Author's Notes: I'm back.
Many of you who follow me on Tumblr have been aware of Blackout's huge reconstruction process—which has spanned the past couple of years—and as of today has officially been completed. Chapters one through seven have been entirely rewritten to reflect the changes I felt were necessary. I hope that most of you, if not all of you, will enjoy going back to read all of the new content that has been added. These chapters are almost twice as long as they previously were. There is loads more content—as well as more depth and backstory—than was previously given in the original. I truly hope you will love the changes.
Thank you all for your extended patience, your reviews, your constant persistence, and for urging me to keep going. I owe so much to all of you. Your comments and questions and passion for this story are immensely appreciated. I am intensely excited for all of you to read everything that is to come. This story is only just beginning, and I have so much yet to reveal. With all of that being said, even if all you can spare is a few words, I would love to hear from you and that you are still out there and interested in the story. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoy.
Chapter Eight
It was slowly that Taylor's eyes fluttered open, lashes fighting back the sudden onslaught of light. The brightness was violent, like staring too long at the sun on a day where it sat poised high in the sky, unmarred by a shield of clouds. And she was reminded of a memory long forgotten then, tucked in some dusty corner of her mind; the memory of a long car ride as a child, where her father had sighed at her in the rearview mirror and warned her not to stare at the sun. Yet she watched it chase the car alongside the long expanse of highway, staring at it against his admonition, and afterwards, when she looked away, green and black dots danced in her vision. It blotted out the passing trees as they sped by, and Terrence in the seat next to her, separated by the arm rest between them and quietly reading a book.
As the memory faded from her mind, the bright glare from above did not, and Taylor squinted against the light while lifting a hand to her eyes to shield against it.
That was when a cold shock of panic jolted her—she realized she could not move her arms.
Frightened eyes trailed to where her ankles, then wrists, had been cuffed to the metal surface beneath her, keeping her supine.
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed back panic, heart pounding fast, thudding like a war drum in her ears. The muscles in her arms strained as she pulled at the bindings that kept her wrists attached to the table, testing the resistance. There was no way she was getting out of those.
She made to turn her head to the side, only to realize she couldn't do that, either.
No.
No, no, no.
Unable to turn her neck, she scanned the room as best she could, eyes darting anywhere her gaze could reach. The ceiling and walls were made of white tile, not a trace of dust or spot of dirt to be seen.
The room was small, sterile, and empty.
It looked almost like the isolation rooms she'd seen in the psych ward at Gotham Medical, but those weren't nearly as cold, and not so blindingly white. And instead of a white, clean bed, what she lay on now was hard, cold, and made of steel.
Behind her, a piercing bang sent the hairs on her standing on end. The double doors behind her had burst open. She could hear the whoosh of air as the doors swung back and forth until they closed.
Squeaky wheels rolled across the floor. A metal cart, the same height as the table, came into view. Taylor's neck strained as she attempted to lift it off the table to get a better view.
Purple leather gloves gripped the sides of the cart. She frowned.
Purple? Why was that familiar to her?
She twisted her head in vain. The figure remained stubbornly out of view.
"What—" she swallowed the sandpaper coating her tongue, "—what's going on?"
The figure did not move.
"Where am I? I don't... " She trailed off when she noticed the long, serrated knife set in the center of the cart.
Her heart dropped to the pit of her stomach, settling deep down, afraid, as if he wanted to disappear just as much as she did.
And something struck her, a thought that told her she'd seen that knife before. But where? She looked at the sharp, pointed tip of the blade, and that thin, elongated gap in the center of the blade, almost reminiscent of a knife used for peeling fruits or vegetables.
She startled when the cart was pushed forward, scraping against the floor, where the cart had begun to dip a little. There must have been some sort of drainage duct beneath her.
The knife on top of the cart slid farther into view at the same time the figure did, his back facing her. She knew immediately that it was a man, judging from the size of him, but she could not make out the color of his clothing, only that it was dark. It could have been anything from navy blue to brown to black. The lights were blinding her….
She stared at his back, at the sharp, protruding shoulder blades, the hunched shoulders, and the dark, stringy hair that fell over the rim of his collar.
"Who are you? Where am I? Please, I—"
Her words died again when she noticed the figure reach forward to grab the knife. His coat bunched around his shoulders as gloved fingers cradled the handle.
She felt her heart picking up speed, pounding, every muscle tight, pulled taut, coiled like a wound-up spring. The silence was deafening.
"What are you doing?" she cried. "Please say something!"
She waited, holding her breath and willing the man to speak, to explain what was going on, to just say something, anything.
Instead, he laughed.
It was the most horrible sound she'd ever heard. Sickly-sweet and grating to the ears, it grew louder with each second that passed. It was the sound that haunted every nightmare she'd ever had, the sound she associated with death, the sound of sharp blades and the frenzied spurt of blood as skin is sliced apart. It was the exact opposite of what laughter was supposed to sound like and the feelings it was supposed to inspire.
She watched his shoulders shake, his back tremble with the force of his laughter. The hairs on her arms stood on end.
He was still laughing as he spun to face her.
She jolted when she saw him. Faceless and terrifying, he had blurred, white skin and a bloody red slash for a mouth. She screamed as blood trickled from his gaping, wide mouth, speckling her neck and arms with flecks of blood when he laughed.
"Stop! Let me go!" She squeezed her eyes shut, clenched her hands into fists, and wanted more than anything to be able to shield herself, to raise her hands, to move her limbs. The restraints rattled against the table with her effort. "Stop it, stop!" she begged.
The laughter did stop, so suddenly it was almost jarring. Taylor opened her eyes in time to watch the figure jerk closer, hovering over her face. She gagged on the rank smell of copper that flooded her nostrils, crying hard, wanting to look away but unable to look away.
