A Demigod in Smite of Myself
by Charles C. Cole
part 1
“I have a finger, and I’m not afraid to use it,” I eventually shout. Hell, by then the words boil out of me like steam from a teapot. That’s always my final warning.
First, my oppressors — bullies, overzealous authority figures, dismissive salesclerks — contort with a suppressed burst of guffaws, then they usually let it rain torrentially with overwhelming raucous yucks, metaphorically, at least until I take my turn at bat. That’s when I point at them with my never-fail magic curse: “Say bye-bye to the world.”
And they disappear from the face of the earth, not with a puff of smoke or a bang, more like a bad jump-cut in a cheap sci-fi movie. They move on, wordlessly, with no time for crocodile tears or feigned contrition. I could waste precious time feeling guilty, but they deserve it — they know it — and I warned them. I’m fairly sure it’s painless; it has to be, as sudden as it is. If you cannot destroy energy, then they’re converted into something else or go somewhere else; a different existence far away. Beats me.
Why was such a gift bestowed on me? I was raised in a foster home for unadoptable children. The house mother said I was an orphan. I was sickly, undersized and quiet. Bigger boys punched me or kicked me because they knew I wouldn’t cry or complain to the adults. My non-reaction made it a non-event. I was a safe bet, a sure thing. The school librarian, Mrs. Toole, ever the advocate for the underdog, said my personality was a magnet for aggression. In other words, it was somehow my fault.
Mostly, I stared at things and counted them, sometimes looking for subtle patterns in damaged ceiling tiles, dandelions on the playground and pieces of orange gravel on the bottom of a classroom aquarium. The powers that be sent me to the local public high school, where I was pretty much a loner.
Late one night, I was lying in bed and studying for a biology exam, door closed to my room. I had my TV low, for white noise, on not-distracting-at-all Public Broadcasting. I woke up hours later, not remembering falling asleep.
On the TV, there was a grey sock puppet with very active eyebrows in dark round sunglasses sitting behind a miniature news-anchor desk. He wore a navy-blue gown and graduation mortarboard with a gold tassel on his right. He was shuffling papers, like returning to air from a commercial break. Then he saw me!
“And you’re back,” he said.
“You mean we’re back, idiot,” I said, not expecting him to hear me but always ready to correct low-level celebrities who thought they were too cool to make mistakes.
“Have it your way,” he replied. Then he called to an off-screen cameraman. “Give me a close-up, will ya? What? Close enough to see my stitching. This is important. Einstein ain’t gonna make this easy.”
“You talking to me?” I asked.
“Butch, I don’t have much time.”
“How do you know my name?”
“Listen faster. No more interruptions,” he scolded. “The toga-wearing immortals, or their sycophantic pets, are always watching. You’re a demigod. Yeah, I said it. ’Bout time you heard it. The others don’t want you to know. It was my idea to hide you among the perishables.”
“What are you talking about, puppet man?”
“Don’t take abuse from nobody. They should be showing you respect. If they knew who your papa is, they’d go gentle. For sure. When a god gets disrespected, it’s bad for the whole system. So, I got a cure. It’s like kicking a ball downhill; you’re not doing it, gravity’s doing it. You’re just the holier than thou kinetic energy. Got it? You’ll thank me. Here’s what you do.”
And that’s when he told me about my superpower. Then, almost as suddenly: “Gotta go. Be kind to stuffed animals; they could be a former warrior with a long memory. ’Nough said.”
Who was he? My childhood nanny? A disgruntled former aide-de-camp of the Innermost Circle? He didn’t give me his name.
Did I believe him? Not at first. I practiced on the TV, now with a buzzing screen of static. Nothing. I practiced on a trail of ants and a cat eating out of a dumpster behind our dormitory. No dice. Apparently, it only works on living things that should know better than behave the atrocious way they sometimes do.
I was walking home from school and took a shortcut through an alley between a pet store and a hairdresser. Raney Langford followed me. I heard him before I saw him: he had a habit of mouth breathing like one of those industrial bellows a blacksmith uses.
“Raney, I’m not in the mood,” I warned, without turning around.
“How’d you know it was me?”
I could have been rude, but I was looking for an off-ramp. Maybe I was afraid of what he’d make me do. “Can we resume hostilities some other afternoon?”
“Long day, deviant,” he said. “One punch to get my aggression out of my system, like popping a zit, like therapy. I won’t break nothin’ critical. Promise.”
“You really don’t want to do this.”
“How you gonna stop me?”
I told him the story. Of course, he didn’t believe me.
“You? You ain’t nothing. You certainly ain’t some demigod,” Raney scoffed.
“But what if I am? What if I can point my finger, and you’re gone forever? Do you really want to find out, first-hand? I’m giving you an out here. Nobody’s around. You can back off, and we’ll revert to our bad habits some other day. What do you say?”
