The Caterpillar Phase
Unlike the majority of the cleaning staff around Arkham, Alice did not quit within her first week, nor did she even quit within her first month of working. She had actually made it through relatively unscathed, and had not come to clean around any Class 9 patients- those that were thought to be of greater risk than anyone else in the asylum. Due to her being one of the younger workers the blonde would still occasionally clean the offices of the doctors after their own awkward run-ins with differing patients. Now starting her second month, she was already in to the habit of perfecting the rooms before leaving after hearing a woman had left a spray bottle in the Joker's cell and he had almost blinded a guard.
"Alice, to Doctor Gretchen Whistler's office, she's finishing with a patient of hers right now, but by the time you get there, she should be done." Alice replied to the voice on the other side of the walkie-talkie and started to push the squeaky cart down the hallways and in to the elevator to make her way to the first floor of the building where the offices were, below the housekeeping room.
"Hold that elevator!" Alice was surprised to see a guard hurriedly pushing someone chained from head to toe to make it to where she was, letting her finger press a button to keep the doors open a bit longer. The large guard ran in and pushed the man in chains next to her, letting her hear him sniff her deeply. "Thank you so much! They would have killed me, I just got off probation with the other inmates, and then this one runs off and I have to get him, and we're already late- oh, I'm Tommy Armbuster, here and at your service!" He stopped his ramblings and introduced himself to her, readying himself for a handshake before he noticed her almost well hidden attempt at holding a non-frightened look on her face at the man with the prison mask sniffing her hair from where he stood above her.
"You're the one The Hatter is always going on about. You, you're the one that messed up my dates! My oh so important dates! They were laid out the way I wanted them and you just went and put them the way you thought they should be!" The blonde was surprised and attempted to back away from the man in chains. "Oh, but no! It took me so long to put everything together, my parents deaths were next to each other even if their dates were different...but...oh, don't worry. I'll find the perfect date for you and let you and all of the others pay for touching my dates. Maybe some stomach troubles on Valentine's day- oh, I'll mark it down." Alice saw the guard's embarrassment though his guard helmet and saw him direct the patient to the other side of the elevator where Alice's cart was between them. The prisoner was clearly dejected, but stayed still as Tommy pressed the same button that the blonde planned to press herself. He patted her on the shoulder as they reached the floor together and led the patient down the opposite hallway she was planning to go down. Taking her cart, she made her way through the hall and found herself outside of the doctor's room- looking inside and seeing a large, green, scaled man.
The blonde knew this man to be Killer Croc from others around Arkham, he was a more notorious patient. He was strange, as he was born with a rare mutation that made his skin green and scaly, and which grew his body to grotesque proportions. His birth name was Waylon Jones and he was raised by an alcoholic aunt and bullied relentlessly for his appearance from what she knew from children at her school. He had briefly worked as a carnival freak under the name Killer Croc, but his misanthropy began to grow just like his own bestial nature, pushing him to a life of crime. Alice believed it was a sad thing to think that the world could be so cruel as to look at a person who was different and not give them a chance at a normal life.
"What's the bitch outside staring at?" The man's voice was loud and menacing as the doctor within the room was forced to stop her own question and look at the young, innocent girl who was staring back at her through the window outside her office. "I mean, I know I'm a fucking hot piece of freak, but seriously?" He was growling louder now, and Alice felt her own ears flush and she ducked her head down so she didn't bother anyone. Guards filled the perimeter of the room with buttons in their hands, which she could only guess were to deal with the collar around his neck.
"I apologize Mr. Jones, it seems that our session may have run longer than we had previously thought. Someone is here to clean this room." The woman said in her slight accent, letting the man growl at her while the guards escorted him out of the room. She regarded Alice as if she were fluff on her dress and stared down at her. "I thought we were improving, but, as you can see in the corner there, there is a mess of papers which I need cleaned before my appointment with another patient in an hour." And the woman left Alice to stare at her back while she cleaned.
Grabbing her garbage bag and tightening her gloves she stared at the mess before her, stopping to think for a moment. "That man was taller than two of me." And continuing her work.
It didn't take her very long, and she had told the voice on the other side and patiently awaited her next task. Her family had not spoken to her since she had left and she was soon to move in to an apartment complex which had been arranged by some outer source she could only believe to be a partner within the asylum- and she had more than enough to pay rent.
