The ol' bite and squeeze
He’s running, the dimly lit hallway seemingly going on forever. The walls are closing around him like a vice but somehow are also so unbearably wide. The longer he looks in front of him, the more the shape of the hallway around him and the darkness in the distance seems to shift and change.
The lights flicker.
His shoes squeak on linoleum floors.
His head is pounding.
As he runs, doors pass in a blur on either side of him, he’s going so fast he doesn’t think his legs can ever stop moving. Doors appear and disappear faster and faster as he runs. He can’t look back, if he looks back it’s going to kill him, he’s going to die here.
Suddenly the seemingly endless hallway, in a rather dramatic fashion, ends. The wall and his face have a rather intimate meeting which ends with his blood splattered on both the wall and the floor. Falling backwards onto the ground, his head throbs and the space behind his eyes is filled with sudden spikes of pain. His vision is blurred and a hand raised to the side of his head comes away bloody.
He can’t stay here though, he needs to move, to get up and run. He chances a look behind him, nothing but clouds of darkness swallowing where he had just been. Although he can’t see anything coming for him, he can feel it.
He feels like a prey animal, he’s being hunted like a prey animal.
As he stands on shaking legs the wall in front of him changes, he blinks and it’s a door. This is a chance he can’t pass up, he pushes through it and slams it behind him, throwing his back against the wooden surface. Squeezing his eyes shut he takes a moment to catch his breath, his lungs feel like they’re one wheeze away from bursting.
Finally, when he can breathe again, he pushes off the door. Looking up he notices that just like the hallway, the room he finds himself in has a single light. The light is somehow bright enough that looking at it stings his eyes but dim enough that it casts shadows up the walls. The walls that look suspiciously like laboratory walls. The white walls and grey floor look clinical and frightening in the dim light, the steel table in the centre of the room the only actual piece of furniture. On the table, he can see a small, clear rectangular box.
Cautiously, he walks closer. It’s tall enough that it reaches his eye level while on the table. The clear walls have a line of small holes just below the top edge, a hinge on one side is the only thing that breaks the uniformity. Inside the box, perch-like sticks crisscross from where they are fixed to opposite walls. Delicate webbing dusts the perches like snow, dangling and dancing in a non-existent breeze. He leans closer to the box, placing a hand on the table as he peers in. Silently he wonders to himself just what the box is for, a question that is very quickly answered.
On his hand, oh so gently, he feels a scratching sensation. It goes ignored at first like a tiny itch but as it continues he can't help but look down. There on the back of his hand, moving slowly and seemingly at random, is a spider. Its legs are a shade of bright blue with stripes of red, abdomen a deep maroon with abnormally large spinnerets. The eyes are large and dark, somehow human in their expression as its head tilts upwards and it looks right into his eyes. They stay this way for a moment, the calm a stark contrast to his primal fear just moments before.
Until it bites.
Fangs sink into his hand in slow motion, he feels it the second they break the skin. Pain blossoms immediately and he sucks in a harsh breath. He shakes his hand violently, flinging the spider into the air and away from him. He clutches his hand to his chest as it burns, fire spreading its way up his arm with an alarming speed. His chest seizes and his head begins to throb, he blinks and when he opens his eyes he’s on the floor. The light in the room seems to flicker violently as his pain intensifies, black spots coat his vision.
The only word he can think of is ‘excruciating’ it's the last thing he thinks about before-
he wakes up.
He sits up suddenly, a crunching sound is the first and last thing he hears before he’s careening off the side of the table and onto the ground. The room is silent aside from the sound of fast panting breaths as he tries to regain control of himself. God knows how long he stays there, hunched over with a hand on his heart just breathing.
Eventually, when his heart starts to slow and breathing doesn’t feel like a brand-new invention, he leans back against the table with a thunk. The cold steel feels incredible on his back, he didn’t realise he was sweating until now. As he leans against the leg of the table he tilts his head back and closes his eyes, the coolness of the metal helping ground him.
It was just a dream, it was just a dream, just a stupid stupid dream.
He feels jittery all of a sudden like he has too much energy and simply needs to get rid of it somehow. He pushes himself to his feet and starts pacing the room, corner to corner to corner to corner. This room is too small, these walls are too close, this stupid bright lighting is still burning his eyes and the table has goddamn handprints in it. If his brain would just slow down enough for him to have a coherent thought then maybe he could-
The table has handprints in it?
Handprints that were not there when he fell asleep. Handprints that were suspiciously ‘his hand’ shaped. He stops pacing to walk to the table, placing his hands into the dents to find they fit perfectly as if he were the one to create them. That's not possible, however, because this is a steel table and his hands are certainly not capable of warping steel. At least, he doesn’t think they are.
Just to test it, purely for scientific purposes, he grabs the corner of the table and squeezes it. It crumples like paper in his hand. This is not at all how he expected this to go. What he does next he can’t say he’s proud of… he panics.
He desperately tries to warp the steel into the ‘non-handprint’ shape it was in before. He gives up on the corner of the table immediately it’s a lost cause. No amount of pushing or squeezing fixes the shape, in fact, it only makes it look worse. The only thing that could be any worse is if someone co-
“Good Afternoon.”
He freezes, his back is towards the door, he had no idea someone had walked in. He is in the middle of squeezing a steel table back into a vaguely table-like shape and someone has walked in. He turns, trying his best to cover it with his body.
“Oh uh- hello!” it seems his response is faker than he anticipated, he can tell the man in front of him is raising an eyebrow under his mask.
“Food.” Is all the man says, not moving from his place by the door but holding out a plate for him to take. This might be a problem.
To take the plate, he will have to take a few steps forward, exposing the table to the man's view and outing himself as a furniture destroyer. To stay in place, however, will raise suspicion and potentially mean he doesn't get the food which sounds practically world-ending.
“Can you put that on the floor maybe?” He asks, hoping he is displaying enough unsureness for the man to take pity on him, take the hint and leave. The man continues to stare at him with a deadpan expression.
“I need to clean your wounds.” Well. Might as well get it over with.
“I broke the table.”
“That’s fine, sit down.” Oh. well. That’s fine then.
He sits down and the man comes closer, setting the plate next to him on the table. He expects yelling, cursing and ranting, but it doesn't come. He lifts his shirt over his head as the man pulls the same medical products he’s seen constantly over the last, however long, out of the pouches on his belt.
He can’t possibly keep calling this guy ‘the man’ in his head, so as he gets cleaned up he asks. “Are you Bruce? I’ve been calling you ‘the man’ in my head but that feels rude.” At this, the man, maybe Bruce, freezes. The cleaning wipe starts to tingle as it's held in one place on his skin. Before he can speak again, however, the man moves again, continuing to clean the skin around his injuries.
“Where did you hear that name?” Is the only response he gets.
“Alfred said it, I think.”
“They call me Batman.”
“I somehow don’t believe that.” The man stares at him for a few moments longer while finishing the last of his cleaning, the need for rebandaging long gone. "Are you mad about the table?" He asks, might as well clear the air now.
“Yes, my name is Bruce and no I'm not mad.” Bruce mutters as he places the last of his items inside the utility belt. He smiles to himself, he can hear how much the man didn’t want him to know that. They shouldn’t have been talking so loud outside his door then.
“Well Bruce, it’s nice to meet you.” He gets a strange look at that but continues without comment, eventually standing to leave.
“Can I ask what you did to the table?” Bruce turns to him, looking at him, then to the table, then back to him once again.
“I’d actually prefer it if you didn’t.” he says, staring Bruce directly in the face with a blank expression. Instead of replying, Bruce simply turns to the door and steps out as it slides open.
“I’ll see you later.”