Slothantua and His Existential Crisis on Planet 52-B

Slothantua began to feel that there was a general lack of depth to his activities and interactions with other people. This realization struck him at perhaps not the most inopportune moment, as he had just vanquished his most recent foe the Evil Former Lord Emperor of the Dust Beings, Shhhhwuntopung, and subsequently had a little bit of free-time. Slothantua tossed aside Shhhhwuntopung’s head and sat down on a green rock dimpled with tiny craters to contemplate this sudden troubling notion.

“There has to be some aspect of my life with which I am satisfied,” he thought, gazing at the bulging of his muscles against the stretchy thin silver glitteranium spacesuit he was wearing. Perhaps fulfillment was to be found in his public life as his secret identity, Nathan Slothan. The business suits were certainly more comfortable than the skin-tight all-too-revealing get-ups he wore as a defender of the solar system. The random array of clashing day-glo colors, each suited to a different planetary environment or climate, were enjoyable, perhaps a subconscious throwback to his teenage flirtations with drag-shows.

Of course the Incident had ended all of that. A poor decision as a young adult to enter a medical study of “non quantifiable risk” on similarities between humans and sloths, determined by experimental radioactive equipment, had left Nathan as a powerful half-man-half-beast with no recourse but to become a registered Extraordinary Being and Planetary Defender.

The closest he got to normalcy these days was as a particularly hulking employee of a home décor magazine, Interior Accents Quarterly, arranging and photographing displays of earth-tone monogrammed bath towels. Lately, though, even that felt hollow.

Slothantua gazed up at the two glittering blue moons in the sky, and the passing swarm of small deerodactyls that snatched at tiny winged crustaceans as the sun set. Nothing to do now but wait for the spaceship bearing the other four of the Mighty Fistful, on its way back to Earth.

Was it attention he was after? What sort of debt did he feel he owed to people to utilize his supposed gift in such a way? What really constituted good and evil? Didn’t entire races of planetary species get eliminated either way? Slothantua began to absent-mindedly trace one of his six claws in the purple sand, creating patterns and then erasing them soon after.

Maybe it would help him to evaluate his life if he thought of his aspirations before becoming the giant radioactive sloth beast that the world adored and whom cretins of the Universe feared. What had he wanted to be? A firefighter? An Astronaut? He did both activities perhaps daily, and neither actually felt as rewarding as they were in his joyful childhood crayon imaginings. Routine had turned an ersatz cheerful take on his extraordinary mutation into self-pity and doubt. Was all this strength worth the loss of opposable thumbs?

The fist-shaped spaceship appeared suddenly as it pulled out of the fourth dimension immediately in front of Slothantua. Sammy Grillosphere, the man with the power to heat up individual layers of the atmosphere so that planes fell from the sky but kites, balloons, and birds were unharmed (or vice versa) stepped outward from the side portal on the pinky fingernail.

“Splendid work chum. I see you foiled one of our most Significant Nemeses,” Sammy said, glancing over at the headless torso with the Dust Emperor’s insignia on it. “He’ll certainly have a hard time finding a way to get A-HEAD now, won’t he? Heh heh heh.” Sammy chuckled at his own witticism.

“Yeah I guess so,” said Slothantua, still staring dejectedly at the ground.

“Heeeeeeeeyyyy. You sound kind of like you’re in the dumps. Anything wrong? Need a vacation? You did a GREAT JOB pal!!” said Sammy encouragingly. Slothantua looked up slowly.

“No. I mean, I guess I am feeling a little down. I mean….do you ever wonder what you’re doing with your life? I mean, I know why we’re doing this, saving the planets and all, but sometimes I wonder if it’s for me, this kind of life…”

Sammy stared wide-eyed, paused in a slow intake of breath, and then slapped Slothantua on the back with a return of his trademark frozen-faced smile. “OF COURSE it’s the life for you! Excitement! Adventure! Accolades and Adoration from the Rescued Masses! Not to mention that beautiful wife you’ve got at home! Even MOVIE STARS would be lucky to have a lady like THAT!!!”

Slothantua thought about his wife. She had a propensity for getting into trouble, and had been a young co-worker at Interior Accents Quarterly alongside him. He had rescued her so many times it seemed like they were destined to be together. Recently she had revealed to him that she had placed herself in the clutches of so many villains merely to get a strong heroic husband, and somehow this seemed to cheapen the apparent fatedness of their relationship. Slothantua was typically taciturn, but this had been an irreversible unspoken change to the dynamic of their marriage. Even that didn’t feel right anymore.

“Well. I guess. I just don’t feel….happy, I guess.”

Sammy blinked and continued to smile, leading Slothantua toward the ship with a firm hand pressing against the expanse of his back.

