Aaahh! I can't tell you all how glad I am that you like this story! I wasn't really expecting much of a response, but it's certainly welcome! Thank you! Life's been hectic lately, so I'm sorry for the long delay before I updated. I'll try to correct that in the future. I also love to make things perfect, so you'll have to excuse my ridiculous dedication toward getting things exactly right. :D I hope you enjoy this next chapter. I think it is good considering how long it took me to finish it. Hahaha! Thanks again!
There's been some questions as to whether or not I've seen Battle Royale, seeing as this story seems to resemble it closely. I read a description/synopsis and I agree. :3 But I have never seen Battle Royale. I hope it's not too close to that story line, and I hope it's still enjoyable even though they're so similar.
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Disclaimer: I do not own The Joker or The Dark Knight. They're Christopher Nolan's and DC Comics'.
I do, however, own my OC and my nameless rabble of victims. :)
Enjoy!
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Tropical Torment Chapter 3
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A Fight to the Death
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My world seemed to be slightly sedated – my attempts to shrivel up and die might have actually been working. I wasn't really sure, seeing as I was trying my best to stifle all coherent thought in my head. My nose was brushed by the scents of blood and gunpowder, of filth and sweat and fear. I was barely breathing to prevent the foul smells and tainted air passage into my aching lungs.
My ears seemed to be almost completely focused on the sound of my "mental submersion," that being the term I had assigned to my attempts to block out all of the screams and cries and gunshots and heavy thumps of bodies hitting the sand and chokes and gasps and gurgles that made a haunting, twisted melody of chaos, terror, agony, and death all around me. I focused on the sound of my own blood rushing through my head, wondering idly how long it would remain in my brain cavity, before that thought was stifled as well by the desperate fists of the metaphorical and mental protectors of my sanity.
I felt the blaring warmth of the tropical sun upon my pale, dry, salt- and blood-sprinkled flesh, felt the breeze gently playing with my hair – greatly out of context with my currently hellish situation, but welcome nonetheless. A caress from the Caribbean winds was far more preferred than the angry, merciless gales of a hurricane. The sand was also rather pleasantly heated against my legs where my weather-suited pants failed to cover them up, though of course it was starting to get into the many cuts and slashes all over my body, irritating and stinging. I tried very hard to block out the pain.
I tasted the salt of the sea in my mouth, as well as the blood from my injured lip and from the times I had screamed when people had died and some of their blood had managed to pass between my horrified lips, much to my dismay. The word …Hepatitis… passed sluggishly through the restraints I had set up within my mind before being attacked and disposed of by my mental security guards.
Can't have coherent thought, now can we, with this blood-bath of a situation..? said a tiny, mocking but truthful little voice with both a touch of sweetness and a drop of venom in its tone within the frazzled, throbbing confines of my head. It won't be long now before it's your turn. Any idea of who you'll be up against? What about that little boy in the front...if he's still there like he was before you decided to curl up and shut down? Could you kill him to save your own life? What about that big guy with the doe-eyed woman next to him..? You think he'd hesitate before killing you when her pretty little life was at stake?…My head more or less spasmed for an instant, seeing as simply shaking it was just not sufficient to block out the hideous thoughts that had managed to break into the trembling, shriveling realms of my sanity.. No. Stop it now.
Let's see… I covered touch, taste, sound, smell… Now sight. All I was able to perceive with my tightly-closed eyes was darkness. Thank God. I couldn't bear to watch anyone else die. I'd had my repulsive, disturbing fill for the day, that was for sure, even though I couldn't forget that it hadn't even been an hour since the Joker's first two chosen victims – or "worthy opponents" as he called them – had completed the first life-or-death bracket of his sick little game, the young man being the victor after strangling the woman to death after the giggling Clown Prince of Crime had pointed his gun at the man's children. There'd been so many deaths after that, I was beginning to lose track. Again, thank God.
People were dying right at that moment. Right in front of me. I was sure of it, despite my efforts to shut it all out entirely. I usually took pride in my ability to tune out annoyances and enter my own little world of safety and sanity and imagination and freedom, but not today. Today, I needed a mental strength that I simply could not muster. I needed a secret password that my mind just couldn't recall. Not only was I denied access, but I was also being made to suffer, shudder, and internally and externally scream.
I was getting strip-searched down to nothing at the gates of my happy place by the big, nasty, merciless gate guards named Sickening Fear and All-Consuming Terror. I was having every bit of my courage and hope and faith confiscated by them, having to watch everything that I was get locked away from me forever more while I was left, cold and naked and alone, upon the dry, barren, sweltering beach of an almost-deserted island. I was sitting in a broken, crumpled heap upon the sand at the edge of a competition of a ghastly sort of survival, instigated and directed by none other than the Joker himself.
