Chapter 10: Breakfast Briefing

By a/k/a Simon
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After returning to bed Eddie, thankfully, had no more bad dreams and slept rather soundly, despite being in a strange bed and even stranger surroundings. When he woke the next morning he woke gently and to the smell of cooking bacon, always the best way to start a day. He looked over at Megan, still sound asleep, and decided to let her rest, knowing the harrowing day she was sure to face. Rather than lay there until she joined him in the land of the living, Eddie decided to search out the source of the wonderful smell filling the house and see if he could get in on the action.

The last person that Eddie Sanchez had spoken to before going to sleep was the first person he spoke to when he woke up the next day. In the kitchen, standing by the stove, Teflon spatula in one hand, frying pan handle in the other, was Greta Foster. The sizzle and pop of the bacon kept her mind occupied and she didn’t notice when Eddie walked through the entryway. He stood there for several seconds, taking in the comforting scene of domesticity. The day before had been about death and anger and regret and tears. He was happy to have at least one moment that was about something simpler, something like breakfast.

Sensing a presence, Greta lifted her head and snapped out of the meditation of cooking. She gave Eddie a smile that he could tell hid her true melancholy. It was her role to stay strong for the family, the elders were supposed to be the mortar that held the bricks in place. But with the older generation diminishing, Greta was finding the responsibility solely on her shoulders, and she wasn’t completely sure she could handle it. At the very least she was glad to have Eddie there. He wasn’t a blood relative and, until recently, not even a part of her life. Their tenuous connection made it easier for her to open up to him, to give him small glimpses into the truth of how she was dealing with everything. She had never held him as a baby or watched him while his parents went out or lent him money when he was in a jam. He had never depended on her for anything and so, she saw him as more of an equal.

In his mind, Eddie respected her. He knew it must be a hard position she was in, though he’d never had to deal with such situations himself. Maybe he’d never stood at a person’s deathbed and played the role of strength-giver, but having people expecting you to be there for them when they needed you was a feeling he was more than familiar with.

“Coffee?” she asked as Eddie took a seat at the rectangular table in the corner of the kitchen. He nodded an affirmative and she placed a mug in front of him and filled it with steaming hot liquid. Eddie curled his hands around the mug, the coffee so hot that it instantly heated the ceramic to the outside and conducted the heat through his palms, down his wrists and up his arms.

“Do you have any cream?” he asked, when he realized that, as welcome as the heat was, he still wanted to drink the coffee at some point.

Greta walked to the refrigerator and looked inside. Her voice muffled by the sound of the cooler, she said, “Sorry, only milk. Just a little left.”

That was fine, though Eddie felt slightly bad about using the last of the family’s milk, even if it wasn’t close to enough for a glass or anything useful other than a small amount added to coffee. With that in mind, he dismissed his concerns and decided to enjoy the few calm moments remaining to the day.

He didn’t realize how few moments those would be.

As Greta was asking Eddie how he liked his eggs, heavy footsteps could be heard from below the kitchen floor. It was Ryan, trudging out of bed and up the stairs from the basement. Like a disturbed troll crawling out from under his bridge, Ryan plodded into the kitchen, unsettled and grumpy from the harsh reality of consciousness. Perhaps he was hung over, Eddie wondered, thinking it best not to provoke him in any way.

All Ryan had on was a pair of white Fruit of the Loom briefs. Walking by it was impossible not to notice the remains of a morning hard on, especially as, by scratching his ass incessantly, he pulled the thin cotton tighter around his prominent phallus. Aberrant sounds came out of every orifice of Ryan’s body. Maybe he simply displayed less decorum when he first woke up, but Eddie couldn’t help but feel that Ryan’s conduct was well beyond the realm of common decency. At the very least he could have thrown on a bathrobe or a pair of pants.

“Fuck!” Ryan was tipping the empty milk carton over, seeing that there was nothing inside but a few remaining drops. “Is there any more milk anywhere?”

Greta reached into a nearby cabinet, “I found some CoffeeMate, if you want that.”

“Nah, I can’t use that shit. It gives me the runs.” Then he noticed Eddie for the first time, and noticed the obvious presence of milk in his coffee.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie apologized. “I used the last of it. I didn’t know.”

Ryan shook his head in disgust, pursing his lips. “Forget it,” he said. “I’m going to take a shower.”


