The Return of Ruby Rubber

6: Wearing the Ring

‘Just try it on. Go on!’ pleaded Stuart.

‘No way, not a chance, never!’ yelled Ruth, her trousers looking like pedal-pushers as she added a foot to her height by lengthening her legs. She towered over Stuart. ‘I don’t care what your aunt did, you are not getting me to put that thing on!’

Stuart gestured to Ruth’s bare elongated ankles. ‘But you can’t wear ordinary clothes if you’re going to go stretching about all over the place. They simply can’t cope with your flexibility. Now the Ruby Rubber costume has been specially designed to -’

Ruth stretched her neck, putting her face an inch or so from Stuart’s. ‘N-O spells “no”, you idiot! I may be rubber but I am NOT Ruby Rubber. I couldn’t do the stuff your aunt did. She was amazing - I saw that retrospective they did on her for the anniversary of her first appearance last year. The rescues, the fights, the derring-do. That time she enveloped an entire 747 full of hijackers -’

‘Aw, that was brilliant, that,’ enthused Stuart.

‘Exactly! I’m not that type of person.’ Ruth shrunk back to normal. ‘Can you imagine me doing something like that?’

Stuart smiled. ‘Not wearing those clothes, I can’t.’ He reached inside his jacket and withdrew the ring he’d been looking for these past five minutes. ‘Just try it out - see what it feels like. You’ll be amazed, I promise you.’

Stretching her legs once more, Ruth catapulted herself over the ten feet that separated her from her sofa on the other side of the room. She flumped down, elongating her arms to encompass the width of its cushions as her legs wound themselves back up.

‘I’m not doing very well today at standing my ground, am I?’ she admitted. ‘I suppose it wouldn’t do any harm to try it on.’

‘Yay!’ cried Stuart.

‘With no guarantees,’ emphasised Ruth. Stuart nodded back. ‘I’m merely satisfying my curiosity, like I have done with all of this stretching business so far. Nothing more.’

Stuart walked over and handed the ring to her. ‘Just put this on,’ he instructed.

Ruth took the ring from him and weighed up which finger it should go on. The wedding finger was a definite no-no so she settled on its opposite number on her right hand. As she placed it over the tip of her finger, she felt something brush against her skin, like she was stretching an invisible film.

‘What’s that?’ she asked Stuart.

‘That’s the costume,’ he replied. ‘All you have to do is stretch yourself through the ring for it to cover your body.’

‘What?’

Ruth looked at each expectant face of her five opponents in turn. She sighed, unable to stave off the inevitable any longer. She held out her right hand, grasping on to its only ring with the forefinger and thumb of her left. Slowly, her hand thinned and distorted, squashing like a child’s plasticine until it could fit through the tiny circle of the ring. As it came out the other side it started to reform into its original shape, only now it was coated in a strange, glistening fabric that looked like the material of a wet bathing suit. Slowly, the rest of Ruth’s body followed: her upper arm, her shoulder and her head, squeezing through the ring in a bizarre approximation of someone putting on an incredibly tight pullover. As she moved her right leg through, passing through the tiny circle like an elastic submariner stepping through a miniature hatch, the process of donning her costume had reached the halfway point. One side of her body was now clothed, the silver and red striped design of the once-familiar Ruby Rubber uniform starting to take shape.  The other half still remained within her everyday clothes, the two sides linked through a shifting tentacle of flesh that ran down Ruth’s sleeve and through the ring.

Ruth’s head popped through the ring, her face now covered by a silver half-mask that came up to her brow, allowing her hair to flow freely from the top. She adjusted the eyeholes with her gloved right-hand.

‘This has to be the strangest thing I have done in my life,’ she said.

‘So far,’ replied Stuart. ‘That’s the great thing about this job. It gets stranger still from here on in.’

There wasn’t much more of the costume to come. All that remained was Ruth’s left arm. ‘Oh no. I don’t mind trying this on for size,’ she protested, ‘but for me this is as strange as it gets. Leave the adventuring to those with a death wish.’  She plucked at the material at her waist. ‘What’s this stuff made from, anyway?’

‘Would you believe ectoplasm?,’ explained Stuart. ‘The original version of this uniform was made by The Grey Professor.’

‘Wasn’t he the guy with the gizmo that could do anything? What was it called?’

‘”The Swiss Super-Team Knife”? No, that was Dr MacMech. The Grey Professor was the Man with the Ghostly Mother - half mortal, half phantom. He invented a synthetic ectoplasm while trying to come up with a material to clothe the wraith-like twins his own spirit spouse had given birth to.’

‘I’m wearing something made from ghost nappies?’

Stuart laughed. ‘The same fabric as ghost nappies, at least. It’s ideal for superhero uniforms as it has a tendency to mimic the wearer’s psychic requirements: invulnerability, resistance to superspeed friction, elasticity. Even the ring’s made of a version of it - it’ll stretch and flatten as you require.’

Ruth looked at the ring that had contained the costume. As the last of her body worked its way through, she realised that she had ended up with it on her wedding finger after all. 

‘I don’t think this is for me at all,’ she murmured.

À SUIVRE...