SHORT STORY I WROTE. Part of a book in process of edition. TKS for your visit and reading.

 

THE RETURN OF SUPERMAN

 

In the future, on some day not too distant when I am there for the centenary's house, living in a retirement home for the young rockers of yesterdays, after finishing my usual routine exams I will be sent to the waiting room of the existing infirmary, where I will have to wait for the results, reporting what is still left of my health at this moment.

After lighting one of my illegal cigarettes hidden from the nurse, Captain Thiago appears to me, an old friend in his seventies, almost bald, in good health, but no longer as slender as in the prime of his youth.

-D@mm it Zéca!!! Again you waited for the nurse to come out to light the cigarette!! You have to stop that.

-You're right, Captain. But I'll wait for the medical result to not smoke anymore, until then, I can finish this cigarette here.

-No, Zéca. You really have to stop.

-I'll stop when I die, Captain. Until then I'll be decreasing. Look, when I was your age I smoked much less than I smoke today, so there was even a certain advance in my situation.

We both laughed at the mediocre joke because we didn't have much else to do but check the news on our cell phones, make small talk talking bad about politicians or remembering the past.

-What's up Zéca? Are you writing anything new?

-Writing always am, but now much less because everything hurts.

"Even to write, then I have to record it in the audio and pass to artificial intelligence to editing all in a way that my messy ideas make some sense."

-And is it working?

-I do my part, Thiagão. With a lot of effort, but then comes the censorship and does not allow the publication of anything, because my ideas are old and the people today do not need to waste time with this kind of uselessness...

-Then the service ends up shelved?

-It ends up being shelved, Thiagão. My luck is that I have some money left over from some jobs I did back then and "badly" hold my retirement and this lot of exams that I am forced to do.

-Are the works you talk about from the time of SUCESS PILL, Zéca? At that time, the scripts you wrote were a guarantee of success...

-Exact. What the government didn't eat me with taxes is still there...

-Man, how I liked that series, the SUCCESS PILL...

-It made a good amount of money, Thiagão... It was enough for the expense.

-And there were a lot of seasons. Many people still think that if he came back today, it would be a success.

-It could be... The motto of the SUCCESS PILL in each episode, being given to someone to fulfill any personal wish or dream, can still be explored in a multitude of variants.

-I saw all the episodes, Zéca. I did a lot of programs there on my youtube channel commenting on everything. People still like this series a lot.

-And wich was your favorite episode, Thiagão?

-The guy who fulfilled the dream of living with the movie star he dreamed of since childhood, then, after he saw how difficult the life of an artist is, he became a renowned businessman helping a lot of other people in the business get work, in times of crisis, ending him as her hero.

-That story was good, but too bad the guy died in the end...

-And you, Zéca... What was the episode you liked the most?

-What I haven't written yet...

-Oh! But this answer is standard, Zéca... Over me, my friend?

-Worse is that it is, Thiagão. I have a lot of work there to publish, but this censorship of the social democratic state, doesn't even let us think straight.

"It's just brainwashing to educate us, eating slop food and paying high tax collections. I don't even know how I managed to live so long like that."

"What worries me is the future fate of younger generations like yours."

"You are still rubber, but the State wants to do away with the elders and leave only the kids without enough memory or knowledge."

"So captain, my expectation is even in the works that have not yet come out. Here at the top of my centenary, I have to look forward... As long as the eye can handle..."

-F*ck, Zéca... I always thought a lot about that series.

"I always imagined the situations I would get into if a pill like that appeared in front of me."

-And what would you do if you got a success pill, Thiagão?

-I was going to turn myself into Superman.

-But you're already Superman, Thiagão. When you wear the big Blue uniform, go to cosplay events and especially to charities providing unpaid volunteer services of assistance to the needy…

“Fellow… You become my favorite Superman!”

-Thanks Zéca, but I'm just an ordinary man.

"I would really like to be the real Superman..."

"To help the world by doing good, just as the Kryptonian original would do."

-The original Kryptonian Superman is one of my favorite heroes too, Thiagão, precisely because, I myself, in his place, if I had so much power, would make a lot of mistakes, trying to correct the world in my own way, which would certainly not be the most correct and everything would end up in a communist dictatorship of sh*t, even worse than the one we have today.

-Superman needs to come back, Zéca.

"They finished with him, he is forgotten and not even released in comics anymore."

-He symbolizes virtue, Thiagão. Azulão is one of ours. He represents virility for the sake of something GOOD and better for the WORLD COLLECTIVITY, even if still invisible to the eyes of the ignorant crowd.

"Then they disappeared from the censored media, with all his references, and today nothing is published or divulged about him and..."

I couldn't interrupt my reasoning, because I didn't imagine where it would take me, and also because the nurse arrived to take me to another room where she put me sitting in front of a table.

Then she left, leaving me waiting there, alone, who knows what.

The delay was short and soon an acquaintance arrived.

He was not a relative or a doctor, but one of my fictional characters in the stories I wrote.

MR. PILL.

 

***

 

MR. PILL is not just any ordinary guy. In fact is the protagonist of the series THE PILL OF SUCCESS.

He is the one who gives the main character of each episode the pill capable of fulfilling any wish or dream, no matter how absurd and impossible it may seem.

