Disclaimer: I don't own The Endless, who were created by Neil Gaiman (Ilen Magian is an anagram of his name) and are owned by DC. Max Schreck and his department store were in Batman Returns, and I don't own them either.
"Talia?" His girlfriend had gone as pale as paper. Bruce had a vague idea that what you were supposed to do for someone who had passed out was to put their head down between their knees to make the blood return to their head, but if he did that, she was likely to slide off the sofa. He patted her face instead. When she did not respond, he made her as comfortable as he could, then went to the nearest bathroom and soaked a hand towel in cold water.
Returning to her side, he put the wet cloth on her forehead, and was rewarded by a slight flinch. "Oh." she said a moment later, opening her eyes. "Oh…how childish of me. I fear I have ruined the evening. Forgive me, Beloved."
"Hey, if anyone should be asking for forgiveness, it's me. You weren't kidding when you said you weren't a fan of horror movies, were you?"
She sat up, removing the cloth from her head and holding it in her lap. "I was brought up to believe most films were foolish and trivial, and horror films even more so."
"Really? That's a shame. It's like you never had the measles when you were growing up—now you've got no immunity to them. And then I go and expose you to a super-contagious person. I mean, this film, it pulled out all the stops. It had me going, too."
"Truly, Beloved? Are you certain you are not saying so to make me feel better?" She asked it with an impish smile that reminded him why he liked her.
"Honestly, it was one hell of a spooky movie." So he was exaggerating, so what? He felt bad about springing Ju-On on her—but he wished now that she had a little more backbone. She never stood up for herself; there was no fight in her, at least where he was concerned.
Upstairs, the doorbell rang. "My drapes!" she exclaimed. "Forgive me. I must let them in."
"Are you feeling okay?" he asked as she sprang to her feet.
"I might have been momentarily overcome, but I am not such a feeble creature as that!" she tossed back at him over her shoulder as she left the room.
Alone in Talia's media room for the first time, Bruce took a look around. Media apparently included books; on a lower shelf of the coffee table was a volume with a purple leather cover lettered in gold. He picked it up. It looked like a well-cared-for antique. The Endless, by Ilen Magian, he read. He had never heard of that author. Illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley. He had heard of Beardsley, a Victorian artist who used some very graphic images in his work.
Bruce sat back on the sofa and opened the book, more because it was something to do than out of any real interest, but certain books have the ability to draw readers in, and it seemed The Endless was one of those. Soon he was wrapped up in it—and rapt about it.
The Endless, according to Magian, were a family of seven immortal siblings. Not gods, because gods (with a small g, not a large G) require worship, and die off without it, but anthropomorphic personifications, or, to put it into words that didn't require sawing up to fit into one's mouth, concepts given human form. Something like how Santa Claus was the personification of generosity and indulgence, in other words.
These siblings were more serious. Each of them got his, her or its own chapter, but Magian had listed them in a shorter form first.
Destiny was the eldest, who appeared as an eyeless man chained to an enormous book. Then came Death. Rather than the classic Grim Reaper, a skeleton clad in robes, Death was a very attractive and cheerful girl in her late teens who affected Egyptian eye make-up and jewelry. The next sibling was Dream, a young-appearing man with poetical looks.
Then came Desire, who was a hermaphrodite. Beardsley had really gone to town with that particular illustration, and Bruce turned the page quickly. Destruction was next, a big burly man, and then Despair, an ugly, toad-like woman who gouged at her own flesh with a barbed hook—a good metaphor. The last and youngest was Delirium, a very young girl whose clothes and hair were disheveled and disordered as her mind.
Was this book mythology or fantasy? Had Magian made it all up, or was there a real history of the Endless behind it. He was glancing over the section about the Endless' children—apparently Dream was the Morpheus of Greek legend, and the father of Orpheus—when Talia returned.
"I am sorry I left you for so long, Beloved, and sorrier still that these tiresome people will command my attention for some little time."
"I guess you're kicking me out, then." Bruce stood up.
"Never—but I fear you will grow bored."
"That's okay." Gordon would be expecting him, come nightfall. "Do you mind if I borrow this?" He held up The Endless.
