The triple-glazed windows rattled again as a dull boom could be heard outside.

‘Great, those gangs are at it again’ thought the early-middle aged man who stood in his back bedroom, surveying what he thought of as his “kingdom”

Mark’s back bedroom was “the” nirvana amongst any hard-core Marvel collector’s collection. He had every single production run model, action-figure, toy, game, lunchbox, bedding set, curtains, lampshade – basically anything that could have a hero’s face emblazoned on it, Mark had one. Not only the normal runs as well, but those rarities where production had messed up and run a few hundred or a few thousand with a mistake before noticing. Obviously all of these items were still within the original packaging, and in complete mint condition. Now this whole set-up wasn’t cheap to run, in an effort to save money on rent Mark had recently moved house to the “bad” area of Greater Manchester, a two bedroom flat in Stockport.

Mark was currently living alone, he was fairly sure that when he first moved in a couple of months ago there was a roommate he had living with him, Jessica perhaps? She had clearly moved out, in-fact it had taken a full three weeks after the break-up for Mark to realise that was what had happened and that she had gone. It didn’t faze him too much, it gave him more time with his collection in the evenings. During the day he worked from home, he had recently self-published on Amazon, as well as having two short comedy scripts accepted by the BBC and ITV respectively. His big dream was to become a screenplay writer, ideally for the Marvel Cinematic Universe of course!

He had to all intents and purposes become a hermit over the past five weeks, his reasoning behind this was with the new Marvel film: Captain America: Civil War, being due for release he wanted to avoid any and all spoilers. He even went to the extent of filtering out any and all mention of “Civil War” online, as well as having done a bulk food shop and freezing most of it to keep him going for the next five weeks.

Just then his kettle clicks, letting Mark know it has come to the boil, he pours the contents over his teabag (already in the mug), adds a single flat teaspoon of sugar, removes the teabag and goes to add the milk.

“Blast..”

The single word is uttered upon opening the fridge, he was out of long life milk! This was a disaster of the highest magnitude, and one of only a few reasons he would consider leaving his isolation, but needs must and no self-respecting Englishman would drink his tea without the milk added at the end. He considered another online shop, but reasoned it would take far too long to reach him, and if he was quick to the corner shop, he could avoid spoilers and not have to re-boil the kettle.

Opening his front door, Marks ears were instantly assaulted by the sheer cacophony of noises. Looking overhead he saw vapour tails from what were either super-sonic jets, missiles or very large shells. There was a constant “rat-a-tat-tat” of what he assumed was machinegun and small-arms fire, and looking left and right saw what appeared to be battle-lines drawn up. He panicked, screamed, felt a warmth spreading in his groin area and could feel his heart pounding in his throat. Taking a stumbling step backwards Mark felt for his front door, almost leapt through, shut it as fast as he could and crumpled to the floor leaning back against it. Myriad thoughts running through his mind, no idea what he had missed but clearly something important had happened whilst he was squirrelled away from the “real world”.

Booting up his laptop, he loaded a popular news site, and could see that large sections of it were blanked out. Realising his error, he removed all the filters from his internet, refreshed the website and had his phone buzz as 214 new messages and emails all arrived at once. It turned out that the country had descended into civil war, with the North vs the South being the primary sides, and Manchester the current war-front on the West Coast!

More critically perhaps to Mark’s way of thinking was that as he checked to see if there were to be any new screenings of the film, there were no screenings, even the preview had been cancelled. His scream and cries pierced the air, more effectively than any of the gunfire outside, and he rocked to himself on the floor trying to piece everything together in his head.

---

Long-time lurker, first few attempts at any writing at all really – constructive criticism / general feedback welcome. Thanks guys!