Darkwing Nightmare

Misty drizzle and the breeze, which carried it, chilled the already cool September night in New York City. Marvin stayed perfectly still as his eyes opened. Stillness was a learned reflex he used to keep his body heat from dispersing if he moved. It was one of many rituals the homeless used not only for comfort, but for survival. His eyes had sprung open from another survival instinct, the clatter coming from the back of the alley he slept in. In the moment his mind didn't catch up to reality. Maybe an interrupted dream took him away from his past. He wasn't in a warm bed. It wasn't in the house on Long Island he paid for with earnings as a sales manager. He wasn't lying next to his wife. Now his mind was catching up. He mumbled to himself.

"Thank God for small favors. At least I don't have to sleep next to that bitch."

A divorce and a harsh economy were the triggers that led to his spiral into homelessness three years earlier. His anger and stubbornness had sealed his fate as a societal dropout.

He set his timing in tune with the noises he heard and the light. The huge neon sign on the face of the building near the mouth of the alley lit in stages. He remembered how days earlier another homeless man had tried to muscle him out of his spot in the alley. It was a good spot because of the restaurant dumpster he and his scant possessions laid next to. The foul odor of rotting food fermenting in the bottom of the green dumptster was easily forgiven because of the tasty scraps which rested on or near the top of the discarded heap. He could eat whenever he wanted to, and sometimes quite well. It was worth fighting for. His opponent was beaten and vanquished in part due to the light. The sign was made of huge red neon letters. It should have read "motel", but the M didn't work. The O began the light cycle. About two seconds passed, Then the T made it brighter. Two more seconds Then the E, and finally the L lit to cast the most light back down the alley. Four seconds of pitch darkness followed before the cycle began again. Marvin used the darkness to spring the decisive attack on his challenger. Now he suspected the man may be back. He rose from filthy blankets and newspapers in the first four seconds cover of darkness. He pinned himself to the brick wall and strained to look back down to the end of the alley as the red illumination grew. He saw nothing. Darkness moved him again, sliding closely with the wall to his back keeping him partly in shadow. His eyes strained again, scanning to catch someone moving so he could gain an advantage. Still, nothing. Two more cycles of light came and went, the red glow still didn't reveal anyone. Marvin wondered if he was wasting his time. The possible consequences of letting his guard down kept him stalking. There was only one more move left to put him at the end of the alley. The only place left to see was a brick archway across from him. It was the remnant of years earlier, before the restaurant was converted from a sweat shop clothing maker’s business. Garage doors were inset under the archway so trucks could back into the alley and load the toils of immigrant labor. He made his final move to his left into the back corner at the end of the alley. With the brick wall to his back, and now another one his left arm pressed against he could go no further. He looked the fifteen feet across the alley into the archway waiting to be seen in the dark. The O lighting didn't fully take the archway out of shadow. The T didn't either.

1

The E lighting let him see no one was there hiding under the archway. The T lit, letting him make sure it was clear.

He relaxed, staring into the archway seeing the garage door inset there and no one hiding close to it. It was a false alarm. The dark part of the neon light cycle left him standing there still looking toward the doors. His eyes strained again looking at an odd dull red glow that looked like it was inside the restaurant.

The garage door’s top row of glass let him see inside.

It took him a moment to realize what he was seeing wasn’t inside the restaurant.

As his eyes strained, dull apprehension began to settle into him. He realized he was seeing a reflection. Two red ovals the sizes of billiard balls were being reflected in the glass. His eyes strained harder trying to figure out what they were.

His angle looking up at the windows told him the objects were next to, and above him. He started to turn to his right as the O lit up. He looked up as the T lit, but something was blocking most of the light. As the E lit, he realized what was glowing red. His body shook in a shivering spasm. They were eyes! Terrible looking eyes towering over him. Eyes in a head two or three feet above him. Right next to him! The L lit as he pinned himself back against the wall trying to move away from whatever was beside him. The full illumination of red neon light let him see what was crouching down to move toward him.

