Note: Thank-you so, so much to those of you who liked the first chapter. The fact that some people actually want me to write more means so much to me, I honestly didn't know that anyone would enjoy my writing. And to the people who wrote comments, I thank you especially.
To psychedellicplatypus: Thanks very much for the critique, I really appreciate it. I always have the problem with verb tenses when I write, but I hope that this chapter is better. The story is supposed to be written in past tense, but Sky's thoughts and the speech of the characters are supposed to be in present tense. But thanks so much, I'll try to fix the rest of it in later chapters.
So, I do really hope that you all like this chapter as well, I wrote a lot of it at around one or two in the morning, though. And the beginning is sort of gory, so I hope that sort of thing doesn't bother you. If you are bothered, then I'm very sorry.
Also, if there are any spelling and/or grammar mistakes, feel free to let me know. I'll correct them.
Enjoy!
Oh, and I don't own the Joker, sadly. However, I do own Sky Mortimer.
To Heal Your Scars
Chapter Two. The Purest Terror.
When I had been in the store, crouching behind the display boxes that I had been sitting upon only moments before, I had witnessed the murder of a man – a bullet through his beating heart. I had thought that what I had felt at that moment was pure terror. Then, a few minutes later, the Joker discovered me; I had looked into his eyes, and I had thought that was pure terror. Afterwards he threw me into the white, falling apart van and drove at breakneck speed through the streets of Gotham – the fear of getting into some gruesome car accident and the image of myself being smeared along the pavement being etched into my mind – was that pure terror that I had felt? No. Well, maybe at the time, but it was nothing compared to what I felt at that moment that the lights had been turned on in the abandoned warehouse. As the Joker stood behind me, his head bent to be on level with mine, his fingers trailing up and down my spine creating chills that made my entire body shake with cold, I stared, speechless, at the scene in front of me. It was a large room, and the front was mostly bare but for dust and dirt covering the bleak concrete. But the back, illuminated now by the fluorescent lights that shone down from the ceiling, was like nothing that I had ever seen before. The floor was smeared with the red-brown colour of dried blood. The walls were covered. The air reeked. And why? I saw, though it was far away, the body of a man. I shook, and finally managed to make a sound: it was a strangled cry that emerged from the back of my parched throat. I was going to cry, I was going to be sick… I was going to die of fright and sadness, right there. Taking a few steps forward, I slowly and shakily made my way over to the dead man. When I was ten feet away, I couldn't make myself move any closer to him. I didn't know him, but I couldn't stop imagining that I knew him. My mother had always told me that I had an overactive imagination. I imagined that he had a wife that he loved. Children that he adored and played with when he returned home from work. Friends in whom he confided. I imagined him alive, breathing, happy, laughing. But as I stared at his lifeless, gray face, I felt tears streaming down my own ashen face. He was dead. And I could see his face, not like that man in the store. I could see… smell his blood. What was this? I couldn't see him anymore. I realized that my knees had given out from beneath me, and I was now lying with my cheek pressed against the floor. I was lying… on a bloodstain. My head hurt from the fall. Wait, was it my blood that I was lying on? Or was it the man's? Or was it from some other poor victim of the sadistic Joker's?
"Who…?" I muttered. "Who… was he?" I thought that my words were incoherent, but he heard me, and chuckled.
"My, aren't you theatrical? He was, um, someone who bothered me. I didn't like him, not like I like you." Another giggle. The sick bastard. "Come on, stand up now. You have a serious liking for the floor, don't you?" The Joker skipped over to me and leaned over above my collapsed body. I couldn't stand up. I could barely even move my mouth, let alone my legs, which felt like they were disconnected from my body. The last thing I remembered was being lifted from the dank, stinking floor into the Joker's arms. He chuckled and didn't stop until my mind went blank and everything was dark.
