Roger - Deus ex Machina Part 2

Des Moines – Aged 13

Pops traded in the mops years ago for pigs, running the hog races at whatever carnival would take him. He has started to lose his voice from the years of yelling and the he was having trouble selling the mops. “Nobody trust’s my voice anymore,” he told me. He was right; I didn’t trust much of anything he said, especially after the hogs came in. It was grueling, disgusting work. The hogs were disagreeable and did nothing but eat and shit. But as he had for the past five years, Loki took care of me when Pops couldn’t. We were doing three races a day before Loki had the idea to start taking bets on the side. I was going to take the idea to Pops but Loki didn’t see why he should get a cut. But I wasn’t sure how the hell I was supposed to get away with it without telling Pops about it.

“Find that Gypsy woman and tell her what’s going on. She’ll know what to do,” he told me. I wasn’t sure what any of it meant, but the fortune teller had become of great interest to me as of late. She was the only woman in my life and taught me so many things about manhood. The chance to actually talk to her was reason enough to get me to bring the proposition to her.

Her large wooden shack always lay a bit outside of the carnival, still attracting customers while shying away the coppers. I waited outside for her to finish up with some poor mark eating up some junk about “love as hot as fire.” He left with a smile almost as big as Loki’s.

“Remember, try and look her in the eyes,” Loki whispered to me before I was walking in. She was reapplying make up in the mirror when she saw me.

“You are Pops’ boy, yes?” she said with a thick accent. My eyes were directly on the curve of her breasts. I nodded. “So what is it? He need more of his throat medicine? If he keeps on drinking during the day he’s going to run out of money right quick.” I was stunned. Her figure and the magnitude of what I had to ask had stumped me. I felt a sudden, subtle push from behind. I didn’t need to turn around to know that no one was there. The words flew out of my mouth as if they were from another’s.

“We want to start a racket with the hog races. You give us customers, we give you a cut, 80/20,” I blurted out in a voice close to mine, but a bit off.

“Betting you say. Old Charley’s up to new tricks I see.”

“My father doesn’t actually know anything about it. And, uh, we would like to keep it that way,” I replied. She burst into a cackling laughter.

“Very interesting! Well, you certainly have grown up quickly. But, you said ‘we would like to keep it that way.’ You have, how you say, partner in crime?” My palms were sweating something fierce, either because of her bust line or because I realized I made a mistake. “No worries, my darling. We make agreement, you and me and whoever you work with. I take part of money you make, and your so-called-father will never know what is going on. But it will be 50/50. Split in half.” I tried to turn my head to get a response from Loki, but the Gypsy woman looked suspiciously at me.

“Agreed!” I blurted out. She planted a wet kiss on my cheek and I walked out. I couldn’t stop smiling on the way back to the wagon, so much so that I didn’t realize that Loki was walking with me. He patted me on the back and looked like he was proud. We started pulling in the major dough after that. We hid the money in the back of the wagon and I paid the Gypsy every week. I took the bets in the back while Pops got the hogs ready out front. Loki always sat on the roof. He said he liked to see everything go down. I could tell he was getting bored so I told Pops we should start doing five races a day instead of three. He reluctantly agreed; he was old and drunk most of the time. With the additional races came additional profits. But, Loki was still bored. He would steal women’s purses and rig the Carnival games so that the marks always won, not the house. He would snicker about it later, but it never lasted. Loki had an insatiable thirst for chaos.

After a few months of the hog race racket Loki decided to take the Gypsy woman for all she was worth. From the look in his eye I knew I had no choice but to let it happen. We had enough money to take care of ourselves and even throw a bottle at Pops from time to time, but he insisted it would do nothing but good (for us). I protested when he told me I had to be involved.

“I can’t do this on my own, my boy. You won’t be there when it goes down. I just need you to do a bit of the prep work for me.” I sighed. The next time I dropped of her money she was entertaining the men with booze and dancing, just like Loki planned. I threw the money in the back and grabbed her hair brush on the way out. Loki took the hair and burned it. The flames were several feet tall, and I could see people moving inside of them. He left that night without saying a word.

