Prologue

Now now… everybody siiiit back for ah mo-ment. It's time for a bed time story. I wantcha all to close your eyes for that aaand no peeking.

You live in a small town, perhaps no town at all, out in the countryside. You know your neighbors. Nice people, who would look you in the eye, nodding their heads when they're passing by, they smile no matter how far away they might be. They care. They seem to…ah care, whenever you need help, they're there. Now close your eyes. Listen. What do you hear?

Do you hear birds chirping or the crickets chir-ruping? A rustle of leaves maybe as the breeze picks them u-p? Do you hear little children playing in the yard? Happy without a care in the world. Free. Do you feel it too? The smell of almonds and vanilla beans, lemon, pepper mint? Chocolate? Mommy's probably baking something de-licious. Father's sitting on his rocking chair, smoking and nodding your head at you, a gesture of assurance as if he wants to go bear haunting with ya.

But then something strikes ya. You open your eyes and you're not in the countryside anymore. You're back in your city. Gotham City. You live in a house that your daddy had rent from someone he'd never met. Listen: above the ever-present traffic, an ex-plosion. Probably just a car backfiring. Or kids, playing with firecrackers. They're probably harassing some old man? Or is it ah gunfire? When you awake tomorrow morning, will there be a dead man on the steps to your apartment? Probably.

Now, no more than a few doors down, breaking glass, hear it? just someone dropping a beer bottle in their garbage. Or… a car window breaking… or ah house window. Listen next to the squeeeal of braking tires. Perhaps a crash comes, perhaps it doesn't. Footsteps. Is it someone walking pass the sidewalk? Is your housemate home? Is it just some homeless guy taking a piss in the three-foot alley between your apartment and the next? Some woman squatting where the bush used to be in front of the house next door? Neigbours just got tired of her hiding in their shrubbery and taking shit, so they cut it down… and she keeps right on doing it in the open where the shrubbery used to be. Now there this… ah low-flying jet and you don't know what's going on because you can't hear any-thing over the roar. And when the roar dies down, a helicopter flies low over your apartment. It sounds like it's making an alley run right between your apartment and the neighboring apartment.

These are the sounds of…ah your city. Every night, eeevery day, every night, you…hear'em. And you just ignore them. Most people do. They drown them out with music, with headphones, earplugs anything to let their brain stop processing. That's what the seven year old boy living down the alley did when-ever he heard staggered footsteps coming down the hallway, the sound of heavy boots.

Thud. Thud. Thud

WMWMWMWMWMW

September 19th, 1983. 12:30 AM

The key turning in the rusty door lock, the sound that preceded it all.

"Why the fuck is this bloody house so cold?" The sound of a drunken man's voice, that he hated to call father, echoed in the bare hallway outside the little boy's door.

He knew he had to keep the lights off and pretend to be asleep. He knew he would beat him to death if he got the chance. He always had an excuse for that. Last time he ended up at a hospital with a broken head and some fractured ribs. He still had bruises all over and it still hurt whenever he touched them.

"Where the fuck are you bitch? Why can't you keep a fucking heater on?"

He heard noises in the room next door as the walls were paper-thin. She was moving around, slowly, woken from sleep, resigned to her fate.

He heard the song on his father's lips, out of tune and slurred.

"How was your night dear?" Her voice sounded timid and far away as always.

"What do you care? The house is fucking freezing, what have you been doing all night? "

"Your coffee's in the oven if you want it."

"Why would I want it after it's dried out in the oven? It'll taste like shit!"

The sound of bottles clinked in a crate through the walls. " I'll have to made do with one of these." He heard his father say.

"Ok love, I'll go back to bed now if that's alright? I'm just so tired."

The anticipation was giving him butterflies. Maybe it would be different tonight, he thought.

"Sit down", the drunken anger in his father's voice made him jump in the darkness of his room. "Keep me company; you never talk to me anymore. It makes me feel like you don't want me."

Silence…

he could feel the sound of his heart pounding against his chest. He prayed that his father had somehow passed out. Then the night would simply end and his father would wake up with nothing more than a headache. The monster would be gone. It had happened several times before, usually around the holidays or when his father came home after a night of drinking with his policeman buddies.

But the sound of glass breaking broke the short silence and he heard a chair crashing onto the floor, wood splintering.

"I said sit the fuck down."

His mother's stifled scream signified the beginning. He hid under his blankets, too scared to get out of the bed to look for his Walkman. To block out the screams to forget where he was, to lose himself in something he couldn't comprehend but… the cries came through the walls; the walls shuddered with the impact. Then the noises stirred dark pictures in his mind, pictures that frightened him more than the actions. He had to see now, to block out the horrifying images in his mind; he had to see with his own eyes.

So He crawled out of bed, opening the door slowly; the hallway was dark. The only light was coming from the kitchen. The light inside flickering as the bulb swung on its cord.

Crying and cursing, anger and emotion poured out into the hallway in great big puddles of blood, the images in his mind distorting the reality. He followed a trail of blood leading to the kitchen, bloody handprints smudged around the walls and the coffee table.

A shadow passed from his eyes, falling across the open kitchen door, then he saw a body fall. His mother was lying on the floor, Her face covered in blood. His father stood over her, his eyes now facing the darkness in his head.

The eyes that told him it is his turn now as they looked back at a mother with no love.

He tried to melt back into the darkness, being the same with it to hide: maybe he won't see, he thought.

He heard the sound of bottles clinking in a crate, a reprieve if only for a while. Go back to bed, he thought. Get some sleep and get up in the morning, it will be okay in the morning.

He knew when he got up that song would be on the radio, the same one she always played. The tune was stuck in his head, the one that let him forget where he was.

Don't cry…

Father hates any sign of weakness.