The motion of Eddie getting out of bed had woken Megan up, but she was not ready to deal with the day yet, and so, faked still being asleep as her husband wandered off downstairs. She needed a minute to just lay there and ease into things. Once she accepted the inevitable, she climbed out of bed and wrapped her old high school robe around her, fuzzy, light blue, and down to the floor. The next step was to shower, because there was no way she was going to be able to deal with anything without first washing away the previous day’s tears and grime.

In the bathroom, she grabbed a familiar towel from the small closet, pink with an embroidered bunny at one end, a towel she’d used as a child, and set it on the toilet across from the shower, within arms reach if she bent over and stretched.

As the water shot down upon her body, she thought about how strange it was to be back in this shower after so many years. She remembered bleary-eyed mornings, when she’d only have five minutes to clean up before having to run out the door and catch the bus to school. Memories of years later, during the big hair 80s, when she could easily spend an hour teasing and spraying, using a curling iron in ways surgeons used instruments to execute exacting procedures, and applying an indestructible layer of AquaNet to her bangs to keep them in the proper heavenward position. Later still, the first time she’d taken a pregnancy test, late at night while the rest of the family slept, her hand shaking as she waited for the indicator to reveal positive or negative, not sure which answer she preferred, but still relieved when it told her there wasn’t a baby on the way. Over the years she’d probably had as many important moments in her life happen while in this small utilitarian room than in any other room of the house. And then she remembered another time, being hunched over the toilet, vomiting, her stomach unsettled because her brother had just punched her after he blamed her for his drug plants being stolen, her wrists swelling up and bruising from where he’d grabbed her. Suddenly she wasn’t so nostalgic for the bathroom, a room where people go to get clean by leaving their dirt and shit and piss and spit behind. It was too bad that memories couldn’t be flushed down the drain quite so easily.

To distract herself from disquieting retrospection she turned on the waterproof radio hanging next to the soap tray. It was drive time and most of the local stations were playing ‘zoo crew’ talk, pitiful derivatives of an increasingly tired Howard Stern shtick. She switched over to AM, looking for a news channel, curious to see what had been happening lately in the commonwealth of Massachusetts.

“…daring escape of the superpowered villain Albert Mendelhaus, known publicly as Shadowclaw, from the Boston Extraordinary Offenders facility, commonly referred to as The BOX. Police have no leads other than to say that he has connections in the Putnam area and may attempt to reach out to his contacts there. Though historically a thief, Mendelhaus should be considered extremely dangerous. For more on Albert Mendelhaus, a.k.a. Shadowclaw, we turn to our consultant on superhuman phenomena, Terry Bertrand. Terry…”

“Thanks Walter. We actually know very little about the origin of Shadowclaw’s powers. We know that Mendelhaus was a small-time crook, with a long record of petty theft and the occasional assault charge. About five years ago he hit the big time when he obtained psychokinetic powers through a mysterious source. Where he got his powers is not so important as what he did with them and how police and enforcement units can stop him. Shadowclaw uses the power of his mind to draw together the Dark Matter present in the universe and fashion that matter into large claws, which he can wield with incredibly destructive force. Two years ago, at a hostage situation in a bank in New Hampshire…”

Megan turned down the volume on the radio. Rubbing soap under her armpits, she thought back over the stories Eddie had told her, trying to recall if any involved a character named Mendelhaus or Shadowclaw. She focused more on Shadowclaw, because Eddie always favored using the established codenames, as silly as some of them were, when referring to superpowered individuals or anyone else involved in that scene. Try as she might, there was no recollection of anyone with that name. It was highly likely that he’d never met or fought the villain before. The general public assumed much like they did with movie stars or musicians, that everyone with superpowers knew each other just because they worked in the same field. Megan was just as guilty of this fallacy, but she was quick to correct herself. When she finished with her shower she finished with all thoughts of a possible intersection of Eddie ‘Corona’ Sanchez and Albert ‘Shadowclaw’ Mendelhaus.

Megan pulled the curtain across and stood there, allowing her body to air-dry for a few moments before reaching for the towel. As she stretched her hands over her head, a yawn filling her ears with the sound of the ocean, she didn’t notice the twitching of the doorknob. The pin lock of the bathroom was far from secure and easily defeated by wiggling the knob back and forth until the door gave way. Ryan barged into the bathroom with a sense of entitlement, like Manifest Destiny had made the room for him to claim as his own. He didn’t even seem shocked at the sight of his sister, naked, wet, and stretching, standing in the bathtub. She would have been quicker to respond if her eyes weren’t closed and her yawn hadn’t muffled her hearing.

“Are you done, or what?” he asked, annoyed.

