A.N.- As always, thank you to my beta eeyop, for putting up with my nonsense sentences and silly spelling errors! :)
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
Why was he lying still and not trying to escape? They were beginning to die! The stupid behemoths above were crushing his small body!
Tetch's body, which had been so still, suddenly began to jerk, his fingers curled like claws and scratching at the ground in fanatical desperation.
The fiends, the fools, the Snarks, the Jubjubs!
The small body, trapped under the dead weight of expired bodies, was the only living thing left in the cafeteria.
Growling in frustration, the small body managed to turn itself over so it was facing the corpse hulking on top of him. Ignoring the stench of sweat and death, and the dead man's blood dripping on his face, The Mad Hatter began to claw at the body, determined to tear through it if he had to.
He had to get ready for tea time.
HAD TO GET READY!
And these idiots – these silly cards – were in his way...
On his way back to the cafeteria, Crane noted the smell of burning bodies had overtaken the screams of horror. He smiled.
"Your house iss buurrniing..." whispered Scarecrow.
"Your children are gone..." finished Crane.
The kitchen back door was ripped open, blood spattered all over the walls and floor. Of course, the smarter criminals had come to the kitchen: it contained knives. Crane ignored all the butchered bodies of the unfortunate catering staff and guards. He didn't even bother to step over them; he just walked onwards, as if they weren't there.
"Ladybug... ladybug..." The rhyme descended into a hum. The beauty of the ruined cafeteria overtook Crane for a moment. He loved carnage. How he longed to see the whole world burning away like this, covered in blood and gore and corpses! Barely holding in childlike sniggers, he wandered about the room in a dream-like manner, his green eyes absorbing up all the horrors that they could.
An animalistic grunt brought his attention to where a pile of dead men laid, the first ones to be killed in the chaos. The pile was moving slightly. Something was underneath it.
"Te-tch?" he drawled, oblivious to a trail of saliva dripping from his mouth as he did so.
Yep, there Tetch was, a little blond head slowly clambering its way out of the entangled bodies. Crane had to admire Tetch's gruesome handiwork: he'd managed to rip half these bodies up in a bid to get out. Impressive, for someone so little and with no knife or such like.
Crane sat down on a table in front of the pile-up of bodies, observing Tetch's struggle. He could help Tetch by moving the bodies – but thoughts like that didn't cross Crane's mind. Instead he watched with the same level of interest he had when he first saw the mad blond.
Said fair-haired lunatic had now wrenched himself out completely and was inevitably covered in blood and gore.
"Well done," said Crane, smiling, and thinking that Tetch should feel honoured. Crane seldom gave compliments or praise. Dilated blue eyes stared at him for a moment. Tetch cocked his head to the side like a bird, as if he was analysing Crane with a very bizarre logic. It gave the impression that Tetch wasn't actually looking at him exactly...
Crane's stomach flipped with joy. He stood up and leaned over the small creature, who, unlike before, did not step back or seem intimidated. "Are you Tetch... or Mad Hatter?"
"I must get back for tea," replied Tetch in a pronounced English accent, the clipped type heard on English period dramas. "I simply must! I'm late! I'm late!"
"...I see."
Far off in the distance a monstrous roar sounded out. It was an odd sound, unlike any known animal: it was deep and reverberating, like a lion's, but guttural, as if being sounded through water.
"The Jabberwocky," The Mad Hatter whispered, his voice assuming fear, but Crane did not detect any legitimate terror. He was acting. Tetch wasn't even in this body anymore; he was gone, and in his place was a vague, two-dimensional character from a children's book.
'The shadow animus isn't strong enough,' he thought. 'But it's alright, we can fix that...'
The thing that had once been called 'Killer Croc' let out another roar.
It wanted everyone to know It was coming! Like a monster out of the Bible book of Revelations, It raised itself out of the stinking waters those filthy humans had left It to wallow in.
To tear and rip and eat and destroy!
That was It! It was that! Destruction and Terror personified!
Finally, after so long, Its hunger would be satiated!
As Its claws bit into the metallic sides of Its watery prison, It knew It had always had the strength to escape this place. But all those human potions had made It drowsy and light-headed. And more so was the hunger, the terrible, ongoing hunger! It was a thing of carnal, bestial pleasure and satisfaction. They had tormented It with their filthy fake food, just enough sustenance to keep It alive, but never enough to allow It satisfaction.
