A New Start

Waking up in an alley is a hell of a thing, and I didn’t mean that in a good way. One moment I was collapsing into my memory foam mattress, with nothing but ten beers working through my system. The next, my face was glued to cold, sticky concrete, and something sour enough to pickle a corpse was working its way up my nostrils.

I blinked. Asphalt. Dirt under my fingernails. Something wet and probably biological seeping into my back. It wasn’t raining, not right now, but the air tasted like someone had died, resurrected, died again, resurrected, then vomited and died again.

My first thought: this was a mistake. I didn’t even drink that much, ten beers on a saturday night was light work for me. Second thought: maybe someone hit me with a tranquilizer dart. Or maybe my upstairs neighbor, the one who wore heels and ran laps at two a.m., decided to escalate things and chloroform me in my sleep after I called her a bitch.

Lifting my head cost more effort than it should have. The world jerked left, then right. I braced one palm against the wall—a wall so slick and gritty it left a layer of grime on my skin. The other hand landed in something with the consistency of oatmeal but it wasn’t and I was not going to figure out what it was.

“Shit,” I muttered, to the puddle, to the brick, to whatever gods presided over this kind of humiliation.

Memory check. 

Last night. I’d made it through a brutal Saturday, did a little coding, responded to three emails that made me wish for the heat death of the universe, microwaved leftovers, and logged off. I’d watched half an episode of something forgettable as one does in Netflix. Drank some beers… Then, lights out.

Not one second of that involved blacking out, hitting a bar, or anything else that explained why my tongue was dry as a paper towel and why I was now starring in my own indie film: Man Wakes in Dumpster: The Forgetable Movie of This Summer.

I sat up. Immediately regretted it. My vision went static, then came back with a vengeance. I did a quick body check—no pain, no blood, no obvious injuries. My head felt like it had been hollowed out and stuffed with insulation, but nothing worse.

My phone. That was the logical next step. I patted my pockets. Found denim—cheap, unfamiliar, a size too tight and stiff in all the wrong places. Not my jeans. Not my phone, either.

“Fantastic,” I said. The sarcasm was wasted on the concrete. I tried to remember if this had ever happened before. Maybe in college, once. But even then, I’d had the dignity to wake up indoors.

I forced myself to my feet, one hand on the wall. The alley was a cliché: busted crates, dented dumpsters, trash like confetti after a parade. The only light came from a sodium streetlamp at the far end, casting everything in the kind of yellow that made even clean things look diseased.

Okay, I thought. It’s a dream. Or a prank. Or maybe some idiot mugged me and left me for dead because I didn’t have anything worth stealing except my shoes. I checked: still wearing shoes. But they weren’t mine, either, what kind of thief gives you shoes after stealing yours? 

As for my shoes, well, the left heel was blown out and the laces were knotted so tight they looked welded.

For a second, I considered just lying back down. Let the city’s indifference roll over me until morning, or until someone found me and made me someone else’s problem. But there was a heartbeat in my ears, persistent and insistent, reminding me that I should probably care. 

At least a little.

I shuffled to the alley mouth. Stuck my head out, squinting like a mole at the world outside. Neon. A battered, flickering sign—blue, orange, half the letters burnt out. I didn’t recognize the street. It could have been anywhere: downtown, uptown, another city entirely.

I tried to orient myself. 

But I couldn’t, like at all… The buildings were wrong—too tall, too old, too close together. It felt like stepping into a movie set, a very gothic movie.

Huh, this would be the perfect place for a Batman movie now that I think about it.

As I pondered about the possibilities of a Batman movie, a shape lurked near the next dumpster. 

I tensed, bracing for a mugger, a junkie, or something even less charitable, like a mugger that happens to be a junkie. But it was just a pile of blankets that, on closer inspection, was breathing. I took a half-step closer, curiosity winning out over caution. It was a man—maybe fifty, maybe seventy, with the kind of face that made age impossible to guess. His eyes flickered open at my approach, two pale coins in the darkness.

He stared at me like I was a particularly offensive hallucination.

“Got a light?” he rasped.

“No.” I did not, in fact, have a light. Or a phone, or a wallet, or an explanation. All I had right now was shame, and possibly piss on my clothes that wasn’t mine but I was doing my best to ignore that.

He snorted. “Didn’t think so.” His eyes closed again, as if I was too boring to bother with.

That was the extent of my social interaction for the moment. So, I moved on.

The air outside the alley was colder. The street was empty except for a battered sedan limping through a red light, tires squealing. 

Ignoring the ambient, I looked for landmarks. There was a pharmacy across the way, all bars and grime. A sandwich place. A pawn shop. Nothing familiar. Not a single franchise I recognized.

I checked myself again, more methodically this time. The shirt was frayed at the collar, the pants were brown as in white that had once been white, but would never again. The jacket was a disaster—a zip-up with a broken zipper, stained at the sleeves, a whiff of something unidentifiable clinging to it. 

Nothing that could help me.

I’d seen enough movies to know what came next: check the inside pockets for a ransom note or a cryptic clue. I did, and found nothing but lint and the ghost of hope.

