Chapter Two
Uncle Jim was stuck at work again, so my visit to the Gordons had to be canceled. Major Crimes was always so busy these days. Looked like I was going to work with nothing to look forward to tonight. Whatachange.
Instead of being greeted by a perky Stacey on my way into work, I was immediately greeted by Dr. Crane. He looked frazzled and urged, "You need to look at Mr. Zsasz immediately. He's been demanding to speak to someone." He then looked me up and down, checking me out. He smirked, "I wouldn't go in there looking like that though."
I frowned, and must have looked confused because he elaborated, "That's an awfully tight shirt, Miss. Johnston. You know how he gets."
I shrugged him off and went to see Zsasz. If my patient needed me, then my patient needed me. I wasn't going to take the extra time to change my shirt just because my perverted supervisor thought it was a bit too tight. Besides, it was business casual.
"Hey Aaron," I smiled as he buzzed me in to see Zsasz.
He smiled back, "Hi Jess. You be careful in there, alright?"
I nodded and braced myself for what lay ahead. It wasn't that Zsasz himself scared me; after all, he was just another patient. It was actually quite shallow of me to think so, but it was his looks that scared me. Zsasz cut himself as a way to remember every person he had killed. Each bright red cut was a glaring reminder not just to Zsasz, but to me, that I was talking to a brutal murderer.
"Hello Miss Johnston," he greeted me.
"Hello Victor," I replied. "What seems to be the problem today? I was told you were demanding to talk to someone."
"I wanted to see someone who wasn't a zombie. You're not a zombie, Miss Johnston, are you?"
"No, I'm not."
He nodded and smiled at me, as though he knew that I understood what I was saying. "I hate the zombies, Miss Johnston. They're everywhere. I need to free them."
"Free them from what?" I asked.
"From life."
"Are you considering freeing someone from their life right now, Mr. Zsasz?"
"I'm always considering it. I see lifeless zombies everywhere. Your friend out there? Aaron? He's just as lifeless as the rest of them. I need to free him. I need to free the other inmates here. I need to free everyone."
"But you can't free everyone. It's not your choice to make."
He sighed. I could tell that he was becoming bored with our conversation quickly and I didn't want to lose him.
"How is your life, Jessica?" he asked me, attempting to get a rise.
"I'm here to talk about you, Victor," I sighed.
"You're starting to sound like them," he snapped.
"Like one of your victims?"
"They're not my victims," he snapped again. "They're the lucky ones."
"Lucky because you took their life? I don't think anyone you killed would be too grateful."
"I disagree, Miss Johnston. I think they'd be incredibly grateful. Everyone here is just shuffling through life, doing nothing worthwhile. People just need to stop. They need to leave this life behind. Don't you think your mother would be glad to be gone? She was probably just walking through life doing nothing until cancer came along-."
"That's enough, Victor!" I regretted ever having told him about my mother. The first rule of therapy in a hospital for the clinically insane was to never share anything personal, and I learned that rather quickly.
He smirked, obviously quite happy with finally getting a rise out of me. "Why don't we talk about your mother?" he asked, laughing.
"I think that's enough for today, Mr. Zsasz," I said as I stormed out of the room. I must have been tearing up when I emerged because Aaron immediately wanted to know what was wrong.
"It's nothing. I'm fine, I swear."
"You sure? You seem upset."
"Honestly, I'm alright."
I walked away as quickly as I possibly could. I wasn't in the mood for talking to Aaron. Honestly, I was never really in the mood to talk to Aaron. He was a real nice guy. Really honest too. He was just always a little toointo me, and I found it hard to talk to him without feeling like I was giving him the wrong impression.
The next thing I knew, I was on a mission to find Dr. Crane wherever he was in the hospital to talk to him about my meeting with Zsasz. I tried all over the hospital until I finally realized that I would have to look for him in the maximum security wing. Unfortunately, my security clearance required an escort, and the only available security guard at the moment was Aaron Cash.
I walked back downstairs and realized that I would have to beg him to take me through to maximum security.
"Please Aaron?"
"Jess, you know I'm really not supposed to do that."
"But I really need to talk to Doctor Crane."
"Jess, I-."
"It's not going to hurt anyone," I paused and gave him puppy dog eyes before urging him. "Please."
He sighed and grabbed his keys off the desk and started to walk towards the door. I squealed with excitement like a school girl and quickly followed his lead. I almost felt bad for manipulating him like that, but I really needed to talk to Crane. When we reached the maximum security wing, he paused and looked at me seriously. "If you can't find him, I want you to get out of there as quickly as possible. The less people know that you were here, the less people will find out that I helped you, okay?"
I nodded feverishly as he opened the door and let me in. I gulped as though I was in a corny suspense film and walked into maximum security. These were the baddest of the bad- the craziest of the crazies- and I was going to be thrown in with them. I quickly made my way through the halls until I reached a door with a security guard outside of it. It was Officer Frank Boles. Frank was nice enough, but there was something about him that I couldn't quite put my finger on that made me a bit leery. He looked at me as though I was just another criminal.
"What are you doing here?" he snapped.
"I- I need to talk to Dr. Crane," I stuttered.
"Well he's with a patient right now. You'll have to wait."
I waited outside the room while Dr. Crane talked to his patient for about twenty minutes before I got fed up.
"I'll just be one minute," I said as I opened the door to reach Dr. Crane.
When I opened the door, I couldn't believe what I saw. Crane was tormenting the patient with a menacing looking mask made out of what looked like a burlap sack. Feeling as though I had just seen something I wasn't supposed to see, I quickly closed the door and proceeded to wait again. I didn't have to wait long, seeing as Dr. Crane emerged from the session two minutes later.
"Miss Johnston. What are you doing here?"
"I need… I needed to talk to you. It can wait though. I'm sorry," I tried to back peddle out of the situation.
"Well clearly, it couldn't wait if you felt as though you had to barge in on me when I was with a patient," he said, smiling as he spoke to me in a condescending way. His smiles were the most off-putting thing about the man. He always managed to smile at the most inopportune times.
"I just wanted to talk to you about Victor Zsasz, but it can wait. Really."
He cleared his throat and gestured for me to follow him to the corner of the hall so that we could talk in peace without being overheard by Frank or the inmates.
"Look, about what you saw," he began; explaining with an almost unholy, yet gleeful light in his eyes. "It was just an experiment to work on his nightmares. I know how it must have looked. And quite honestly, it is a bit unconventional, but I really think I'm onto something here."
I nodded as though to say I understood.
"Are we good?" he asked, smiling again.
"Good," I mumbled.
"Great! Have a wonderful day, Miss Johnston." And then he smiled again.
Aside from the fact that the work day was finally over, I looked forward to the end of the day because I got to ride the tram home. I always got excited at the prospect of watching and meeting new strangers. Not in a voyeur kind of way… Okay, well I guess kind of in a voyeur kind of way, but I just genuinely loved people. I've been fascinated by strangers ever since I was a child. I think it all started when my mother died. I got so wrapped up in my own life that when I finally realized that everyone else had their own problems going on as well, I couldn't stop seeing them. I would walk down the street and start wondering what everyone else's story was. Was the woman walking down the street a prostitute? Maybe her son just died. Whatever it was, I couldn't stop doing it. That's partially why I loved riding the tram home every night. I got to take a break from my own life for twenty minutes every day and think about what was going on in other people's lives.
So when the clock hit six, I couldn't wait to get out of Arkham.