Supervillain Girlfriend: Anomaly (special preview)

I reside in the Heimlich Correctional Facility, a specially fortified prison made to house the exceptionally gifted criminal. In other words, it was the jail for supervillains. I’m not one for the flowery talk that is used to describe what I am. Exceptionally gifted criminal sounds, to me, like a participation trophy. The facts are these: I break the law, I have super powers, and I was caught and tried for my crimes. I’m not bitter about it, I knew one day I would be caught. But it was the way I was caught that makes me livid.

My father was an occultist. Let me correct that, he was a secret occultist. Something my mother never knew when she married him. She never knew that he was trying to summon a creature of unnatural powers, using her womb as some sort of vessel. Even after I was born, she didn’t assume a thing. My mother was pure sunshine, bright, bubbly, and loving to a fault. I love her more than anything. Our Sunday visits are the highlight of my otherwise boring existence as an exceptionally gifted criminal. I suppose I liked my father too, but when it was found out I was born to be a denizen of his cult’s nefarious schemes, my mother got a good divorce lawyer and took us across the country.

My powers came slowly, which I will be grateful for. My mother got a few good years out of me being a normal baby before I started ripping her from bed with invisible strings when I was hungry. That’s why she started sleeping with a red light. My powers only worked in darkness or blue light. Took her awhile to figure that out, but once she did, things were fine.

We moved into a cul-de-sac after she left my father. There were houses all around us, something she planned just in case anyone from the cult came to get me. Lots of people around, lots of witnesses, and a big chance for us to make close friends.

I was weird, what with my sharp teeth, sleek black hair, and all black eyes, I wasn’t exactly the girl you wanted at your tea party. But then there was Ben. The exact image of the perfect little boy. He was adorable, charming, with big blue eyes and curly blonde hair. For some reason, this angel of a child was drawn to me, the demon spawn. I was lonesome and craving a friend so badly. All I had back then was an enormous collection of horse toys, figurines, posters. Yes, the supervillainess was a horse girl, laugh now.

Ben invited me to play one day as our backyards shared a fence. My mother did what she could for me. I had a sandbox to play in, and she managed to get a swing into a tree. But Ben had everything a child could want. He had a swingset, a tree house, a huge slide, an even bigger sandbox, a pool! And he wanted me to come play. I was never happier.

Like me, Ben, too, was exceptionally gifted, but unlike me, the gifts were more acceptable. He didn’t need darkness to use his powers, his powers didn’t come from a pact with the devil. Ben was like his father, who I later learned was the superhero Mr. Miraculous. Like his father, Ben had abilities like super strength, flight, speed, as well as being able to phase through walls. Although his powers weren’t as strong as his father’s, he had a certain cunning to him. Something I would later think would make him better suited to me in my shoes.

When Ben was in his late teens, he took up the mantle of Prodigious Son and fought alongside his father. But he resented the attention his father maintained while he felt he was left in the background no matter what he did.

At this point, my powers were reaching their apex. I was discovering more of my abilities, finding my puppetry could now work as long as there were shadows. It didn’t matter if it was completely dark; although the darker it was, the stronger I became. I never told anyone except my mother about my powers and what I could find out. Somehow, though, Ben figured it out.

“We should be a team,” he told me excitedly one night. “Just you and me. I can get away from my father’s legacy, stand on my own two feet, be my own man. And I will have you by my side.”

“I don’t know,” I told him. We were in my basement, which mom had turned into a studio for me when I took up painting. It had been a hang out spot for us ever since. Ben was sitting very close to me and he seemed so excited about the idea.

“You’re so powerful, Anna, you would make an amazing superhero!” He put his hand on my leg. “It would be just us.” He said this in such a way that my stupid little heart fell for it. Back then, I was young and barely understood who or even what I was. I thought I loved Ben because he was my only friend. But that wasn’t the case. As years went on, I would realize I loved Ben like someone might love a brother, or a cat, or a shiny rock. I loved unconditionally, but romantically I never cared for.

“You and me as a team?” I asked him with a smile.

He kissed me and I fell for it. We had sex on that old sofa and I still fell for it. I agreed to be his partner as a superhero and he named me Anomaly. I thought it was sweet back then, but these days, I wear the name as a badge of spite. Too bad there’s a hero called that now or I might change my brand.