Aquaman: Land Locked #1

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Issue #1 - The Drain
Written by Fantomas
Cover by: Roy Flinchum
Edited by: Jay McIntyre

--1--

I wake up in the bath. Again. Bad dreams.

No. Not even that. Good dreams. Good dreams that make the whole goddamn world look broken. I dream in vivid colors of aquamarine and gold, when all the walls of the cold, dry apartment around me are in shades of grey.

What goddamn hurts is that they aren't just dreams. They're memories.

And that hurts. That damn hurts.

It is 1959. A Tuesday morning in downtown San Diego.

The figure slumped in the bath rises. Back cracks as it is straightened. A hand that is not yet shaking (but will do) reaches around to ease it.

The bath is old. The lining is cracked and worn. The tin beneath is showing. The figure - hunched, bleary eyed - reaches down and yanks the chain, bringing the molding black plug out with a schlurping sound, like a fat man eating a hot dog with too much sauce.

The water drains away. Arthur Curry watches it. When all the water is gone, he dries himself. He takes his time. There is much to think about.

Arthur Curry is old. He passed his fiftieth year (alone) some time back. Hair that once fell rich and thick about his shoulders is no thin and wispy, the regal gold strands now deposed by treacherous white fibers. His face is not proud any more. Nobility sits resigned behind a mask of weathered furrows. Wrinkled creases and thin pale grooves.

He walks with a slight limp. He posture is upright, but only just.

Arthur Curry is just old. The Aquaman is dead.

The man - and he is just a man, now - pulls on some faded grey slacks. An ill-fitting white shirt and tie. He looks about his apartment just as his hand touches the door.

His shoulders slump. He heads for work.

Aquaman died when I stopped breathing. When I choked on the waters of the sea and I surfaced. I came up for air.

Arthur Curry was what was left. Not Orin II. Not Aquaman. Just Arthur. Just me.

Land-locked.

There is a radio in the apartment room next door. It can be heard through the paper-thin walls with the washed-out green wallpaper as Arthur Curry walks down the corridor towards the rickety building staircase.

Arthur Curry hears the radio, but only just. Only murmurs. Whispers. The newscast becomes hushed rumors. The crooning Presley becomes a song sung distractedly just under the breath.

Aquaman would have heard it. Would have heard it clear.

There were lots of things Aquaman could do that Arthur Curry couldn't. Like breathe. Real breathing.

Arthur Curry walks on. The man on the radio newscast coughs and shuffles his papers. His voice just faintly carries to Arthur as his greying head disappears down the staircase.



"...reports of unusual lights in the waters have been coming in from residents along the coast...President Eisenhower has reaffirmed the US' commitment to maintaining the current peace, reassuring reporters that America will not back down to the Russian threat...meanwhile Hawaii holds out against proposals to become the 50th state, citing the rising sea levels there as a more pressing concern..."

There is a hissing and a blare of sudden static. The man in Room 208 is changing the dial.

He wants to listen to Chuck Berry.

--2--

Arthur Curry is standing at a urinal. The porcelain bowl is chipped and the wall it is mounted on is rough, the stained piping running over the cracked plaster only partially covering the scrawl of society's foulest voices.

A man next to him, a protruding stomach just lightly touching the copper pipe that runs from his urinal, groans and lets out a slow, flatulent gasp of fart. He grins proudly and winks at Arthur.

Arthur says nothing. He finishes up, and washes his hands.

He is very aware of the water as it trickles down the drain of the basin. Aware of the fat man's piss as it drains...away...

He notices one of the crudely written slurs on the plaster wall as he turns to leave the public toilets.
It says 'AQUMANN WAS A BENdRER'. Beneath it is an illustration. A figure in a bright orange shirt and bright orange leggings bent double over.

Arthur sighs, slowly. He leaves the public toilets.

Mera is dead. Aqualad is dead. Vulko is dead. Quisp is dead. The Ocean Master is dead.

They're all dead. Every last Atlantean. Every last sentient being of the sea.

I made a choice. The land or the oceans.

I could only save one.

I killed them. And I killed Aquaman in the process.

Arthur Curry comes to the end of the block and leans heavily against a tall steel girder.

A building is going up. Society is going down around it.

He lights a cigarette and smokes it carefully. His hand was shaking. It stops now. Arthur Curry collects himself.

There's a man selling newspapers at a stand not far from Arthur. He buys one, and instantly regrets it.

Everyone has problems. That's all the newspapers are these days. A mother of five stabbed through the throat with a bread knife by some beatnik' punk over a handbag. Two big corporate firms say they're dockside warehouses are flooding. In small print it adds that a number of apartment blocks on the same street had to be closed as the water levels rose. The usual Russian panic.

Everyone has problems. Everyone wants help.

Arthur Curry isn't a hero.

He discards the paper. Looks out, out to the thin line of blue sea visible on the horizon. To where the docks are.

