Who Writes This Stuff?

“What I really need,” says Hammerspace as he jogs along in a track suit and headband (over his mask) “is to really lay the smack down on General Welfare.”

Keeping pace with us is Fumigator, a seven foot tall monster of a man wearing a tank of poison gas and an elaborate alligator mask complete with a muzzle and teeth. It covers his face completely and his voice comes through as a muffled echo. He replies, “Yeah. That guy is an asshole.”

I asked Fumigator earlier about the gator theme and the poison. He filled me in. “I went with the gator theme because I went to the University of Florida. That’s actually where I had the accident that left me completely immune to all types of poison gas, hence the fumes – fumigator. The mask is actually made from a real alligator head. A friend of mine is a taxidermist. I can give you his card if you want. It has a lot of scare factor, and that’s something you want, but it’s a pain if I get an itch or a runny nose or something.”

One of the most important parts of the villain’s lifestyle is regular exercise. In order to do battle with the likes of superpowered do gooders, supervillains need to stay in shape. Cardio is a must and weight training is also pretty typical. That’s why Hammerspace and Fumigator go on a daily 5k run. They stick together just to be safe in the event that they might run into a superhero. Although the possibility is slim, this is still a good idea. One of the worst super fights in history occurred in August 1991 when Knight Watch ran into Brute Suit in New York’s central park whilst walking their dogs. The two began a scuffle over Brute Suit’s alleged neglect to pick up his dog’s leavings, which escalated into an all out battle to the death. Ultimately, a large area of the park was left a desolate, crater-covered wasteland. Both Knight Watch and Brute Suit were killed by a National Guard armored division. Ever since, costumed super characters have been more careful about these things, and a buddy system is never a bad plan.

Fumigator met Hammerspace during a routine bank heist in 2006. “I walked into the bank with my poison gun ready to go and I yell everybody down, but then I realize they’re already on the floor,” Fumigator recalls. “That’s when I walk back to the vault and see this dickhead cramming safety deposit boxes, I mean the whole boxes, into his coat. He wasn’t even opening them.”

“I open them with a cutting torch back at my apartment,” Hammerspace interjects.

“I didn’t know that then. So I was just confused, you know? There’s this guy doing my job and we end up in sort of a stand off for a minute. But then in walks… What was his name?” He laughs as Hammerspace jogs his memory. “That’s right! The Peacekeeper! What a costard. His power was that nobody could commit acts of violence in his presence – including him. So Hammerspace just kept taking stuff. What was he going to do? We both laughed so hard. I think we literally laughed him out of the business. I remember the security guard standing there yelling at him to do something.”

Hammerspace continues to bounce ideas off of Fumigator. “Do you think he gets his powers from the sun? I could find a way to block it out.”

Fumigator seems unreceptive to this idea. “He kicked the crap out of Doom Machine at night once. I saw it.”

“Maybe he stores energy during the day,” Hammerspace counters.

Fumigator shakes his head. “Nah.”

“See, invulnerable heroes usually have some kind of Achilles heel, you know, like… uh… That guy (Achilles)” Fumigator tells me. “If we can figure out General Welfare’s secret weakness we can take advantage. So far we’ve tried poison gas, well, obviously (he points to his gas tank), death rays, ultra mega death rays, radioactive minerals. Hammerspace dropped an anvil on him from a building. Other guys have tried acid, magic spells, bombs, undersea pressure, aphorbic bombs – you name it. It’s been done. He takes a licking.”

“Didn’t Terrortron nuke him once?” Hammerspace adds.

“Yeah, during the Uzbekistan thing. That was ugly.”

I can’t help but picture General Welfare taking an ICBM the size of a building square in his puffed out chest, smiling the whole time. The blast incinerates his costume in milliseconds but he remains, walking from the charred crater of scorched earth stark naked, his smug expression never changing. What does a person think as the air catches fire around them and everything that was ceases to be? Is it absolute terror, or is it as mundane as a drive to work? As his hair was burning off in ten million degree temperatures was he wondering what he would do for lunch? Or is his hair invincible too?

“What about the stasis field bomb idea? What happened with that?” Fumigator asks.

Hammerspace rolls his eyes. “I can’t show a two year work history and unless you get me into Fort Knox to load my coat with gold bricks, we don’t have the funds.”

It is at this point in their conversation that I interrupt to ask a question I suspect I will regret later (and I do, although not to the extent that some would have you believe). I ask Hammerspace why he can’t simply break into the place where they keep the stasis generators and toss one into his jacket.

