I was frozen in place on a cold, hard ground. Opening my eyes I looked dead on into a brick wall. No matter how hard I tried to move my body parts, the best I could do was to lift my head. I smelled blood and felt a dull, aching pain from my right wrist to my collar bone. This pain was, ever so slightly, magnified in the center of my skull. Finally, I built up enough energy to move my head from the right, where it was facing the gritty wall, to the left, sliding my nose across a fresh pool of blood. When I turned my head two more bodies came into view. They were lying next to each other on the other side of the alley, just outside the vision of the street light. Both had dried blood around them, their blood had stained the pavement. What had happened? I don’t remember anything before waking up in this alley.
I turned my attention back to the figures; I noticed that one was moving. As the figure tried to stand I held my breath hoping that this was just an illusion. There was a silence, so still that I could feel my blood making its way out of the shreds of skin on my right arm.
“Nigma.” said the figure, “Wake up we need to get out of here before the bat finds out you escaped.”
The figure was leaning heavily on the wall. I noticed that new blood was making a steady stream down his burlap looking clothing. This man that he had called ‘Nigma’ was lying face down on the ground. He wore a dark green suit and had a golden cane with a question mark handle lying next to him. The man in burlap was still leaning on the wall; he had started nudging Nigma’s side with the tip of his shoe.
“Damn it Nigma, wake up!” said the burlap man. He sounded angry, but had a hint of pleading in his voice.
For a second the man in burlap stopped nudging his unconscious partner and looked up, across the alley to my motionless body. Now that he had turned toward me, I could make out more of his costume. This man was wearing some sort of fright mask, but the mask had a mouth piece, the two parts of a gas mask were sticking out the sides of the stitched grin. Also, on his right arm he had a storage tank, connected to a weird system of tubes that lead to needles on his finger tips. He had leaned his head to one side and started using the wall as a crutch to move toward me. All I could do in return was stare at him in paralyzing fear.
“Well, now what do we have here?” whispered the costumed man, “A child that wandered to far from home?” His voice rose into a shrill, high pitched laughter, sending waves of fear up my spine.
He crouched next to me and reached out, lifting my face with his death cold, finger tips. We stared at each other in silence for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, he released my head, letting it fall to the ground with a small thud. He stood up and looked back at his partner, who was now using the wall as a resting place. The man in the green suit had his eyes closed, but I could tell that he was listening to everything that was going on.
“Hmm….” mumbled the man in the green suit.
The burlap man ignored his partner and looked back down to me. He took one hand and held my head against the pavement. Then he held his needled hand in front of my face.
“Do you like dreams child?” he whispered looking straight into my eyes, seeing my fear, “Then you’ll love nightmares!”
In one swift movement he injected the needles into my neck, sending glowing yellow liquid into my veins. The world was turning black around me and all I could hear was the shrill, high pitched laugh as I faded away into the darkness.
