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A clock ticks.

"Why are you doing this!?"

Your panicked cry echoes through the empty hallway- where exactly it is, you don't know. It's impossible for you to know. Since this terrifying entity appeared before you (you believe he introduced himself as 'Tony', but you're unsure if he really said that or if you've attached the first name you could think of to him in an effort to make him seem more human), all concept of time and space has become so erratic that it's impossible to make heads or tails of the past twenty-four hours.

As for him, he just chuckles as he approaches you, his eyes trained on your every movement, eyes bright with playful malice.

"I'm showing you," he intones, inexplicably, wagging a finger at you back and forth like a metronome.

You want to scream in frustration- he talks as if quoting from a storybook, or about to burst into song. Nothing he has said to you since this nightmare started has made any logical sense, or at least, he has given you no information that makes you any the wiser to his ultimate goal.

But whenever you display any kind of strong emotion- and you've run the whole gamut from confusion to fear to anger- he seems to find it amusing. And you do not want to amuse this thing. You know that 'Tony' is the cause of all of this, even though you never actually witness him doing anything but following you and snapping his fingers. But even that is deeply unsettling- you cower back as he strides purposefully towards you, his coat billowing and putting you in mind of black wings, from a crow or a bat. Dark things. With his midnight-blue skin, strange black, blonde-tipped hair and the red streak across the bridge of his nose that you fervently hope is not blood, he is unlike anything you have ever seen. But it's his eyes that frighten you- deep and fathomless as a black hole.

"Show me what?!" you hiss, back arching like an angry cat's as he draws nearer and nearer, teeth forming a half-moon grin.

He chuckles, his deep voice resonating throughout the spacious hallway in which he has you cornered.

"Stay back!" you shout, voice cracking.

All your pleas- then demands- for him to relent in his dogged pursuit of you have gone unbidden. Each new place you are somehow teleported to, the same pattern emerges- you try to flee, he chases you, and then when you are cornered and he catches up to you, he snaps his gloved fingers and the game begins all over again, leaving you more and more confused and disorientated at each new curveball thrown. But there is only so long this can continue, and Tony knows that all too well. History does tend to repeat itself, doesn't it?

"I'm showing you," Tony repeats quietly, peeling off one of the gloves with his teeth.

You swallow.

"Showing me-?"

His eyes suddenly widen as he lunges forward and wraps a hand around your wrist and you cry out- his grip is bruisingly strong. But your pain is rendered irrelevant when you look down at your arm. The skin seems to be withering, almost, crinkly like a shriveled apple. A scream crawls up your throat as you watch, the stink of rotting meat and dried blood invading your nostrils as you stand there helplessly, unable to move or tear your eyes away as your own arm decays before you. First the muscles and then the tendons, and you feel the bones shifting and slowly cracking beneath the pressure of the man's merciless grip, the crunch causing a twinge in your knees. Soon, from your wrist to past your elbow, all that's left is bones.

"Stop! Make it stop!" you scream out, the urge to vomit growing stronger by the moment. If you weren't being held up by your arm, you would have collapsed to your knees by now.

Tony smiles and leans forward, his breath icy cold against your ear, tickling the hairs at your temple.

"You can run. You can hide. But eventually, everyone runs out of time." he says, like a commandment. You gaze at him, bewildered, panicked, uncomprehending. He smirks as his eyes, inhuman and horribly beautiful, bore into your own, which are almost popping out of your head in fear.

“Until next time.”,

And he lets go.

"AAH!"

You sit bolt upright, jerked awake by your own horrified scream, panting as though you have recently gone into labor. You skin is soaked with sweat, hair either plastered to your forehead or sticking up wildly at different angles. Glancing all around, your heart begins to slow down as the familiar sight of your bedroom greets your eyes. You gasp and glance down at your arm...it's fine. No rotting flesh, no visible bones, nothing. Cautiously, you even raise your arm and take a sniff of your skin. Totally normal.

"A dream," you whisper in relief, almost wanting to laugh at the absurdity of it all. "A dream..."

Distantly, a clock ticks.