WEDNESDAY - A DASTARDLY LIFE
Gil

 “I wish I’d never been born.” The bridge’s railing is cold but no less icy than the river below.

“Oh, you mustn’t say things like that.” I turn to find a strange man standing on the bridge. He’s unremarkable, other than to say that he is the most non-threatening person I’ve ever seen. He has a distinct paunch that sits beneath a ragged coat and rests below a thinning hairline.

“Who are you?” I say, my feathered cape wiping around me in the freezing wind and swirling snow. “What’s your business here?”

“My name is not important, Gil Laridae, and my business is the business of the world.” The man touches my shoulder with a caring hand and I feel lighter than I’ve felt in a while. “Everyone in this world is precious, even the villains. I know you have been coming here the past few nights.”

“Cause I’m a loser! All my evil schemes fall apart. All I bring is misery to anyone who's ever tried to help me.”

“Come with me.” He guides me into the swirling snowstorm. “Let’s get a drink to warm you up.”

I don’t remember the walk, but suddenly we’re entering a familiar place. The wood paneling is split in places, marking knife cuts and laser burns. The green upholstery on the booths is old and worn, but comforting all the same. The floor is sticky, and there’s a remembered aroma of beer, body odor, and gunpowder.

Strangely though, there are no decorations. There is no Christmas music playing.

“Take a seat anywhere, sugah.” Georgia Atlanta sweeps by in a rush. She has that old smile, framed beneath a tangled and hastily tied up ponytail.

“Georgia,” I say. “You’re not mad at me?”

“Darling, I ain’t got one damn notion who you are? Let me guess, you’re the Chicken Man, or the Clucking Madman or some such thing?”

“No, I’m the Seaguller.” I lift my feathery cape. “But it’s me, Gil? You really don’t know me?”

“Sorry, Chicken Man.” She gives me a wink and dashes away to pick up an empty mug from the Mass Transiteer.

“Why doesn’t she know me?” I say to my companion.

“Because of your wish. This is a version of the world where you were never born.”

“No, that can’t be.”

I run to catch up with Georgia.

“Miss Atlanta,” I say touching her arm and then pulling back with the look she fires at me.

“Hands off, sugah. What do you want, Chicken Man?”

“What about Annah, your niece? I mean, is she okay… Is she here?”

“You mean the supercriminal known as Bedlam?” The beer glass Georgia is holding shatters in her grip. “She ain’t no kin of mine, not no more. After that stunt she pulled she can damn well stay with that Pyrrhic brute. I made it clear as a jar of air that I don’t want nothing to do with her or that gang she’s running with. Did she send you?”

“No,” I back away, hands up. “I just know her from… around.”

“Well, if you see her, you tell her that after that her Auntie Gee tells her she can tap dance her little self straight to the devil’s doorstep and I won’t ever give two licks about her again.” Georgia looks down at her hand. She is bleeding.

“Excuse me, darling.”

I only barely notice my companion as he walks up behind me.

“In your absence, Savannah Atlanta became one of the most ruthless assassins in Titan City,” he says. “She once nearly got Georgia’s son killed when a rival gang came to their apartment looking for her. It created a rift with her aunt that has turned Georgia bitter and cold. She hasn’t opened her heart up to anyone since then.”

“Okay, but what about Edward?” I don’t see him at the door but he must be outside, forever loyally guarding the door. “Nothing bad could ever change Edward, right?”

I rush to the door, eager for a friendly face, but before I reach it, a polished bald head in a black shirt stops me. “Where are you going, Mr. Chicken?”

“I’m not a… I’m looking for a friend of mine, Edward. He’s the bouncer here.”

The man’s a henchman if I ever saw one. He’s even wearing dark sunglasses despite him being indoors and it being nighttime. “I remember a guy named Edward. He was fired years ago. I’m the bouncer these days. They call me Wolf. Now, unless we got a problem here, Mr. Chicken, I think you should either take a seat or get the hell out.”

Part of me wants to show the man what a chicken can do, but I think better of it. “I was just about to head to the bar.”

I find a seat next to my paunchy companion. On the other side of me is the towering villain, Man-Shark. He holds up his beer and gives me a hungry razor-sharp smile.

“I don’t understand,” I say, after returning Man-Shark’s cheers with a far less toothy grin. “JJ’d never fire Edward, and he’d never hire a hench.”

“James Joseph Friday is not as you remember.” He sips a steaming cup of tea.

“And what about Edward? Where’s he?”

“Cell Block C in Cerebus Super Maximum Security Prison. Edward now spends most of his nights crying alone in his cell.”

“What?” I shake my head. “But JJ’d never—”

“I’d never what?” says a voice I’ve not heard in a while.

My former employer walks over. He looks more tired than angry. There’s a strain behind his eyes, and even his mustache is wilder than I remember.

“You’d never serve a bad drink. I’ll take a whiskey scowl.”