The evening of the con he was pulling his hair (and himself) up to the preferred height when I asked him the only pertinent question.

“But Loki, is she going to be able to see you?” I asked.

“My good Benjamin. She will see and hear and feel all that I wish her to.”

Loki told me to stay behind but I followed him to the Gypsy’s hut. Loki straightened himself out and entered the tent. I ran up to the side of the hut and held on to the ledge of a window to see. The gypsy woman was entertaining the men when Loki walked in, but he wasn’t Loki at all. He was a tall, dark man dressed in peasant’s garbs. The woman immediately recognized him, standing in utter shock. She rushed the men out of the room and stood still with the man that was Loki. I could barely hear their words, but they were certainly not in English. They talked with a passion and intensity that made me uncomfortable. They embraced deeply and the Gypsy woman gave over to me. The man who wasn’t Loki looked up to me in the window and threw me a smile as massive as ever. I turned away and went home.

In the morning Loki returned with ten thousand dollars wrapped in the Gypsy’s gown. The carnival moved that day. As we drove away I saw the Gypsy woman calling out hysterically into the empty field. She was wearing torn clothes and had black tears streaming down her face. I went to the back of the wagon and looked at all of the money we had and cried. Loki stayed away from me.

Tyler: Not Fair

Last night I met a girl with 'Femme Fatale' tattooed on her arms. Deadly woman. That shit's not even fair, of course I'm sweating her.

Tyler: I Think I'm Pregnant

There are some crispy ass Newcastles in the fridge but I'm not drinking them. I got myself a good writing beer with Black Label sitting next to me, encouraging my every thought.

I finished another story today and thusly it shall be posted. I'm thinking I'm going to finish another tonight. We'll see how far Black Label will get me.



