Gotham Nights

The shelter was two blocks north, like the cop said. In daylight, I would’ve called it an abandoned church, or a condemned YMCA, or a very good nightclub. The paint was flaking in tectonic plates, all color leached by a century of pollution and bad intent. A sign out front—peeling, but legible—read “ST. CATHERINE’S SANCTUARY.” Someone had used spray paint to add: “NO JOKERS.”

The stairs were a death trap. I stepped around three kids huddled on the top step, the oldest maybe ten, the youngest a toddler with a face full of snot and dirt. They watched me with a practiced mixture of hope and mistrust, like I might be a social worker or a new stepdad, or just someone who would ignore them like the rest of the world did.

Inside, the place reeked of old soup and bleach, with a top note of suffering that blended the entire aroma together. Cots lined the walls, a river of stained mattresses. Most of them were already full—old men, old women, a couple in a fight over the placement of a battered duffel bag. The noise was a soft, constant drone: snoring, muttering, TV static.

This was… more depressing than I expected.

There was a reception desk, or what used to be one. The barrier was made from two folding tables zip-tied together, covered in a chainmail of paperwork. Behind it was a woman with gray hair and a look that said: I can’t wait for the Grim Reaper to come for me.

She didn’t ask why I was here. She didn’t even ask my name. She just handed me a clipboard and said, “Fill this out.”

I scanned the sheet. Name, next of kin, allergies, religious preference, current medications, list of prior addresses. The usual.

When I handed it back, she glanced at it for a whole second, then dropped it in a pile.

“We’re full up,” she said. “You can sit in the common room. Couch is first come, first served. You sleep, you leave in the morning. No drugs, no booze, no fighting. You got all that?”

I nodded. “Crystal clear.”

She made a noise that might have been a laugh, but probably wasn’t. “Showers are cold only. Kitchen opens at seven. Don’t touch the TV.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

She slid a bag across the table, a clear plastic ziplock full of basic hygiene gear: a comb, travel toothpaste, a bar of soap, and a hotel-sized shampoo. There was also a set of clothes—gray sweats, socks, underwear, and a t-shirt with a faded “Gotham Knights” logo.

“Thanks,” I said.

She was already on to the next person, a man with a beard made entirely of crumbs. She handed him a clipboard without breaking eye contact with her computer.

I took my bag and walked to the common room. It was a rectangular box with a TV bolted to the wall with some many safeguards superman himself would struggle to steal it, broadcasting a news station on mute. An old man in a bathrobe had staked out the only recliner, and he was defending it with the kind of menace that promised actual violence if challenged. Most people were asleep or pretending to be. The couch, she’d said, was first come, first served. It was a three-seater, upholstered in a pattern designed to hide stains, but it had clearly lost that battle years ago.

I sat at the far end, letting my body melt into the cushions. A little girl was curled at the opposite end, using a coat as a pillow. Her feet were bare, and she was clutching a half-eaten granola bar like it might get stolen in her sleep.

“The world fucking sucks… fictional or not,” I muttered.

I took stock. It was warm enough. There were no obvious predators, not at the moment. The lights were kept low, which made it easy to drift in and out of a half-doze. I opened the hygiene bag, did a quick check to see if anyone was watching, and dry-brushed my teeth.

Luxury, by Gotham standards.

Maybe if I slept… I would wake up back home.

————

The next morning, the kitchen opened right on time. I followed my nose to the back, where two men in hairnets were spooning oatmeal into bowls. The line moved fast, a silent conveyor belt of the resigned and the starving.

When my turn came, the taller of the two gave me a professional up-and-down. “You look like hell, kid.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot.”

He shoved a bowl into my hands. “You want brown sugar or you one of those purists?”

I shrugged. “Surprise me.”

He dumped a mountain of brown sugar on top, then added a few raisins for good measure. “Name?” he asked.

I…

What’s my name?

Why can’t I remember my name?

“Arthur,” I said, snapping out of my trance, and because it was better than stalling out in front of a dozen hungry strangers.

He nodded. “Arthur. Try not to get in any fights, okay?”

“I’ll do my best,” I said.

I took my oatmeal to a corner table, out of the main flow of traffic. The bench was sticky, but less so than the floor. I ate in silence, letting the calories do their work.

Halfway through, a girl in a threadbare hoodie slid onto the bench across from me. She had a shiner on her left eye and a look that said she’d cut you if you got too close.

