BatJay Binds Again

I leap down from the rooftop, all shadow and no silence. The bones of the muggers break like rotten wood under the impact of mere fingers. I know seven ways to kill them without trying to, nine to make it an accident.

Begging sounds emit: I laugh at them as they did their own victims. One has a gun. I flex my cape like a blade. Two fingers are terminated. Their victim stands frozen against the wall. Afraid of them.

Afraid of me.

Good.

“Run,” I snap. The word a bullet. My disgust a blow.

The victim run-bolt-stumbles. Weak. But fear can lead to strength if one learns that fear is a luxury they cannot afford. The muggers have both fainted. No joy there then.

I break their legs, because reminders are important.

Movement. I spin. A magician is standing behind me. He does not look like a magician, which is one of his strengths I think. There is nothing of a mugger or victim in his eyes.

“BatJay.”

Indulged myself. Careless. I move. Nothing happens. The world about us too solid. His will has imposed itself. No way around it. Only through.

I fire my grappling gun at his face, arm twitches. I miss, leap. I could break his neck before he could work a single act of magic, but some ward hurls me backwards onto the alleyway floor. I taste blood in the back of my mouth. Hurt. I was hurt. I thrust out a hand. Half a block away, windows shatter at the force of the blow.

The magician hasn’t moved.

“You are strong, but not near as tough.” I go to move, but his gaze is unbreakable. “Why do you exist?” he snarls, and the power under the words drives me to my knees.

His magic is a bludgeon on the air, and I let out a scream of shock as his will tears into mine. He rips memories out of me with a savage cruelty that flares and dies so fast only the aches inside me are proof it happened.

I manage to stand. My breath is wounded pants.

“I cannot unmake you,” the magician says, and the power remains though his voice is softer. “I am sorry, but it would be... noticed, and not understood. Even you do not know the moment that made you. And I cannot do a binding you would not break in time.” He is tired, and I think scared, but not of anything like me.

“I am darkness. I am the night,” I snarl.

“No, you are not.” He holds out a hand.

I move. I can’t break away from him, but even so. I move, and my strength shatters the ground under him. It does not break; he does not fall into the sewers underneath us.

“You cannot hurt me,” the magician says. “Because Jay never would.”

And there is a truth in his eyes. I make a sound. Like the victim almost. I emit. I don’t want to. I don’t mean to.

There is a hardness to him that nothing can break.

His hand closes. Fists. Opens.

The world tears itself apart. The universe does, behind me. There is nothing solid Outside. But hungers. Shapes. Movements. Things older and more dangerous than even BatJay.

“I banish you,” the magician says, and he is not strong enough to look. I fight it, but his is the will and magic both.

There are things Outside. Waiting. Not for me. I am a small fragment of something else. A shard of loss innocence. I know what I am, in that moment. I scream my name, expecting the rest of me to hear to know to come

but the magician stops it and

i am

i have no way back

i fight

i cannot win

Outside is the asylum

there are too many enemies

i fight. batjay will not lose.

will not

will not!

not

...

NO

...

no

...

...

no  

The BatJay Returns

BatJay’s Journal. Date Uncertain, 2018(?)

Bigfoot carcasss in the alley this evening, claw scars on burst stomach. The night is afraid of me. I made faces at the abyss. The streets are extended alleyways and the alleys are full of labyrinths trying to drain tears and when the drains finally scab over, all the loss will melt away. The accumulated bindings of all their needs and desires will foam up about their shadows and all the sacred and the scared will look up up and shout “Save us!”...

...and I'll look down, and whisper “jaysome.”

They have no choice, all of them. To fall in the shadow of BatJay is is to become jaysome. Decent adventures, for a day’s journey. Too many are afraid of that. Instead they run to the abyss with open arms as though I will not be waiting at the end. Don’t tell me they don’t know that.

Now the whole works totters on broken bindings, staring into the emptiness at the end of all things with their jibbbers and their jabbers and all of the sudden.... everyone has too much to say.

The world become a cacophony of shredded voices. Everyone is screaming for salvation, no one willing to see the face of their saviour.

BatJay’s Journal. Later.

Was busy all day. I have eaten too many sugar mice. Someone complained about the smell. I am certain they cheat their nose with every meal. Soon it will be dark. The sky is the colour of burnt yolks. Beneath me, this empty city, it screams like an abandonment. No one listens, too busy to fill it. Bindings scattered like broken glass.

On Friday night, a comedian died in New York. Not many sasquatch comediennes. Body left shaved for the police. Someone knows why. Down there. Up here too, but I have to not know. Follow the bindings. Search for clues. Clues are the last call before the curtain goes down.

I leap down, scattering shadows, grappling rope tugged from the moon. Mistake. Can’t afford those. The gloaming reeks of bad choices and lost answers. I believe that calls for exercise.

The bar is quiet with the hush of lies. Bouncer moves in front of me. Says I can’t be here. Utters threats. Can’t have that. Break bindings. Pinky finger. Index finger. Appendix finger. Not a finger. Still breaks. Screams. I ask questions.