I left the oceans a long time ago. When I stopped needing them to breath. When I couldn't swim so fast. When I couldn't hold my trident any more. When it became too uncomfortable to think about water when you've seen Mera's hanging cadaver, just twirling lazy spirals, caught on an underwater current...

And yet still I live in San Diego. Where I can see the sea from my apartment block. Where I can still hear the gulls cawing every morning.

I'm torturing myself. And I deserve it.

He doesn't want to be late for work. The office is dull, and drab, and grey, but it gives him something to do. Something else to think about.

And he does not want to be left with his own thoughts today.

His tie feels tight today. He loosens it. Turns his back on the sea once more and walks home.

--3--

I'm walking down an alleyway. A concrete crevasse, all dog droppings and shadows and hard, hard stone ground.
Don't know why I'm walking this way. It isn't on my way to work. The office is a few blocks eastways. If I'm late again I'll get fired.

Spotty-faced kid with a high peaked baseball cap turned all the way around walks out of a run-down pizzeria. He is wearing some kind of outfit. Maybe a delivery (costume) outfit.

He's walking in a kind of daze. There's a roll of greens clutched in his hands. Maybe his first paycheck.

He's engrossed by the stuff. Perhaps it's the first time he's held so much money. Perhaps he knows just what comic book he wants to buy at the shop on the corner.

The cash is grubby, and it stinks of pizza. But it's green, and it's got presidents on it.

Doesn't take long for the neighborhood to notice. Not in an alleyway like this.

I remember why I know this alleyway. Realize why I'm walking down it. Remember the damn steel locker, remember every last grunt, every last strain (the Aquaman used to be strong, Arthur is not) it took to push that goddamned steel locker into the water.

The alleyway hides a house. Abandoned. Derelict. An empty shell of a building. A ruined husk.
Vagrants don't squat there. Can't. It's flooded. Floor crumbled long time ago. Revealed an underground pool.

A seemingly fathomless pit of cold, dank, murky grey water.

The pool I pushed the locker into. The locker where I stashed the Aquaman's mail shirt.

The pool where Aquaman was buried. Not in the oceans, but in the dirty waters of the city.

Arthur turns to leave. To walk out of the alleyway. To turn his back on that house, and the pool and the locker and the mail shirt below.

Two figures block his way. Gangly youths. Gurning. Testosterone-driven children. Mock-James Dean hair greased high over acned foreheads. The oil on their adolescent faces shines in the bland, weary light of a rising San Diego sun.

Leather jackets rustle. Rusty switch-blades flick out, tooth-pick pieces in awkward, sweaty fists.

Damn kids. Bastard children of a rotten city.

They aren't going for me. It's the other kid they want, the one with the roll of fresh greens still clutched in his palms with a childish reverence.

The two hoods close in. The kid sees them at last and squeals. I tense. Freeze. The hoods move past me. Grab the kid.

I'm a coward. Arthur Curry is a coward. He's no hero.

They grab the kid and they beat him to the ground. No knife-work. There's either no need or they simply forget the clumsy tools in their hands.

They knock his head back against the concrete wall and they kick him down until he is bent and crying among the dog-shit and the empty cardboard boxes that litter the ground.

A man in the pizzeria - maybe the kid's employer, maybe his father, maybe just an average citizen of San Diego city - watches through the grimy glass window. He chews lazily on a burger and does nothing.

This damn city doesn't help its own.

I don't help my own.

They take his money. Tear his nice, new delivery-boy outfit as well. They take them and run, leaving him bawling with his high-peaked cap on his head and bloody snot streaming from his nose.

He yells. Crawls and spits at Arthur through his tears. Calls him a phony. Calls him a damn yellow belly jerk.

And I just stand there and listen to the rushing of the waters. It's thundering in my ears. It always is. The oceans, rushing, rushing. Roaring to be heard.

Damn. This city needs an Aquaman.

Damn.

--4--

A scream. A low snort of laughter. Footsteps, running, hard.

The girl yells as she trips, legs twisting as she is sent sprawling to the ground. She flounders, her hands scrabbling and cutting themselves on the hard concrete of the sidewalk.

It is night. Darkness makes the city look almost venerable. It hides the scum and the stains. Makes the place look clean. Washed in the inky black.

The girl struggles and a heel snaps. She makes to rise. A hand catches her. Twists her long auburn pony-tail up around gnarled fingers. Yanks her head back.
A knee is pressed to her back. She lies trapped, sprawled, wide-eyed.

A silence. A breathless, cruel silence. The man on the girl's back is like a mountain. A solid mound of flesh and muscle and hard bone.
He grunts, playfully. The girl has fallen silent. She is shaking.
It isn't the man on top of her she's scared of.

A buzz. A burst of static. And then the disembodied voice of Johnny Cash warbles a garbled refrain, and is suddenly changed. The voice of an aged and stuffy newscaster announces "...-eath of the Blue Beetle, the mysterious vigil-..." and is cut off.

The Radio. He's thin. Stick thin. His features look as though they've been penciled on.

He emerges from the shadows into the light of a tall street lamp. He is wearing a dusty black suit. His eyes are quizzical.

