“So you’re finally admitting it huh? Look Boss. I am your employee, yes, but we are also friends.”

“Of course. We’ve been friends over 15 years!”

“Exactly. I know you better than you know you. There is not one superhero left in the city. You set out to capture them all, and now you’ve gotten rid of them. The city is now your oyster. But you’re still unhappy. And you know why?”

Boss looked irritated. “Well you don’t have to be an asshole about it. Things just work out for me but not how I want.”

“Exactly that. The real problem is that your heart is not in it anymore. Your inventions are half baked. They never resolve. The plans fall through because you constantly get lucky.”

Boss looked unhappy.

“I know. I get lucky. But I still do evil things with my inventions.”

“Boss. I’m going to level with you right now: You are not actually evil.”

“What?” Boss laughed. “What’s this about me not being evil? I am evil.”

I laughed. “See there’s your problem. You think you are but you are not.” I leaned over the desk and poured us both a glass of whiskey. “Give me a light.” Boss used a tiny laser to light my cigarette. He scowled at me though.

“Look Frank. I am evil. It’s literally my entire life.”

“I’m evil. Your entire life is being a brilliant, comically chaotic engineer who is lying to himself everyday. You’re not even happy that you have every single superhero trapped in a stasis field after shrinking them. They’re decorating your damn shelves like Funkopoops or whatever the kids call them. Why are you even keeping them alive?”

He couldn’t answer that because he knew it was fucking stupid. I went and fetched their cute little shrunken jail cells and placed them on the desk. They all sounded like little ants.

Boss got mad. “And what exactly makes you evil me not?”

“If you really want to do this let’s play ball.” I sat back and point my cigarette at him. “You need to rob a bank. What’s your plan?” I sat back cross legged.

He laughed. “Well of course I will build a contraption to burrow underneath the bank and extract the money into the machine. Then get away. Except last time the drill accidentally got stuck. Eventually the building collapsed after everyone left so that the vault fell just right into the drill door opening. That was a pretty lucrative accident.” He thought back fondly. “So, what is it you would do?”

I didn’t hesitate. I took a drag. “Now this is just a rough draft off the top of my head. So. I would learn the entire layout of the bank and how to open the vault. Then I would take my team, outfit them with automatic guns, cut the power to the bank, walk into the lobby. Lock the doors and murder everyone as soon as possible except the two tellers who both have the vault keys. Then I would kill the bank manager in his office and lock it because he’s a little bitch. (My cousin, you see). Then the tellers, held at gunpoint, would open the vault. We take everything to drivers in the parking garage connected to the vault with prepared nondescript gray and black sedans after I shoot the two tellers. Then we lock them in the vault. We change clothes. We leave slowly. Never rush.”

My boss just blinked at me.

“I got another one for you. I know you hate Laserman. He’s a real riot that one but he always gets in the way. Explain to me how you stole the Evercrystal from him last week.”

My boss shook his head as if casting off some kind of bad memory. “Well last time I caught him in my clutches, I told him exactly what I thought of him for a few minutes. My henchman held him over a tank of sharks. Unfortunately one of the henchman slipped and dropped Laserman into the pool but he managed to get out. He ran but dropped the Evercrystal, which fell from his pocket you see. Whew that was a lucky one.”

“I would have shot him in the face and took the Evercrystal, then drop kicked his corpse into the shark tank. Then I would sleep easy.”

Boss was starting to look uncomfortable.

“What about how you stole the Ancient Greek Gilded Discus from Discusandra?”

“I used a mechanical lasso to catch her out of the sky. The lasso actually missed catching her but it did hit a telephone pole which hit her on the head, knocking her out cold. I grabbed the discus that way.” He folded his arms. “Wait. Let me guess how you would have handled it?”

I gestured for him to continue.

“You would have shot her in the face and took it?”

I hit my knee. “Damn right! But not in public. I would have hired a professional sniper, someone discreet, to shoot her out of the sky over an open field. She lives in the country side and owns acres and acres of land. No witnesses out there since it’s her lair, which you already know the address to! I would have collected the stupid glorified frisbee and buried her on her own property.”

Boss looked disturbed.

“You see what I’m getting at? You are playing games out here with all of this: These inventions. These toys of yours. These genetically modified animals. These robots and all this shit. Pure mad science okay? But the fact is that you’re still not evil.”

Boss tried to talk back, but his face went white as a sheet when I pulled out a revolver.

“Let’s play Russian Roulette. Only all the bullets are for you.”

I showed him the chamber, which had all six bullets. I aimed the revolver at his face point blank.

