Murphy Can Suck A Fat One.
Murphy Can Suck A Fat One.
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Tom hasn't made it out of the apartment for ten days. Mostly due to wardrobe issues. He's just growing too fast to put together anything that would be appropriate for school. The apartment is a fourth-story place in 'Crime Alley,' so you can imagine that it is less than ideal. Cat, dog, and human piss and excrement are common enough to see on the sidewalks and in alleys that it is rarely ever commented on anymore. Usually just new people that bother. Little social crusaders and missionaries that decide instead of doing their time in Africa or Asia, they are cool with trying to fix Gotham. Normal people will grumble a bit too, when things get egregious. But usually, it's just these precious snowflakes that float in, get abused for a while, and then leave with their tails clenched firmly betwixt their legs. Normal people without a need to do charitable proselytizing, hide, or have a history with it such as being born in the area? They don't move to Crime Alley.
The sound of gunshots is a nightly occurrence, here. The chatter of a full-on gun battle a weekly one at minimum. Usually, something big will kick off at least two or three times a week. But a weekly minimum is more or less expected. Traffic laws are something of an unenforced joke here. The decent cops aren't fond of making the trip. Far too dangerous. The crooked cops love it though, they can generally double their pay for the night just by being complete dirtbags. 'Got mugged, so sad. We caught the guy you said, but he didn't have any money on him, so we had to let him go.' All said while the cash contents of the purse in question are now sitting in their billfold. Sometimes even worse, when only half of it is. That implies an actual system being deployed to fleece the populace of what little wealth they have.
His uncle Lou didn't used to live here. His business is here, but he opened his salvage yard in response to the Wayne family dumping ungodly amounts of money into the area to try and bring it back from the brink of complete collapse some forty years ago. He was trying to take advantage of all the old brass, copper, and antique building materials that were coming out of the condemned buildings. Made a killing. For a while. But when the corruption rolled back in, it sank deep. About ten years ago he'd had to hire a bunch more crew, including armed night watchmen, just to keep things from completely falling apart. And when he did that he couldn't keep his four-bedroom corner lot in the suburbs.
Then a couple of years ago when his parents died, there hadn't been anybody else. Lou came through for him in spades. Took him in, kept him fed and in school. Taught him how to run the books at the scrapyard, as he was planning to retire when Tom graduated and either sell the yard altogether and move to a better area, or offer it to him and take a small percentage of whatever profit he can manage for as long as he is willing to try, and then split the sale with him if he can stick it out and keep his people employed for another five years.
Lou takes treating his people well very seriously. It's the primary reason that people have to break in to steal things. His own people won't do it to him. Oh, it's a scrapyard and the occasional bit of whatever is sometimes unnoticed having gone missing, he's sure. But it's all little things. Inexpensive. The handle of a screen door that happens to match the broken one that one of his employees have. He doesn't care if they use the piles of trash to make their lives a bit better, and because of that, they don't push it. They don't even look hard at anything worth real money.
And set against this backdrop of empty pocketbooks, bad neighbors, rampant crime, and the wet weather of late spring? On his way down the steps from his apartment so he can make his Friday appointment with Dr. Thompkins, he is going between the second and first floor when his foot goes right through the step, causing him to stumble and fall. He puts his hands out with his eyes closed in a desperate attempt to save his face and when his hands hit the steps below, they go right through that step as well. Then his gut and chest hit, as well as the leg that went through the hole being forced up by the angle of the fall, and the squealing sound of nails giving up erupts as two of the stairs above him are nearly pulled off.
The short cacophony stills as he lays there, face down, one leg at an odd angle, hands actually on the concrete floor beneath the steps at this point.
His eyes mist over a bit as he rips up even more of it getting loose. It doesn't hurt. But it is so damn frustrating. Why him?
And how much does he weigh now?!
Thankfully, there are multiple staircases to get up. Because he doesn't have the time to stay, and honestly... He'll probably have to move somewhere else. His going back up to the apartment again is probably not going to happen.
He hasn't stopped getting bigger yet, and if this is happening already?
He sighs and checks his clothes for damage. A tank top and a pair of sweat shorts. They don't seem to make things he can still wear that aren't custom, so this is what he's got that can stretch out over him. His uncle is looking into getting some stuff custom-made, but they are still trying to decide what they want to make it out of. They don't have the cash for this, not really. Whatever they decide on needs to last, and they can't even try until this damn growth stops.
