Solomon
Sometimes I despair the world will never see another...
Friday, March 6th. 4:07 P.M.
Gotham City.
The world we had known ended. The events that transpired involved chemical, biological, and atomic weapons. The geopolitical circumstances had been brewing under the surface for years, and several key fail-safes had failed. The number of casualties remains uncounted because the death count is: Total extinction.
Some of the more resilient heroes might have survived, but there was no sign of anything living near Slaughter Swamp. None of the vegetation remained, and even the hardier vermin that were supposed to survive such a catastrophic event proved to be less impervious than previously imagined.
The swamp, if you could still call it that, was lifeless, but bubbled with radioactive heat and bioengineered pestilence.
Monday, March 9th, 12:03 A.M.,
A broad white fist emerged with the intentionality of rage and the resignation of routine.
From the moment those partially organic, arcane-imbued digits pierced the quicksand, Solomon knew something had changed. His senses—deadened and forgetful—still held the ability to discern. The radiation licked at his distal row of carpal bones. Grundy assumed this sensation was an ambush.
He assumed that something had been waiting at his burial site and would attack upon his rebirth. Using his mystical musculature, he jettisoned his remains upward, surging himself into the caustic openness of this Lichfield.
A bellow of pure rage escaped from bleached lips and yellow teeth. Landing—his heavy black boots sank into caustic, cracked earth. He whipped his head from side to side, expecting a blow from some unseen assailant.
None came.
Grundy panted, not because he was out of breath, but because he was pretending to still need oxygen.
In a flash of intrusive thoughts,
He thought about how many of his actions were learned behaviors.
He thought about how many of his mannerisms were little more than pantomimes of menace.
Solomon knew at this moment that this resurrection would be one of his more lucid and cerebral.
At this realization, existential dread prodded his knees.
Snarling and snorting, Solomon Grundy stalked forward. He had no idea where he was heading. He had not thought about what he would like to accomplish. He clapped his massive hands together. The speed and strength behind this clap forced a vortex of air both forward towards the nothing in front of him and—backwards towards his broad chest.
The noose around his neck wriggled, and the dust in his suit blew back behind him. He sneered and snorted. He yelled at nothing and stomped in a meaningless direction.
“Motion,” he growled.
But after a short distance, he halted to scan his surroundings.
The eyes of the horizon did not return his gaze.
The air itself—which on most occasions would have already presented him with a challenge or an adversary—seemed to shy away. The space in front of him looked down in shame.
“Come out!” He screamed and spat.
Nothing responded.
Not even an echo. His deep confrontational shriek just flittered away.
“No more hiding!” his voice broke.
“No more hiding,” he repeated a bit softer this time.
Arching his powerful back and lifting two hammerlike fists above his head, he growled out another deep scream. He brought his fist down to the earth and followed through with the butt of his lantern jaw. The three points of impact smashed into the dry, cracked earth at his feet. The landscape gave way under this blow, and a cloud of sonically disturbed debris exploded into the air. Grundy repeated this motion several times until he was standing shoulder-deep in the earth.
“Where are you!?” flittered away into the barren sky like his other exclamations.
“Where Man of Steel?” Grundy uttered to himself while crouching down in the pit he had just formed.
He covered his face with his hands and slumped in the darkness. Rage battled silence, and a sense of futility prevented him from lashing out any further.
Time moved slowly.
He continued to mimic heavy breaths, and when unable to resist the urge, he would smash one or both of his hands into the ground or his own body.
Solomon, when able to do so, used to think to himself that he wanted peace and rest.
That he wanted quiet, calm, darkness.
Now he had it.
He sat alone, not a sound to interrupt him. Not even a beating heart.
“What do now?”
“No!”
“Trick!”
“It is smart guys tricking me!”
Solomon stood tall and strong. He crawled from his pit.
With the point of his square boot, he kicked and dug into the ground.
Left than right, throwing earth and rocks into the air.
He stomped this way, kicking and dragging.
“Born on a Monday! Born on a Monday! Born on a Monday!” he bellowed with each shoveling leg thrust.
What would now be considered dawn began to shed a sickly green light on the remnants of Earth. Although the golden rays were distorted and warped, they illuminated some of the landscape. Solomon could see only a flat expanse in front of him. Clouds of noxious smoke billowed in the distance, and maintaining his gait and dirge, he trudged toward the smoking embers of Gotham City. Solomon hoped that Gotham would be ablaze and that somehow, he would be able to exacerbate the destruction.
The closer he got, the more he realized the full extent of the nothingness that remained.
Scraps of sewer pipes marked the outer edge of the city.
Jagged, charred, and melted.
Solomon lunged to grab one of the bigger hunks of exposed metal. He wanted to twirl it like a hammer throw.
He wanted to hurl it as far as he could.
As his hands went to clamp it, the metal disintegrated into dust.
Light metallic powder floated around lifeless eyes and stretched rictus sneer.
This further act of futility uncorked the monstrous zombie’s rage. He flailed and screamed. He attempted to smash anything that even partially resembled a human construct, but all that remained was ash and dust.
Car tires, burnt corpses, shells of bank vaults, all reduced to shadow.
A façade of devastation in the shape of a once-familiar landscape.
“Nothing to smash”
“Nothing to smash!”
“Born on a Monday!”
Solomon plodded on. Not even a siren. Not even the crackle of flame on wood. Nothing but peace. Nothing but the endless needling of quiet.
“Rises in the East”
“The ocean will make sounds.”
“I will fight the ocean!”
With these words, Grundy turned toward the green din and stomped toward the coast.
“Born on a Monday!” He yelled and smashed his hands together.
The metal frame of a nearby building gently wisped away from the concussive force of his impact.
A quiet puff was barely audible.
As the source of green light approached the center of the sky, Solomon’s view had not changed. Everything he could see was empty, barren. His repeated refrain was the only thing keeping the voices in his head quiet.
Rage won out again, and Grundy began leaping and smashing into the ground. His feet were pounding deep craters. He yelled and bellowed.
The sounds once over did not reverberate or return.
He again sat in the base of a crater. His massive, calloused hands clutched and pulled at his undead features. Grundy felt a new sensation. Something he had forgotten long ago.
He felt panic.
Not fear, but panic.
Alone—nothing could end his suffering.
How long would he have to exist like this?
When will something new arrive?
This curse of invulnerability and immortality was now worse than ever. This fate is too harsh a punishment to endure.
“Endure I must.”
“No choice”
“Endure I must!”
Grundy slammed his head and back into the ground and lay prone, looking up at the sky.
Nothing profound came to him.
He just stared up and pretended to breathe.
His hands were palm down, and they scratched and clawed at the earth. The heels of his boots dug in deeper. He remained like this until the blackness of night returned.
“Born on a Monday”
“Christened on a Tuesday”
“Christened on a Tuesday!”
“Christened What!?”
He whispered, “Christened what?” into the weeping eye of green blackness that loomed above his pit.
There’s something devastating about giving Grundy clarity after the world ends.
Well, this was chilling: a truly brilliant and original take on one of comics' most inherently tragic figures. Using him as a lens to examine the total end of the word - the curse of being alone after everything else is gone - was a brilliant idea. Tonally, it reminds me a little of 'Last Knight on Earth' (DC) and 'Ruins' (Marvel). Were they influences on this story, by any chance? Either way, this is masterful!