Trapped in a city of the living dead, men and women that fell through the cracks lived with whatever they could gather. He watched people walking under the sun, through the drudgery of life as if nothing was wrong with the shadows. Mike liked to think he was a philosopher, a musician and an artist. And if he played his music on empty bottles and built his art out of remnants of other people's lives or trash then that only made it more worthwhile to do so in the first place.
There was more than food to be found in a dumpster. The day before he'd found this gorgeous piece of shot glass, that caught the sun in a thousand angles when placed just right. And the day before that he'd dug up a pair of glass pearls that had gotten caught in between a banana peel. He'd washed it in the rain and used the pearls on the foot of his statue.
Mike had been digging through the dumpster behind Starlight's, a nightclub just out of his usual zone when he saw an arm. At first he thought someone had thrown a mannequin in the trash and he jumped in, hoping to get to it first before someone else did. He was shocked to find that the arm belonged to a man, a man who was still breathing.
The stranger was naked, and had blood flowing from his scalp and forehead. Mike flinched, what if the bastards that had robbed this poor sucker were still around. What would they do if they saw him help their victim? It gave him goosebumps just thinking about it. Maybe the guy deserved to be beaten up, undressed and thrown into a dumpster. He didn't know the guy, why should he risk himself for some stranger that might stab you in the back, the moment you turned away from them. Why should he care about someone he didn't know? The only ones in this city you could trust were the heroes. Not the shiny ones, the ones on the covers, all government approved. Those were as bad as the cops. No, the real heroes, the ones that stood with Cap. Those still cared about the likes of him. And not like those social workers, that talked as if they wanted to help you, when what they really wanted was to put you in the funny farm, lock you up, three meals a day and think they saved your soul. Not him, no sirree.
He dragged the man out of the trash and pulled him down. There was a bit of a sound when the flesh hit the curb. He quickly jumped down himself, hoping he hadn't hurt the poor bastard even more. Then he took off his own ratted coat and pulled it onto the wounded stranger. Good Samaritan he was, always ready to help another, but who ever helped him? Well who?
"Don't... don't belong here. Please stay ... away." The words came out as a whisper, endlessly. Mike barely even listened to the man, no not a man, more like a boy. He pulled the kid's arm over his shoulder and watched him put step by step until they got to one of those rare sanctuaries of safety in the darn canyons of the city. A bright shining ray of light amidst the squalor. The volunteers let him right in and helped him carry the stranger on to a couch. The poor bastard tried to resist, fumbling with his arms, but not really up to putting up a fight. Ain't no fun being carried like that, when your mind's fumbling off some other place.
"It's alright." an older woman gently stated as she got some bandages and some water. "Has someone called the police yet?" Nobody answered. She looked beautiful in fine blue array, a true lady amidst the squalor.
"Cops tops, bad boy Peter." The lady stared at the boy on the table, only now taking a good look of him. Mike could see her face, going from mere concern to fear.
"Peter?"
The boy's eyes opened and for a moment Mike thought he'd gone insane. The kid's eyes lighted up in bright shining silver, like a blowtorch in a deep swamp, but even with that in place of pupils he couldn't help notice the horror when the boy stared at the lady. It was in the way he shivered, the way he held his limbs as he scrambled right off the couch, crawling away from her to the wall in the blink of an eye.
"Dead, you're dead, gone, vanished, lost, ate you, ate you and her." He stared at her as if someone had handed him the answer. "It has to be a dream, isn't it? You just can't be here. Or if you are, then I'm not."
Mike had seen men like him, lost in their own minds. Not all of them could take care of themselves as well as he did. Just because you saw the angels and the demons, didn't have to mean you were helpless. But the boy mumbled on and on, even Mike's refined ears couldn't make any sense out of the words leaving his mouth.
The mad messenger personified, straight out of the storybook, telling our brave knights a tale of horror to prepare the wiry protagonist for the tale to follow.
"Nobody's going to hurt you." The kind lady stated, her quiet confidence in the face of such horror made her look even more like a saint. "You're safe here."
The messenger, who was more than he seemed at first glance, carrying the token for the story, the quest.
She reached out for the boy. Mike wanted to pull her back, didn't she see the boy was more dangerous than he seemed. Didn't she see those eyes, that horror that could turn to violence? He'd seen that look before, in men who had nothing left to lose.
"Close the doors; run for the hills. It's not like I could stop myself. Not this time. Not when it mattered. I tore you to pieces, you and MJ, took a slice of double meat, but was stopped before I made it three in one bun. There was so much blood, it tasted, tasted, no taste, just blood and flesh. Oh God I need to throw up."
Mike didn't understand how the woman could just sit there, and listen to the boy's mad ramblings while he wouldn't even let her touch his hands. When the police showed up a bit later, someone had managed to find the kid a blanket; he was still huddled in that same corner, scared whenever the old lady, May, got near him. Others had tried to approach him as well, but he started shrieking whenever they even came close.
His eyes were still glowing, but it didn't seem like they actually did something. One of the cops pulled the boy up. They seemed nice about it; they always did, till they had you...
"Where did you find him? Was anyone around? Who, what why?"
Chief interrogators of the dark city. Ready to throw him in a dungeon and throw away the keys, lock him with straight jackets until he took his meds and the world went back to the drabness it had before he saw the light. The old lady, May, then stood up for him as she'd done for the boy. Mike just wanted to run. He was pretty sure that the strange boy thought the same thing, but 'he' didn't fight the cops. He just sat there lost in the back of the car, staring at the mirrors as if the devil himself glared back at him.