Marbles (DI SI) (Patreon)

Back when I used to write fiction, beginnings were always the part I struggled with. Y'see, once you get going, once you get past the awkwardness and build up a proper narrative, writing isn't so hard, especially if its something you're invested in. But the beginning, well, the beginning doesn't have a narrative: it exists to set up a cast of characters, establish the premise, and provide a hook.

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You can call me Mr. Byrd: a reference to my old internet pen name. Back before this story began, I used to be a writer. I lived in Oklahoma. Small town: I'm not gonna give you the name. I didn't have a great life: christ, who does? But I had my dogs, my family, and most of my mental health. And it had all gone down the crapper five years ago. That's when I landed in this trash heap of a dimension.

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You ever seen that old Tom Hanks movie? Castaway? The one with the volleyball. My situation is kind of like that: difference was, when my plane went down, it crashed on another earth. In my world, all those big shiny heroes you love? Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman too? Each of them are fictional. Comic book tales designed to thrill and delight.

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You can imagine my surprise when I woke up in your world and saw all the fictional characters I had once admired as flesh and blood beings instead of ink on a page. I'm not going to bore you with the details of my early days: it was a very riveting handful of years in which I spent time living in the gutter or in the streets. It was not a pleasant time, nor was it a pleasant experience, but it worst of all was a very boring span of years.

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Instead, I'll start our story at the real beginning: the series of events that finally saw me lose my marbles. The origin story that resulted in my first Arkham Sentence. 

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The year was 2031. I had been stuck in this dimension for about five years: I was twenty seven years old. It had been 2018 in my world when I got transported here. At the time this whole mess began, I was living in what could generously be described as an apartment in the Bowery, which could be lovingly described as the infected crotch-pit of Gotham. I had a futon, a toilet, a shelf I kept books on, a single outlet, and a laptop.

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Without that laptop I probably would have taken a backflip off Blackgate Bridge. That or run over a billionaire with my car- probably Lex Luthor.

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Anyways, on the particular day in which the chain of events that caused me to lose my temper and sanity began, I had been visiting the job center. The whole mess started while I was waiting in line to see the receptionist. In that room full of damp linoleum and flickering florescent lights, the time approximately 6:30 AM because if you get there any later you're stuck all day, my troubles truly began. It was an apocalyptically foggy tuesday evening: I had had to navigate my way here with only a flashlight, an hour before the sun started to rise proper, while I couldn't see five inches in front of my face.

Still, it could be worse: I at least would be able to get out of there in a few hours. People who got there later would have to wait even longer.

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Course, it wasn't like I had much to look forward to anyways. Sure, I could play on my laptop: WayneTech's recent initiative to make Wi Fi 100% free to all citizens of Gotham was a big contributing factor to the whole 'not doing a swan dive off a bridge' thing I mentioned earlier. Thing was, that got stale pretty quick. "So, Byrd, didja hear about that thing down by the docks?" Came the chatty voice of one of the assorted mugs I was friends with, Tommy Brownstone. When you pictured Tommy, visualize in your head the platonic idea of a goon, and you had a pretty accurate idea of what Tommy looked like. Bushy mutton-chops, skin covered in tattoos, scars over his right eye, several teeth missing, a crooked, several times broken nose. Beer gut. Y'know, the kind of guy who looks like he mighta been tough and frightening ten years ago in his prime, but had gone to seed.

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He was currently dressed in a mostly stain free navy blue jacket and fishermans hat: the weather was predicting rain. Prudent dress choice. I took a sip of my coffee and adjusted my tie. "Nope," I said, tapping my foot, my eyes glancing to the clock on the wall and the ticker at the front of the lounge we were waiting in. CURRENTLY SERVING 32. My own ticket was 42. "Don't tell me, it was the bat-"

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"It was the Bat! Apparently, there was a huge fight between Penguin and Two-Face: ended with a huge chunk of their organizations getting arrested," He said, and I tried not to grimace. Back in the day, I had been a huge fan of Batman, but lemme tell you, you stop admiring the guy when you're forced to actually live in the city they can't seem to save. Still, I let Tommy go on: the guy was a Batman fanatic. Apparently, his little brother had been saved from a collapsing ferris wheel once by Robin. "Word on the street is because of that, there are a whole bunch of positions open at the docks," He said, whispering conspiratorially.

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"Forget about it," I muttered. "Docks is a bad idea: at some point you get stuck in the cycle." Better to just use the job center: the pay was usually crap and they almost never had non-temp jobs available, but at least WayneTech was solid enough to not attract supervillains in its corporate structure. Go anywheres else, and you run the risk of getting drawn into the cycle of Gotham. I had seen it happen a dozen or so times.

