When last we met, our heroes dealt with the aftermath of a
brutal winter storm, and had their lives invaded by a frightful figure known as
the Handmade Man.
In his lair beneath the city, Goom takes a defensive
position after taking something from his knitting bag, as large bandaged hands
begin bending his door back. More and
more hands appear, forcing the heavy door, as the beam across it cracks and the
door bursts open. The tunnel beyond is
filled with thousands of the city’s homeless, shoulder to shoulder, as far back
as Goom can see, some sitting atop the shoulders of others, all holding
improvised weapons – pieces of rebar, broken 2x4s, rusty pipes. Every eye is black, a gleaming star sparkling
within. Goom grabs his gun and the
communication radio and bolts out the back way.
The man at the front of the group, speaking with the voice
of Goom’s old drill sergeant, shouts, “STITCH HIM UP!” The horde roars and charges, the intensity of
their footfalls shaking things off shelves.
They chase him through the winding tunnels, the din of screaming all
around. Turning a corner, they crash
over each other like rushing water, not one stopping, as bodies are blindly
crushed under the flow. Taking advantage
of the few extra moments this buys him, Goom scurries into a small service
tunnel, which leads him to a sewer causeway.
The mad horde obliterates all light behind him as they crush into the
small tunnel, a wet crunching noise following him as he exits to the street.
Goom finds himself about two blocks from his usual
exit. With the city still at the mercy
of the snow and ice, there are not many people on the street. He heads towards the group’s original church
meeting place and radios to Morgan that he is fine and indicates his
destination. She informs the others and Morgan,
Gareth, Alex, and Drake convene upon the church with him. Alia joins them as well, her face wrapped in
a scarf to hide the gashes (now stitched up at an emergency clinic) she
received from the man at the pizza parlour.
There are many homeless at the church, though none of them bear any
resemblance to the attackers beneath the city.
They are taking advantage of the food and space heaters that have been
provided, again, by Luthor Grant.
Feeling relatively safe here, Goom launches into the tale of his morning,
and at the mention of the Handmade Man, Alia and Gareth relate their alarming
tales of him as well.
As they discuss, their attention is drawn outside by the
ringing of a bicycle bell. Looking out
the door, they see a tandem bike going by on the sidewalk, ridden by two
enormous goldfish with human limbs. The
piscine cyclists make a hard left, riding right into – and through – the brick
wall of the church, disappearing from view. They all stare dumbly, trying to ascertain if
the others saw what just happened. All
of them agree, though it seems that no one else in the church noticed. Curious, Gareth dashes down and presses his
hand against the wall where the fish disappeared. It feels solid, though it resonates, brick
but not brick. He knocks on it three
times. On the first two strikes, his
fist leaves indentations as though the wall were putty. By the third it is solid brick again, though
it bears the impression of his knuckles, as though the brick had been melted.
Unnerved, Alia wonders if the Handmade Man can take over
anything in the form of a human, printed images, television, sculptures, and
realising that they’re standing in a church with several statues of Mary,
Jesus, and other biblical figures, panics.
They decide to leave and head to a coffee shop, Goom being careful to
conceal his large firearm under his coat.
Wally is in the lab of his new apartment, scared and
weeping, when the hair stands up on the back of his neck – there is someone
else in the apartment, walking around his living room. Arming himself with a substantial piece of glassware,
he steps out. There is a woman, her back
to him, wearing a red dress, black pumps, her dirty-blonde hair in a short
coiffure. Wally asks if he can help her,
and she turns, revealing her… face?
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| Le Viol (The Rape) by René Magritte, 1935 |
Where her face should be is a woman’s naked torso. She casually sits on his couch and starts
smoking. Out of her vagina mouth. She reaches toward the coffee table and a
crude ashtray appears, looking like a child’s art project. When she doesn’t do anything beyond that,
Wally returns to the lab to make sure he hasn’t accidentally ingested some
awful substance. When he returns to the
living room, her head is lolled back and she is twitching. Again, Wally tries to address her, and again
she does not reply. Giving up and
figuring he’s hallucinating, Wally goes to take a shower.
A couple of minutes later, the door opens. He’d locked it. The woman walks in and begins to
undress. Wally steps out of the shower
(which isn’t difficult, as the bathroom has one of those walk in deals with no doors) grabs the lid off the toilet tank, and swings. His arms reverberating with the impact, she
falls forward, and Wally is treated to the sight of a woman’s face on her lower
back. She starts yelling at him, from
her back face, berating him, and calling him Kenny. Wally, wanting nothing further to do with any
of this, grabs his clothes and exits the bathroom, using a chair to jam the
door shut from outside. The door rattles
and the woman’s voice keeps going, soon joined by a man’s voice, and they have
a heated discussion that leads Wally to believe that Kenny is this woman’s son
and that he’d hurt or killed her. Wally
dresses, and catches sight of the ash tray which bears the crude inscription “To
Mom ❤ Kenny”. Wally calls Gareth.