"Jervis come back here!" A bald headed man with round glasses that Alice knew as Hugo Strange was chasing after a shorter, balding man who was running towards her where she stood in the elevator. Alice felt her insides turn cold and tried to close the elevator with the button while some of the guards that were around tried to grab him- only to have the Hatter slide underneath their arms and throw his short form against the blonde girl. "Jervis!" Doctor Strange yelled as the doors closed on the two of them. And as the elevator began making its way up, the two were stuck together.
"O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! Ha ha, she's mine for the asking! I'll sweep her off her feet, treat her to a wonderful night on the town and -oh Alice, I'm so happy we're together!" His hands were all over her, pulling down her tights and running his fingers down her newly showing legs. They reached halfway between the second and third floor of patients when the short man pressed the emergency stop button and pushed Alice's cart away and her body down. She landed heavily and his hands found their way underneath her skirt.
"It's great to see you as well Mr. Hatter, but I don't believe what you are trying to do is completely appropriate." She tried to make her usual soft voice sound more airy and firm as he paused what he was doing for a moment. "I thought you would want to do something like this in Wonderland? This isn't right, I'm not dressed properly Mr. Hatter." She told him and let her hands slowly drag herself away from him in the small area. He was staring at her but letting his eyes flicker down occasionally as he scratched his head and she felt her back press against the wall of buttons.
"I suppose." He said. "Alice, would you like me to make you feel good though, it'll give us both a taste of what Wonderland will be like." The Hatter gave her no chance to answer him before he jumped back on top of her, knocking the breath out of her while he attempted to pull off her shirt and working with his own prison garbs which 'did nothing to show his true self' as he said.
"Stop!" Tears leaked from Alice's eyes as the man on top of her began jumping on top of her so much that her head was now banging against the metal bottom of the elevator while she attempted but failed miserably to reach for the buttons of the elevator to head back down so that he would go back to what he was doing with Strange. "Hatter! Oh, Hatter! Please stop! I cannot travel to Wonderland with a concussion." The blonde laughed slightly as if it were a joke and his grip on her body loosened.
"Oh Alice!" He said, rubbing his cheek against hers. "I'm so sorry my Alice! I'll make it up to you!" And he cautiously began to unbutton her shirt instead of the previous attempts to rip it off of her. His rough hands rubbed her smaller mounds and he smiled the entire time. Slowly, he lowered his mouth to rest on the pink nub of her breast and she stared up at the camera in the corner in shock. Her hands reached for the buttons again and pressed the ground floor button to get in front of the medical offices.
The Hatter noticed the lurch of where they were and cursed himself before crouching on top of her. She attempted to push him off of her only for him to nip at her neck when the door opened. Guards rushed in with their guns pointed at him but they made no move to fire as the seventeen year old blonde was too close and they couldn't risk hurting her. So, Alice did the only thing she could think of with the man nipping at her neck. The small blonde wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his face on top of her own. The Mad Hatter was smiling widely and was beginning to go down to kiss the girl before she threw him off of her and ran in to the arms of the nearest guard while the Hatter cried out for her while he was handcuffed and led in to the basement to solitary confinement near Killer Croc's specialty cell. He cried and whined for the other girl, but eventually gave up and went limp within the guards arms.
"Don't worry my Alice!" He screamed from behind her. "I know you're scared but we'll be safe in Wonderland very soon!" Her arms were rubbed as she fixed her shirt and skirt, leaving her tights on the ground. Pulling her walkie-talkie from the cart she walked away from the group of male guards. "I'll cut open your head open if I have to Alice, don't worry!" A shiver ran up her spine as she pressed the button to call the person who usually gave her directions.
"Alice checking in. The room is cleaned, but a matter came up- give me a while, if possible, before I start working again. I'm taking an early break." The blonde said, gathered her things and pushed her cart down the hallway and in to a nearby closet to put her tights back on and catch her breath. Her knees pulled in to her body and she held them tightly as she stared at her tights which she had haphazardly thrown on to the floor- her breaths were beginning to slow in the same was as her heart as she moved to hold her thumping chest with long fingers. Then, she began the process of fully buttoning her shirt and pulling her tights over her pale, scratched and scraped legs. The Mad Hatter had her in his sights, and she would be lucky if her were to find her less appealing within the near future for her sake- but she felt it within the furthest corners of her mind that it were in her and the majority of Gotham's interest if she were the only one in trouble with the older man.
