Homemade Heroes, Face One

HOMEMADE HEROES, FACE ONE
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Ja had been going for stretchy powers, initially. Mr. Fantastic, Plastic Man and the like. It was really the only power where you could be a super-hero and guarantee yourself a nice, big wang. Like so many kids in the late twentieth century picked up a guitar for the women, so many in the late twenty-first picked up powers. No one had achieved super-stretchiness yet but Ja figured he'd unlocked the secret.

One afternoon after he'd loaded class, he spent his graffiti money on twenty-thousand rubber bands. It took them three days to print out and tied up the whole house because his monkey-ass Giz-box was about three years old. ProxyMom was pissed, especially when the override worked about as well as everything else on the out-dated crapbox, but she'd see it his way when he put it to her as Mr. Plastastic. That was the best name his feeble mind could muster. When the printout was ready, Ja fused himself with the lot of them.

He didn't exactly get what he wanted, although he immediately tried to stretch his wang. It did seem bouncier than usual but it wouldn't hold its longer form. After ten minutes of attempting to bring his super-powers to their full potency he rolled over and fell asleep.

He found work holding papers together and securing the pony- and pig-tails of the poor. When he grew tired of the super-hero life, he went back to graffiti. Mr. Plastastic had only fought the forces of chaos for about nine months, but Ja's murals would forever after stretch just a little bit higher than anyone else's.