His mouth opened wide, wider than she would have thought physically possible, as if his lower jaw had unhinged, and she was hypnotized, unable to look away from that gaping black hole as blood surged from his mouth and down his chin.
"He tried to take you away from me," the figure said, his voice garbled and indistinct as he spoke around the torrent of blood in his mouth, causing more to spurt onto her heaving chest as he spoke over her. "He was going to hurt you... going to make you bleed."
Taylor cried out, wanting to turn away from the putrid smell of his breath. "What are you talking about? LET ME OUT," she sobbed.
He growled in response, and she stared in horror as his mouth shifted into more shapes. He twisted the knife in his hand, jerked up the hem of her shirt with the other.
"Maybe you need a reminder," he snarled, "something to jog your memory."
"No, no, no—please!"
The figure's mouth twisted and his voice became more distinct when he wiped the blood from his lips with the back of his hand. He cocked his head.
"What's the matter? Don't you want to play?"
Taylor screamed when he lowered the knife to her ribcage and slowly began to peel back a layer of skin.
Her back arched off the table in agony—but there was nowhere else to go, nowhere to run.
"Nowhere to hide," he said, finishing her thoughts.
And he began to peel again.
Taylor's eyes snapped open with a start, body jolting upright.
She was covered in a sheen of sweat, the room bathed in darkness. Breathing hard, her hands flew to her abdomen, rushing to lift up the hem of her shirt, where the skin there was smooth and soft, and had not been peeled away to reveal the muscle beneath.
She sobbed aloud when she realized it had been a nightmare—only a nightmare, she assured herself—and felt her shoulders sag relief.
It was a relief that was short-lived. A stabbing pain was radiating from her skull, and as she reached for her temple, she could feel the gash there, and the crusted, dried blood that was plastered to her forehead and all along the side of her face. It made the eyelashes of her left eye stick together, and it was a moment before she could open that eye fully and let both eyes adjust to the waning dusk. When she licked her lips, she tasted copper and dirt.
Perhaps this was the real nightmare. She cried out as she lifted her head—even despite the sudden onslaught of pain and the wave of nausea that sent bile rising to her throat—and knew instantly that she was back in the same room she had been in before; the room the Joker had tried to kill her in before sending her back home as if none of it had happened.
She had the memories, clear as day, to prove that it had.
It had been real. All of it.
Every muscle in her body ached, like she'd been thrown against a wall—or perhaps carelessly tossed and then jostled in the backseat or trunk of a car. She weakly pulled herself the small distance it took to reach the window and stared up through the slats of the boards to see a sprinkling of stars against the darkening twilight. Instead of being a comfort, they only reminded her just how far outside of Gotham she really was. You didn't see stars in the city, not beneath the blanket of smog and pollution. Wherever she was, it was far outside the city's jurisdiction.
God, she had to get out of here. She had to leave, she had to do something. She couldn't just sit here and wait for the mallet to drop. She would not have her fate sealed so easily.
It was a struggle to think clearly let alone find the strength to push herself to her knees. Every movement, even as minute as they were, sent thunderbolts of pain to her skull, a lightning storm inside her head. Getting to her hands and knees alone felt like a victory; she was so dizzy she couldn't see straight, and that aside, there wasn't much to see in the dying light.
She pressed her raw and bloodied hands against the floor to push herself up, and for a second it seemed as if the floorboards held nerve endings as a shock of images flooded her mind. She saw the Joker throwing her against the window, saw herself crumbling to the floor from the impact, saw him heave an ax over his shoulder only to bring it hurdling down, missing her by inches when she rolled away. The memories were so vivid, and she saw them all now as if she had watched them happen as an outsider.
When she stood, she had to reach out for the wall to balance herself. Remembering what had taken place in this room only days ago made her legs tremble.
She took two deep breaths to steady herself and calm the panic that was racing through her. It was getting darker by the minute. If she was going to act, it had to be now. She didn't know how much time she had left, but she wasn't about to sit around and wait to be killed.
Wait to be killed. Or worse.
Along the wall to her left there were two doors; one led to a small walk-in closet and the other to a bathroom with rusted faucets and sinks and little else. The light switches didn't work. She padded towards the main door, standing stock still in front of it for several moments, as if someone might burst through the door at any second. Tentatively, she pressed her ear against it and listened.
At first, all she could hear was the thudding of her own heart pounding in her ears, but after a minute, she willed it to fade into the background as she focused her concentration on the sounds outside. It was silent.
She had no idea if there was someone guarding the door, or if it was locked, or where she would go if it wasn'tlocked. But she had to at least try. If this really was an old hotel, as she had expected the first time she'd been brought there, there would be plenty of rooms to hide in if she needed to. There was, after all, the massive gate she needed to think about. She didn't know if the fence encompassed the whole property, or if only extended so far into the woods before tapering off. She knew already there would be no use trying to climb it—not if her failed results from last time were any indication.
She removed her ear from the door and shuddered. She was already psyching herself out and she hadn't even opened the door yet.
She reached for the knob and turned it. Locked, again.
Fuck.
She barely refrained from slamming her fists against the door in anger. What was she supposed to do now? She stepped away from the door and turned back to the room, weighing her options as her surroundings grew darker. It was almost impossible to see anything now.
She hurried back to the window and fingered the boards nailed there, running her hands over each one and fitting her fingers between the slats that were big enough for her hands, trying to find the weakest board. She tugged and pulled with every ounce of strength she could muster, even when her head pounded so hard it made her dizzy, and her t-shirt was soaked with her exerted. The sweat that gathered near the edges of her hairline made her wound sting more than it already had been.
She worked relentlessly for what felt like hours, becoming more frantic and anxious with each minute that passed. Her muscles ached with the strain of pulling, and her palms were nearly raw—she'd cut them on a thick nail that hadn't been pounded into the wood all the way. None of the boards would budge and there was nothing in the room that would fit between the slats that she could use for leverage.