Vomit, Not Mine

I woke up sideways on my mattress with a screaming hangover. Now, there’s a very important point I’d like to make here. Note how I did not say I woke up sideways in my bed with a screaming hangover. I very much did not wake in that manner. You see, the requirements for waking up in a bed are a fitted sheet and some kind of padding between the metal springs and one’s back in addition to comforters, pillows, and the like. Waking up on a mattress means the only thing that was protecting my skin from springs was, well, the hair on my skin. Waking up in this fashion was either an omen for the day or a consequence from the night before; I’d have to wait it out to find the answer.
I rolled over, avoiding vomit that was not mine, to learn that the sun was indeed up and the bars on my bedroom window were still in place so that was a positive. I caught a glimpse of the digital clock sitting on my desk reading that it was a quarter past 9 meaning I’d slept roughly 3 and ¾ hours. That, my friends, is always a shitty realization.
Still lying, I stared blankly at my television as it did the same to me. It had been unplugged for months and I found myself envying its lack of responsibilities. All it did was sit on my dresser, content as all fuck. It didn’t have to worry about what it would do if some girl threw up in its bed the night before leaving it only a mattress to sleep on. The television never had to concern itself with how to get said girl out of its room whilst keeping her from trying to cause some kind of scene. I was wildly jealous of it’s laid back lifestyle and the more I thought about it the angrier I got so, still lying down, I grabbed for my copy of Bukowski’s Women laying near my bed and hurled it at the glossy black screen. Direct hit but I knew it was only a book and couldn’t possibly have hurt the television. It occurred to me that this son of a bitch television was probably laughing at my sorry-ass attempt at destruction from deep inside its circuit boards. I was not about to be mocked by my own possession so I grabbed the remote. I figured smashing the screen with the remote would blow its fucking mind and then I would get the last laugh. I stared down my enemy and leveled my aim. I wanted the bitch to shatter. I wanted it to whimper as it lost it’s last bits of life. I wanted the fucking thing to explode for mocking me. I cocked my arm back and released a rocket easily traveling at the speed of sound. Unfortunately, I neither heard nor saw the amazing crash I was expecting. I didn’t see much due to the aforementioned high speed of my throw. I did, however, hear a loud thud. The kind of thud that can only be made when a television remote plunges 4 inches deep into drywall. At that point I figured my headache was both a result of the night before and an omen for the coming day.
I left the abattoir that was my room and made my way to the couch in front of the t.v that was partly occupied by my roommate Jude. He was up remarkably early especially considering he stopped going to classes and thus had very little to wake for, “Why are you up?”
He nursed his coffee, “Well, I met a girl last night which was good but she had to work this morning so she woke me up and dropped me off here which was bad.”
“So it kind of evened out?”
“It would have except she fucked like a ragdoll all motionless and dead inside.”
“I’ve never fucked a doll but I’ve got to say that sounds very disturbing.”
“It was.” I wanted Jude to elaborate on how he knew how ragdolls fucked and whether or not they were better than other dolls but that was a conversation in which I wasn’t willing to participate. He took another drink of his coffee and turned to me, “So how was your night with, what was it, Cindy?”
“Close, Sidney, and it was bad.” It was worse than bad. It was terrible and wretched and it made me loathe attractive women and it made me want to scream and runaway and it was all the worst kind of uncomfortable.
“Well, what happened?”
“So, we met up at Ravari right, and she hadn’t had anything to drink so she was just lovely. Very good looking and sweet.” This girl Sidney, she was good looking, far more so than myself. Gorgeous short, dark hair that framed high cheek bones and thick lips. She was tall and slender and moved the way women should and talked the way women should and looked just right for a first date.
“Wait, yesterday was Clamp Down. Did you go there knowing you had to dance because that sounds like a terrible idea already. Who was spinning anyway?”
“Hey, I’m not that bad of… you know what, I dance just fine.”
“No, you fingerdance which doesn’t even qualify as dancing. You just point in different directions to the beat. Who was spinning?”
Just because I danced differently did not mean I didn’t dance, “Right, I fingerdance. It’s in the fucking name.”
“Who the fuck was spinning?”
“I don’t know. All I remember is that it wasn’t very good.”
“Was it Starkey?”
“Was not Starkey. I mean, it wasn’t that bad.” Starkey was a local idiot that spun shit, no more, much less. “So anyway we’re there and it’s great. We talk about all the normal stuff like work and classes and whatnot and she’s cool. English major and works the same kind of shit job we all do. There was no awkwardness and she laughed at my jokes.”
Jude either straight up did not believe me or just wanted to be a dick, “I believe nothing of that last sentence. If she saw you dancing, which she had to have right?”
“She did.”
“Then she had to feel awkward being next to such a complete disrespect for rhythm.”
“Look, if you’re just mad because girls actually come up to me to dance then don’t take it out on my dancing. It’s not my dancing you’re mad at, it’s the girls. My dancing is an innocent party.”
