I decided I needed a change, so I packed my bags, threw them in a U-Haul and made my way to the city. It's busier and louder and more expensive than anywhere I've ever been. I'm sharing a 1br with a non-existent roommate who sleeps on the couch when he's not trying to pry his way into my bedroom. Thanks, Craigslist. No, really. Thanks.
My job is unchallenging, at best. But it pays the rent and keeps me fed and I try not to think about how late I have to stay and how many hours I'll waste waiting for, and then, riding the train. On occasion, I'll take a cab from the station to my building, but I usually walk. My mom thinks it's unsafe, but isn't everything?
"Hi Mom. How's work? Oh, everything's okay here, but I might have had some sort of stress-induced hallucination and I was almost raped less than three blocks from home."
I was walking home and I didn't see anyone else on the street. I haven't lived here long, but I know that's not normal.
I hear someone fall in step behind me. I didn't want to turn around because you're not supposed to stare at people here, ya know?
I start walking faster. And whoever's behind me does too. Exact same footsteps.
Without turning to look, I start running. I'm at least another ten minutes from home and I'm wearing dress shoes, so I can't run and he's getting closer, I can hear him...
I remember screaming. I'm sprinting, losing energy and yelling my head off.
He put his hand over my mouth. He told me to calm down. That it would be better that way. His breath smelled like Binaca.
I tried kicking or clawing at him, but I'm short and he could've broken me in half.
I shut my eyes and prayed. I prayed to anything I remotely believed in.
He pushed me to the ground. At least, I thought he did. I didn't realize until afterward that he had tried to hang on, but then dropped me.
I've tried to replay it in my mind, but it's all so dark and quick. I heard him gasp before letting me go. I didn't look up until I heard a sort of wailing, followed by a loud cry. It sounded like he was begging, and it was coming from the rooftop nearly fifty feet away.
I watched him fall two stories to land against a fire escape. After that, I saw whoever had dropped him dart out of sight.
Him. The man I'm looking for now. Fast. Faster than anyone I've ever seen; up and then gone. Over the rooftop. He looked back, once.
That's when the police came. They wanted to know how I stopped a man twice my size from attacking me and got him onto a fire escape.
They weren't accusing me, they said. Had I seen anything?
No. I told them everything I could remember.
Nothing unusual?
Other than maybe seeing someone drop someone else from a rooftop, only after flying up there while holding the weight of said other person? No. I've had a pretty run-of-the-mill evening.
I hear the younger cop ask his partner something; sounded like "The Bat?"
"Bat?" I repeated.
His expression didn't change when he said that he didn't know what I was talking about.
They had me fill out a form. The guy was sent up for something else and I never had to testify.
The Bat.
I didn't want to talk about it. My coworkers would well-meaningly quarantine me like a leper. My family would insist I move. My roommate would ask what I was wearing.
I learned something about the city: people talk to each other. Back home, people talked to neighbors and family. Here everyone is like neighbors and family and neither.
A kid on my block, fourteen, fifteen, asked me if I'd seen him. He put his index fingers beside his head like devil horns.
"Him."
The old woman on the stool at the bodega, the one who's there 24/7 and speaks no English and never gave me a second look, now smiles and touches my hand.
People say hello.
No one says it, but everyone knows.
And maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm crazy and none of this happened. But last week, I found this picture under my door. A big, blown up photo, grainy and overexposed. You can just make out the… Man in it.
Him.
On the back someone wrote, in block letters like a comic strip, three words:
HE IS REAL
Now I can't sleep. I still think I may be going crazy. But if I am, I know I'm not alone.
I used to feel afraid living here, but I'm not anymore. I'm still anxious, but it's different now.
I know there's a city inside the one I can see. His city. I know I'm not the only one who's seen him. Someone took that photo. Maybe someone else put it under my door. Was it you? Tell me your story. Tell me because I need to know.
6 comments:
Some things are too real for proof - The Bat being one of them. Tell me, does his being real affect your feeling of well being in a big scary town?
Having him here, actually seeing him, does make me feel safer.
I can't be the only one to feel that way.
I saw him once, kinda. I saw him in the way you're not supposed to see him - angry.
I fell down on my luck once. Who doesn't from time to time? This was a chain of falling dominoes though - lights due, rents due, car notes due and I just got laid off from the steelmill. My cousin, "that no gooder" my grammy would call him, said he knew a guy who knew a guy who needs a guy. Nothing too hard, just keep people out and make sure the right people came in. A big guy like me could make a grand in a night, he said, and if I didn't ask any questions, those nights could come pretty frequently. So, looking eviction, repossession and starvation in the eye, I said yes. Wouldn't you?
For awhile, it wasn't too bad of a gig. Stand out in front of a ritzy club,let the pretty girls and the guys with the money in and keep the others out. The more desperate they looked to get in, the less likely I was to let them. I got to wear a nice suit, I was tipped well and at the end of a 5 hour shift, I'd go home with $600-1000 in cash. Steak for every meal. I couldn't believe I had ever thought that working the smelting pot was a good job.
