Early morning.
Gotham.
Beneath the skyscrapers lay the slums.
This shantytown was the kind of place where even the police refused to patrol alone.
The tin roofs looked like scars across a mangy scalp, patched together at random and tangled with clotheslines, discarded mattresses, and a broken sofa whose owner was long gone, its surface stained with a dark brown patch that definitely did not look like coffee.
The air was thick with mold, sour rice, cheap cigarettes, and a cloying sweetness, as if something were quietly rotting nearby.
Leon crouched atop the highest abandoned water tower.
The iron framework had rusted down to its bare skeleton, and when the wind passed through it, the whole structure gave off a low wail, like air blowing across the mouth of a bottle.
He untied the first bag of money.
Hundred-dollar bills, neatly stacked, smelling of ink.
In Gotham’s slums, that scent was more fragrant than bread, more fragrant than women, more fragrant than anything else.
Because it could buy all of those.
Leon did not dump the entire bag at once.
He grabbed a handful, flicked his wrist, and scattered it like fish food.
The bills drifted down like green snow, scattering toward the west.
He grabbed another handful and threw it east.
Another, north.
Then he climbed down from the water tower and moved slowly along the tin roofs of the shantytown, scattering handfuls from the bag every few steps, evenly and silently.
Below were the masses.
In the easternmost corner, a homeless man lay curled in the narrow gap between a tin shed and a brick wall.
The original color of his clothes could no longer be recognized; they had been worn so long that even the dye had been stripped away, leaving only the gray-white fibers beneath.
Beside him, a small fire burned, fed by scraps of wood and old newspapers scavenged from the trash.
The flames were tiny, flickering on the edge of dying, huddled together against the wind.
His eyes were unfocused, his pupils wide as two dry wells.
He had just finished shooting up; the syringe still lay at his feet, a bead of blood dried dark red on the needle.
He leaned against the wall, limp as a ragdoll tossed aside by someone who no longer cared.
A faint smile hung at the corners of his mouth.
A blank smile.
The kind that came from not having to think about anything, as if his brain had been washed clean with bleach.
A green slip of paper drifted down from the sky and floated past his eyes.
His gaze followed it for a long moment, as though it took him forever to confirm that the thing was real.
Then he reached out, pinched the edge of the bill between two fingers, and held it up to the firelight.
The bill was licked by the flames.
Its edges curled rapidly, turning from green to brown, then from brown to black.
Fire climbed along the paper like a thin, bright red snake.
He laughed softly, as if he had seen something only he could see.
He had seen plenty of hallucinations before.
Once, he had seen his own veins crawl out of his arm and turn into vines that wrapped around a lamppost, hanging him in midair.
Another time, he had seen a cat covered in eyes crawl out of the sewer, every eye weeping gasoline before the cat set itself on fire.
So he was used to this sort of thing.
He rolled up the burning hundred-dollar bill with slow, careful movements, as though rolling a handmade cigar.
Then he tossed it into the fire.
The flames suddenly flared.
The green banknote curled into a ball in the fire, the ink faintly sizzling under the heat.
The paper carbonized from the edges inward; Franklin’s face on the hundred-dollar bill wrinkled, blackened, then crumbled apart.
Two meters away, another homeless man leaned against the wall, wrapped in a tattered down jacket pulled from a dumpster.
The jacket was torn at the shoulder, gray stuffing spilling out like the flesh of a festering wound.
He had been dozing, but the sudden abnormal flare of the fire startled him awake.
His eyes snapped open, and his pupils reflected the patch of green vanishing rapidly at the center of the flames.
He froze for one second.
Then his eyes bulged so wide they nearly popped out of their sockets.
“Holy shit! That’s fucking money!”
He sprang up from the ground like a dog whose tail had been stepped on and lunged toward the fire.
His hand thrust straight into the flames, fingers grabbing the edge of the burning paper.
The fire licked across the back of his hand.
The hair there curled instantly and turned black, while his skin shifted from pale to red, then from red to a ghastly translucent white as tissue fluid seeped from beneath.
He felt no pain.
He pinched the edge of the ashes and fished them out of the fire.
Two-thirds of the bill had already burned away, and what remained was still sparking.
He slapped it with his other hand, the sparks searing into his palm, the skin of his palm sticking to the paper ash.
The fire went out.
He held the thing up to his eyes.
It was a black lump of ash with curled edges, still barely retaining the general shape of a banknote.
