The Alleyway

The dark alleyway burned into the boy’s eyes. The inky blackness surrounding him, grasping him with sinewy tendrils of sickle-shaped, cruel claws refused to reveal any more than two steps away, the rest obscured ominously by the shifting cloud of darkness. Desperation, clinging like vines, clawed into the boy, gorging out his skin and ripping apart his organ piece by piece. Layers of hope dissolved dismally into panic and insanity, his eyes frantically alert, his tongue constantly gulping. Shuffling uncertainly, he wobbled forward, jumpy and nervous, flinching at the mere sounds of rustling leaves and breaking twigs that seemed unnaturally deafening in the pin-drop silence.

Creeping forward, the poor boy, shivering like a newly born chick, spotted a light. His demeanor brightened, his spirits lifting, as the small pinprick from beyond the mindless gloom enlarged into a powerful beam. Veins pumped with new found vigor, he drunkenly floated towards the light, whatever fear he had before melting and evaporating off him. Like a mouse after its cheese, a squirrel after its nuts, he now giddily hopped, anticipation radiating in his body. He giggled, chuckling with disbelief; the light is close! A small nagging suspicion lurked, a tiny sense of dread that instead of being saved, the gullible child had traded one danger for another, that the light was a trap. But oh well, the boy, after turning it around his head awhile, dismissed it briefly, his joy vanquishing all other doubts.

His glee soon turned to curiosity as he drew close to the source, his savior. The murky shadows allowed him to see more and more of the light until, from behind the blinding torch, a grinning man stepped forward. The boy stopped, fighting the immense urge to scream as his blood ran cold, freezing.