Fog Man

By Janet Vittorio Corica

This exciting new superhero flies at nanosecond speed.
FOG MAN's strength, speed, and endurance are unequalled in the history of
mankind.
He's the envy of every superhero.
He's devastatingly handsome, sexy, unattached, and can sing Country music with the best of Nashville stars.
His special crime-fighting and rescue techniques entail never-before heard of powers.
He'll battle crime, and help humanity worldwide.
FOG MAN is destined to capture your heart and mind.
You'll never be the same, nor will his world or yours! FOG MAN controls what evil cannot conquer. Grab onto his cape, and let us take you where no superhero has ever been or ever will be! We promise you a superhero ride, at superhero speed, and superhero experiences, all set in the unequalled beauty of the shores of Lake Superior, Duluth, Minnesota.
Janet and Bill

• Language: English
• Publisher: Janet Vittorio Corica
• Release date: Sep 9, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301443345

Janet Vittorio Corica

The author is a former Radio/TV Writer/ Producer/on air personality editor, TV model, and poet. She’s currently working on a super hero story set in Duluth, MN her hometown. All her books will be in e-book and paperback. She has two other soon-to-be released books with a partner. She holds a degree in Psychology/Counseling and has extensive graduate work in the same field. Married, she lives with her husband in MN.

Book preview

FOG MAN

Written by Janet Vittorio Corica & Bill Meyer

Copyright 2012 by Janet Vittorio Corica & Bill Meyer

Smashwords Edition

A TRIBUTE TO ETHEL VITTORIO, WHOSE IDEA SPAWNED FOG MAN!

This book is dedicated to Janet Vittorio Corica’s sister, Ethel Vittorio, who was the actual seed for FOG MAN.

On July 23, 2011, Janet called Ethel to tell her the fog was rolling into her backyard. She and Ethel discussed the weather and Janet was making her usual silly howl at the moon spooky noises when Ethel said, I don’t know if there’s a fog man. Janet laughed and said, I could write a book. The more they talked, the more they both knew their talk had spawned a new being, human but missing his DNA.

So, to Ethel, thank you for all the years of fun we’ve had together. And thank you for being my very own weather person from when I was a child living on Main Street in Duluth, Minnesota.

Thanks, too, to Lakeshore Rehabilitation. As I was starting FOG MAN, my husband fell on me and broke my ankle, necessitating surgery and a painful recovery. So for 57 out of 60 days, with wonderful nurses, Julie, Linda, aides Dave, Sue, Thor, Neal, Todd, Joann and Kris, I was able to keep writing. Thanks for keeping me smiling.

Thanks also to Mark and Beth Knutson and the David Norland family for emergency food and visits.

And, Dr. Kenneth Irons, our most wonderful doctor, deserves huge accolades for his outstanding care, countless call-backs and great sense of humor. I doubt Mike and I could have recovered as well without his marvelous assessments of our situations.

FOG MAN’s artist drove from Maryland to take care of my husband, too. For that we can never repay him.

So, with Bill’s sweet patience, we didn’t miss a step on our wonderful FOG MAN.

And, as our FOG MAN goes to press, Lakeshore, The Fountains are helping my beloved Mike recover from knee surgery. Special thanks to Brittney and Jody.

Thanks to my dear friend, John Whelan, a former Korean fighter pilot and Eastern Airline pilot, for his advice on aviation and jargon. He kept the FOG MAN mishaps on the right runways and flightways, etc.

And now, FOG MAN, step forward, courtesy of Ethel Ann Vittorio, Janet Vittorio Corica, her wonderful partner and co-author Bill Meyer, and Janet’s talented friend and artist, Clyde Bruno. Together, the four of us have made FOG MAN live.

On Thursday, April 23rd, 2009, I documented a new word that came to me in a dream that night.

My wonderful brother, Frank Calgero Vittorio, of Duluth, MN, was helping me with something.

I remember that after we finished, he said to me, Isn’t this niftypufferous?

He had a huge, glorious smile on his face and was obviously pleased at whatever we were making or doing. The word, in my interpretation, since we were having fun, whatever our project was, will mean, great, perfect, exciting, wonderful, extraordinary, and not to be outdone.

The pufferous part will explain something that puffs one’s senses in a positive way. It also means a feeling that elicits excitement and a feeling of contentment at one’s accomplishment or at what one is doing or experiencing.

