A shadow.
An enormous shadow covered in gray fur was barreling through the dark streets of New York City.
He’d heard an explosion, and his bed had tipped over sideways. Confused, the shadow had bolted.
Sometimes he swam through rivers and roamed aimlessly through the night in search of someone he knew.
Sometimes he heard screams go up around him, but the shadow took no interest in them.
After all, their voices sounded nothing like the “small people” he knew.
The little one called him Charlie and fed him every day.
The one who called him Cookie was a person with red hair who’d been showered with cheers and applause along with him.
Then there were the darker ones who followed the smaller figure around, calling him “young master.”
He couldn’t find them anywhere.
Strange territory, unknown landscapes.
The foreign shapes of skyscrapers surrounded the shadow. They frightened him, and he kept lumbering along, searching for somewhere peaceful.
Every so often, he caught the scent of food, but the small people nearby screamed and scrambled to get away.
Over the past few years, the shadow had learned that screams were bad, so he left those places and kept traveling through town, avoiding the sound.
✦ ✦ ✦
Shortly before dawn, he saw a small person wrapped in gray fur leave a building.
The shadow started to follow the gray figure, but then he caught the scent of dried meat drifting from the building. This was one of his favorite foods, and he stopped.
As the shadow slowly started toward the smell, he saw the door open and shut.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Goddammit, Ladd… You and Graham keep slamming the doors, and now they’re all out of whack. At least they’re double doors, so I guess we only really need one of them to work…”
The voice belonged to a man dressed in white. The shadow didn’t understand what he was saying.
For his part, the man was focused on the doors, and he hadn’t noticed the shadow. He was about to lock up, but just then there was a heavy thump, and he saw a gray figure through the glass.
“Huh? Doc? Did you forget something?” the man said. His hand was on the doorknob, but he promptly realized that something wasn’t right.
The gray shape was much bigger than the doctor he knew.
“Wha—?”
He froze. In that instant, the thing pushed the door open—
✦ ✦ ✦
—and when the man in white registered the enormous shadow, he passed out before he even had time to scream.
✦ ✦ ✦
On the morning of the second day of the Ra’s Lance casino party, there was an odd uproar in New York.
Just the other day, the city had been subjected to an attack by strange airplanes. Now, before it had had a chance to recover, there had been a string of sightings of a monster.
A traffic accident had happened near the casino venue the previous night, and odd things had begun to occur immediately afterward.
✦ ✦ ✦
Some said that when they woke that morning and went outside, they’d noticed a weird, wild smell hanging over the street.
Others said that a man with nowhere to go who’d bunked down on the side of the road had seen an enormous shape barreling down the street.
Still others said a black mass had been spotted swimming in the middle of the East River in the light of the morning sun.
That there were footprints on the riverbank that belonged to something far bigger than a human.
That they’d heard a monstrous roaring in the night.
✦ ✦ ✦
Various rumors flew every whichway, but the updates stopped coming before the sun had fully risen, at which time the confusion died down. There hadn’t been many witnesses to begin with, and nobody had the spare time to entertain themselves with theorizing when the Depression was making life miserable.
Some of them might have been suffering enough to think, If there’s a monster out there, I hope it destroys the world. However, people like that definitely didn’t have the time, money, or emotional energy to swap rumors.
✦ ✦ ✦
On a street somewhere in Manhattan, though, there was a group of people who had little cash but plenty of emotional energy.
“Say, Miria. I just thought of something pretty amazing.”
“Ooh, Isaac, that’s amaaazing!”
“You think? It’s all thanks to you, Miria!”
“Yay, I’m so glad! Thank you, Isaac!”
The couple’s conversation seemed to be meshing, but it wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, it hadn’t even begun.
At first glance, Isaac and Miria appeared to be wandering through town without a plan, but they were currently working two jobs. Although the locals who often saw them around probably wouldn’t have believed it, the pair was helping out at a clinic run by a doctor named Fred, and they were also helping the Martillo Family during the casino party at Ra’s Lance.
It was an odd position to be in, working a public job during the day and an under-the-table gig by night, but nothing about their complicated situation showed in Miria’s innocent voice. “Well, what is it? What amazing thing did you think up, Isaac?”
“Heh-heh-heh! Just wait till you hear this, Miria. I’ve thought up a no-fail way to win at gambling. A surefire method!”
“Woooow!” Miria’s eyes shone.
Isaac went on, sounding proud of himself. “Here’s how it goes: First, let’s say I bet a dollar, and I lose.”
“You lost? I thought it was a surefire method to win.”
“…You’re right. It’s a surefire method, but I lost. Miria, what’s going on here?”
“Yes, it’s a mystery! It’s horror! It’s suspense!”
Isaac muttered and mumbled for a little while. Then he clapped his hands together melodramatically. “I get it! I’ll bet someone cheated! I must be gambling against a flimflammer!”
“Eeek! He’ll trick you!”
“Hey, it’s all right, Miria. With my foolproof strategy, no matter how much I lose to a flimflam man, I’ll have more lettuce than I know what to do with! I’ll be able to buy back the Eiffel Tower, and we’ll have a safe full of insurance money!”
“How keen! You’re Victor Lustig! Thérèse Daurignac!”
Miria had given the names of a con man who’d sold the Eiffel Tower and a woman who’d launched a pension plan as part of an audacious fraud, but for some reason, Isaac blushed rather happily. Then he went on explaining his stratagem.
“Anyhow, after I lose that dollar, I’ll bet two dollars. If I lose those, I’ll bet four. If I do that ten times in a row, I’ve gotta win once, see? And if I do it a hundred times, what do you suppose my bet will be like?”
“Ummm… One, two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, one twenty-eight, two fifty-six, five twelve, ten twenty-four, twenty forty-eight, forty ninety-six… Oh no, Isaac! I lost track of what round I was on.”
“Don’t worry, Miria! So did I! Either way, I’ll pull out a win at some point! If I win on a thousand twenty-four, I’m scared to see just how far my winnings would outstrip my losses!”
“Hooray! Isaac, you’re riiich!”
The two were elated for a purely imaginary reason.
Unfortunately, today there was a man behind them ready to dash cold water on their fun.