Okay, I thought. New plan. Find a payphone, or someone willing to lend a phone, and get the hell out of here. Find out if I’d been reported missing, or if my apartment had been looted while I was out cold.

I took my first step out of the alley, and the city swallowed me whole.

I made it exactly three steps before the alleys yanked me back.

Not literally, but close. 

I ducked out of the glow of the corner store, hugging the shadows, and took another look at the place I’d come from. It looked different from this angle—a tunnel into a blacker world, with its own population.

There were more of them than I’d noticed at first. Bundles of trash, or what I thought were trash, shifting with the barest hints of life. Under a milk crate, a pair of eyes blinked up at me. Next to a rusted shopping cart, something that could have been a man or a mannequin propped itself up and coughed.

“Hey, you,” the shape wheezed. Female voice, maybe. Old and ragged at the edges. I kept moving. “Got any change?” A wet snicker.

I stopped when I caught my reflection in a window above a busted air conditioner. I looked like shit. No—worse than shit. I looked like the kind of person I’d cross the street to avoid. Even my hair was wrong, a nest of cowlicks and grit that defied any logic or styling product known to man.

I looked different… younger somehow, despite how shitty I looked. I guess I might be imagining things.

I looked down at my hands. They were shaking, just a bit. Not the kind of tremor that comes from fear, but close to it to some extent.

The alley behind me reeked of piss and bleach and the rotting breath of civilization. It smelled like someone had tried to clean it once, failed, and then decided to cover it up by dousing it in even more ammonia.

“Nice duds,” someone said behind me. I turned, slow and deliberate. The owner of the voice was a kid—no older than sixteen, skin stretched tight across high cheekbones, eyes sunken but bright. He was wearing three layers of sweatshirts and a pair of pants that had been patched so many times they looked like a tribute to duct tape.

“Thanks,” I said. “I got them at the apocalypse.”

The kid grinned, showing a mouthful of teeth that were surprisingly white. “You new?”

Was I? I considered the question. I was new to this, that was for damn sure.

“I’m just passing through,” I said. It sounded like something a person in my situation might say.

The kid laughed and spat a glob of something onto the street. “Nobody’s just passing through. Not here.” He eyed me for another moment, then seemed to lose interest and drifted off, his body language all shoulders and suspicion.

The only thing more humiliating than looking homeless is realizing you’re actually homeless, at least for the moment. I clung to the illusion that this was all some wild misunderstanding. Maybe there was a reasonable explanation. Maybe the universe had glitched, and if I just found the right person, I’d be restored to whatever version of reality I’d been yanked from.

My first step was obvious: get a phone. Any phone.

I aimed for the corner store, figuring the clerk might let me make a call if I looked sufficiently desperate but non-threatening. The bell over the door gave a weary little jingle as I stepped in.

A man stood behind the counter, arms crossed, eyes tracking me with predator’s patience. He wore a bulletproof vest under his work shirt; I could tell by the way the fabric bunched at the shoulders.

“Restroom’s for customers only,” he said. He didn’t bother with a hello.

“I just need to use your phone,” I replied, keeping my voice low and measured. “It’s kind of an emergency.”

His face didn’t change. “No public phone.”

“What if I buy something?”

What am I saying? I have no money…

He shrugged. “Still no public phone.”

So much for Plan A.

Plan B: appeal to the kindness of strangers.

I’m fucked, aren’t I?

On TV, you see stories about Good Samaritans, people who’ll stop and render aid to anyone in need. In real life, those people are rare like a game of League of Legends without toxicity, and they don’t hang out on this block after midnight.

I wandered up and down the main drag, scanning for anyone who didn’t look like they were in a hurry to not get stabbed or that looked like they would think I would stab them. The city was alive, but not in a way that cared for lost souls. Taxis and rideshares zipped past, none even slowing. Pedestrians kept their eyes fixed on distant horizons, never breaking stride. I might as well have been a ghost.

I found a likely target: a woman in a dark red parka, white earbuds in, head down, moving at speed but not running. She looked like she belonged here, or at least wasn’t afraid of the night. I stepped into her path, hands up and open.

“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t mean to bother you, but I—”

She veered around me with balletic efficiency, not even pausing her music.

Well… I guess not her.

I tried again, this time with a man in a suit, jacket over one shoulder, briefcase swinging in time with his steps. He was older, late forties, with a face that said he’d seen worse than me. I matched his pace.

“Excuse me, sir. Sorry, I just need—”

He stopped so fast I almost collided with him. “I don’t have any money,” he said, voice icy, eyes flicking to the camera above the pawn shop door.

“I don’t want money. I just need to borrow your phone for a second. I lost mine—”

He scanned me up and down, the way you’d scan a strange dog before deciding whether to pet it or call animal control. “You’re not getting my phone.”

“I just want to make a call. You can dial it for me—”

He stepped back. “I’ve seen that scam before.” He raised the briefcase like a shield. “Go ask somebody else.”

He strode off, speed-walking, phone already out as he probably dialed the police.

