A Robin's Nest

Kelda Robin, a waitress at a local restaurant, is about close up shop when a man bursts in from the stormy streets, covered in injuries. She helps this person, who she now recognizes as her classmate, Flynn Howard, rest and recover, and the two discuss their failures to talk to each other before now, among many other things.

For Context

This short story was originally written as an extended scene for a nonexistent play as an assignment for my dramatic writing class. This version of the story has been rewritten to read more like a novel than the original, which was written in the format of a play script, though it's still going to inherently have a bit of a play-like feel to it, mostly with the extreme emphasis on dialogue.

This is framed within an overarching universe for a TV show I wrote in said class, called Misery, MI. It's essentially a satire of The Flash, an experimental reactor explodes and gives people powers, but the powers are all really terrible and/or have some kind of monkey's paw twist to them. The main character, Flynn Howard, is given the ability to conjure lifeless mannequins of the female figure and control them with his mind. The "template" for his ability was his fiance, Kelda Robin who disappeared and was absorbed into his body, and so the show is about him fighting various villains of the week alongside his friends while trying to find a way to get her back, featuring heavy tonal contrasts between ridiculous superhero action, charming slice-of-life sections, and powerful emotional moments.

Anyways, this scene is supposed to take place in S1 E8. Our heroes are fleeing from an enemy they come across in an abandoned factory when the floor gives out, and they fall into the offices below. The one who can get them out of there is knocked out during the fall, so while they wait for him to recover Flynn tells the story of how he met Kelda, a story he previously refrained from telling earlier due to how traumatic it was. Thus begins a flashback...