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You get a job. Pay is usually crappy. Boss seems a little shady. They tell you they'll pay you a little extra if you do a few jobs for them. You need the money, so you agree. At first, it's unloading some trucks at another joint for them. Deliver a package. Send a message. Stuff that's sketchy but unlikely to end with you getting arrested. Then the bosses ask for more: maybe they need a bouncer for a meeting. Maybe they need you to unload a truck at midnight. Maybe they need you to load up a truck at a place you didn't even know your boss owned. Maybe they need someone the cops don't have on their radar to deliver a package of blow or something.

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Say no, and you run the risk of getting fired, so you don't say no. You need the money, so you keep doing more and more to make ends meet. Eventually, however, someone will fuck up, and you'll get arrested. Maybe the Boss sold you down the river for a better deal, maybe one of your peers fucked up, maybe you were on the cops radar the whole time.

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Once you become a felon, that's it. You won't get hired any more: who wants to hire someone who served time in Blackgate? Doesn't matter if the employer is up to the same shady stuff you got arrested for, the only jobs left for you are the kind you don't want if you have any other choice. You don't get any government assistance, meager as it is, so you get even more desperate. If you're lucky, you have family who can help you out: it was just about the only way I had seen people escape the cycle.

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Eventually, you bottom out. You wind up getting desperate enough to finally throw in with the last people in the city who are willing to hire you and pay you enough to live. The Mob. Ever wonder why people willingly work for the Joker? Because most of the time, their alternative is starvation, disease, or taking a backflip off the Blackgate Bridge. At least if the Joker kills you, it's quick. Even OD'ing on Smilex usually only took ten minutes to kill you, and at least you went out with a laugh

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Anyways, I say this and Tommy shrugs. "I dunno man, it's good money. More than we'll get at this craphole," He said, glancing at the ticker. Thirty seven. "I'm fucking tired of making less than minimum wage working at fucking LexMart," He groused.

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"Can't disagree with you there," I muttered, anxiously tapping my foot. "Frankly though, I'm not risking my chance at getting out of this hellhole just yet. Better men than me have gotten eaten. Better to just stay safe, focus on the reliable payday, and work towards better things," I said, doing my best to have a voice full of conviction. Problem was, I couldn't quite convince myself that was true.

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"Whatever man," Tommy shrugged. "Anyways, you see the game last night?"

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I groaned. "Fucking hell, why'd you have to remind me? Fuckin' umpire had it out for the Cubbies," Came my grousing. I didn't used to be a big baseball fan, but my stepdad was. Combined with the fact that you could stream most games if you knew where to go, and it had become one of those things that I had picked up since moving to this dimension.

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Sadly, it seemed the Cubs sucked in every dimension. "Ha," Tommy said, and my eyes flicked to the ticker. 40. Not much longer. "You're just mad we beat your team 7 to 0," He boasted.

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"What's this we, kemosabe?" I asked dryly. "You get picked up by the Gargoyles when I wasn't looking? Hey, you wanna sign my baseball? I got a sick kid with cancer who would just love to pay me twenty dollars for a ball signed by a big name baseball player." Tommy threw his head back and laughed, and I felt a small surge of gratification: I had always liked being a funny guy. Meant people liked me. If they were laughing, that meant I was being charming.

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I looked up at the ticker. 42. "Alright Tommy, I'll see you later," I said, shifting and moving towards the front desk, a long row with about ten different people standing at the counter and conversing with whatever agent was available. "Have a good one," I said, turning and walking backwards to give Tommy a small wave as I left.

"Have a good un, brother," He said. "Hey, I'm hittin' the bar later, Hooches: you got anything goin' on?"

"Sorry pal, tonight my schedule is packed," I lied, turning on my heel without missing a beat and approaching the person I was here to visit. "Howdy howdy howdy, Susan," I said, preparing for the schmoozing I was about to do. "You look lovely today: really digging the sweater, looks comfy." I said, causing Susan to give a light titter.

"Hello again, Mr. Byrd," She said in a high pitched Tennessee accent. Susan here was a sixty year old housewife and grandmother of seven. She liked online poker, had a crappy knee, and had probably murdered her first husband. Today, for her outfit she had picked a brown sweater and some black dress pants, and her lightly blonde dyed hair was wrapped in a bun. She was a good sign: Susan liked me. Most old people did: I dunno why. "Here to see what's available this week?"

"'Bout the sum of it, yeah," I said, shrugging. "Need to be able to make rent."

Susan nodded, and made a clicking noise before tapping away at her computer. "Alrighty, let's see what's available...No openings at Bat-Burger, unfortunately...LexCorp is hiring..." I almost wanted to say 'pass', but I didn't really have that luxury. It was a lesson I had learned years back: when you don't have money and nowheres else to turn to, you don't get the luxury of turning down a job that was clean and paid enough to live on, even if the conditions are sub-amazonian and you're furthering the financial success of an actual supervillain.