He laughs. “They’re too big to fit in my jacket. I would need somebody to forklift it off the ground and then I still couldn’t conceal it anywhere.”

Fumigator interjects. “Isn’t the whole point of your super power that you don’t have to conceal anything?”

“Well, sort of. I have to be able to hide things initially but then they just sort of… poof. They’re gone.”

“Don’t you wonder about that? Where does all that stuff go?”

“To the Hammerspace. That’s why I’m Hammerspace. I mean, I thought that was established.”

“Yeah, but what is it exactly? Is it like another dimension? What’s it like in there?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been in there. I don’t think that’s even possible. That’s like a snake eating its own tail or something.”

“Have you ever thrown anything alive in there?”

An hour later we’re in a pet shop off the turnpike somewhere. Hammerspace is buying a big bunny rabbit, which Fumigator picked out because he thinks the idea of making a rabbit disappear is more hilarious than any other animal we could have chosen. He buys a small dog leash to go with it.

We don’t even leave the pet store to conduct the first experiment. Hammerspace puts the leash on the animal. I make a joke about the first bunny rabbit shot into Hammerspace. Neither of them thinks it’s funny. I’ve never been funny.

Fumigator picks up the rabbit, which is a fat rabbit. It doesn’t move around a lot. He pulls the rabbit around on the leash for a while to make sure it can’t get loose. We’re getting a ton of stares from people in the pet shop now. A lady with a Siamese cat asks me if we’re doing some kind of TV show and for the first time I wonder if people around us see figures of legendary greatness or if they ogle simply because a grown man in an alligator costume is walking a rabbit on a dog leash. Hammerspace points this out to Fumigator and they get on with the experiment before we gather any more unwanted attention.

Hammerspace holds his trench coat open and Fumigator tosses the rabbit at him. He closes the jacket and the bunny is gone. Its leash dangles from the folds of Hammerspace’s jacket. Fumigator stares strangely at this, and even Hammerspace seems somewhat perplexed. “I’ve never had anything alive go in there, and I’ve never had any sort of lifeline dangling out either. So this is a first for a couple things. It’s kind of weird because you can actually make out where this place ends and the nowhere begins. I’m gonna be pissed if that thing gets lost in there. Who knows what it could get into. The last thing I need is a rabbit running around eating up my store of Nutrigrain bars. What if it dies? Everything I pull out of there is going to smell terrible.”

Fumigator hangs on to the leash for a few minutes to see if the rabbit tugs at all. We get nothing. He shrugs. Hammerspace reaches into the coat and pulls out the rabbit. Fumigator is somewhat impressed, but he says that in order to be certain we need to send the rabbit in without the leash to see if Hammerspace can still retrieve it. We do. Hammerspace pulls it back out a moment later with no difficulty.We all immediately know the next step, although it is Fumigator who brings it up first.

“I’ve got to go in.” He says.

Hammerspace is more reluctant. “I don’t know. I think that’s kind of gay.”

“What?”

“Jumping into another guy’s hammerspace. It’s just kind of gay, that’s all.”

“Whatever, Richard Gere. You put a rabbit in there already. By that logic you just committed bestiality.”

A fifteen minute argument then ensues, which I won’t reproduce here because it is completely pointless and somewhat homophobic. I’m not saying I stand by the gay agenda, only that I need this book to appeal to as many readers as possible.

Finally, Hammerspace and Fumigator turn to me and demand I settle the argument. I tell them I’d personally like to know what’s in there, and frankly, I can’t believe no one has thought of this before.

Hammerspace caves after Fumigator bothers him a little bit longer and they decide to give it a test run, but Hammerspace still insists that we find a female person for this experiment. Being a supervillain, Fumigator concedes that it does make more sense to toss a civilian into the Hammerspace before he risks his own life. The two of them settle on a cashier named Debbie whom Fumigator gasses with some sort of poison. As she wobbles and topples he scoops her off her feet and tosses her unconscious body into Hammerspace’s jacket.

Bystanders begin screaming and running when they see this. We run down the street and wait for ten minutes or so in an alley, during which time Hammerspace notes aloud that he’s never had anyone throw anything into the hammerspace before. He tells me this has given him a really wicked idea, but he won’t elaborate any more on the subject.

Once the coast is clear and the guys have determined that no superheroes are coming to the rescue, Hammerspace pulls a hysterical pet store clerk from the confines of his infinite storage space. I try to ask her what it was like in there, but she runs away.

It is Fumigator who points out the most important thing we have learned from this experiment. “Once something goes in there, it can’t leave until Hammerspace pulls it out.”

Next Week: Hammerspace commits a felony.