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Marbles Chapter 3
🕑 Added 2023-08-31 17:41:10 +0000 UTCThings get easier and easier as you establish a groove. By chapter three, you should have most of the parts necessary to focus on narrative, and at that point its just a matter of momentum.
See, writers will complain all the time about writers block, but you wanna know the best way to actually get work done writing? Fucking write! Write as much as you can: write something in the morning. Write something in the afternoon. Write something in the evening. Stay up late writing. Let it eat more and more of your time, and the words will come. Once you get in the habit, writing becomes easier: its like a train building steam. You wanna build up enough speed to make that train go, first you gotta spend a bit getting the engines running and keep em going long enough to build up a speed.
"So, what did they look like again?" The officer said, giving me the stink eye.
"I told you, I don't fucking know, it was dark out and I dropped my flashlight," I lied. I might be shaken, I might be scared, but I'm not a fucking snitch: I don't rat to the cops, and I especially don't rat to the fucking Gotham PD.
I didn't particularly care for cops back in the real world. Living in Gotham, you learn to fucking hate them.
"Look pal, that's not what your supervisor said," He said, scowling. "He told me you described em over the radio."
"Yeah? He tell you the details of what I said?" I challenged. "Who you gonna believe, the paper pusher who wasn't even there, or me, the guy who these people ACTUALLY shot at? Besides, why the fuck would I lie: these guys tried to kill me."
"Yeah, why WOULD you lie," The cop said, doubt and annoyance in his voice. "Most good, upstanding citizens would COOPERATE with the police, y'know, especially when it might help them catch the guys what shot at them."
"Sure, an upstanding citizen would, but you gotta understand officer, I'm not a citizen of Upstanding, I'm a Citizen of Gotham." At this, the cops mouth formed a hard line, and the corner of it started twitching. Good: he found it funny. Cops that thought you were funny were less likely to try and ruin your day/year/life (depending on your socio-economic status and skin color). "Look sir, way I figure, this was probably just some dumb teens," They had all been at a minimum thirty years old, "Smoking a little pot and playing around with their dads gun to feel tough. Beyond the fact I need a bandage and a beer, nobody got hurt and nothing was damaged." I was actually significantly freaked out and the wound was somewhat concerningly large. Once the adrenaline had worn off, I had learned that it wasn't so much a graze as a light winging: I had staunched the bleeding before the cop got here and convinced my supervisor the injury was minor, but when I got home I sobbed like a baby and had to actually patch myself up with a sewing kit.
"Frankly, you almost certainly have way more important shit to do than hunt down a couple of no name teen punks," I said. "Like really, are you gonna tell me you got so little going on that you feel like wasting time hunting these guys down?" He almost certainly did have that little going on.
The cop paused for a moment, and I could see the gears turning in his brain. I might have fucking hated Gotham cops, but I knew how to get em all turned around: I'm not an intimidating looking guy and the wrong skin tone for them to immediately be prejudiced. From there, you gotta grab their affinity: in my case, through humor. After that, you plant the seed of an idea: 'these people aren't worth the effort'. Add a little ego stroking: you can't just say 'you're a important person', you have to say things that make them FEEL like an important person. Imply they have a lot going on, that way this seems a little less important in comparison.
End on establishing the idea that chasing them contradicts all this. It doesn't need to be a well supported idea: it didn't exist to stand on its own, it just existed to tear away a bit of the affinity he mighta had for the idea of pursuing them.
"Eh, fuck it, not like Gordo'll pay me extra anyways," He said, shrugging. "I'll just write down that it was a few vagrants, call it a night. Still, you should watch yourself pal: you mighta got a few yucks from me-" God, why do people from Gotham talk like this, it's like they all stepped out of a bad cartoon "-But eventually, that smart mouth is gonna get you in some hot fucking water."
I would like to again note for any unastute readers that I had less than an hour ago gotten shot. I note this because I know at least some of you are dumb and unobservant enough to recognize the irony in that statement.
"Aight, Officer, I'll keep that under advisement. Hope you have a nice night," I lied, and a moment later, I was alone. Wincing, I relaxed a bit, allowing the pain I was feeling to show on my face. See, having a hole in you really hurts.
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 it: moment I got home, I'd have to patch myself up. Thankfully, sewing kits were cheap and first aid lessons had been free.
"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," Ollie 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, his next statement sending any and all goodwill he had built with me down the crapper.
"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 and the bullet hole. 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. Columbo and baseball. There was many a night where the soothing drawl of the new york city detective 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.
Boy, I sure diddly-didn't know how right I was.