But now, the gangly one had offered It a sacrifice. Appropriate, for what was the thing that was once called 'Killer Croc' now but a God? Its enormous strength, Its natural ultra-violent talent that It had been born with all pointed to It being a superior being – certainly higher than all the putrid creatures that crawled across the surface of the earth.
They believed that It was perhaps some sort of throw back, some sort of devolution. Fools!
It was actually a demi-god of ancient lore. Once more, It would have humans bow to Its feet to worship It, to feed It, to satiate Its lusts, avarice and greed!
It gripped the iron lid of Its imprisonment and tore it open with a high-pitched screech of triumph.
Oh, the blood and hair It had tasted in Its waters! They coloured the water with the flavour of Man, and it had tasted so good! It needed to find Its prey and tear him, limb from limb, and gulp down his pathetic remains! It sniffed the air; the smell of death hummed in the atmosphere.
Today was the day of Revenge, the day of Revelation; It would feast. It would feast and make all those scum that had captured It pay!
Away from the deluded thoughts of grandeur, misanthropy and malevolence of these multiple, confused personalities, a few miles away, Miss Leland, the very epitome of sound common sense and sanity, was calmly eating a bagel and trying to get through 'The Jabberwocky', a rather odd poem courtesy of Mister Lewis Carroll.
Bearing a logical mind, Leland had not found Lewis Carroll's work easy to read. She had had to get various critical essays on his work, and was wryly amused when finding out that Lewis Carroll was actually just an alter ego for a shy, retiring academic (and possible paedophile) by the name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.
The parallel between him and Tetch was enlightening, and Leland couldn't help but wonder if Tetch was in fact obsessed with the author, if their similarity was what attracted Tetch to the books in the first place.
She had her first real session with him this afternoon. He would undoubtedly be shaken, as today would be his first day in C block, and no one ever got through their first day of C block smoothly; but hopefully she would be able to calm him down long enough to obtain a few crucial facts about his childhood. The prime one being when he first started reading 'Alice in Wonderland': was it a part of his childhood, and how much did he know about the author?
It mattered, as: one, the Arkham psychiatrists needed to know why he became obsessed with the story; two, why he became the Mad Hatter character; and three, why on earth he was so obsessed about finding Alice.
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson had known a young girl by the name of Alice Pleasance Liddle (again, the connection was uncanny) and had based his heroine on her. And though the Alice Tetch had come to love looked like the modern Disney version of Alice, both young women had one thing in common: they were reputedly beautiful and charming.
Was Tetch looking for perfection in a woman? This would lead to questions on how Tetch viewed women and humanity in general. Did he become angry with Alice and forced her to his will when she 'lacked' this perfection by rejecting him?
They had tested Alice after Tetch's arrest. The poor girl remembered nothing after Tetch had used his mind control device, and was suitably traumatised. However, confounding all previous fears, the tests showed that she had not been sexually assaulted in any way.
When interviewing Tetch – who had been very unhelpful and confused throughout his arrest and trial – he had mentioned that he hadn't been the one to undress and re-dress Alice in her costume; he had ordered his boss whom he only called 'the Red Queen' to do it for him. It seemed all Tetch wanted was a companion to have tea with.
There were other possible explanations though. Was he obsessing over finding an Alice in order to find another way to be close to the author?
The phone rang shrill through the quiet apartment, making her jump and drop her bagel all over the book. With a sigh she picked up the phone, listened for a moment, and then groaned wearily.
"Dear Arkham employee," an inappropriately cheerful and nasal voice, heavily accented with the Gotham twang, spoke, "this is an automated response. There has been a mass breakout. Please follow the usual safety precautions; take necessities and leave town until the Gotham news report that Arkham is back, running at its usual pace..."
There was more but Leland had heard it a hundred times before, so she hung up. Running to her bedroom, she pulled out the emergency suitcase every Arkham worker had. She grabbed her coat, keys and ruined book. She would call her sister and tell her that she was coming over, again, when in the car.
A mass breakout happened every few months at Arkham, and every time the workers had to treat it as if a huge natural disaster was going to hit the city. In some ways, that was exactly what it was. In the few days it would take for the Batman and his comrades to round up all the criminals, the death toll in Gotham alone would make up for a third in the entire country's statistics.
Arkham workers were always required to leave as, inevitably, they were the most at risk.
As she started her engine and drove to the intersection, Leland could not help her heart from sinking. There was no way Jervis Tetch would survive C block now. No way.
He'd be dead within the hour.