“Whatever, there’s still no excuse for her laughing at your jokes.”
Now, previous to this particular conversation I had done much thinking on the topic and came to a very definitive conclusion that I was (and am) the absolute funniest person I knew (and know). I make myself laugh hysterically far more than anyone else can. In reaching this end I also determined that by some rule of geometry or some other form of math with which I am unfamiliar, everyone must be under the impression that they are in some way funny. If someone says something in an attempt at humor they only do it because they think it’s funny therefore they inherently believe they are funny. At any rate, Jude’s point was moot, “Jude, your point is moot.”
“You know, I bet if it wasn’t for Rick Springfield you wouldn’t even know what that means.”
“Regardless, the current point of the story is that Sidney was nice. That’s it. Are you following me so far?”
Jude slowly nodded his head, “Yeah, pretty sure I’m with you.”
“Ok, so we’re dancing and I’m being witty here and there and I suggest we get some drinks. She says she’s got the first round which, I mean, I try to be a gentleman…”
Jude jumped in, “But you’re too fucking cheap.”
“But I’m too fucking cheap so I let her at it. She comes back from the bar with double cherry bombs in pint glasses.”
Jude shook his head, “Eli, darling, that’s not your style.”
“But, being the gentleman that I am, I took it. All of it. At once because she did as well. And, I mean, that’s kind of how the night went. I got the next round maybe twenty minutes later and she wanted the same thing and since I’ve never said no to a girl before, I obliged.”
“Like an idiot.” I really did hate it when Jude was so right.
“Beside the point. Anyway, we did this for about an hour and about five trips to the bathroom.”
Again, Jude interrupted, “You should get your prostate checked out.”
“Shut up. So, Clamp Down is nearing its end and it’s just bad news bears. I’d not been so drunk in a while but I wasn’t nearly as gone as her and beyond that, I had to drive home. So we left and got in my car which seemed, at the time, like the right thing to do.”
“Did you drive back? That seems like a really irresponsible move. I should call your mother.”
What’s nice about my family is that they don’t really know my lifestyle but what’s even nicer is that they don’t ask about it, “Yeah, call Doreen; she’d love that. So by the grace of God, we got back here in one piece. Before I could even get out of the car, though, Sidney grabbed my face and started kissing me.”
“So that’s nice.”
“Yeah, I was pretty appreciative. Then, still sitting in the car, she grabbed my hand and threw it right down her pants.”
“Also nice.” Jude really did enjoy the finer things in life.
“Exactly, still good. I suggested that we move to my bedroom and she leapt out of the car. I fumbled with the keys at the door but we eventually made it inside. As soon as the door was open she started taking her clothes off en route to my bed which would have been really great but she went to yours first.”
“On accident?”
“No Jude, she desperately wanted a Devil’s Threesome with us. What the fuck?”
“I just thought, maybe…”
“Wrong. So then I had to point her in the right direction. Fully naked she jumped on my bed and fingered me toward her.”
“So she fingered you?” Jude obviously thought he was hilarious.
“You know, I don’t have to finish this story.”
“No, I’m sorry. That was completely inappropriate for me to quote you like that. My bad.”
“I made my way to the bed and got in and we started kissing again and it was wonderful until she started getting the drunk-ups and it was bad too. I’ve seen where they lead before so I got to the kitchen and pulled out a garbage bag because I did not trust this girl to make it to the toilet in time to vomit.”
Jude looked into my bedroom and started laughing, “But Eli, there are no sheets on your bed. What on earth happened to your sheets?”
He knew what had happened to my sheets, “I got to the edge of my bed where she was on her knees. I started begging her to throw up into the bag and she tried desperately to convince me that she was fine and didn’t need to throw up but before she could even finish her sentence she turned her head and blew. It literally took more effort for her to ruin my sheets than it would have if she just would have used the bag.”
Jude was laughing uncontrollably, “This, Eli, this is what you get for trying to fuck a drunk girl.”
“I let go of the bag and just stared at her but for some reason that angered her. She started yelling at me.”
“Why did she start yelling?”
I’d thought about it the rest of the night and come up with no conclusions besides, “She’s just a dumb drunk girl I suppose. Then out of nowhere she started yelling at me in German, something I didn’t even know she could do.
“How do you know it was German?”
“I don’t know. I just kind of guessed but it sounds the way German is supposed to sound I think. It was rough and ridiculous.”
Jude looked half sympathetic and half elated, “Well buddy, that sounds like a pretty bad night and I wish I’d been here to see it.”
“You haven’t even heard the worst part.”
“Give me the punch line then.”
“After she was done yelling and throwing up she looked me right in the eyes and said she was pregnant.”
Jude’s mouth dropped, “Fucking pregnant? Is it yours?”
“God no. No way was it mine.”
Realization swept across his face, “So what’s going to happen to the baby?”
“I don’t really think there’s going to be a baby shower, actually.”
“That’s not looking to likely right now.”
“Yeah, so if she comes by later with my sheets, you know, that’s why she’s here.”
“Duly noted.”