“Wait no—“

I shot every single shot, point blank, in quick succession. He dodged three fucking bullets, my hand slipped on the forth shot, the fifth ricocheted off the table into the ceiling right after that, and the last jammed the gun.

Boss had his hands over his head cowering.

“What the fuck Frank! What the fuck are you doing?!” he yelled.

I threw the revolver behind me.

“TELL ME WHAT A GOOD FUCKING SHOT I AM!!” I screamed. My chest was heaving.

“You never miss!” He cried, hands still over his head. “You’re the best shot I know!”

“Exactly. I never ever miss, especially at point blank range.” I calmed myself, smoothed my clothes. Fixed my tie.

“You’re not evil. You’re beyond lucky. But not just any kind. Supernaturally. Like superhero lucky.”

He seemed to be in shock at that. “Now Frank, don’t do anything rash,” he warned.

“Rash? Rash? That’s literally part of my job description. So where exactly do you think this leave us Boss? Every one of us in this organization has been following your lead because we thought your evil, cold, dark heart was in this. But that ship has sailed, long ago in fact.“

His face started to go slack.

“What’s wrong wit my face?”

“I have been trying to poison you for the last couple months. Of course you have been lucky enough not to get sick thus far.”

I stood up and walked toward him. He looked horrified at the whiskey. Of course he backed away. “M- rms. Ca-mov.” I pulled his rolling chair around to the front of the desk. I went behind the desk where I belonged.

“It’s been a pleasure being your friend all these years. But by your own admission, we need to get rid of all the superheroes. Technically you’re the last one left. I would be insubordinate and remiss to ignore your directives, correct?”

He whimpered.

I laughed. “I genuinely tried to just shoot you in the face which is what I do best. You saw me do it. It didn’t work. So we will use your own invention.”

I reached under the desk and pulled a lever. A trapdoor appeared right in front of him but the chair ever so slightly rolled just out of range. Of course. Lucky bastard.

“See this is what evil planning is about. If you’re lucky, you’ll die a quick painless death. Or you’ll be lucky enough to live through the pain long enough to be rescued and nursed back to health. Who knows? Luck works all sorts of ways.”

I walked around to his chair and tipped his body into it.

I watched as he plummeted to his death by spikes. And then an incinerator came on. I went and grabbed those tiny little superheroes one by one fed them into the fire for good measure. I did not take my eyes off the trap until there was nothing but bones.

Guess his luck ran out. And so did theirs, frankly.

I didn't initially think he was talking to me. He never spoke to me, let alone looked at me, before. That was until I caught him making piercing eye contact with me while I emptied the trash in his office. I cleared my throat, "Excuse me?"

Chief Wicked didn't usually care to repeat himself but this time, he didn't seem phased in the slightest. He calmly said for the second time, "I haven't had a successful plans in years. All the stuff I come up fails miserably. Things just keep working out in my favor. I say 'all according to plan' just to look like I know what I'm doing."

"I'm sure that's not true at all, Chief Wicked! You've had so many successful plans, you're a criminal mastermind!"

"Oh yeah? Whats your favorite?" Hed asked, in the same skeptical tone as a man asking a teenage girl in a Metallica shirt to name five of their songs.

I tried to rack my brain. The truth was I was just a janitor at Chief Wicked's secret headquarters. The most evil thing I did was sometimes skip recycling. "Well, uh, I heard someone in the cafeteria say you orchestrated a bank robbery last week! With loads of civilian casualties. Thats pretty cool."

Chief Wicked slammed his fist on the desk, noticeably denting the wood. He raised his voice, "That's exactly what I'm talking about! That bomb wasn't supposed to go off at all! it was a total fluke; I actually wanted the money! And now everyone is like 'wow, this guy is so chaotic, he robbed a bank just to blow up all the money.' People are calling it a radical communist statement! And I had to embrace that shit to avoid the embarrassment. Shit fucking sucks, man." By the end of his rant, he was actually crying.

Here was the supposed most evil man alive, whining to me like a toddler. My daughter was going to get suck a kick out of this. She always called him "Chief Stupid" and the juvenile joke never got old with us. But still, he was my boss, and he offered a relatively generous benefits package, "Im sorry to hear that, sir." I pushed my yellow janitorial cart toward the door of his office, "I better be going now."

"No, no, don't go". I heard the sound of a drawer being opened. When I turned around, he had a gun in his hand and was using the back of that same hand to wipe his teary eyes. "It really feels good to let this shit out sometimes. My wife always tells me, 'Jerry, you gotta be more vulnerable' and goddamnit when she's right, she's right."

"Please- you don't have to- I promise I'll never tell anyone the truth" I was shaking, my hand gripping the broom handle for dear life.

"Sorry, pal, not worth the risk."

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