Prologue

I am become a superhero of the ultramodern age, difficult to recognize as such, but with that last unimpeachable quality shining bright under the dark cloak of my outer layers that demark me sinister, terrible and altogether the antithesis of what people look for under that title.
I am unbecome a man. Made weak by time and fate and in will, I let the man drop away from me like a retire-able sock, undarned and sadly stained, let it fall away from me like o so many old and tattered metaphors that, as I sit here now in my perfectly bleached, starch-stiff, mountain-scented uniform, unallowed the pen with which I scrawl, I begin to have an unfaith in poetry, the seed of my childhood, unfaith in the power of any words no matter their construction. Unbecome, unallowed, uniform; the tell-tale trinity of the unmade man.
This is the memoir of the superhero, from the point he became to the point he unbecame, the form of the hero falling away like (I’ll skip the simile here, if you don’t mind), and became – well, the pen-wielding ward of the state hunched over this paper now in dazzling toxic-white, the alter-ego.
I apologize only for this aspect of the memoir: that it should become at only five hundred word installments. I’m not allotted much private time to remove my secret pen and scrawl out these words on a tendril of toilet paper. Besides, I could not ask so much space of my friend Mike who has been kind enough to print these poor words and this unbecoming story here, for whatever eyes may rest upon them.
I am become a liar. I won’t apologize for that, I’m not James Frey.