"Of cour—Oh." Her face grew worried. "If it were any other thing I possess, I would say: take it, and let there be no talk of borrowing, it is yours. But that is a most rare tome which I purchased as a gift for one who has desired it for many years. I am sorrowful beyond words, Beloved."
"Hey, I understand." He handed the book to her. "I'm glad I had a chance to glance at it, in that case." He headed for the stairs, and she followed him. About three-quarters of the way up, he saw something that made him pause. "Talia—do you have that wet towel?"
"Yes. Why?"
"There's a spot of paint or something—." He took the towel and swiped at the glob, but it was more solid than he had supposed. "It's blood. Blood and a little piece of meat—I think it's the very tip of somebody's finger." He held it up. "How did—?"
She blinked, and then answered, too easily, too naturally. "I know what happened. One of the workmen had an accident with a—a band saw, I think it was? Or was it some other sort of saw? He had to go to the hospital for stitches."
Talia was lying. He could tell. She was very good at it, but she had lied. "Do you think I ought to call them and tell them it has been found, Beloved?" she asked, ingenuously. "I hardly think such a tiny fragment could be reattached, the more so because it has dried out from being on the floor all day."
"Talia, why are you—?" His phone beeped at him; a text message had just come in. Taking it out, he saw it was from Alfred. Explosion riverfront suspect Joker, it read. "Damn. I've got to go…" He hurried out.
Talia stood at her brand new door for a very long time after he drove away, her face pensive and unreadable.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in Gotham City, Batman and the Gotham City police department were about to get their first big break.
Max Schreck, owner and president of the last chain of independent department stores in the Gotham City area, looked down at the seething shoppers on the sales floor and smiled. A striking-looking man in his fifties with a leonine mane of white hair and glacial eyes, he possessed bone structure too fine for him to be labeled ugly, yet he was too odd looking to be called handsome. Despite the economy (and despite a seven percent decrease from sales that month last year) profits were up two percent, and it was all thanks to his willingness to try new techniques and technologies.
Losses due to shoplifting had been reduced by ninety-five percent over the last quarter, and as they were heading into the Christmas season, when sales and thefts both spiked, he anticipated only more of the same. Simply slashing prices and then slashing them again wouldn't fix the economy. He could see that even if other retailers couldn't. Something new, something bold had to be done to save the bottom line from going into the red, and he had done it.
On every floor, in several different locations in every Schreck's Department store now stood a massive VDT which showed a variety of video clips, each five to sixty seconds long, ranging from seasonal landscapes and scenes to catwalk fashion shows to nature programming to spokes-models explaining the current and future predicted hot looks and colors and back again, the screens were the epitome of modern advertainment.
But they served another function, because underneath and behind the clips were other clips and messages, all aimed at stopping shoplifters. Sobering, even harrowing clips of shoplifters being apprehended, arrested, humiliated, accompanied by captions such as: Don't do it. They're watching you. They're on to you. They'll catch you. You can't escape. And it worked. Shoplifting had dropped dramatically from day one.
When Admospherics, Ltd. had come to him with their proposal…Well, he had to admit he didn't understand exactly how it worked, except that unlike the old experiment in subliminal advertising, it wasn't just one frame out of hundreds. This way of doing it ran continuously. The Admospherics people had explained a lot about negative space, and how when you stared at a picture of an American flag printed in orange and green for a while, then looked at a white wall, you saw the flag in normal colors. There was also something about those 'Magic Eye' pictures that had been a big fad about fifteen, twenty years ago. But that was why they were the ones coming to him for money rather than the other way around.
It was thoroughly above board and ethical, too. After all, they weren't influencing anyone into, say, spending money they didn't want to or buying a particular product, (although in the future…) they were only preventing shoplifting, which was illegal. It was practically a public service.
Although—not that this proved anything, because Gotham City had more than its fair share of lunatics—it did seem as though a disproportionate—yes, that was the word, disproportionate number of them were choosing to have their psychotic breaks in Schreck's Department Stores. About one a week, on average, which was why he hadn't started firing the security guards. But it couldn't possibly have any connection to the Admospherics videos. It couldn't.
At that moment, proving that Destiny has a fine sense for dramatic timing as well as a taste for irony, the girl started screaming…