The fact that Frank combined nifty with his pufferous, (Frank’s coined word) into niftypufferous tells me that nifty wasn’t enough, that it needed something more to convey happiness, which was brought forth by a combination of fun, delight, and joy.

Since my computer does not have all the accent marks needed to show pronunciation, I’ll simplify it. Say the word nifty. Then accent the word puffer. Add a sound that sounds like the iss in kiss. Run it all together and you have niftypufferous.

And now, FOG MAN brings it forth in 2012. Isn't that just niftypufferous? 

Chapter 1

Damn! What happened? Who’s been messing with my experiments? Lars Scheid cursed, tossing a test tube that had contained his DNA to the floor.

It couldn’t be! Not again! Who the hell has keys to this place? Damn that cleaning crew!

Lars surveyed his lab in The Canal Park area of Duluth, Minnesota. Locked cabinets stuffed with his years of research gave no clue to the important studies he was conducting. Not even his wife knew his true work.

I work on the effect of various creatures on the water quality of Lake Superior, he told her.

Funded by both the state and federal government, this highly secret lab gave no clue to the real secrets locked within these files. Deliberately drafted to look innocuous, his drab olive, metal files seemed innocent enough.

Lars preferred to work alone. His work was well-known within the scientific community, but he was judicious and protective of what lay within his files, and God help the person who dared to tamper with them.

Initially a nice man, he could be known to snarl at anyone who might even suggest that he should have a secretary, or at least let someone try to put some semblance of order to what lay within his secret cabinets.

Looking out on the cold, foggy day before him, Lars peered at the lighthouse and thought back to the days in the fifties when his grandfather described the long, lonely cry of the diaphanous foghorn, which had guided many a boat into Duluth’s ship canal.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeoooooooooo. Eoooooooooooooooooooo. Its sound had echoed far up over the hill into the tree and house-covered hillside, which crawled upward toward the Laurentian Divide that formed rocky cliffs, and upon which brave immigrants of many nationalities had built humble but comfortable homes.

Some do-gooders, he was told, had removed the call-to-home horn and replaced it with a weak little whistle. Such is progress, he was told.

Good old Lake Superior, on which Duluth was born, was known for having a calming effect on the city’s residents. Even when Lars’s temper had erupted into a bubbling burst of destruction, looking out of the top floor office of an old warehouse eventually calmed him enough to help him sort out what might have just happened.

Let’s see, did I forget to include the transformation of the DNA with the new formula I developed? How could I? I’m not that careless! It couldn’t go wrong. I’ve done it many times. What the heck happened to my DNA?

Perhaps the new machine Pharmacology Medical Supply had developed for him had bit the dust already. Lars picked up his hotline and dialed Washington, D.C.

Scheid here. What kind of equipment did you build for me, Carson? he barked into the phone.

The best our government can buy. What’s wrong? Bentley Carson responded.

It’s supposed to classify DNA and a whole lot of other things, he lied, not wanting to disclose to Carson that his DNA had simply disappeared like fog on a Duluth hill.

You’d better get a man over here, pronto, he ordered. I need that machine in working order.

His irritation fairly sizzled over the phone and unlocked into the ears of Bentley Carson, Chief Engineer of Human Microbiology and Genealogical Research. Answering directly to the President of the United States, both knew the importance of their Don’t talk about it work. Share this knowledge with anyone else, and you’re out on your ear! That’s it, you’re blackballed, don’t even think of asking for a job again.

Tell you what, Bentley offered. I’ll ship out a duplicate machine by Air Express immediately. You’ll have it in the morning. But I want you to go to the Post Office and put that one in the mail, overnight delivery. We can’t afford to have either machine out of service.

His voice carried the urgency of the situation they both knew this project demanded.

I’m on my way soon as I get this disaster packed up, Lars sneered.

His disgust made Bentley hold the phone away from his ear and promptly hang up after a terse Goodbye.

Lars quickly wrapped the offending machine. With it under his arm, he bolted down the stairs of the wide, old warehouse and aimed his key at his old Subaru. Indistinguishable from a lot of the cars that University of Minnesota, Duluth students drove, it blended well with others in the parking lot.

Incompetents, Lars muttered as he made his way to the west end of town and Duluth’s main Post Office.

Once there, he made his way inside, insured the package as a piece of medical equipment, grabbed the receipt and drove back to his office.