“You know I think you just need to forget your troubles for a while. The things we deal with are a lot, I MEAN A LOT to deal with! No Joe-Average-Schmoe could do it everyday like we do and still keep a level head. AND I’m NOT suggesting you go out drinking. OH NO! We sure had enough brain damage already from Mentalio’s Mind-Wipe Ray, heh heh! No, take your wife out to A MOVIE. Or maybe to a BIG FANCY RESTAURANT.” Sammy waved his free hand across the empty air in front of him, as if painting the wonders of which he spoke.

“Yeah,” said Slothantua stepping into the Fist Ship, the chromanium fingernail portal slamming shut behind him.

Employee of the Month

Farnly was exhausted after a long day of work at the Planariatarium. He removed his vinyl jumpsuit with its slowly dribbling unconstituted flatworm particles and hung it on the drying rack over the draining grate.

“You think about what I was saying about workers rights an all ‘at, alright?”

Farnly was accosted thusly by his coworker Cranford.

“Yeah yeah.”

“I mean it “ Cranford said fixing his throbbing veined bloodshot eyes on Farnly’s, and briefly digging in his teeth. “We work hard at what we’re doing. They need us. The people who need planarians need us. They can’t keep dickin’ us around. You oughta come to one ‘a these union meetings.”

“Yeah of course. You know. Just let me know.” Farnly felt extreme antipathy.

“Alright Buddy.” A hand descended to uncomfortably rest on Farnly’s shoulder, unpleasant whisps of processed corn chips intruding into his nose. Boiling vats of hydrogenated oils filled his imagination, the bubbles popping in thick clouds of gas with every word his coworker spoke. “I’ll see ya next shift.”

Freed from the oppressive manhandling of casual acquaintanceship, Farnly made his way out into the world of bleary swiftly fading sunlight. Greyness abounded and he could almost see the air shimmering in the witching hour with the tiny bodies of airborne pathogens, more than likely simply the retina-reflected pulsing and wrigglings of his own eye’s capillaries.

Keeping his head down, eyes averted from all faces of passersby, he made his way walking home as a germ alighted on the cusp of his inner ear.

“I have a message from the germ world for you Farnly…” He was silent in response

“We think what you’ve been giving the family in exchange for protection hasn’t been nearly enough. And a couple of those antibacterial soap slip ups-- tsk tsk. We cant let the genocide of your hands natural fauna go completely unaddressed now can we? All I can say is, your probiotics aren’t gonna know what hit ‘em. You owe us. The fam’ is pissed and we’re takin’ some compensation.”

Intimidation came at him from all angles, from coworkers to his body’s natural ecosystem. He ignored the germ’s warnings of bacterial warfare but ended up vomiting, hunched over the toilet, shortly after arriving home. A blow dryer was running in the bedroom so his wife didn’t observe him in his moment of weakness, which was as it should be.

“Oh honey you’re home? How was work going? I don’t like you working these long hours and then walking home, you could be robbed you know.”

“Oh. Well we started making a new model planarian today”

“Really now? Did they make them bigger again? I thought five feet long was pretty big.”

“No. The ones we were pouring out today, apparently they’re capable of love. They’re gonna be really hot, you know, might mean maybe bonuses even”

“Oh that’s terrific!” His wife’s effusion turned into materialistic babble. Farnly hated feigning interest in his work but it gave their relationship some meaning to pretend to have some kind of emotional investment or interest in their outside lives.

Sliding his body underneath the covers, Farnly stared at the ceiling, mottled from decades of patching and seemingly exuding a faint blue white light, traces of the street lamps that crept in below the blinds. After his wife’s song-like labored nostril-less breathing started, Farnly rose and traced the dark memorized footpath to the bathroom. Many hazards such as nightstands, tables, and chairs took half-formed demon-like shapes, which he knew to avoid due to past toe stubbings and habit.

Once in the bathroom, under the unflattering fluorescent light, Farnly stared into the mirror and prepared to have a silent conversation with himself.

He observed his hollowed-out looking eyes with pronounced baggage underneath, the wrinkling of his jowly cheeks, being slowly dragged from his face to the grave as he continued to age irreversibly. He stared deeply into his own passive cow-like eyes.

Abruptly his nose fell off.

It sputtered blood into the sink and was propelled downward against the drain guard. In short order, each of his other facial features and limbs fell with soft “puh”s to the linoleum, as though his body was made of poorly arranged and placed together clay.

After all bits of his human likeness had deteriorated from the outside of his body, Farnly surveyed his new limbless and slightly phallic shape with dispassion and disinterest. He wondered if he could learn by eating chopped up pieces of other people now.

He flopped his head to the ground and slithered by pushing his foot-like underbelly all the way back to the covers of his bed. His wife adjusted herself in her sleep mumbling something incomprehensible. Farnly felt it proper to respond.

“I don’t think I’m one of those ones built for love though,” he told her.