The nightmares had gotten worse. They’d been getting worse progressively over time and I wasn’t entirely sure why. It wasn’t like I remembered what she looked like, her face anyway--her scars or how she even got them, but I remembered the feeling of that dreadful day all too well. After all, how couldn’t I remember? I don’t think I’ll ever truly forget it. I apparently considered it, among other things, to be my own personal torment and hell. No.I remembered. That feeling I experienced, of helpfulness, uselessness. That’s what more or less haunted me about the whole ordeal, that and the pool of blood that had drowned her body as it lay crushed under the toppled-over car. Her face is always the same, blurred with a static-like presence to it. Corrupted by a loss of memory or the ever-increasing guilt. The rest of her though, is always the same. She always seemed to be in a perpetual state of purgatory as she always looked up at me, pointing. As if my own blame and guilt weren’t enough, every night I relive hers too.

“This is your fault.” She’d say over in repetition until a crescendo of thunder broke the silence. I always wake up to her face, running with blood and tears, mournful, but accusatory that I hadn’t gotten there sooner. Accusatory that I hadn’t been able to help her. Of course, logically I know the accident wasn’t my fault. I’ve been reassured that numerous times by numerous people and I’ve even been informed that it hadn’t the slightest bit to do with me either. I’d merely just been in the wrong place at the wrong time as I caught the tail end of the crash. Even with all these reassurances though, my personality being the monster it is, wouldn’t let it go. My own mind felt the need to tear away at me. I’d never forgiven myself, no matter how much I wanted to or was told to, for letting her die that way--or at all, for that matter.

She wasn’t the first death I’d ever experienced. I’d experienced death in one way or another pretty much all my life. I don’t mean this in any kind of edgy way either, It’s just gotten to the point where I’m pretty melancholy about the whole nature of it. No, she wasn’t the first, but hers was one of the most impactful ones to me. When I last saw her, she’d been alive, and then she wasn’t. I had minutes of time to get to her but I was too slow. I’d later been told that those minutes I remember were actually only seconds, but there’s still a part of me that deep down knows. Had I been faster and maybe even stronger, I’d have been able to save her. She’d still be alive. At least, this is what I always tell myself whenever this topic comes up internally, which quite frankly happens more often than I’d like it to. Though in reality, I know that I wouldn’t have been able to do a thing about it. I’ve always been told she died within minutes of the crash and that everything I’ve seen in these nightmares and memories was just that, fabrications of my own subconscious because I knew her. The killer got away if I remember correctly. The killer got away and the case was an open and closed cold case. Heavy resources had been spent for about a week or two but once the DA and the IPD had gotten bored of it, they moved on, and who was left to take the fall? Yours truly. Of course, as I’ve stated already, a bit more of self-induced blame than anything else but I digress.

I woke from the nightmare in such a fever induced panic that I'd barely realized I was still bleeding. More accurately, I probably re opened the wound in a thrashing fit during the nightmare. I'd been told by several of my siblings I thrash at night, especially when the nightmares are bad and this one was horrifying. I checked the bandage around my arm and it looked like I'd ripped it open sometime during the night. I'd wrapped it and tied it off before passing out but the glue must have eventually dried up. I also hadn't quite realized I was still outside until I'd finally shaken myself awake enough to feel the chilled fall breeze. It was then that I'd noticed just how cold I actually was, which was quite ironic considering I could summon the power of flames at my beck and call. The playground was like any other. Light Poles illuminate very little here and there in ominous liminal ways. Jungle gyms and monkey bars. Swings that still swung eerily in the wind. I shivered. Not many things really scare me but for whatever reason this particular playground managed to. The swing continued to swing in the wind. I looked around before finally flopping down on the old oak bench that sat at the far end of the grounds. Why I didn’t sit somewhere in a more lit area is beyond me. I’ve been told I suffer from chronic dumbass syndrome and I hold to that sometimes. The wind blew again as the leaves carried with it. They crumbled and shuffled as the grass and trees all moved together in harmony. As I sat there under that tree pondering my next move, I heard the swings again. Weird, the wind hadn’t even been blowing. I looked around, again double checking that no one had followed me through the shadow-slip. I was surprised there hadn’t been anyone. Maybe I had been wrong about my unidentified assailant from earlier. I scanned the park again. The bathrooms were in the corner, as dingy as I’d always remembered them. Multiple swings throughout, a baseball field and several other sports centers. Ahah. I found the moving swing and--there was someone on it. I quickly rose and dove behind the tree. Someone had followed me? I was sure they hadn’t though. They would have been here long beforehand. If it was Fear Patrol, they’d have already tried bringing me in. I peeked around the tree.

