A horror of thoughts that suddenly are real.
We must endure our thoughts all night, until
The bright obvious stands motionless in cold.
-from Man Carrying Thing by Wallace Stevens
…
The door to her apartment was painted a lewd, vile shade of apple green. It was easily the ugliest color Darcy had ever seen. A color that, according to Sheila's loudly articulated first impression, was reminiscent of vomit and other revolting things.
Somehow, despite the odds against it from the minute its new owner's best friend had given it a seal of disapproval, the door's revolting hue had grown on Darcy during the past three days. Ugly as hell, yes. But better, far better, than rats in the walls. Or cockroaches in the shower. Better than no door at all.
Aside from the hideous green entrance, the apartment was a decent place. Far from posh or even charming, but suitable and, most importantly, safe.
Darcy had taken great care in selecting a secure neighborhood and a trustworthy building. A young woman alone in Gotham was put in a most precarious and volatile situation, but Darcy was convinced that at least a fraction of the danger was eliminated by use of common sense and caution. So she'd been practical and cautious. And, for the time being, it would seem she'd succeeded.
As she stepped into her lightless bedroom, her inner commentary and insides froze. Dark, dark, dark. Every breath seemed a perilous labor. Blind eyes tore at the night.
But the fear subsided as she quickly flicked on the light in one panic-quickened motion and waited for the giddy buzz of horror in her brain to fade—nothing there, just light.
She let her heartbeat slow and set about changing out of the stiff, drab suit she'd worn to the interview and into some soft flannel pajamas. After rinsing her thin mask of cosmetics off her face, she pulled her unruly dark hair from its sober bun and into a limp ponytail.
Going to the tiny, malfunction-prone fridge that had come with her apartment, she extricated a plastic-wrapped sandwich from its humming white interior. She'd made it for lunch that afternoon, but had forgotten it in her pre-interview jitters; now it was dinner instead. She ate the thing with slow neglect, surveying her still mostly unfurnished apartment, running through one of her detailed mental checklists as she did so.
Bed…unpacked, set to go for its first night. Couch…on its way from that store in New Hampshire.
New cookware…damn. She'd take care of that tomorrow. Could she afford—? Yes. Her dormant funds could go for a little while longer before she was really in dire need of the position at Arkham. Or any other occupation short of prostitution that would earn her some cash.
Car…she could look for a used one in the classifieds and put Sheila out of the chauffeuring biz forever. For now, however, she could only continue to unpack the apparently innumerable cardboard boxes stacked in the corner, like she'd been doing all weekend.
Finishing the sandwich, reluctantly licking the cloying mayonnaise off her fingers out of necessity, Darcy set to work. The concentrated tranquility with which she worked was broken only by the whisper of unfolding cardboard and the mutter of various packing materials.
The first box she reached for was a small one, with the words Sentiment. Items scrawled on its top in her messy, loose hand. She knew that she should have gone for Bathroom Stuff or Electronics first—it didn't take an extraordinarily intelligent person to know that those two were by far the more practical choices—but she grinned in impetuous noncompliance and tore the box open anyway, easily unfolding its thin lid. Her heart lifted as it recognized its own contents nestled amid the bubble wrap.
A one-eyed, mangy-looking stuffed toy cat was the first voyager to set foot on the pallid carpet. Darcy gently thumbed one of its floppy ears, then reached in to pull out a framed photo. Her eyes knew what they would see as she slowly removed the layers of bubble wrap, but looked nonetheless.
It had been a candid shot, taken by a friend.
The couple lounged on a bench in Hanover. Clearly autumn. Both were bundled up for a cold, cloudy day. The girl worse a thick dark coat, a cranberry scarf, and sleek blue jeans. Her head rested comfortably in the boy's lap, one arm dangling to the leaf-strewn grass as her warm eyes gazed up at his.
Darcy Crandell, three years and an entire naive ideology ago.