Roger - Deus ex Machina (Part 1)

I used to have a dog. It was probably my earliest memory. It was back before Pops took me away from the home. He told me I was three then. All I can remember is it was brown, and it was mine. It made me happy, but I had trouble remembering sometimes. Pops always said I did.
One of the other boy’s dogs was hiding underneath the demo stage. He was going there to die. I know that because Pops told me so. I didn’t even have to ask. “It’s a dog thing,” he told me in between bites of his hotdog. We had had hotdogs for the past week because Pops met a guy who was selling them for “pennies on the dollar,” as he put it. Pops traded him two of his mops (that was what he did, sold mops) for two boxes of the man’s hot dogs. They were starting to smell.
The man selling electric shavers started making his final pitch and Pops started getting ready. “You get ready and wait up front for when they start handing the money over.” I hoped to God they would this time. Then maybe we wouldn’t have had to eat hot dogs anymore. After Denver I got a steak. After Chattanooga we got squirrel.
Pops made his pitch and we made out pretty well, selling four mops in that hour. The whole time he was yelling to the crowd I could hear a boy calling out for his dog. I would have told him where it was but Pops doesn’t let me walk away from the stage during his pitch. “Who the fuck else will watch the money?” He had a point there; there wasn’t nobody but me and Pops. Not until that night at least.
Sometimes Pops met up with friends after the markets or fairs closed down, especially if he had sold some of the mops. They’d go to the Gypsy woman’s tent and laugh and sing and bark at each other. Sometimes I had to help him walk back to our wagon. Meanwhile, I would play with the other boys, or if there weren’t any other boys I would just run around the tents, as Pops said we couldn’t afford toys. That night, the only other boy in Cincinnati was sitting in a tent crying either over his dog or his Pops beating him for losing it.
I was sitting out by the parking lot waiting for Pops to come back when I met who would be my best friend. I didn’t notice him walk up at first, he just kind of appeared out of the parking lot gridlock. He leaned against the same fence I was just looking out at the cars, just like I was. He was wearing a silly red suit that was real easy on the eyes.
“You like cars, kid?” he asked. I shrugged. Pops warned me to stay away from strangers. And policemen. He said they would just make things more complicated. I simply tried to ignore the man, but he seemed so interesting. He jumped up on the fence and began trying to walk it like the tight rope walkers Pops took me to in Santa Fe. He was a fairly short man. But very proportional, like maybe he was a dwarf, but a very tall one. He had fiery blonde hair that stood nearly straight up and eyes that were just a bit to skinny and a bit too far apart.
“You pitch?” I asked him. He smiled as if that was a very funny thing to ask.
“Never been much of a salesman, per se. I’m more of a persuader.” He smiled. “What’s your name?”
“Benjamin.”
“I had forgotten how strange names have gotten lately. My name’s Loki. Tell me Benjamin, how would you like to have some pizza?” My stomach growled at the sound of the word, and Loki’s smile grew immensely, quite literally from ear to ear. He leaped off of the fence and grabbed my hand as we ran off together towards the darkening fair grounds.
Mr. Petruzzi’s pizza shack was located on the other side of the fair grounds. “Does he know you?” Loki asked. I shook my head. “Fantastic!” Loki straightened himself, pulling his hair upward. He seemed to grow a foot just by doing it. Loki poked around the back of the shack, looking for some sort of entrance. He peered through a small window in the back, waving me over to him. He lifted me up to the window. Mr. Petruzzi was putting the toppings on a large pizza. The window was directly above an oven.
“Grab a match!” Loki called to me. The matches seemed impossibly far away from reach, resting on the base of the oven, not the top.
“I can’t reach it!” I replied. Loki sighed abruptly.
“Silly boy! Just reach further!” I closed my eyes and stretched my arm as far as it could go. Then further. Then further. I felt the sudden feel of wood. I opened my eyes to see my hand several feet away and grasping a match. I recoiled sharply and fell back onto Loki.
“Good job, my boy! Now, let’s have that match.”
“My arm! It kept going!” Loki giggled and walked around the building to a trash can near the shack. He lit the match off of his teeth and threw it in the can. He ran back just as the fire was beginning to catch. As Mr. Petruzzi ran out with a pale of water, Loki and I snatched the pizza from the shack’s counter and ran off back to Pops’ wagon.
Loki and I sat on the edge of the wagon, devouring slice after slice. The food was so delicious I completely forgot about the funny events of the evening. I did not know where this man had come from, or how he had done the things he had done. The moment was just too wonderful to worry about such things. After our feast we laid in the grass, grasping out stomachs. I closed my eyes and smiled. It had been the greatest night of my life. When I opened them, Pops was standing over me and Loki was gone.
“What the fuck is all this mess?” he asked, slurring his words as he did. I had no idea how to answer him. “You steal it?” The words would not come. He grabbed me by the hair and pulled me to my feet. “I asked you a question boy! Now you answer!”
“Yes. Loki helped me! He’s my new friend and he helped me get into the shack and he started the fire and he ate it with me and I like him so please don’t make him go away,” I shouted as directly as one can while being elevated by the hair. Pops stared at me, slightly bewildered. Finally, he set me down and belched loudly.
“Heh, good for you,” he said. “Ain’t got no friends so you make up your own. Next time you nick something you leave some of it for me. You don’t and I’ll put you right back in that orphanage.” It was a threat that I had heard often. I had learned to disregard it.
As we lay on our cots in the wagon, I saw Loki’s hair walk past the window. I slowly got up and went outside. Loki sat playfully on the fence of the parking lot. I sat on the steps and asked him the two questions that were keeping me up that night.
“Are you real?” He did not react. He simply sat, and smiled. He always smiled.
“Will I see you again?” To this he stood and placed a comforting hand on my shoulder.
“I will be here till you needn’t need me any longer.”

