“You Live Long Enough” • by Christopher Blake

Maisie was 11 and determined to get superpowers, no matter what. Hero or villain, it didn’t matter. The power was the thing. 

She petitioned the school for field trips to nuclear power plants and upstart biotech companies, but there wasn’t a single measly gamma ray explosion or voracious alien parasite. 

She registered for dubious clinical trials at the university but wasn’t old enough to consent. She stared for hours at a spoon, trying to bend it with her mind. She thought she was making progress when her nose bled, but it was only her nose-picking. 

At last, she decided she didn’t need a superpower, just a traumatic origin story to spur her to intellectual and physical perfection. You can hire all sorts of shady people on the dark web, and the movie just happened to be playing across town… 

“Mom, Dad? Can we go see The Mark of Zorro?” 

Her parents had never seen Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

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Christopher Blake lives with his wife, cat-daughter, and human-son in Ontario, Canada.  He writes mostly fantasy and science fiction, some of which can be found in places like Galaxy's Edge and Cosmic Roots & Eldritch Shores. If you like this one, you’ll also find his story, “Goons,” elsewhere on this site.

This week’s Pete Wood Challenge was to write a 150-word or less story that includes the line, “[character] had never heard of [name of a movie].” To see the previous winners of previous challenges, click this link. 

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