Crying Justice

John Wright is an middle aged superhero on a night patrol. He reflects on his life as he waits for a crime to respond too.

The city of New Horizons was calm in the evening. Most of its citizens were either commuting or settled at home. It was a calm breezy Wednesday night, so the club scene was not active leaving a few night owls on the streets.

John Wright sat on a rooftop of an urban commercial building, listening to the police bands on transistor radio. He listened intently for specific information. He was dressed in his night patrol outfit, which consisted of a black combat vest, black cargo pants, and combat boots. He wore a black mask that covered most of his face. His stature was of a strong bodied middle aged man who was worn from working all of his life. His hair was exposed, because he was proud of its fullness just like in his youth and ignored that it was now salt and peppered. ‘Full hair was better than no hair.’ He thought absentmindedly as he slicked it back more in place.

He stood up, stretched and popped his back into place. He looked out to the landscape, nonchalantly glancing into the lit windows of the adjacent building. He scanned each apartment. Most windows revealed citizens resting in front of televisions, eating family dinners, or children wildly at play. One window caught his attention. There was a little boy around 5 years old, playing in his bedroom with an action figure. He studied the boy and the toy. The action figure wore an old replica of his former outfit, which was red spandex with a yellow letter J on its chest, blue boots, and yellow utility belt. The mask on the figure was blue and the hair was auburn brown. He smiled as he looked at the child twirl and spin, holding the toy above his head and pretending it could fly.

He focused more of his attention on the outfit, and remembered the day that he first donned his iconic garb. Martha had been 7 months pregnant at the time, and they were living in a studio apartment barely paying rent. The city had been crime riddled and the infrastructure literally was being destroyed by the criminal element.  Construction work was slim, because no company felt safe to do business, let alone build in New Horizon. John had been unemployed for a few months and unemployment checks were going to run out soon. Martha was the only one working at the time as a receptionist, which had gotten the medical bills paid but not must else. John had to something, and thought that the only way to save his family was to become the superhero this city needed. Others like him would not have chosen this option to display their powers in public, but he didn’t have much of a choice. If this continued, they would be homeless with a new born. So Martha began to design his costume. He remembered Martha’s bubbly pride as he posed the costume that she had just sown. It had fit perfectly. “Go get those other Supers, Bulldozer.” She said as she had kissed him and ushered him out the window.

“I wish I could maintain that costume the way she did.” He spoke out loud as he snapped back to reality. The little boy was now facing the window with his mouth agape. The child slowly waved at him. John was surprised that the child was able to see him from so far away. In his childhood, people like him hid behind their abilities, pretending to be helpless or ignorant to live normal lives. He just waved back and the child beamed with joy. ‘I wish Mom was here to see this.’ He thought as he imagined his mother’s shocked face as she would have jumped up to his window sill and lectured him on staying silent.

He turned his attention back to the radio. There was a robbery in progress, but he did not mobilize. In his younger days, he would have bounded after them and stopped the ordinary criminals, but now there is only one type he goes after, Super Attacks. Nowadays that crime is infrequent due to him. He huffed as he slumped down to rest. He picked up his thermo and opened it to take a sip of coffee. “I hope for a long quiet night.” He said with sorrow in his voice as he looked up at the moon.

He reflected back.

John had been upstairs in the master bedroom of his 3 bedroom house, putting on his red super hero outfit for the night patrol. Paul was at the dinner table, finishing up his homework. He was in the eighth grade and was a skinny, lanky prepubescent teenager. He sported a zit or 2 on his face and long brown hair with shaggy bangs to match. Martha was in the kitchen cleaning dishes; at some intervals you could hear her coughing as gently as possible. Every time she had coughed, her long raven hair shifted out of place from her bun and she casually smoothed it back into place.

John had finished and ready to fight some of the remaining Super criminals out there. He ran down the stairs, made his way into the dining room and scuffed his son’s hair before entering the kitchen. “Dad, are you cool? I mean the last time you helped arrest that bank robber, I had to carry you to bed and reset your shoulder back into place. Stay home today.” Paul had said with his face etched in concern. His fingers were twirling his pen feverously, and his leg shook nervously as he looked his father in the eyes. His crystal green eyes had pierced John’s heart, filling him with a small urge to spend night with his family.

Martha came out of the kitchen. She had coughed into her hand and quickly wiped her hand off in her apron. She had stood with her hands folded, already to assume the position of possible mediator. “Paul, I am the only one powerful enough to stop these guys. No one else is doing it, and the city is better off with me saving it.” John said as he was hamming it up posing like a superhero.

‘Does he have to attack like a cornball every time he is in the costume?’ Paul rolled his eyes. “Seriously, Dad. I don’t want you to get more…”

John just walked up to his son and had placed a hand on his shoulder. “I do this all for us. Before I fought the Supers in the city, they leveled it every day. Robbing, kidnapping, murdering, and destroying everything and everyone. The economy was in the toilet, but no business could grow without security. I am a construction worker, and I don’t work if New Horizons doesn’t grow. I defended the city, so my family can live a better, normal life.”