I woke up to darkness; I thought that I was maybe still unconscious and I was dreaming, but no. I could never have dreamt the cold that I felt, the discomfort of whatever I was lying on, the deadly silence that met my ears, or the feel of the blood that had dried in and then matted my hair. So it was my blood that I was lying in on the concrete floor, maybe. And then I sat bolt upright (not a good idea, ow) as I remembered the reason for the cut on my head. I had fallen because of something… Oh, God. That horrible scene flashed through my mind once again and I felt extremely nauseous. I gagged as bile rose in my throat and spilled out in front of me; it was so painful because I hadn't had anything to drink in so long. After I was sick and wiped my mouth I wondered vaguely how long I had been unconscious. Minutes… hours… days? Had I missed Christmas? Not exactly that it would've mattered to me, but it was still quite a major event to miss. Another question: where was I? I assumed that I was still in the warehouse, maybe in an old office that had been re-designated as a room for me, but I was left by myself. No one was guarding me, as far as I knew, and I decided that I would try to stand up. It wasn't easy, my legs felt like lead I was so weak, and I was still so dizzy from my head wound and the amount of blood that I had probably lost. I grabbed onto something near me – a desk, I realized – and made sure I was balanced. Finally, I let go, and stumbled over to the door leading to goodness knows where – hopefully not that wretched entranceway again – and grasped the metal doorknob and turned… only it didn't turn. I was so stupid, did I really believe that the Joker would leave me in an unguarded, unlocked room for me to escape from? I sighed and then felt around the walls for a light switch and I found one. I was about to turn it on when I caught myself. What if he had locked me in a room similar to the last one in my recent memory? There might have been blood in there, or worse, a body. I couldn't face that again, so I leaned against the wall, closed my eyes, and thought. I thought about what would affect me more – seeing another body, or stagger clumsily around the room and end up tripping over and possibly falling on a body. I chose the first and quickly flicked on the light. I kept my eyes closed for a few seconds and then forced my eyes open to look at my surroundings. There was… nothing. Except for a desk, an old filing cabinet, and a horrible mattress with springs actually coming out of it all over the place (that must have been what I was lying on before). There was a window on the wall opposite me, but it had opaque glass as well as iron bars covering it – so not only could I not get out, I couldn't even see out. How disappointing. The window on the door adjacent to me was also covered with opaque glass, so if I was lucky I might have been able to see the shadowed outline of someone if they approached my room. As it happens, someone did come. I could hear their soft footsteps quickly approach my door and stop outside of it, and then the person's fumbling with the lock and key. The locked finally clicked, the doorknob turned, and the door swung open to reveal a surprised and confused-looking Joker as he stared at the empty mattress in front of him – where he expected me to be. He turned around and his onyx eyes met my wide, frightened ones.
"You're awake!" He exclaimed gleefully. I said nothing to him. "I thought you'd never wake up, you were out cold for two days, you know. Missed Christmas, isn't that sad? I was hoping that we could share a nice supper, but alas…" he smiled at me once again, his teeth disgustingly shining a rotten yellow. I still said nothing, even when he strode over to me and grabbed my wrist. "We'll make up for it tonight then. I'm assuming that you are hungry?" He raised his eyebrows, and I succeeded in moving my head up and down in a nodding motion. "Good." He laughed and pulled me out of the room and into one at the end of the hall. We were in the second level of the building (there were three) and you could look over the railing at the floor below, but I didn't just in case the body hadn't been removed yet. I was half pulled, half dragged into a room at the end of the hall and was greeted by the delicious smell of food. My stomach growled. It wasn't nice food by any means – fast food actually – fries, wilted-looking salads, hamburgers, and sodium filled soup. How nutritious, but I decided that it was definitely better than nothing. Joker let me go and I dove onto the fries, shoving three in my mouth at a time, and took a swig of brown pop – that was funny, the bottle was surprisingly light as if there wasn't much left in it. "That," his voice made me jump. "was mine. But I suppose you can have it if you really want. Yours is actually over there." He pointed to the far end of the table. I muttered a small "sorry" and grabbed that drink instead. Thankfully, there was a lot left in it and I inhaled that like I had the fries. I ate the salad and some of the soup and realized that if I ate any more I'd probably be sick again. I slowly put down the Styrofoam bowl and looked up at his amused face. I noticed that he hadn't taken a single bite of food, did he simply feed off of my fear? I laughed at the ridiculous thought. He was simply an evil human, not a mythological monster. "You laugh at the oddest times," he remarked, and I nodded after thinking about it for a couple of seconds. Not that he would know it, but I was one of those people who would think of something funny and burst out laughing, regardless of where I was or who was around me. He shrugged and then said rather rudely, "You need a shower." How offensive! And I blurted out before thinking,
"As if you should talk!" I gasped and bit my lip, preparing for him to walk over me and hit me. But he only laughed, uncontrollably at that, He was hypocritical, that much I knew. He thought I laughed at the oddest times? He finally stopped and smiled at me.
"You're quite the mouthpiece, Beautiful. And you think my hair's greasy do you? You're wrong. I put hair wax into it to make it look that way. Sort of completes my look, you know?" He giggled. "I don't think that it would be very suited to me if I walked around looking like, well, this," he gestured at his face and outfit, "and had soft and pretty hair." He giggled. Again. I supposed that it made sense, what he was saying, but his hair still looked gross so I said nothing, a mute once again. "Still, you need a shower. Right. This. Way," pointing toward the door that lead back into the hallway, he smiled mischievously. I carefully walked out, never once taking my eyes off of him, and waited for him outside the door. He was quickly in front of me and I had to jog to catch up – his legs had to be nearly twice the length of mine. He stopped suddenly in front of a door on our right and I crashed into him, nearly knocking myself over. He didn't even budge. "Here we are," he said still with the hint of a smile in his voice. He unlocked the door and opened it wide to reveal a mess of a room. It was cluttered, with things like knives, guns, grenades, and other weapon-like things that I really didn't know existed. There was a large, unmade bed in the far corner of the room covered with a purple comforter on it, and the walls were painted black. The floor was made of black linoleum. Makeup and a jar of green hair dye sat on the windowsill alongside a hand mirror.
"This is your room," I squeaked. I thought he was bringing me to a bathroom so I could shower, not his bedroom.
"How could you tell?" he asked playfully and walked into his messy room. I followed, careful not to step on anything that could injure me. "Bathroom is in there." He pointed to a small room connected to his.