And it was then that I was hurtled back to the painfully present reality by a shrill, horrified scream. Try as I might to swiftly rebuild the barriers I had attempted to construct around my mind, my senses were rebooted, my nose, ears, tongue, flesh, and eyes all working again in one agonizing transition from numb to live-wired. It was all thanks to that powerful soul-piercing cry that rose from the depths of a young woman's heart as what was no doubt her son was shoved into the sand by the large, burly man I had feared would take my own life to save that of his female partner.
Why are they doing this?! I thought desperately as the sunlight made me squint as the woman continued to cry. My thoughts were a panicked, barely-coherent blur of words and emotions. I wasn't even entirely sure if what I was thinking was true or not. My fellow passengers were killing each other because the Joker wanted them to! What did they think they would get out of this?! Why would they take other people's lives when theirs was probably going to get taken away any minute now?! Why would they want their last moments alive to be filled with fear and submission and murder?!
What was happening to them?! The Joker wasn't going to let any of us get away from this alive, so why were we playing his game and doing what he wanted when we were most likely going to die anyway? Why should we give in to him? He was most likely going to shoot any of us that weren't already dead in the end…or the last one standing got to partake in his sick little surprise?! What kind of ending prize was that?! If we were all going to die – or wish we were dead – in the end, why kill each other to get there?
I couldn't take it anymore. I didn't care what happened to me anymore. I was going to die, one way or another, and I didn't want to die a submissive, sniveling coward. I opened my eyes and stood up, swaying slightly on my feet as I took a good look at the scene before me. I realized that there were about thirty-something people left from the original almost-fifty that had managed to make it to the beach. The majority of the bodies were bleeding too much for strangulation or abuse – I realized that most of the people had died by gunshot, meaning more people than I'd first calculated from the edge of my sanity inside my trembling little walls of numbness had actually succumbed to his sick little game and killed people themselves to ensure their own safety or the safety of the ones they loved. Yes, I steadily recalled the gunshots and the screams and the sobs that had just managed to brush my coherency at the fringes of my shivering mind… I vaguely remembered the shaking refusals, the panicked denials, the despairing pleas, the quick footsteps that quickly ceased after a harsh crack rang out through the air… Perhaps they all had not been as weak and pathetic as I'd given them credit for… Still, some hadn't been so noble. That was unbearably clear as the little boy's struggles lessened beneath the iron grip of the burly man. I noticed tears in the man's eyes, but he still wasn't stopping. Well, I was beyond my limits for dealing with this hellish situation. I wouldn't and couldn't take it anymore. With all of the volume and force I could muster, I opened my mouth and screamed, "STOP!" I screamed to anyone and everyone who would listen, or even register the transfer of sound. I screamed for them, for me, for all.
The man smothering the little boy looked up at me, his movements slowing to a stop while his victim continued to struggle weakly in the stronger grasp, succumbing to the lack of oxygen found in the blood-stained grains of sand no doubt filling his eyes, nose, and mouth. Many people looked at me all at once. Their combined gazes, so fearful and broken and confused and weak, settled upon me with an incredible emotional weight, something I believe would be safe to say was felt in the very center of my soul. Parents looked up from comforting children. Strangers looked to me for help and guidance, for the strength they couldn't find at the moment. Couples, old and young, clutched each other close as they looked at the one who had mustered the courage and volume to scream with all of the emotion she was feeling even though she was terrified of the consequences. They all were. No one was enjoying this – except him.
I then switched my gaze from the crowd of victims to the gruesomely painted man who had made us plummet to such a state…but mostly not without our own consent. We were only as weak and pathetic as we allowed ourselves to be… but the creepy clown waving a gun around certainly didn't help us fortify our physical or mental defenses or find a burst of self-confidence in such a time of peril or even protest his terrorism effectively… until now? I realized what I had done, then, standing up and ceasing his horrific hour of fun if only for a moment. He was looking at me and only me, the black smears around his eyes making his gaze seem to suck me into depths of darkness from which I could never escape. He had been greatly amused by the proceedings up until that point, maybe a little disappointed that I'd interrupted them, but then again…there I was, standing up and out for all to see, a clearly intriguing prospect for his mental consideration concerning what he would make happen next. Good God…
I was once again his target, his experiment, his play thing… A wave of nausea washed over me when he licked his lips dramatically, making them gleam like the fresh blood that stained the sand in the sunlight, and I almost fell to my knees. Sure, it wasn't like he'd forgotten I was there, but at least before I hadn't been the center of his murderous attention. I had a bought of selfishness, wondering in a panicked surge why I'd felt the need to stand up at all, why I'd dared put myself in harm's way for other people. My bottom lip trembling, my wide brown eyes slid over to the man still holding the little boy, who had now gone still. His mother was sobbing a few feet away. I swallowed roughly, holding the man's gaze and willing him with all I had in me to stop the chaos, stop the madness, find his humanity within him and hold fast to it, so that instead of plummeting into darkness, we all might leave this world with even a bloody sliver of our dignity intact.
