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At first, Johnathan didn’t pay the little bar on the corner of the street any mind. He was in this dimension to find its Alchemax facility, not get drunk. Frankly, before the accident, he’d never been much of a drinker. He preferred keeping his wits about him- too many times in college he’d come back to his dorm room only to find his roommate drunkenly snoring in a heap in the corner, usually wearing some stupid accessory he hadn’t left with, or sleeping in Jon’s bed with some random person he’d picked up at the frat party., both reeking of whatever cheap rotgut had been on offer that night.
And the Alchemax team outings hadn’t been much better. Usually, those trips ended with Dr. Octavius and Kevin the IT Guy getting lit and screaming bad Journey karaoke., while the creepy twins from security cruised around trying to find someone who’d go home with both of them., and the accountants tried to start a book for whatever sports game was playing on the television at the time. Jon would endure the whole night, nursing his single IPA, counting down the minutes until it would be acceptable to leave. Usually the night ended up with someone getting arrested for starting a fight, illegally gambling, or Dr. Octavius would get drunk and aggressive and the tentacles would come out. More than one New York City bar had needed to file an insurance claim for mad-scientist-related destruction of property. Fortunately for everyone involved, Wilson Fisk had very deep pockets, and was more than willing to go bail his portal team out of jail. After all, they couldn’t bring his wife and son back if they were sitting in lockup.
But, much to Jon’s frustration, this dimension didn’t actually have a working Alchemax facility. Oh, it had had an Alchemax at one point, that much was obvious, but apparently, there had been some kind of accident. Once he’d gotten through the high-security fencing and walked a little ways back, there was nothing left of the lab but a burnt-out shell. Just to be on the safe side, Jon had actually gone inside the crumbling ruin to see if there was anything he could salvage . But whatever had happened here had been bad- maybe worse than the collider accident at his own Alchemax. The amount of ash around the blast radius and the stench of decay in the air led him to think that the employees at this particular branch had not been as lucky as he had been – at least he’d survived the accident that had turned him into the Spot.
Defeated, Jon was about to tear a hole back through space and time , go back to his apartment and regroup, but then he remembered that little bar on the corner. He wasn’t much for partying, but honestly, he could use a drink or two. Maybe a quiet tipple would be enough to calm the gnawing feeling he had all the time in his gut, which only grew any time he encountered a setback.
The little building wasn’t much to look at- a short, squat single building that read “Shopping Mall, Coming 1997.” No other buildings had ever materialized though, leaving the bar labeled “Sharon’s” as the only business available.
Inside, it was cramped and a bit dingy, but otherwise clean. A a few television screens over the bar were playing a football game, a news channel, and a finance channel that nobody in the room was looking at. The barkeep, a matronly woman in middle age, barely looked up from the liquor bottles she was dusting as Jon came through the doors. Even with his appearance, she didn’t seem to much care, just waving her hand at the bar as if bidding him to enter. None of the other patrons seemed to care either-they were all huddled together discussing something, staring blankly at the news channel, or just drowning their own sorrows in one or more alcoholic beverages.
And the longer Spot looked, the more he realized something. Nobody was phased by his appearance because… they were all like him, to some extent or another. There was a man wearing a bird costume who looked like he was made entirely out of scribbles on old parchment (man and costume both), a bulky man with gray skin and a Russian accent, who was chatting up a crazy-eyed woman who appeared to be wearing a long, flowing black robe. A handsome Chinese man who looked like he’d been rendered in gray-scale was scrolling through his phone while drinking a margarita. A group of people who looked like honest-to-god space pirates were arguing good-naturedly over whose turn it was to pay the bar tab. A man was amusing himself by making electricity arc between his palms while a woman watched with rapt attention. A group of young men in the corner who were dressed like they’d stepped out of an early 2000s movie about computer hackers were having a LAN party, while a man in a lab coat studied his arm, which was covered in reptilian-like scales.
“You gonna order something or not?” The barkeep’s voice cuts through his thoughts. Jon looked up, only to see the woman waving him forward.. “You don’t have to buy something, but I do need you to get out of the doorway, Air condition ain’t free you know!”
Slowly, Jon walked up to the bar and sat down a few stools away from the monochromatic Chinese man, who did not even look up from his phone. “What’ll you have?” the woman asked.
“Uh… what do you have in an IPA?” Jon asked. The woman wrinkled her nose.
“You kids and your damn hipster beers… I’ve got Voodoo Ranger and Stone IPA, one of those okay?”
“I’’l take the Stone, please,” Jon said politely. The woman nodded, grabbed a pint glass off the shelf behind her, and drew the pint from the long line of taps off to the side. Wordlessly, she passed it over to him. Wondering how the woman would react when she realized his face wasn’t actually a mask, he slowly sipped the beer through his face hole. WOW, that was good. Jon had forgotten how nice the hoppy taste of an IPA after a long day was- even though he’d rarely indulged before the accident, he truly did like them.
Watching as Jon took a few more sips of his beer, the woman waited for him to enjoy it a bit before she spoke again. “So, what’s your story?”
“My story?” Jon asked. The woman laughed.
“Son, nobody ever comes here into old Sharon’s unless they’ve got some kind of a story. I like to think of this place as the ‘bar at the end of the world,’ you know?”
“I don’t know that I’m that much younger than you,” Jon demurred. He was in his late 30s! Not so young that someone in their early 50s at most could call him “son!”
