Good day to everyone. I've been thinking and decided to write a fanfic. It's my first work, so please be gentle. I won't beat around the bush, here's "Need to start with a clean slate" for your attention..
「A Scratch on the Celluloid」
Once more, that deafening, humiliating blow to the beak—a heavy punch to the gut that made his lungs shrivel into a dry coil—followed by a blinding flash of pain in his left eye, scattering prickly sparks beneath his eyelids. It was the same thing every time. Over and over, with the relentless, mechanical precision of clockwork, every brilliant scheme of his tumbled into that cursed, gaping abyss.
Jim could find no answers. All he could do now was feel his own heart pounding against his ribs—loud, terrified, and frantic. He pressed his back against the cold, rough brickwork behind the St. Canard National Bank—hard enough to make his vertebrae crack—trying to steady his ragged, wheezing breath. His mouth held a distinct, sour taste of copper and dust.
It wasn't supposed to end this way. It simply had no right to.
Negaduck never left things to chance. He always calculated his moves down to the minutest physical variables: the exact millimeter of gravel crunching under his heavy boot-sole, the tension of a hidden trap’s tripwire, the precise second of his victim's hesitation. Yet that... that damned do-gooder in the purple cape—as if mocking the very theory of probability—invariably stayed one step ahead.
By what unfathomable, unnatural instinct did that feathered moron guess every one of his plans before they had even fully formed in Jim’s mind? And why did Darkwing Duck alone possess this secret, while he—a true genius of destruction—was forced to gather the shards of his greatness in stinking alleyways?
His battered, weary body hauled itself up from the ground, heavy as if filled with molten lead. A gloved hand, grimy and stained, pressed against the icy, peeling wall, seeking some semblance of support. With a practiced, automatic motion, he adjusted his askew mask. His inflamed, angry eyes darted feverishly across the dark alley—praying no one would see him like this. Praying he wouldn't betray his weakness here, on the very brink of crushing failure.
Silence reigned all around. The deafening, dead silence of the city at night.
Jim froze. For the first time in ages, he simply stopped and forced himself to listen to that emptiness.
No. It wasn't just silence.
Something alien—something barely perceptible that Starling had never noticed in all his years—began to seep into his eardrums. It was as if, somewhere beyond the audible spectrum, right at the back of his skull, an invisible, dust-caked radio was muttering monotonously, choking on static.
He jerked his head upward. Not a single lit window in the towering skyscrapers. Not a distant echo of a car engine on the highway. Only that strange, rasping, dry sound. Like an old projector left running in an empty theater, spooling through a blank, scratched strip of celluloid with no soundtrack.
Jim spun on his heels, ready to draw his chainsaw. No one there. Just an empty passageway between windowless walls, oozing with the dampness of the night. His legs carried him forward across the wet, oily-sheened concrete.
Starling froze, staring at his boots; the soles were leaving dark prints on the damp surface. But it hadn't rained today.
He vividly, down to the smallest detail, remembered the dry, dusty, and stifling heat of the evening when he'd just set out on his mission. The air was like an oven, with no hint of a thunderstorm. Where, then, had come from that sticky, cold dampness, the kind you only get after a long autumn rain?
"Im finally gone nuts.." the villain whispered under his breath, almost silently, nervously adjusting the brim of his hat, which had drooped from the moisture.
Yes, exactly. These are just hallucinations. Mirages born of a concussion after a good slap. Ordinary fatigue, which distorts the perception of the world, turning it into a trembling, faulty lens. Just fatigue. Well.. or paranoia. There's no other option.
The alleys of St.Canard twisted and turned along familiar paths, memorized down to the last brick. Jim quickly spotted the rusty, creaking fire escape—his faithful savior—and climbed effortlessly onto the roof of the five-story building. He'd done this hundreds, thousands of times. A bird's-eye view of the city at night always had a calming effect on his frayed psyche: it allowed him to catch his breath, sort out his thoughts, and completely confuse the police snoops. A perfect, calming ritual.