“It’s too messed up, man,” he said. “Besides I’ve got one helluva itch, and I gotta scratch it. I owe it to myself: got to. Besides, I think we’ve moved up from a free throw to a certified pounding. You should have just taken your lumps. Don’t blame me.”
Raney took one step toward me, winding his hitting arm back and up, when I spoke my magic phrase. Then the world was unexpectedly, permanently Raney-free. The power bestowed on me through some low-rent QVC TV show was formidable. I wanted it to be real, sure, but it’s not like there was a bolt of green lightning coming out of my supercharged index finger.
Truth be told, I squinted my eyes closed at the moment of impact because I was afraid I’d get splattered with Raney guts. So, the first time, I missed the moment. I looked for him hiding behind a pallet leaning against the brick wall. I backtracked to the nearest street. There was no sign of my teenaged archnemesis. He was gone, except his sneakers, like sometimes happens to people struck by lightning.
“Dear diary, today I did a really bad thing, probably the worst thing you can do, but it was sort of an accident because it shouldn’t be possible, and I only half-intended it.”
That’s what I wrote. And it was true, the first time, about it being a sort of accident.
It was less true when applied to Mrs. Toole, in that I pretty much knew what I was doing by then. I just wanted a book on quantum physics. I waited until she was closing and I had the place to myself. She took one look at my reading preference and said, “Damn, son, isn’t that a little above your paygrade?”
“I think it’s interesting,” I allowed, though I was secretly looking for a viable alternative to the notion I had just killed someone.
“Maybe you should pace yourself before you get overwhelmed. I just reshelved some graphic novels, ‘thick comic books’ to the uninitiated. They say they’re written for sixth graders, closer to your speed, I’m guessing.”
“Mrs. T,” I said, “back at the foster home, they’ve really been drilling into us lately about the importance of stretch goals. We can overcome any adversity with the right mindset, that sort of thing. There comes a time in your life when you can turn right or you can turn left. You’ll never believe it, but I am standing in the middle of that life-changing intersection at this very moment.”
“I just don’t want you to get frustrated, tell me you lost it, when you throw that very expensive book in the gutter before anybody else has a chance to read it.”
“Mrs. T,” I tried one last time, “I’ve been meaning to tell you, I really think you should be nicer to me. A lot of good can come from workplace philanthropy. I’ll bet a nurturing way can engender all sorts of positivity.”
She laughed, then stopped suddenly and covered her open mouth, searching around the empty library. “Am I on some sort of hidden camera? That’s impertinent,” she said. “You had me good. Who told you to say that? You have one of those covert earpieces, don’t you?”
“No, ma’am,” I said. “See.” I showed her both my ears. “No menacing micro-tech.”
“But you sounded so whip-smart. I thought you kids from across town were—”
“Underprivileged? Disadvantaged?”
“A different D-word, but that’s close enough,” she said.
I got suddenly dark: “You know what they say: When life gives you apples, save the seeds to make cyanide.”
Her mood collapsed. “You kids can be so sweet one moment and a pain in my ass the next,” she said. “I’ve got things to do and not enough time to do them. Are you taking that book out or aren’t you?”
“I’d sure like to,” I said, “even if my reading comprehension’s slightly below average.”
With both hands on her hips, she arched back and squinted at me, then leaned into my chest like she expected a hidden recording device there and said: “I never said you were dumb.”
“Not to my face,” I said. “No microphone, I promise.” Then I bluffed: I knew she was friendly with one of the janitors. “But I overheard Mr. Rollins and one of his co-workers. And he said that you said—”
And that’s where things got nasty, all civility swept away. She did not hold back. Kids from the Johnson Home were separated from society for a reason. Exposing the general populace, by letting us attend a public high school, just lowered average test scores and gave the school a black eye and a reputation it did not deserve.
“I’ll take the book now,” I said.
“You know what?” she said. “No, I don’t think you will. In fact, I just remembered: Tina Peters asked me to hold it for her. Some paper she’s writing in AP Physics. That girl is going places.”
“Please.”
“Come back tomorrow. Maybe I’ll be able to find you something more your speed. Right now, I’ve got to finish locking up. Off you go.”
I grabbed the book off the counter and stepped back. “This definitely could have gone better. I shouldn’t have caught you at the end of the day when you’re tired; that wasn’t fair. Live and learn.”
“Where are you going with my book?” she said. The look in her eyes just then said if she had my power, I’d have been wiped from the earth. But she didn’t know how outmatched she was.
“My suggestion,” I began, “is for you to calm down. I’m going to borrow this, off the books, just for the night, and I’ll bring it back in the morning for Tina Peters, Scout’s honor.”
“I can get you expelled if you’re not careful; the assistant principal and my brother play on the same basketball team.”
“You are, genuinely, not a nice person. I had my suspicions.”
She smiled. It was anything but warm. “I was nice when I was your age. But nice people get hurt.”
“I won’t hurt you,” I said.
“You’ll never get the chance.”
Copyright © 2026 by Charles C. Cole