She couldn't help but smile and ruefully shake her head as she looked at Mike. His cheeks were flushed with the cold, nearly the same lovely dark red as his tousled hair. He gazed straight at the camera, almost defiant, his smile broad and confident. He was completely unaware of the adoring girl in his lap, numb to the heart that strained toward his princely own.
Had it really only been a year and a half since she had declared her independence from Mike Laramie? She'd slammed dormitory doors and shouted profanities and cried like a baby and thrown the engagement ring in his face. Acted just like the pathetic, silly child that his arrogant upperclassman mind had seen her as all along.
His ego should have been bruised. It should have.
But he'd still had the damnable gallantry to call her up after her graduation from Dartmouth and tell her about the opening at his workplace. With his typical tolerant gentility, he'd braved the cold at the other end of the line and encouraged her to try applying.
No; she couldn't throw the photo away just yet. Setting it aside, beyond her line of sight, she slowly—slowly resumed her efforts.
The next possession to emerge was her beloved psychology textbook, saved from the first semester of freshman year. She opened the book to a random page, knowing as she did so that, at this rate, she would be done with this single box by next year.
A person who is psychotic has lost contact with reality and is either occasionally or constantly…
What a happy thought. She halted mid-sentence, turned the page.
Schizophrenics often believe others hear and "steal" their thoughts. Sometimes they fear they have lost control of bodily movement as well as thoughts…
Darcy shut the book with a sudden snap that was almost deafening.
If she got this internship at Arkham, she'd be in the same building as some of the most convoluted and dangerous minds in Gotham every single day. She would hear their screams and file transcriptions of their psychoanalysis sessions. Each night, the place would become quiet and frozen—still brightly lit and carefully monitored, but quiet as a tomb, so quiet you could almost hear the murderous thoughts that slid under, seeped out of, the doors of the cells like—
The phone rang.
Pulse hammering, she jumped to her feet, searching madly for the source of the shrill racket.
Breathing deep, Darcy ran to where the phone hung on the hall and picked it up, voice light and sugary and false as she spoke into the receiver she was clutching so tightly.
"Hello?"
"Darce, baby, is that you?"
"Hi, Mom."
She glanced at the clock: six-thirty. Of course. Just the weekly call.
"Everything okay, sweetheart? How's the apartment?"
"It's fine. In a great neighborhood. Just a few blocks from where we used to live, actually."
"Well, your father and I are just dying to see it. Need a bit of help with paying for furniture and whatnot?"
"No, Mother." Courtney Crandell had never stopped seeing her daughter as another one of her charity cases, it would seem.
"I know—I know. I just can't believe you're so…so grown up and—Harold! Come and talk to your only child!"
Dear Lord. "Mom, I don't—"
A familiar voice hushed her protests.
"Hello? Darcy?"
"Oh, hello, Dad."
"How are you? Have you applied for that internship yet?"
"Yes. Um, the interview was today, actually." She glanced at the window, tugging at a loose lock of hair.
"And? How'd it go?"
She thought carefully, wavering between giving him a misleadingly optimistic answer and a dolefully honest one. In the end, she went with dolefully honest.
"It was mediocre. Doubt I'll get the job."
"No one would turn down our baby girl!"
The outraged shriek was certainly not her father. Darcy's brow furrowed in sudden recognition.
"Mom? What? Why are you—the other phone—again—"
"Your father and I hardly ever get to talk to you together anymore, dear." Her mother's voice was a melodramatic plea. "Indulge me."
"I—" Might as well. "Fine."
"You'll get the job, Darcy," her father assured her calmly, "Don't you worry."
"Have you bought a car yet?" Her mother demanded to know, voice bright.
"No, not yet—"
"Need help with that? I could send you some money and it'll be there in—"
"I think I've saved enough money up for—"
"Are you sure, honey? Are you positive?"
Darcy bit back a groan of frustration. "Look, Mom, I can't talk to either of you with both of you on the phone!"
Silence.
