WHAT IF CAPTAIN AMERICA WAS DEAD? By Ben Guilfoy Once, in another time and place, David read comics. Stories of heroes and villains, clear-cut, black and white, good and evil, had arrived at his door every month. Those heroes, those stories, they stuck with him. He believed, and loved, the ideas they represented. David supposed now that if he should look up to the ashen skies, he might have glimpsed the solemn face of The Watcher. “I am Uatu, The Watcher,” the cosmic creature would have said. “You know how these events originally occurred. But what if…” “What if,” David said to himself, “Captain America was dead?” The city was near dead itself around him. Very little motor or pedestrian traffic wove through the centuries-old avenues. He walked along a street lined with shops, glancing idly at the glittery, yet somehow pale windows. Nothing had color anymore; the world lacked vibrancy in a way that hurt. People marched down the streets nervously, or with their heads hanging in sadness or depression. When a storefront would come along with the red white and blue hanging in the window, or a car with one attached to the antenna, they would look at it. And they would smile. David didn’t like that smile. It wasn’t a happy, or a proud smile. The smile was a farce, and behind it, a nostalgic longing. They were smiling for good times past, the way David did when he flipped past “Transformers” on the Cartoon Network, or “Star Trek” on TNN. Or when he passed the comics shop. The depictions on the window caught his eye; it was the only thing that seemed to change for the better nowadays. One time, he stopped in and bought comics for the first time in years. He picked up many issues of all his old time favorites: “The X-Men”, “Spider-Man” and others. Fifty dollars he spent on comics, frowning as he approached the register that cover prices had skyrocketed to over two dollars an issue. Fifty dollars wasted. He enjoyed them, surely, but they just didn’t hold him the way they used to. The stories were fine, the art had improved, but his childish enthusiasm was gone. The conflict, he saw, was weak. It seemed that not even the infamous Doctor Doom, or the vile Sinister Six could match the evil from Afghanistan. Lost, David wandered into a bar. He took a few drinks, and the pain got worse. The bar suddenly seemed dark, foreboding, sinful. He stumbled out into the street, and hated it. Despite the daylight hour, everything seemed shrouded in inky, black shadow. It seethed disgustingly toward him as he crept fearfully away from it. David ran. He passed the dim shops, all of their brightly colored doors slamming shut as he neared and passed. At the comic store, he nearly ran into a small, familiar boy, who stared wide-eyed at a copy of “The Amazing Spider-Man.” David didn’t look back at the boy as he ran. Time passed like a river that could not be dammed, and the all the while, the darkness encroached upon his life. It tainted things: buildings, people, food. Everything seemed to him lifeless and wrong. Even his comics were faded and dull.

His office was no refuge, either. Day in and day out, the place seemed to grow smaller and smaller as he watched, shadows the only things that lengthened. He looked around, frantically. The window caught his eye. A shaft of yellow light stabbed through the encroaching darkness. David opened the window, bravely, and prepared to step through. The darkness jumped and engulfed him quickly as he hit. A deep rumble and a flash of orange, and then darkness again. A world of pain took him, shook him, and then closed in further. Time passed. Then, the darkness moved. It shifted, and seethed to one side as a beam of light cut a swatch through it to his left. He looked into it, squinting to see what was happening. He gaped at the bulky figure above him, clothed in red, white and blue. The colors were vibrant, brilliant; they burned through the darkness, everywhere. The shield strapped to one arm was more than a dead give away. “Are you alright?” the deep, powerful voice asked him. David couldn’t respond as his childhood hero took his hand and helped him up. He looked across the plaza at the devastation, and couldn’t believe his eyes. In that brief, dazzling moment, he gaped in astonishment at the things he saw. In the bright, streaming sunlight, Spider-Man webbed up a wall to stop a fire from spreading. The Fantastic Four sifted through the debris for other survivors. The Hulk lifted several twisted, blackened metal girders to allow a bright red fire truck access to the plaza. They were all there, standing tall; shining beacons of hope and good. David looked over at Captain America, and said, “You’re not dead!” He blinked, and a firefighter, with a beautiful, tattered American flag draped over his shoulder, smiled and replied, “Nope. And neither are you. Thank god, huh?” David smiled and looked out over the plaza once more. Gone were the heroes of his imagination. Spidey, the FF, Wolverine and the X-Men, even Captain America, all had disappeared. But in their place, the bright, bare and noble human spirit embodied: policemen, firefighters, and normal nobodies had become superheroes. David saw that small boy again, clutching a shiny new “ASM”, smiling at him. David smiled back and turned toward the firefighter. “I want to help,” he said. The firefighter smiled back and handed him a bottle of water. “In a bit,” he said. David took a swig from the bottle, tilting his head back as he did. Uatu was there, in the clouds, looking down right at David. “What if?” David asked, and smiled a true, real, proud smile.