Wicked – Chapter 10
By Christopher W. Blaine
DISCLAIMER: All of the characters and events portrayed in this work of fan fiction are ©2004 by DC Comics Inc. and are used without permission for fan-related entertainment purposes only. This original work of fiction is ©2004 by Christopher W. Blaine.
Wicked stared at the blood that ran from his forehead to his toes and marveled for a moment the way it seemed to make a piece of macabre art on his flesh. He was a portrait of evil and for that single instance of time, he was a masterpiece of depravity. His eye caught the reflection of the room behind him and he felt the fear rise in him.
He turned and walked naked into the room and surveyed the carnage. The corpse of the girl was laying spread-eagle on the bed, a flesh flower in a garden of blood, gore and other bodily fluids. He had expended himself time and time again during the night, pulling her head close to his, feeling her flesh cool even as his heated up. He had forced her to bend and twist in ways a live woman could not have, all the time cursing the woman who had driven him to his rage.
He had sworn if he had ever met that woman again, he would disembowel her, sodomize her and then cut her head off, and not necessarily in that order. But that was not something he needed to worry about. He had completely gone off the deep end, but he was not surprised. How many times had he suppressed his fantasies about the dead? He was smart enough to know he could not continue doing what he did for a living and not fall off the wagon.
So, now he had a desecrated corpse in his apartment and a need to molest a little boy. He also needed to get out of Gotham City tonight at the very latest. The body would start to stink soon and he had not the time nor the inclination to clean her up. Let this be the way her parents remembered her. Their precious little daughter cut up, raped, and torn apart. God himself wouldn't be able to put her soul back together!
Without a word he went and showered, wiping away the evidence of his conquest, of his power over the little bitches and bastards that thought they were better than him. Her designer jeans and expense account had done nothing to save her. It didn't matter how much money or prestige she or her family had possessed; she had been his to do with as he saw fit.
He felt himself becoming aroused and he turned his thoughts to other things because he did not want to be too tired to ravage his intended prey. A young boy of eleven or twelve perhaps, possibly as old as a teenager? Sometimes it was like selecting a fine wine and he could not wait to sniff the cork, that first taste of what was to come.
Fifteen minutes later he was on the street, hair wet and hanging down on his face, wearing clothes a little too big for him. He gave himself a maximum of forty-eight hours before the body was found. Even the incompetent morons of the GCPD could figure out his identity by the end of the week, but more than likely they would call in the feds. By then he would have changed his appearance and would be in another city on the other side of the country.
A smile began to creep onto his face as he waved to the shopkeepers he had seen every morning. After he sated his thirst for perversion, he could get back on track. Maybe he would even mix it up a bit, kidnapping only crippled children or some retards! The more innocent, the better!
He hated the world he lived in, he decided at that moment. He looked around and saw people going about their lives, realizing that he never really had a chance. They got to live their dreams, but his were all illegal. Because he did not want to conform to their rules, he had become a social outcast, having to find happiness in private. He had the wrong taste in clothes, he listened to the wrong music and had knowledge in all of the wrong subjects.
And he liked to have sex with kids. Seems as if everyone had a problem with that. His philosophy had always been if they weren't meant for it, they wouldn't have been given the equipment until they were ready. After all, you don't hand someone a gun unless you expect them to use it, right? God wanted them to have sex!
Lost in his thoughts, he paid very little attention to where he was going, just taking streets and corners, whistling as he went along, even taking time to pass a few quarters to a beggar. Around lunchtime he was in a part of town he had only driven through briefly as it was right off the main highway.
It seemed fortune smiled upon him.
Parked at the side of street was a car that only someone with kids would purchase and he could see a woman hunched over a road map while a young man sat next to her in the passenger's seat. He was slumped down and so Wicked had to walk closer to get a good look. He was a good looking kid with a mop of brown hair and a bored look. He couldn't have been much older than twelve, maybe thirteen. Wicked stopped a few feet away from the car, all the while scanning the area for anyone. All he saw were some addicts shooting up in an alleyway, nothing to worry about at all.
Inwardly he pushed down the demon raging inside of him and jerked out the military discipline he had learned in the marines. Slowly he approached the car and knocked on the window. The woman looked and Wicked put on his innocent smile. "Ma'am, are you lost?" he asked.
