Notes:

Wow. I am really surprised at the reviews I've gotten. I am so glad this story is doing well, because I'm really enjoying writing it. Thank all of you for the wonderful reviews and you guys rock so much! This chapter is, I admit, not of the best quality, but I needed to introduce the function of the Queen of Clubs as well as a few other things. Even still, I hope all of you enjoy this chapter and let me know if there are any confusions on either the Joker's part or Julia's and I'll try to answer you as best as I can!

…

…

The Queen of Clubs

…

…

Chasing down materials in the Fabric Warehouse was not how I wanted to spend my Saturday. While shoving and being shoved by people, I peer at tables with rolls of fabric, something purple or blue or green or black would catch my eye and I'd have to stop and examine it. I find a little something red, a strip of a dingy, almost grungy reddish brown that could go well as Bruce Wayne's belt sash, maybe for a sundang or something dangerous but rather exotic. I hold it in my fingers and press my cheek to it. It was made from a rough type of cotton, something less than rich but considering what Bruce Wayne was going to be, I figure a little roughness around his pretty-boy edges would do him some good.

I still laugh when I imagine him as a pirate. Hah.

I barter with the little Filipino woman, until I brought the price down from ten dollars to five and a half. I open my enormous canvas bag and stuff it to the bottom, juggling my tank-purse on my other side. I look around at all the people milling around and I see it. It looks like a royal purple, but it's just a tad brighter, less blue and more of a purer purple.

I make a determined beeline to it, shoving people bigger than me away and when I get there, the material is an enormous roll, it's crumpled and bunched and it still almost touches the floor. I tremble a little when I reach out to it. When I touch it, there's a small spark on my fingertips and it feels like hope and relief. I rub at it gently, purse my lips. It's not very soft to the touch, but it is good cotton. It looks a little more resistant to wrinkles than most, but it is by far an Egyptian cotton. I bend my head to it, and touch it to my cheek. The fibers scratch a little, but there's an underlying softness to it.

It's tight-knit. It's strong, resistant. I remember the gabacho and his hunched ways, the bony gauntness of him, the absolute savagery in his movements.

The woman, a blonde with dreadlocks and too many piercings in her ears to count snaps her gum and cocks her hip. The price tag on this is seven bucks and fifty cents for every half yard. I probably need the whole fucking roll, for spares of fabric in case I mess up on the gentleman's coat with its tail or the trousers. A rich purple like this, in such good shape, is expensive, but a good fabric adds on the price tag.

I get my game face on; the tough take-no-shit look that seems to work well in Gotham, which basically amounts to this: Bring it on bruja. I scowl, cock my hip back and lower my head like I'm about to charge. I see the corner of her eye twitch.

I start to haggle; she shakes her head and goes on a lecture of how expensive, how beautiful and absolutely-fucking fantastic this material. I snap back that if it doesn't have its own goddamn name yet, then it's nothing fucking special. She purses her lip, shakes her dreadlocks and I flinch back. Those things make me think of all the little nasty critters they're probably housing.

So, I do what I've always done best. I make a scene, point and accuse her of trying to cheat me because it isn't soft and it tears too easily. She says I'm lying, so I raise my voice more. If this keeps up, not many people will be buying from her.

The whole roll, which would have come to a total of two hundred and fifty-seven, cost me one hundred and fifty flat.

I walk away, proud and crooked because that fucking roll is heavier than shit and it took up most of my canvas bag. I may need to buy an extra bag for the rest of the fabrics to come.

While I'm browsing through blues with little hexagons, or octagons, the back of my neck prickles. My nostrils flare and I smell fear. My fear. I turn, expecting the mono from yesterday breathing down my neck and holding a switchblade to my eye, but I come up empty. The silk in my hands flutters back to the table, slipping away from my fingers like water. The sensory jilt feels good.

I look back at the material I had blindly groped at, and its base color is a cornflower blue, printed with large majorelle hexagons that link together in a geometrical puzzle pattern. I feel at the silk. Smooth, slippery – something like sand and water; maybe something like Harry Potter's Invisibility Cloak would feel. I look at the little demure Thai woman who watches me with big eyes.

I don't haggle, or pester her with the price. This sort of silk needs to be respected because though she be a hard mistress, the reward for stitching her is this: no wrinkles, a strong shirt and the coolest, most tender embrace in clothing that you never thought possible. I pay the woman and feel at the silk. I fold it gently and place it over the purple roll.

