Marbles Chapter 3 Pt 2 (Patreon)

After that, I shuffled my way back into the building, Ollie waiting for me by the stairwell to his office. "Oh no, you're done for the night: hit the bricks, I'll have one of the other guys cover for you," He said.

"Thanks boss," I said, actually somewhat grateful. Christ, I needed to detox. Ollie frowned. 

"Don't thank me: Ace Chemical gets sued because an employee who just got shot at was forced to keep working, even a temp one, I get fired," He admitted, and I had to admit, I also appreciated the honesty. "We can get a way with a lot, but we try that one every bloodsucking lawyer in Gotham would be on our ass."

"I'll be honest I really don't give a shit if its just ass-covering, I need to go lie down," I confessed. "I'll be fine tomorrow," I added, hopeful, only for Ollie to shake his head.

"Nah, we got someone for tomorrow. Look- I'll send you your schedule, check back with the agency tomorrow," He said, and I winced. Wonderful, that meant I had a scant handful of hours to rest before I had to get to the job agency in the morning if I wanted my schedule earlier than next monday, since they weren't open on weekends. 

"Sounds great, boss, thanks for the day off, I really appreciate it," I lied, and Ollie shrugged. With that, I began hobbling back to my home. Thank Wayne for the metroline. A short walk later, and I was sitting on an empty car headed for the bowery, taking a moment to bleed and breath, groaning in pain.

Before coming to Gotham, I had been shot zero times. Since coming to Gotham, I had been shot roughly once or twice a year. This had not been the first time I had been forced to walk back home with a hole in me, it would not be the last, but it still hurt like absolute hell. It felt like satan had decided to stab a knife in my side after heating it over the fires of hell. 

Still, at least I knew what I had to do: keep the bleeding as staunched as possible, move slowly, take plenty of breaks, take any shortcut that won't get you mugged (and if its bad, take them anyways, just have your wallet out and ready to hand over so you can get home quicker), and if possible, pass near the docks, wharf, or swamp so that you can get a fume bath to disinfect: the benefit of a truly historic level of pollution, we almost never got plague anymore.

Anyways, the trip from the station I found and the stop closest to my apartment doesn't take long. About an hour later, I finally, shakily, opened the door, walked to my futon and collapsed, bleeding and heaving. Now, I'm not gonna lie to you reader: I respect you to much to try. I cried. I cried like a goddamn baby.

If you were in my shoes, wouldn't you? I had been fucking shot! And instead of getting any kind of treatment or a doctors visit or even a real fucking day off, instead, I basically had to spend my entire morning standing in line pretending I had not, in fact, been shot. I couldn't afford the hospital bill, I couldn't afford to not work, and I'm not an employee so I don't get workers comp. 

And frankly, that was only the most recent awful thing I had experienced! So yeah, I sobbed. I cried. And eventually, I managed to shuffle over to my bathroom, take the piss I had been holding in for the past few hours, brush my teeth, shuffle BACK to my fridge, where I grabbed a zesti lime cola and a first aid kit before returning to my couch. 

One painful session of patching and sewing myself up as much as possible later, and my laptop was opened and streaming a less than legal showing of Columbo. By this point, I knew I wasn't gonna get much sleep: by the time I woulda had to wake up, I would have gotten only an hour or two of sleep anyways: might as well just pull an all nighter.

Another talent I had learned from being a writer: no matter how tired I got, no matter how exhausted, if I had the right tools, I could push through it. Those tools happened to include citrus flavored sugary or sweet drinks: back home, I had used orange juice and grapefruit soda. Here, I use zesti: way worse for my liver, probably, but rent is expensive and terrible soda is cheap. 

This is probably the part where I detail what I was thinking. It wasn't good, I'll tell you that much:  mostly, it was complaints about how fucking stupid I was. A few intrusive thoughts involving taking a backflip off the Blackgate Bridge. An almost crushing homesickness. The latter was the most unpleasant: everything else I could probably live with, but the thing that genuinely made me hate this fucking city was how alone I was. I had no friends I could turn to, no family I could go to for help. 

When I died, nobody would know, nobody would morn. 

...Jeez, that's dark. Reader, I apologize, I was going through a bit of a depressive phase back then, on account of the clinical depression. Y'know, back when things felt overwhelming and I felt powerless. Turns out, in small doses, smilex is actually a pretty ding dang damn diddly anti-diddlypressant! 

Anyways, much like a hospital, I didn’t have the money to afford medication at this point, so instead I coped with the next best thing: Columbo. I’m not gonna lie: if it wasn’t for Columbo, I probably would have ding dang diddly killed myself. That and baseball. There was many a night where the soothing drawl of Peter Falk lulled me to sleep. Peter Falk’s detective was a human can opener, able to use wits, subtle manipulation, and his intelligence to get his foes to lower their guard and reveal their secrets knowingly or unknowingly. 

What I'm saying is, he's a pretty good person to study if you want to be a people person: not enough people know how to REALLY crawl into a persons brain like Columbo, to say nothing of using humility to lull enemies into a false sense of security. 

Eventually, the time came for me to begin getting ready, and I stood up, preparing for a miserable morning standing in line to speak to someone at the Job Agency. Hopefully I got there early enough to skip the line: by that point, I needed, like, a WEEK of sleep, and things weren't looking any better later.