What were they doing here?
"You've got plenty of money, and it's just a stupid cookout, anyway," Sheila reminded him with what she thought was great patience. "They'll be drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon and vomiting in the pool by 10."
"That doesn't mean we can't show them how supervillains should go on, hmm?" Phantom's eyes in his mask narrowed at her in concern. "Why the tetchy mood, my dear?"
Sheila rubbed the bridge of her nose. "I've got a headache," she lied.
"Poor thing. Well, I suppose you're right, anyway" he said, and sighed. "There's always the Charles Shaw. It's economical, and drinkable, especially the chardonnay."
Another realization hit Sheila in that moment: this relationship would never, ever work. It all boiled down to the fact that she could never live with a chardonnay drinker.
"Two-Buck-Chuck? Ick. But I guess all chardonnay is drinkable, if you like cat pee," she said, annoyed into crudeness. "It's a headache in a bottle."
"There's no need for vulgarity, my queen. And besides, you've never tasted cat pee, surely." Phantom's eyes were crinkled now as he tried to joke her out of her snappish mood.
"I had a wild youth," she said.
His eyes flew wide. "I didn't realize you felt so strongly about it. I'll purchase some of this pinot grigio for you as well, then." He grabbed a bottle of something off the top shelf, something with red mountains on it, and turned around, looking left and right, like he was searching for an employee. A scrawny kid in a red vest walked by and Phantom Limb accosted him. "Excuse me, but do you have a case of the Charles Shaw Chardonnay, unchilled? I prefer to chill it myself."
The situation had gone from ridiculous to more ridiculous. Sheila sighed, her best, deep, tired-and-pissed-off-woman-sigh. Hamilton turned to look at her again.
"I don't trust these grocery-store coolers," he said, in a defensive tone. "Who knows at what temperature they store the bottles? The wine cooler at home will do perfectly well, and we have a few hours before the party."
Now that's just stupid, Sheila wanted to tell him. But she zipped her lips, crossed her arms and wondered why she hadn't left this pompous idiot weeks-- no, months-- ago. She wanted to tell him that, logically, the wine could have been stored anywhere before it was here, at any temperature. That he was buying cheap wine, in a Save-On, and he had millions of dollars but they were standing here in Save-On, and he had a newsprint sale circular in the pocket of his Armani coat, and being smart with money was one thing but this was ridiculous. This wasn't super-villainy. This was... boring.
She remembered when she'd met him. He'd had the accent and a big brain and acres of evil ideas. Now he had a general ledger and a subscription to Martha Stewart's Living.
"You can rest at home while the wine chills," he continued. "Or, if you'd prefer not to go to the party, we can stay home and watch the DVD I received from Netflix today. It's 'God Rest in My Garden,' the new bio pic on Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky. Or, we could even plan my next corporate coup. I know how you love those nasty economic takeovers."
Really, Sheila would rather pierce her nipples with rusty nails. But she didn't say so.
"No, we'll go to the party," she said. "I just need to rest first."
Phantom Limb finally got his cheapass, Two-Buck-Chuck, cat-pee wine, along with the pinot grigio for her, and they paid. Not soon enough, they walked out the door and into the parking lot. Sheila took over pushing the cart while Hamilton dug in his pockets for the clicker to the Rolls.
And out of nowhere she felt a gritty wind blowing her back, nearly making her lose her grip on the cart. It was followed by the deafening BOOM of a fantastic explosion, and then a cloud of smoke rolled across the parking lot. Something across the street had been bombed. Sheila looked around, trying to discover what had blown up, who had done it, and whether or not they'd been aiming for Queen Etheria and the Phantom Limb. Then she saw the vehicle.
It was the ugliest thing she'd seen on four wheels in a long time, and yet still sleekly alluring. It was hunch-backed and curve-shaped and several shades of purple. It had a radio dish on top, and its hull sprouted loops with little colored dots on the ends. It looked like a Saturday morning cartoon ad.
A tall, skinny man with a pointy, dark beard hung half out of the vehicle, shaking his fist at the explosion. He was wearing what looked like an all yellow costume. The costume had wings.
"THAT will teach you to destroy my E-Bay purchases, you SAD EXCUSE FOR A POSTAL SERVICE!" the man shrieked. "Now I'll have to e-mail the seller, and they might leave me NEGATIVE FEEDBACK! And until NOW, the Monarch had a 100 PERCENT FEEDBACK RATING, YOU DICKS! BURN! BURN!"
