Gallimaufry

A silly short - Evil Anonymous

Most support groups were generally held in old churches, or sometimes community halls or school class rooms. Not that I had ever been to one of those, but I'd seen movies and looked at the brochures before, I knew what they were supposed to look like.  But this wasn't one of the normal support groups, and I supposed it made sense that they wouldn't be sitting somewhere that normal, nice and innocent people wandered around. And they certainly couldn't sit in a church. They weren't supposed to be allowed to go anywhere near the sanctity of something like that. 

However, it was a little  ridiculous that the Evil Anonymous group was meeting in an outdoor amphitheatre, in the middle of the night. There were benches built into the sloping hill, circling the stage that usually housed musicians or thespians, sometimes speeches or ceremonies. But every second Friday, the stage hosted  a circle of the deplorable.  There they sat, some sitting on the cliche plastic floating chairs the right way, others straddling the chair and leaning on the back, one woman merely sat on the ground, her legs bent as she watched the group of them. 

They were all turned inwards, their voices a low murmur as they talked about whatever evil people talked about when they were looking for help. Not that they needed very much help, the world was a shit show, the heroes were useless and caught up in red tape most of the time. And most of these assholes were deities.  But they were looking for help, trying to pretend to be normal people in a world that had conceded that maybe a little bad wasn't a bad thing, as long as they tried not to destroy the entire planet. 

The rest was just fodder, right? 

I took in a deep breath, which brought me the scent of coffee on the air, drawing my attention to the table off to one side. The bastards even had coffee and stale donuts! I don't know why it made me so angry, that they were playing into every little stupid cliche, as if they didn't understand the reason behind what was expected of a support group, but mimed it because that's what they were supposed to do. But it made me furious. 

My fury crackled along the sky overhead, lighting up the group, most of which barely jumped at the peal of thunder as i stalked down between the benches, shifting out of the darkness and into the soft light one of them had conjured for the stage.

"Looks like we have a new member." One of them chuckled, nodding in my direction and drawing their attention my way. 

"Whatever has you so angry, kid. We're here for you. You don't need to vent it haphazardly, pull up a chair, talk to us. What's got you ready to tear the world apart?" 

"I'm not one of you." I snarled at the speaker, who hadn't even stood. None of them had stood, or showed an ounce of  fear at my presence. It was as if they had taken me in, and written me off.

"Of course you're not. But you're on the way." the sitting woman purred, grinning to me with a look that promised life and death and everything in between, "anger like that, a need for vengeance and murder like that, and you'll be one of us soon enough." 

But wait. 

Wasn't  I supposed to be the hero in this?