"She's a little tense about the interview, Courtney. Be easy on her."
"Um, I've got a bit of unpacking to do, Dad. Is it—"
"It's okay, Darce," he said warmly, "Take care."
"Kisses, Darcy! Call when you have the time."
"I will, Mom. I promise. Love you both."
The line died cradled in her palm, and she hung up with a sigh of relief.
She loved her parents. But sometimes her mother's onslaught of adoration was too much to stomach. Twenty-four years of the tangling vines of parental affection were more than enough.
But the sudden silence seemed oppressive. Before she returned to unpacking, Darcy turned on the television, which had been unpacked and plugged in over the weekend.
"And in local news, a Gotham businessman was found violently beaten to death in a subway car about an hour ago. Here's Graham Wilson at the scene of the brutal crime with the details—" Darcy tuned out the dark words, taking out some books of poetry and laying them on the rug beside the textbook. But the thoughts the words provoked refused to be so ignored.
Sheila was right: as much and as desperately as she wanted to prove her friend wrong, the city was slowly but surely collapsing before their eyes.
The thought saddened her; Gotham City was her home. It had been, ever since she could remember. An immortal, fantastic place that held surprises and quirks for the city's seasoned natives and inquisitive tourists alike. Even the epidemic depression it had suffered during her childhood hadn't been enough to dim its luster completely.
Dartmouth and Hanover had seemed so rural and pastoral in comparison; she remembered her first homesick phone call home from college, when she had asked her mother to hold the receiver out the window of their old apartment so she could hear the bustle and clangor of traffic and countless people.
She had learned to love the countryside during her studies in New Hampshire. Where Gotham had been steel and shine, Hanover had been leaf and green. The isolation and small size which had tormented her at first soon became familiar comforts. But nothing could beat that first thrill of adrenaline she'd felt when her plane had landed in Gotham Airport. She was home, permanently, for the first time in six years.
But Darcy hadn't expected to see so much sadness, so much anger, so much distress in the familiar face of her mother city. Carmine Falcone and his seemingly endless ranks of underlings, who'd seemed powerful enough when she'd left six years ago, now had Gotham in a chokehold. The police force was badly crippled and almost powerless, and those few officers who weren't helpless were irrevocably corrupt. Crime rates were soaring and justice was becoming a thing of the past. The city was eating itself from the inside out.
Buildings that had shone half a decade ago were now in urgent need of repairs. Their immaculate façades were blurred with graffiti. Fresh dark asphalt had become broken and gray. Garbage littered the avenues and the lines leading to the scarce soup kitchens were seemingly endless.
It had been enough to make Darcy want to donate half of her precious funds to a charity organization within seconds. Anything—anything to make things all right. Anything to right the dismal wrongs which seemed to have occurred overnight.
The people she'd talked to during her first few weeks back in Gotham had seemed unsurprised by the state of their city.
'It's just a big place,' they'd said, shrugging as they handed her a newspaper or a hot dog or a cup of coffee. Their eyes sad—yes. But dull and uncaring, too. 'Getting too big to take care of. Happens everywhere, doesn't it?'
They wouldn't even mention the distortion that was taking place right under their noses. The dishonesties and falsehoods that took root everywhere, from the sidewalks to the lobby of the city hall. The lies that no longer had to be hidden for fear of lawful punishment.
Darcy had tried to keep her faith. She'd tried to brush off Sheila's continuous remarks about the disrepair and the dirt. She'd tried to remain hopeful and loyal.
But on evenings like these, when police sirens seemed like merely an omnipresent part of the background noise of the city, when the occasional scream tore the air and no voice answered, when the homeless gathered like moths around tiny fires that did little to thaw the chill about a human heart…it was hard.
Hard to hope, hard to worry, hard to even care at all.
What made her, of all people, saintly enough to care? Was she too good for welcoming the deterioration with open arms? Was she too damned virtuous to be neutral and indifferent? She knew she wasn't. She knew she was as petty and unpleasant as the rest of them.