The man cackled maniacally, and the astonishing purple vehicle zoomed away with an ear-splitting screech.
Sheila stared after it. Now, that was super-villainy.
"Who was that?" she asked, as they headed again for the car.
"Nobody," Hamilton said, with a sniff. "Some simpleton with a trust fund and a mean streak, trying to overcompensate for his lack of companionship in college. He was a low-level in the Guild for a while. But, there's no need to worry about him. He'll be gone from the scene soon enough, once he realizes that nobody cares."
Sheila wasn't so sure she agreed. The skinny man had looked sneaky and bad tempered. She found that ... attractive.
And that man represented something, something she missed: her past. The thrill of being evil. The thrill of blowing things up. The thrill of laughing maniacally at a crime well-committed.
Plus, she'd thought he was sorta hot. She wondered if he'd be at the party.
***
However, nobody Sheila cared about was at the party. It was the same old group of costumed idiots. She used to think they were cool. She wondered if they'd changed, or if she had.
And she'd been wrong about the timing. The partygoers were indeed drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon, but it was only 7:30 and already they were vomiting into the pool.
Sheila squeezed through the crowd, knocking away a few groping hands and sipping a lukewarm glass of pinot grigio, the good stuff, the grocery store top-shelf-stuff. She passed a mirror and stopped to have a look. Her eyes looked tired. Maybe she had changed, she decided. She'd grown old.
Her hair looked fantastic, at least. The pink streaks she'd had put in a couple of weeks ago really stood out against her white costume. And her bod was as fantastic as usual. Pilates really were God's gift to women over 19.
Rising up to the challenge of our rival ... The damned song was stuck in her head, for good, apparently.
Sheila spotted something in the mirror as she patted her hair: something yellow. It was gone in a flash but she turned, and caught the blur of yellow again, amidst all the red and black and green costumes. It was a pair of wings. They were attached to that man she'd seen earlier today, that man who called himself the Monarch.
Sheila flipped around and did another quick check of her makeup in the mirror-- was it her imagination, or did she look better than she had a few seconds ago? Her eye wrinkles were gone. She looked fabulous, as a matter of fact.
She sipped her wine and waited for the man to notice her. Men always noticed her, sooner or later.
And this one noticed her sooner. He stared at her for a moment, then pushed through the crowd toward her, scrunching his-- butterfly?-- wings in one hand to keep them from being bent by the other partygoers. She checked out his physique. It wasn't bad. Pretty good, in fact. It looked like he worked out. Too many supervillains didn't realize that spandex required a lot of maintenance.
"Hello, Nurse," he said with a leer when he reached her.
"Hello," Sheila said back and smiled. She rubbed her knees together to draw attention to her fantastic legs and sexy boots. She realized she was being all girly and coy, but didn't care.
"Nice outfit," he said. Then he mumbled something. It might have been, holy crap, have you got Godzilla in your throat? but she couldn't be sure, because the party music was so loud.
"What?" Sheila asked.
"I said your voice was sexalicious," he said. He leered at her some more. "What's your name?"
"Queen Etheria," Sheila said, and fluttered her eyelashes like a teenager.
"Hi. I'm the Monarch," the man said. Then he sipped at his beer, hummed a little, and looked around at the other partygoers for a bit. He apparently didn't know what else to say.
Sheila didn't either. She felt like a fifteen-year-old, all flustered at meeting her first boy. Finally she blurted out the only thing she could think of. "Who sings that song-- 'Eye of the Tiger?' It's been driving me nuts trying to remember."
The Monarch gave her a look of slight horror. "Survivor. I wish I didn't know that, but I do." He sipped at his beer again. "Hey, you with anyone?"
She glanced back through the crowd. She spotted Phantom Limb; he was trying to grab a bottle of Two-Buck Chuck away from a blue-costumed drunk who was trying to chug it. She looked back at the Monarch.
"No."
He waggled his long, thin eyebrows at her, then held out his elbow. "I've got a Monarch Mobile out front, and it's full of henchmen and a keg of Guinness."
"No Chardonnay, I hope."
"God, no. That stuff tastes like cat pee."
"Good." Sheila took his arm. She supposed she'd have to e-mail or call or text-message Phantom Limb at some point, to get all her stuff back. And to give him back this idiotic costume.
END.