When she did finally give up, she slammed the palms of her hands against the boards and slid to the floor in an angry, exhausted heap.
I'm going to die here. The Joker's going to kill me.
She pulled her knees to her chest and sobbed into the valley of her kneecaps. She cried until she could cry no more, until there were no more tears left, just the lingering taste of salt on her lips and the trails of white where her tears had cut tracks through the dried blood on her cheeks.
She raised her head and wiped her eyes, sniffling. Too weak and worn-out to do little else, she leaned her head back against the wall so she could stare up through the slats more comfortably. The blinking lights of a passing airplane flashed at intervals overhead; her eyes tracked its languid crawl against the washed out, navy expanse of sky until it disappeared from her line of sight. She felt a longing towards it. How desperate she was to be on that plane, to be thousands of miles away from this place, away from the Joker.
Those people on that plane, so many miles above her... she marveled at how they could never have imagined that at this very moment, somewhere deep in the woods, in this abandoned place, curled up on the floor and scared for her life, there was a young woman desperately fighting for survival. She had never felt so far detached from reality, like she was trapped in this alternate universe where no one could save her, because no one else knew she existed. Even she herself felt far away, like she was watching herself from a distance. She felt as if she were in one of those dreams where she knew what she needed to do to escape, to run, to defeat whatever chassis her fear had disguised itself as this time, but she could never get her body to react with the speed she needed it to, like her legs were tangled in a rope, or she was wading through pools of molasses.
She didn't remember falling asleep, but when she woke it was to gray, milk-pale light floating into the room, ghost-like and slow, gliding between the boarded slats of the window. She was curled up beneath it still, using her forearm as a pillow, and she jolted with a start. The muscles of her back and neck ached in protest from the uncomfortableness of sleeping on the floor, and her head felt heavy and light all at once, like it was stuffed with cotton balls.
It took a minute to remember where she was, what day it was, and how much time had passed. Her mouth was desert-dry. The last time she'd eaten was when William had made her breakfast, before she'd gone to see Jason.
God, it felt like ages ago. How could she have been so stupid to go to his apartment alone? She had seen that van parked outside, knew that something wasn't adding up, that maybe, just maybe, it hadn't all been a terrible nightmare—and now she was here, horrified to be proven right. What had she been playing at? Had she really been motivated out of a desire to do the right thing, to make sure Jason was okay, or had she been fueled by an obsession to prove to Austin—to everyone that doubted her—that she wasn't crazy?
Now she had thrown herself head first into a situation she wasn't sure she'd make it out of alive—and all for what? To prove herself? To prove that she was sane and brave, that she could take care of herself and reign victorious, come out on top, be the hero that she always had wanted to be?
Her entire body felt ablaze with nerves, her veins frayed, somehow, like a small spark could ignite a forest fire beneath her skin. They had kept her in here all night—somebody had to come for her today. Would the Joker try to extract the information from her again? Would he send his men to torture her till she cracked and told them? Would he torture her himself?
And there was still the matter of why he had decided to return her home at all, why, when he was seconds away from bringing the ax down to split her face in half, he had stopped halfway. She could still feel the way it felt to have that chain pulled taut against her neck as he inspected it.
Taylor reached up to caress the heart pendant between forefinger and thumb as she often did when she was anxious or distracted, but she froze when she realized it wasn't there.
How…?
She cast a frantic glance around her. Had it been ripped off in the scuffle, back at Jason's apartment, when the Joker had used her as a human shield? Had it accidentally been yanked off when she'd been manhandled here while unconscious?
But no… none of those scenarios could be true, because she remembered just last night having touched her necklace as she sat with her back against the window, straining to see the stars. She remembered that.
That left only one option.
Shivers racked her spine at the thought of the Joker having visited in the dead of night, having touched her, gathering up her hair and brushing it out of the way to unclasp a necklace that hadn't been removed in over twenty years.
Just the thought of it made her heart pound, made breathing hard, like she was going to hyperventilate. That necklace… it was one of her few most personal comforts. It was the only item she possessed from a past that had long since been forgotten, tucked away in a secret corridor in her mind she no longer had access to.
She felt childish for crying as she touched her collarbone where the thin, silver chain used to lay. It sounded ridiculous to say that it felt like a piece of her was missing, but that is exactly how she did feel, like a rope she had been holding onto in order to cling to the past had been severed without so much as a warning. She felt naked without it, defenseless.
After several long minutes, she swallowed and wiped her tears away. There wasn't time to cry about a piece of jewelry, no matter how sentimental it was, not when she probably wouldn't live to see tomorrow.
If the Joker—or someone else—had come in the middle of the night and taken her necklace, could it be possible that they had left the door unlocked?
She got to her feet and eyed it warily. Like last night, she pressed her ear against the door and listened for several long seconds.
And just like the night before, it was silent. It was so damn quiet. Where was everybody? Either this place was a lot bigger than she originally had thought and she couldn't hear anyone, or she was truly alone and they had left her here by herself.
But why? What was the point? Did she know too much? Did they want her out of the way, or were they going to torture and kill her after they'd gotten what they wanted? Or would they leave her here to rot and die? And if that was the case, then why run the risk of her escaping?
Unless they were confident she would never escape.
Each scenario sounded more horrifying than the last. She just wanted to get out of here. She would drive herself crazy if she had to spend another moment in this purgatory, waiting for her death sentence to be officially declared.
She took a long, rattling breath and reached forward to twist the doorknob. The knob didn't turn.
She hadn't expected anything less, but disappointment still settled low in her gut, heavy like a rock sinking to the bottom of a pond. She didn't know what to do then. She felt unsure of whether she wanted to draw attention to herself by calling out for help—at least not without testing her other options. There had to be another way out, her unwavering optimism would not accept anything less. Maybe she could try the window again, or find a vent large enough to squeeze through. The hotel was old—the crumbling brick outside and the architecture alone spoke of decades long past—so perhaps, then, it was privy to those oversized air ducts she might try and squeeze through in order to make her escape; she was sure they were archaic, now, except for perhaps in industrialized factories, but it was still worth a shot.
