Flora & Ulysses

She put Ulysses down on her bed, and he looked even smaller sitting there in the bright overhead light.

He also looked pretty bald.

“Good grief,” said Flora.

The squirrel certainly didn’t look very heroic. But then, neither did the nearsighted, unassuming janitor Alfred T. Slipper.

Ulysses looked up at Flora, and then he looked down at his tail. He seemed relieved to see it. He lowered his nose and sniffed along the length of it.

“I’m hoping that you can understand me,” said Flora.

The squirrel raised his head. He stared at her.

“Wow,” said Flora. “Great, okay. I can’t understand you. And that’s a small problem. But we’ll figure out a way to communicate, okay? Nod at me if you understand what I’m saying. Like this.”

Flora nodded.

And Ulysses nodded back.

Flora’s heart leaped up high in her chest.

“I’m going to try and explain what happened to you, okay?”

Ulysses nodded his head very fast.

And again, Flora’s heart leaped up high inside of her in a hopeful and extremely uncynical kind of way. She closed her eyes. Don’t hope, she told her heart. Do not hope; instead, observe.

“Do not hope; instead, observe” was a piece of advice that appeared often in TERRIBLE THINGS CAN HAPPEN TO YOU! According to TERRIBLE THINGS!, hope sometimes got in the way of action. For instance, if you looked at your elderly aunt Edith choking on a piece of steak from the all-you-can-eat buffet and you told yourself, Man, I sure hope she’s not choking, you would waste several valuable lifesaving, Heimlich maneuver–performing seconds.

“Do not hope; instead, observe” were words that Flora, as a cynic, had found useful in the extreme. She repeated them to herself a lot.

“Okay,” said Flora. She opened her eyes. She looked at the squirrel. “What happened is that you got vacuumed. And because you got vacuumed, you might have, um, powers.”

Ulysses gave her a questioning look.

“Do you know what a superhero is?”

The squirrel continued to stare at her.

“Right,” said Flora. “Of course you don’t. A superhero is someone with special powers, and he uses those powers to fight the forces of darkness and evil. Like Alfred T. Slipper, who is also Incandesto.”

Ulysses blinked several times in a nervous kind of way.

“Look,” said Flora. She grabbed The Illuminated Adventures of the Amazing Incandesto! off her desk. She pointed at Alfred in his janitor uniform.

“See?” she said. “This is Alfred, and he is an unassuming, nearsighted, stuttering janitor who works cleaning the multifloor offices of the Paxatawket Life Insurance Company. He lives a quiet life in his studio apartment with only his parakeet, Dolores, for company.”

Ulysses looked down at the picture of Alfred and then up at Flora.

“Okay,” said Flora. “So, one day Alfred takes a tour of the Incandesto! cleaning solution factory, and he slips (Alfred T. Slipper — get it?) into a gigantic vat of Incandesto! and it changes him. And so now, when there is a great crisis, when malfeasance is apparent, Alfred turns himself into . . .” Flora flipped through the pages of the comic and stopped at the panel that showed the glowing, powerful Incandesto.

“Incandesto!” she said. “See? Alfred T. Slipper becomes a righteous pillar of light so painfully bright that the most heinous villain trembles before him and confesses!”

Flora realized that she was shouting the tiniest bit.

She looked down at Ulysses. His eyes were enormous in his small face.

Flora tried to sound calm, reasonable. She lowered her voice. “As Incandesto,” she said, “Alfred sheds light into the darkest corners of the universe. He can fly. Also, he visits the elderly. And that’s what a superhero is. And I think you might be one, too. At least, I think you have powers. So far, all we know about you is that you’re really strong.”

Ulysses nodded. He puffed out his chest.

“Flora!” her mother shouted. “Get down here. Dinner is ready.”

“But what else can you do?” said Flora to the squirrel. “And if you truly are a superhero, how will you fight evil?”

Ulysses furrowed his brow.

Flora bent down. She put her face close to his. “Think about it,” she said. “Imagine what we might be able to do.”

“Flora Belle!” her mother shouted. “I can hear you up there talking to yourself. You shouldn’t talk to yourself. People will hear you and think that you’re strange.”

“I’m not talking to myself!” Flora shouted.

“Well, then, with whom are you speaking?”

“A squirrel!”

There was a long silence from down below.

And then her mother shouted, “That’s not funny, Flora Belle. Get down here right now!”