"Children have You ever met the Bogeyman before
No, of course You haven't for You're much too good, I'm sure;
Don't You be afraid of him if he should visit You,
He's a great big coward, so I'll tell You what to do
Hush, hush, hush, here comes the Bogeyman,
Don't let him come too close to You, he'll catch you if he can.
Just pretend that you're a crocodile
And you will find that Bogeyman will run away a mile."
"Hush, hush, hush, here comes the Boogeyman!" whispered Victor, humming away merrily as he rifled through his attachment case. Click went the latch on the lock. "Don't let him come too close to you, he'll catch you if he can." The lid burst open and the case unraveled a compartment of special toys.
"Mmm..."
"Say shoo shoo and stick him with a pin." He picked up one of his special toys. A Henckel's International Chef's knife. It was so beautiful. "And just pretend that he is not there, and the Boogeyman just vanishes...vanishes...vanishes into the air! Haha! Good, huh?" He looked over to Samantha for approval. The blonde haired woman, bound with chains and gagged with an old shirt, moaned loudly, tears falling from her bruised eyes. Victor's heart broke at the sight. "Oh, my gosh, my dear, please don't cry. Shh! Don't, now. I don't want you to. It will make me cry, and I just can't handle that right now."
"Mmm!"
"Shut up. SHUT UP!" Victor Zsasz screamed. He stabbed down with the kitchen knife and it entered into the blue carpet of the floor just inches from her left leg. She made a silent, gagged scream, her eyes wide with absolute terror. Having a fully naked man with countless self inflicted cuts, carved into tallies, decorating his body all over, take a stab at you with a kitchen knife stained with old blood, would make anyone lose their head. He attempted to give her his best smile, though. He wanted her to feel safe with him. Secure with him. He was not a bad guy. No, he was a nice man. A good man. A damn good man. Who was she to judge him? Who the heck was she to judge him at all!? "I'm sorry, Sam. I really am. I didn't mean to snap, no..no...here, let me remove that, huh? You gonna be good? Gonna be quiet? Nod your head and I'll take it out."
She continued to cry, her eyes shut in internal pain at the horror of her situation. It was so cold in this small, dimly lit apartment. Where were her clothes? He had not made any advances on her. Had not shown the slightest indication of desire for her. And yet, he had taken her clothes. And stuffed her, bound in a corner, beside a low set air conditioner. Torture was not even the word. She could feel her very tears frozen on her face. Her skin was turning blue. She was numb. So very numb.
"I asked you a question, Sam...DON'T ignore me!" His hand seized around her chin. Her tear stained, red eyes bore into his dark brown ones. She could no longer bear to look at the cuts. So many cuts...and she knew what they were all for. Of course she did. She had run the story on GCN, had reported on Victor Zsasz only a month before his escape from Arkham...only a month before he had snatched her off of the street in the dead of night...how many days had she been here, bound and gagged, starving in this small enclosure with a man whom she knew was after only one thing, and it was not her body, her valuables, or her connections: he was after her blood, and he would get it. Would obsess over it, because that was who Victor Zsasz was. A maniac with an obsession for killing.
"Mmm..."
Victor swore loudly and grabbed at the shirt gagging her. He forced it out with a quick jerk, and Samantha began to choke as air hit her fast, coughing and taking in deep breaths for the first time in days, it felt. How long had she tried to avoid vomiting due to lack of oral oxygen? How much willpower had it taken to force it back down, so as to not choke on her own vomit, to drown in the puke induced by this monster?
"Now, talk! Are you happy, Samantha?"
"N-n-..." But she could not even speak, could not produce enough strength to get the message out. It was a torturous endeavor, a testament to the fallibility of mankind. We reap the sins of our doing, by the perception. What, then, had she earned in this Hell?
"Say that you are fine. Say it!" Victor put the knife against the bulb of her throat. "Please...say it..."
"I'm f-fine..." It took everything within her to produce those few syllables, but it was her life on the line, and, like with Edward Nygma, you had to follow the rules to a T in order to win the game. Zsasz was no different. He had a game. It was a game of Cat and Mouse, and he was testing her Mouse, to see how far it could get before the Cat's claws wrapped around its feeble body, to be broken and devoured.
"No, you're not! You're not fine at all. You're tired, because you haven't slept in days. You're hungry, because you haven't been given a real meal, let alone any meal, because of that gag down your pretty little throat! You're scared, because there's a man holding a damn knife to your damn throat! Don't lie to me! Tell the truth!"
"B-but y-you said...you said..." She was losing breath. It was so hard to breath. Her oxygen was ceasing up. Something was crippling the foundations. It was absolute fear.
"Don't!" He reared his hand back and slapped her across the face as fiercely as he was able, tears dripping down his face as he did. She screamed, jerking wildly backwards as the force burned into her like real, true fire. She was sobbing, begging him from the inside to stop this madness, to show empathy on a human level. Could the words come out physically? Could they escape the confines of her mind? It was unlikely. "Just don't you dare! You tell me how you feel! Now!"