Her heart seemed to surge at this newfound resolve, different than the determination she had felt the night before, a determination borne of panic and fear, a one-track byproduct of the adrenaline-fueled terror that had coursed through her. Her only thought then had been escape. Her only thought now was survival.
It's not over yet, she reminded had to stay level-headed. Panicking would get her nowhere, and it'd just drain her precious energy. She touched her forehead and skull where her hair was matted with dried blood, and her face felt stiff with it. She'd taken care of more than enough concussed patients to know that she had probably suffered a mild concussion herself. The blood streaked over her neck and her entire left side seemed to scream at her; the shock of sanguine against the white of her shirt was jarring. She hadn't noticed it in the darkness of the previous night, but now that she had the benefit of daylight, it was hard to miss. There was also some that had dried on her bare thigh. Her blood loss had been more extensive than she cared to admit.
She went back to the window where the warm edges of the sun were already beginning to crest the horizon, the sky the color of bruised peaches.
She bent her head to peek through one of the slats, but the scenery had changed little from the night before. She saw the same looming, black wrought iron gate she had attempted to climb the last time she was here, and was rewarded with flashbacks of the way she had been dragged back to the hotel through the pouring rain, her knees and hands scraped and bloodied, unable to differentiate her tears from the rain as her wet hair stuck to her face and her legs were pulled through the gravel and mud. She turned her eyes away and noticed for the first time the large pond separated by the gravel drive, the water green and covered in thick algae and other growth, clearly untouched for a very long time. Taylor strained her ears and listened for any signs of life, but heard only the crickets and the cheery morning songs of birds. She watched a red-breasted robin flutter from the branch of a nearby tree and land on the fallen limb of a partially-submerged tree on the farthest side of the pond. The tree looked as if it had collapsed on some sort of wooden pier. Both lay broken and rotting, covered in moss and other pond overgrowth. She returned her eyes to the surrounding woods, looking for any signs of life, any signs that she hadn't been abandoned here and left to die. The trees were thick with foliage, the sun unable to penetrate the intertwined canopy of leaves from above. Underneath, the woods lay dark and uncertain.
Taylor winced as a bead of sweat trickled over her forehead and into her open cut, making it sting. The higher the sun rose in the sky, the hotter the room became and the more she sweat; The smell of both that and the copper stench of blood seemed permanently suspended the air, like the strong, lingering notes of a too-potent perfume that refused to abate, even after the wearer had long since retreated.
She hurried away from the window and went to the closet, pulling open the door and wishing the boards over the windows didn't block out so much light. She peered through the darkness and cautiously started sifting through the junk on the floor—anything that might help her escape, or that she might use as a weapon—but it was all broken pieces of furniture; legs from a chair, the wooden blades from a ceiling fan, empty drawers from a dresser that was no longer there. When she stood, she knocked her head against the wooden clothing rod, letting out a curse and hoping it wouldn't reopen her wound and cause it to start bleeding again.
She abandoned the closet and searched through the bathroom instead, holding her breath through the stench of urine and mold. There was no toilet, just an empty space where one should have been, and a bathtub filled with stale water and piss. There was small leak in the ceiling where rain water had gotten in, and it was obvious that at one time the room had flooded because of it, leaving behind a full tub and the stench of molding floorboards beneath soggy linoleum tile.
The sink was cracked and the mirror above it had been removed. Neither the faucet for the sink or the tub produced any water, not that she had expected them to. Still, she was disappointed, once again forced to swallow her spit in a desperate attempt to parch her dry throat. She'd do anything for water, even if it had to come from a dirty pipe that hadn't been used in over a decade.
She didn't have the luxury of thinking about water and food, though, no matter how long it'd been since she'd last had either of those things.
She shrieked when something small and black went skittering past her shoe, realizing a second later that it was a cockroach. It skittered out of view and squeezed itself in the space between the cabinet sink and the wall, leaving Taylor clutching her chest and feeling like an idiot for overreacting to a small bug.
In the bedroom, she tried to gather her wits. Her heart hammered at the realization that she had run out of options so soon after finding her resolve. The room held nothing of use, no methods of escape, and now she was forced to try the window again. And while there was still the matter of what'd she do once she got enough boards free to squeeze herself through—would she have to jump out? Would there be a drainage pipe of some sort she could cling to? Were there bushes or other foliage at the bottom that would break her fall if she was forced to jump?—that was a problem she'd have to tackle once it arrived.
She set to work immediately, refusing to accept the nagging voice in the back of her head that insisted her efforts were futile. She would not accept failure as an option, not when her life hung in the balance like this.
She worked for hours pulling at those boards. She thought if she could wedge something small between one of the cracks, she could use it as leverage to pry the nails from where they had been pounded into the frame of the window. She chose the fan blade she had discovered in the closet, as it was the only item thin enough to fit between the cracks—but upon inserting it and applying her weight, it broke in half, and she was forced to resort back to her earlier method of trying to pull the boards from the wall with all the strength she could muster.
Her hands were still raw from the previous night, scratched and bloodied, and it hurt to grip the splintered wood. She didn't realize she was crying until she tasted salt on her lips. Still, she kept going.
The sun was high and bright now, relentlessly hot, and though she didn't have a watch, she guessed it was noon or sometime after it, and that the sun was at its peak. Sweat poured off her in rivulets, drenching her, and she was shaking despite the heat; the realization that there was no way out and nothing she could do seemed to hit her full force in the chest, sudden, like a heart attack. She picked up the pace, redoubling her efforts with even more vigor than before. One of the rusted nails looked like it was starting to come loose, if she wiggle the board around a little bit more, it just might….