A girl sat on the swing, casually humming to herself as she moved along with the wind. I could hear her hums as if she were right next to me, though she was several hundreds of feet away. I ignited a small flame in the palm of my hand, not enough to give myself away but something enough to have ready if she planned on doing something. It was also one of the creepiest fucking things I’ve ever seen in my life and my oldest sister excels at torturing me with creepy things. She practically made a career of it. I breathed in and focused. I was a vigilante and had the ability to conjure fire at will, but I don’t have any kind of superhuman hearing or anything useful like that. I focused on the sounds of the humming. They were faint and soft yet almost echoed around the park through the small gusts of wind. I watched for a minute, playing with the flame in my hand as it danced around growing bored, as did I. Was this person I saw going to attack me, did she even know I was there? Was I even supposed to know that she was there? I had pondered these before she started giggling again as she turned to face my direction. She wore a mask. Something we had in common. There wasn’t anything overtly scary or weird about the mask, nothing personalized. It was just a plastic white mask that fit over her face. You could buy those at any corner party store. There was just something specifically creepy about it because of her overall demeanor. She stood up still facing me. She appeared to be about five feet in height and dressed in all nondescript clothes. A sweater and jeans, neither too baggy nor too tight. There was nothing about her at all that stood out. Nothing but--the blood. There was blood on her mask and she was smiling. I’m not sure how I knew that, but she was smiling.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Enjoy the freedoms you have.” She spoke again with an echoed voice that burst through the winds. I remained where I was. “I know you’re there, darkfire. Enjoy your last bit of freedom. A reckoning, long overdue might I add, is coming. We’ll see to it and there isn’t anything you or anyone you’re associated with can do about it.” She continued. I finally stepped out from behind the tree, fire blazing larger than life.

“Who are you?” I’d have asked the usual bullshit questions that people in my position always seem to ask, but I didn’t have time for that. She tilted her head and hummed again.

“You’ll find out in due time, Mother.” She said, now breaking into a melancholia skipping across the field. I shouted out something at her but she never turned back, nor did she ever come back. I shot a blaze of fire towards the direction she went. It wasn’t powerful enough to do any major damage to the area around, though it scorched the tops of the wet grass.

“New player in town.” My inner voice spoke finally.

“Ah, there you are, what were you on a vacation or something there?”

“Assessing the situation.” That was fair, but I didn’t have to ignore myself.

“Well, what’s your assessment then?” I asked, walking away from the field now.

“New players in town. We’ll need to look into it. Not a fan of the way she called us mother, either.” That was unnerving, considering I wasn't even a guy. She’d called me father. I shivered as I walked out through the little arched fence that surrounded the park. I tied off the bandages again, this time having nothing really to sustain any kind of tie off. It'd have to do though. The bunker was too far and home was entirely the opposite direction. I'd need to run through the downtown districts and I was in no condition for a trip through the roughs. The other thing that troubled me, outside of everything else going on in my head was that I couldn't even remember how I'd gotten my injury. I felt the cut, I knew it was a blade of some sort but if I'd been in some fight or some kind of altercation with someone that was strong enough to get the jump on me I had no recollections of it. I stopped in the street there as a few hoover cars flew far above the grid. My hands gripped the fabric of my mask, my face, as I called it. It truly was my honest face. I rarely identified with AJ Green anymore, darkfire, diablo, the harbinger of Harmony, these things were more a kin to my true identity, No. Stop. I knew that wasn't true but the inner voice, the metaphysical representation of every survival instinct I had, tried to convince me of these things daily.

I needed to do something. I needed to be somewhere, I just couldn't remember. Dammit. Why couldn't I remember anything? How I got where I was, why I was bleeding, who the hell was the creepy girl? I strolled through the residential district, skipping over the rooftops of apartments and houses. Everything in Industry felt fake. It wasn't. It wasn't some matrix glitch or something I knew that but everything looked like it was a carbon copy of some simulated programs. The rural districts were the only places in the city, which was the largest mega-metropolis in the world, that felt real. I breathed heavily, which hurt my chest. I looked down at my torn up hoody and jeans and shivered in the cold.. I had things to do, things to learn. I needed answers to loads of questions but I wasn't ready, mentally or physically to handle doing anything I'd need to get those answers. No, I needed to rest. rest was important. I'd head off to the bunker, my home away from home. Every detective, every vigilante, every private eye worth even a shred of their own salt had some form of an office. The bunker was mine. A private office buried deep in the woods outside Industry. My legs wobbled and creaked under the weight of my injured body. I felt like I weighed a thousand pounds, the heft of the last several days balancing on my shoulders. I started to collapse.

I closed my eyes, reached out my hands and focused. Thoughts formed pictures in my head. I materialized the bunker in my thoughts, down to the exact square inch of its stone walls and the heavy duty metal doorway. I nearly high fived the ground as I could feel a doorway opening between the fabric of darkness...and I stepped in.