The Joker waited, watching me.
"…Let him go," I murmured softly to the man, my voice trembling with my own foul weakness, my eyes darting over to the Joker's when the hideous man smiled dangerously at me. I'd just made his game more interesting. Sure, it was great to watch people kill each other, but now, there was a force opposing that… And when there was an opposing force, there was something to collide with, something to overpower, something to overcome and seduce and ravage and destroy. I gulped again, barely comprehending the change in the man's expression as his grip on the little boy slackened. Slowly, the child lifted himself off of the sand with trembling arms, soon coughing and spitting out blood and grains of sand, his face effectively coated in both substances. His mother choked on a sob, holding out her arms to him and saying what I expected was his name, though it was in a language I didn't understand. The boy, sniveling and hacking and crying, stumbled up from where he had lay in the sand and ran over to his mother, collapsing with shaking sobs in her arms. The two cried together while everyone else waited.
The man seemed to realize what he'd almost done, looking down presumably at his hands in utmost horror. The reactions of the victims apparently sparking his sadistic curiosity, the Joker allowed his black eyes to crawl away from my face to settle upon the various members of the crowd in quick, two-second glances, evaluating all of their actions and reactions as he waited with a creepish, childlike eagerness for everyone to respond to the ceasing of the current tournament match of death. The man looked up at him, his face glistening with sweat and fear, and he then began to move slowly, almost in a frightening dream, back toward the woman he'd been killing to protect. She didn't look at him when he arrived somewhat-safely at her side, and he only looked at her for a moment before hanging his head and crying more vocally than before. She took his hand tightly in her own, but did nothing more, as if she was still trying to come to terms with what her love had almost done for her, her eyes straying to the crying mother and child before finally settling on the crying man at her side. She seemed to forgive him and realize that it really didn't matter what happened next. She curved her arm around his shoulders and held him as he cried, her eyes meeting the Joker's for only a moment before closing.
It was then a shot rang out, cracking like thunder in the delicate silence. I jumped a foot off of the ground, the little bubble of "no one is currently dying" shattering like lethal, glistening glass shards around me as my eyes widened, incomprehensible and staring in mute horror. The woman's large, round doe eyes, after slowly opening, now began to darken, as if a hellish vacuum were sucking the light away from them. Her bottom lip trembled, blood welling out of her mouth and dribbling down her pale white chin. Her hand slackened and fell from the crying man's shoulders, and she slowly dropped to the sand, a ragged crimson hole in her chest. The man choked on his tears, his hands dropping and his body stiffening rigidly, his eyes searching for the one he loved and settling with unbelievably heart-breaking weight upon her dead body beside him. The world seemed to slow down, like it was a cold, unfeeling machine that seemed to be malfunctioning more and more as the day went on. The Joker's automatic pistol still smoked, his previous warning carried through: kill the boy or I'll kill your woman. It was as simple – and horrible – as that.
The man couldn't contain himself any longer. His eyes welled over with a continuous stream of tears, a heart-wrenching scream of agony and pain punching forth from his chest as he dropped to the sand beside the woman he lived. With shaking hands he clutched her body close, sobbing into her bloody chest as the crowd, myself, and the Joker all watched him. We couldn't bear to look away. The Joker didn't want to. Almost casually, he lifted his gun and blew at the smoking tip, dispersing the soft grey cloud in an instant, as if he were part of an old Western movie and had just successfully won a valiant shoot-out. I turned, gaping at him in speechless horror and repulsion. He wasn't valiant – hell, he wasn't even socially acceptable in any way whatsoever! Tears welled within my own eyes, my emotions getting out of control as I expressed my indignant fury and my mournful sorrow and my sickening fear all at once. My hands clenched in fevered fists, my enter body being racked by shivers that were slowly mounting in frequency and feeling. For the second…or third, I wasn't sure, I was losing track and I didn't care – for the whatever-number-th time that day, something inside of my snapped.
