***
“...ear me, sir?” a woman’s voice said from far above me. I opened my eyes, and found a female policeman kneeling in front of me, looking concerned and smelling of Juicy Fruit. The pain in my body returned, and I was almost overwhelmed by it.
“Wha . . .”
“I said, can you hear me?” she repeated.
“Yeah,” I muttered. Holy shit, there was something solid and small in my mouth. I knew it was a tooth without looking at it. I tried to sit up, and something in my stomach stung and told me to lay still.
“You’re going to be alright, sir,” the policewoman said. Beyond her, another cop was shining a flashlight. He was an older man, a black guy, and seemed to be looking for evidence or clues.
“You own a blue Acura?” that cop asked, tossing me a quick glance.
“Uh huh,” I said. “Can . . . can you get it back?”
“Back?” the woman said. “It never left.”
I mumbled my name, and she said, “Okay” in an encouraging tone.
“Ambulance is on its way,” the black cop said, either to me or to his partner.
I turned my head. I was still on the ground at the gas station, and I was alone. Amazingly, my car was a few feet away, the gas nozzle still in my tank. There was broken glass at my feet, and a few dark stains that could have been blood here and there. Of course, they might have been oil drippings too.
“Do you remember what happened?” the black cop asked, casting a bit of light my way. It hurt my eyes and he pointed it elsewhere.
“We believe you were attacked tonight,” the woman added. “Is that right?”
“I . . .” I did remember, actually. I remembered everything, despite how much my head ached. And that made me wonder if I remembered it right. “Did you see him? Did you see Batman?”
“Batman?” both cops repeated at the same time. It was kind of cute, actually, in retrospect.
“Movie? The middle one was better,” the male cop said.
“No, Batman was here. Tonight. He saved me.” As I said it, I was aware of two things. The first was that the broken tooth in my mouth had a sharp edge that was digging into my tongue. The other was that I sounded absolutely crazy, and a lot like a little kid describing a dream.
I spit the broken tooth out into my hand. It took two tries and I apologized to the policewoman. Briefly I wondered if a doctor could sew the tooth back on, then I realized how insane that thought was, and wondered if I might have some kind of brain damage.
“Near as we can tell, sir,” the policewoman said quietly, “you got mugged or attacked within the last two hours. It’s possible someone hit you with their car.”
“No,” I said. “It was a bunch of kids. Muscular, mean ones. I mean, like teenagers, not, like, little kids.”
“Your wallet’s still here,” the man said, holding it up for me to see it. “Still got twenty-seven dollars in it.”
I reached out to take it, but felt that sharp pain in my stomach again. The sound I made was embarrassingly girlish.
“Lie still, sir,” the policewoman said. “You may have some broken ribs.”
“You’re good at your job,” I said, for no reason. Then, because I wanted them to understand I hadn’t lost my mind: “It might not have been Batman, you know.”
“Oh. You think?” the black cop said. It hurt my feelings, but it would have been funny to anybody else.
“No. I mean, it was a guy dressed as Batman. I mean.”
“And he saved you. Killed the bad guys?”
Actually, I didn’t think Batman killed people. But I couldn’t say that to this guy. If I did, he’d ask me where the bodies went. And ask me which Batman it was, the Adam West one or the Christian Bale version. “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
“Well, there wasn’t anybody else here when we got here. No bodies. Although I did find a filling over there.” The black cop smiled good-naturedly. “You got a gold tooth?”
Somewhere to the north, I could hear a siren. I couldn’t remember if ambulances have different sirens than police cars at the time. I was confused and my head was filled with a combination of cotton and applesauce. Homestyle applesauce. With the chunks.
Maybe I had hallucinated what had happened to me. Maybe there had been a man, but my injured brain somehow replaced him with a superhero. Maybe I’d passed out and my imagination had filled in the rest. Or maybe there had never been any hero. Maybe the cops came along at just the right time, and the bad guys high-tailed it out of there. Maybe I’d never know what really happened.
It made more sense than how I was remembering it.
“About Batman . . .” I started to say.
The policewoman said my first name, her hand on my shoulder, and I shut my mouth. “Just relax. Lie still and don’t strain yourself. It’ll be alright.”
“But--”
“Sometimes head trauma can cause funny tricks with the mind. One time this guy hit me with a beer bottle and I forgot my middle name for more than an hour.”
“It’s Consuelo,” the black cop added. “In case you forget again.”
“Thanks, Albert,” she said. The siren was getting closer. I heard a crackling from the woman’s walkie-talkie and a voice said something I couldn’t understand, though I think I made out “three minutes” in there. She looked down on me again. She wasn’t particularly attractive, but I was feeling all affectionate anyway. Grateful. Childlike. “You’ve had a bad experience and an injury,” she said, “but I think you’re going to be alright. We’ll get you to a hospital, patch you up, and you’ll forget all about Batman.”
“Especially the George Clooney one,” the black cop said. “Whoo!”
“You think I imagined him?” I said, afraid to keep talking in case I called the policewoman ‘Mom.’
“Probably,” she said. “Doesn’t matter. What’s important is that you’re going to be okay, sir.” So, we were back to the sir again. Alright.
She was right. I had been out of my mind, seeing things that my stressed brain wanted to see. Silly, childish things that I had once believed in. There’s no such thing as superheroes, and I’d learned that decades ago. There was no such thing as a lot of things. Sad, really. No Batmen, no straight politicians, no business that couldn’t go under, no love that lasts forever. Really sad.
I lay there as still as I could, feeling little bunches of pain in my mouth, my stomach, my knee, and my head. The siren was very close now, and I suddenly had to go to the bathroom. Bad. I was lucky I hadn’t already gone in my pants.
And maybe I had. Even more embarrassment.
I moved my right hand to check my crotch, and felt something hard and metal beneath it. I grasped the object and brought it up to my face to get a look at it. It was a Batarang.
“Heh,” I said.
the end
About the Author
Rish Benjamin Outfield is a writer, artist, and voice actor. He can be heard month to month as host of the Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine (www.dunesteef.com), where he and Big Anklevich present genre short stories with a full cast, music, and effects, as well as their That Gets My Goat podcast (www.dunesteef.blogspot.com) where they chat into the night.
His short fiction has been heard on The Drabblecast, The Way of the Buffalo, Journey Into…, Midnight Circle, and Horror Addicts podcasts, as well as his own show. If you’d like to contact him on Facebook, his address is www.facebook.com/rish.outfield.
Since you asked, Rish’s least favorite band is Foster the People, his least favorite food is potato salad, and his least favorite animals are cockroaches. He is currently trying his hand at performing audiobooks for Audible, and has never gotten over the fear of something grabbing him while walking up the basement stairs.
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