A Comic Book Rehab Carol - Part 5

I felt something slithering across my feet - his cape! It had grown so long that it had flooded the floor like a red carpet - the corners of it crawled up and tied me up and lifted me off the floor and held me in the air, making direct eye contact with its host.

"Now, you will see what it feels like to be trapped in a world you never made!"

"Al?...go right ahead, but have you ever wondered why you never tried it before, or why you would need me to do it?"

He seemed to tilt his head just a bit, as if to pause and reflect on that question...it was hard to tell with that expressionless face what a brown study should look like.

"I don't have much time," he admitted, and held out his hand. An unusual rectangular object appeared out of thin air above his palm. It was his power chronometer - the eternal countdown/gauge that measured how much power he had spent, how much was left, and how much time he had left. It was unreadable to all but him. "There's so much I have not accomplished...so many things I should have done in the time I had and wasted...just wasted...marking time.

"I discovered a way to change my fate - by trading universes,  I won't have to endure this shallow status quo. I will change."

"It won't work. Your plan is built on a false premise. You think you're all out of time, but that's what you've been made to think, so that you think you can't go anywhere because of this pathetic weakness, and as a result of this, you've ALL become Brand ecch."

"No!"

His cape released me, and I landed on my feet. "No, it's true. You're blaming the faithful readership, chasing after a phantom demographic all these years - one that does not respect you. This plan of yours won't work because your energy does not exist in our world - your stuff is always the stuff of dreams - constructs of someone else's imagination - we think, therefore, you are."

"I'm doomed." His cape seemed to shrink back to a more standard size, his glowing green eyes dimmed, his body began to hide within the folds of the red cloak.

"No, you're not. You'll be fine, I'll be fine. But you know what you have to do. You and all the other spirits go back to where you belong and start the change from there. Change happens from within. AND I'M GIVING YOU JUST 10 SECONDS! SO, COME ON! CHANGE!!"

The whole room went fuzzy... I started to black out...

To be concluded...