“Oh yeah? Bit hard to tell,” she said, before continuing on. “Take me for example- I never thought I was going to become a bartender- I was a housewife! My husband and I were trying to get pregnant, you see- back in the 90s it was easier to live on one income, and my Sammy made enough at Alchemax that we figured I’d stay home and watch whatever kids we had. Then whatever looney tunes experiment they were doing over there exploded and killed everyone in the building- no survivors were ever found. So I took the life insurance payout, buried my Sammy in an empty grave, and opened up this place. It was supposed to be a part of a big shopping center, but the other tenants never materialized. I guess nobody really wanted to go to a mall this close to a mass grave,” she said bitterly. Then, she softened. “It’s not so bad. I get decent business anyway- whatever hole in the world that explosion tore, I get a lot of people passing through who want to have a drink here..”
“Oh…. I’m sorry...” Jon said, actually feeling kind of sorry for her. It didn’t sound like she’d had an easy life- being widowed young and having to start a business just to survive. “I… also worked at Alchemax, once. Not this one though,” he added. Sharon nodded.
“Figured. Most people don’t get all…. Blotchy like that without some sort of chemicals involved,” she said, then quickly realized what it sounded like. “No offense! My Sammy used to come home glowing in the dark sometimes!”
“None taken,” Jon replied. “I know what I look like.”
“Anyway, ever since those spider people came tearing through reality, I’ve been getting a lot of business!” Sharon said. “I don’t put up with that nonsense, people dressed like bugs trashing the city and harassing my customers, I’ll throw them out!”
“Wait, Spider-People?!” Jon yelped. Sharon nodded.
“Oh yeah, they all call themselves ‘Spider-Man’ or some variation of that. Come crashing around the city chasing people, wrecking up the place, and dragging them off god knows where, all because they came through some sort of portal. Some cowboy-looking asshole threw Aleksei here into my car the other day. Totaled the damn thing, he’s heavier than he looks.” Sharon indicated the Russian man, who grimaced.
“Da. I was not even doing anything. This time,” he complained. “Is it so wrong to want to come to enjoy the football and some vodka? Even if is not in my home dimension?”
“Oh please, Sharon, I bought you another one,” the monochromatic man sitting near Jon said, finally looking up from his phone (and now empty margarita glass). “That old Chevy was a death trap anyway. What if you’d blown the engine while you were trying to outrun Spider-Man?”
“You bought me a Bentley, Martin!” Sharon said, exasperated. “It’s worth more than my house and this place put together! That old Malibu was worth maybe a grand! You know I can’t accept that kind of generosity from you!”
“Well, it wouldn’t be worth more than your house if you’d let me buy you another house,” the man named Martin said practically, then smiled enigmatically. “Besides. It’s not generosity. It’s a warning. People will think twice about coming for you when they see it if they know it means they’ll have to tangle with me.”
“This is the last place in the ‘verse we can come.” the electrical couple agreed, the woman speaking. “Since everywhere else is just crawling with Spider-Men.”
"Can’t even rob a bank anymore without like five of them showing up,” the electrical man agreed.
One of the hackers in the back spoke up too. “We’re native to this world and even we get caught up sometimes! That vampire-looking fucker broke my wrist last week when he grabbed me!”
“Doctor fucking Doom is less aggro,.” one of his friends agreed.
“Spider-Man is why I look like this now,” Jon volunteered. Everyone wanted to hear more, so he told the whole sordid story from the beginning. Even though it made him look kind of pathetic, he didn’t leave anything out. The bagel, the accident, the botched ATM heist, Spider-Man not even bothering to look at him when they were fighting, then how he discovered his portals worked. Everyone listened with rapt attention, and agreed that Spider-Man was just the worst. The monochromatic man bought everyone another round of drinks, and everyone started telling their own stories and run-ins with Spider-Man.
The electrical man had been a power company worker called Max Dillon, who’d become a human capacitor after getting hit by lighting while trying to restore power during a freak summer storm. Since his touch was now fatal to most people (although he’d accidentally infected his girlfriend Francine with the living electricity as well), he’d turned to a life of crime to just support himself, which led him into contact with his own dimension’s Spider-Man. The Russian man, Aleksei, had been used as a test subject by a criminal syndicate and wound up with enhanced strength and endurance, speed, and super-hard skin. The hackers were apparently local to this dimension, the oldest one had been a friend of Sharon’s late husband, and she let them use her bar as a hangout to play games in. The monochromatic man declined to give much information about himself, but Jon was able to glean from the context of what he said that he was some kind of businessman, most likely both legitimate and not. How he ended up in black-and-white was a story he did not feel inclined to share. But he certainly was feeling free with the bar tab that night, as everyone kept talking, he kept paying for the drinks. Although, Jon had a sneaking suspicion that Sharon wasn’t accurately ringing them up on the register to make them a little cheaper.
Everyone seemed genuinely willing to help him- well,l his nemesis was Spider-Man. They all had reason to dislike Spider-Man, even Sharon. Max and Francine had given him some tips on ATMs, so Jon was reasonably confident that his next attempt to get some money would go a bit better. Aleksei had offered to come back with him on his hunt for Spider-Man, an offer Jon declined for now.
Eventually, it got so late that Sharon kicked them all out. “You know where to find me tomorrow, but you assholes need to go home and get some sleep.” Aleksei offered to walk her to her car, but she declined, saying that nobody on this side of town would dare come after her now. And after seeing exactly what some of his new friends were capable of, Jon had a feeling she was right.
As he tore a hole in space and time to return to his own world, Jon felt, for the first time since the accident, almost at peace.
And definitely very drunk.
/END