Tyler: Blah Blah Blah

So, I've not been able to write for a while, fiction at least. For the zine (which is fucking out and stapled and beautiful) I've written a couple things which we still need to workshop. One is an essay on the beauty of karaoke and the other is a conversation with Chuck Palahniuk which I'm fairly pleased with.

At the moment I'm sitting in my room staring at the houndstooth fabric on my wall, drinking a delicious Oberon and smoking some American Spirits and I am writing some fiction and it feels good and it's vaguely therapeutic. So until I finish this story here is a little piece of it. By the by, the name is directly influenced by Biz Markie



A Girl Named Blah Blah Blah

When did I start smoking? When the fucking dreams wouldn’t stop. When Morpheus decided I was the perfect target for his rage.
The dreams were, of course, about a girl, Blah Blah Blah. I had a much better name picked out for her but, you know what, I really don’t feel like she deserves it now so I’m going with Blah Blah Blah. It was a good name too. A sweet name. It fit with how I saw her at the time but looking back, she deserves a worse name. A name that really says something about her character, her personality. Something that conveys to you, the reader, my true emotions or feelings or whatever I feel toward this girl. I figure Blah Blah Blah is a very nondescript moniker apt to riding some happy median between blind devotion and shear detest.
This girl left me hard. She tricked me into liking her, something I usually try to do to girls successfully or otherwise. It could have been my own fault, I can’t really say. A couple weeks before I’d met her I’d just gotten out of a four year relationship with a girl that saw me as husband material for some reason. I was out in the open and not looking for much but I found Blah Blah Blah by chance. We were both at a show for a local band in which we had mutual friends. I came alone and she did as well and at some point I found myself outside with Blah Blah Blah just talking about, well, nothing in general. We were going through drinks and discussions and everything else. We got to the topic of where we went to high school. I told her I went to St. Charles for a couple years. She then proceeded to ask if someone jumped out of there or something. Didn’t someone try to kill themselves there? Yes, in fact, that was me. I was that kid, am that kid. She was in shock and a little embarrassed. I thought it was hilarious. I mean, I didn’t succeed so it’s kind of funny that she mentioned it, right? I don’t know, funny to me.
Whatever game I was or was not spitting, it worked. At the end of the show she hinted at lamenting her night being over so I offered we go to the Dube to end the evening right. She agreed and I was doing well. After my fried mac and cheese balls were finished I took her back to her car, got a hug and her number, and was on top of the world.

Roger - Another Short

A brief story I wrote for a reading. The essential story of how one might get arrested.