“You new?” she asked.

“I guess.”

She nodded, then attacked her own bowl with the urgency of a prison inmate. After a few bites, she said, “Don’t mess with the old guy in the bathrobe. He shanks people.”

I guess my assumptions were right.

I raised an eyebrow. “Good to know.”

“Last week he stabbed a guy with a fork. Just saying.”

I looked over at the old man, who was now dozing with his head on the table. “Makes sense, he looks rather frail thought.”

“That’s why you don’t see it coming.”

I was starting to appreciate the local customs.

After breakfast, I took the world’s fastest cold shower and changed into the “Gotham Knights” outfit. The sweats were three sizes too large and smelled faintly of stale fries, but they were clean, which was a step up from before.

I made my way to the day room, where people were already claiming space for the long hours ahead. The TV was on some morning show, all plastic smiles and teeth, but no one was watching. Most people just sat and stared at the walls, or at nothing, their brains marinating in whatever trauma had driven them here.

I tried to think what I was supposed to do next. In every movie, book, or anime I had seen… this is the part where the protagonist finds a lead, or gets recruited by some shadowy organization, or has a fateful encounter with destiny.

So far, all I had was… well, nothing, I think my dignity died on the couch last night.

I killed time reading an old newspaper. Same headlines: Batman, Joker, some new plague hitting the Narrows. I skimmed the want ads, looking for jobs that didn’t require documentation or a criminal background check. There were none.

You would think that for a city that has more criminals than citizens somehow, that they would be a bit more lenient in terms of job recruitment, but nope.

At noon, the staff did roll call. Eventually leading to me.

The woman with the gray hair—her badge said “Director”—gave me a thin smile. “You planning to stick around, Arthur?”

So someone already shared my faked name… I guess is better than nothing.

I shrugged. “If possible, sure.”

“Bed’s yours tonight if you want it, a few people died lastnight, overdose. That said, if you wanna stay longer than a night you need to know that we run a tight ship, so don’t cause trouble.”

“I’m housebroken.”

She snorted. “Sure you are. See me after dinner, I’ll get you a real pillow.”

I almost thanked her, but she was already onto the next crisis.

Late afternoon, the shelter’s micro-society started to flex. A group of kids set up an impromptu soccer match in the main hall, using wadded-up newspaper as the ball. A woman in a wedding dress, stained but still white, wandered around reciting poetry to anyone who’d listen. The old guy in the bathrobe staged a coup on the TV remote and switched to a channel showing endless infomercials. No one challenged him.

I sat by the window, counting the cracks in the glass. Outside, the city looked no more forgiving in daylight. People moved with the urgency of prey, never meeting your eyes for more than a second. Even the birds looked meaner.

That was when I saw the girl from breakfast—shiner and all—out on the steps, sharing a cigarette with another kid. They didn’t speak, just traded drags in silence. I wondered what their stories were. I wondered what mine was.

My memory still wasn’t right. The only thing that stuck was a feeling of displacement, like someone had swapped out my whole operating system and left me running in compatibility mode. My body didn’t quite feel like my own, but it worked, so I ignored it for the most part.

When dinner came, it was spaghetti. The sauce was an affront to tomatoes everywhere, and I was pretty sure every time someone served this an Italian died somewhere in the world, but it was hot and filling. The day staff handed out seconds if you asked nice, or at least didn’t make a scene.

Afterward, as promised, the Director handed me a pillow—flat as a pancake, but clean. She also gave me a lecture about curfew and told me not to let the other guests “see me as an easy mark.”

“Thanks for the tip,” I said.

She eyed me for a long second. “You got a plan, Arthur?”

“Working on it.”

She shrugged. “Try not to die before breakfast. We’re full up for the morgue.”

Well that’s rather grim…

I left her to it and headed for the couch. It was already half-claimed by the granola girl from before. I sat at the other end, propped the pillow behind my head, and closed my eyes.

There was noise—always noise—but I filtered it out, the way you do when you know you’re not going to get any better. This was my life now. At least until I figured out a way to upgrade, or I woke up from this nightmare.

I drifted into sleep, already dreaming of an exit. Maybe tonight… I would wake up from this nightmare. Maybe tomorrow I would remember more.

I woke up with the kind of headache that was probably illegal in at least three states. At first, I thought it was the shelter’s depressing ambience—screaming child, someone throwing a shoe, the lingering aroma of instant oatmeal and piss—but then I realized it was my own brain, doing the computational equivalent of screaming into the void.