While the group is walking to the coffee shop, Gareth and
Wally discuss what is going on in the new apartment. Realising that they are not far away, the
church and Wally’s new building are both on 21st street, the group decides
to visit Wally instead of Starbucks.
Drake gets a cab for himself, Alex, Alia, and Morgan. Gareth, still fuming from their argument,
opts to walk the ten blocks, and Goom joins him.
When they arrive, first the cab group, followed a few
minutes later by Gareth and Goom, they are greeted by the building’s doorman
and shown up to the 23rd floor.
While they wait for the walkers, Alia turns on the news. The leading stories are:
- Konstantyne has disappeared and
the police are looking for him. EMTs on
the stage saw a corpse, assumed to be a stunt man, and that body is also
missing. Police are questioning
Konstantyne’s manager, Lanny Dorkin.
There are rumors that the illusionist fled the scene in a limo, but
later ditched the ride and has been MIA ever since. There are pending civil and criminal charges,
involuntary manslaughter, for the audience deaths, the death of the assumed
stuntman, and the ensuing cover up.
- Luthor Grant continues to hand
out emergency supplies to the city’s poor.
He is joined for a photo op by Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio, with
their arms around each other’s shoulders, shaking hands. The mayor-elect has joined Grant in his
humanitarian efforts and has nothing but praise for the man.
- Local gas companies are looking
for the source of an assumed leak as people in a significant portion of the
city are reporting hallucinations.
At this last story, when an outline of the effected area is
shown, Wally goes pale. The area is
centered on his old building, which until now was Hank’s centre of operations,
and pretty much aligns with Hank’s area of distribution. Wally’s new building and the church are
within the effected radius.
Once everyone has arrived, they bring each other up to
speed, discussing their hallucinations (which Gareth and Drake both recognise
as being tied to surrealist artworks) and the threat of the Handmade Man. Gareth suggests that the Man might be one of
the Vanishers, and they all agree that Madame Butterfly might know something
about it. Drake gives her a call.
It turns out she is very familiar with the Handmade Man,
although she’s horrified at the mention, as in the 1970s she had assembled
another group similar to theirs, and they brought him out of his realm and
killed him down in the subway beneath the city.
As she’d mentioned before, these creatures are sensitive to iron, and
the group in the 70s had pinned the Man to the train tracks using a giant iron
lance. What was left of his body would
have been in the area of the gas leak, and though it has been quiet for the
last 30 years or so, Yuri-ko suggests that they check down there. She also offers that if any of the group wish
it, they can shelter in her “cage”, designed to keep out the Vanishers.
Armed with this bit of knowledge, the group tries to figure
out what to do next. Wally is convinced
that the remains of the Handmade Man lie beneath his old building, and that the
drug “Sand” which had excited Hank so much is connected to the influence of
this powerful entity. Goom sticks around
Wally’s new place, as Goom has nowhere safe to stay at the moment, and Alex decides
to pause there as well for a time. When
the others leave, Wally goes out to buy food for the new apartment and to check
out his old apartment, to see what can be salvaged.
Drake invites Alia back to the Waldorf, giving her the
opportunity to pick up a higher set of clientele, businessmen stranded in Manhattan by the
storm. Drake returns to his room and
begins making calls.
Gareth returns to his apartment and removes any artworks
that could be conduits for the Handmade Man, stashing them in a closet. He then goes out around the city to dumpster
dive, hoping to find scraps of iron that can be used to arm the group against
their new foe.
Morgan similarly goes home, removing knick-knacks and art
that seem risky. She lies down and
naps. While she sleeps, Morgan dreams
that she is riding the Ellis Island
ferry. She is doing a Tarot spread for
another passenger, a man, who looks as though he is out of time, his attire
suggesting someone living during the turn of the 20th century. She flips over a card, the Inverted Handmade Man. This is not a good sign, she tells her
customer. Suddenly there is screaming at
the bow of the boat. The cause is not
hard to miss. Standing in the river, water
rushing into its gaping mouth, is the Statue of Liberty. A voice bellows from her, “I AM A HANDMADE
MAN”
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| You know, close enough and just as horrifying. |
