Down Time

He was naked. Had his life been a cartoon, this would be the part where a stuttering Arc would gasp, "Who? What? Where? When? How?" like a coked-out television news reporter.

Why?

The viscous goo he had landed in clung to his skin. Arc slapped a wet hand to his face to wipe away whatever was there only to deposit more of the vile fluid on his left cheek. He grunted and got to his hands and knees. He could feel the stuff slipping down his chest and abdomen into the crevice where his leg met his hip, sliding down to his crotch, finally finding a suitable point of departure on the tip of penis. He looked left and right. It was still dark. He wondered how long he'd been out, and if that helicopter had been looking for him, or just curious as to why a naked man was laying in scum-filled gutter half drenched in auto excretions and god-knows-what other waste products.

As he peered into the darkness, passing cars briefly illuminated his surroundings. He was in an alley between two apartment buildings. It was still New York. Where specifically he couldn’t tell. If memory served him right, and his memory was slowly evacuating his mind, then he was still in Manhattan, somewhere near the World Trade Center. A filthy newspaper floated in the slop in front of him. The paper was a week old, but it was still October, 2001.

Time distortion: Arc realized it wasn’t getting any lighter so either the buildings above the ones beside him were blocking the light or it was hours away from daybreak. A car pulled up to a red light in the street far ahead of him. The soft haze created a screen that made Arc’s eyes hurt. He pushed at it and touched the glass of the windshield. Beside him, a man spoke in a high, castrated voice. A white voice. Pathetic next to Arc’s soulful baritone. Arc shifted in his seat. The man was telling him something that Arc already knew, so he didn’t pay attention.

Sweep and clear.

The leather beneath him was warm, the lights high above shone brilliantly like lances of arcane admonition from a century after Christ. They stopped in front of St. Stanislaus Congregational. Even the churches advertised with drastic electricity. The white man pointed to a building, indicating that was where Arc was supposed to go. Arc’s memory short-circuited when he tried to remember the man’s face.

Arc found his shorts and pants hanging from the edge of a dumpster. Seizing them, he tried to recall how he ended up outside and nude. Even in Manhattan, with all its exotic atrocities, naked men just don’t fall out of the night sky. However, Arc’s shirt, dangling from a jagged spear of wrought iron fire escape, suggested that they did fall out of buildings. Movement forced blood still tainted with chemicals to go to Arc’s brain. His eyes began to work again. It was still too dark to make out detail, but rough shapes were enough for now. A ragged homeless man, pale and pasty white in the glare of the urban light pollution shuffled away as Arc moved. Checking his pants pocket, he found his wallet empty of whatever money he had. The homeless man took another look at Arc and scurried away.

Gun!

Arc rifled through his memories, searching for some logical reason as to how he got out here. Logic and New York were two things that often did not go together. A van backed into the alley at the far end. The rear gate swung open and two Japanese runners hopped out, each carrying a satchel. Out of the passenger side came Miko, a delicate Japanese flower who ran weapons for the local Yakuza. She looked too innocent for the cops to question, making her great camouflage for the illegal gun running scam. Arc had picked her out long ago.