I ran at the Joker, a furious, panicked heat flaring within me, driving me faster and crazier than before. My long fingernails would suffice nicely for clawing his make-up-smeared eyes out. My hair started to tangle all around my head and I screamed at him like an animal when he turned to look at me, his black eyes sparking. I heard various people in the crowd gasp, some even cheering me on, though most were too shocked and afraid to do anything of any real consequence or notice. I lunged for his face, just as he lifted the gun. Then things happened a little too fast for me to process in my rage.
My course of direction was changed. The world was a blur of blue and pale white and slightly searing golden light. There was great pain from something blunt slamming into my side and knocking the wind out of me and even more pain from something tightly encircling me as I continued to move in a fast circle through the air. Still, it was nothing like a bullet wound, so I was fairly certain that he hadn't shot me. And then I got a better handle on what was happening to me. The Joker had moved at the last minute, grabbing me and spinning me around to redirect my momentum and protect himself, slammed the butt of his gun into my ribcage, and was now restraining me in his arms, the barrel of the gun jammed up beneath my jaw and pushing my head so far back to the point where tears of pain pricked at my eyes.
My annoyance at being so unable to fight back against him would have known absolutely no boundaries or limits, if I hadn't been focused on how close I was, yet again, to dying. My back was pressed uncomfortably close against his chest, his arms encircling my front, holding me almost off of the ground, my legs straining to find any sort of leverage or support in the sand below my feet. I felt his warm breath upon my neck, seeing as it was so exposed because of the gun jammed up beneath my chin, stretching my face up toward the blaring sunlight as sweat broke out upon my brow. My heart pounded in my ears. I attempted to refrain from gasping for breath, but my breathing was still ragged and weak. I felt disgustingly pathetic as I heard him chuckle darkly in my ear. I was such a failure – such an irrational, uncontrollable failure. I couldn't even die trying correctly.
I continued to struggle, attempting to free myself, though the heat and exhaustion, both mental and physical, of all that I'd been through was weakening me more and more with every passing second. I still wanted to claw his eyes out, and that helped me to not give up just yet. His strength was too much for me and he only tightened his grip upon me, wrestling me into submission as he whispered wickedly in my ear.
"Y'know," he exhaled heavily, licking his lips far too close to my skin, "you might, uh, have a little more fightthan I, uh, gave you credit for, beautiful…" I felt the smile in his voice like a blind person in a garden would feel when they accidentally picked up an overgrown slug instead of a flower.
"Though, I'd be a little more, uh, care-ful, if I were you…It might. just. be…the death of you, some-day…" he murmured darkly to me, his tone once again containing a potent but amused warning. As I struggled to remain calm and not give him any more enjoyment – or any more reason to hold me tighter – I felt the pressure beneath my jaw lessen as he removed the gun from its lethal position. His arms pulled away all at once and I fell roughly to the sand, stumbling to my feet and taking a few quick steps away from him. Dang it, why couldn't I stop shuddering? The sun was warm against my skin, but that did nothing to make the icy goosebumps disappear…
"Oh, Beautiful?" he murmured in a repulsive sing-song voice, injected with something that I supposed was supposed to be a friendly tone, as if he were calling a close, childhood friend over to play Frisbee or something. It made me shudder again, despite my efforts not to. The crowd looked on, many of them watching me, clutching their loved ones close as the man and the mother and child continued to cry, not quite as loudly as before… Slowly, unwillingly, I looked up and met the Joker's gaze, doing my best to swallow any other emotions and clearly display my hatred for him, letting my fiery, loathing eyes bore into his with all of the hostility I could muster. I didn't speak, didn't give any other acknowledgment that I was responding to his creepy call. He simply grinned at me, his blood-red scars stretching with the movement, his yellow teeth gleaming in the suddenly-harsh sunlight. Suddenly and without warning, he moved toward me, making me flinch and curl in on myself in fearful surprise. When he reached me, he wrenched me up into a straight-standing position, seizing a handful of my long brown hair and pulling back, making me lift my head as I gasped at the pain. He then drew my hands up and shoved the gun into my shaking, sweat-slick grasp. Ice slipped down my spine as he forced me to take aim at the crumpled form of the crying man, still obliviously holding his dead loved one.
"You're up, beautiful," he murmured hotly into my ear.
Tears prickled into my eyes, my breath caught, my heart rate quickened, and the guards of my happy place simply smiled like demons and waved back at me.
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Thank you all once again!
Hugs from me – and from the Clown Prince of Crime, if you aren't too concerned about dying. :)
Reviews are certainly appreciated!
