Thump!
Bang!
The big bully's foot landed on Joe's tummy, driving the air right out of his lungs and making him find it difficult to breathe. Joe crawled on the ground in deep and intense pain as it shot through his entire nerves.
"You should learn to respect us whenever you see us next time, Loser!" Ben laughed, echoing more on the last word. He kicked Joe's backpack and all the content spilled out. Comic books scattered across the puddles of water, Joe's lovely artwork soaked wet in the rain.
"Do you really think you could stop us?" Ray, another big boy, shot out and gave Joe another kick. Joe winced again in pain.
"Son of a bitch, you called the cops on us the last time but now you can't, ha ha." Ben laughed and spat on Joe.
Ben and his two friends kept watching Joe and grinning like they were watching their favorite movie. Joe squeezed his eyes shut, trying so hard to resist the pain. This was how it always went. He had kept his head low, stayed out of everyone's way, but they kept finding him.
He had been bullied, molested and tortured all his life in high school that he had started getting used to.
"Hey!" A small voice called from a corner of the alley. Joe peeked through one of his eyes and saw Lucas Bright - Freshman, the quiet boy that always sat alone in the cafeteria. He was holding his skateboard like a shield and his small hands were trembling slowly. "Leave him alone."
Ben turned around, and his face darkened and he smirked. "Oh, look what we got here. Little Lucas wanna play hero too?"
He started walking towards the kid, Derek and Marcus right behind him. Joe's chest was still burning from the terrible kicks, but something inside him snapped. He had spent three years letting them push him around, hiding in the bathroom during lunch, dodging around corners and walking different routes home everyday. But he wasn't gonna watch them hurt someone smaller than him.
Before he could think, he quickly scrambled to his feet and lurched towards the bigger boy, Ben, slamming into his back. Ben stumbled forward, tripping over a loose piece of concrete. He turned around, his face red with rage, and he swung his fist hard.
Joe ducked but the punch caught him in the side of his head, another one landed on his tummy, and the punches kept coming. Joe could feel his head spinning, his vision blurred. He lost his balance and stumbled backwards over a pile of broken blocks. All of a sudden he felt a heavy blow on his head. It was painless but he fell flat on the ground.
All he could hear last was:
"No Ben, I think he's dead…"
And everything went dark. The gray Chicago sky faded to black.
But the darkness didn't last. Instead of nothing, Joe felt himself falling again - this time through empty space, like a void, wind howling in his ears so loud that he couldn't think. He reached out his hands to grab something but there was just air around him. For a split second he felt he was falling but it wasn't on and on for a few moments.
He could feel the force of gravity pulling him toward the ground.
He began to scream loudly.
No, No, No…
Ahhhhhhhhh....
Then. BUMP!
He hit the ground hard, rolling over and over until he came to a stop. He closed his eyes tight then opened them again. He blinked twice but all he could feel was darkness. He pushed himself up, groaning as his head throbbed like it was full of thorns. He felt heavy as he raised himself up.
All of a sudden a sharp light penetrated towards him nearly blinding him, he closed his eyes again and he peered towards the light.
The light then expanded surrounding the entire area. Joe looked around and he realized this wasn't his high school, this wasn't the alley. It wasn't anywhere in Chicago he had ever seen.
Where was he?
This was a definition of another city. Tall skyscrapers rose overhead, they were all cracked and twisted, covered in thick black glass that sparked like metal and gray light. But it's a real sight of apocalypse.
The street under his hands was made of a kind of stone, not normal stone, but a dark stone, and the air was putrid and it stank of death and rot.
Red illumination of light greeted the streets and he could see no one around. He stood up and dragged his feet across the street. The street lights were broken and broken shards of glass filled the ground. He heard all sorts of sounds like ghosts and the earth moving underneath.
This seems like a movie or a dream.
A sound made him freeze. Footsteps, slow and steady, coming from behind a collapsed building.
Joe scrambled backwards, his heart beating loudly, until his back hit the base of a street light that looked like it had been melted into a weird shape.
The figure who stepped out was a girl, average height, about his age or maybe a little bit older. She had short black hair dyed at the tips, and was wearing heavy work black stained boots, cargo pants with more inner pockets than he could count, a leather jacket covered in patches, and she held a steel pipe in her hands that looked bigger and heavier than her.
She stared at him for a long moment, her brown eyes scanned every inch of him. Then she spoke, her voice was calm and flat.
"Seeing you here is either one out of the two, you're dead or rather in a coma. You must be Joe Miller."
Joe just stared back, he was too shocked to talk. How did she know his name? Where was this place?
"Welcome to the Dark Lands, Joe," she said like she was announcing to him. "And if you wanna live long enough to find out what that means, you have to listen to everything I say."
Joe stared at her. Too many unanswered questions ran over his mind.
How the hell did he just bounce from being beaten by the bullies to the Dark Lands?
Was this really another timeline? Was he in bigger trouble? Let's find out more…