Anyways, one night we got to run an errand. Nothing out of the usual, I'd go along with the bosses personal crew to pick up stuff all the time. Sometimes they'd tell me what was in the package, sometimes they wouldn't. Didn't bother me any. My job was to look big and not ask questions. And it was easy not to.
We pull over next to this market in Chinatown and it's late, the store lights aren't even on. One of the inside crew, the ones that handle the bosses affairs, is standing by the back door. He's wearing sunglasses, even though it's dark as hell. He waves us over and leads in through the back door. In the yellow light of the back room, I see a small man, on his knees, head down and hands up. He's talking very fast in a language I couldn't understand and he's not daring to look up at the guy he's pleading with. The guy he's pleading with has a pistol pointed at his head.
"Lined the trunk with plastic?" asked the guy with gun. Suddenly, I was full of questions and I meant to ask them.
The little man was ordered on his feet and when he didn't comply, he was pulled standing by his hair. The little man couldn't have been more than 50, tears running down his cheeks, his eyes wide with fear.
"You don't pay your due, we'll collect it." said the man with the gun. They pulled him into the back alley and towards the open trunk of the bosses black sedan. I'd like to say that I wanted to help that little guy, the shop owner, but I can't tell you that I was thinking of anything at all. It was too unbelievable to think of and I watched it all happen in slow motion, powerless to do anything.
The light in the alleyway was shoddy at best and suddenly got worse. A great arc of sparcs lit up the walls behind us and then we're in dark. The little asian man, gibbering with fear, suddenly seemed to take flight, tucked under the arm of a shadow. He arced up high above us and disappeared past the roofline. The list of questions I had just doubled.
You know when it's quiet, where you can hear your blood pulse through your ears and you wanna just say something so it doesn't have to be so quiet anymore? Picture three guys standing around looking at each other and no one wanting to go first. The guy in the sunglasses took them off and tucked him into his coat and pulled out a gun. Me, I got nothing. I'm supposed to just look big and not ask questions. I think I need to be somewhere else right now and start backing up towards the car. All I want to do is climb into the empty trunk and close it on myself.
The two guys start for me, like they were afraid I was going to take off in the car and lead them behind, which I was. They start to run towards me and suddenly their feet kick out from underneath them. They're being dragged backwards into the alley by their hair, their feet are digging around trying to find a way to stop their backward slide. In a second they're gone. I didn't see what took them and I no longer cared. I was gone.
And I would've been too if I hadn't stopped to shut the trunk. I knew if I got stopped by the cops with an open trunk lined with plastic, that I couldn't have explained it well enough (Ice. I could've said I was filling it with ice and beer and going to a Knights game. Hindsight, eh?) I slammed the trunk and fumbled for the keys. I didn't even check the door, that's how scared I was. I stood there, doing a little dance trying to fish the keys out of my pocket when I was pulled from my feet.
The Bat was there. He pulled me like six inches off the ground. I'm a big guy and the Bat lifts me six inches off the ground like I'm a little girl on a pony ride. The Bat pulls me to him, his face close to mine, his teeth bared, not from the strain but because he was angry at me. Very very angry at me.
"WHO ORDERED THE HIT?" His voice was deep and booming and I felt this tingle across the small of my back. It was like the growl of a too close lion.
I answered, I think. Something like - I dunno who ordered it. I don't know what's going on. I was just a bouncer at a nightclub and I'm supposed to just look big and not ask questions. I screamed it. I cried it. My voice became high and screechy like a rabbit in a trap. The Bat drew a hand back, his black fist made a rubbery crinkly noise as his fingers tightened. I went limp.
I woke up in jail. They found me on the hood of the car, passed out with a huge stain of you know what across the front of my nice new suit. I guess I was lucky. The other two guys were trussed up by their feet, hanging from a lightpost. I spent a night in jail and Ma bailed me out, which to this day still feels like the worst part of the night. They didn't find my fingerprints on any weapon and the Mr. Liu, the shopowner, didn't remember seeing me, so the DA dropped the charges against me. (Nice guy, I'm going to vote for him in the next election)
If The Bat is reading this, I want him to know that he did me a favor. I coulda gone down a bad road because I didn't care enough to ask questions because the pay was so good. After a couple of nightmare ridden nights, I decided to enroll in some classes at the community college and I'm doing real good too. I figure I have a lot to answer for and I'm going to do my best to make up for things that I helped happen because I chose to do nothing and earn a paycheck.
And when I walk home at night, I want to know that if I hear distant sounds of footsteps, they're not coming for me.
What did he look like? He was so far away and I only saw him for a second...
You know, I couldn't tell you as lame as that sounds. Light seemed to fall off of him. All I can remember is the halo of a streetlight behind him. His head had horns or something, thin and pointy. Kinda like ears, you know? The only detail I could make out on him was this shape on his chest, which based upon your pic, appears to be a bat or something.
Sorry, I don't have more. It's kinda like being run over from behind and then being asked if I got the license plate number.
iv never seen him but ive heard stories...always wanted to know what it would be like to meet him?you know, sit down and ask him questions...one day i guess
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