Thanks everybody and Torog, excellent use of tmesis. Also word of warning below is a long text post.
Miguel Cardenas was born to two mexican immigrants. His parents owned a local hardware store and for the formative years of his life Miguel worked there as well. Then he graduated high school and left his home for college, the first of his family to do so. He wanted to become an engineer, hoping to use his intelligence to improve the world. One year passed and before another could pass, his father had his first heart attack. He was bed ridden and unable to work.
Miguel knew that without someone to man the store the store and his parents livelihoods would fade into nothingness. He also knew his education was not cheap, adding to the withering of their funds that the shop’s closure would bring. So Miguel did what a good son did, he forwent his education and went back to his home to care after his parents and the shop. It was just to be a temporary measure until his father got better. His education was just going to be delayed, not ceased. But his father never fully recovered. He was stuck working at the store, his once open future now closed.
A couple of years passed and the time, his father had another heart attack and passed. Miguel resigned himself to his new reality, it wasn’t the one he preferred, but it was the one he had . Miguel was on the path to becoming a bitter man, but someone stopped him dead in his tracks.
Maria Tyler was the town’s new schoolteacher and her house needed some fixing upping so she went to the Cardenas’s. Miguel knew instantly that they were destined to be. He offered to help her fix her house and she accepted. Out of this help grew friendship and soon love. They were married after a year. Jesse came a couple of years later.
The three of them were happy for a while, but hardships came soon in bunches. First his mother passed and then a big retail store moved into town, driving the Cardenas store out of business. Since Maria had stopped working to care for Jesse, they had only savings to tide them over. Maria tried to get her old job back and Miguel was furious at his own inability to provide for his family. If only he had been able to finish his schooling, if only his future hadn’t been plucked from him. He was powerless and angry.
Then he discovered his gift. He could walk through walls and let objects pass through him like he was a ghost. He finally had some power to change his life. He put on a ski mask and got some funds to tide them over by phasing into a bank’s vault when nobody was looking. He finally had a way to provide for his family, a way for him to feel powerful again.
So to provide for his family a life he knew they deserved, Miguel became Spectre, a ghostly thief. He told his family that he had found a job in the city nearby, a very well paying job that could explain the sudden bursts of money coming into the household, money that came from doing hired jobs or fencing various jewels. Miguel lived a dual life, by day, the loving father and husband and by night, the vicious and elusive thief.
Years passed and now Jesse was a teenager. Miguel’s secret remained a secret and everyone was happy. They had money left over, they went on vacations, they were not living paycheck to paycheck. Things were looking up.
Then Miguel forgot to hide his suit properly. His mask stuck out of his briefcase and Maria found it. At first, she didn’t know what it was, but then the news figured it out for her. The Spectre had just robbed a high tech lab, coinciding perfectly with Miguel’s sudden arrival home from a “business” trip. Her husband didn’t work for some firm in the city, he was a superpowered thief, a criminal. Her life, their happiness had been built on crime, on the suffering of others.
She confronted Miguel and he tried to explain himself. He only did this because he loved them. He only wanted the best for them, for her. He had a skill, a skill he could use to help them. She believed him, but she still couldn’t live with it, with blood on her clothes and in the food she ate.
Jesse had been listening to all of this unfold and he shared his mother’s objections. He rushed in, crying. His father had been feeding him a lie for as long as he could remember. The dad he knew was not the man he was. Jesse’s whole life was a lie, or at least predicated on one.
The happiness the family knew was gone and in its stead was confusion and anger. They could not go back to the way it was and the future was uncertain. One thing was certain, however. Maria was not going to let her son live with a criminal. So after arguing for an hour, she grabbed her bags and started packing and sent Jesse to do the same. Miguel begged them to stay, on his knees by the time they made it to the door. He was speechless. His life was perfect 24 hours ago and now it was dead.
A few weeks passed and with it left the stupor. Miguel had a family to get back. He stopped his thieving, to make Maria and Jesse see that he could change. He began to live on his very substantial savings. He also used said savings and his criminal contacts to try to locate his wife and son. But they were hidden too well and his search cost too much. It was either give up or acquire more funds, so he did the only thing that made sense, he became the Spectre again.
Now Miguel spends his time solely as the Spectre, devoting his time between trying to find and reclaim his loved ones and stealing to pay for his search.