Negaduck walked to the very edge of the roof and, with a dull groan, sank heavily onto the cold concrete ledge, his legs dangling over the edge. The night air rushed into his lungs, cooling his fevered brain.
Down below, on the deserted street, the same worker trudged along, as always at this hour. Jim saw him here regularly. The man always stayed late, always wore the same ugly green cap, and lugged a heavy backpack that noticeably weighed down his right shoulder. He always walked along this path, past the broken payphone, at exactly the same time.
A strange, almost childish, capricious urge suddenly stirred in Jim's chest to throw something heavy at him. But.. the passerby had already disappeared around the bend of a gray building, leaving behind only the flickering light of a lone streetlamp in the fog.
"Life is such a bastard.." Starling spat bitterly into the emptiness of the night, slowly turning his head back.
His fingers absentmindedly brushed against a small shard of red brick on the roof. He picked it up, turned it over in his hands, then turned back to the edge and looked down, about to hurl the fragment at the opposite wall.
The brick fell from his numb fingers.
"What the.." Jim breathed, feeling the feathers under his hat stand on end.
Down there, by the broken payphone, was that same stranger again. The same guy in the green cap and with a backpack over his right shoulder. As if he hadn't left a second ago.
Maybe he was imagining it? A double?
No, that's impossible. Over the past six months, Jim had become as familiar with that stupid, faded cap as he was with Darkwing Duck's face. But how the hell was that possible?! He had just turned the corner onto another street. There was no way he could have gone back in a split second without making a sound.
Jim quickly picked up another brick fragment and hurled it down with all his might. The stone flew to the ground with a soft, air-splitting whistle and shattered into pieces with a dry crack right in front of the passerby's toes.
The man didn't even care. He didn't even flinch at the sharp sound. He didn't quicken his pace or raise his head to curse the hooligan.
He simply continued on his way—measured, mechanical, unnervingly steady. And once again, he vanished around that same corner.
It defied every known law of physics and logic. Everything that underpinned the familiar—albeit cruel—order of things in his world.
But had it always been this way? Perhaps he simply hadn't noticed such trifles before, too preoccupied with his grand schemes to conquer the city? Or.. had his mind finally succumbed to the onslaught of madness?
He sat on that rooftop for three hours.
And the whole time, down to the very second, the exact same action repeated itself. The moment Negaduck looked away—even for an instant, or just to blink—that damned guy in the green cap would start his walk all over again. Again. And again. And again. Like a wind-up toy running low on power.
Naturally, Jim couldn't take it anymore. He climbed down and intercepted the man right by the payphone. He tried to interact with the anomaly: roughly grabbing him by the collar and pinning him against the wall, demanding answers. And there *was* a reaction! The man screamed in terror, trembled, dropped his backpack, mumbled something about money and the police, and then fled in a panic.
But the moment Negaduck stepped into the shadows of the alley—vanishing from sight for just a couple of seconds—and returned, the cursed cycle would restart. The man would calmly walk from the beginning of the street again, remembering neither the attack, nor the broken brick, nor Jim himself.
It was a recording. A dead time loop. A broken frame on an old reel of film. After yet another—the tenth—futile attempt to break the pattern, Negaduck walked away, breathing heavily with rage and bewilderment. He strode briskly off, but a cold, paralyzing certainty had lodged itself in his mind like a steel spike: something was wrong here.
Something fundamentally, monstrously, and irreparably wrong was happening in this city.
And the most chilling part wasn't even the blue-collar worker stuck in a loop—Jim planned to get to the bottom of that in the morning. What truly made his insides knot with a dull, primal dread was what was happening right now, beneath the light of the sparse streetlamps.
Why did his own shadow on the wet concrete stubbornly lag behind him exactly every ten steps?..
germansingergirl
origamiaround
andulkaphoto
