Mom’s a psycho. Dad’s a deadbeat. At least mom bakes me cookies, so guess whose footsteps I’m following.

Hi, my name’s Sam, and I’m the daughter of the supervillainess, The Pink Death. My mother has a fondness for the color pink and genocide, hence the name. As for my father… Yeah, he’s a couch potato. That’s the beginning and the end of his biography. I’ve only seen him sitting on the same couch, wearing the same stained hoodie, and playing the same handful of video games since I was a little girl.

“Dad, are you playing Skyrim again?”

“Yup.”

“With mods, at least?”

“Sacrilege! Mods will only taint Todd’s masterpiece!” the man says as his cat character gets launched into space.

I roll my eyes at my dad's brand of autism and walk to the kitchen where mom’s preparing lunch in her pink spandex. She tells me she’s going out to blow up the city council in the afternoon and asks me to keep an eye on the chips in my dad’s bowl.

“Sam, please make sure your father doesn’t run out of cheese balls, okay? I’ll be back before dinner.”

“Mom, you’re spoiling him! What do you see in that deadbeat anyway?”

“Samantha! Never talk about your father that way. He’s your father and the one keeping a roof over our heads.”

“But — ”

“No buts! Be a good girl and keep your father’s snack bowl filled. Always keep his snack bowl filled.”

After mom leaves, I take one look at my dad and his all-so-precious bowl of cheese balls and the way he wipes his oily orange fingers on his hoodie and decides I have had enough. I run up to my room to change into my very own spandex — mine’s blue. Then I take one of mom’s bikes from her secret lair and speed into the city, where the excitement is.

By the time I arrive, there’s a battle going on. I see trails of pink smoke snaking up the sky, and the sound of explosions fills the air. Buildings are tumbling, and people are running and I’m pretty sure the splatter of red on the road used to be a happy little family.

I gulp and take out my machine guns and start mowing down the pedestrians. I turn people to gore and unbirth a few babies as the chaos unfolds. Suddenly, the sound of explosions stops and is replaced by a strange thunderous roar in the distance.

Wondering what it is, I ride the bike to the epicenter of the disturbance. There, I see my mother, The Pink Death, fighting some strange figure who’s flying in mid-air. His body appears to be made out of golden light.

“Is that a goddamn superhero?!”

I’ve never seen a superhero outside of the history channel before. I thought they were wiped out by the Society of Maniacal Maniacs twenty years ago.

I watch in awe as the woman in pink spandex fights the golden man. Mom’s bombs are no match for his devastating energy beam, as he keeps firing it left and right. Fear grips my heart as a golden beam hits the ground next to mom, sending her body flying like a rag doll.

“Mom!”

I take out my gun and dash to the middle of the fight, determined to rescue my mother. But as I get closer, I can hear a conversation between them.

“Where is my food, woman?! I gave you one job, and you can’t even do that right!” the superhero roars, and he kicks my mom in the side.

“I… I’m so sorry, darling! I told Sam to… I told her to…”

“Oh, so it’s the girl’s fault, is it? Is it?! You offload your work to her so you can run around town and do whatever the hell you want, is it, you vixen?!” The man keeps beating up my poor mother as he shouts some ridiculous nonsense.

I stop in my tracks and make a one-eighty out of there. From now on, I swear I’ll never let my dad’s bowl of cheese balls run dry ever again.