The Last Joyride

Just a simple idea I had. I tried to do it in under 100 words but I fell WAY short. Or is it long?

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“I never should have stolen that damn car,” Richie thought, as his lungs filled with blood and his sight blurred. The cries of the women he tried to save were little comfort as the gang moved closer. They swore at him in broken English and laughed at how they thought it was really him, come to punish them. Then they took turns deciding what they would do to him next, this crazy fool who pulled up in the car and tried to stop their fun for the night. Richie tried to blink away the sweat over his brow and stare into the looming shadows of Death. He may have led a horrible life but his last act surprised him. Maybe it was the way people looked at him as he drove down the streets and alleys of the city. Maybe part of him wanted to know the way a righteous man felt, even if it was only a trick. Just for once to do something good and right. The darkness coalesced around him and the laughter trailed off. “This is it,” he thought as the shadow became the shape of a bat when it fell around him, “how ironic.”

The gang around him erupted in yells of pain and panic. Richie tried to focus his eyes and force breath into his clogged lungs. He was just able to make out the man standing over him, defending him, protecting him, when the man in the dark cape and the pointed ears bent down and whispered to him. “It’s okay now, you did good son. Rest” Richie smiled and no longer felt afraid of the dark, but welcomed its embrace. It was the only time he ever felt safe in the city of his birth and death; Gotham.