2. Down The Rabbit Hole
A young mother reads her son the Carroll classic, Alice in Wonderland, before she tucks him in to bed and gives him a kiss goodnight. The boy, who wouldn't be older than 7 or 8, asks his mother when his father was going to be home. She replies offhandedly that she isn't sure, but should be soon. His father was never home. Just as the boy drifts off the front door swings open and shut again, and the raised voices of his mother and father soon sweep the house.
The boys father is a mid-level drug runner for the GMC and had recently run a big favour for some of the "higher ups" and after weeks of waiting, had found that his cut had been embezzled within. Furious with the GMC, the man set fire to two shopfronts and two clubhouses, destroying several hundred thousand dollars worth of product and burnt everyone inside. The people he used to call friends.
Unfortunately the Big Boss, Psycho Pete wasn't in the clubhouse he's usually in on a Thursday. He assembles the remainder of his gang and hunts down the boys father, who foolishly came back to his home. It wasn't very long after his father returned home, that his bedroom was mangled with bullets. The boy hears a bloodcurdling scream- that suddenly stops. His mother.
The gunfire dies down a little as the boys father bursts in and forces the boy under his bed. As the man turns around he comes face to face with Psycho Pete, who says nothing more than "scum" and shoots the man. Once in each kneecap and slits his throat. Bleeding out, the man stares into his sons eyes, and dies. The boy reaches for, and clutches, his beloved book.
Psycho Pete, contrary to his namesake, empathises with the boy and takes him by the hand. He leads the boy to an ice den on the corner of Third and North St, sits the boy down on the couch and heads into the back room and overdoses. The boy spent the next 10 years living here, indulging in the lifestyle and growing ever more reclusive and paranoid. But he always held his book tight.
That was his home, with Alice and the white rabbit. How he longed to just vanish down a hole, and have his own adventures in a wonderland. The boy, now a man, would run odd jobs for the gang under the alias "Tetch" for some years before he'd had enough. He poisoned the dens water supply, pilfered a heap of lab equipment and disappeared into the abandoned sewers near Coventry, in the hope of finding his own private wonderland.
That was years ago. In time he became something of a legend. A ghost story.
The treatment plant staff room and offices had an erratic makeover, paint smeared over walls and shattered glass all around. There was years worth of the junkies mind-warped murals and innocent possessions of the runaway children Tetch had since experimented on. He has become quite proud of his chemical expertise. And now he has the Pillar of Gotham, The Great Bruce Wayne, here tied to his chair.
How the mighty have fallen. How fun it will be to witness him descend into madness, to watch him die. "I want my money" says the hired goon, the muscle. He knows perfectly well he won't get paid until Wayne is dead, but Tetch doesn't listen, doesn't care. Time is just a construct, he has all he needs. "Look" says Tetch, sharply "I've just injected him with a special concoction of mine. An LD50. Enough to kill Hunter S. and then some. My farewell treat, lets say."
"Frank wants him dead" says the goon "So hurry it. I need to go"
Wayne stirs in the chair, and both men look over. "Get going then, I don't need you" Tetch squeals. What the hell did this guy even know about Frank anyway, thought Tetch, Frank has been my accomplice for years, this jacked-up-jackarse doesn't get it, he never will. Frank does.
Tetch continues to stare at the goon, until he leaves with a sigh.
"Now that he's gone" starts Tetch "We can start. Sounds fun, Hm?" Tetch lifts Wayne's head by his hair, light pouring straight into his eyes. He flinches and pulls but his neck swings and droops over the back of the chair. The air around is piercing but muffled, his skin feels like its prickling and burning. Deafening pierces sway in and out of his head as Tetch talks on and on. Wayne vomits a little down his chin, the crying windlessly leaves his lungs and his ears ring damply.
Tetch gets right in Wayne's face and grins widely, looking very pleased with himself. Tetch then turns around and calls off into the darkness. Suddenly a half dozen beady eyes light up in the distance. Cold and wide, they venture closer. Tetch turns back to Wayne and calmly says "Tea Time"