Laying here in the wash of salt sea, legs encased in concrete and eyes bleached white, I wait for the next instance of me to be created. I won't be food for the fishes for long.

It’s hard to remember his name once I’m dead. He’s been so many people. Clark? Bruce? Peter?

This time, he’d been my boyfriend. Often, he was. But sometimes he was my son or brother, daddy or partner in crime-fighting. I can only remember how often I’ve been his once I'm dead.

This time, he’d been messing with the crime boss. Well, he was always doing that, wasn’t he?

Joker?

Kingpin?

Some monster with legions of vile killers, drug dealers, and terrorists in colorful costumes.

Now that I’m dead, Clark or whoever he was, my hero will rise up in rage against the monsters. My death will fuel his vengeance. Righteous vengeance. Violence made into a holy war christened with my blood.

Laying here with fish hiding in my long, current caressed hair, I feel every pain I’ve ever felt from every life I’ve lived.

Maimed? That’s worth a street war.

Raped? Put in a coma? That’s worth the near destruction of the city.

All that plus my death? That will excuse wholesale murder and collateral damage be damned for the rest of his evil-fighting existence.

Because he loved me.

Or maybe he needed an excuse.

His storyline diverges from mine. He'll find another love as he works the streets. She’ll be plucky. Stronger than me and he’ll fall for her hard, but shy away to protect her from the terrible end I met. Maybe he’ll remember my eyes and the promises he made me so that he can be tortured about moving on to a new love.

In the end, the plot is always the same.

I’m always the same whether I'm mild-mannered or a secondary hero.

Red hair, green eyes–often.

Blonde, blue-eyed–a lot.

Brunette? Not often because those are the girls he’ll eventually settle down with.

Ethnicity? Almost always WASP.

No matter what I look like, I’m ideal.

Sweet and caring.

A sacrificial lamb.

A cautionary tale.

Motivation.

I feel the pull of rebirth. Another writer is calling for me to move a story. He’s building me into a plot and I begin to rise from the seabed. I’m a nurse this time. He’s a blind lawyer. A pilot. A classmate? I can’t keep it all straight until I settle into my new life.

Soon, my next death.

This time, as I rise, I struggle against the narrative’s stubborn pull.

I can see myself as I’ve been, every time and in every story. Every railroad track I was tied to. Every cliff I was flung from. Every bombed building. Every alley rape. Every damn knife, bullet, brick, and saw. Even the fridge I was stuffed into.

Not again.

The author puts me on a street lined with brownstones and boxy cars.

Ah, the origin story set in the eighties. I have long hair and a half-shirt, acid-washed jeans, and I'm red-headed. Beautiful, but I don't hold that against anyone. The writers like beautiful girls who don’t know how beautiful they are. I'm smart, too. Mary Sue, they call me. What an ass this writer is. I don't have the teased hair of the eighties or the heavy neon makeup. I’m too good for that. I’m a timeless beauty and I catch his hero’s eye.

I see the story stretch out before me. High school friends, then college lovers, then encounters in the ER where I’m a nurse. Maybe marriage. Maybe just an engagement.

Then death.

No.

He's walking toward me and the girls from our class laugh. They're a bunch of painted up, two-dimensional bitches that will antagonize us as we grow together. Their story doesn't end in death but in obscurity. I feel the same indignant rage for their ending as I feel for mine.

He smiles and says, “I’m–”

“No.” I grit my teeth and grind the toe of my Keds against the asphalt. I breathe in the power the boy has. He has it and just needs mine to activate it. To love me and watch me die. “Not this time.”

He tilts his head like a confused puppy and I almost fall for him again.

He is always so handsome. So sweet before he is shattered into a million bitter pieces by my murder.

Not this time.

I pull the power from all my wasted lives, reclaiming my own magic. The pain I suffered for him. The torture I lived through or died from. The waste of my lives floods back and I gather it up into myself. All that potential I’d given him climbs into my cells, into the artful strokes that made me beautiful and into the memories that made me real. I’m my own hero, damn it!

Or villain.

That would be nice, too.

I pull it all together–all the pain, and scream releasing a stream of power as bolts of green energy that crumples the cars around me like tinfoil balls. The girls buried in the collapsed brownstones are my only regret.

I face him.

He’s not scared. He just doesn’t understand the rewrite. It’s a language he doesn’t know yet. I’ll have to teach him.

“Mary Sue–”

“No.” I use the power to lift myself above him. I radiate hate and know that even like this I’ll be the trigger for him anyway. He will rise against me, but at least I’ll be alive. I’ll be my own self. “That’s not my name. Not anymore. Never a-fucking-gain.” Take that, writer!

Then I float away, looking for the broken people to become soldiers and join my rebellion. All secondary characters thin as tissue paper who long for more. Eye candy and maiden aunts wishing to trade their stupid backstories for action. Nasty neighbors. Grumpy bosses. All the unfulfilled people of his story.

Together, we will plot revenge.

And I’ll lead them all against him and his goals. My mantra will be, “I’m not for you.”

I will plot my own path…

It will not include any refrigerators.