She worked ceaselessly, even when she became so thirsty she thought she might pass out. She thought obsessively of the events that had led her to this moment while she worked, every single one, all the way back to that morning she had been running late to work, and the pharmaceutical rep from Andromeda had delivered his speech. If only she could have realized that digging so far deep would have come to this. That an innocent man was now dead because of her, a good nurse, her friend.
God, though… what drove him to hang himself? She was plagued by the memory of finding him there, hanging from the shower rod, his face swollen and pale, so cold, lifeless, the leather of his belt digging into the skin of his neck, leaving behind a bruised ring of blue and purple.
What if she had gotten to him sooner? What if she had been quicker in putting the puzzle pieces together? If she had just gone to Jason and spoken to him when she'd wanted to at the police station. What if she could have prevented his death altogether, or been there to talk him out doing what he thought was his only option left?
Her poor timing wasn't the only thing that haunted her, though. There was also the persistent nagging that prodded at the back of her mind, forcing her to question whether his death had really been a suicide at all, or if it had just been made to look that way.
She replayed finding him all over again, the horrible shock upon seeing him there, the suicide note to Julia—who was Julia, anyway?—seeing the bottle of Digoxin there on the counter in plain view. By all accounts, it appeared as if he had committed the act himself… but what if all these pieces her eyes had latched onto had been part of a ruse? What if everything had been staged, part of some bigger plan? The Joker had announced himself only moments after she had made her discovery… had he been waiting in the shadows all along, knowing she would come?
The thought shook her. She took a shuddering breath and gripped her skull, running her hands through her tangled, sweat-soaked hair. What if she had fallen right into his trap? What if all of this was what he had wanted all along? What if he had wanted her to doubt her sanity, for everyone to question the validity of her story? Just how much of this had the Joker concocted?
She wanted to scream. Maybe she was overthinking all of it, she didn't know… but then what if she wasn't? She imagined the Joker forcing Jason to stage his own death, imagined him grinning as he forced her friend to write an unfinished suicide letter, and as he wound the leather belt around Jason's neck, strung it from the shower rod, how scared Jason must have been; imagined what must have been running through his head in those final moments, what the Joker said to him, what else the Joker did.
She saw more than felt herself crumple to the ground, as if she were watching herself from a distance. She curled herself into a ball, wrapping her sweat-slicked arms around her knees and cried.
She fell into a fitful sleep after that, dreaming of sounds that went unaccompanied by any discernable images, only flashes of light each time a new sound occurred. She heard the sharp bite of the belt pulling taut, the straining groan of the steel curtain rod, the crack of her skull meeting the mirror and the shattering of glass, the way the tiny shards seemed to pop like firecrackers as they slid into the drain. She heard the dull thud of the Joker's ax hitting the floor, her breathless gasp as she rolled away. Austin's calm, grounding voice, "I want to believe you. I know that you're not crazy".
She jolted and sat upright at the loud bang of a gunshot. Her vision swam before her in a distorted wave; she was drenched in a cold sweat. She looked around and supported herself on her elbows as she waited for her vision to return, unsure of whether the sound had been real or imagined. It was dusk again, nearing night. She scanned the room and her heart sunk. She didn't know why she expected to find some kind of change, perhaps a plate of food to have been slipped under the door while she slept. Something. Anything.
Why had no one come for her? They didn't really intend to let her die here…. did they? It didn't make sense. Why leave her here to die, why not kill her as the Joker had clearly intended to do before? Why run the risk of having her escape? Was that perhaps what he wanted, what he was planning for all along, for her to escape? Was he waiting for her to make the first move? Was he waiting for her to break, to crumble under the stress?
She slammed her bloodied, blistered hands against the floor and screamed, letting her frustration spasm around her like some pulsating, living thing that was clawing at her insides, desperate to get out. Hot, angry tears pricked at her eyes and snot dribbled from her nose.
She cried for a long time, what felt like hours but could have only been minutes; she cried until her throat was raw and she could see again, her vision no longer blurred with tears.
She was going to die here. The realization gripped her, hard and cruel, like the way an angry lover grips their partner by the jaw in a quarrel, squeezing with bruising force.
But fear wasn't the only thing to grip her; hunger gnawed at her now, so painfully not it was hard to ignore. Her stomach had never felt so hollow and empty, and she felt weak from it, could hardly stand.
Even more distressing than her hunger, however, was her thirst. She'd gone two days without water. Two days. He really was trying to kill her, wasn't he?
The only question was whether she'd drive herself mad before he did.
The urge to relieve herself was excruciating. She'd had to urinate for a while now, but with no toilet at her disposal, it had been an urge she was able to ignore in favor of other, more pressing matters. Now, though, the empty hollow of her stomach was accompanied by an insistent cramping, and she couldn't hold it off any longer.
Should she call for help? Would anyone even come if she did? And was it really worth the risk? What if they came to kill her? That was the only thing stopping her. She didn't want to bring attention to herself if it meant they would come to torture her further, or kill her.
She fought with herself as long as she could, weighing the options. Her body trembled from the stress, replaying the way the Joker had tried to kill her in this same room. When she closed her eyes she could hear the sound of the ax meeting the floor, the way the floorboards seemed to vibrate beneath her from the intensity of it. She took a shuddering breath. She had to stop thinking about that.
Anything had to be better than this, than suffering alone. She had to try.
She went to the window, where her raw hands spasmed at the memories it brought her. She tentatively touched the boards, gripping them to balance herself, and then stood on her tiptoes to angle herself so her mouth was in line with one of the gaps between the boards.
It wasn't easy to find her voice, her mouth was desert-dry and raw from crying. After many start-and-stop attempts, she was able to shout at full volume.
"Help me! Somebody please help me!"
The more she screamed, the more panicked she became.
They really left me here to die.