Megan’s eyes popped open and she instinctively wrapped her arms across her breasts and crotch, pulling the shower curtain closed at the same time. “Ryan! Get the fuck out! I’m taking a shower!” Almost thirty years old, she thought, and he still hadn’t learned how to knock before entering a locked room.

“No you’re not,” he argued. “You’re just fuckin’ standing there waiting to dry off. I don’t have all day. Use a damn towel.”

“I was just about to when you came barging in. Now get the fuck out!”

“Fine. Hurry it up.” And he walked back out the door, chuckling to himself with assertive pride.

Megan pulled the curtain halfway across and cautiously reached for her towel, still holding one arm over her breasts in case her younger brother decided to be a comedian and come back in. He didn’t and she quickly and securely wrapped the towel around her body. Outside the bathroom, Ryan was standing there waiting. They exchanged defiant stares, which Ryan broke in amusement. Megan backed down the hall to her room. She dressed leaning against the door, having no faith in her door lock to protect her. Even after a shower she didn’t feel clean.


Eddie and Greta were enjoying eggs and bacon when Megan came into the kitchen a few minutes after her disturbing bathroom incident. After his comments the night before, she decided not to tell Eddie about the confrontation, choosing not to add more fuel to that particular fire. There would be enough to deal with already that day, no need for more complications.

Megan went to the counter and poured herself a welcome cup of coffee. “Hope you didn’t want any cream,” Eddie said.

“Oh yeah,” Greta added, “this asshole used it all up.”

Eddie’s eyes bugged out of their sockets. Megan’s jaw dropped. “Greta!” she said in slightly mocking shock. “What kind of example is that to set for the children?” Greta simply smirked, letting Eddie see her expression to ease his worries.

With a plate for herself, Megan joined the two at the table and began to eat.

Two mouthfuls of eggs and a strip of bacon later Shane’s mammoth SUV roared into the driveway, announcing his arrival like a trumpeter would a conquering king. His footfalls were heavy on the front deck, coupled with the staccato tap of his cane as he approached the front door. By the time he walked through the front hall and to the kitchen he looked like he was out of breath. He didn’t even bother to say hello, instead immediately stuffing strips of bacon into his face, his mouth not working fast enough for his insatiable hunger. Within a minute he had devoured a half-pound of fried pork products. And then he eyed the coffee. Like his brother before him, Shane saw the milk carton, tipped it over, and found it empty. “Anymore milk?” he asked. The seated trio responded with a round of titters. Shane was not impressed.

At that point, Greta felt it appropriate to bring up some pressing issues. “Kids, I know this is going to be a tough few days,” she began solemnly, “but there’s a bunch of stuff that needs to get done today. It seems that not all the funeral arrangements have been made in advance. I guess Helen was too busy taking care of Murphy to worry about herself. And then, once she got sick, well I guess she didn’t have enough time.”

“Isn’t it in the will?” Shane asked. “I mean it should say in there what mom wanted done, right? And then the insurance covers everything.”

“Not quite,” Greta corrected. “Your mother never got around to writing out her will. She always was kind of absent-minded about those sorts of things. And filling out those forms is such a morbid procedure. Nobody wants to sit around thinking about being dead. Unfortunately, it helps out a lot when it actually happens.”

Shane seemed unsettled by this revelation. “But what about the money?” he asked, with more heartfelt concern than he’d displayed since Eddie had first met him. “The estate that dad had was huge, and mom was in charge of that. With her gone, and dad in the home, what’s going to happen to all that money?”

“Way to prioritize,” Megan interjected scathingly.

Shane’s eyes narrowed and his head tilted as it shook, “Oh, like you weren’t thinking about it.”

“Actually, I wasn’t.” It was the truth. Murphy Kroeger came from money. When his parents, Megan’s grandparents, died he inherited the bulk of the family fortune. Megan hadn’t spent more than a minute or two her entire life wondering what was going to happen once her parents were gone. After the falling out and her subsequent move to Washington, she just assumed she wouldn’t be in on the spoils. But she knew that Ryan and, even more so, Shane couldn’t wait to get their grubby little hands on all that cash. With no will apparent, the doling out of the money would no doubt turn into something ugly.