And worse, the bourgeoise. "...Hmm. What are your thoughts on working the night shift?" She said.

"I think that I like money more than I like sleep," I said, causing Susan to laugh.

"Okay hon, there's an opening down at Ace Chemical: they need a night guard," She said. "Listing says its a long term position: 6 months at a minimum." Holy shit.

"What's the pay?" I asked, leaning forward, tapping my foot faster. This was the question: if it was minimum wage, I was taking that fucking job. Hell, I'd fight someone to take that job. I'd fucking fight BATMAN if it meant I'd get the job.

"Looks to be about 13 dollars," She said, and the grin that split my face at that news could only be described total. That wasn't quite minimum wage, but it was close enough that I'd be able to pay my bills and have a little left over to put towards the Fund. And for six months, potentially longer? That was incredible.

"I'll take it: holy sh-heck," I said, catching myself. "That's fantastic!" Finally, the year was looking up for me. Little did I know it would all go to hell in a handbasket. Susan began tapping away.

"Alright, they say they want you to start immediately: they're short on manpower," She said, and had I been a smarter man, I might have questioned why a company with as many resources was outsourcing to a temp agency for recruits. As it was, I simply basked in the knowledge that starting tonight, I was going to have for at least half a year something resembling stability. "They want you to show up for your first shift at eight tonight, at the plant."

When I exited the building, it was with a smile on my face and a spring in my step. Which contrasted nicely with the downpour that had started when I was talking to Susan. Still, even if it was flooding, my heart was singing. Of course, I didn't exactly have anywheres to be, and it was still prior to 9, so I had time to kill: later that day, I'd have to definitely go grab some sleep if I wanted to survive my upcoming shift without way too much coffee, but there was no way I was sleeping with how pumped I was feeling.

One metro-ride and walk through the rain later, I'm at my destination: my shitty, run down apartment. Pulling out my wallet, I removed my keycard, flashing it above the reader, causing the door to slide open. Wave of the future: landlords get bulletproof doors and card readers, the rest of us get leaky roofs from Freeze and the rest of the Ice Guys deciding they prefered Global Cooling to Global Warming. Walking past the out of order elevator, I walked up my stairwell, taking extreme care where I stepped: some of the steps had rotted and had to be skipped. Reaching my floor, I walked to my apartment, noting the sign taped to it.

PAY YOUR RENT: FINAL WARNING

My eye twitched, but I kept myself from making an audible groan as I grabbed and bundled up the paper, pulling out my keys and unlocking the door and opening it to my apartment. It wasn't up to code: it had a single room, no windows, and the toilet was close enough to the bed, a fold out futon that no longer folded out, that if I put a TV up there I coulda watched it on the can. Across from the bed was the shelf, my 'kitchenette' as it were: I didn't have a stove, but I did have a fridge, coffee maker, griddle and toaster oven. A stolen griddle and toaster oven, mind. Stacked all along the shelf otherwise were books: every single book relating to magic, psychic powers, and brain training I could find.

The books were my only vice, and almost all of them were fourth or fifth hand, old, or in poor condition. Or garbage. Turns out, just because there are books out there that can tell you how to gain super-powers, doesn't mean its easy to find said books. Maybe if I had been the type to have an encyclopedic knowledge of Detective Comics, I mighta been able to find a lead on one, and maybe if I had money I would be able to afford the rarer, bigger ticket books that might actually have something worth learning, but unfortunately I was stuck blindly buying the cheapest books I could and hoping they worked.

My current read through was a guide to something called 'hyperreaction'. Supposedly, if you followed the meditative practices the book proposed, it would allow you to perceive the world faster than other people. You didn't get smarter, you just got quicker at being stupid. Thing is, some of the exercises worked: nothing magical, but these days I could reliably hit a baseball thrown at me, at least. The wonders of accidentally stumbling on something somewhat useful after combing through tides of garbage.

Plopping down on my futon next to my laptop, I picked up said book from its resting place on the floor, preparing for a cozy-ish day inside until I finally found myself able to nap, nice and dry and warm bundled up in my blankets.

'CHAPTER 10,' It read. 'Weather Meditation'. Reading its contents, I sighed, standing up, taking off my jacket.

This exercise unfortunately would require me to spend two hours in the rain without a shirt. The things you do for the chance of getting superpowers...

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Howdy howdy howdy, since my birthdays coming up, I've decided to write a self-indulgent crime  noir/dark comedy story about a fictional version of myself falling down a flight of stairs until they snap and become a supervillain. It will update approximately whenever. 

As for the continuity, think of it as a mishmash of various ones. Also, disclaimer: while the MC on the whole is resentful of Batman, that's because they've lived in Gotham for five years. It does not reflect the opinions of the author, who thankfully does not live in Gotham and thus has no reasons to resent Brucebat Wayneman.