The second Helena Kyle opened her eyes, she knew she had stepped into a nightmare. She didn't know how she had entered, exactly, as her memory had been reduced to a series of involuntary impulses randomly flashing brief, insignificant sequences from various points in her life. She was tied spread-eagle to a giant vertical wheel, spinning faster and faster as she watched strange events unfold behold her: irate clowns stabbing one another before her very eyes and then devouring the live flesh on their daggers in vile acts of cannibalism; naked women being beaten with rods by fat, filth-ridden men in masks and then forced to perform oral sex; wild dogs ripping apart the innards of chained slaves who cried out in agony while watching their intestines being fought over in a horrific game of canine tug-of-war. Helena wanted desperately to break free and stop the madness, but all she could do was spin round and round, the rusted chains on her wrists and ankles tied so tightly that she bled as though she had the stigmata.
Then, far off in the background, draped in the shadows a great distance behind the atrocities stood a man whom she had never seen before, and yet she knew like her own father. It was a sensation she could hardly articulate: Sigmund Freud called it "unheimlich," or the uncanny, that intangible sensation of something being both completely foreign and eerily familiar, as though the two concepts were linked in some far-off chamber of the mind. The man in the shadows was terrifying but beautiful, even despite his features being concealed by the darkness. He was in fact, an endless stream of contradictions: strange but familiar, wicked but glorious, subtle but powerful. Helena wanted to make him love to him almost as much as she wanted to kill him. She didn't know who he was, but she knew she had met her match. His power of intimidation alone was enough to defeat her.
"Make them stop!" she cried out to him, her words echoing through the strange, foggy void in which she was present.
"They do as they please," the man responded without words. His words transmitted themselves straight into her mind without the faintest sound.
"What is this place?" she called out, trying once again to break free.
"This is my home," the man transmitted again. "The place between wake and sleep; the chamber where your nightmares are born, and every evil desire of your heart."
"Where the fuck am I?" Helena screamed, completely fed up with the mind games.
"Tell me your deepest desires," the man whispered to her mind, clearly ignoring her heartfelt query.
Immediately Helena's wheel began to spin faster and faster, until all she could see were swirls of light and darkness lulling her into a trance. She knew she had to fight it, and so she closed her eyes, bit her lip, and began to focus with as much strength as she possibly could, searching desperately for a single relevant memory, anything that could renew her understanding of what was going on, and hopefully offer some glint of a useful epiphany.
Finally something sparked. For a brief second, she saw an image of herself in a bed. There were white satin sheets, beads of sweat and an aura of passion in the air. She was not alone...
Suddenly the wheel began to slow down, as if reacting to her sudden remembrance. When she opened her eyes, she saw the swirls becoming slower until she could once again make out the horrible atrocities before her on the hard rocky ground, and the image of the uncanny man in the shadows. Suddenly she had a stunning thought, a possible key to what was going on. But it couldn't be...
She closed her eyes once again and considered the possibility of her new revelation. Then suddenly another memory flashed before her eyes, directly connected with the last. She was lying in the soft bed, her naked body against the satin sheets, her head pointed up at the ceiling. Her nerves tingled as soft lips kissed her stomach and moved slowly toward her thighs.
She came back to her senses and reopened her eyes just as the wheel began to slow even more. This time she was certain it was reacting to her thoughts, even though there was no logic to such a correlation. She looked past the cannibalistic clowns, wild dogs and abusive masked men and returned her focus to the uncanny man in the shadows. Yes, perhaps it was true…
"I can read your thoughts," the man whispered to her mind, "and that is how I am able to speak directly to them. I can see your fear...your frustration...your desire..."
Helena closed her eyes once again. As much as she wanted to scream "Fuck you!" and pull against her chains, she could only take deep breaths and resume her concentration. As much as she hated the bastard, she had far too much affection for him to curse him.
With her eyes closed, she witnessed the further continuation of the bedroom sequence. She was lying in complete submission, groaning with pure erogenous ecstasy as her mystery man's hot breath swept against her stomach with each passionate kiss. Then she placed a hand on his head and gently ruffled his hair. Finally, she turned her head downward to meet her lover eye to eye as he pulled his lips away from her belly button. Right as the sequence ended, the two of them gazed right into each other's eyes.
Instantly Helena's spinning wheel stopped completely, giving her a painful jolt. So it was true. The lover in her vague memory was the uncanny man in the shadows. She had just looked directly into his eyes, and yet she could not for the life of her picture his face. Once again, she just knew...
And she knew something else as well. Wherever she was, and whatever was causing her plight, she could control it with her mind. There was no doubt that her thoughts had stopped the wheel from spinning, and so perhaps it was merely her thoughts that prevented her from breaking free.
She closed her eyes once again and envisioned herself escaping. Then, almost instantly, her chains began to shake and then exploded into a thousand shards, allowing her to drop gracefully to the ground in freedom. She then rushed toward the masked men with the rods and began attacking them one by one with swift jabs and graceful kicks. She was expecting a challenge, but to her surprise, the men disintegrated into dust right as she touched them, causing her to wonder if it were all some grand optical illusion.