"Alice here, I'm ready when you need me." The blonde girl now walked out of the closet, tights on and shirt now fixed around her bosom. A flush was fixed on her face from what the Mad Hatter had done to her just half hour or so before. Her skin felt tight and hot, but she was ready to do her job to the best of her abilities. Alice pushed her cart down the hallway, she knew that quitting because of something like what had happened to her in a place like Gotham would be puerile for someone else as much worse had been faced by many and she did not want to be seen as weak by the majority of the city's populace.
"Ah, Alice." The voice on the other end of the walkie-talkie rang out with its southern drawl. "I apologize for what happened to you, but it's nice to see that you are ready to continue your work. It would be nice for you to know that Jervis Tetch has now been moved to solitary confinement for the next week- due to this, it is the perfect time for you to clean his room after you clean some other rooms on the fourth floor of patients. Please make your way to rooms 401, 410 and 440. One patient is in therapy, one has been terminated, and the last room belongs to Mr. Tetch." Alice did as she was told and made her way to the elevator with shaky legs, and attempted to hold her head high.
When she arrived at the fifth floor of the building the blonde found herself wavering in her spot before making her way to the first room right in front of where the elevator opened. Using her key card she found herself moving inside of a room fitted with an assortment of cobwebs and drawings of moths. "Killer Moth?" Alice whispered to herself as she began to scrub the walls clean of the sketches and used a glove to take down the cobwebs and place them in the garbage bag attached to her cart. She moved to clean the bathroom and then stripped the bed of its sticky sheets and replaced it with new, clean ones.
Leaving the room, she shut the door behind her and did the same thing to room 410, only, instead of cleaning cobwebs, she was stuck waiting for a hazmat suit and cleaning fecal matter and helping another staff member to remove the actual mattress from the room and then replacing it. Finally, she found herself in front of room 440 and heard a scoff behind her.
"Tetch would hate to here that his room's been tampered with while he's gone. He always finds the one that's unlucky enough to clean it, spouts nonsense about how 'his Alice would hate to see his Wonderland different than how it should be', really bothersome to hear during the nighttime when I'm attempting to get to sleep. But, I suppose if I tell him you look like her, he won't be as annoying as someone with his mental state would be." Alice looked across from the room and saw a man sitting upright on his bed from between the metal bars. He looked proud, his icy blue eyes sparkling in the darker atmosphere that Arkham was surrounded in. His body was lanky and Alice knew quickly who he was after he asked her his own famous question, "Tell me, little girl, do you have any fears? It's best to talk about them with a professional." Alice felt her shoulders stiffen as she ignored him and opened and closed the door to the room behind her.
It looked exactly how she would have pictured it. There were soft, plush tea cups so that the Hatter would be unable to harm himself within the room- all scattered about on the floor. His walls were painted an unusual blue color that came close to matching Alice's own eyes and written in what she could only imagine to be blood were quotes from Lewis Carroll's most famous creation.
She carefully scrubbed the walls clean of the grimy words and sentences. Her breath hitched in her throat as she came across something peaking out from underneath the bed. The blonde got down on her knees and began reaching for the white item. Pulling it up in between her long, pale fingers, she saw that it was a simple card with the measurement of '10/6' etched on to it. Placing it in the pocket of her skirt to report it later on. After checking underneath the bed for anything else, Alice arranged the plush tea toys carefully in the corner of the room beside the opening to the toilet and sink all patients had.
Opening the door and placing all of her items in the cart she had, she looked across from her and saw the man from before staring at her with the same icy blue eyes from before. "I see that you cleaned. I don't believe that a patient like Jervis will be very happy to see that his only connection to his own hallucinative means of coping with what he goes through has been tampered with." He clicked his tongue and the hair on Alice's neck stood up at full attention. "Personally, I don't understand what such a smart man would find so interesting about a not-so-well written story. It makes no sense." He murmured towards her, rubbing his chin thoughtfully as it looked as if it had not been shaven in a long time.
Alice huffed and the man threw his eyes towards her through the bars that acted like a window in his door. The blonde patted down her puffy, black skirt before staring back at him, her lip between her teeth. "It's a complete work of art if you have the imagination to place yourself within the story. It's not my fault you're too high and mighty with your educational stand point to possibly think less." He was angered by what she said and attempted to throw himself against his door- knocking Alice on her bottom from the sound, and falling backwards a bit himself. He scoffed and she began to reach for her walkie-talkie.