He made a calculation. She was lost, it was obvious, a stranger in a strange land and by her dress, probably from the Midwest. She wasn't pretty, but she wasn't ugly, a typical mother. Wicked had the big advantage in that he was white and he knew that people believed that only black people were bad in the city.
He was correct; her White Anglo-Saxon Protestant upbringing spelled her doom. She indicated to the teenager to roll down the window. The boy wasn't too sure, but he did as he was told. "Can I help you, ma'am?"
She started to speak but Wicked acted first. He grabbed not at her, but at the boy, who had neglected to put on his seatbelt. Wicked pulled on him and the boy screamed. "Shut up!" he told him, pulling him clear out of the car and onto the sidewalk.
The woman started to get out, screaming help, but he knew it would do no good. This was a part of town where hookers were disciplined and cries for aid made by a woman were laughed at. The boy tried to fight back, but Wicked was too strong.
Or so he thought.
The boy got a kick in that knocked the older man back. Like a leopard, the teenager sprang up on his feet and faced off against Wicked. There was no fear in his eyes; in fact, he seemed to see Wicked as a challenge. "Come on," the boy whispered.
Wicked roared, but the boy dodged, delivering another savage kick to the stomach. "Come on!" the boy screamed again. "You think I'm afraid of you, fat ass?"
Wicked swung out and caught the boy in the shoulder, sending him against a wall, but it only seemed to put more fire in the boy's eyes. Another punch and the boy's eye swelled up, but he got two licks in that were hard and powerful.
"Hal! Get back in the car!" the woman cried out.
"No!" he told her. "He wants a fight, he gets a fight. I'm not afraid of you. I'm not afraid of anything," the boy boasted.
"You're gonna die, boy," Wicked said, rubbing his chin. "Your momma is gonna be crying at your funeral."
"She ain't my mother and I'm not gonna die," he said with a certainty that gave Wicked pause. He had fought his victims in the past, but never with one that seemed to such pleasure in the battle.
Hal roared and tackled Wicked, sending him back against the wall. The criminal had not been ready and his head hit the bricks hard. He saw stars behind his eyes and then a lot of pain as Hal kicked him in the jaw. "Hal Jordan! Get in this car now!"
Another kick knocked some teeth loose and Wicked moaned. He had been completely unprepared for the assault. He had never seen such fearlessness in anyone. "You're lucky my aunt wants me to go, bastard. Next time pick on an adult."
Wicked closed his eyes and waited until he heard the car roar off. The smell of exhaust fumes and burnt rubber brought him back to reality and he got up slowly. He would not make that mistake again. His marine corps instructors would have laughed all day long to see him taken down by a scrawny...well, smaller teenager.
Next time he got into a fight, it would be for keeps.
"Dinah, wake up," Ben said as he hopped into the driver's seat. Black Canary shook her head and straightened up in the passenger seat. "I got a lead. Report just came in of a mutilated body in an apartment downtown. The guy renting the place matches the description of Keates."
Ben started the car and slowly backed out. "Maybe I should drive," she said. It had been one of her complaints. "You drive the speed limit."
"And I get us there safely and without costly tickets," he reminded her. "I wouldn't want your daughter to go without a mother because of me."
"Which is why I should drive," she said, brushing crumbs out of her cleavage. "And why do we have to eat in the car?"
"Because when the story is hot, we need to be able to move."
"You need one of those car phones," she said.
"Like that will ever be affordable," he laughed. "Maybe you're married to a high-priced detective, but I have to live on a reporter's salary. Plus I have a son to raise."
"Don't you ever want to settle down with a wife again?" she asked as they took a turn a little too hard. Ben immediately let off the gas slightly.
"I don't work well with women in close quarters. Communication problems. I don't like intimacy without a beer. Stuff like that."
"Your wife hurt you," she remarked.
He nodded. "You don't put that much emotional effort into something and expect it to go bust. I suppose that's why I'm so dedicated to this story. Getting the killer is sort of what I need to come home to."
"We'll get him," she promised.
"I hope so. I haven't received a letter concerning this victim. According to the cops, he sends them out either right before or right after he commits his murder. But, there has been no other kidnapping reported." He smacked the steering wheel as they came to a stop at a red light. "Unless the cops are covering it up, again."