The dagger-wielding cannibal clowns and flesh-hungry dogs also disintegrated upon contact, until all that was left were scattered pyramids of ash and blank spaces where chained slaves and nude women had vanished into thin air. In the end, there was only the Huntress, Helena Kyle, and her mysterious lover, the Uncanny.
She stepped toward him slowly through the fog, noticing her surroundings for the first time. The hard, craterous road was unfamiliar, and the dark sky emanated with a bright red glow, as though the cosmos were aflame, clearly no place that Helena had ever visited before, and yet it felt strangely like home. Another strange paradox...
"What do you want from me?" Helena asked, continuing to step toward the man in the shadows.
"Your father once had a great nemesis," said the man, speaking audibly for the first time, "and that great nemesis would ask your father an important question; more of a riddle, really. Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?" The man extended his hand to her from within the shadows, revealing a white glove.
Helena scoffed. "So you're the devil? Wow. That must be quite a responsibility. And how do you know my father?" She began pacing back and forth only a few feet away from the man, feeling his power in her veins and wanting to keep a safe distance while maintaining a bravado that suggested she did not fear him.
"I know all," said the man. "I see all. I know that you both love and hate me right now. I know that when you were a child you would dream about me. I can see into your very soul, Helena Kyle, and I can even take it by force if I wish it. Though I would prefer that you gave it to me of your own will."
Helena turned around. "Okay, I've heard enough. I don't know what this place is, but I know I can destroy you with a single thought, just like I destroyed those chains."
The man laughed. "Please try."
Helena closed her eyes, hesitated, and then opened them again. "I can't do it. Not because I'm unable, but because I feel some degree of compassion for you. Maybe it's pity, I don't know."
"It isn't pity, Huntress, nor is it compassion. It is desire. I asked you to tell me your desire, and your mind answered on your behalf."
Helena thought back to the visions she had just had. Holy shit, she thought to herself. What if he's right?
She began walking away from him. "I need to get the hell out of here." As she walked, she closed her eyes and envisioned herself back home in New Gotham. Nothing happened. She tried even harder, clenching her eyelids tightly, but still nothing. Finally her concentration was interrupted by the laughter of the uncanny man, now several feet away.
"You're trying in your mind to escape," the man said to her, "but it is your soul that has imprisoned you here. You are in my clutches now."
Helena turned to him. "I don't believe in souls!" she shouted in his direction.
"All the better."
"What do you want with me?" she shrieked.
"To destroy you, perhaps, or to save you. You may have noticed that my very being is one endless series of dichotomies. Though some would have you to believe that I am pure evil. History has given me a bad reputation, with no help from the religious establishments and their so-called gods."
Helena turned from him once again.
"Your father is alive," he added. "I can reunite the two of you."
Helena turned to him once again, now fuming. "Fuck off!" she cried out in a rage, completely overwhelmed with fury even to the point of forgetting her affection for him.
But the uncanny man remained still and calm. "All you have to do is ask, and you can be back in his arms."
"I have had about enough of your games!" Helena shouted as she rushed toward him, jumped her own height off the ground and swung her leg to kick the side of his head in midair.
The uncanny man, though, maneuvered around her leg and rose even above her own elevated head by means of levitation to kick her in the chest, knocking her hard to the ground. Helena, of course, not about to accept defeat, jumped right back up and swung her foot at his groin just as he was coming down to the ground. He responded by dodging his body to the left—defying the laws of gravity—and using his own foot to kick Helena's raised ankle and knock her off balance.
When she returned to her feet, she made one last attempt to jab his throat, but he grabbed her wrist just in time to stop her and sent an insatiable impulse through her nerves. Once again she wanted him, and was far too weak in the knees to attempt any further acts of aggression. If being in his presence caused a strong a reaction, then making physical contact sent her into an emotional tailspin. She still could not see his face; even in the light it remained shadowed, as though constantly shrouded by a dark cloud, but she knew she wanted him, more than she had ever wanted anything in her life. She began to shake.
"You are strong," he said to her, "but not strong enough. If you allow me, I can teach you to be invincible, even immortal."
Helena nodded her head as she tried desperately to see his seemingly-absent face.
"Very good," he said to her. "Now let's dance."
Helena awoke in a trash heap in an alley in New Gotham, surrounded by rats and filth. Her memories and awareness were, for the most part, restored, but she was still quite befuddled about the events—whether real or dreamed—involving the spinning wheel and the uncanny man. As she stood up and wiped the garbage from her back and hair, she realized something else she could not recall: how the hell she had wound up in the trash.
As she limped through the alley and back into the busy streets of New Gotham, the morning sun shining down on her, she noticed that a message had been burned into her wrist. Curious, she stopped and raised her wrist to eye-level. The message read:
Tonight. 8:00. New Gotham Park. Come alone.
TO BE CONTINUED...