Villainous Us

Nightmares

Iron Crisis

My eyes snapped open and I shot up in bed, panting heavily. My sheets were tangled around me and I was drenched in sweat. Running my fingers through my hair, I tried desperately to distinguish fiction from reality. I closed my eyes and focused on calming my erratic breathing.

Once it was a little more steady, I laid back down and covered my face with my hands. After a short while of just laying there and calming myself down, I turned my head and read the time displayed across the little alarm clock on my night stand.

It was 5:46 in the morning. I groaned and sat up for the second time, knowing that if I tried sleeping again, the nightmares would return.

I could function on three hours of sleep, right?

I blinked away the last memories of the dream before swinging my legs over the side of the bed, my bare feet brushing against the cold hardwood floor.

I stood and groggily made my way to the bathroom where I splashed cold water on my face. I then buried my face in a hand towel before hesitantly meeting my eyes in the mirror.

"It was just a dream, Alex," I told myself as I stared into the mirror, "It's not real."

That's a lie. It was real at one point in my life. Though I'm not a powerless little boy anymore, my dreams always found a way to bring me back to a time when I was. The pain, the fear, and the hopelessness streamed in like water trying to suffocate me. Only then would I wake up to a world where I was completely and utterly alone.

I stared at myself as I clutched the sink. Black hair and blue eyes. That's all I saw.

In truth, I wasn't even really sure who I was anymore. I felt like myself when I was Iron Crisis, but every time I took off that mask, I felt like I was hiding behind another.

I wasn't Alex Hale anymore. Alex was just a shell that I used to hide my true self from the world.

Alex didn't have any friends, and his family was held together by nothing more than a measly thread, more concerned with the public eye than their relationship. He didn't have a job or a purpose really. He was just there.

Iron Crisis on the other hand is everything that Alex is not. He's confident, charming, cunning, and powerful.

And a little psychotic, but that's just details.

I sighed and rubbed at the dark circles under my eyes. They were getting darker. Sleep was becoming even more difficult to come by recently.

I stumbled back out to my living room and sank into the plush cushions of the couch. The Starbucks napkin from last night sat on the coffee table, and with a tired sigh, I picked it up and reread it a few times over.

In normal circumstances, I hated riddles, but this one was small and self explanatory.

Meetings are a bitch, but then again, so were the Six.

Obviously this was leading me to the old meeting place for the Sinister Six. In truth, I wasn't too keen on going back to that place, but I needed to talk to her. To somebody.

I rubbed my chin a little as I read it over one more time. Then I suited up.

It didn't take long to get to the old warehouse. The poor building was collapsing in on itself now that we've abandoned it. I frowned and slipped between the wreckage and debris.

Once I'd navigated the maze of the main floor, I moved down the stairs.

Underground, it was evident someone had not been happy. Chairs were overturned and the table was on its side, its contents spewed across the floor.