The alarm began blaring, and I scrambled, grabbing my notebooks and loose pages that I had been working on for the past four hours. People scrambled. In the chaos, papers took flight like snow on a cruddy winter morning, littering the floor. The shouts began pervading the air.
"What the hell is going on?"
"Just get out!"
One woman, panicked, screamed, "Guns! I heard guns!" But by the time I had grabbed everything, the scrambling people had relocated, taking the chaos with them, leaving me with the alarm still blaring for company.
I rushed to the stairs, my glasses slipping off of my nose. Using my forearm, I attempted to push them up. I tripped, but I caught myself, papers flying everywhere. I rushed down the stairs, scrambling to grab them. A huge shadow overtook me, while I was on my knees grabbing papers.
"Talia?" the huge shadow asked. I spun around; his voice frightened me as it echoed through the stairwell.
I recognized him from the news articles that we, the journalists, had written on him. "Bane." The name got caught in my throat.
He jumped down to the landing I was standing on. "Come with me." I was lost for words, so I shook my head. He grabbed my arm and begun to drag me behind him.
I dug my heels into the ground. I rediscovered my voice. "No!" 'Wow that was loud,' I thought. He pinned my arms to my sides and tossed me over his shoulder, much like one would a bag of potatoes. I rested my head upside down and on his back. "Please," I squeaked.
He just went on running out of the building. He dropped me long enough to hop on his motorcycle. I momentarily hoped he would just leave me, but I wasn't so lucky. He pulled me on, my glasses began slipping again, and as I pushed them up, he took off. I slammed forward, trying to recover from jerking back, clawing into him and praying that I wouldn't fall off and die.
Eventually he slowed, finding his way and maneuvering his way through the town. Aside from him smelling good, I wanted to die. With the sudden turns and overdramatic weaving, death was emanate, and I only prayed that it came quickly and painlessly.
The motorcycle came to a stop, and I struggled to detach myself from him. He tossed me over his shoulder again, and I lifted my head enough to see other helmeted people come to take away the motorcycle.
"Who is Talia?" I asked. I could feel him tense up.
At the top of the stairs, he took a left, and at the end of the hall, there was a door. He flung the door open, my glasses began slipping. "Um, my glasses, they are…" Then they slipped off, and a crack sounded through the hall. Bane kept to pushing me into the dark room. I stumbled around, practically blind. Someone grabbed my arm and pushed me to a chair. I squinted, hoping to make out some defining characteristic, but it didn't work. The door slammed.
"Hello?" I called out. No one answered. My eyes strained, and my head ached. Using my hand to cover my eyes, I tried to stop my eyes from seeing and constantly attempting to adjust. I heard rustling and felt someone sit next to me.
"Hello?" I called out again. Whoever it was didn't move for what felt like forever. Something light dropped into my lap. I scrambled grabbing it, almost immediately I recognized the object. "My glasses," I gasped. Scrambling, again, this time to put them on. The door closed, but before whomever left, they had flicked on the light. I was alone, and the first thing that I noticed was my right glass lens was cracked. Great.
I observed the room around me. I was seated on an old couch; the fabric was worn thin at some points. There were two doors, one that I had probably come in through, and another behind the couch. The room had a small table and a cot with nothing on it, no blanket, no pillow.
"This is going to be great," I muttered standing up. I stumbled over to the door that I had come in and banged on the door. "Hey, I have to go home; I need my other pair of glasses. These ones are cracked." I kept banging but nothing came of it.
Eventually I stopped, I just got tired. Some terrorist dude broke into my work and found me in a stairwell and snatched me. Sadly, I knew the only thing that would miss me would be my azaleas, and they'd die before they called the cops.
I decided to explore; the second door was to a small bathroom with a single, bare light bulb. There was a shower, a toilet, and a sink. I was shocked to find a window. Overcome with desperation, I rushed at it, throwing it open.
An alarm began going off. My heartbeat sped up as I climbed on the sink, attempting to dive out of the window and onto the fire escape. The window was tiny, and I stupidly enough got stuck. My hips caught me and my eyes began to water as I pulled and I twisted, but I could not get through. My glasses began sliding dramatically off of my nose. I hated them.
Something, or someone, began pulling on my legs, unsticking me from the window. Bane set me down after I was entirely out of the window.
"I just wanted my other pair of glasses and a change of clothes." He just stood there, breathing. He wasn't as scary as he seemed on the television. He was huge though.
"I'll let you go home and get some things but no escape attempts, promise?" I nodded viciously. He reached around me, slamming the window shut, and the alarm suddenly stopped shrieking. He left me in the bathroom, and he only returned to lead a young woman approximately my age in. "Katrine will take you, behave."
I was surprised that I would be out, maybe I could escape. I nodded and grinned. This would be easy.