With one gentle touch of his finger, the blackened parts crumbled into powder and sifted through his fingers, falling into the muddy water below, floating on the surface like a thin layer of coal dust that might scatter with the slightest breeze.
Blisters had already risen across the back of his burned hand, transparent and swollen with pale yellow fluid, each surrounded by a ring of unhealthy red.
He did not look at his hand.
He stared at the ashes for a long time.
Then he wiped his hand on his pant leg, smearing ash and bits of burned skin across the fabric, leaned back against the wall, and closed his eyes as if nothing had happened.
The homeless man who had shot up still leaned nearby, that blank smile hanging on his face.
The fire continued to burn, scraps of wood crackling in the flames.
He did not remember what had just burned.
He would not remember tomorrow either.
The day after that, he might not even remember where he had been today.
That was fine.
In this place, memory was a luxury.
The clearer you remembered, the more painful it was to keep living.
In another direction, in the alley across from the convenience store, a man squatted at the base of the wall.
The cuffs of his shirt were frayed, and the collar was worn, but anyone could still tell it had once been decent clothing.
Oxford cloth, light blue, with needle marks on the left side of the chest where a brand tag had been torn away.
He squatted there with his knees pressed against his chest and his hands in his pockets.
In his right pocket was a steel pipe he had picked up from a construction site.
It was about forty centimeters long, one end sawed off with a jagged, rusty edge.
He gripped it tightly, his palm sweating.
The sweat mixed with the rust, leaving a sour metallic tang in the air, like licking a battery.
He stared at the convenience store door.
An automatic glass door, with a printed sign reading “No Credit” taped to it, the edges of the paper already curling.
He was calculating.
Go in.
Take bread.
Take water.
Take anything he could shove into his mouth.
He knew the clerk behind the counter.
Back when he still had a decent job and his credit had not collapsed, he would nod to the clerk every day as he passed by.
The clerk would nod back.
Neither of them knew the other’s name, but they nodded twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening.
He felt that probably counted as knowing each other.
The clerk would press the alarm under the counter.
How long would it take for the police to come?
They would not come.
The police in this neighborhood would not respond to a convenience store robbery.
But the clerk had a gun.
He had seen the shotgun under the register.
Last time a homeless man caused trouble at the door, the clerk had placed the gun on the counter without saying a word, and the homeless man had left.
So he had to strike before the clerk could reach for that gun.
Use the steel pipe.
Smash the hand reaching for the gun.
Then grab the food and run.
If he could not run, he would fight for his life.
Just fight for his life.
His life was not worth anything anyway.
A hundred-dollar bill drifted down and landed in the muddy water at his feet.
He lowered his head and looked at it.
Franklin’s face was turned upward, half submerged in muddy water.
The dirty water slowly seeped along the edges of the bill, staining the green ink into a murky dark green.
He stared at that face for a long time.
Long enough for the streetlamp nearby to flicker three times.
Then he released the steel pipe in his pocket.
His fingers opened one by one, and the pipe slid down, pressing against the side of his thigh.
He bent down and picked the banknote up from the muddy water.
Dirty water dripped from its edges onto his frayed cuff.
He used his thumb to wipe the mud off Franklin’s face, but he could not get it clean; the stains had already sunk into the fibers of the paper.
He held the bill up to the streetlamp and checked it.
The watermark was there.
The security thread was there.
It was real.
He folded the bill and stuffed it into his shirt pocket, right against his chest.
Then he stood up, his knees cracking softly, and walked into the convenience store.
The automatic door opened, and the doorbell gave a short electronic chime.
The clerk behind the counter looked up.
The person he nodded to twice a day.
The man walked to the shelf, took a bag of sliced bread and a bottle of mineral water.
The cheapest ones.
He carried them to the checkout counter, pulled the banknote from his shirt pocket, and placed it on the counter.
The bill was wet, muddy, and stuck slightly to the surface, its edges curled.
The clerk looked down at the banknote, then looked up at the man’s face.
He stared for several seconds.
Then he opened the cash register and gave him change: coins, along with a few crumpled one-dollar bills.
He pushed the change, the bread, and the mineral water toward the man.
Neither of them said a word.
The man picked up his things and walked out of the convenience store.
He sat on a concrete block at the alley entrance, tore open the bread packaging, and pulled out a slice.
The crust was a little dry, and chewing it felt like chewing paper.
He chewed very slowly.
Not because he was not hungry, but because he had been hungry for too long.
