| FEARFUL DARKNESS I know what you�re thinking. You�re sitting there looking at me in my Armani Wells suit and my Italian loafers thinking 'How can he be interesting? What kind of story can he tell?� Well, sit there and I�ll tell you the story of my life. Before you judge how interesting the story is just listen to it. The night outside was bright as day from the touch of the full moon. The crickets outside chirped loudly outside the window. If I recall correctly about fifteen and tried everything in my power to go to sleep. It was two in the morning and my mind and body refused to settle down as though they were fueled by the night itself. Surrendering, I threw on a pair of jeans, a shirt, and my shoes and went for a walk. There were barely any cars on the street, not very unusual for this time of night. Before I had noticed it, I had eventually ended up in the city. I did notice, when I realized I was in the city, two well built thugs mugging a woman. �Hand over the purse lady and no one gets hurt,� said one of the thugs. �Hey,� I called out to them,� leave the lady alone.� �What are you gonna do about it, Shrimp,� said the other thug, holding a knife in one hand. He charged at me after I instigated him but I dodged out of the way and hit him in the back of the neck. He collapsed on the ground and the other came at me with a knife. I slugged him in the stomach and he fell to his knees. He jabbed the knife in my arm and when he did, I clubbed him in the back of the head with my fist. �Are you all right?� I asked the woman. She was shocked, I noticed. I thought it was from just witnessing a high school sophomore beat the shit out of a couple beefed up meatheads at first but I looked at my arm where the thug had stabbed me, now deprived of the knife, was healing rather rapidly. Within seconds of my stabbing the gushing wound had healed completely. But that wasn�t what turned me. What turned me was an incident that happened six years ago. I learned of all my powers by now but instead of being the savior to the city of Washington DC, I had decided to use my powers for my own personal use. I used my incredible strength, agility, and speed as a sideshow. It was good money. But one night my parents were involved in a head-on collision with a speeding crook. The police had told me that the crook had gotten away, but my parents were dead. It wasn�t long after that the radio crackled with the news that the crook had escaped by jumping to his death off of a building. With all my anger, rage, and sorrow I vowed that I would rid the world of the people like the crook. Thus, with the help of my brother, the Prowler was born. Two years ago on October 16, I was twenty-eight. If I recall right, that was the day it started. I was now a respected businessman and had been invited by the president, Maxamillion Hoover, a descendant of J. Edgar Hoover, to a ball to celebrate his daughter�s twenty-seventh birthday. I guess he was trying to get us together. �Hello, Scott,� said President Hoover. �Good evening, Mr. President,� I replied. �How�s every thing at home?� �As good as everything can get.� �That�s great, Scott,� said the president, �Have you met my daughter?� �No,� I said, � I don�t believe I�ve had the pleasure.� Just then a secret service agent came up to the president and whispered something into his ear. �When?� the president asked the agent. �About thirty minutes ago,� replied the agent. The president turned back to me and seemed almost surprised that I was still there. �Excuse me, Scott,� he said to me, �I�ll see you later.� �You�ll see me sooner than you think, Max,� I said to myself. Thanks to my new skills, I was able to hear what the agent had said. He had said that someone was trying to break into the power plant. I was about to leave when I ran into the president�s beautiful daughter. �Hello, Mr. Kersay,� said Sarah. �Hello, Miss Hoover,� said I, �please, call me Scott.� �Okay, Scott,� said Sarah, �call me Sarah.� �Delighted to meet you,� I said forgetting about the break in. We walked off to the garden. Meanwhile, across the city, federal agents stormed the plant in hopes of actually catching the man that was said to be the Al Copone of our time, George Datsone. �George Datsone,� called a special agent, � you are under arrest.� �Over my dead body,� yelled out the voice of the gangster. Suddenly there was a shower of bullets around him. �Bad choice of words.� He turned to run only to run in to two cops heading his way. He turned back around but stopped when two bullets hit the ground near his feet. The gangster saw only one way out. He leapt off the catwalk and grabbed an electrical wire. Unfortunately the wire snapped and sent him spiraling down into a vat of chemicals. The wire, sparking with electricity, ignited the vat and caused a tremendous explosion. |