prompt: fight, title: up up and away in "the next big thing" flash fiction

One of Frank’s co-workers on the Walk of Fame, busking photos to wide-eyed tourists as well as hipsters trolling for cheap irony, was a guy they all called “Hollywood Superman”, for relatively obvious reasons. The finest character actor to ever grace The Boulevard, finer than any star with handprints in the Grauman’s cement. More believable as a super-hero than Frank as a sasquatch, even though Frank’s an actual goddamned sasquatch.

I wish I could say this means Superman’s real, that the fact he was a better fake than the genuine article would make him actually super. Sadly, that’s rarely the case, even under that haze of LA’s obfuscating glamor. Considering how many real Lex Luthors there are, cartoon criminals posing as genius businessmen, he’d have them all in space-jail by now, were this the case. Musk, Bezos, Thiel, Trump, all salted away into some sort of Phantom Zone. Alas, however, no such luck here.

“Hollywood Superman” was just a regular man born able to pass as Christopher Reeve’s cousin. And really sold it. Some are thrust into sports because of height. Some try modelling because of beauty sublime. Others get into creative writing because of mental illnesses. This man, however, simply resembled Superman and ran with it. Which went amazing for a while as so many things do, until it didn’t anymore, as with all things ever.

One evening just before the actual sunset, not the street but the sun below the horizon, arrived in Hollywood, he witnessed a gang trying to mug some tourist family. Not even desperate indigents looking for booze, rich snots from The Hills doing it for kicks, because they could get away with it. On a reflex, he got into a fight to intervene but it went awfully. Once Frank Yetti realized what was happening, his literal super-human strength got Superman out of there before they could kill him, but not before significant spinal damage. They got away, of course, the rich ones always do.

There were fundraisers by the buskers and local shop-keeps because, you know, this is America and he didn’t have health insurance. It got him back on his feet, but not quite enough to prevent lingering pain and while he kept on working there, he was never quite the same. He still looked like Superman, but the sparkle was gone from his eye, backbrace just barely visible beneath his spandex. For all I know, he’s still there now?

It reminded me of a time I once saw some guy dressed as Superman sheepishly sneaking into the medical marijuana dispensary on Highland just north of Hollywood. Before Frank shared his tale with me, I thought it was someone just playing pranks for a teevee show. Now, of course, I know there was nothing funny to it, no joke or bird or plane, just a man like any of us, trying to find an avenue to deal with the pains of reality for whatever span of years we can manage to remain real.