"No, it can't be!"

The neon turned dark as Marvin cut loose a blood curdling scream.

"YAAAHHHH!!"

Before the O lit again his blood and body tissue splattered the dirty alley walls as he was torn to shreds.

Colonel Leroy "King" Biggs worked calmly. His restive state of was verified by the bio-monitor readouts. His eyes moved away from the monitor showing him that his pulse, respiration and blood pressure were all normal. He was the coolest of operators, even in these circumstances, and also in many other ways. He was not only a man’s man, but also quite a lady’s man. His short brown hair framed a rugged and handsome face. His larger than life sense of humor, and persuasive confidence were seductive. Hundreds of women could attest to the fact that he also had a larger than life "manhood". His charm and sex appeal could be intoxicating, if not, irresistible to women. His sex drive was compulsion he couldn’t or wouldn’t rein in. None of that, or anything else distracted him now. His mind was totally focused on the job he had at hand. He only glanced at the bio-readings in the bottom right side of the monitor in front of him. His eyes paused again at the navigational readout in the upper right corner of the screen. His distance, more than two million miles away from Earth astounded him. The center of the screen though, was what really held his attention. As a test pilot he had flown the fastest and most secret jets the United States had produced.

2

When he was the pilot on three space shuttle missions, he had flown at more than thirty-five thousand miles per hour.

The center of the screen he watched told him his speed was more than nine-hundred thousand miles per hour, and he was accelerating. Inside the tiny vessel it felt as if he were standing still. He had no duties operating the vehicle that was carrying him so fast and far away. It ran automatically. He only observed the series of informational readouts on the screen. Even though he knew from the pre-flight meeting what this new test vehicle was said to be capable of, it was still an amazing event to him. He wanted to survive the maiden voyage of this new piece of technology, but not out of a normal human survival instinct. His safe return to Earth on this first test flight would mean the United States had made a giant leap in technology. That’s the best a test pilot could hope for, to prove something worked. Being the first man to fly this vehicle didn’t glorify his ego, but it was simply a job to him, a duty to be carried out, and he wasn’t passionate about duty. Sports, and sexual escapades were what he was passionate about. The results of those encounters were always uncertain, and he was challenged by being solely in control of the outcome. He calmly sat and watched the screen.

Unknown to him another ship, with another pilot was also in flight on a coordinated trajectory. It was flying directly toward him. The distance between them was over four-hundred thousand miles. The on board computers of both ships held the exact flight trajectories they were programed with. Neither Biggs, nor the other pilot knew about each other as they hurtled toward the point where they would collide.

They ate up huge areas of space quickly as they moved toward their intersecting vector. At the point exactly between them the huge forces they projected gathered and resisted each other. The invisible rippling energies grappled against each other with greater intensity. Their opposing forces bent space itself into an unnatural formation of heavy matter. At the point of their greatest accumulated resistance something was emerging.

Seemingly out of nowhere, at that same point between the two ships, a third ship popped out into space from somewhere invisible. The pilot of the third ship, was Colonel John Evans. He did know about the other two pilots who had been zooming toward each other. They both knew nothing about him, or each other. He also knew that they were now veering away from each other and would settle into a course returning them to Earth. Evans was as steely serious as a military officer could be. His intense military bearing completely defined him. Mentally it afforded him certainty, and never a moment of hesitation or doubt. The thoughts behind his contorted face were as close to confusion as he could have been. He was in that state for barely a moment when the realization of what had occurred hit him. It seemed beyond reason, and exceeded even the wildest theories of the nature of his mission. No one had even imagined what he would discover. Not even the brightest minds in the genius think tanks could have considered it. A scowl came across his face. For him that was as close to a smile as he got.

The course of Colonel Evan’s ship carried him back toward Earth. He could hardly believe what had happened. He was returning to Earth with an astounding revelation. It would be the most important discovery in history.