For a brief interlude in time, it was as though I was shopping for a regular customer who had unknowingly asked for something spectacularly artistic, a diamond in the rough sort of thing. It passes when I remember what the customer was. A lurching, deformity of a human being; something part jackal, part hyena and part hell; there were no singular words to describe him.

He hadn't explicitly threatened my life, not really, but he will. I know he will. He was dying to tear me to pieces back then, sew me back together and do it all over again.

Growing up where I did, it was a person's eyes that did it. Something that lurks behind everyone's mask. Like a crocodile in dirty river water ready to snap at any unfortunate seabird that may touch the surface.

It is this part of him that gives me reason to run far away and hope to God he can't sniff me out like a bloodhound.

Lost in my thoughts, it's a jolt to my senses when I feel someone brush against me, hands askew and searching for something; a pocket or the opening of my purse, or my gigantic canvas bag. Hands grab at my purse and I turn around, facing the person. It's a younger man, about twenty-something, and he jumps back, holding his hands up and he starts to stutter apologies.

I stare back at him. He has to be the worst fucking pick pocket on the face of the whole goddamned planet. I don't yell at him, or threaten to drag the police in this, but I am more than tempted to threaten to call his parents on him. I scratch at my hip and he shrinks back a little. He stares at me; I stare at him, and then ask, "What the fuck?"

He looks surprised, either at my word choice or at the fact that I said something instead of starting to scream my head off. I squint at him. He's got better hair and prettier eyes than me. Little pretty-boy-winner-of-worst-goddamned-pick-pocket-of-the-century-award prick.

"I just had to um be sure, ya know," he shrugs a shoulder and looks uncomfortable under my scrutiny.

"Be sure of what?" I snap. I am, agreeably, not in the best of moods to deal with this little fucking schoolboy. Julia mala, he's just a kid.

He shrinks in on himself a little and mumbles something I don't catch before he runs off, disappearing into the crowd. I am about to huff, stomp away like the little proud gal I am, before something that flutters to the ground in his wake catches my eye.

To say that I am a little more than confused to find the Queen of Clubs staring up at me from the dirty cemented floor of the Fabric Warehouse is a vast understatement. Her serious, drawn and resigned face with lines beneath her eyes glares up at me in all her mundane glory.

I bend at the waist and pick her up, clawing at her sides with what was left of my nails (my singular index nail still torn and currently wrapped in inch thick gauze) to pluck her from the floor before I hold her in front of my face.

There are words in her white background that are repeated over and over and over until they fill the space with red words from a precise pen. Why so serious? Why so serious? Why so S E R I O U S? I swallow the dry cotton in my throat and I twitch my fingers. The utter creepiness of the meticulous, tedious task that someone had appointed themselves to do on the Queen of Clubs is more than a little fucking perturbing.

Something sticky, wet like candy-streaks makes me turn the card over. Red lipstick smears the underside of the card, kisses pressed here and there like a child would and beneath it all; I catch a glimpse of it. Do YOU know what the QuEeN of ClUbS means? Haha. HAHA. HAhaHAhaHA.

P.S

By the way, chi-ca you really should get some sleep. Those crow's feet don't look too nice on your purdy little eyeballs.

Sincerely, your bestest pally-wal.

I feel the blood drain from my face, feel my fingers go cold and clammy, and suddenly my white floral print sheath dress doesn't feel so pretty. The fear from the other day comes rushing back up, holding my head under cold water and sinking into my bones. The chill holds inside of me, and stays.

I work my legs faster, skidding occasionally on my white pumps when I pick up the rest of the materials. I don't want to stay here anymore. Not here, not at the shop, not at my favorite corner cafe, not anywhere.

"I'll be uh checking in…"

He wasn't lying, I realize vaguely, in some still not-completely-scared-shitless part of me, when I stare down at the Queen of Clubs. I don't know what she means, but I know who probably will.

Sadie.

I'm struggling to balance the materials, and dig around for my cell phone. I slide it open and dial Sadie's number, working my thumb and pressing the phone against my face so hard it may stick. It rings twice and then, "Hullo?"