"I feel terrible!" There they were. Words. Actual words.
"How terrible!?"
"You...you monster..."
"Yes. Go on. Abuse me. I want to feel that wrath. Spill out to me, Samantha, kill me with your hatred." He actually fell back, the beast, back onto the floor, the knife dangling from the tips of his fingers, his legs spread wide open in a most vulgar manner. His privates perfectly open. She felt bile form inside of her throat, sickness arise from the perverted sight.
"You are sick! You sick freak!"
"Aww..." It was a moan that came from him, but one of pure, inhuman pleasure. "Yes, now that is essence."
"You're enjoying this?" Samantha gasped, in utter disbelief. He looked up at her.
"Did I tell you to stop?"
"You're actually enjoy-"
"DID I TELL YOU TO STOP!?" the creature screamed once more, throwing himself at her with the knife.
"No! Please!"
"You think you're so freaking strong, don't you!? You think you're so freaking special!? Rich and a socialite at that? Loved by hundreds of viewers. You're a Class A queen of quests, Samantha. I have a nice little pose for you, you'd better believe it."
"If you were going to do something, you would have done it already!"
"Maybe I was biding my time. Poetic, isn't it? Awaiting a special moment, just for me and you."
"Where are my clothes!? I want them now!"
"Why, Samantha? I like you this way." But he did not look at her at all with any form of lust. He was gazing intently into her eyes, imagining a special death for her. Imagining the most romantic thing he could do with this woman: murder her. "It's exotic in your becoming."
"You sick bastard..."
"Language!" The knife lunged forward, his hand shaking as he did. The tip of the blade clashes with the flesh of her bare shoulder and blood mixed in with a rage of terrible screams that issued from her mouth. The red fluid flowed like a waterfall, and her screams, her agony, the way she shook and flung flecks of blood all over Victor and her surroundings, it was beyond poetic. He stared at her for quite some time in her torment, smiling something, an obsessive grin that longed for further blood. He felt it, the rush of testosterone, the blood flowing into his head, that rush before the release of the prisoner.
I will free you, he whispered to her inside of his mind. I will free you.
"I hate you!" she cried, her sobbing a form of music to his ears.
"Yes, love. I know. Tell me more. I want more abuse!"
"You sick...you foul...you're not well! You're just not well. You understand that? Victor Zsasz, you look me in the eyes and tell me that you are just fine. Tell me!"
He blinked rapidly. The shock of her words hit him hard, somewhere in his chest. It was a fire, a pain like something new. Something unfamiliar. This was a pain that he did not like.
"What?"
"Tell me that you're fine. That you're okay." The blood was still flowing from her shoulder, and the way she talked, it was evident that she still had torment running through her nerves by the vicious strike. The wound looked nasty. And yet, despite her pain, despite her shaking, she still had this strength about her. A vicious strength like no other. It scared him. It really, truly scared him.
"You watch your language."
"It's not language."
"I mean...you know what I mean...just don't!"
"Why, Victor? Tell me why, I need to know, I want to know NOW!"
"You...you don't..."
"Penguin."
Victor gasped. His eyes widened at the name, and he backed away, scooting backwards, the knife falling from his hand and embedding itself into the floor.
"Don't," he whispered, and Samantha realized, with amazement, that Victor Zsasz was scared. Terrified. He was looking at her as if she were a demon. "Just don't..."
"You need to come to terms with something, Victor," Samantha pressed on, tears falling now with the blood from her shoulder. "You need to come to terms with your own mortality. Of your say in the loss of life and the continuation of it. What the heck kind of choice is that!?"
"It's the choice...of the God...who gave it to me..." He was crying, pained beyond reason. Tears were falling along with Samantha's. "I...I was given a chance to free them. Who the hell else could do it!?" He screamed the last sentence, throwing his arms out dramatically, his dark eyes boring into hers. "That man, that old vagrant, you should have smelled him! He was begging to be saved! And you know what!? I freaking saved him! I WAS HIS UTTER SALVATION! NO ONE ELSE COULD DO IT! NO ONE! NOT ONE! I AM THE CRUSADER! PEOPLE FOCUS ON POLICE, OR WAR HEROES, OR BATMEN! BUT NO! THEY ARE NOTHING COMPARED TO ME, VICTOR FREAKING ZSASZ!"
"And He tells you to do this stuff? God tells you to go and kill people? Innocent people?"