"Isn't there any other bathroom here?" I asked. I did not exactly feel comfortable showering while he was in the room next door with the set of keys in his own pocket. All I could think of was the scene in Psycho where the woman was stabbed to death in the shower with ee ee ee ee theme playing over and over again in my head.
"Yes, but not one with a shower," he replied smiling at me. He was probably lying.
"Well where does your team," I mimicked him, "shower? Or don't they?" It definitely wouldn't surprise me.
"They do have lives other than me, you know," he said. Not very long ones, I thought, thinking of the man who was so carelessly shot in the store. "They have places that they stay and most likely shower in." I stood there for about a minute and he asked me if I was going to move or if he had to put me in the shower himself, and I scurried into the bathroom and locked the door. I looked around the dirty little room and found a small table to put against the door. It wouldn't be a great obstacle for him to have to move out of the way, but it would make a lot of noise to alert me and probably give me enough time to throw my clothes back on before he saw me. I put my clothes in a small pile in the corner of the room and stepped into the small shower, which was surprisingly clean. I turned on the water and yelped at the freezing temperature of it. It eventually became warmer and I washed the dirt and grime from my body and hair and finally shut the water off. It was only then that I realized that I had no clothes to wear. And I stepped out of the shower and realized that not only did I not have any clean clothes, there were also no towels. That pervert. Did he really think that he could get away with that? I'd put my dirty clothes back on if I had to. But I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
"Um," I called out the door. "You wouldn't happen to have any towels? Or clothes that I could wear?" There was silence for a moment and then:
"Oh dear. Did I not leave you any? I went to your apartment and got you some of your clothes – "
"What?"
" – but I must have left them, oh yes here they are. I left them out here. Would you like to come and get them?" Giggle. That jerk.
"I. Need. A. Towel," I growled.
"Well those are all in the wash right now, I'm afraid." I finally came up with an idea, though I was sure that it wouldn't work.
"I'll open the door a crack and you can hand me my clothes, alright?" I suggested to the makeup-ed man standing on the other side of the door.
"Alrighty then, Sweetheart," I could almost hear the smile in his strange voice. When he knocked and said that it was okay to open the door, I was worried that he was going to barge in on me, but he handed my clothes to my outstretched hand that I held out. I quickly yanked them away from him and slammed the door in his face, leaving him chuckling, and I swore I heard him call me a prude.
"Wonderful," I muttered as I got dressed. It wasn't until I had all of my clothes on and was about to walk out of the tiny bathroom that I realized that all of my clothes that he had chosen for me were purple and black: Purple shirt and socks, black pants and sweater. He brought me a green belt. Wow. I unlocked the door and walked out, and right into him.
"Watch where you're going, Sweetie!" He exclaimed as he pretended to stumble.
"Then don't stand where I'm going to walk! And I do have a name, you know," I retorted. He looked furious for a second, and apparently changed his mind and smiled, bending down to my face and whispering,
"You might want to watch your mouth around me. You may find that I can be a little… unpredictable," he then straightened up suddenly, completely towering over me. "I like your – um – feistiness, though. Very endearing. To me, anyway," he winked, and I felt a little sick. But I noticed that some of his face paint chipped off when he smiled, and you could see the skin underneath. Could it be there is actually a man under that sick and twisted layer of being that he had created?
As we were walking back to my room he said, "I do like your clothes by the way. But I didn't like the rest of your wardrobe much, so I burned it. Got you some new clothes, though. Hope ya like 'em."
"You… burned… my clothes?" I managed to sputter.
"Actually," he said purposefully, "I set fire to your room. It was a very pretty sight, but the firemen came and ruined all my fun." What if someone died? I thought that I was going to collapse like a couple days before, but I somehow managed to keep walking, keeping up with him, no less. "Here you go, your room as you did not leave it." I didn't understand what he meant until he opened the door and turned on the light. Instead of the broken mattress I'd slept on for two days, I had a bed! It was purple (sigh). And I had a set of drawers. And a vanity.
"How… nice of you," I said, actually surprised. There was no doubt that wherever he had gotten these items from, they were stolen, but I managed to convince myself that it was the thought that counted. I walked over to my drawer, opened it and – surprise, surprise – almost all of the clothes in it were purple (but some were black, some were green). "These weren't someone else's before, were they?" I asked a little cautiously.
"Oh no no no. I got them from a store, just for you. I hope they all fit… I got all small sizes," he said, looking me up and down, but not like lech-like, like his team of clown-masked morons.
"Thank-you," I replied, giving him the smallest of smiles. He returned my gratitude with raised eyebrows.
"Well, I should be going now. Get some sleep, you'll need it for tomorrow," he said with a devious glint in his eye, but I was confused and burst out:
"But I woke up only two hours ago! And before that I had slept for two days! And wait… what's happening tomorrow?" I had suddenly figured out his last sentence.
"That would be for me to know dear, and for you to find out. It's two am, by the way. I'll be waking you up in five hours. Good night," he began to leave.
"Wait!" I yelled.
"What? Too afraid to sleep alone?" Another devious glint in his onyx eyes. I glared into them and growled again (at this rate, he'd probably think I'm part animal):
"No. Good night."
"Sleep tight."
