Make A Name For Ourselves

• Kyle Bissell, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2013

"They told us to make a name for ourselves. So, that's what I did." I looked up at the man sitting across from me in the small square room. The wind beat against the window as the man took in a deep breath and thought for a second.
"So you did all this?"
"They didn't set any parameters; no field in which it mattered, no way in which they were concerned, legal or not nothing mattered. The only measure was that if we walked down a street someone would recognise us. That could be a good thing or a bad thing it didn't matter."
"Don't you think you went a bit overboard?"
"They warned us that no one had ever managed it before, they didn't accept people regularly. It tended to be an 'only when someone dies' situation and they were all so far from death until I got involved."
"You know there are some people that say you're a hero: ‘the best man this country has ever seen’ they’re saying."
"They're wrong." I replied my voice even and calm.
"Oh trust me, I know that. You're not a good person but then you're not just plain bad either. It takes a special kind of evil to do what you did."
"I don't know if I should be offended or flattered." I smirked, and when I spoke my eyes drifted back up to him glaring under my eyebrows, almost like a challenge or an uneasy threat.
"Was it worth the weight on your consciousness? The effort and risks you took? Was it all worth it to you? Or is it only now that you see how you threw your life away with such wanton abandon."
"There were fifteen of us, they downright said that there was almost no way that they would take any of us. Now, I have the world in the palm of my hand. If you walk into a crowded street and yell my name, half the people who hear will cry in shear terror, the other half will applaud and cry their highest praise. So tell me, do you think it was worth it?"
The officer took in a long deep breath, as though it would protect him from me. "Maybe we should move onto the logistics of how you did it."
"Maybe we should not." I replied, I straightened up and he almost pushed further away from the table. There I was, my hands in shackled beneath the table, and he was terrified.
"We've caught you, how can you say you have the world in the palm of your hands when you're sitting here? Your freedom is slowly slipping away like the sands of time and there is, and let me make this perfectly clear. There is, nothing you can do about it.” If only he knew how many people had said the same thing.
"You wanted to know how I did what I did... so why don't I tell you? I walked up to him, ‘the immortal man, king of all who would bow to none.’ I walked up to him and I told him that I could snap my fingers and make it all change. Told him that I could snap my fingers and nothing would ever be the same."
"And?" The officer swallowed with all the effort of swallowing bricks.
So, slowly I rose my hand from under the table, a pale line where the shackled had been on my wrist, when the officer saw his eyes grew blank, and I smiled. Then, I snapped my fingers.