"Don't preach to me! Don't! I can live my life without hearing sermons, my good patron. I'm not doing God's work! I am my god. My own freaking god and I don't need a blonde bimbo like you to tell me otherwise!" With a outraged yell he was jumping to his feet, grabbing the knife as he did. She looked up at him, weak as she was from the blood loss, and her breathing became quite ragged. She could no longer find the willpower to speak up against him. She did, however, offer a silent prayer to God, asking Him for her own form of salvation: deliverance from the hand of Victor Zsasz. Being a woman of God, Samantha Kellington believed in His divine plan, and knew that one way or another, she would see the deliverance meant to be. Whether it be by the knife of Victor Zsasz, or the intervention of something else, she had to give all that she had for her faith that there was something better waiting for her. The destination was evident, all that was needed was the method of transportation. "I should kill you. Oh, what I am saying? Like it's freaking choice or something. I AM going to kill you."
"Then...do it..." She closed her eyes. She could no longer bear to look upon the demon. It was against her better will to submit to his words in her ears.
"You're such a saint, aren't you, Sam? Such an angel. That's why I took you. I didn't want a demon in my home."
"Their home, you mean..." She nodded, as painfully as it was due to the headache that was ensuing within her now, by the blood loss. She was indicating the corpses piled up beside the door. They'd been lying there for two days, an elderly couple. The true owners of this shady, decrepit apartment in the darker part of Park Row of Gotham City. She'd watched as Zsasz had knocked on the door, how the old man had answered it, a beer in one hand, how Zsasz had gutted him with a kitchen knife and proceeded to slit his and his wife's throat. They had never stood a chance. She'd watched him cut two fresh marks into his own skin, had then been stripped naked by him and bound beside the freezing air conditioner. But he had not touched her. Had not violated her in any way, had not made any moves to take advantage of her. Because his satisfaction was not sexual. It came from tormenting her, humiliating her. Making her cry tears of fear was as powerful to him as making her cry because of an orgasm or something similar. This torture of her was their sex, or rather, his rape. What was there in the physical works, when he had her mentality to destroy?
"It's my home, you dog."
"No, it's theirs, and you slaughtered them, you animal!"
He put the tip of the blade against her neck again. "I'm going to set you free..."
"Then set me free," she whispered back, embracing her fate. He smiled.
"This is going to feel so good."
"I bet it is."
Victor and Samantha froze. That voice had not come from her. Victor jumped, spinning around on the spot. There was a third person in the room.
"What the hell!?" Victor stepped backwards, stepping on Samantha by accident. He tripped backwards, but the dark shadow had moved fast, moving forward towards the pair of them. "NO!"
But the Oppressor had come from Victor Zsasz. A dark shadow, clothed in black, wearing the white of expectation. He had come, he was here, and salvation would have to wait. The hand had closed around Victor's throat, and the kitchen knife had fallen onto the floor, so close to Samantha's leg. She could only whimper as she watched the Oppressor hold Victor in the air, his feet dangling above the floor, and Victor looked deep into the eyes of the Oppressor, hidden within the shadow of concealment.
"You made a lot of noise, Victor. I can't thank you enough. Had you not...I couldn't think about it. Are you okay?" It took a moment, but Samantha realized that the dark one was talking to her.
"No...just no..."
"It's alright. You will be soon. I promise you that, if I'm worth your trust."
"You're worth my trust. You are..."
"You think you've won? You think you've freaking won!?" Victor spat in the Oppressor's face, but the Oppressor did not flinch. Did not react at all.
"I'm here to take you home, Victor, until your time comes. You ready?"
"You really shouldn't fool yourself, you know...I wouldn't want you thinking you've won...I really wouldn't..."
"I know, I know. It's okay, though, you know. I don't have to make some testament of victory. Two dead, over there, by the door. You've won this one, Vic. I'm man enough to admit it, but now, we gotta get you home."
"I need her...you don't understand..."
"Oh, but I do. Obsession is nothing new to me,Victor. One day, you and the others will understand that. Until then...you go home."
"NO!"
But a no could never make a yes, not for the Oppressor. Not for the Vengeance. Victor Zsasz would find no peace at home that night. The walls of Arkham had grown cold since he was last here, no longer welcoming as they had once been. There was something missing. A mark. He needed the mark.
"I should have killed her...I should have killed her..."
"Yeah, you should have." said the demon, who sat silently in the corner of the cell, a crouched child in the dark, his hear in his bent legs. The child in the corner looked as if he were crying. But inside that hidden guise, he was grinning. He was with his friend. With Victor. "Guess next time you'll just get your shit together and do it."
"Watch your language, kid..."
"Why? You didn't watch your priorities. I can't watch my language if you can't watch your priorities. That's not how life works, Victor."
"Just go away...let me be to my thoughts..."
The demon in the dark corner shifted. He raised his head, but the face of the child that had come to visit was gone. Instead, it had been replaced with another face. The face of Samantha Kellington.
"I'm here, now, Victor. I'm here with you..."
The screams of Victor Zsasz awoke everyone near the Red Ward that night. Doctors rushes in, escorted by heavily armed security forces, but none of them ever found "the girl who is not a girl," "the child who is a demon". The only demon found in the cave that night was Victor Zsasz. And he was so alone. So very much alone.