His shoes now are sandals made of a metal plate sandwiched between a couple of pieces of repurposed tire rubber, with the straps being canvas-covered steel cables. Uncle Lou made them when they realized the sheer cost of trying to keep up with that bill.
He didn't have a chance to burst out of his old shoes. He'd worn a hole through the sole of one of them on day six. And that was against the carpeting and linoleum of the apartment. Against concrete, they'd have likely given up the day after he was released.
He opens the front door to the building and groans. It didn't look so bad on the fourth floor. But from street level, this is a downpour. He puts on the hat that came with his rain gear. One of those banana-yellow ones with a brim that goes all the way around. He doesn't know what it's called but it does a good job. He thanks whatever stars might be willing to offer him any luck at all that the hat is adjustable for size.
The actual coat part of it is a complete no-go, however. For that he is forced to do as his uncle suggested, a combination of a tarp, a knife, a lighter, and some cunningly applied binder clips makes a rather ridiculous-looking but completely functional piece of wet weather gear in the form of a big blue poncho.
Then he ducks to leave the building, his height having not stopped either. The fact that the soles of his sandals are three inches thick doesn't help.
>>
The Clinic of Leslie Thompkins. 2:45 PM. Friday, May the 12th
Tom opens the front door to the office carefully. Enters slowly. And closes the door just as carefully.
He turns around to see Dr. Thompkins staring at him from behind her desk, and he blushes.
“Can I borrow your phone, Doctor? I need to tell my uncle that there are repairs to do back at the apartment building we live in. And that I am going to have to find a new place to live. Something on the ground floor I think.”
The doctor hands him the handset for her old corded office phone and gets the details while he's telling his uncle.
“Hey, Lou.”
“Yeah... I was heading out to my appointment and the stairs didn't um... Hold me. So there are a few that need to be replaced and I might need to, I don't know, sleep in the office at the yard or something? For a while? I don't think it's a wildly great idea for me to be taking those stairs again, anyway.”
“I'm sorry, Lou. I'll... I'll try to figure something out for permanent. But for now at least?”
“Gotcha. Sorry again.”
“Okay, jeeze. I'm at the doctor's office so I'll talk to you when I get to the yard.”
He hands the phone back to Leslie and the woman replaces it in the cradle before coming around the desk. “If you like, I can see about using the foundation to secure a place to live? It isn't exactly unprecedented for metas to have issues of these kinds. What was your Uncle's issue with you staying in the yard?”
Tom shrugs as he starts undoing the binder clips on the right-hand side, slipping out of the hat and poncho. “Zoning won't allow anybody to live there full time, and as crooked as the cops here in the alley can be he tries pretty hard not to give them any excuses.”
Thompkins then spends an hour getting as full a picture of what the boy currently is as she can while she rolls the current problems around in her head.
She ends up getting a blood sample from his tongue. She can't get a needle through anywhere else. His urine and fecal tests were strange as well. Mostly in the sense that there is absolutely nothing left in the samples that is anything but inert plus whatever water was needed to expel them. Anything that could be used to maintain life is simply being stored, seemingly indefinitely.
Without his sandals, he is currently seven feet tall and change. With them, he's nearly seven foot four.
She can't get an accurate weight for him. Her electronic scale only goes to five hundred pounds. The best they can do is have him stand with one foot on the scale and one foot on a bit of wood that will put both his feet at the same height, check the weight on the scale, and double it. Not very accurate, but it gives them a probable weight of somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred and fifty-six pounds.
Finally, once she has poked and prodded him to her satisfaction, she motions back over to her desk.
“Do you have any pains or problems that wouldn't show on the physical side of things we've touched on? Headaches, or heartburn, anything troubling you like that? Any small problems now could be big problems just getting started.”
Tom sighs as he looks down at the visitor's chair.
There is just no way in hell that thing made out of cushions, wire, and a few pieces of stamped aluminum was going to hold him.
“No, Doctor Thompkins. All my problems right now are pretty mundane really. Nowhere to live. No clothes that fit. The food bill. That I am trying to finish my junior year remotely because they don't have a desk that would fit me and...”
Leslie's eyes narrow, just a touch. “And what?”
