The Pale Prince

Interview

"It began in 1945. The government call it Victory in Japan Day; the people call it the day that the world - and subsequently - mankind woke up and smelled the roses. I like to call it the beginning of the end."

I flexed my hands, straining upwards against the tight metal cuffs that held me onto the cold steel stool, bolted into place too heavily for my strength to succeed in pulling them out of the dull concrete floor. Ahead of me - upon an old, chipped wooden chair - sat a single man, his gloved hands reaching up to fiddle with his hood, the cloth pulled over the top of his head and a set of Kevlar armour - fashioned to reflect that of the great crusades - stretched over his lithe yet seemingly muscular body. Gritting my teeth as I looked down at the crimson stains upon my milky white skin, I snarled towards the man and roared outwards - furious at my capture. "What do you want from me?" I slumped forwards, breathing heavily with defeat - the chair and the cuffs besting me.

The man stood up and circled around me - like a Shark mid-hunt, preying upon something weak, something feeble. "I just want you to tell me."

"Tell you what?" I cried out, face covered in dry blood from previous wounds - it seemed I had a talent for displeasing my captor. "What do you want to know? I'll tell you anything...please!"

The man circled around me, smiling down at me from beneath the hood, his brown skin glistening with sweat whilst the fingers that sat upon his right hand curled constantly. "I want to know everything." My hooded kidnapper drew his chair forwards and spun it around to face me in one swift motion before he sat down upon the oak seat and nodded towards me solemnly. "I want to know everything about the American; everything you can tell me about him. Tell me all that you know, and you go free."

"Well...as I said - it started in 1945. The news was all over it, talking about a flying man dropping and rising out of the sky like a bird learning to use its wings for the first time. The Governor called in the National Guard and the National Guard called in the Army. Policemen became SWAT and SWAT became Soldiers. Cruisers became Tanks and then Tanks became Fighter planes - flocks of Airacobra's blotting out the sky and covering up the clouds trying to keep up with this one man who seemed like a fish out of water. Suddenly - out of no where - the big guy lands on the ground; not as gracefully as he'd like I'm sure, nowadays he's all gentle, smooth with his feet like one of those ballet dancers - not this time, he smashes right through about three tower blocks before getting up and brushing himself off." The man stared at me, eyes glistening over the shadow his hood imposed upon him, causing his already sharp nose to seemingly jut out further. "People around the area said that he looked as bewildered as everyone else felt - and that was before the Tanks started firing at him. Knocked him around a block away so I heard - again, the big guy gets up without even taking a scratch."

"When the Army realised that they weren't denting him, they decided to call in the President. No one really knows what Truman said to the guy, or what had happened - but the burning question that was on all of minds was the same question that still fills our heads now: 'Where did he come from?'"

Flexing my hands to keep the blood flowing to my fingers - the tips of them underneath the nails turning a light shade of purple - I spat slightly onto the floor, my saliva laced with thin traces of crimson. "Carry on." The man spoke, leaning down to his leg - pulling a small yet vicious looking knife from a tiny scabbard that sat at his ankle. "I said I wanted to know everything."

Sighing to myself before coughing up more blood, I ran my tongue along my bottom lip to catch some of the stray droplets before looking across at the man. "Well, we didn't find out for another few months, until July at least. All the interest in the situation had almost died at this point - everyone was too busy still celebrating the surrender of Nazi Germany when suddenly the big guy comes out again on National Radio, doing an interview under the jurisdiction of the President. There were a few riots in Birmingham about it - 'The Flying Negro' they called him - but nothing serious happened, a few shops smashed up; burned out houses; police brutality...nothing we heard about until after the War."