Dreams are supposed to fade when you wake up, and I had woken up twice so far.

This complicated my entire dilemma.

There’s lucid dreaming, and then there’s this. In all my years of REM cycles, I’d never had a dream with this much continuity. The hunger in my stomach, the ache in my back, the terrible taste in my mouth—every sensory input screamed “not a dream.” It was like my subconscious had sprung for the deluxe package: full tactile immersion, no refunds, no escape, fuck you bitch package.

I rolled off the couch and shuffled toward the bathroom. Along the way, I passed a girl in a tinfoil tiara who was holding court over a circle of kids, giving them a motivational speech about surviving in Gotham. She nodded at me like I was a fellow dignitary, and I returned the salute, because why not, long live homeless princess.

In the bathroom, I stared at my reflection. I definitely looked younger, sixteen… maybe seventeen. That alone was weird, but my eyes were much weirder, purple eyes… did I have that color of eyes yesterday? or ever for that matter?

I tried to remember what I used to look like, before I woke up in this funhouse. The image came up blurry, like a corrupted file. I remembered my old apartment, the computer, the beers—but the face was just a generic human default, no features.

But no matter how much I tried, I couldn't recall my name at all.

I dredged every memory I could, but all I got was static. Names of old coworkers, pets, fictional characters, all in a jumble. But my own name was… gone. Like it had been deleted to free up storage for something else.

I pressed a hand to my chest. Felt the thump of my heart, fast and anxious, and as I did, my eyes changed color from magenta to brown.

That was definitely not normal.

A staffer rapped on the door, three sharp knocks. “Wrap it up. Showers are for the living, not the dead.”

I ran a palmful of water through my hair and stepped out. The staffer—a woman with a ponytail and the eyes of someone who’d seen every trick—looked me over. “You look like shit,” she said.

Just the kind of tact and love the homeless need to overcome this already depressing world.

I nodded, playing along. “Couldn’t sleep.”

She handed me a clipboard. “Breakfast shift. If you want to eat today, you gotta work.”

I glanced at the roster. My name was on it: Arthur. No last name.

I took the clipboard and followed her to the kitchen.

The work was simple—scoop, serve, smile, don’t get stabbed. The kids from the night before lined up first, followed by the old men and the scattered detritus of Gotham’s forgotten. I found a rhythm: “Morning. Oatmeal? One scoop or two? Morning. Oatmeal? One scoop or two?” Some people grunted, some said thanks, some just stared through me like I was a ghost, and quite a few called me a bitch for no reason.

Somewhere in the line, a man with a Batman hoodie stopped, looked me dead in the eye, and said: “You don’t belong here, do you?”

I paused. “Pretty sure no one belongs here.”

He laughed. “You got that right.” He walked away, bowl in hand.

When the rush died down, I ducked into a corner with my own serving. It was the same oatmeal, same brown sugar, but it tasted better now that I’d earned it. I watched the other residents eat. They all had the look of people waiting for a bus that would never come, clinging to the idea that maybe tomorrow would be different.

Maybe tomorrow they’d be somewhere else.

A memory surfaced: playing Red Dead Redemption for twelve straight hours, barely stopping to eat or piss. The main character’s name was Arthur Morgan. Good man, hard life, met a bad end.

I snorted into my oatmeal. Of course. If my brain was going to make up a name, it would pick one straight out of a video game. But all in all, I liked it.

Someone sat across from me. The girl with the shiner from the night before. She didn’t bother with pleasantries.

“So, Arthur,” she said, emphasizing the name, “what’s your story?”

“Amnesia,” I said, thought that answer didn’t sound right, I remembered a lot of things, just not the things I wanted to remember. “Or possibly just a really bad hangover.”

She poked at her oatmeal, not buying it but not caring enough to push. “Well, you picked a shit time to get stuck in Gotham.”

“Was there ever a good time?”

She shrugged. “Not since I was born.”

I took a chance. “What would you do if you could leave?”

She didn’t even blink. “Die. Nobody leaves Gotham. If there’s a hell, it’s here.”

She has a point, a very good one at that.

She scraped her bowl clean and stood. “See you at lunch, cowboy.”

Cowboy. Nice touch. I think I like the name now more than ever, Arthur Morgan the incredibly handsome cowboy, that happens to be homeless.