Tom seems to shrink a bit. Well, as much as he can anyway. “... And my uncle got the impression that the school wasn't really excited about having a meta that looked the part in their halls. He wasn't sure what to do, so he suggested the remote schooling thing and they leaped on it like starving animals. But it isn't easy to do all the work without access to the teachers or even the internet. Lou stops by the school and picks up a bundle for me every day, and drops it off at the school every morning, but...”
Leslie is holding the bridge of her nose and counting to ten. Mostly angry with herself, if she's honest. Every problem he's having is painfully predictable, given the direction his meta state is taking him, where he lives, and the current climate toward 'inhuman' metas that exists in Gotham.
“But it isn't easy when you have no way to ask a question.”
“Yeah.” He rumbles softly, head down. He so obviously wishes that he wasn't part of the problem, and yet is just at the end of his rope. To the point that he is probably about to break down and ask for help. Some might say that 'humility' would be good for him, but Leslie rather thinks that no sixteen-year-old kid deserves the humiliation of having to beg to live.
“That's a tough situation, Tom. I wish you had come to me sooner. The Foundation isn't a money tree, but some custom clothing when needed due to meta body issues and a basic place to stay so you aren't on the streets is absolutely part of what this is supposed to do. I can get you some numbers of people to call that I know are discrete, talented, and willing to work with the foundation. As for your place to live, let me ask you this. Do you actually want to live at the scrapyard?”
At his look of confusion, she continues. “I only ask because I am willing to believe we can make that exemption for you work. Also because based on what you've already said I think it is safe to say that you are going to be hard on things for a while, until you figure out just how strong and, well, big you are. Can you think of a better environment than a scrapyard for that? Unless it's some high-end hospital meta-center like STAR labs or something that would cost a mint?”
She shrugs. “As for your food issue, that is a health concern that is only this ridiculous because of your meta-human nature. I can promise you that at the very least, we can supplement your food bill.”
She spends a few more minutes trying to reassure the kid until she has to close things down because the hour she allotted is long past, and she'll have another patient coming in soon.
>>
Saturday, at the scrapyard. 8:22 AM.
The sound of somebody beating on the door distracts him. He knows that Lou is in the yard somewhere, he'd brought breakfast and they'd eaten together before he started on his classwork again. But Lou wouldn't pound on the door like this.
He stands, and the trailer shifts just a bit. Makes his way to the door, and opens it.
“My uncle is out working with the crane if you... need... Who are you?”
He stumbles a bit because he is pretty sure that this guy in an expensive three-piece suit didn't come here to look for matching hubcaps.
The man smiles, shaking his head for a moment. “I'll be damned. I genuinely thought this was somebody pulling a fast one but you really are a meta, aren't you?”
He collects himself, and in a practiced motion, he opens his briefcase, removes a clipboard, and sets the clipboard back down on the briefcase. Then nudges the pen stuck to the clipboard. “My name is Gabriel Porter, but you can call me Gabe. Assuming you are Thomas Wierzowski, I'll need your signature and that of the property owner for the exemption for you and a family of not exceeding five to live on the property as long as your particular meta... issue. Is still extant.”
Tom can see his uncle walking over curiously and signs it. “I'll be honest, sir. I wasn't sure what I was expecting but a response this quick was beyond my wildest imaginings.”
The man nods. “They don't bother to use it often, but when they do the Wayne Foundation has the political capital to move mountains. This all came in yesterday at four. Had my boss scrambling, I can tell you that.”
His uncle has made it now, and after a quick explanation and a read-through of the document he signs as well. The man hands over their copy, puts his things back in the briefcase, and looks up at Tom one last time while shaking his head with a confused expression on his face. “I suppose it's none of my business. But if you don't mind my asking, how old are you?”
Tom shrugs. “Sixteen, sir. I'll be seventeen come October.”
The man shakes his head again as he turns to make his way to his car.
“Jesus. Good luck, kid.”
They watch the man go, and then his uncle looks at him curiously. “So we're really going to try to find somewhere on the lot for you to set up a trailer or something? I have a few sewer connections, and it isn't hard to run power lines. Might need to use tanks for water...” He seems to be thinking a bit as the pause lengthens. “The way you're going though, we'll probably need to wait until your growth evens off and then build something custom. Especially if we want it to ever move again once you've been using it for a while.”
They both roll that around in their heads for a bit and then his uncle grins.
“Well, it isn't particularly high-tech and we'll need to get busy with something more permanent soon because this won't fly come fall. But, well, you've seen MASH, right?”
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Author's note:
Have another.