Traffic was heavy for the day, in spite of low visibility. Tourists weren’t about to let a little fog deter them. They milled about on the sidewalks, dragging along leashed dogs, children of all ages and sometimes laptops, which they used at the local Caribou Coffee House.

Might as well stop in for a cup.

He could use some coffee to calm his jangled nerves. Not much he could do until he sorted out what had really happened. Where was his DNA, anyway? DNA doesn’t just evaporate into thin air, he told himself. It’s as old as man himself. It’s our human identity, our tie to all our ancestors, our gene pool from our Creator. God knows it is as ubiquitous as the green grass or blue sky or the howling Duluth wind on a stormy, snowy day.

But as natural as it was to reason the existence of mans’ DNA, Lars also knew that his was gone. He was going to have to run a lab analysis and see whether some creep was messing with his test tubes. He’d have to check his surveillance cameras to see if his suspicions about the night crew panned out.

Luckily, he had insisted that Carson find a budget for the cameras. This kind of work justifies a watchful eye.

Back at the lab, with just two hours to go until closing, Lars wondered how far back he’d have to go to find anything that looked out of place.

Let’s see, he thought, this set of my DNA and all the chemicals needed had been mixed just two days before. That meant just one night crew. But they didn’t come in or weren’t due until Friday, and this was only Wednesday, he reasoned.

He immediately set to work and followed the exact sequence he had followed two days ago. One by one, he added the necessary chemicals until he duplicated the exact tincture he had concocted that day.

Using a sterile cotton swab, he added his own previously-drawn DNA and anticipated that by the time his new piece of equipment arrived from Human Microbiology and Genealogical Research on the morrow, it would have ripened sufficiently that he could whip it right into the new testing machine.

Having done all he could for the day, Lars locked his office; but not without putting a slip of paper between the door and door frame.

Just let some weasel enter. I’ll know it. Let him find that piece of paper wedged in its proper place, and I’ll have a talk with the property management office. I’ll tell them a thing or two about what kind of miscreants they are employing. Heck, anybody should know that an office cleaning crew shouldn’t have light fingers. One should expect honesty out of them. I’ll have to find out whether they’re bonded. If they’re not, I’ll sure make sure others are in the future.

If he had to take it up with the Mayor, he’d make his trek up to City Hall and make it known that his office was being tampered with. Better yet, he might make his way over to the Police Department. He knew the desk sergeant. He’d make him listen. A man’s office was sacred, whether he was doing research on the beautiful Lake Superior that belonged to everyone or not.

Mussels, lamprey, let ‘em think it. He’d had to defend his mock work against the Water Quality Lab up the shore many times. Lucky the Feds secretly employed a couple of guys to periodically test the old beauty for hitchhiking creatures that attached themselves to any mode of water transportation they could find.

Armed with their reports, Lars was able to attend monthly meetings and be the imposter needed to allow the real testing that certain people in Washington wanted to continue.

Working hand in hand with other scientists at the Great Lakes, Lars presented the perfect picture of a marine biologist whose only interest was keeping Mama Superior as a grand old lady as nature had ever defined.

Traffic heading east on Second Street was one way, and Lars was happy that, with the fog thick and heavy, a one way street lessened the chance of a collision on his way home. Making his way onto Hawthorne Road was a little more difficult but a right turn took him down to a large, pale yellow house that he knew would soon have to be sold.

Damn that wife of mine. Damn her for that motorcycle-riding schoolteacher she ran off with! I’d like to make her feel some of the pain I feel in my heart.

Lars knew he’d be entering a house where his faithful Great Dane, Thunder, would be waiting, thanks to a kindly neighbor, Mrs. Conroy, who fed him a noon snack and visited twice a day so he could relieve himself while he waited for his master to walk through that front door. Once inside the foyer, Thunder would wag his tail in such fast and furious motions that Lars had to set a high water mark that Thunder’s wiggles and wags could not set flying in all directions and fragment into broken pieces, remnants of their once beautiful form.

Hi, Old Boy, Lars greeted his faithful Harlequin, who raised his head and nudged him until his head found the pats he so loved and sought each night.

You’re just what Daddy needs tonight, Thunder, Old Boy! I had a really bad day, he disclosed. Thunder’s ears turned to and fro as if they were a rotating set of antennae that fine-tuned their reception at his every word.