Brenda and Eddie liked to argue. Just about as much as they liked to fuck afterwards. This was the particular joy for Brenda. The arguing that is, not the sex. Brenda hadn’t enjoyed sex since the surgery. The surgery also made her completely unable to deal with what she saw as bullshit. That made things particularly difficult with Eddie, as he lived his life fueled by talking his way out of things and conforming whenever it seemed beneficial. This did not fit well with Brenda.
They were arguing about how Eddie told his boss he would be “happy” to come in on Sunday. Then they argued about Brenda being boring, specifically her inability to get enjoyment out of anything. Brenda blamed Eddie for that.
Eddie learned at the beginning of there relationship that it was best to pull the car over when they argued. His best weapon against Brenda was his ability to look her in the eye for longer than she was comfortable with (which since the surgery was anytime at all). Brenda’s defense was simple, change the subject as much as possible. If they got on one subject he would win. She knew that.
Brenda talked about Eddie’s ex-girlfriends, his drunk friends, his drinking, his cooking, his bad writing, how he won’t sleep at her place, how he doesn’t “get” her, and especially how he (with no explanation) refused to read her poetry. Eddie was starting to get tired and the whiskey was hitting him pretty hard, but he knew he had to make some retort.
The police cruiser pulled behind Eddie’s car before they put the lights on, blinding the passengers. Brenda felt an immediate guilt for starting the argument.
“Can you talk yourself out of it?” she asked Eddie. His head hung low and a smile of complete acceptance washed over his face. He ended the argument the same way he always did.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I never fuck you right or make enough bread I know.”

Roger - Judgement

I never liked the subways here. Not like the ones back home. Not, home, per se. But back in my city. Maybe that’s what the problem is: I’m all too aware this isn’t my city. But he took my city away from me. With one shot in the night that thug took it all from me. But he didn’t realize what he was triggering. Now I had to take it away from all of them.
The stairs between the subway underground and the street can tell you a lot about a city. In my city they make sure those steps sparkle. Here, it is complete rubbish, covered in newspapers, food, and excrement. But when a town is run by the mob and the rich with there fancy limousines and their drivers, so no one ever sees the piss sliding down the stairs from the drunk at the top. It’ll be the first thing I do when I take this place over. Well, second thing. Right after I kill Bruce.
Across the street from the opera house an old woman drops to the ground with her bag of groceries. No one stops to help. I don’t understand people anymore; they won’t eve protect themselves. Surrounded by all this poverty and gunshots and funerals and they still haven’t realized that if everyone would just help each other out a bit, things would be better. But what am I saying? Humans just aren’t capable. They can’t do anything with out forcing them to do it. I know that. After years of trying to run the League, I know they just aren’t capable of making decisions. So I will make them for them. I don’t have to worry about their warped sense of self preservation. Because I’m not one of them. “Ticket please! You need as ticket mister!” the teller yells at me as I walk in the opera. A group of ushers approach with those stupid covered flashlights. They wave them around after I disappear to the balcony, like their muted lights would ever show anything but an aisle and seat number. Bruce’s problem is he’s the easiest person in the world to find when he’s not on the job. You just have to find the swankiest event and town and find the most garish balcony seats and the most attractive girl and sure enough, he’s there. An old man sings on the stage in German about his father. The music is beautiful. I’ll let them keep that afterwards. Music, that is. They don’t screw that up.
“Alfred! If you could remain with the young lady and escort her home when the opera is finished it would be much appreciated.” He says something assuring in the woman’s ear and any complaint she could possibly have melts away. He’s nothing but cheap tricks, on the job and with people. Not like me. He is not like me.
We exit the back of the opera house and I can’t help but wonder if that still bothers him. If paranoia ever sits in. I know I’ll never feel right in an alley again after what that man did to Lois. I can’t hear Bruce anymore. All I see when I look at him is the only man who stands in my way. The only man who could ever take me down. The only man who could bring about my demise. Yes, this is the best place to do it, in the same alley his parents died. “I’m sorry about Lois,” he says. “Is there anything I can do?” he asks. Clark he calls me.
“I am not Clark anymore.”