Ancil“I’m looking for my Mommy,” the little girl said. “You see my Mommy?”
The Midnight Robber’s tall figure appeared behind her and began to stroke her long curly locks. The Midnight Robber looked completely different. He didn’t look like he was wearing a costume but he looked like a shadow formed in the shape of a man with red eyes, a hat and a long flowing red cape. It was my first real encounter with the Midnight Robber. He then said to the little girl, “Don’t worry child we go find your mommy. Ask the boy again and see what he have to say.”
“Where my mommy?” The girl asked me again.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You don’t know!” The little girl shouted angrily, “you don’t know!” Her voice got deeper as she said it a second time. Sharp claws slowly began to protrude from her fingertips and all the way to the floor as she walked closer to me with her twisted feet. I couldn’t tell if she was angry or not because I saw no expressions through her faceless apparition. The girl then ran up to me and literally jumped into my body. As soon as she did, the loud screams of torment started to play in my head again. I went down with my hand over my ears. Among the tormented cries I could have heard the little girl asking “where my mommy?” every few seconds. I kept on saying that I didn’t know but she kept on asking. The sounds eventually subsided but it was then replaced by the deep monstrous voice of the Midnight Robber, “You know what is allyuh problem? Let me tell you what is allyuh problem eh. Allyuh feel that I just like allyuh. Allyuh feel that I is just a man. But I is not no man. I is something more than just a mere man. I is a man who was forged from the love of liberty in the fires of hope and prayer. I is a man carved by the razor sharp beak of the Scarlet Ibis and sculpted by the Rufous-vented Cocrico. I is a man who was color coded by the Chaconia and glued together by little remnants of asphalt extracted from the pitch lake. I is the Midnight Robber and everything that I set out to do does come to pass and no angel in heaven or demon in hell could stop me. My will will always be done.” I looked up and I saw the Midnight Robber kneeling on one knee in front of me. He didn’t look like the shadowy figure from before but like the very real Midnight Robber. He stayed silent and stared at me for a while then said, “I had no intentions of killing you Jed. You is a good boy. I does only kill wrongdoers and vessels of injustice. But you know too much. The kind of knowledge you have is enough to get you killed. I can’t let you live with that.” He grasped my neck and lifted me off the ground suffocating me with his hold. His grasp got tighter and tighter on my neck.
“Put him down!!” A familiar voice shouted. It was Megan standing with a huge gun in her hand. The gun looked like an ordinary shot gun but the tip where the bullet comes out of was huge. It was literally almost 6 inches wide and 6 inches high. The Midnight Robber dropped me to the floor and as soon as he did, Megan fired a shot at the Midnight Robber propelling him high into the air and off the side of the building. Megan then came, helped me up and said, “now we’re even!”
“Nope. I saved your life twice,” I joked,
“Well I’m almost there then,” Megan laughed
“You think he’s dead?”
“I don’t know. I hope so. If he’s dead that means we saved the nation right?” Megan answered.
The First Lady came up from behind us and said, “It will take more than that to kill the Midnight Robber. That guy ain’t human.”
“He talks a lot,” I said.
“Yeah. He is quite the chatterbox,” the First Lady said.
“A shot like that would kill anything. What is he… Like really?” Megan said, changing the topic.
“To be honest,” the First Lady said. “I don’t really know. The files that the government had on the ACT Programme only pointed to failure. There were always errors. A creation like the Midnight Robber is something that the government could have only dreamed of.”
“I heard that the government stopped funding the ACT Programme after the test subjects went bezerk and killed a bunch of people,” Megan said.
“How do you know that?” The First Lady asked.
Megan looked at me then answered. “We have our sources.”
“Hmmm. The public isn’t supposed to know about that. It must have leaked,” the First Lady said, “That kind of information can get you arrested, even killed. Don’t ever tell anyone that you know that okay. The government is very cautious when it comes to spilling their secrets. You won’t believe how many things are being hidden from the public. If you listen to the government you would think that the country is in some sort of recession. This country is nowhere near to a recession. The ACT Programme alone led to so many scientific discoveries that were trademarked by the country and sold to Russia and the United States. The country did stop funding the ACT Programme but funded other programmes that utilized the same technology. But you won’t know about that. The government won’t tell you that. There are even secrets that have been kept from me, and I’m the First Lady.”
“So who are really the bad guys here?” I asked.
“Hero or villain, we are all shitty people. Everyone has their demons.”
“Corruption is a hell of a thing,” I said.
“You could say that again,” the First Lady said. “Anyway, let’s go inside and probably try to figure something out.” She began to walk towards the doorway but then she turned around and said, “Try to keep the fact that I’m helping y’all a secret please. I would hate to have the Midnight Robber blow my head off.” She then roughly took the gun away from Megan.
As she said that I remembered the fact that she betrayed us and I was about to yell at her for it but Megan seemingly had read my mind because she instantly said to me with her hands in front of my face, “save it.” She then walked off behind the First Lady. I was slightly insulted but I guess she was right. I then followed after the two.
