He did not think that he would get to use his new found power so soon. Certainly, living in the largest city in the country, it must mean he must also be living in the highest concentration of misogynists. But before the incident that had precipitated all of this, he had never personally encountered it in all the years he had been there.
So he was surprised when, less than a week later, he found himself on a packed subway car in plain view of a guy’s hand as it touched the woman in front of him. Like a real New Yorker, she took none of it. “Keep your hand off my ass you prick!” She shouted immediately, turning to face her molester and giving him a good shove. He was a great deal larger than her, however, and he and his friend just started snickering about it. The whole car was focused on them; people here would not put up with this kind of crap.
Anthony felt their hostility, felt it wash over him. He slowly made his way through the crowd. People mistook it for simply heading for the door, and moved to let him through. People had put themselves between the woman and the pair of harassers, who continued in their stupid sniggering. He hated the sound of it. He hated them for daring to continue drawing breath after their brazen, disgusting action.
Slowly, deliberately, he reached over and gripped the man by the arm he had used. The man stopped snickering and looked down at his forearm just in time to see Anthony’s hand snap in cleanly in the middle. Anthony never would have thought that such a large man was capable of producing a scream so shrill. It was a single scream, followed by a lot of moaning, interspersed with mostly incoherent rambling. He was completely incapable of believing what had happened was real; and from the look of it his friend was not much more capable.
Anthony stared down his nose at them as if he towered over them. Beads of sweat formed on the injured man’s forehead as he looked up, uncomprehending into his assailant’s eyes. At the next stop, he—and nearly all of the people on the train—got off, leaving the two creeps nearly alone. When Anthony’s eyes met the the woman’s, he was not sure what he saw there. But he did not wait to find out, not wanting to get involved with the police.
Over the next few months, he encountered many misongynists, and did far, far worse to some of them than breaking an arm. But he remembered that first time the most distinctively; his heart beating like a drum in his chest as he reached for the stranger’s arm. The way it felt when it broke in his hand, the sounds the injured man made.
This had all started not long before the arm-breaking incident. Emily, his long time friend and long time wishing-was-more-than-a-friend, had gone with him to see a movie in a little independent
theater in SoHo. He had never, ever had a problem in this part of town or any other, really, when he had been with Emily or any other female friend. So he was taken completely off guard when a couple of teenage boys starting cat calling her. It was bad enough that they were doing it, but they were being really, disgustingly graphic.
“Hey,” he said to them, “shut up already.” They found this hilarious. Both stood a good head and shoulders taller than Anthony, who had never had much in the way of stature. Being ten years older than some kids didn’t really do much for you when they were big and you were a scrawny geek. They got on either side of him, one of them getting in his face and daring him to take a swing. He didn’t, but not because he didn’t want to. He turned and walked away quickly because he was terrified of them.
They walked for several blocks with the assholes following closely behind them, taunting them and making lewd comments at Emily. It was miserable and it was humiliating, and it only ended when an older man intervened. “Fuck off you little pricks,” he shouted, walking up like he meant to deck them. He wasn’t much bigger than Anthony, but he carried himself with a confidence the younger man completely lacked. The kids didn’t actually want a fight, and so they turned around and left with a few parting remarks.
“Are you kids OK?” the man asked, and Emily assured him that they were, and thanked him. Anthony just stared at the ground. It wasn’t just the humiliation. He had never felt so angry in his life. He had never even known that he could feel this way; a cold, unyielding hatred that swallowed up every other feeling.
That night, he woke up and knew immediately that he was not alone. He turned on the light and standing before his bed was a man he had never seen before. The man wore an expensive looking pinstriped three piece suit. In spite of this, though Anthony couldn’t tell you exactly why, everything about him screamed cheap.
“What the fuck are you doing in my apartment?” Anthony demanded, hoping he sounded angry rather than scared.
“I’ve come to give you some help, Anthony,” the stranger said in a smooth, deep voice.
“Who are you? How do you know me?”
“I’m a friend,” the man said with a smile that was anything but friendly, “I saw what happened. With the boys.”
“Are you with them?” Anthony asked, grasping for some explanation for the bizarre situation he found himself in.
“Hardly,” the man said dismissively, “I just watched and thought the whole thing was kind of pathetic. Not only were you completely unable to do anything, but you didn’t even try.”
“Fuck you,” Anthony spat, and infuriatingly he had to fight back tears.
“Still feeling pretty raw, aren’t we?” a menacing grin, “I’m going to give you a little gift. Starting tomorrow, until you teach those boys a lesson yourself, you’re going to be strong. Unbelievably strong. No mortal will be able to best you.”
“What are you talking about? Are you…a trainer or something?” It sounded stupid before he had even said it. This elicited laughter from the stranger, a discomforting noise that filled the whole room and ran on far too long.
“Test yourself tomorrow if you don’t believe me,” the man said when he finally stopped.
Then the room was pitch black again, and Anthony was still under the covers. A dream? Of course it was.
But it hadn’t been. He couldn’t resist testing himself the next day. He went to the gym whose membership he had signed up for eight months earlier but barely taken advantage of. He found that the weights were a lot lighter than he could remember. In fact, he was unable to find any weights that he couldn’t lift immediately and easily. As he went from station to station, he drew more and more attention to himself. The sight of such a little man lifting so much weight must have been very strange.
The incident with the broken arm came not long after that. Then he knocked a few teeth out of the mouth of a cat-caller. Then he caught a couple of guys pinning a girl against a wall in an alley on his way home from work, and he really gave them a thrashing. They were disgusting. They were vermin. They deserved worse than he was capable of, even then.
After years of never encountering this type they seemed to show themselves every other day. Was it that he had been ignoring them all along, and only now had his eyes open? Or was part of the bargain that these people were drawn to him now?
When he spent time with Emily, she could tell something had changed. He didn’t look any different, and she hadn’t seen him get into any fights, but it was just the way he carried himself. He radiated confidence in a way he never had in all the years they’d known each other. She liked it, and she gave him signs that she had finally started to like him—in the way he had always wanted her to.
But that went out the window when they encountered those teenagers ago.
From Anthony’s point of view, it was destiny, giving him another chance. A chance to make up for his previous humiliation. They even remembered him, and walked over with the intention of repeating history.
He had never thrashed any misogynists as thoroughly as he did these two. He hit the first one in the ribs, having learned that going for a blow to the head first tended to drop his opponents too quickly. The boy rewarded him by coughing up blood. Before his friend could blink, Anthony brought the heel of his foot down savagely against his ankle. The result was rather similar to the man on the subway, only with more crying. It did not go better for them from there.
Anthony lost himself in the adrenaline rush. When he stopped, the big youths who had humiliated him and harassed Emily were broken, bleeding, whimpering piles at his feet. He was so strong. He was a hero.
Emily. He suddenly remembered her. He looked up at her for the first time since the engagement began. And he saw…
He saw what he had seen only a glimmer of from that woman on the subway, something he had now seen from dozens of men over the course of the past few weeks.
She was afraid. Afraid of him.
He had thought himself so righteous, but with each fight he had fallen deeper into the euphoria of violence. Feeling justified, feeling better than the powerless scum he had crushed only made the whole thing feel more…enjoyable.
Emily would never speak to him again. And now, having caught up with the kids who had been there at the beginning, his strength would leave him for good.
He felt more pathetic and alone than he ever had. And the streets of Manhattan seemed to echo with the horrible laughter of the well dressed man who had given him the gift of violence.