Is Superman Dead?

IS SUPERMAN DEAD?

(Amsterdam was always good for grieving}

SCOTT L. ANDERSON

Copyright © 2009 by Scott L. Anderson

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U. S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, stored in a database or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass!

Walter Sobchak (The Big Lebowski)

SUMMER OF 1995

WHO KILLED SUPERMAN?

The cable was finally hooked up again - he'd been three months behind on the payments and they had shut his service down - and Superman, the one he loved when he was a kid, was flying around on the tube as some old school badass gangsters in suits and Fedoras peppered him with bullets. You could hardly see the television through the cloud of smoke hanging in the dingy apartment, the cable technician had been bribed with all the beer he could drink and all the hits he could handle off the hookah to hook up HBO and Showtime for free. Fucker had had a hard time getting out the goddamn door he was so toasted. Hanus plopped his Volkswagen wide-ass down on his beaten up old couch, fired up a Pall Mall, and popped another can of Grain Belt open.

Hanus Miller was a very happy, happy man. He had cable, weed, he had beer, he had more cash in his pocket that he had ever had in life, and very soon he would have some blow. Not that stepped on with baby laxative shit either. No fucking way, Jose! He was going all the way today and from now on for that matter. He was scoring some ice cold pharmaceutical blow, straight from the source, gonna be like snorting ice crystals.

And then would come that pussy. Once he scored the cola and got rid of the old man he'd give Donna a call and get her big ass over so they could snort some lines off her big jugs and he could get down on that trim. He was gonna tear that big momma up. Make her cry in the pillow. Donna was big - damn near as big as Hanus, and he weighed close to three bills, but she sure could get in on! He had met her during his last stretch in the joint. She had been a contract cook on the side of the prison where they kept the retards - folks on the street don't realize that they keep retards in prison - think that they're all those cute Down's Syndrome kids, like the one that even had his own television series, wouldn't hurt a fly -when in fact the local state prison had a whole unit of them, mostly child molesters but they were even a few murderers in there. Hanus had been assigned to work the kitchen since he had acquired short order grill skills from working at the local Burger King and the White Castle up in St. Paul between his prison sentences. Donna hated the retards - "the droolers" is what she called them - and showed Hanus her contempt for them one day by demonstrating how she often prepared their burger patties - pressing them flat with her bare and unshaven armpits. Hanus had one upped her by dropping his trousers and squeezing the hamburgers with the cheeks of his ample and unwashed buttocks. One thing led to another, and soon the new couple had romantically screwed standing up in the cold storage area. This routine went for months until Donna was immediately fired when she was caught beating Hanus off with a handful of Crisco behind the potato bins, but they hooked up again soon after had been released.

Criminal mastermind - Al Capone or Pretty Boy Floyd for example - was not what came to mind when one thought of Hanus Eugene Miller III, although he thought of himself as some sort of a gangster with his baggy shorts hanging past his knees, his dirty underwear sticking up out of the back, his Tupac t-shirt, and his ball cap turned sideways on his head even though Hanus was a born cracker and in his forties.