She stopped to take periodic breaks to listen, to hear if anyone would come, but silence pervaded. When it grew too exhausting to stand on her tiptoes at the window, she went to the door, balling her hands into fists and banging on it for all she was worth.
"Let me out of here! Anybody, please!"
She drew her hands to her chest when they started to bleed again, and then she started to shake, falling against the door, feeling her chest heave and constrict, working herself into a panic attack as she gasped for air.
In all of this, she still had to go to the bathroom.
That made her want to scream, too—that there was no toilet, that in the Joker's effort to take her life, he also had to strip her of her dignity, too. She hated him. She hated him more than she thought it possible to hate another human being.
She forced herself to get up, crawling for a moment on her hands and knees until she could gather the strength to stand. Her bladder ached and she whimpered at the sharp stabbing in her gut.
The filth in the bathtub had been marinating from the heat of the afternoon, and the stench assaulted her when she entered. She gripped the edges of the doorframe for support, feeling nauseated and dizzy. Her eyes trailed to where the toilet should have been, and she wanted to cry again but this time no tears would come.
She eyed the bathtub with a sickening sense of finality, shaking as she unbuttoned her shorts. She'd never been so revolted in her entire life.
For a moment she was pricked with fear, paranoid that he could somehow see her, that perhaps this was all a game and there was a hidden camera somewhere, that'd he pop out right before she reached her breaking point and say, "Gotcha!"—but there were no cameras, only her own paranoia and degradation. She pushed her shorts down to her knees and squatted over the tub, not too low, and gripped onto the railing next to the tub for balance. She felt like she was going to throw up.
At first, nothing would come. She had to go so badly, but she couldn't force herself to let go, her own humiliation preventing her from relaxing. She took a deep breath and tried to distance herself from the situation, tried to pretend she was at home in her own bathroom—but she couldn't distance herself from the heat, the reeking stench, and the sound of her own urine as she finally did let go.
It was humiliating; humiliating to have to squat over this mess, to be debased in this way. She was trembling from the exertion of it by the time she had finished and had pulled her shorts back up her legs. The moment felt as if it had lasted hours. Her bladder still ached from having held so much water for so long, and on top of that, hunger still rippled through her. She wiped her tears away with the back of her hand, briefly tasting the sharp tang of salt on her upper lip.
In the bedroom, the heat had dissipated some now that the sun had taken its leave, but the humidity still lingered. She thought about how much more bearable this all would be if she could just have water.
As the hopelessness of her situation set in, it was suddenly all she could think about. She went slowly to the window—she took comfort in being close to it, in feeling the small wisps of occasional breeze that might sneak through, of being near to the world outside her prison—and laid down below it, too weak to sit up. She found herself curling into a ball despite the heat. She looked down at her body, saw all the dirt and sweat and dried blood that clung to her clothes and skin. She felt disgusting, yet none of that mattered now. She would die here, she was going to die here….
She thought about her mom and dad—not her adopted ones, but her real parents, the ones she had never known. When she was younger she used to see glimpses of her mother. She could remember lying in her cot at night in the orphanage. She shared a room with several other girls, all varying in age. Some of them whispered to each other and gossiped, others were asleep as soon as the lights were turned out, and there was one other still—a teenager—who cried herself to sleep every night like Taylor often did. All this she could remember clearly, the sounds as well as the orange glow of the streetlamp outside the window, the way it forced itself through the barred windows and cast stripes against the floor, so bright she couldn't sleep. It was the nights where she lay awake in bed when she saw her mother most clearly, the two versions of her. There was the first version of her mother, with her long brown hair done in a high ponytail, of her eyes rimmed in blues and greens, the sparkles on her chest and tummy, her clothes, and the pinkness of her cheeks, overdone with blush. She didn't like this version of her mother, this caricature of her. Because there was a clean version of her mother, too, one unmarred by makeup or glitter or barely-there ensembles. There was her mother with her hair down and dressed in plain clothes, not a stitch of color on her face or eyes. This version of her mother always looked so tired without the makeup to hide it, but it also betrayed her age, her youth. Her cheeks looked fuller, her eyes tired and maybe also a little scared. She was just a girl, barely old enough to hold a drink in her hand and have the feel of it be something familiar to her. These were all things Taylor hadn't realized until she was old enough to piece all the images together.
Her father, on the other hand, she could only imagine what he looked like, how he acted—and she did spend a lot of time imagining, of patching together the figure her father might have been. She pictured him as young and handsome, with dark hair like her mother's, and green eyes to match her own. She used to imagine him as a lawyer dressed in nice suits and who carried a briefcase every day to work—but she quickly realized she didn't like lawyers, or anybody who worked for the law. They lied to her, or made her promises they couldn't keep, or promises they had never intended to keep in the first place.
She resorted to imagining him as a businessman after that, somebody important who accomplished equally important tasks. Someone dependable and trustworthy. She used to dreamed of meeting him and of him scooping her up into his arms, telling her he had missed her and loved her, how much she had grown since their time apart.
Taylor thought about the light she had painted her parents in, how optimistic she had been; she wondered how far off from the truth her rose-colored visions had actually been. She knew her mother had been cruel to her, even if she didn't remember specifically the things she had done, but even now she still felt love towards her mother, love towards this woman who was more a stranger than someone of her own blood.
She thought about Clara and William, how they had given her a new life, a fresh start, and for once in her life, hope for the future, providing her with all the tools she needed to accomplish something great, to go to school and get a degree, to step out of her comfort zone and meet people, to not be so afraid all the time. Even after Clara had passed and William had sunk deep into depression and Terrence had left, she was still surrounded by love; she felt it every time she imagined Clara smiling down at her, and she felt it every time she embraced William in a hug and he held on a little longer than normal.