"Sadie, it's Julia. Do you uh…" the question is now, what can I say without getting gutted? I look down at the Queen of Clubs, holding her hand up as if she knew the answer. I lick my lips and look around, before taking a sharp right.

"Julia? Are you still there?" Sadie's voice comes through and I walk a little slower, trying to will my body into growing a few extra eyes.

"Huh? Uh, yeah, yeah, I'm still here. Look, I was um, wondering, do you know what the Queen of Clubs means?" I remember Sadie had been deeply intrigued by the art of Tarot card reading, and stars and such so she may know what the fucking hell this shit is.

She yawns over the phone and I feel like smacking the crap out of her. Bruja! Don't give me this shit; it's a matter of life or death! Answer the fucking question before I have to chase down an old Gypsy woman!

"The" – another little yawn, "The Queen of Clubs? Um…If I remember correctly, she represents self-interest." I blink slowly, staring dumbly at the unavailable crosswalk.

"What?" confused dread sets in and makes a nest.

"Julia, what is this for anyway?" she inquires, curious as a little kitten.

"Sadie, please. Just humor me." I have no idea if telling her will have dire consequences or not, but I am certainly not dying to find out.

"Okay, okay. Party-pooper. Um, yeah, the Queen of Clubs supposedly represents self-interest. You know, All for One, but not One for All?"

Something in me recognizes those traits, so familiar and hateful to myself. I feel the trepidation of my next words, "Keep going."

"Julia, is this for something weird, for like a cult or something? Because I am so telling you, those things are not all they're crack up to be –"

I cut her off at the quick, "Sadie."

I hear her sigh and mutter a grouchy "hold on", before background noise and then, "Ooookay, Miss Queen of Clubs is…quite the greedy one. Above all, she looks for comfort and money. All for One, not One for All, self-interests come first…blah blah blah…oh, here's something. The Queen of Clubs is a supposed card personification of Argine."

Argine was a misconception of the name of Argea, wife of Polynices who had been an exiled king of Thebes, and had looked for her husband on a battlefield only to come across his corpse and have him cremated. The Iliad.

The gabacho needs to cross reference his history better in regards to personifying them as his fucking victims. "Is that it?" I ask, still feeling a little fluttery considering I'm still holding the Queen of Clubs, and the fact that I am still maybe a victim of stalking.

"Yeah," Sadie responds. "As payment for this deed, you need to tell me Bruce Wayne's measurements."

"I'll tell you when I come back to work," I respond easily, skipping across the crosswalk in order to keep up with the masses. I can feel my blood rushing like early morning traffic. Bum-bum, bum-bum-bum-bum.

My heart won't stop pounding against my ribs, begging for me to calm it down, screaming for the help I know I won't be able to get.

"What? You're off until Monday Julia!" she protests like a little whiny kid.

I snort, "I'm sure you'll live," I hang up without saying good bye and shut my phone off. If I had stayed on the phone with her any longer, I might've cracked. I'm a leva, but I won't knowingly put Sadie in danger. The girl is the little sister I wish I never had.

I need food right now, and I'm trying to concentrate on that rather than the fast pace of my heart, or the terror that stills arcs in my blood. I have no idea if he's still watching me. I don't know what the Queen of Clubs may mean to him. I have no idea what I'm going to do. All that I can think of is that I'm hungry, and maybe if I'm eating I'll stop looking over my shoulder.

A few hundred yards ahead lay my destination.

There's this little Thai restaurant that dips in to a kind of basement that does take out only. It is the best Thai I've ever had. I'm going to use the money left over from both Bruce Wayne and the gabacho to buy myself a nice lunch and dinner.

My stomach gurgles, whether at the nausea of remembering who I was currently working for, or at hunger, I don't know and I won't question it.

I look down at the Queen of Clubs with her terrene gaze spearing me. There are parts of the Clubs that bare resemblance to me; self interest, obsession for money and security, and all that delightful jazz. She's probably a leva too.

While I pass a garbage can, I toss her in, lipstick smears on my hand and it looks like B-horror movie blood. I have to wait until I'm in the Thai restaurant to wipe it away because I happen to like this dress. I'd made it not too long ago, a stretchy material with big tropical exotic flowers printed here and there.

I turn a corner, go down a small flight of stairs and into a basement joint. I open the door and a small counter greets me, with a cute little Thai boy running the register. He straightens up, "Pick up, or order now?" he says without an accent.