Lars surveyed the empty house. He missed his wife. The divorce was not yet finalized and the thought of it made him weak in the knees, just as she had the first time she walked into sight at a local talent night down on the waterfront. She was a beauty, no doubt about it. Her natural Scandinavian blonde hair cascaded to her shoulders in attractive ringlets that reflected the rays of the spotlight as she stepped up on stage. A few friends raised their voice in unison. Yeeeeah, Marta. Knock ‘em dead, honey, one encouraged, clapping wildly in support of her beautiful friend.

Busty, with snake hips and a curvy posterior, Marta was everything a man desired in a woman. She carried herself like a New York model and swung her hips like a Victoria’s Secret fashion beauty. Her Country voice probably would have done better in Nashville than Duluth. But, still, she had her share of fans that followed her performances and made it clear that she was destined for bigger things in the music world. For now, though, she was happy here in Duluth, the unsung beauty of Minnesota, the jewel of the Northland, the speck of diamond dust that not everyone knew but that Grandma’s Marathoners worldwide were discovering and beginning to herald year after year.

Duluth, the air-conditioned city. Why they had stopped touting that in their Chamber of Commerce advertisements was anybody’s guess. Those in the know, just as surely as the fawning members of the Bernard Madoff fraud, were sometimes happy to keep their newfound discovery of Duluth a secret. Freshly built hotels hung in the shadow of the Aerial Bridge, one of two such ornate bridges in the world, nestled on the lake’s shores. Known for cold, surfer’s waves in stormy weather, first-built hotels sometimes had their windows assaulted by Mother Superior’s fury, and anyone who loved the excitement of a lake’s wild anger held a tolerant passion and respect for what she could dish out on a yearly basis. Storms were part of her charm, except for the memorable day, November 10, 1975, in which she claimed the lives of 29 souls. We’re holding our own was the last transmission she ever emitted in a nautical shipwreck that was memorialized in Gordon Lightfoot’s The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

On this night, however, on the shores of this awesome lake, Marta Jannsen stepped up to the microphone and began to sing. Crazy, I’m crazy for feelin’ so lonely, crazy, crazy for. Her lament of a love lost.

Her husky voice lent itself so well and magnified the call of a woman mourning a love that has exited her hold on him and moved on to another.

Ms. Jannsen pursed her lips and sang into the face of her new love, the motorcycle riding guy in her life. Having shed Mrs in favor of Ms, Marta Scheid had taken back her maiden name. Not wanting to be associated with her still-husband, she adopted the Ms. Actually, it suited her better. She was wild, she was beautiful, as capricious as the wind. It wasn’t fair that any man owned her. It was against her spirit, against her guttural instincts, her primal need to be free as the wind, free to follow whatever way it blew. Having signed a marriage contract once, Marta learned it wasn’t for her.

She ran off with her motorcycle-hopping school teacher, who she hoped could and would teach her new things, her next experience in the schoolroom of life. She studied him, absorbing everything he said, as if her personality were not complete and needed his scholarly ways to mold her into the next facet of her personality.

She’d learn what he had to teach but darned if she’d let any male rule her into a new lifestyle that he thought she should follow. He’d learn soon enough that Marta Jannsen had her one try at marriage, was about to shed its bonds, and woe to any male who tried to force his lessons on her again. Once was enough, Lars Scheid had left his mark, his memory and wounds were nailed onto her heart, and a gaping hole made it hard for her to love again. Use ‘em and leave ‘em, was her motto now.

Walter Monson didn’t know it yet, but he was in for the ride of his life. Marta had lessons to teach him, teacher-reversed roles. A learning-cycle he’ll wish he’d never seen, but in the meantime, he sat enamored as she sang.

When her set was over, Marta bowed and retired back into the crowd, her shiny tresses bouncing as she found her way to her table. Numerous patrons and fans stopped by to offer congratulations and encouragement.

A local bar owner, unknown to her, approached and on the spot offered her a job she could not refuse. She’d show that circus-trainer Lars Scheid that she could make her own money. She didn’t need his stinking handout. Let the house be sold.

But she’d fight him for Thunder. That and her family was the only thing in the world she cared about today. The dog was loyal, he was loving and he didn’t play games. He laid his love right out there for you. No manipulations, no conditions, just unconditional love. That was a Great Dane for you. When he loved you, you knew it. Those great, big eyes of his zeroed in on you like those of a lovesick cow. His gaze followed you around the room like a security camera on a department store. There was no letting up. Once you were in his sights, there was no escape. But then who would want to?

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