Tuesday, March 14, 2006

236. The omniscient narrator

Oliver braced for a fight. Dick was too surprised--and far too out of training--to do much more than freeze while flashbacks of vaguely similar encounters from his past began to flood his mind.

As it turned out, there was to be no hand-to-hand combat, only a pair of guns pointed at each of the two lovers. Queen and Grayson both raised their hands, then lowered them behind their backs and allowed their wrists to be tightly bound. Oliver (Dick was still adjusting to thinking of him as "The Green Arrow") contemplated his next move, but his options were limited as long as Dick's life was on the line.

One other thing prevented the masked man from taking any sort of further action. That thing was the butt of one of the attacker's guns, which landed hard on the base of his skull and knocked him out cold.

Dick watched the beating in horror, then saw Ollie slump to the floor unconscious.

"You're next, faggot," said the head yokel. In the blink of an eye, Grayson felt something big and ugly connect with his head.

Then he felt nothing at all for a long, long time.