e-mail from the front

From: J William Hughes billyhughes@#####.###

To: Tim Craine tcraine@###.###

RE: Updates & Such

Sent: Sunday, July 21, 2002 11:45:13 PM

Tempers and frustration are high. Life is not good. Damn jihadists pop up outta nowhere, blast us to bits, and then disappear back into the wind. They got Doug on Thursday. Shot him with an RPG. I don’t know what they were aiming for, but they shot him in the chest with a rocket-propelled grenade. Blew him into “chunky confetti,” as Conrad put it. What was I doing during this? I was doing air-aerobics over the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, who were high-kicking the morale of the men.

Maybe I couldn’t have done anything. Maybe I would have cowered behind a rock until the shooting was over. Or maybe I would have flown between the bullets and the rocks, grabbed the prick who mulched my best friend, flew him to the stratosphere, and dropped him to see if Allah saved him from the infidels. Maybe I would have flown next to him as he plummeted. We would have rocketed to the earth head-first. I would have slapped him as he tried to pray. I’d pry his eyes open, make him face inevitability, and then make him watch me fly away safely on the warm current of American freedom.

Or maybe I would have just punched the guy. I don’t know how fast I can fly, but I’ve been able to catch up to, and then fly side-by-side with, airliners. Flying at that speed, I wonder what a fist would do to someone’s stomach?

I don’t know why I’m here. I know why we’re here, and I’m totally behind it, but what am I doing here?

-B

PS: I feel like a complete idiot including this, but could you take a look at this contract Warner Brothers sent me? They want to adapt my team-up with Superman into a movie and want to include my “origin story.” So I guess it’s going to be one part superhero movie, one part biography. Not many of those out there, I’d bet.

Billy Hughes Contract.pdf 9K View Download