The Small Gods Club

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“You got to really want it, kid.”
“I’m not a kid.”
“You prefer I call you punk?”
I didn’t, so I kept my mouth shut.
At the moment, trudging down a Brooklyn alleyway that had focused the first bitter rain of fall into a stinging fusillade, even opening my mouth was like trying to drink from a fire hose—totally useless. Like the first heavy rain of the season always did, it would wash the city clean.
However, while it was happening, the dark storm had turned the early October evening to a dense midnight that baffled even the streetlights. It washed away a summer’s worth of car exhaust and overripe garbage and, based on the nose-curling stench, this alley was the A-Number One flush pipe for the whole borough.
No storm-ridden night and cute little invitation to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry like Harry Potter. Not that I thought I was a wizard, but becoming a superhero? I wanted that plenty enough to be following this old dude through the torrent and letting him call me kid. I’d spent two long years beating the pavement of New York hoping for a single break, even the tiniest clue.
I’d known they had to be here somewhere.
Batman, Superman, Spiderman, all the greats had worked here. Okay, I know they were fictional, not a total dweeb, but if superheroes were anywhere on earth, where else would they be?
Tokyo?
Rubber monster land?
Give me a break.
Greatest city on the planet? Oh yeah. Definitely in the Big Apple.
What more did I need to know?
Though, as I trudged along behind the man I’d spent the last month dogging after into a darkened alley, the glamour was wearing off pretty fast. Remember the flush-pipe bit? Yeah, ankle deep and growing. But how wet can you really get anyway?
What I don’t get is that right now, at this very moment, it felt like two years of finding squat had to be easier than not turning around, leaving the dark alley and my taciturn guide, and going back to hide at my job working in the deep stacks at New York Public Library.
I straightened my slicker—should have worn a wetsuit—and my resolve. Then I focused my attention where it should be, not doing a faceplant on the slime-slick brick.
For two years, I’d spent every spare minute I had on the streets. Two years of crappy hotdog-stand dogs and enough salt pretzels to season Lake McConaughy. Biggest lake in Nebraska? Come on people, it’s right there in the middle of the country. Anyway, two years of no joy and he was questioning whether or not I wanted it?

Initial Publication: May 30, 2022 (Blaze Ward Presents: Small Gods)
Edit / Re-release: March 1, 2025
Print pages: 80