I smile a little. I can feel my skin stretch tightly, resisting the menial task of smiling to a complete stranger who has no idea what the fuck is going on. I want to grab him, shake him and spill my guts out and beg him to help me.

"Order now, I'd like the number sixteen and forty-four."

He nods and goes through the kitchen door, yelling at the chefs in Thai.

I look at the little wooden bench that's in the corner of the shop and I slump down. My canvas bag sags and so does my shoulder, in obvious relief from the burden I'd been carrying. I see a napkin dispenser and steal a few, smearing the lipstick off. I frown at the mulish make up that sticks to my hand like glue, spreading a sickish feeling on my palm.

I let myself lean back, and close my eyes for just a few minutes of sleep.

Time elapses, collapses and becomes the universe's dust particles, swirling endlessly in a torrential, outlandish, prismatic gust that feeds my soul. I am floating. I have no worries. I live vicariously now, feeding off of emotions like happiness and joy, just like the physical parasite I had been when I'd been 'alive'.

I see galaxies and life blossoming before my eyes in my not-dream, nebulas and dwarf planets that shrink in on themselves, then explode in a violent, apocalyptic end.

"Miss? Miss, your order's ready." A hand shakes my shoulder and I inhale sharply, forcing my head up and accidentally colliding with the register boy's forehead. Sharp pain bursts forth and I hiss at the same time he does, both of us leaning away from the other.

"Fuck that hurts, I'm really sorry, ow shit that stings." I mutter almost incoherently but he waves it off and points to the plastic bag on the counter. "How much?"

"Eighteen ninety-five," he responds, going back behind the register and still nursing his forehead, giving me a wary glance.

I slide a twenty and a ten over and say "Keep the change."

It feels good, in a narcissistic way to say that. I've never been able to say, "Keep the change, bucko," like those old-style high roller women from the old fifties movies. They'd been my heroes, chief among them Audrey Hepburn. Cool, suave, sexy, intimidating, intelligent and powerful – these are the women all the teenage girls want to be. When you're eight, or nine, you still believe in love at first sight, or think that there's someone for everyone or happily ever after always exists or that your White Knight or Charming Prince will ride up and make you a princess.

Audrey Hepburn, Betty Page…these were the women I had hoped to follow since the first time I saw War and Peace, the first peek I'd caught of a black haired woman in leopard skin. These women who were confident in their own skin and got to the top by using what they had; how I envy them still.

I walk out of the shop, holding my purse, food and giant canvas bag. I feel like a jackass. The figurative and literal meaning of the term. I totter down the street rather awkwardly and look up at the sky. Thunder booms angrily and dark grey clouds swell, puff up like frightened animals. Lightning cracks once like a white-hot whip and the city-people, as one, turn up to the sky that had earlier been so clear and calm.

Something in the marrow of my bones quivers, cowers away and moans.

I shrug it away and start walking faster to my little apartment. A big fat raindrop lands on the back of my neck and rolls down. It rolls coldly down my spine, eliciting goose skin. I walk faster.

People bustle even faster in the start of the rain, shoving and being shoved, holding newspapers and briefcases over their heads, women pop umbrellas out of their purses and those without seek shelter from the coming downpour in shops.

It starts to really come down, cold wet rolling on my dress which is now probably see through and sticking to me uncomfortably. Fucking hell. I start jog through the slowly dispersing amount of people on the sidewalk.

My apartment is another block ahead when I see an unmarked white van come streaking down the road like a bat out of hell. It reminds me of the vans that would dump the carved bodies of the mulas on my street or neighboring ones. One of my good mexa friends became one. She did it twice and the third time, she never came back home.

I'm soaked to the bone when I finally get to my doorstep, fumbling with my keys; my blessed Gabriel pendent clinking against the golden cricket Ms. Ming gave me for my birthday. I stick my key in, but my apartment door swings open without me turning it.

It creaks ominously on old hinges but my apartment is dark. I stand outside of the door; lingering and I reach back for my cell phone, preparing to drop kick everything else and run the fuck away from the shadows that creep against my walls.

I step inside quietly, and flip the light. It comes on easily and I blink at the sudden change of brightness. I drop the canvas bag and my purse on the couch and leave my food on the kitchen counter, going for my meat cleaver. It shines in the light just like it does when I'm chopping up a duck, or a whole body chicken.