The girl knows about him. Knows the story behind the name. The seemingly random bursts of frequency that emanate from the gaunt man's chest.

The Radio had a fight with the Puerto Rican mafia one time. They surprised him, tied him down, cut open his chest and drilled a radio into his rib-cage. Sewed him back up. Said that way they'd know when he was coming.

A big joke. Embarrassing. Almost fatal. Didn't work. The Radio got them back, one by one. Used a saw to take off their ears. Said that way they wouldn't know when he was coming.

Then he left them in a warehouse and burnt it down. Burnt every last one of them.

Just in case, he said.

He didn't speak so much. But his radio was the last thing many people heard in this grim, hellish city.

The girl rocked backwards. The man mountain held her fast. He was still pressing her to the ground, but he wasn't laughing any more. No-one does when the Radio is around.

The Radio nodded. A deliberate gesture. From the shadows another figure emerged to join him. A shorter figure, in a fine double-breasted suit.
He could have come from a casino game. Well dressed. Wealthy. Not legitimately.

The Radio was to be feared. The figure now stood beside him was...something else.

His face had a pale, pallid complexion, and seemed almost flat, or blunted. Snake-like. The expression was blank. Utterly blank.

He tutted, slowly. The noise seemed to echo about the street.

"Candy. Why do we do this? You know the rules."
The girl didn't struggle. She looked into the face of the man with the pale face and said nothing. She couldn't.

He tilted his head. An awkward, angular movement. It made the girl think of a documentary she'd once seen at the cinema. Of a viper, snapping up its prey. It looked like that.

A crackle. "...three dead and another nine in hospital being treated for serious injuries. The attack seemed to have been unprovo-". The Radio didn't flicker at the outburst.

"I don't ask people the same question twice," the pale-faced figure drawled. His accent was clipped. Maybe German, or Austrian. "You know that."

The girl bleated, and then choked. "I couldn't! Couldn't...do it! I tried, Cheef, really I...ah-"

The pale-faced figure had moved. Signed something. The Radio had reacted instantly, a black pistol suddenly appearing in his hand, slipped out from under his suit coat.

Without hesitation, he fired it. The girl screamed. A bloody hole had appeared in her shoulder.

"It can be fixed," the pale-faced figure said, dismissively. The Radio had already holstered the gun.

Further up the street, a policeman stood, his eyes closed. There was a bulge of green in his breast pocket. Oil to grease the gears of the city law. To keep the federal lawman in his place, while the true law worked. The criminal law.

"The next time you decide you can't do something you remember who you are working for."

The girl looked up, biting her lower lip. Hard. Blood was oozing from her shoulder thick now, in dark gloopy splashes.

The pale-faced figure nodded. "Good. I am glad we had this talk, Candy."

He signaled to the man mountain that leant on the girl, pressing the breath out her, his greasy hand pawing at her hair.
The crushing weight eased, reluctantly, as the man withdrew.

"You get back to the mayor's office, Candy," the pale-faced man said, curtly. "and you do your job. Make him happy. That way he can keep me happy."

They left her. There was a burst of static and then the sound of a car door opening.

The girl sank down and cried. The car door slammed shut.

She would get up. She would bandage the wound. Patch it up. Cover it up. Conceal it.

Then she would go down to the city hall. To the mayor's office. He would be expecting her, the foul, lecherous, gut-swinging dog that he was. He would let her in. Would let her do...anything to him.

The Le Chiffre - the pale-faced man - ran San Diego. Of that there was no question.

--6--

The city is dark outside. The aged figure of Arthur Curry glances over at it from where he is sat, at the foot of his weary bed.

The radio is on, softly, in the corner of the room. He doesn't like to listen to it, because it will tell him the same story that the newspapers tell him.

The city is broken. The people are crying.

They need saving.

The radio tells him about an attack on a retirement home just on the outskirts of the city. Three dead. Nine hospitalized. No motive. No reason.

It tells him more. Of course there is more.

"...strange lights that have been reported by fishermen and ships just off the West Coast. Similar phenomena appear to be being described all over the globe..."

"...police seem to be making no attempt to..."

"...Communist aggressors even advancing on American interests...war seems inevitable..."

"...brutally assaulted..."

"...Kord, head of Kord Industries, met an untimely end yesterday when his car over-turned, badly burning his body and breaking his spine in several places. Ted Kord was revealed to be the mysterious vigilante, the 'Blue Beetle', at the time of his retirement two years ago..."

"...stabbing her through the throat..."

"...levels rising drastically on the Japanese coasts, forcing hundreds to emigrate east into America..."

"...not the first 'superhero' to die a mundane and unexpected death in recent years..."

"...it seems these truly are dark times for San Diego and the USA as a whole..."

"...where are America's supermen?"

The radio went dead. Arthur held the power plug in one hand for a moment, and then dropped it.

He sat still on his bed.

Then, rising, he walked to the cramped bathroom and ran another bath.

Damn.



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