I was handed a helmet, and we were sent on our way. My first thought was to mislead Katrine to the police station as opposed to my house, but she seemed to know the way without me telling her.
When we reached my apartment, I thought that I'd be able to shake her, but she watched me like a hawk. I concocted a plan to distract her with conversation.
I began simply. "So what do you like to do for fun?" I asked, forcing a friendly grin. She shifted her weight. "That's…interesting. Katrine…that's an interesting name. What's its origin?" She lifted an eyebrow. "Oo-kay…so, your boss man…" She crossed her arms defiantly over her chest. "So, who's Talia?"
She glared me down. Her stare consisted of daggers, snowstorms, and other horrible things, so the weakling I was, I stopped trying.
I grabbed my backpack, but she shook her head so I slowly put it down. I grabbed a pair of jeans and a shirt. I went to the bathroom, but after my first escape attempt, she made me dress in front of her.
I tossed on my Union Jack 'Keep Calm and Carry On' shirt, with my black jeans, and a pair of chucks. I grabbed my not broken glasses and followed Katrine back to the motorcycle. My plan of escape failed, and I was caught like a rabbit in one of those box traps. Damn.
We returned quickly, and before Katrine locked me in again, I asked her for hair shears. She looked confused but complied.
I threw off my shirt, standing in front of the bathroom mirror. Without delay, I chopped, hacked, and sawed away my hair from lengthy to pixie boy cut short. Whoever this Talia was she looked like me, and that's why I was kidnapped; there was no way I'd continue to look like her. Maybe I'd be released sooner.
I sighed, looking into the mirror. My bangs were a little long, but I looked different. Mission accomplished.
I felt itchy so I picked up as much hair off of the floor as I could with my hands and flushed it before climbing in the shower. The water took forever to warm up, and there wasn't any soap. After I realized there wasn't any towels, I cursed everything halfway decent in the world while I attempted into clothes, wet.
When I returned to the main room, Bane sat casually at the small table. I suddenly became very self-conscious of my hair, and I ran my hands through it as I sat down.
"Not quite what I was expecting from a prisoner with scissors," Bane said, coolly. I refused to make eye contact, drawing circles on the table with my fingers.
He stood slowly and left me to my silence. Before the door closed, I looked at him. "Wait, when can I come out?"
Bane shook his head, nonchalantly.
He struck fear inside of me, somewhere deep, but I disregarded it, stupidly, of course. I laid down, thinking about how earlier I would have never thought I'd have ended up a captive.
Sleep washed over me, and I began falling. When I opened my eyes, it was Fear Night again. I had just left my boyfriend's crappy apartment. He lived in the Narrows. It was a misty night, and the air felt funny. I climbed a fire escape to get higher, hopefully reaching purer air. My boyfriend started acting crazy. He pushed me and I barely caught myself, but this time I fell and before I hit the ground I woke up.
I woke up to my own screaming, and judging by the person standing over me, I wasn't the only one. I struggled to breath in enough to keep my lungs supplied with enough air. A hand reached down stroking my face; I gasped and choked out, "Bane."
He sat down on the chair that had been pulled up. "It was just a dream."
"They never are," I chided. "They never are just dreams; they are memories."
He sat back, unable to supply a cryptic response. "What of?" he asked, remembering when he had been trapped in "The Pit" and Talia had had a nightmare. He never thought that both girls would be so similar, so frightened but unafraid, and so stubborn. Dichotomies unto themselves.
"Falling," she choked out, "I am scared to death of falling…I was there on Fear Night when all Hell broke out. My boyfriend mistook me for a zombie undead corpse of his dead ex-girlfriend; he pushed me off of the fire escape. I fell, time slowed, and it felt like forever." While she spoke, her eyes filled with tears. "I woke up in the hospital thinking I had died; unfortunately I hadn't."
Bane scooped me up, holding me tightly as I sobbed. I hated the fact that my captor watched and held me as I cried, reliving my "accident". I blamed Crane for my "accident", and one day I would re-pay him for my suffering.
As he held me, I gave in. "I feel like I have no purpose. No one notices me; I can be kidnapped and no one even cares. I just don't matter." Tears fell generously.
Bane grabbed my face, pressing his forehead to mine; he just stared into my eyes. I couldn't make out the color in the dark but something small, something instantaneous passed between us. It wasn't love; it wasn't anything other than an understanding.
"No one cared who I was until I put on the mask," he stated sensibly.
After a while, I curled up on his lap, him still holding me, and I slept, really slept for the first time in probably nine or ten years.
Lordlink13: Yay for the first chapter!
ThinkingOfPenNamesAreEvil: Shut up, Lordlink… my chapter, my story. Go deal with Shadow's drama.
Lordlink13: Before I go, Read and Review, readers!
ThinkingOfPenNamesAreEvil: Hey, Jerk, that's my line! Read and Review, guys.