Okay, I thought. Time to recalibrate. My appearance was working against me. Maybe I needed to find someone who couldn’t run away. Someone paid to stand in one spot and deal with problems.

I scanned the street. There, outside a twenty-four-hour pharmacy, stood a security guard. He was bored, maybe thirty, face lit blue by the light of his own phone. I walked up, forcing my gait to be as normal as possible.

“Hi,” I said, pitching my voice to the frequency of I’m not a threat, just an inconvenience. “Sorry, man, but could I use your phone for a minute? I got separated from my friends, and I’m kind of stranded.”

He eyed me, then his phone, then me again. “Company policy,” he said, not even trying to fake regret. “I’m not allowed to hand out my phone.”

“Could you call a number for me, then? Just put it on speaker?”

He gave a theatrical sigh, like he’d already exceeded his quota of human interaction for the night. “What number?”

I recited my own number, hoping muscle memory would kick in and it would be correct. He tapped it out and hit the speaker.

[The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please try again later.]

Huh?

I tried calling every friend I could remember… but all numbers gave the same results, so… I wandered, because that’s what lost things do. Each street bled into the next. Same grimy facades, same sad little convenience stores and corner bars with neon signs that might as well have read ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER.

I started to notice patterns. The posters on the bus shelters were all about a mayoral race, but not a single candidate name rang a bell. The digital billboard on the side of a bank glowed with the grinning face of a guy called “Mayor Hill.” His slogan was something like “Gotham Stands Together,” which sounded as generic as any election ad, but it stuck in my head.

A few blocks later, I passed a battered mailbox. The sticker on the side read: PROPERTY OF THE CITY OF GOTHAM. Someone had used a sharpie to scribble JOKER RULEZ under it.

I stopped, blinking. Gotham?

As in Gotham City?

As if to answer my internal question, I saw it again: a delivery truck painted with the bold blue GOTHAM DAIRY logo. The driver, broad and sleep-deprived, glared at me as if daring me to ask for a handout. 

I kept walking.

Three blocks later, a mural filled the side of a liquor store. Black and yellow, all sharp lines and impossible muscle: a cartoon bat, fanged and grimacing, with the words STAY SAFE, CITIZENS scrawled underneath. It was either a parody of the Batman or the laziest Halloween decoration ever. I didn’t want to think about which.

I tried to tell myself it was a coincidence. Maybe there was some city upstate with a sense of humor and a theme.

But the more I looked, the more the evidence stacked up. News-stands sold copies of something called the GOTHAM GAZETTE. Every cop car I saw—always in pairs, never alone—had GCPD emblazoned on the doors. Even the generic corner pharmacies had little bat-shaped stickers on the window, warning about “prescription fraud” and “rogue pharmacists.”

By the time I’d walked half a mile, the only conclusion left was the one I didn’t want to make.

I was in Gotham.

“Fuck me…”

Of all possible fictional cities to wake up to, I woke up in the one where the crime rate is like 200%...

The logical part of my brain tried to file this away under “delusion.” Or maybe I’d taken a blow to the head. It would explain the memory loss, the sense of unreality, the way my body felt like a borrowed suit that was uncomfortably tight.

But deep down, something else started to tickle at me. The sense that, for all its grime and weirdness, this city was more real than anything I remembered from before.

So I did what any self-respecting newly declared homeless guy from any reality would do: I decided to find a cop.

The first squad car I flagged down didn’t even slow. The next was parked outside a bodega, lights on but engine dead. I knocked on the window.

The cop inside looked up, face bleary with paperwork and caffeine. She cracked the window an inch.

“Move along,” she said, voice all business.

“Sorry, I just—need some help, could you help me?” I pointed at my clothes, hoping my desperation looked more like need than threat. “I have no idea where to go, and I thought you might.”

She regarded me with the professional wariness of someone who’s seen every scam on earth. “Ok kid,” she said, then softened just a hair. “There’s a shelter two blocks north. They’ll help you out.”

Kid?

I know I looked a bit younger in this delusion of mine, but I ain’t no kid.

Before I could argue, she rolled up the window and turned her attention to her paperwork.

I wandered in the direction she’d pointed, but mostly to look for more clues to discern how invested my brain was in this stupid dream. But as I walked, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. Not by the cops, or the others, but by the city itself. Every shadow seemed to stretch longer as I passed. Every rooftop looked like it had something perched just out of view.

“This place is fucking creepy…”

I ducked into a late-night diner, hoping to find warmth or at least a bathroom. The waitress greeted me with a look that said she’d seen it all before, and with pity she nodded, as if permitting me to stay here for a bit.

I slid into a booth and scanned the headlines on the abandoned newspapers at the next table.

BATMAN STRIKES AGAIN, GCPD BAFFLED.

NEW FEAR TOXIN SCARE HITS MIDTOWN.

MAYOR PROMISES SAFE CITY, CRIME RATE SOARS.

I read them all, twice, and a single thought crossed my mind: Fuck me.

His Anodite form:

A few notes.

One part of him thinks is all a druken dream, two, he has no idea he is younger than he should be, and three he has no idea he has powers.