Daddy Issues
Ivy lay back on the cot in her cell at Arkham Asylum, brow furrowed and lips pouting in thought, nimble fingers idly picking at the patch with her name and inmate number that was stitched to the left lapel of her orange jumpsuit.
She hated being there, confined like a plant in a terra cotta pot with no room for her roots to comfortably spread. She hated that the other convicts were loud, that the food tasted cheap and artificial, and that the staff always made sure to wear those disgusting protective suits, so that her charms were powerless against them. But more than anything else, she hated those goddamn therapy sessions.
Ivy hated how the psychologists would tap their ballpoint pens on their clipboards, lean forward with looks of practiced sympathy on their faces, and ask her questions in the same manner you'd expect someone to adopt when addressing a troubled teenager. "How are you feeling today, Pamela?" "Anything you wanted to discuss today, Pamela?" "How about we try that cathartic technique we discussed last time, Pamela?"
Her responses were always No, no,and no, but they never stopped asking.
She shifted from her back to her side, weight transferring from her back to her arm and hip, causing her ultra feminine pinched waist to become even more pronounced. Worst of all was the way they'd talk about her afterward. As if she didn't know. As if she couldn't hear. As if she was too insane to understand. Mental instability, they called it. A deep-seated obsession begun in childhood and manifested into a compulsory need to exact revenge on the human race and promote the cultivation of plant-life. A problem rooted in childhood feelings of neglect by her father. In other words, daddy issues.
Daddy issues. Ivy sniffed and scowled at the thought and fingered the embroidered patch again. How dare they bring that up! How dare they try to analyze something they'd never understand! She didn't have daddy issues. "Daddy issues" was what they called it when a girl had a bad relationship with her father and sought refuge in the arms of older men. That was hardly her issue. And the way they talked about it made it seem so incriminating, as though she were guilty of something she could control if she only tried hard enough.
It wasn't her fault that her father often neglected her in favor of work, leaving her in the care of a mother who'd rather don pretty dresses and attend one social function after another than tend to her only child.
It wasn't her fault that Woodrue had taken advantage of her naiveté and his educational superiority by seducing her and then betraying her, and turning her into the monster she'd once thought herself to be.
It wasn't her fault that men were as quick to trample flower beds as they were to trample the women in their lives – to cut down trees in the same way they cut down their wives, and to dominate the earth in the same way they dominated women.
Ivy remembered seeking refuge in the company of her beloved potted plants when her parents were gone. The flowers had been her only friends and companions. She remembered whispering words of girlish simplicity to the greenery in her garden when she'd first been with Woodrue, then later watering their soil with her tears after he'd try to destroy her. She remembered how she'd only come to embrace her new self, her true self, after discovering what she was capable of and what she could do for her leafy companions – how she could repay them for always listening.
Was it any wonder, then, that she took it upon herself to exact revenge on those who deserved it most? How could anyone dare say that she was wrong to kill those who killed others, who polluted the generous earth that gave them life, who hurt the innocent without a second thought? People, especially men, took advantage of the planet. They took advantage of it the way they'd taken advantage of her. They left thirsty plants to die the way her father had left her when she was young. They plucked flowers for pleasure and sentenced them to a slow death, like Woodrue had done to her when he pricked her with that needle.
She saw their faces on the heads of every man she murdered.
Ivy was jolted from her thoughts by the sudden rrrrip of thread snapping free from fabric. She glanced down, gaze landing on the sight of chipped green nail polish and the now loose upper corner of her ID patch. She must've ripped it free without realizing it, unaware of how forcefully she'd been picking at it.
She smirked in spite of herself. Maybe she did have some daddy issues after all.