"Words like that from a little girl," He smirked for a moment. "I find it hilarious to think about the noises you'll make for me when you begin to scream from your fears. Scarecrows are particularly terrifying during the late hours of night." The man continued and Alice felt her eyes widen as she remembered who this man was. The Scarecrow, Jonathan Crane- a once renowned professor at Gotham university as well as psychiatrist who had an obsession with fear. He was by far one of the more attractive people within the facility, from what Alice could tell, even though he was on the skinny side, she could see that his arms were slightly muscled.
Holding her walkie-talkie to her mouth, Alice told the person on the other side that she had finished cleaning the rooms, only to be told that she was done until her next shift the next morning. There was no reason for her to head to her new apartment, so she decided to head down to the medical bay and catch a nap before a snack time the asylum held within the cafeteria. Then, she would go back to sleep in her claimed bed with a free meal in her stomach.
Laying down on the cot she smiled at the nurse who was stitching closed a wound one a man's arm before letting her eyes close softly and falling asleep.
"Alice..." She was woken up with an arm on her shoulder and saw the smiling nurse staring down at her. "The meals are ready, I figured you would want to know before you found yourself too deep in your sleep." Alice smiled at the older woman and swung her legs over the cot, itching her tight-clad ankles and brushing through her hair with her nimble fingers. Wiping the sand that had accumulated at the corner of her eyes, she made her way through the medical facility, past the metal detector and out in to the corridor.
Alice slowly dragged her feet up the stairs that landed just beside the patient's cells, where the full glassed room greeted her with malicious smiles of patients and doctors within. Making her way toward the trays of food, she grabbed one for herself and a juice box. Deciding to sit at a table where one doctor sat alone, muttering quietly to himself. She smiled and he simply looked up with glazed eyes, introducing himself as Dr. Combs. He went back to staring at his wringing hands- looking around him every few seconds.
Alice calmly ate the peas, potatoes and thin slices of ham on her plate before returning the tray to rest on top of a garbage can and readying herself to leave the large room after popping a few, small grapes in her mouth.
"Alice!" A male's voice called behind her and she turned to see a man in a doctor's uniform who she knew as Dr. Kellerman running towards her with two trays of food balanced in his hands. He was visibly sweating and she stopped in her tracks, turning to smile at him. She stared in to his eyes with questioning ones of her own. "I need to bring these trays to some patients but I have an interview scheduled with another patient at this time. No one else wants to and I really need someone to deliver these to Jonathan Crane and Victor Zsasz. You don't have to talk to them, you just have to push the trays underneath the small slit in the bottom of their doors. Please be careful." He warned, before shoving both trays in to her unsteady arms and running off- not waiting for any possible form of protest from the teenager.
Sighing, Alice made her way in to an elevator and found herself in the upper floor of patients. The men's rooms were written on the trays and she stopped in front of Victor's room first. She knew to stay far from him as it was he who had fallen from being one of Gotham's middle-class business owner's to a killer who tried to take out 'zombies', those who lived with no purpose. He posed said 'zombies' in a way that they were positioned to fully live their lives properly in the realm of death. His pale body was covered in tick marks to keep track of every person who was eventually released from the world.
"Hello?" She called as she stood in front of the metal door. Victor came to stand in front of the bars, staring at her face for a long moment before inclining his head towards the tray balanced in her right arm. She smiled and pushed it partially through the slit inside of the door. He pulled it the rest of the way through, standing up with it in his arms the same way she now held Crane's tray.
"You're going to be a mark right here." He pointed towards a place on his neck while he stared through her. His laughing then followed her as she hopped down the hallway as fast as humanly possible to get to Crane's room with his food in her hands. She found herself in front of the door within a few minutes, breathing heavily before letting their blue eyes lock on one another.
She stiffened and as if she were glass annealing, he breathed out, her face now near his cell where her began to drop down and her body visibly relaxed. "Nice to see you once again." He said offhandedly as she placed the tray halfway through the porthole in the door. "While your here, would you like to entertain me?" His voice was lower once again and he smiled charismatically as he stared- letting his eyes rake over her body. She was tense once again until he began to steadily breathe, letting out a small chuckle as Alice shook her head and ran to the elevator.
His smile widened as he stared at the cologne bottle he had smuggled in to his cell.
"See you soon." He called as she disappeared.
