CW: This chapter depicts a character experiencing thoughts of suicide.
1972.
There is nothing more miserable than misery in summertime. In the movies Edward had seen as a boy, a man who had lost everything would walk under an overcast sky as cold winds plucked at the collar of his heavy coat. This was a convenient fiction, telling the audience that when the hero is sad, the whole world is sad with him. Even the sky wears shades of mourning.
But that isn’t life. Life keeps happening in its natural way, completely indifferent to human suffering, especially in summer.
The brilliantly blue sky that Edward walked underneath bombarded him with burning rays that ignited Titan City’s searing sidewalks. Bags of uncollected garbage stewed in the afternoon heat, and businessmen cooked in their polyester suits. As the afternoon wore on, partially dressed residents leaned from tenement windows, struggling to find a balance between indoor shade and outdoor breeze.
And from all over the nation came the tourists, all wearing the brightest colors possible to signify they were on holiday. Tourists flooded the sidewalks and clogged the train stations. They might ask any passerby to interrupt their day to take a picture of them standing beside no more noteworthy a landmark than an “honest-to-goodness” Titan City sausage and pretzel cart.
Their naivete might be endearing were it not for their terribly rude tendency to treat another person’s home with the indifference one might give a roadside motel. In response to such attitudes, no wonder Titan citizens had a reputation for being rude — especially in the heat of summer.
Yet, Edward placed himself right in line with those tourists at the feet of the Spirit of Prosperity, where they gathered to climb her inner staircase and look out over Marshall Bay. He listened to their little family squabbles and smiled at children who stared up at him because he was a stranger, and because children have a way of seeking out faces they don’t know.
They did not know him as Edward Finn, millionaire CEO of Finn Industries. They did not know him as the Crimson Wraith, Scarlet Stranger of Titan City. And they did not know that he was going to kill himself by jumping from the arms of the Spirit of Prosperity.
What was it about the view from up there that inspired so many to take that fatal leap? There were too many to be explained away as mere accidents. Already twenty bodies had been recovered from Marshall Bay that year. The economic recession was taking its toll in more ways than one.
Over time, the leap had gained an almost romantic quality — surrendering to Prosperity’s embrace, as if she had ordained their deaths as she had their fortunes. It seemed particularly attractive to those from the financial industry when their investments had crumbled — a sign they had lost Prosperity’s favor.
That would likely be the story when they found Edward, that Finn Industries had suffered a stock decline — which it had — and he must have been unable to bear it, ending his life only months before his fortieth birthday.
Throughout his climb up the inner staircase, various displays told the story of the Spirit of Prosperity. One showed it being erected as a gift to the people of Titan City from Finnish sculptor Jonne Hurme in 1886. Another remarked on how it served as a military outpost to scout for enemy submarines in both World Wars. Finally, there came the display that showed how, just eight years prior, the Crimson Wraith had stopped the criminal Esteban Valentino, a.k.a. The Troubadour, from defacing the Spirit of Prosperity with a comically oversized nose.
Edward saw the photograph of himself and Tommy in their costumes, smiling for the crowds at the statue’s feet. Someone had scrawled the word “PERVERT” over his face. There had been an unsuccessful attempt to scrub it away from the plexiglass covering. It left the letters blurred but still perfectly legible.
He hated the happiness he saw on his face there, utterly blind to the desolation ahead. Feeling suddenly dizzy and nauseous, Edward gripped the silver Derby handle of his cane and closed his eyes, attempting to steady himself.
A voice barked at him from behind, “Hey, buddy, there are other people here, you know!”
Edward turned to see a father of three in a straw hat and flamingo-pink shirt.
His wife, in her blue paisley muumuu, with one child on her hip and another holding her hand, said, “Honey, he’s disabled!”
“Doris, I’m handling it…”
“My apologies,” said Edward. He resumed climbing. No need to engage any further than that. All such petty grievances would be over for him soon.
At the statue’s shoulders, Edward followed the crowd out along her right arm, then over the walkway that crossed her chest to her left. When he came to the downward stair inside the statue, Edward pulled from his pocket a small brass replica of the Spirit of Prosperity he had purchased from the gift shop and casually dropped it over the stairwell’s inner railing.
It banged loudly against one metal support after another, drawing everyone’s attention. And as the crowds leaned over the railing, Edward stepped backward, allowing curious onlookers to push him to the side. By the time he had his back against the door to a utility closet, there were no eyes on him.
From his sleeve, he drew a utility pick and slid it into the door handle lock. Carefully squeezing it one, two, three times, all the tumblers clicked into place, and Edward turned the handle, slipping inside.
He took a small electric lantern from his pocket and set it on a shelf beside the cleaning sprays. Then he turned a mop bucket upside down to make a stool, pulled out the old copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass from his days at Ellsworth Academy, and sat in the suffocating heat to read.
After a while, Edward nodded off. When he awoke, the voices and footsteps of tourists had all gone silent. He was alone. There was no one but him and Prosperity herself. It was time.
Emerging from the closet, Edward felt the overbearing weight of summer warmth had receded. He stepped out into cool shadow. Night breezes caressed him like an invitation, and he turned to see the sky framed by the doorway on Prosperity’s shoulder.
It was a beautiful sight from that vantage point, flecked with starlight, and streaked with clouds reflecting subtle orange and bruised purple from the city lights below. Always on his patrols as the Crimson Wraith, he had stared downward, inward, toward the glow of Titan City, searching for lives needing rescuing and crimes needing justice.
Looking away from its light, its noise, its motion, he felt a pull to the great, silent, shadowy expanse beyond. He searched for the line where the dark of the sky met the dark of the sea and found nothing but infinite emptiness. Was he staring into yawning, hungry abyss, or simply unable to pierce the limits of his own vision?
Edward felt a tear slip down his cheek. His chest ached. He mourned the life he imagined for himself as a boy. Had he ever truly done any good as the Crimson Wraith? How could he if not one person had dared stand in his defense when it all came tumbling down?
He released his cane, letting it clatter to the walkway at his feet, and gripped the rail, readying the jump. Only one last choice, one action, one motion.
All he needed to do was fight back the voice inside that cried out for him not to do it, a voice that seemed intent on prolonging his pain forever, a voice that sounded like his father’s.
Author’s Note: This chapter was written when I experienced a call toward oblivion, dear reader. I must also point out, it is not the last.
The Crimson Wraith 