“Damn, kids,” I grumbled, like the old hermit I’d become.
I put on a pair of pants in all the painstakingly long ways it took my broken body to do so. By the end of it, tugging on them left my arms so sore I didn’t even bother buttoning my shirt. I just shoved my arms through, trying to ignore the pops and creaks of my bones.
My wheel caught on my old Roach suit as I turned. A multi-colored SuperBall rolled free. I vaguely recalled picking it up as a gift on my way home from Horton Point when I bought the bottle of Johnnie Walker to help dull the pain.
I strained my aching abdomen as far as I could, bending to pick it up. Laura’s daughter Michelle would love it. She didn’t talk much, but she loved anything colorful. Kids are easy when they aren’t yours. It’s no wonder so many parents fuck it up.
I stuffed the ball in my pocket, grabbed my suit, and rolled out along the grated catwalk encircling the Roach’s Lair. The press would’ve called it that if they had any idea it existed. It was my control center in an old service node for a sewage line, abandoned along with the factories and football stadium that once made Harborside the most vital district and historic downtown in a city that was once important.
An array of big, bulky monitors, surveillance systems, police radio monitors, and a self-destruct button rested in the center, unused for years, covered in dust and cobwebs. Under it sat dozens of crates packed with empty folders once stuffed with pages of intel on criminals across the city. I had to give it all up after I got shot, though not entirely by choice. Thank you, Mister Mayor.
Against a nearby wall stood a lighted, upright display case with a naked mannequin inside. It usually wore my uniform when I wasn't taking it out for a suicidal spin. Presently, it only wore my mask—a painted gas mask with two tubes in the front like insect antennae.
The thing actually covered my face. Not like some flimsy domino mask heroes wear in the comics, their mouths, noses, and chins all exposed. How dumb do you have to be not to recognize that?
The red bulb flickered periodically, but otherwise illuminated my entire lair. Behind me, a hole broken through the concrete wall sealing this station remained black as the ace of spades and led into a seemingly endless tunnel offering access to Iron City’s vast underground sewer-system. The stink of stale sewage seeped through, pleasant now after so long.
My display case remained open from when, in a drunken stupor, I’d apparently decided to don my old suit. What had I been thinking?
I considered redressing the mannequin, like usual, but I couldn’t muster the energy. Instead, I tossed it over the thing’s shoulder, closed the glass, and entered the code on the keypad to lock the case. Then, turning around, I ran my fingers along the desk of my control station. A layer of filth peeled away, so copious it turned my pale flesh a mustard shade of brown. I glanced up at the newspaper clippings arrayed on the empty stone wall above the desk. They were brown too, aged and worn. I couldn’t help but chuckle. Here I was, the infamous Roach, living amid darkness and grime like a real insect.
All those headlines. If those reporters could only see me now. It was like the sad shrine to a high school scholar-athlete who’d never done a damn thing with the rest of his life. Going from “Blue, forty-two. Hike!” to, “You want small, medium, or large?”, if they weren’t out causing trouble and getting caught by me.
I’d kept every newspaper mention of my exploits for as long as I can remember. I’d even recorded news on VHS from the TV in the early years. The good and the bad.
They weren’t trophies, however much it might have looked like that. Not to me. They were reminders of how people really are. Same as the news stories: the good, and the far more frequent bad.
THE ROACH BREAKS UP MAFIA GAMBLING RING ON BLEAK STREET.
That was a real old one.
SUSPECTED PEDOPHILE MINISTER FOUND CRUCIFIED OUTSIDE SAINT DONOVAN’S CATHEDRAL.
That one was a little too poetic. He’d died for his sins just like his idol, with all the pictures of his victims scattered at his feet. I always did have a romantic side.
HERO OR VILLAIN? CITY DEMANDS THE ROACH COME FORWARD AFTER SHOOTOUT AT HORTON POINT LEAVES THREE UNDERAGE GIRLS DEAD.
Yeah, at the same shipping yard in Horton Point I’d almost rolled off a few hours earlier. Romance. Poetry. That’s just me.
Of all the stories pieced together by hacks without all the information, that last one was one of the few to ever bother me. Maybe the only one. That the sheeple I’d spent so long protecting could think I would purposely hurt, endanger, or kill young girls made my blood boil.
How was I to know that the Bratva ‘soldiers’ drugging up foreign girls and selling their bodies in backrooms would also use them as human shields as they unloaded on me with fully-automatics? How was I to know that after I ravaged and kicked nearly every other major gang out of Iron City, the worst would fill the void? How was I to know I’d made room for the Goddamned devil himself?
Did I go too far? Maybe. But the cops weren’t going to do anything back then, and I tried my best to avoid collateral damage. I’m sure those few lost girls would have gladly given their lives if it meant no other kid would have to go through their hell—that the other girls would have a chance to escape slavery and go off to do great things.
Hell, Reagan had been the president. An actor known for hunky westerns, now leading America into conflicts like a gun-totting, trigger-happy cowboy. Anybody could be anything they wanted to be these days.
I knew Chuck Barnes, the author of that article, wrote the piece just to crawl under my skin like my moniker’s namesake, but that didn’t matter. I almost gave in. A decade protecting the city, and I had as much slack with the squawking hens as a mass-murderer on parole. It had me so distracted, the very next night I got shot saving Laura and was taken out of the game anyway.
That article became the last one ever written about the Roach that didn’t include terms like MISSING or PRESUMED DEAD.
I dragged my hand across the page like I did every time I saw it. This time, the loose corner finally gave out, folding over and tearing away from the strip of Scotch tape in the bottom right corner. Next thing I knew, I’d ripped it off completely and crumpled it up in my fist.
“Ungrateful, sons of…” I seethed, flinging the paper ball. It bounced against a wall, then fell behind my control desk to join the spiders and the dust. My fingernails dug into my palms, drowning out the echoing memories of the gunfire and the screams.
After drawing a few raspy breaths to calm myself, I rolled onto the lift to my townhouse. The rusty, accordion-style metal door clattered shut behind me. The pulleys were in even worse shape, rusted, grinding with each movement. Every night I spent down in my lair, I wondered what would fall apart quicker: my body or the rickety elevator that sounded like a rat being strangled.
I held my breath, expecting it to give out and drop this time. I almost hoped it would. Instead, it jerked to a stop with a rumble and a loud screech. The grates folded open, and a switch signaled the hidden doorway built into a bookcase to slide open and reveal my first-floor study.
I know. How original. But it isn’t my fault that sometimes movies have great ideas that any real person would never think to check in a million years.