I hold it to me and start first at my bathroom; I turn the lights on and see nothing. My closet has the same results. I'm skulking around my own apartment with a meat cleaver dressed in wet clothes.

I look in my bedroom to find nothing - my bed is still unmade and stray pantyhose litter the floor like shed snake skins.

I drop my arm and blink, stare out the window and see a dark shape crouching on the other rooftop like a gargoyle. We don't have gargoyles on this side of town, unless it would be the Catholic Church that's a few miles away. I go there sometimes to pray to God to ask for forgiveness of my irrational selfishness towards my fellow man. Or I pray to Gabriel to shine his lantern so I can see where my road is again because I lost sight of it a long, long time ago.

I never receive an answer.

I dismiss the gargoyle as to the mystery of what it may be because I remember; I live in Gotham. It's Freak City here.

I go back to the kitchen and settle my cleaver back in its drawer and I turn to the kitchen counter where I catch sight of it. I cock my head to look down at her with wide eyes. The Queen of Clubs stares up at me balefully, holding her hand up not as if to answer a question but as if to uphold an oath or a pledge.

Beneath her faces, on her midsection there reads in black, scratchy writing that looks rushed and angry and biting; Turn me over.

I stare at her and she stares back, accusing me of the crimes she too was probably guilty of. Leva, leva perrucha. Too pathetic to save another life and too stupid to save your own.

I bite my tongue and look away, look around me, and my stomach roils, heart roars and mind whirls. I have no sense of who I am. I am nauseous, dizzy, tired and so fucking frightened. I look at the arrows that point to the sides of the card. They are furious, and indent the card to the point where they almost seem to tear it.

I reach out to touch it when my stomach finally protests violently.

I hold my hand to my mouth and I rush to the bathroom. I vomit up yellow bile, a fruit tart and a Chai tea I'd bought at a Starbucks earlier. I can barely hold my hair up, and grip the sides of the porcelain at the same time. My throat rattles at the pain and I can't stop. Tears squeeze at my eyes but I push them back, shove them away, Párelo, párelo, PÁRELO! Aliviane Gabriel, aliviane.

After I'm done, I sink to the floor on my legs, pressing my temple to the seat and start to dry sob. I want to hold my Gabriel pendent. I want to rub it in my hands.

He'd been in my home. The lacra had entered my sanctuary, the one place where everyone hides from everyone else and is always comfortable in their own skin. He is now crawling under my skin, poisoning my blood and deteriorating my muscles and blackening my bones. He is my Bubonic Plague. He is my cancerous tumor. I want to saw him off viciously.

He knows where I live.

It runs circles, laps, miles, light years around my mind in an endless whirr. My mind is a broken record player obsessed with a singular, terrifying thought: He knows where I live. Ouroboros doesn't have anything on this.

I slump on the toilet, letting the coolness seep into me, absorbing my body heat and I can't bring myself to get up to turn the card over. It may be a death threat or just a threat. I have neither the stomach nor the courage to turn the Queen of Clubs over to find out.

I close my eyes and try to will back the beautiful universe I'd seen in my short dream.

I see the Queen of Clubs, and her stare pierces my heart for reasons I don't understand. All I know is that it is pure unadulterated terror.

My eyes open and I clench the sides of the toilet seat before I push myself up to wash my mouth out with mouthwash and water. I look at myself in the mirror. The bags under my eyes are getting worse.

I look away and walk carefully to the kitchen where the card still lies.

I stand a few feet from her, wary and frightened and angry. He came into my home and invaded my life further. He scares the shit out of me.

My stomach cramps and it's not just my monthly.

I walk to her, slowly as if I were approaching a deadly animal before I grip a corner and flip her over. I can barely believe how scared I am of a playing card but when I bear witness to the writing that is rugged and angry and playful and exact all at once, and when the lacra's grinning face pops up, I still wish for Gabriel to shield me with his wings and take me into the light of his lantern.

DiD you LosE SoMetHing chi-ca?

…

…

Sundang: it isn't a Spanish word, but it's a Filipino bolo knife

Bruja: bitch

Mala: bad

Mula(s): literally mule, but also a coke mule

Mexa: someone from Mexico

Párelo: stop it