He gets to work, pulling down a glass, tipping it under the tap, and pulling the handle with a grunt that makes it seem as if the very act of doing so causes him physical pain and simmering anger. “Sorry, kid, all we got is beer.”

I take the dirty and unappetizing glass from him. “Say, I was looking for a friend of mine. Big guy, by the name of Edward.”

“That no-good idiot? Last I heard he was stupid enough to fall in with CABAL and he got himself nabbed by a couple of long johns. I heard Pantheon himself nearly broke him in half. Turns out he’s not as indestructible as we all thought.”

“Idiot? Stupid?” I say. “I’ve never heard you say one bad word about him.”

“Do I know you, kid?”

“No.” I go to sip my beer but then think better of it. There’s something floating in there. “But out of curiosity, what’d he do to make you hate him so much?”

He eyes me but leans over the bar. “If you must know he lost my Santa suit. It was a few years back, now. He used to get it from the cleaners every year, and then one year he lost it.”

“I remember that,” I say. “It wasn’t his fault. The dry cleaner got it mixed up with some funeral director’s suit. I figured it out and we both went back and got the right bag…” I trail off.

“What the hell are you talking about, you big chicken?”

“Nothing.” I take a sip of beer and gag. “I guess I’m just surprised. I’d always heard that James Joseph Friday was a friendly curmudgeon.”

Glass shatters and JJ has a broken bottle in his hand, sharp side pointing in my direction. “I don’t know who you’ve been talking with, but I’m no one’s friend. I’m a killer, a terrorist. I’ve done terrible things both in and out of a mask.”

“Yeah,” I say, staring down the wrong end of the broken bottle, “but you’re not that person anymore. You put that behind you.”

“Nothing’s ever really behind anyone, kid. I still wake up screaming. I still see things when I close my eyes that’d make you go cold. Everyone I ever cared about is dead. Any friend I’d ever had is gone… And the fact that I haven’t joined them is just some sick joke of this world.”

He drops the bottle and storms out.

I watch him go, a man I barely recognize. “I thought his life would be better without me.”

My companion puts a hand on my shoulder. “In the past few years, James Joseph Friday has grown increasingly unpleasant, even vicious. He never had someone to care about.”

“Funny,” I say as the silence of the bar returns to whispering murmurs. “I don’t remember that turning out so well for either of us.”

“Even your betrayal ultimately pushed him to confront his past in healthier ways, but without you he just sort of hardened. His business is failing. He drinks as much as he sells, and he hates almost everyone, most especially himself.”

“I had no idea.” I reach over and grab my companion. I hug him hard so he can’t feel what I’m doing. “I had no idea.”

“There, there,” he says, and suddenly we’re back on the bridge. “See it, was all just an illusion. The world is still as it was, and now you know that we are all important. We all affect each other’s lives and there is a plan for all of us. Never be sad that you were born, Gil Laridae.”

“Are you an angel?” I say stepping back from him.

“Yes,” he says and brilliant wings extended from his back.

“Because you know what they say,” I bring up the electronic control pad strapped around my wrist. When I press the activator a small chime rings in the chill air. “Every time a bell rings an angel gets… ten thousand volts of electricity!”

The man screams, as the device I placed on his back is activated. He shudders under the constant shock of my newest invention. He falls to the snow immobilized.

“You fool! Of course, I’m glad that I was born. I knew that if I stood here long enough, pretending to lament my misfortunes that someone like you would show up.” The wind whips violently around me, as the lights of the bridge cast my villainous shadow over the helpless creature. “Tis the season after all.”

“No,” he groans. “This is not the real you.”

“Quiet,” I kick him. “Don't presume to know me. For I am the yellow snow that poisons the reservoir. I am the grinch that steals your holiday cheer. I am the winged menace that slays your bells. I am the Seaguller, and now you’re my prisoner.”

“I only wanted to help you,” he moans.

“Oh, you will. You and your power to warp reality will serve me and my evil schemes. After all, when you really think about it, an angel is really nothing more than a giant seagull.” I unleash a menacing laugh that rises to a fevered pitch.

I’m really quite proud of this laugh. I’ve been working on it, but then it stops being funny.

In the blink of an eye the man’s gone. My electric restraining device is lying empty on the snow.

I turn around, ready for a fight, but he’s just standing there, ragged coat, unassuming smile, and all. His hands are in his pockets.

“I will bend you to my will,” I say with all the fearsome bravado I have.

He just shakes his head. “You may fool yourself, but you cannot fool me, Gil Lariade. The pain that drew me here tonight was real. I would not have come if your distress was not genuine. You are not this person. You can be better, and there is a part of you that knows it.”

“Silence, fool.” I take a menacing step toward him. “I am the Seaguller, and I’m at the top of my game. One day this world will fall before my army of winged evil.”

He looks at me with pity. Can you believe it? How dare he pity me.

“Merry Christmas,” he says. “I will give your best to your mother and father. They’re both very worried about you.”

Then he’s gone. There are tears in my eyes. I don’t know why, but at this moment, I kind of wish I’d never been born.