His stomach had shrunk to the size of a fist, and if he ate too quickly, he would throw up.
The steel pipe was still in his other pocket.
He did not know when the next banknote would drift down.
So he kept it.
At the deepest part of the shantytown, in the area where even the homeless would not gather, there were no corrugated iron sheds and no nests made from scrap cardboard boxes.
There was only a half-collapsed red brick wall and a concrete eave at its base that could barely cover half a body.
Rainwater dripped from the eaves, soaking the foot of the wall into a patch of dark green moss.
On the moss lay a homeless man whose body was already crawling with white maggots.
He lay on his side, knees curled, arms bent, head resting on one hand.
Like a baby in a mother’s womb.
But the skin on his face was gray, his lips were white, and his eye sockets were deeply sunken, like two dried-up wells.
Several wounds covered his body, scattered across his arms, calves, and the outside of his ribs—wounds made by blunt objects, by crushing shoe soles, and by life itself grinding him down bit by bit until he festered.
The skin around the wounds had curled back, revealing dark red flesh beneath, its surface covered in a thin translucent film of pus.
The smell reached several meters away, cloyingly sweet, like overripe fruit left under the sun for three days.
Flies landed on the wound on his calf.
He did not wave them away.
It was not that he did not want to.
He no longer had the strength.
A dog curled up beside him.
It was so dirty that its original coat color could no longer be recognized.
It might once have been yellow, white, or black-and-white spotted.
Now it was a uniform brownish-gray, soaked again and again in muddy water, engine oil, and unknown liquids.
The dog’s belly was large and loose, her nipples swollen and ringed with red marks from nursing puppies.
She had just given birth.
From some unknown corner came the whimpering of puppies, their voices thin as wind blowing through rusty wire.
The dog did not look back.
She curled beside her master, resting her chin in his palm.
The old homeless man’s finger twitched—the final unconscious spasm of muscle before death.
His fingertip touched the dog’s ear.
She raised her head and licked his finger.
That finger was ice-cold, covered in dust, with mud caked beneath the nail.
The dog’s tongue was warm and pink, carrying a thin sheen of moisture.
It was probably the only clean thing in this alley.
The old man’s lips moved.
His voice was faint, light as wind blowing through a crack in corrugated iron.
“You can eat me.”
The dog did not understand.
She only kept licking his finger.
“Thank you for staying with me all this time,” he whispered, his voice dry as sandpaper scraping glass.
“Everyone else is gone. The landlord. The foreman. The one who promised we’d take temporary work together. The docks. The clerk at the convenience store who nodded to me every day. They’re all gone.”
He paused, his Adam’s apple moving as if he were swallowing something.
But there was nothing in his throat.
“Only you are still here. Only you never left me.”
The dog rested her chin in his palm.
That hand was almost entirely without warmth, but the dog did not care.
She rested there, eyes half-closed, her tail slowly sweeping across the ground and kicking up a thin cloud of dust.
“The world doesn’t want me anymore. You still do.”
He closed his eyes.
His hand slid from the dog’s head and fell onto the cold concrete floor, fingers slightly curled, as if still clutching something.
Green fell upon gray, like a leaf from another world.
There was a hole in the pants over his knee, revealing the patella beneath, so thin it was almost nothing but skin over bone.
The bill landed there, its corners lifted by the wind, gently patting the protruding bone.
He did not open his eyes.
He no longer had the strength to pick it up, to spend it, to use it.
Money was useless to the dead.
A hand suddenly reached in from the side and snatched the bill away.
The hand was very thin, with black dirt under the fingernails and an old knife scar across the web between thumb and index finger.
Its owner was a young man in a hoodie, hood pulled low, revealing only a section of his chin and a freshly healed scratch mark.
He clutched the bill and turned to leave.
The dog bared her teeth—as if her tail had been stepped on, as if her belly had been kicked, as if all her fear and pain had been compressed into one hoarse growl.
Her lips curled back, revealing pink gums and several worn, yellowed canines.
The dog was very old.
Several teeth were missing.
But she still bared them.
The young man turned back, raised his foot, and kicked the dog in the belly.
The dog’s stomach caved in from the blow.
Her body bounced off the ground like a kicked ball, flipped in midair, and slammed into the red brick wall.
Her ribs struck the corner of a brick with a dull thud.
She let out a short shriek—not a bark, but the sound of air being violently squeezed out of the lungs.
Then she fell to the ground, lying on her side, all four legs twitching.
She crawled back up.