He had moved away from his son, and had poised himself so that he could gesture around the house. “I think I did a great job.” He had bellowed with confident grin.

Paul had risen from his chair. “I want to go with you like a sidekick. I’m stronger now.” He had immediately lifted up the table above his head with his pink finger without strain to demonstrate.

John had just smiled and slammed palm on Paul’s shoulder in a super-powered pat on the back. He had not flinched and stood firm in front of his father. John had just sighed and turned away to run out the door, “When you’re done with college.”

“Promise not to get hurt. You can’t go to the hospital.” Paul had rubbed his shoulder to relieve some of the pain.

John had already kissed Martha and headed out the backyard door. “Of course I am Captain Justice.”

John took another sip of coffee, and averted his gaze from the moon to listen to the radio. ‘Disorderly conduct.’ He closed the thermo and shook the contents to blend the sugar better. He picked out his smartphone from his left pocket, and pressed the power button. ’10:30… now, how I get this thing to do the thing I want?’ His face contorted in confusion, wishing his son could help him. The new cellphone perplexed him. It’s like every time it turned on, the cellphone screamed in flashing lights of apps, alerts, alarms and updates. John just concentrated on texting and e-mail, all the social media apps would mentally destroy him.

Suddenly the screen changed, Samuel Harrison was on the line. John feverishly swiped the screen and stared at it like a deer in headlights when the phone changed screens.

“Hello?” Sam spoke. John fumbled the phone to his ear and alarmingly replied. “Yeah?”

“Captain Justice. I got some news for you.”

“Don’t. It’s John now. I don’t have a secret identity anymore.” John said sourly. People calling him by his old name triggered memories of Martha.

“Sorry… I forget.” Sam apologized. He just admired his old hero so much. Sam bit his lip as a punishment for making John unsettled. “Well the court is looking into the case again. We might be able to reach an agreement.”

“Oh! Finally?”

“Come on. You know how people are against your… well… you know… Supers. They just want you to hid away or be locked up in cages. The first judge had those same biases, knowing the way he ruled.”

“Yeah, yeah. I learned a hard lesson that day.”

“Anyway you’ll have to appear…”

John’s attention was alerted by the radio. “Super robbery in progress on 8^th and Grand.”

“Sam, call you back. I got to go.” John dropped the phone and bolted. With his momentum, he was able to make a 125 foot leap onto the next roof top. As he landed, his knee creaked with age and overuse. With a grunt, he pushed past the pain, and sped up to bound over to the next one.

As he was making his way over to the crime scene, his mind was reeling of the past with Martha in a hospital bed, strapped to a respirator desperately clinging to life. He regretfully remembered yelling on the phone with the insurance company over denial of treatment to the next. Every prescription that was mentioned by doctors was too experimental for the company to have insured. He had worked long hours to pay for partial treatments. The only thing the insurance had paid for was the hospital stays. He even had risked his secret identity by advertising as Captain Justice for a non-profit organization that helped families pay for expensive treatments. He had posed for pictures with his family in the hospital room. They had pretended that they didn’t know each other, but they were not actors and one reporter had connected the dots.

John frowned on the top of the building at the corner of 8^th place and Grand street. It didn’t take a long time to see what was happening. The police cars encircled at two men in the middle of the block. Many scared citizen spectated from their apartment windows. One man, who was wearing a tattered hoodie and jeans, was holding the other with one hand by his neck as if the hooded man was presenting him as a live chicken at a farmer’s market. The struggling man, who was dressed in well stitched and ironed button down shirt and slacks, was dangling for dear life, sporting a bullet wound in his right arm and left leg. The police were behind their cars with their guns pointed at the hooded aggressor. ‘He is using his victim as a meat shield from the officers’ gunfire, but he is also trying not get him killed by making sure the bullets didn’t hit his vitals.’ John thought as he descended down the building out of sight of the commotion.

The hooded man shouted, “All I want is to leave with my money and I’ll let him go.” The man’s voice was shaking as if he had an illness.

The Lieutenant answered with a bullhorn. “You know we can’t do that. Just give up your hostage and come with us.”

The hooded man looked panicked. “I am not going back there.” His hand started to gripe his victim a little tighter in fear of capture. It was an instinctual action and he forgot his strength. The hanging man could not scream out, but made an expression of a man who was about to have his windpipe crushed.

From the shadows, John darted into the fray, rushing into the hooded man. The man dropped his hostage, to brace for the tackle. John knocked into the man shoulder first, and they tumbling on the ground. The crowd cheered seeing Captain Justice on the scene. During the tackle, John took advantage of the man’s surprise and pinned him down on the ground. He looked down at him, trying to get a view of the hooded man’s face. John’s eyes were welling up with tears, “Paul!”

Author's Note

I am looking for help with grammar problems, but I do want to know what you currently thing of the concept.

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[MoriartyMesa]

If you every have to step infront of the Bronze statue of blinded folded lady holding a scale in one hand and sword in tother, you will know she is blind.