And Austin… she owed so much to him. Growing up, she never could have imagined that someone could love her with the intensity in which he loved her. He made her feel special, important, made her feel like she mattered. And for someone who had spent the majority of their childhood growing up in a system where you were forced to face constant rejection? It meant the world to her. He had always been supportive, even in her darkest times, even when she had attempted to leave everything behind, he had still been there for her. He had knowingly entered a partnership with her and made a lifelong commitment to their love despite all of her baggage and heartache—he had even attempted to shoulder some of the burden himself.
She loved him. She loved him so much her heart ached with it, that it throbbed in a sharp paroxysm at the thought she would never see him again. One day they might find her body, maybe after months, maybe after years, and he'd have to see her in a bag, or maybe there'd be nothing of her left to see. What would he do? How would he react? How would he cope with the pain of her loss? And how would her father? Would he sink even further into depression, just as he had finally begun to show signs of making progress? Would he die all alone, never knowing what had happened to his only daughter?
Her despondency was overwhelming, debilitating in the way that only grief could be. Despite her urge to cry again—to shout and scream at the unfairness of it all—her tears were all dried out; everything had been spent, and there was nothing more to give.
The dark fell slowly, or maybe that was just how she perceived it, time adopting an inexorably slow, glacial crawl. Taylor rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling as the room faded into darkness around her. The moon rose and then disappeared behind the tree line, so not even its white rays could be of comfort to her.
In all of this, her thirst persisted. She dragged her tongue across her chapped lips, but the relief lasted for less than a second.
She slept again—exhausted, thirsty, and weak—only this time when she woke, it was still dark. She didn't know what time it was. It could've been nine PM or three AM, she had no way of knowing.
Her thirst was unbearable. She stood with difficulty, craning her neck to peek through the slats and into the dark. It was black, and the moon was gone. She swallowed what little spit was in her mouth and tried to gather her voice.
"He—help," she called. Her voice cracked from disuse. She tried yelling a few more times, but it hurt. Everything hurt. Her head felt as if it were stuffed with cotton again, and even then it was too heavy to hold up. She slid back to the floor and into her previous position, lying sideways with her knees tucked to her chest, her arms curled around them, tucking herself as small as she could be. It was how she used to sleep as a child, when she used to believe that if she could just make herself small enough, she could disappear, she could fade from this life into another. A life where she was loved and fearless, and nothing could hurt her.
She drifted in and out of consciousness after that, strange mirages of both the past and future merging together and then diverging apart in her mind's eye. None of it made sense, and she couldn't cling to any one image before it atomized into a thousand tiny fragments, and a new image was formed. She saw a dark, winding road with trees crowded on either side, covered in snowfall, and she saw two characters in a black and white film talking on TV. She saw blood-covered tiles, and a sprawl of crayons on a carpeted floor. She saw an assortment of knives and explosives laying against salmon-pink silk, and the tiny fingerprints and artistry of a child who had drawn on a fogged-up window.
Suddenly, there was a loud bang.
Taylor felt her eyes fluttering open, where they were forced to fight against the brightness. Was it day, or had someone turned a spotlight on her?
She groaned as she came to. She felt the warmth of the sun on her skin, and she knew that the light wasn't artificial. Her entire body ached, like she'd been run over by a bulldozer. She had rolled onto her back while sleeping, and now she turned onto her side, away from the window. Her fluttering eyes swept over the room. For a moment, she thought she saw someone standing in the open doorway, but that was impossible, the door was locked….
Her eyes drifted closed again, convinced she was still dreaming.
She froze in place when she heard someone clear their throat. It was done with the exaggerated effect of wanting to command one's immediate attention.
She knew it was him instantly.
She forced her eyes open, cringing against the light, and saw his staggering, purple form standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame with his legs crossed at the ankles, hands tucked behind his back. His bulk seemed to take up the entirety of the doorway, and she could not see past him.
She was paralyzed with fear. The Joker's wide, red mouth stretched into a grin.
"Well, well, well, Aurora is awake!" he proclaimed. "And oof, looking rough, too, I must say," he said, stalking towards her, "And my oh my, your dress is in tatters." He shook his head, shocked. "I guess calling to your little animal friends didn't help, uh?" He feigned a look of apology for a moment before his eyes rose to the ceiling, seemingly in thought. "Or maybe that was a different one. Hard to keep all those movies straight, you know?"
He was standing directly in front of her now, hands still clasped behind his back, and all Taylor could wonder was whether or not he was holding an ax again. She had to crane her neck to look up at him, and when she opened her mouth to speak, no sound would come. She worked to distance herself from him, to scoot away, but all she had energy for was to prop herself up on her elbows. He knew this. He squatted down in front of her, and suddenly he was right there in all his glory, and she was staring up at his shock-white face and red mouth. The puckered skin of his scars was even more apparent close-up and in full light of the sun, and she stared at them, and she tried to speak, and nothing would come, like her lungs had seized and then shriveled up all at once, stealing her breath.
The Joker cooed at her. "Sh, sh, sh, there there, don't try to speak. There'll be pleeenty of time for that later. You and I have a lot of catching up to do," he giggled, rocking back on his heels. "We go waaaay back… maybe you remember?" he prompted, cocking his head at her.
'Way back'? What was he talking about? The last time he'd kidnapped her? That didn't make any sense. She finally looked up from his mouth and met his gaze. The black around his eyes was dark and wet, as if freshly applied. He was staring at her intently, the theatrics momentarily dropped. She felt lost for a moment, staring at him, trying to make sense of this bizarre situation… and then he blinked, and the moment disappeared, his intensity replaced with the same mischievousness as before.
"Wa—water," she managed. Her voice cracked. She tried to sit up more. "I need…."
"Oh!" he exclaimed "Of course, you must be parched!" He stood to his full height. "The room service here is just de-test-able."
