The Word

The Word opened his mouth and called out a word; the magic sacred word that he transformed into whenever it was spoken.

“Tirinirigaranathatanamanagatamanga!”, he called out, speaking almost with the speed of machine gun fire so that the word sounded like a buzzing or shimmering as it poured from his lips, his body transforming into pure sound and flying through the air at supersonic speed, bouncing off of walls like an echo  down back streets and alleyways, taking a short cut to the First National bank where, just at that moment, D-Man; master of Dimensionality, having transformed himself and a bag full of stolen money into 2- dimensions  was sliding out through a narrow crack under a bank vault door and into the foyer of the bank where customers, bank tellers and security guards were frozen in the timeless 3rd dimension.

“Hee-hee-haa-haa”, he cackled as both himself and the bag of money returned to their 4 dimensional form, “That worked like a charm. With my dimension suit on, no bank vault in the world can keep me out”.

Just then, however, he heard the sound, “Tirinirigaranathatanamanagatamanga!” shattering its way through a nearby bank window and then, to the shape-shifting crooks further astonishment, the word transformed itself back into the flesh and blood form of the Superhero known as The Word.

The Words real name was Dr Simon Rhema. He had been a shy, retiring professor of philology once but then, one day was asked to decipher some strange pictograms found upon a meteorite; part of the lost language of an ancient alien civilization.

Sadly, he had never managed to decipher the words but, much more remarkably, he had realized that they were part of some incantation from an alien magic that allowed their speaker to transform themselves into a word as well as perform other amazing feats of sorcery.

“Now where did you come from?”, asked D-Man, looking the superhero dressed in a dark grey  Elizabethan style doublet narrow breeches and thigh length boots up and down, “Never mind. For I have my own conjuring tricks”.

Then, pointing a peculiar looking gizmo strapped to the wrist of his skin tight, jet black dimension suit at The Word, D-Man added, “For instance. I may just trap you, like the other people in this bank, for eternity in the 3rd Dimension; the dimension before time”.

The word of power shimmering upon his tongue again, The Word became as hard as steel; a narrow steel blade flying, like a thunderbolt, towards and shattering the peculiar device on D-Mans wrist so that it fell in two halves upon the floor.

“Language can exist in any dimension, my friend”, said the word reforming himself behind D-Man while all around them, startled people, freed from a timeless prison rushed frantically, screaming and panicking, for the exit, “If I wanted to I could transmit myself in a beam of light; a radio wave or even in genetic molecules. Whatever form you would prefer”.

“I’m impressed”, said a smirking D-man before adding, “But they do say that a picture paints a thousand words”.

Pointing to a mural on the domed ceiling of the bank in which white winged cherubs were idly seated upon clouds, the dimensional master transformed them, first in to 3-dimensional objects and then into living beings existing in time and, glaring at The Word with eyes full of deep hatred and shrieking more like harpies than angels, they flew down upon him, some firing a hail of arrows, like cupids, from their miniature golden bows.

Meanwhile, D-Man transforming himself once more into 2-dimensions and folding himself up into a jet black paper aeroplane glided towards the doors of the bank, preparing to make a swift exit.

Once more, however, The Word changed himself into the word of power and now, instead of colliding with him the cherubs diving down out of the air towards him merely collided with each other, bumping their curly, blonde infant like heads together with a loud ‘Thunk!’ before falling dazed upon the floor.

“Not so fast”, said The Word, reforming himself and then, with one of the golden bows from a concussed cherub, firing a golden arrow and pinning the 2 dimensional crook to a wall.

“You should not have done that”, said D-man, the solid golden arrow becoming no more than a cartoon arrow painted upon the air in yellow before erasing itself entirely out of existence.

And then, suddenly,unfolding from his paper aeroplane form, D-man began to change dimensions once again.

“Now”, he told the Word, “You will see how powerful I really am. First I will become N-dimensional; standing outside of space and time; a God peering into your puny four dimensional world and then it will be I who fold you up like paper”.

But, hearing this, The Word merely laughed.

“A god”, he replied, “Ah, you mean like the great Author of existence”.

Do not be alarmed dear reader. It is I, Dr Simon Rhema, also known as The Word, I have had to come outside of the dimension of this story in order to trap the dastardly and despicable D-man (See how I used alliteration there?).

Suddenly D-man felt a strange tingling sensation around his wrists and then, looking down at them, he realized, in astonished horror, that they were police handcuffs.

“No! I don’t believe it”, said the dimensional master, “How is this possible”.

“As a great wordsmith once said, ‘All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players’”, replied the devilishly handsome superhero , “And this world, rather than being a play, happens to be a short story about a superhero called The Word or, in other words, me”.