Yes, it was himself.

His characteristic outfit, with a grayish velvet jacket, pants, shirt and Fedora hat, in black and also the characteristic sunglasses, left no doubt even because of the aura now hovering the environment in which, Mr. PILL, who, when appeared, left everything around, very strange.

-You know why I'm here... - He said sitting in the chair available there.

-No. I don't know. I can't remember much anymore.

-You met the premises...

-Premises? Which ones?

-The ones required to be able to obtain the reward...

-I don't remember exactly which they were, in fact, because of the few neurons that remain intact in my brain, I am not sure how to remember clearly what would be the conditions required for someone to obtain the pill.

"It seems to me, not even the writers, despite the success of the serie, have not reached a consensus on the subject."

-Yes, but you got the reward you deserved. Here it is!

Having said that, Mr. Pill placed the famous SUCCESS PILL on the table, then rose from the chair where he had been sitting, greeted me by raising his hat, and left.

-Be happy. - He said repeating the same words as always in each episode, when he left behind the main character of the moment to live the consequences of having his own desires/dreams fulfilled, which could be of the most diverse orders, from a success life, to the eventual endless mistakes and nightmares in his destiny.

It would be enough to write down on paper everything I intended to accomplish, keeping that desire folded in my pocket, then I have to ingest the pill waiting for the due consequences of such an action.

That is it.

In that situation, what to do with life, from then on?

I was in front of a spherical range of options with infinite range capable of taking me to past, future, or imaginary present times, and all that occurred to me at the moment was to take advantage and smoke another cigarette, since the nurse was not yet around.

It was only after the flame of wisdom was lit that the ideas seemed a little clearer.

The way my life was whipped 24/7 relentlessly by the heavy whip of Murphy's Law, certainly, what could be a gift for any normal human being, in my specific case, would become a hellish succession of mistakes to make me even more frustrated and nervous with everyday’s problems.

Just as there were no limitations to the realization of any written request on the sheet of paper, there could also be no restrictions, avoiding probable misfortunes arising from these wills.

I was in such a dilemma as to what to ask for, that I even imagined that, if I simply begged for more health, the government, as a result, would certainly withdraw from me the retirement benefits already earned, such as pension payments, health treatments and medications.

What to do?

I didn't ask for any of that.

Maybe it was even life honoring me for some good deed that I had done in the unlikely past, but certainly, it should really be a prank of Fate wanting to apply some trick.

But maybe it wasn't...

I could keep this gift and take the rest of my life without ever worrying about the help of such a crutch in my success.

WHOOPS! Sorry to interrupt you, but I remembered that this script of the main character not using the pill was already developed earlier in the series.

Hence, my still not very active creativity suggested that I could also follow another line... That of passing the hot potato to someone else to risk own luck.

Yes... It wasn't a bad idea.

Even though suffering every day, I couldn't complain about the life.

Full of setbacks, stumbles, headbutts, Corinthians' bad results, bills to pay, politicians who are sons of a b*tch...

Still, I continue to protest, not so sure of my rights to make those demands I already routinely and insistently make, because, after all, to be absolutely true, Destiny itself provided me, a few conditions for my challenges that great majority of people does not have to face much greater hardships than mines.

In this way, I make a point of continuing like this: a boring and complaining old grump.

If I take the PILL of SUCCESS, my problems will end and there will be in life, nothing more to protest...

My time in this world is about to end and I don't need much more than I've already obtained.

Already, the community that surrounds me, needs better people than me...

Someone full of good intentions, who helps children and those in need by guiding the world to a better path.

With some effort I went up the stairs and passed by the room where Thiagão slept.

From there, a deafening rumble emerged, which looked more like a truck engine running at full power being periodically interrupted by the hiss of a hypothetical turbocharger activated.

It was the Captain snoring.

I entered the room and put the pill on the nightstand, next to Thiagão's bed, left there, and went to my dormitory where I practically fainted from fatigue in my own smelly padding, now, with a clear conscience.

In fact, this type of plot had not been attempted in any previous script of the SUCCESS PILL series.

 

***

I woke up with my bladder demanding that I go empty it.

Almost stumbling I went to the bathroom to fulfill this obligation and, only then, long after finishing it, I began to be less stunned.

I drank half a can of my favorite energy drink that was still forming champions in F1 and I went outside the house to see the sun rise.

I sat on a wooden bench in the garden, lit my first cigarette of the day, before the nurse arrived and watched nature continue with its work lighting up the morning.

Then I hear screams:

-What is that?

-Is it a bird?

-A rocket?

-A plane?

-No! It's Superman. He came back.

In my head, I even listened to the old song theme of the movies of my always dear BIG BLUE.

People shouted in joy while I took  stronger puffs on the cigarette, aware of the rare success from one of my decisions; the world needs the return of a SUPERMAN, and I want to keep complaining, because...

Do you really want to know?

My affinities are greater and I like BATMAN much more.

 

***

 

STORY DEDICATED TO BATMAN WHO THIS YEAR 2024 turns 85 years old!

 

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MORAL OF THE STORY: NOT EVERY ELDERLY PERSON self-deludes into reliving lost youth, contenting only with avoiding greater problems in old age.

 

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