Excerpt: SuperGroups

Step One - Awakening
" The first step is admitting, to yourself, that you are empowered.
You are a unique, beautiful being, and have a gift you must share with the teeming masses of the world!
Exercises for this week:
- Shout it out loud!
Announce your intentions to the world from a rooftop, or public marketplace!
- Drafting a New You!
Put your creative talents to work! If you are a painter, paint yourself using your gifts to do something extraordinary! If you are an artist, sketch yourself an alternate persona! If you are a writer, create your own special trust-name, to share with the group at your next meeting!"
- SuperGroups handbook, p3

1.

“My name is Harry Ergaster…and I am empowered.”

The sounds of a shitty convention center microphone thumped across the small space like a sack on dull carpet. Polite clapping stumbled back, accompanied by mumbles of “Hello, Harry.” in that weary call-and-response pattern, the ‘-and also with you’ ritualistic reply of a Tuesday-night support group.
“It’s been…ah…six. Six weeks, since my last meeting.” the bald head at the podium was saying. Hands mopped a sweating brow. Fingers trembled over the faux-knot of a clip-on-tie, fumbling as they tried stubbornly to tighten it.
Regarding the lightbulbs: they were fluorescent, but not bars; those little spiral kinds, the ones that buzz and spit if you try to hook them up to a dimmer switch. The ones that let everyone who buys them take a temporary moral high-ground so they can post little factoids about global warming on the bulletin board in the hall without feeling like bleeding hypocrites.
These are the same people that drive hybrids for the sake of driving hybrids, getting high on the pungent gaseous releases of their own burbling worldly-wise asses.
These were the sort of people that rented the building out for the group every other Tuesday, feeling pleased, feeling charitable; as though when the end of the world finally came and the mutants were banging on their doors asking for a cup of brains, they could shrug apologetically and say ‘Sorry, but this wasn’t my fault. I drove a Prius.’
“So…yeah. It’s been six weeks and I should have come a little sooner…but, well, here I am. And…and I’m feeling weak.”
The old men in the back were nodding knowingly: the white ones bobbing a leg, the black ones tapping their canes against the floor to some rhythm only they could hear.
Speaking of music, the kid in the front—the one here because of a court order—he had an iPod in, probably blaring some nu-metal-techno-core-industrial bullshit he’d only bought on iTunes because Pitchfork said it was the aural equivalent of having a clothes-hanger abortion.
On that note, the single mothers were hushing their screaming youngest as they scrabbled with the wrists of the doughy little toddlers, mumbling sternly that they could have gum after the meeting; that, yes, it was almost over; that, no, they hadn’t brought the PSP; that, hey, let’s play the quiet game.
A few people checked their watches. One stretched. A nother yawned.
And Harry was still talking.
“I burnt my hands. This morning. I was saying the mantras…trying to make toast, and I forgot to…well anyway I burned my hands. And the toast. I burnt the toast too.”
Clearing his throat he added, “The smoke alarm went off and I was afraid somebody would call the fire department again. But they…you know, no one did. I was able to, I mean I got it. Under control.”
Regarding the chairs: no two were alike, except that they were all horrible. Most were metal and folded in the middle so they could be stacked in a sad little row in the corner, like bodies waiting to be burned. Among those were all different colors and sizes; some off-black, some that paisley off-brown, some that poorly-painted ivory off-white, some that sickening barf-tinted off-yellow. Some rocked back and forth from corner to corner. Most of them had tennis balls on the feet. There were a few lawn chairs thrown in; you know, just to mix things up.
“I think it…I mean I know it was past due for me to come back to meetings. I just sort of…haven’t felt like. Felt like it. I haven’t felt like doing much of anything, you know; just always really afraid of…things. Ruining things. I’ve been staying in a lot…well I’ve been in, period. Watching a lot of movies, too. I just, uh…just got Netflix. So there’s that.”
There was only one speaker in the whole room, and it offered only as much volume as his own voice; the effect was like being stuck in the middle of a very mellow, very boring self-deprecatory rant in ghetto-hook-up surround-sound.
The speaker was in the corner, by the door, above The Table. It doubled as a PO system in case of emergencies.
Like if there were a fire.
“I’ve been thinking about Judy. Kind of…a lot. I keep thinking that it was…it was so fast. I cried for about…two? Three hours? Cried for a while yesterday.”
Regarding the table: it held a sad, docile little array of store-bought things that called themselves cookies, and a big metal thermos (with Styrofoam cups) for coffee. And the books, in a perfect little pile against the edge.
“I was in the attic, um, cleaning out old storage…well actually I was looking for it, and I found it so…um…yeah, I found Judy’s favorite dish, the little porcelain one with her name on it. That’s why I was crying and started doing the dictates and saying the mantras again.”
His face plump, his shirt plaid, his pants crisply-ironed khakis. His eyes, slotted into the folds of flesh like little opals dropped in pancake batter, glistened just a little as he spoke. He blinked and the shivering film fell away.
“I’m not…I don’t know if I said before…last meeting…about Judy. I burned her.”
Regarding the books: there’s dozens of them, for every occasion, in case anyone should show up. They ranged back to the early Golden Era, back when everything was coated with a happy little sheen of cheese. Later—silver era; early nineties—when the heroes started getting flawed and gritty and shooting smack? Those weren’t the most optimistic reads for the sort of people that came to SG.
“Judy was my dog. I just…”
Coughing awkwardly, looking at his shoes.
“…I burned her.”

This is Harry Ergaster.
His trust-name is The Heating Element.