Hardman's Bar

By Hadrian Howell (Hardman)

Chapter 15

I woke up. I think.

The headache and the strung out feeling of the hangover was my first rational brain connection. Something in the back of my mind declared loudly that made no sense, since I knew I hadn’t been drinking.

Had I?

I needed to get my bearings. I looked around me.

Dressed in rags, with brown hair on top sat a bum. He looked like a bum. Most bums wear rags, right? What was I doing here? Wasn’t I somewhere dark? Was… was it night time when I went to sleep? No… it was underground, wasn’t it?

What was going on?

Memories swirled into my brain, consuming the images I thought had been real. I’d been REALLY drunk last night. Really, REALLY drunk. The bar’s owner had thrown me out so hard I’d lost a tooth when I hit the street. I remember getting run over at some point. That’s probably why my ribs hurt so much. I was probably alive only because I was so drunk…

This isn’t right.

I slid up the wall, testing my legs to see if I could stand on my own. My own cloths didn’t look much better than the other (other?) bum’s. I shook my head an immediately regretted it. I sank back onto the pavement again, trying to make the colors that assaulted my vision go back to their normal places.

After a little bit of groaning, I wiped the grim off my face and looked at it on my hand. God, my nails were a mess. Had I showered recently? Or was I just some gutter bum?

Something in the very basics of my instinct told me that hand in front of me was mine, but it wasn’t, either. MY hand should have been bigger. And armored.

The guy next to me with the brown hair stirred a little. I decided to chance waking him up to find out where I was.

“Hey,” my voice cracked. NOW I realized my throat hurt. Had I been singing or something last night? It was like I’d been deepening my voice for the last five years, and it was catching up to me. Guarded against the idea of talking again, I poked the bum with my leg. Hazel eyes opened up and slowly took me in.

“Who’re you?” he asked in a dry voice. He sounded like he needed a drink, and bad. I shook my head, not wanting to talk again, and I pointed out at the street and shrugged. He seemed to get my drift.

“I don’t know where we are, man,” he rasped. He stood up a bit more easily than I could have, but that’s when I noticed his arm was broken. Very broken. It bent three times, and always the wrong way. I gave him a concerned (maybe) look and he waved me off. “Bomb,” he shrugged. Then he looked confused, as if questioning how he knew that information.

He staggered past me and looked out into the street, then looked back at me. “Looks pretty peaceful,” he said. “I should probably find out where I am. Want to come along?”

I shrugged and stood up. I really didn’t have much in the way of memory at this point. Something I drank last night must’ve sent me on a loop. It was like there were two lives I’d been living up to that point and now I’d forgotten both of them.

He gave me a critical glance. “What’s your name?” ha asked after a moment.

I chanced talking. “Hadrian,” I managed before the pain in my throat nearly choked me.

He almost smiled and offered his hand. “Jonathan,” he said. “Pleasure to meet you.”

I nodded and took a few steps out toward the end of the alley. I definitely had cracked ribs or something, because it hurt to do almost anything. Jonathan seemed to have some problems moving around too, so we gave each other a hand, and put each other’s arms around our shoulders like a couple of drinking buddies.

We limped into the street and took in the sights. Tall buildings nestled next to short ones, people and… things that looked like people walking around in the daylight. We sort of agreed on a direction and moved in it, mostly in silence. The occasional passerby would give us a disgusted look before being on their way. It wasn’t long before something caught Jonathan’s ears.

“You hear that?” he asked. I shrugged as best I could and shook my head. “Sounds like music. Somebody with a boom box, I bet. Let’s go see.”

Without much better to do, we made out way down the next block and looked into an alleyway where the sounds were coming from. There, strewn like yesterday’s trash, was another bum. The only indicator that he was alive was the fact that his foot was moving to the beat of the music, tapping against the wall. There was something weird about the way he was dressed. Most of what he wore was a dull green, but he had a necklace with a large stylized skull on it. His black hair was done up in a wicked long ponytail. He was also looking at us with dull brown eyes.

“If you don’t like the music you can shuffle somewhere else,” he muttered.

“I thought it was neat enough,” Jonathan said with a smile. “What’s your name?”

“S’rude to ask for a name and not introduce yourself first,” the man with the boombox said.

Jonathan looked at me and I just looked back. What was I going to say? “Sorry,” my companion said, turning back to the other man. “I’m Jonathan, and this here’s Hadrian.”

“I’m Raijin,” the green man said, getting to his feet. “I’m a street DJ. What’re you two doing in this part of town?”

“Don’t really know,” Jonathan shrugged. “We just kind of woke up in an alley. Do you know where we are?”

“Know? Man, you must have been drunk or something if you don’t know where you are. You’re in Monsteropolis.”

Jonathan looked at me again. “I… I knew that, I think.”

“Then why’d you ask?” Raijin smirked. It was not a friendly smirk.

Jonathan shook his head. “I… My mind’s kind of messed up. I keep remembering one thing, and my mind keeps telling me another.”

The DJ shook his head. “Messed up man. And speaking of messed up, you should go see a doctor about that arm.”

“Doctor?”

“Ol’ Doc Thomas will take in anybody, I hear. He lives a few blocks south of here.”

“Which way’s south?” Jonathan asked.

Raijin gave us both a look. I was still not very enamored of the talking idea, so I gave him a meaningless shrug. He shook his head and picked up his boom box. “On second thought, maybe I should guide you. This city might eat a confused guy like you alive.”

“Uh, okay,” my companion said.

Raijin walked past us and down the street, so we followed. As Raijin and Jonathan talked back and forth about the various buildings we passed, I tried collecting my thoughts in a haze.

Something was nagging the back of my brain. Something… I guess I could use the word primal. I felt way too weak. I know I wasn’t so weak before. Somehow, it felt like a massive part of me was missing. I kept trying to think of what was wrong with me, but I kept coming up short. What was going on with my head?

There were people and… robots? Were those things robots? Everyone else seemed so accepting of them, why did they seem so weird to me? Had I just been dropped here, into some world I didn’t- what… what was I thinking? What’s going ON here? There’s some memories in my head, buried under a layer of something I just can’t get through…

A long car pulled up beside our group as the windows came down. Raijin turned down his boom box and gave it a quizzical look, and seemed surprised by a pair of female faces looking out at us.