Everything went dark...
I couldn't speak or move...
I could barely think...
I thought for sure I was dead...
BATMAN BEYOND REVISITED
EPISODE:
NIGHTMARES 2
Blackness...
That's all there was.
Exactly how people describe purgatory to be.
And, as boring as it was, it's not a place I exactly wanted to stay.
I knew that staying under for too long would kill me.
But I couldn't wake up. As hard as I tried, as little as I'm able to, my eyes wouldn't open.
But I didn't need to open them for my vision to change.
Visions started to come into my, well, field of vision.
It was blurry at first, but it'd slowly clear up. I saw me as a kid, eight years old, playing with a new toy that I had gotten, and my parents sitting in the living room watching some old show from way back in the days when movies didn't even have color. Who knows how they had gotten their hands on such relics?
Even the house was old-school 2010s fashion, despite living in the year 2024. Cloth couches, modern day rugs, or what was considered modern back then, glass tables, all the good stuff.
My dad was wearing his usual jeans and flannel shirt. His eyes were green and his hair a bold yellow, along with a pointed chin. His arm was wrapped around my mom's shoulders. She was somewhat taller than him and her hair was dark brown and her eyes a striking blue. She was wearing a black turtle neck and a pair of sweatpants... Yeah, she had no sense of style.
Something was off, though. The scene seemed too familiar...
I heard the rain outside. It was a gentle rain. Nothing too bad. A small drizzle.
The smell of the fire in the fireplace reminded me of something...
A knock on the door...
And I realized...
"No!" I wanted to scream, forced to watch as my eight year old self went over to answer the door at my dad's request.
"Well, what do we have here?" The man laughed as he strolled right on in, wearing his business suit. Of course, though, his face was hidden with make up and a fedora. "What a nice little abode."
My memory of the incident slowly returned to me as it played out in front of me. The serum must have brought back the repressed memories as events I didn't even recall until now began to replay.
"Who are you?" My father asked as he watched the man enter the house and go right into the kitchen, with no wall between it and the living room.
The footsteps were light and the coat was clearly too big for him to wear over the tuxedo. "A friend of your boss. Now, can you follow me somewhere private? We need to discuss those negotiations that you wanted so badly."
My father questioned nothing as he followed him... Only to be stabbed in the heart with a knife from his own kitchen. Laughing, The Joker used his sleeve to smear off his make up and reveal his pale, horrific face. "They've been cancelled... permanently..."
Blood poured out of his wound as Joker walked out as my mom began screaming, using a phone to call an ambulance as she ran to his side, trying to stop the bleeding. She turned to me, not my younger self, but me personally, and said it was all my fault. That I shouldn't have opened the door... That the one time I didn't refuse to listen I should have... That's when everything went black again, though I woke up for real this time, my face feeling exceedingly wet and my vision blurry, pain in bones.
"Thank God you're alive!" Inque and Barbara both exclaimed as they leaned over me.
"Your vitals stopped completely. The got significantly lower over the last four hours and we couldn't stop them from going any lower. We thought you had died." Inque said as she sat back in her seat beside me, sighing in relief.
I didn't say anything. Didn't respond, didn't move as my eyes glanced around the room.
Inque frowned at this, but Dick put his hand on her shoulder, telling her to allow me time to get myself back together and that whatever went on in my head, it couldn't have been easy, explaining how the serum brings back your worst memories.
Leaning over the side of the table I was sitting on, I started throwing up. My throat scratched and my stomach emptied as my nose stuffed up as if I was getting sick. My head was pounding. I stood up off the table and looked at Dick.
Despite how horrible I felt, I still knew something had to be done.
"The WP blimp... How fast can you get me there?"
