Unable To Move

"...look, I don't care how you do it!" Poison Ivy said. "Just get rid of the body! And the costume."

"Okay, okay," the male voice said, then muttered under his breath. "Bitch."

Like a cat, the reporter had transitioned from sleep to consciousness almost automatically. No fuzzy half-state, just a moment of darkness and then she was there, aware, ready to go. Except she wasn't going anywhere.

Lois Lane couldn't see. Her eyes were closed, body heavy and limp. She tried to move, but her arms and legs wouldn't budge. It was like when she awoke in the middle of the night, trapped inside of herself, needing to move but unable to. Sleep paralysis.

At least, the reporter thought, I hope that's all it is.

She remembered stories of people down in Haiti, **** with neurotoxins. How they would be mistaken for dead, buried alive by their relatives. Awake and conscious as the dirt tumbled down onto the box, air getting close. Wanting to scream and pound that they weren't dead. But they couldn't move.

It's one thing to read horror stories about ****-related deaths, the reporter thought grimly. And something else to live one.

Hands slid under her shoulders. A male voice grunted softly under her dead weight. Dragging her away, heels digging into the topsoil. Which gave way to dry cement, and then stairs. The reporter winced as her heels banged on the steps, Achilles' tendons tight and probably scraped and bruised by the time they got to the bottom.

Where would he take me? If he thinks I'm dead, if he's getting rid of the body... Lois tried and failed to shiver, body still completely limp. The Mafia would dismember the body. Make it unrecognizable, dispose of it in pieces...

But the man had other plans.

Heat, and the roar of a furnace. Metropolis was on gas now, but some of the older buildings still had the old-fashioned kind where you could open the door and shove in bits of paper, wood, coal...anything that would burn.

Like a body you had to get rid of.

Lois fell heavily against something soft and springy. Coarse cloth beneath her back. Dense cushions...some kind of a mattress? Her nose was still numb, sense of smell not working right...that would be the residual effects of the cocaine...but she could feel the rough hand sliding up her inner thigh.

"You're a beauty." The voice said, thick with lust. "Be a waste not to dip my wick. Not like you're in a position to argue."