A/N: This was going to be a novel. It's a parody of Peter Pan - well, is it still a parody if it isn't humorous? It's much darker than Barrie's version. I was going to call it Nightmare but then realised I already have a story named that. Notice a pattern here? Yeah. Anyway. I don't want to give away too much. See how much you can figure out for yourself. Review please please please, I really need to know if this is as interesting as I find it. Ta! -for you
Lightning flashed overhead, throwing the alley into sharp relief. The hunched figures, crouched low over the wooden crates, pulled their dark coats tighter and bent closer to their work, shifting the crates onto a horse-drawn cart with blank stares in their hollow eyes. In doorways along the road, tall men stood with their hands on their corkscrew-cutlasses, sinister and menacing. Occasionally the alleyway would ring with the crack of a long whip and the screams of its helpless victims.
Hunkered down over the road as they were, no-one looked high enough to see the boy crouched on the roof high above, flattened against the overflowing gutter-pipes, his tawny hair glistening in the rain, his green eyes burning as he watched the whip rise and fall like the rocking of a pirate ship in the ocean.
If you looked closer, you would see the thin black lines of the bonds linking the prisoners, crackling and glinting with some wild electricity, tugging back in line anyone who stepped out of it. You would see the criss-crosses of thin white scars and swollen welts on their bare arms and shadowed faces. You would see the way their hands trembled in fear and fatigue, and their eyes barely blinked every time the warming tongue of the whip licked their backs and arms. You would see the pain in their dull eyes, the worry-lines on their drawn faces. You would see that most of them were barely more than children, boy and girl both, press-ganged into service and looking like they'd been there all their lives.
The boy couldn't see this, but he knew it was there. If the tall men had been doing their job properly, they would have listened for the slight sound of tinkling bells that came from the rooftop, and scanned up and down the alley regularly for people who might disrupt, or worse, report their operation. In one of these routine scans, someone would have noticed the faint green light casting a sickly shadow down one side of a tall building.
But the thunder smashed and roared in a constant haze, smothering the bells, and the wind and the rain buffeted even the man with the whip until his fingers were curled so tightly around the handle they were almost frozen in place, and the tall men huddled in the doorways, their eyes on the workers, oblivious to anything else.
The noise and the light both condensed to a little girl beside the boy's elbow, who standing up would have reached about two-thirds his size and looked about seven years old. The tinkling noise came from a pair of idly fluttering wings held on her back by a pair of looped elastic sleeves. She watched the scene with harsh brown eyes that were very easily distracted; no matter how hard she tried to keep them on the scene before her, they were constantly sliding to watch the boy's face with a hard intensity that was almost unnerving.
The boy ignored her, keeping his vivid eyes fixed on the man with the whip. He was a young boy, no more than twelve years old, with the innocence of youth still wrapped around his shoulders like a mother's blanket. Perhaps even if the tall men had seen him, they would have let him go, laughing, not believing him to be any kind of threat.
In the tight-bound line, a woman hunched over with age misplaced a foot in front of her, tugging on the young man behind. The helpless figure slipped and sprawled across the wet cobbles. The crate in his hands flew to the other end of the alley and smashed on the vicious bricks of some factory wall. Its contents tumbled out, the shiny green paper spilling its pale pink innards here and there like a slaughtered frog.
The boy saw the fallen slave worker, the broken crate and the tiny pink cubes skittering down the alley and took a sharp breath in. The young man on the ground looked up to see the man with the whip bearing down on him and whimpered pathetically, too weak to get up against the press of heavy rain, too cold to do anything but shiver as the tongue of the whip reared and slashed at his skin, tearing his thin black coat and dirty cotton tunic right through until it drew hot blood from his back.
The man's helpless screams of agony rang through the alley, bouncing off brick walls until it echoed around the chimneys and over the rooftops of the city. Had this not been a deserted part of town, residents would have woken from the deepest nightmares at the sound, desperate and wild.
The boy stood up slowly, made a subtle gesture to the girl at his hip, and jumped off the high roof, his arms outstretched. A woman on the ground saw him and stopped herself from crying out at his folly just in time. A non-existent breath of wind caught him mid-fall and he soared, bird-like, in the rain above the cart. One of the younger ones saw him and raised an arm to point; someone beside her forced her arm back to her side.
The boy flew through the air as though he, too, had wings, until he hovered like an angel behind the head of the man with the whip. A shattering of lightning lit him up, his eyes blazing with some wild, feverish excitement, and the thunder covered the sound as he dropped onto the man's back and choked him with his own whip, moving quickly to the nearest of the tall men before anyone but the sharpest of the slaves knew what was going on.
Three men lay motionless on the cobbled street before the rest of them realised they were in trouble and drew their cutlasses, but the boy showed inconceivable skill with his own stolen blade as he raised it and brought it down, severing the tiny black wire holding the slaves together. With a slight hiss, the entire length of shimmering thread evaporated and the slaves abandoned their work to join in the fray; soon all but one of the tall men had fallen beneath the storm of once-docile workers.
The cart's driver, last of the tall men, had seen the whip-man fall and chosen to save himself; now he hunched in the cart's long shadow and watched the massacre of his colleagues with hatred rising in his broad chest. He knew the pair, by name and reputation only. It was said that nobody survived when they struck a slave-chain, and that even the captain of the Nightmare, the ghost-ship from which their dark operation was run, feared him.
Within moments, the alley was deserted and the cart's contents scattered irrecoverably through the street . The freed workers headed for the woods, leaving the cart alone with its driver, now shedding bitter tears for the men he had known like friends. His tight throat constricted further, convulsing in pain as the driver uttered one word, his low voice coloured with hate.
"Pan."
A/N: I have a part of chapter one but I haven't touched it for ages. In fact, I'm not sure where it is. It's just hard-copy. And most of it wasn't working. I think I need to make Smee a machine. But please review and tell me what you think. This is up here for feedback purposes only, therefore if I get no feedback, I will be very disappointed.
-for you!