Read The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark: A Novel for Free Online

dance moves to the slow portion before shaking his arms wildly and breaking out into full maniacal movement.
    Henrik stopped himself before the song finished. He looked like an idiot. The point was to be unique and distinct, not downright ridiculous. He stripped off his clothes and tossed them in the trash and then flopped in front of the television.
    His old black and white television received only three channels: the weather network, a religious station and NBC . On NBC tonight there was a Dateline special — To Catch a Predator . For an hour, Henrik watched as countless men were busted for soliciting sex from minors over the internet. He found this show to be infinitely fascinating. Each felon followed the same script. They would spend days, sometimes weeks, flirting with a teenage girl in an internet chat room before finally arranging a live, in-person meeting in which they were supposed to have sex. Only what they didn’t know was that the teenage girl they were flirting with was actually a middle-aged police officer named Frank who had a moustache, a gut three times the size of Henrik’s and, from the look of him, most likely some sort of foul stench emanating from his armpits. The predators would show up at a designated house expecting underage sex but instead they were accosted by Chris Hansen, a courageous reporter with a full head of excellent hair and rampant moral superiority. For some strange reason, when confronted by the handsome Chris Hansen, each and every one of the predators admitted exactly why they had come to the house, then once they found out they were going to be on national television, they cried, begged for forgiveness and left the house, appearing somewhat surprised when there were police officers standing outside to arrest them. To be fair, some of the predators didn’t cry. But they all looked like they were about to cry and in Henrik’s mind, that was as good as crying.
    Henrik thought the idea of sex with a minor was completely repugnant. But he considered this all to be a matter of age and attraction, and wasn’t quite sure what role moral accountability played in all of this. While he found sex with a minor to be an abominable act, he found sex with a senior citizen to be equally as abhorrent. However, if he were to be pressed into a decision — if, for example, some evil supervillain was holding the world hostage and valorous Henrik, as the last remaining member of a dying breed of superheroes, was forced to fornicate in order to save the planet from certain destruction with the one catch being that he had to choose either a minor or a senior to fornicate with, Henrik knew that deep in his heart of hearts, he would never — never — choose the senior. That Henrik could find such monstrosity within himself to be a child molester, albeit only in the due course of courageous service to mankind and only as a very last resort . . . the thought of it sent a flush of endorphins rushing to his brain where the opiate receptors responded in a pang of delight. He — Henrik Nordmark — might actually be depraved! Depravity had to be better than dullness. It just had to be.
    Henrik clapped his hands in victory and suddenly fell sullen again. The clapping sound reminded him of a 1978 episode of Super Friends in which the Wonder Twins’ sidekick Gleek was put in a trance and forced to commit all sorts of outrageous atrocities until he heard Robin the Boy Wonder clapping his hands and came to his senses, establishing that anyone can perform abominable acts under the right circumstances, given duress and good intentions in his heart. Henrik realized he wasn’t super at all. He wasn’t extraordinary. He would never be a superhero, or even a supervillain for that matter. At best he could aspire to the heights of comedic relief sidekick, and not even that — comedic relief monkey sidekick with limited speech capabilities.
    Henrik turned off the television. He left his home and wandered the streets