When you open your eyes, you're not sure if you've opened them at all. The void around you is so black you can't see your nose in front of your face. But you can feel the pressure of something sturdy against your back, your bottom, your legs. You think maybe you're lying down judging by the weight of the gravity, you just have nothing else to compare yourself to in the void.
So you lift your arms, stretch them out. They bump into something not far above you at all, and you feel it with your palms and fingers. Silky. Something that shifts under your touch. You follow its curve down to the sides, and with growing horror, you realize the sturdy pressure below you is also all around you. It has encased you.
Fear spikes through your middle, making bile rise in the back of your throat. Your hands don't touch so lightly anymore, they press. You force your hands against the sides, against the top above you, feeling how immovable and solid it is.
Your raspy voice whispers, "Batman?" The single name you can remember to call.
"Batman...?"
The darkness of your prison makes you incredibly self aware of your body, but not of your existence. You don't have anything but yourself and the dark. But you can feel your heart pounding in your ears. You can feel your hands touching and pressing. Are you alive? Do you exist? You wonder, fearfully, if you'll be trapped like this for eternity. How many minutes has it been since you opened your eyes? You hadn't been counting, and now you aren't sure where to start.
"Batman!"
Desperate, you start shoving against what's above you, then you start beating it with your fists. When you hear the first very tiny, insignificant splinter of wood, you understand where you are: inside of a casket. The soft comfort of the silk above you is now an omen of finality, something mocking you. You're in a casket. You're dead.
But you're not dead? You're not! You're alive! You are breathing! You can feel the racing of your heart, the pain in your wrists and arms as you beat on the casket's lid. Someone has buried you alive! And maybe they are still there, maybe it has only been a moment since they have lowered you inside. Tears bubble up in your eyes. The sliver of hope washes over you, and you start struggling and thrashing inside your wooden tomb. Your fingers and hands grow wet as your nails break, and your knees hurt from slamming into the lid keeping you in.
"Batman!" you scream. "I'm here! Batman!"
He'll hear you. He'll hear you! And... he'll come. He'll come... You wonder why this feels so familiar. The spark that had ignited within you goes out like a snuffed flame. He didn't come before, and... he isn't coming now. That's how it is, isn't it? That's how it's going to be. Everyone was wrong. Batman doesn't help the weak and down-trodden. Batman helps who he wants, the most important people. A miserable little street rat like you isn't worth the effort to save or keep.
You're not sure how long you sob. Time continues on without you whether it's slow or fast, and you're stuck in the void of it as it does. And then you're angry. The pit in your chest hurts so terribly at your realized betrayal. You're so angry. At Batman.
This time, you use your feet, your toes. You hurt them. Your busted hands, too, you hurt them. You're not sure how long it takes, but you keep going, fueled by the desire to show Batman what he's done to you. The wood splinters, slowly. The wood splinters, and the toiled earth above gives way on top of it, splitting it open. You hadn't considered this is how it would be once you got through. You hadn't thought about the dirt pouring in and suffocating you, swallowing you whole. It gets in your mouth, your eyes, your nose. You choke on it.
It's heavy on top of you.
But you shove your hands and arms through it, trying to push it aside, trying to pull yourself through the thick of it. How deep do they bury people? Six feet? Is it six feet? You're so tired. Six feet feels like twenty, like thirty. You don't think you'll make it to the top, if there is one at all. You're going to die here, strangled and blue, lodged in the dirt all because Batman doesn't give a rat's ass about you.
Your hand breaks through the top of the soil suddenly, and air brushes over your skin.
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