Ode to Superman

The city streets are littered with splotches of light emanating from the tall street lamps that tower out of the darkness intermittently along them. In between the lamps, the darkness is strong, almost overpowering. In that darkness, evil lurks. The vilest of villains are having a congress, scheming on their next malevolent plot to overthrow the city. Their iniquitous laughter fills the space left by the strong breeze that whips by, lifting the trash left by the city dwellers in their daily quest for the dollar.
A piercing scream rents the air. A lady is frantically swatting at one of the villains with her handbag. Her mink fur coat and diamond crusted shoes give her away as a foreigner to the darkness. She is in the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time. The rest of the villains hear the scream, and then come in closer to see if there is anything on her that is worth the scream. They get her against a dark wall. She is still frantically swinging the handbag as if it is a weapon that will mortally wound anyone who dares to come nearer her. One of the villains, a particularly magnificent specimen with broad shoulders and great muscles on his arms and chest that ripple with his every movement, moves up form the back of the pack effortlessly and swats the bag out of the air without blinking. The lady screams again, the pitch higher and duration longer. The big villain grunts. His sensitive ears ringing at the same pitch as the scream which is driving him mad. He lifts his big hands to his ears, and then as soon as she stops, swings his left hand to his right cheek then brings it back down with the force of a jack hammer. The lady gives off another high pitched scream, her brown leather mitten covered hands raised to her wind stung cheeks in a feeble attempt to shield them from the strike of the villain’s hand.
Then from nowhere, a flash of red and blue…the big villain is snatched away and all that the rest see is his feet flailing in the air after he is set down on the edge of a building not too far from where they are standing. Fear casts an icy grip on each of their hearts and in a single movement they are all scampering away for their safety. Without warning, they are all plucked and set on top of street lamps one by one. “Help! Help” their screams fade away into the night as the red and blue materialize into a man of steel who sweeps the lady off her feet, retrieves her bag and then floats away lazily into the city.
He is the one and only super hero. Man of action. Fearless and courageous. Kryptonian man of steel….He is Superman.