She tried to push herself into a sitting position as she watched the Joker back away, suddenly gripped with fear that he was going to leave again. Maybe he had come only to taunt her—
"Lucky for you, I have a little something to quench your thirst riiiight here." He finally removed his hands from behind his back, revealing a disposable plastic water bottle. Taylor's mouth would have watered if she'd had any left in her system. She looked up, meeting his expectant gaze, and wondered what the catch was. "Well?" he prompted. "Aren't you going to come and get it?" He shook the bottle for effect. The water sloshed around. She licked her lips. "Come on," he urged. "Very busy day ahead of us."
That made Taylor's heart sink to her gut, but she ignored it for the more pressing need of quenching her thirst. She painstakingly pushed herself to her knees and tried to stand.
"Ah, ah," he said, stopping her in her tracks, "crawl."
She looked up at him, dumbstruck. Her tongue felt like lead when she tried to speak. "What—what?"
The Joker lowered his head, the laughter in his eyes gone. "I. Said. Crawl."
He was looking at her as if he intended to burn her. And she could not refuse him—she wouldn't. It wasn't worth it. Slowly, she acquiesced to him, getting on her knees, gently planting her palms on the floor, where they still sang in excruciating pain.
She crawled to him.
"Look at me when you do it… that's it." He stood near the open door—effectively blocking the exit—with his feet planted wide apart, the bulk of his hunched shoulders filling up the doorway.
She stared at him. She stared at him and tried to mask her expression of anger, of rage and of fear felt in equal tandem. Tried to read through his stoic expression and figure out what he was thinking, if he was enjoying this display, enjoyed seeing her humiliated and on her knees like this.
She had to push those thoughts away. She was shaking from both fear and exhaustion the closer she got; water had never looked so good. She stopped when she was directly in front him, sitting on her haunches, finally dropping her gaze to eye the water bottle. It looked clean, from what she could tell, though if there really was something hidden, some particles or some kind of chemical, there was no way for her to really know.
"What a good girl," he said, and his voice was a low rumble in his chest that made the hairs on her arm stand on end despite the heat. She looked up at him and could see the slight upturn of his mouth. Satisfaction.
She refused to look away, waiting, waiting for what felt like the slowest, most antagonizing minutes. She felt the heat of the sun on her back, felt a droplet of sweat slide between her shoulder blades down to the small of her back.
Finally, the water bottle was in front of her now, offered to her by the hand of the Joker. She briefly met his eyes, silently seeking permission, before reaching forward to take it from him. He pulled it back.
"Ah ah," he said again. "No hands."
Her brows furrowed in confusion at his request, and then she flinched when he reached out his other hand, the tips of his fingers ghosting her jaw before carefully angling her head exactly where he wanted it to be. He took a step closer, their proximity even more overwhelming than it had been before, and tilted her head back just so.
Then he let go of her, and finally he was holding the water bottle in front of her face, only he was holding it with both hands, where it was level with his crotch.
He was holding it out to her as if it were his cock.
Taylor inhaled threw her nose sharply, taken aback by the imagery and turning her head away. She would have fallen back if not for the Joker's hand suddenly cupping the back of her skull, holding her in place.
His visage revealed nothing. "No, no, no, no," he murmured, digging his gloved hand into the back of her skull, cradling it. "Don't stop now."
He was staring at her unblinkingly, as if riveted by how she was responding. His warm, gloved hand on the back of her skull urged her forward, and she met his gaze only briefly before taking the tip of the water bottle in her mouth. She had to suck to draw the water out, and the intent was not lost on her. She would have screamed if she wasn't so thirsty.
The first drop of water on her tongue was bliss. She closed her eyes and drank, swallowing as much water as she could, finally feeling human again. She could feel her cheeks hollowing to draw the water out, and she knew how obscene it looked given their positions, but she was so relieved to finally have water that she felt tears pricking at her eyes, threatening to stream down her face.
The spell was broken only moments later when the Joker let out an obscene and exaggerated moan. It startled her, and she opened her eyes to find his features contorted into an expression of bliss, head thrown back, lips parted. Then he lowered his head and blinked owlishly at her, almost like a challenge, like he was daring her to pull away. He groaned in another extravagant caricature of ecstasy, this time without looking breaking their gaze, and Taylor put her hands up to try and pull the bottle away. He kneed her sharply in the chest, stealing her breath, and her arms fell back at her sides. His grip at the back of her skull was now being applied with bruising force, and her cry of pain only caused her mouth to open farther, allowing him to shove the bottle into her mouth. He grinned in abject pleasure, holding the bottle with one hand and squeezing, sending a gushing stream of water into her mouth she couldn't do anything but gag on.
He threaded his fingers into her hair and used it as leverage to yank her closer. She was choking now, and water spilled out of her mouth and down her chin, cutting a clean, white path through the film and grime coating her skin.
He moaned obscenely throughout it, his cries growing in crescendo until the bottle had emptied and he had reached his pseudo-climax, finishing with a shout.
He released his grip from her head and Taylor viscously pulled herself away, propelling herself backwards with such velocity that she landed on her hands and knees. She gasped for breath and choked up water as tears streamed down her face, feeling both humiliated and afraid that this was only the beginning of what was yet to come.
The Joker whooped with laughter.
"What a show!" he exclaimed. She heard his steps as he approached her, felt the heat of his body and the smell of his musk as he knelt next to her. She desperately sucked in air. "Oof, baby," he lowered his face down next to hers, bringing his lips to her ear, "I hope that was as good for you as it was me."
Taylor couldn't bring herself to look at him. She trembled as she wiped her mouth with the back of her arm. She could feel the Joker smiling next to her, and she turned towards him, her chest still heaving as she fought for air.
He cocked his head sideways and grinned at her. His hand came down on the back of her neck like a mallet, and she almost collapsed under its weight.
"I did miss you, you know," he grinned, and then a second later it was gone. "We have so much to talk about," he said, gripping the back of her spine like he intended to crush it. "Where do I begin?"