From Chapter 1: Some Years Earlier

With all the sensibility borne of a alcohol and a short temper, Roy slammed his forehead with a great crunching sound against the mound of muscle.

And it was right at that moment when time stopped for Aloysious. He glanced around the room. The ceiling fans were stopped. Gina hung motionless above a bank of manufactured cloud that didn’t stir. The mound of muscle was frozen in a grimace of pain, his body in the midst of falling down; the phalanx of equally muscled friends with looks of shock and anger stretched on their faces. Aloysious stood up. Everything remained still then a heartbeat later the world started to vibrate and he exploded in a cacophonous wave that suddenly thawed the motion in the room.

It was a violent thaw -- people knocked against each other, every bottle of booze at the bar shattered, and the closest people, mainly the wall of flesh and his friends, had their clothes shredded.

Gina seemed to be the only one unaffected. Hands on her hips, she actually appeared annoyed that someone had exploded at what was to be the climax of her routine.

Aloysious snapped back into existence. Roy didn’t even have to shout a drunken question at Aloysious before they started stumbling toward the exit.

Aloysious didn’t know what it was, but he knew he had to get the hell outside, to the relative safety of the Murder Capital of the World.

“Hey, boy,” Roy rasped. “What’s happening to your skin?”

Aloysious looked at his exposed forearms. The skin was sloughing off in ragged tears and a brilliant white light was searing out from him. “Oh shit,” he said.

A mattress with it’s innards spilling out, suddenly flew across the street straight toward Aloysious. A thin arc of light crackled out from Aloysious and struck the mattress, which promptly and dramatically vanished. A car battery began a short flight from the doorway of a derelict apartment and the same small arc of light snapped out and made it vanish.

“How are you doing that, man?” Roy said. He took out his phone and started recording, fumbling just a bit and not really able to hold the phone steady. Roy watched as the rest of Aloysious skin and clothes fell off in ragged pieces. The Skin Joint’s patrons had all exited to the street, but some were now trying to head back inside.

Aloysious was a being of pure light and every piece of garbage and refuse in a three block radius starting flying and tumbling through the streets and out windows toward him. When the material reached Aloysious the arc of light snapped out from him. At times he resembled a living Tesla coil.

Then the music started. It was XXXXX’s tune. And it seemed to the witnesses there that it was blasting out of every piece of electronic equipment with a speaker, including Roy’s phone.

Suddenly the neighbourhood was transformed into a happy music video.

The garbage gone, crumbled buildings began reforming, buildings that needed painting were suddenly covered in bright pastels, the lines on the street looked like a machine had just laid them down, dented garbage cans were suddenly smooth. People started dancing. The man made of pure light started dancing, too. Fireworks started rising above the building.

A single mother in 3B who happened to be standing in front of her mostly empty refrigerator was shocked to see that is had been fully stocked; the same for the cupboards. And she saw the roaches vanish.

Within moments and in a euphoric wave, the several blocks of the Murder Capital of the World, looked as if a picture of the perfect town had suddenly come to life. Street lights flickered on for the first time in many years and the man made of light rocketed out of sight leaving a bewildered but smiling friend behind.