Suddenly angry and miserable, she tossed aside the bubble-wrapped parcel she was unpacking, switched off the television, and crawled into bed. She squeezed her eyes shut until it hurt and odd patterns danced across the backs of her closed lids. Mind wide-awake, furious, buzzing, cold—she knew she wouldn't get much sleep tonight.
Too tired and too afraid to turn off the light.
Author's Note
I am so glad that I managed to meet my self-imposed 'post every Friday' deadline; my computer was off for most of the week because of the threat of the lethal 'Zotob' worm preying on Windows computers everywhere. Luckily for me, my darling readers weren't similarly deterred: twenty-seven reviews for two chapters? I am tickled pink by the thought of so many responses. Please, all of you should treat yourselves to a screening of Red Eye and something chocolaty this weekend as a reward for your awesomeness. I'll pay for every penny spent in the process in my heart. :-)
Azina Zelle – Yes, Crane does have a way of turning even the most mundane processes into utter agony. But that's why we love him, right? Heehee. Anyway, thanks. I know I've really got a story going if the readers can 'see' it unfolding in their minds—either I'm not botching my work (for once) or you guys are really imaginative. :-)
Codie – Much as I love my regular readers, it's always a pleasure to 'hear' a fresh voice in the reviews. It lets me know that I still have what it takes to reel readers in. ;-) But, of course, whether you're getting your time's worth or not is totally up to you.
Colleen – Yay! It's an honor to have the support of the New Hampshire people, or at least one of them. :-) I'm far, far away on the West Coast, but Dartmouth has always been one of my favorite schools—I couldn't resist letting my OC attend in my stead. I'm glad you noticed the inclusion.
CrazedPony – 'Demented splendor.' Love it! Please write a Cranefic soon if you haven't already; you have a definite way with words that I'd like to see channeled into this genre.
LadyTavington076 – Please don't cut me! Here's the chapter you wanted:-)
Mizamour – Aw, shucks. :-)
Morgan – That's funny, Darcy kind of acts like me too. Wishful thinking, I suppose. So…really rough sex, eh? Hmmm. That brings me to my raunchy question of the day: would he the one doing the 'roughing' or receiving it? ;-D
Rokudenashi – I'm so honored to have you 'on board.' Of Shared Brilliance is a scrumptious read and I hope everyone here who hasn't already devoured it will follow my lead soon.
SpadesJade – I promise to try to get the plot going soon enough. Thanks for being here to cheer me on!
Valse De La Luna – Here's your update! Hope you enjoyed. As I said to Codie, it's lovely to have so many new people reading this and giving me feedback.
Winged Seraph – I'm glad my work has become a source of inspiration. Whatever works to get a fellow writer out of a rut!
Yukari-chan – Thanks and best of luck on your Cranefic. Like Jonathan, Dr. Harleen Quinzel is an excellent Batman character and it would interesting to see what parallels could be drawn between the two 'mad doctors.'
Oh, a note to my new readers (Valse De La Luna, Yukari-chan, crazedPony, LadyTavington076, Codie, and Colleen): I usually make it a point of mine to immediately read and review a story by those members who have been so kind as to leave me a review. This week (see above for more), I was unable to do so and I feel crappy for shortchanging you. So (heh heh) leave another review for this chapter and I'll read your fics ASAP. I can't wait to check out your work.
Next chapter is from Crane's POV, so those of you who got dry heaves when you saw that #3 was from Darcy's POV can put away the Pepto-Bismol and relax for the time being. :-)
Love
Blodeuedd
p.s. The snippets from Darcy's textbook are real facts and have been taken from the 'Behavioral and emotional problems' section of my family's well-worn copy of The American Medical Association Family Medical Guide, edited by the venerable Jeffrey R.M. Kunz, MD, and Asher J. Finkel, MD. In doing this, I have not benefited in any way, let alone financially. (Nope, still broke!)