"I doubt it, but then they are down-playing it so much that the people just don't realize what is going on around them," she said as she looked out the window. "This wouldn't have happened a few decades ago. The police would have made it a point to tell the people..."
"Oh, come on, Dinah," Ben laughed. He pushed the gas down and zipped past a pickup truck. "You mean to tell me that all of the cases that you and the Justice Society worked on made into the public venue?"
She said nothing, realizing that he was correct. Some of the things that she and her comrades had faced were simply too awful or unbelievable for the common person to relate to. They had kept the secrets of their work out of the spotlight to prevent a panic, but now that she was seeing what the GCPD was doing, she was not sure they should have been playing God. What right did they have to not speak the truth?
"So you think that what the police are doing is the right thing?"
He shrugged and hit the brakes, skidding to a halt at another stop light. "I don't print everything I know and we haven't printed every letter. Maybe everyone just disconnects from it all because it is so horrible. I mean, come on, a guy who rapes and slaughters children?"
"It isn't anything new. There were older men on my street, when I was kid, who would offer me a dime to show them my panties." She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. She was speaking of things that she had not ever mentioned to another soul, not even her husband. "My dad had taught me to respect my elders, but I was too smart for that, or so I thought. I thought that being old meant harmless. "
"I don't understand..."
"Of course you don't. You didn't get boobs at ten years old."
Ben scratched his head and then stomped the gas again, silently vowing to run the next light. "So some old man messed with you? My God, what did you do?"
A finger made its way to her mouth and she absently chewed on the manicured nail. "What could I do? My dad didn't believe me when I told him, said that a sixty year-old man couldn't do such things. After that, I kept my mouth shut about everything...I just did what my father wanted. He never knew the extent of what was done to me."
Ben didn't know what to say and instead gripped the steering wheel. They made the rest of the trip in silence and more than once he thought he saw her wipe away a tear. He wanted to make a joke, try to do something to make her smile, but as he reminded himself, his communication skills were inadequate. Especially in this case he told himself.
Several police cars and emergency vehicles crowded the streets and Ben was forced to park at a fast-food joint. He pulled out his press identification and reached into the back of the car for his notebook. Black Canary started to put on her overcoat. She had explained that she wore it to crime scenes to keep from distracting the police or investigators.
They made their way to the yellow tape, Ben nodding to a few reporters from the rival papers and then shaking his head at the news crews with their cameras and microphones. "That's not real journalism, its a dog and pony show."
"It seems like the public is finally taking this seriously," Black Canary told him. She hadn't seen so many cops in one place since the riots of the civil rights era.
"Hey, Ben," another reporter said. The man's press card indicated he was from Newark.
"Hey, Cal," Ben said, taking the man's offered hand. "What's going on?"
"There was a gas leak and when the GP and G guys went looking for it, they found the girl who was kidnapped all mutilated. The super called the cops, but the Power and Gas guys went running out of here screaming at the tops of their lungs, got everyone's attention."
Ben nodded and started taking down notes. "Must have stirred up a hornet's nest."
"Yeah, no shit...hey," the man said, finally getting a good look at Ben's companion. "Hello, beautiful..."
"She's my sister..."
"Your sister is a reporter in Fort Worth and she's not a blonde..."
"No, she's a nun, my spiritual adviser," Ben lied. A smile crossed Black Canary's lips and he felt himself warm. It was nice to have her back.
"What? Oh my God, I'm sorry, sister; I didn't see..." he looked down and noted the fishnet stockings. "Exactly what order to you belong to, sister?"
"The Maidens of Discipline."
"Yeah," Cal said, scratching his head. "Only in Gotham City, I suppose. Makes sense considering the manhunt."
Ben looked up. "What manhunt?"
"The guy who rented this apartment. He attacked a woman and her teenage nephew about an hour ago. She went ape as well, causing a damn panic when she went running into the nearest precinct. Got all of 'em down here," Cal added, pointing to a female reporter speaking to a camera. "Guess everyone realizes that crazy bastard is the real deal, a dark shade of Ted Bundy. I can't believe how much the public didn't realize what those letters your paper was printing..."
"Where were they attacked at?" Ben asked.
Cal told them and Ben thanked him. "The sister and I have to go..."
"Time to get spanked?" Cal asked with a snort.
"Someone is gonna get spanked, that's for sure," Black Canary promised.