Chapter 43 - [AT] Life Changing Incident in a Gotham Alleyway...

[After Transition]

I start to question the man, why is he walking towards me? Why can't he just leave me alone? But he just stays silent with his singular focus being on the brown bag within my hands, he continuously scratches his arms as he moves towards me and it's like he is in a daze because he doesn't respond to anything and it looks like he doesn't know what's even going on, all he knows is that he wants the bag in my hands but I'm not gonna say let him have it.

With the man now getting dangerously close I begin to back away in the hopes that he will just leave me alone but it doesn't look like that is going to happen, we continue with him closing in on me and me backing up to the edge of the roof and then I hit the roof ledge and that's when it all kicks off. With me no longer having any space to back up I look behind me and the skinny man uses that chance to get closer, I turn my head around just in time to see him lunge at me for the bag and when he gets a firm grip on it my eyes widen as he begins to furiously tug at it.

Him lunging at me made me go backwards and I end up sitting on the roof ledge with my back facing towards the dingy alleyway that is behind the building, we are both in a furious game of tug of war and we both intend to wings shown by us both pulling on the brown paper bag like our life depends on it and I know that I am about to lose. Getting desperate I make a last ditch effort, with my bottom on the roof ledge I kick both my legs out at the skinny man in the hopes of making him let go of the brown paper bag but I seriously overestimated myself.

The man might be dangerously skinny to the point of looking almost malnourished but I am just a five year old child, a bit smarter than other children my age but I'm still just a tiny child in this city of monsters and when my feet finally connect with the man's c.h.e.s.t and begin to push at him I can see him moving further away but then I realise it's not him that moving away its me. Falling backwards I desperately clutch to the brown paper bag in the hopes that it will prevent me from falling of the ledge of the building but it was a foolish hope, a ripping noise breaks out into the cacophony that is Gotham at midday and with it my hopes are torn to shreds.

Their is a sudden shower of little plastic bags with sugar inside them everywhere and I begin to feel as light as a bird, I start to fall backwards to the ground and suddenly it feels like everything is in slow motion and with my arms flying up into the sky I can see within my hands is a torn piece of the brown paper bag which I was so desperately clutching onto before. I stare at it for I don't know how long before I just decide to let it go, I stare at the piece of brown paper bag as it begins to flutter in the wind and I can see it swiftly manoeuvring through the little plastic bags in the sky and eventually it has gotten past all of them and it begins to rise higher and higher into the sky but eventually it flutters away from the roof of the alleyway and I can no longer see it.

With my focus no longer on the piece of brown paper bag I stare up at the beautiful blue sky with all the clouds floating without trouble and all the birds swooping by with no problems and for a moment I wish that I could be just like those birds, to fly with nothing weighing me down, to be like those clouds in the sky and float along without gravity pulling me down. Staring at the blue sky I began to feel a sense of peace and I feel tranquil like what all those sisters in the orphanage talk about with their yoga, and I'm not that afraid anymore and I know that that is a weird mindset for a five year old but I truly felt like that.

But then something changed as I was staring at the wide expanse of the sky, slowly up my view of the blue sky began to shorten and I could see it slowly being replaced by the walls on either side of the alleyway and at that moment I had a realisation. I realised that I was a frog, one of the sisters told us a story once and I remember there being a frog being stuck at the bottom of the well and he though the sky was as big as what he could see from his world but it wasn't and as I saw the sky rapidly being replaced by the walls of the alleyway I couldn't help but think that I was in a well.

I am a frog at the bottom of a well and for a moment I got to view the entirety of the sky and the feeling when I saw the entirety of the blue sky was euphoric and when that view began to slowly disappear I couldn't help but feel mad, I don't know specifically what changed in me that day but something did and I'm glad that it did. I watched as more and more of the blue sky began to disappear from my vision and I couldn't help but feel some unwillingness in me at the sight but that quickly ended when I hit the ground signs sickening crunch and everything faded to black.

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Everything's blurry when I open my eyes, I look around but I can't see very much but what I can make out is the skinny man picking up all the little plastic packets of sugar spread around the alleyway and then he comes to me and his hand goes towards my c.h.e.s.t and I see him pulling a little plastic bag from on top of my c.h.e.s.t but for some reason this one is red, I wonder why that is. I try to speak to him but it's like I suddenly get all my sense back and all I can feel is intense pain everywhere, it like every fibre of my being is gnawing and pulling at each other and I'm going to get pulled apart.

As I'm writhing in pain I can hear sickening crunches in the air but I don't know where they are coming from but it looks like the skinny man knows where they are coming from, he finally breaks out from the single minded focus he had and begins to look around. I can't see very clearly but after a while I can just about make out the skinny man running down the alleyway dropping some little packets of sugar as he goes but he doesn't stop to pick them up which is a little weird considering how much he wanted the before, as I watch the man flee from the alleyway my eyes slowly close and it fades to black again.

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My eyes shoot open as I sit up from my position laying down on the ground and I frantically begin to pat myself but I don't find anything wrong with me, when I look down at myself I can see that I am covered in some sort of reddy brown liquid, in fact I am laying in a puddle of the reddy brown stuff. It must be some sort of magical red water or something because it saved me from going splat on the ground though it did hurt a lot(I was just a five year old at the time so I didn't realise that it was my own blood, I didn't have a cut in me so how could it be my blood?).

I stand up and look down at my clothes that are no a dried brown reddy colour, the matron will be angry when she sees how dirty I have gotten my clothes but it has been a long and confusing day and I just want to go home and sleep.

I begin to trudge off down the alleyway and back towards the orphanage without actually realising what had actually just occurred to me...

<AN> I now have a Pa treon up and running and when a chapter is ready it will go up on Pa treon first so please take a look. Some support from you guys would be appreciated and motivate me.

(pa treon.com/GutsyRipper)

A special thank you to my patrons Tim Brown, Stormrall, Leonidas Simon and Turtle. Thank you for the support.