Someone asks if I knew the bigfoot. Asks if I have a friend. Fear-laugh. A twitch inside. Door. Something trying to get out. Of me. Find a sugar container. Sugar daddy. Makes no sense. Probably the screams.

They stop.

No one has answers. There are sirens. Distant. They never have answers. Leave. Nobody knew anything. Slightly off-jaysome. City is dying of silence. I whisper songs to it, start the rats into a chorus. The rats always remember the city when the humans forget. See it as a thing. Good at that. Best I can do. No. Never not jaysome. Never no adventures. Never a surrender.

Turn some people into cockroaches. Give them a break from being them. Kindness. Busy now. Have business with another class of person.

Can’t talk to the dead. Ghoul will have to do.

News on the web, like a spider. Saying BatJay is dead. Wondering where I am. When I am where I’ve always been. Find a drink, wash the taste of sugar mice from mouth. Inhale the darkness.

BatJay’s Journal. Later. Different evening. Time gone soft.

I am the darkness.

I wear the night.

I am BatJay.

Jay Hooks

The window opens silently without being touched. Given that the fourth hotel windows aren’t even meant to open, this is mildly impressive. I’m on my fourth cup of coffee to keep away at ungodly’o’clock in the morning as Jay slips in the window. He’s dressed entirely in black like a ninja would be, only his black seems to blend into the darkness and light both, the effect mildly disconcerting as the window closes behind him and he seems to fade in and out of view. He is holding what looks to be a grappling hook and vanishes as the window closes.

I cough. Not loudly, but I do cough.

Jay spins, eyes wide, the clothing fading into view as a drab black. “Charlie?”

“Jay. It isn’t even four in the morning. What are you doing?”

“I was out flying,” he says. “Like a jayboss does!”

“Wearing black?”

“Uhm. Uhm. Yes?” he says hopefully.

“And with a grappling hook in your right hand?”

“I hid it somewhere else, so you can’t get me with that,” Jay says proudly.

I wait. It takes a few seconds before his eyes widen. I missed Jay being able to see, if only for the addition it has to the look of panic in the kid’s face.

“I mean that I might have hidden it if I had one, but I don’t.”

“Hidden what?” I ask, unable to help myself.

“The – uhm. Something that –.” Jay bites into his lower lip. “You know!”

“Kiddo?”

“That I’m secretly BatJay!” He glares accusingly up at me with all the force one can muster at eleven, even if he’s not really eleven or human at all.

“Jay. You told me and the wandering magician about it. And posted it on your tumblr, which I do read.”

“But –. But –.”

“You’re jaysome, so how could I not read it?”

“But superheroes have secret identities,” he wails.

I fight back a grin. “You could have thought about that before telling us.”

“I was really new to it, and – and you know I’m SuperJay too and could figure out I’m SuperJaysome as well,” he says with a pout, looking like he’s about to cry.

I reach over, and grab him into a hug. “It’s okay, Jay. It’s not like we’re going to tell anyone.”

“But it was one of my secrets,” he says as he bursts into tears against me.

I pause. ‘One of’ sets off alarm bells in my head, but now isn’t the time. “It can still be a secret even if it’s shared, Jay. I was trying to make a joke about it, not hurt you.”

“Honest?” he sniffs, looking up at me.

“Honest, with extra bindings on top,” I say, which wins a giggle. “What adventures did BatJay have?”

“Well, I –.”

“He. Or you might accidentally tell someone, remember?”

“Oh! Right, so BatJay was busy flying and helped save a bird from flying into a plane that wasn’t using lights and the plane landed in the water outside the town and there were people on boards who weren’t jaysome and they had boxes that were filled with really icky bindings. So BatJay took care of them just like a jayboss would only as a batboss and he used the grappling hook to bounce some of them off the plane,” he says with a huge grin.

“Grappling hooks do that?”

“They do in Just Cause, and it gave me lots of ideas!”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“BatJay took their money and did a sneak-giving to some homeless people and then came back here and met me and you kinda know the rest?”

“All right. You want to get some more sleep then?”

“Okay,” Jay says, and bounces off to the one motel bed.

I don’t even try to sleep after three cups of coffee. I poke the internet for information to find out what Just Cause even is and how grappling hooks factor in. I then spend over an hour in horrified silence. A video game where the goal is destroying structures and hurting people with grappling hooks and it had given Jay ‘ideas’. I wait up for the morning paper, and turn the tv on to local news as soon as I can.

The wandering magician wakes at the latter, asking if anything is wrong.

I say I have no idea yet, show him footage of the game and explain.

The lead story involved some probably drug dealers who were found unconscious on a beach with drugs on them and no sign of their craft anywhere.

I tell the wandering magician it’s up to him to find out what Jay did with an entire float plane. He pours himself coffee, asks for the crossword puzzle in the paper and we do our best not to think too hard about it as Jay sleeps.