She lay there for about five breaths, then pushed against the ground with her hind legs, raising her body bit by bit.
The side of her belly that had been kicked trembled violently, her ribs heaving at an unnatural speed, like the heartbeat of a sparrow trapped in a palm.
One hind leg was lame.
She did not dare let it touch the ground and had to stand on three legs.
But she stood.
Dragging that lame leg, she walked back to her master’s side step by step.
It took her a long time to cross those few meters.
Then she curled up again and rested her chin in the palm that would never move again.
The puppies whimpered from the corner.
The dog did not look back.
She only rested her chin there, eyes half-closed, tail slowly sweeping across the ground.
The dust it stirred up settled over her own paws.
Leon crouched on top of the water tower and emptied the last bag of money.
A few bills remained inside, perhaps four or five hundred dollars.
He pulled them out, folded them, and tucked them into his clothes.
Buzz.
The system chimed again.
Leon’s hand froze in midair.
He crouched atop the water tower with his hands in his pockets, fingers pinching those few bills until his knuckles turned white.
The wind swept through the corrugated iron roofs, carrying up the sounds of people fighting over the money below—shouts, screams, fabric tearing, fists striking flesh.
This time, he stayed silent for a long while.
Then Leon curled his lip and climbed down the wall.
The person who had snatched the money and kicked the dog was already gone.
The bill was gone too.
The dog was still curled beside her master.
Hearing Leon’s footsteps, she lifted her head, a low growl rolling in her throat.
Her lips curled back, exposing those worn, yellowed canines.
Her body was shaking.
Three legs braced against the ground, and the kicked side of her belly still heaved violently.
But she did not retreat.
Leon crouched down.
Eye level with the dog.
He did not reach out to pet her.
He did not say, “It’s okay.” He did not make any of the gestures humans used when trying to comfort animals.
He simply crouched there, pulled three hundred-dollar bills from his pocket, and stuffed them directly into that cooling hand without even folding them.
The bills pressed against the old man’s fingers, their edges fluttering faintly in the wind, as though that hand were still clutching something and refusing to let go.
The dog lowered her head and sniffed the bills.
Ink.
Mud.
Sweat.
Blood.
Then she sniffed her master’s fingers.
Finally, she rested her chin back on the three bills.
Her tail slowly swept across the ground, and the dust settled over Leon’s shoes.
Leon stood up.
He turned around and climbed back up the wall.
When he returned to the top of the water tower, only one hundred-dollar bill remained in his pocket.
The system finally went quiet.
He zipped up his jacket and crouched at the edge of the water tower.
Things he could not see were still happening below.
Wherever the money drifted, people snatched it, hid it, burned it.
Some clutched it while walking into pharmacies; others clutched it while waiting for death.
The sounds of fighting rose from between the corrugated iron sheds, muffled, like people arguing underwater.
Someone cried, someone laughed, someone cursed, and someone prayed.
Leon listened quietly.
He knew the world would not become better because of these few bags of money.
The old homeless man waiting for death at the base of the wall still died.
The dog was still kicked, and the puppies would still whimper for milk.
When they grew a little older, they would also be kicked, and they would also curl up beside someone waiting to die, licking that person’s fingers and resting their chins in a palm that would never move again.
The docks would still break the legs of temporary workers.
Antibiotics would still be out of reach.
Painkillers would still be sold by the bucket—cheap, abundant, addictive.
The streets would always remain here, waiting for the next person to fall.
The operating logic of this city would not change just because a teenager in pajamas scattered a few bags of cash.
But tonight, in some corner of Gotham, someone might be clutching a hundred-dollar bill and sleeping the first sleep of their life where they did not have to think about how they would die tomorrow.
It might be the man with the wet bill tucked against his chest.
It might be the homeless man with blisters across the back of his hand, closing his eyes without saying a word.
It might be some woman Leon never saw, rushing out of a corrugated iron shack, snatching a bill, running back inside, and bracing the door shut behind her.
It might be some child hiding a bill beneath their pillow, staying awake all night out of fear that if they closed their eyes, the money would turn out to be a dream.
That was enough.
Leon stood and stretched his numb legs.
His knees clicked softly.
A gray wind swept past him, carrying the scent of rust, mildew, and that cloying sweetness of something quietly rotting.
The hundred-dollar bill in his pocket pressed against his chest, slightly warm.
He did not look back at the alley.
He turned, climbed down from the water tower, and disappeared into the shadows of the shantytown.