“Come on,” Shane prodded, “we all know why you came back to town was to get your share of the loot. And if you think I’m going to let that happen, after the way you’ve treated this family…”

“Okay,” Greta interrupted, stepping in before things got too heated. “Yes, the will is going to be an issue we’re going to have to deal with. But for today, we’ve got more important matters to take care of. First off, someone has to go to the funeral home and pick out a casket and work out the details of the service. I’ve already spoken to Reverend O’Leary, who has agreed to give the eulogy. So at least that’s out of the way. But we also need to pick out a plot for the burial. It’s so last minute, but I talked to Doug Schenkman over at Willow Lawn and he says he has some wonderful spaces for us to look at.”

“Wow, mom really didn’t have anything ready,” Megan observed, “did she?”

Greta gave her a kind smile, reassuring her that everything would be taken care of. “It’s not so bad. People pass away suddenly all the time. The funeral directors and cemetery people, I’m sure are used to this kind of rush scenario. It won’t be that hard. It’s just going to take time to get done. Can I count on you all to help?” Eddie and Megan nodded. Greta turned around in her chair, “Shane?”

Shane looked up from his plate of food, as if he hadn’t noticed anything that had just been said. “What?” A heartbeat, and then realization. “Aw no, I can’t. I’m really busy today.”

“But Shane…” Greta pleaded.

“I can’t, really. I gotta go over to Oak Road and check out a site. Some Chinaman over there is trying to Jew me out of his permit fee. That’ll take a good couple hours at least. And there’s a lot more to do after that. I’ve got to get it all in today because I’ll be at the wake and funeral the next two days. I can’t.”

This answer did not please anyone at the table. Greta turned away with a look of disappointment. Megan stared Shane down with a look of disgust. Eddie tried his best to look unaffected, the dynamic between him and Shane not yet established.

While all this was going on, nobody noticed Ryan come down from his shower and go into the basement. But they heard him come back up and saw him when he entered the kitchen wearing shorts and a T-shirt, carrying a pair of Rollerblades and a hockey stick in his hands.

“What about you, Ryan?” Greta asked, before he could do anything else.

“What about me what?”

“We need some help with some of the funeral arrangements. Can you…”

“Nope. No way. Count me out. All this death shit gives me the creeps. I don’t want to be around any dead bodies or anything like that.”

“It’s not that sort of thing. We have to go pick out a casket and a plot.”

“Yeah, whatever. I ain’t doin’ it. Besides, I got a hockey game today and if I don’t play the whole game gets canceled.”

“Well, wouldn’t want a little thing like the death of your mother to get in the way of your big, important hockey game,” Megan blasted.

“Fuck off. Like you know anything about what it means to have people depend on you. You took off to DC, remember.” He grabbed a package of Pop Tarts from the cabinet. “Anyway, I have to go to the mall at some point and get a new shirt for the funeral. I have no time.”

Greta gave up. She would have to rely on Megan and Eddie to get everything done. “Looks like it’s all up to us then. Sometimes I wish I had superspeed, or something, so I could get everything I need to get done done.” She was shaking her head as she said this and then stopped when it hit her what she said and who had heard it. “Oh Eddie, dear, I’m so sorry.”

Ryan chuckled, delighting in the suffering of others.

“Don’t worry about it,” Eddie said.

“I could go for invincibility,” Ryan added, not letting the touchy conversation drop. “So like nothing would hurt me. Some jackass could punch me and I wouldn’t even feel it. Then I’d pound his ass and my knuckles wouldn’t even get scratched. That would kick ass.”

“You know what would be handy?” Shane asked rhetorically. “X-ray vision. Man, I would clean up if I had some x-ray vision. I could spot all kinds of defects in buildings that I would never notice with normal eyesight. Talk about a good way to make some cash. And I could see chicks naked all the time. Now that’s a useful superpower.”

“So what would you have?” Ryan asked Megan, forcing her into an uncomfortable situation. “Probably something stupid, like making retards smart or something.”

Megan looked to Eddie, who gave his approval to join in. “Actually,” she said, “I’d probably have to go with invisibility. Then I could see what everyone is secretly up to. You know, make sure scumbags don’t get away with any shady business.”

Ryan was silenced for a minute. He gathered up his gear and left the house without any further response. Shane followed a minute later, adding, “Hey, pick up some milk while your out,” before leaving.

Only three were left at the table, the three who were stuck with the workload of the day. They finished eating in silence. As Greta cleared the plates and Megan got up, Eddie said, “You never asked me what I would want as a superpower.”

Megan shrugged. “I guess I just assumed you’d want your old powers back.” He shook his head. “So then, what powers would you want?” she asked.

“Time travel,” he said. “I’d like to be able to go back in time and fix things before they went wrong.” Suddenly, they all wanted that power.

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