Incinerate
You woke in me a feeling that annihilates any other. I feel you, and only you, inside.
—Vazakinada
Sometimes he lets her sleep with him. She still sucks her thumb at night, to put herself to sleep, that unshakeable habit, a soothing maternal comfort, like a baby rooting for its mother's nipple during midnight hours, milk drunk and sleepy. He remembers she was nursed for too long. "Mommy has to feed me," she used to whine, petulant, even then, crossing her arms, practically a lifetime ago, only ever wanting warm milk, the only bitter sweetness she had ever known. But of course she was never weaned—her mother had nothing else to give her, not when there were other hungers to feed—addictions—the nicotine, the meth, dirty mouths that could never be sated no matter how much you fed them. Some people learned that the hard way. Some never learned at all.
He watches as she sleeps, curled up on her side, facing him, a streak of pale moonlight slicing across a bare shoulder, thumb hooked behind her teeth where it's made itself a bed, nestled on top of her tongue. She always wakes to a wet spot of drool on her pillow, and he's always gone before then, but he knows she's embarrassed by her findings, crinkling her nose in that way that she does, flipping over the pillow to hide her shame, pretend like it's not there.
Sometimes she has nightmares. Her whining always wakes him, and he listens to her whimper and cry, toss and turn and fist the sheets. Sometimes she seeks him out, as if he isn't the sole reason for all her night terrors, curling herself towards him, burying her face into the crook of his neck. He always pushes her away, but somehow she gets her way, and inevitably in the morning when he wakes, she is wound around him like an octopus, limbs all tangled. Sometimes he'll find that his arm is draped over her waist, and he wonders if she put it there. Sometimes she is spooned inside him, her smaller body tucked tight to his, her hot puffs of breath on his neck, or her back pressed to his chest, her ass snuggled against his lower abdomen, and sometimes he wakes up hard, and he rolls his eyes and shoves her back to her side of the bed and gets up.
Her side of the bed.
He's not used to having another body to share a bed with.
They have an unspoken arrangement—a pretense—which is that she only slips into bed with him when he should already be immersed in a deep sleep. That is, she always seeks him out, usually in the dead of night, once she's restless with anxiety and unease and decided she can't sleep alone, and he pretends like he doesn't know she's there until the morning, when he wakes.
They don't talk about it, and when she comes to find him in the mornings, hair tousled, the faint imprint of a quilt mushed against her cheek, her teeth sunk into her bottom lip, she looks embarrassed and a little afraid, like maybe he's finally going to come out and say it, the thing they don't talk about. Maybe he'll tell her he doesn't want her sneaking into bed with him anymore, and wouldn't that crush her little heart?
"Hi," she says, shyly, always so shy, even after all this time they've spent together. Even after all the things they've done.
He turns around and grunts to acknowledge her presence, his mouth stuffed full of cereal. From behind the crinkled, water-stained pages of the Gotham Gazette, he watches her move around the small, U-shaped kitchen, popping a piece of bread into the toaster, retrieving a bowl, pouring herself a giant helping of whatever sugary, tooth-rotting junk he'd just poured for himself. It's the only cereal he'll eat. Everything else has raisins and steel cut oats or fucking dried, crunchy strawberries or whatever. Hates that shit.
Taylor splashes on some milk and then scrapes the bottom of the Skippy jar with a knife to slather her toast with. She joins him at the counter, hopping into the barstool next to him. One of the thin straps from her tank top slips down her shoulder, and she doesn't notice, her feet swinging beneath the counter. A happy clam. She chews her toast and munches her cereal, and he can tell she is dancing to a song in her head from the rhythm of her bare feet, the way she moves her head.
She's getting taller—bigger, too—but he still dwarfs her in size, even if her lanky, long limbs are eager to play catch up. One day she'll sit at the counter and her legs will touch the floor—a thought that occurs straight out of left field, catching him off guard.
She beams up at him suddenly, eyes wide and cheeks flushed, a paradigm of barely-contained excitement, "Do you know what today is, Mr. J?"
He lays down the paper. Pretends to think about it. "Hm… I haven't the faintest," he drawls.
"It's your birthday!" she exclaims. Her spoon clatters inside the empty bowl so she can splay her arms wide as if to say, "Surprise!" or "Isn't that just great?"
"My… what."
"Your birthday!" she says again. "Well, not your real birthday, 'cause I don't know when your real birthday is and you never told me… so I decided it would be today!"
When he doesn't respond, Taylor's smile falters, her eyebrows drawing together in concern. "That's okay, isn't it?" she asks in a small voice.
The Joker indulges her—as he so often does—and loops an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into him. Their chairs knock together, and she makes a noise of pleased surprise. "Sure, kiddo. It's my birthday," he agrees, then, suddenly greedy: "What'd you get me?"
"Aren't you going to tell me how old you are first? I have to know so I can put the right number of candles on your birthday cake."
He tongues at the inside of his cheek for a moment, tasting the comfort of familiar scar tissue, enjoying the way she is smiling up at him. Sunny. Happy. She is easier around him now, after Nathan. The first couple of months were painstaking. Molasses slow. She wouldn't speak for months, passing through each day as if trapped inside a cloud, or weighed down by some invisible fog. He would force her to eat back then, help her bathe, change her. She was practically comatose then—pissing her pants like a toddler, screaming in the middle of the night, crying out for a mother who had never loved her, who was long ago dead. He used to pin her down and choke her until she passed out, just to get her to stop screaming, to put a stop to the incessant ringing in his ears.
He used to think about killing her, too, revisiting that fantasy over and over again until the craving coiled somewhere low in his belly, until he was thrumming and white-hot with want, and then he would go to her, want bleeding into need, until he was practically blind with it. And then he'd find her bent over and crying, arms curled around her shins, the sound muffled by the wet hills of her kneecaps. Or sometimes she would be lying on the bed, curled in the fetal position, whimpering, and he would think, you're gonna put a wounded dog out of its misery? You're gonna kill something that's already dead?
No, no.
No.
She doesn't get to die. Not like that.
Taylor is fingering the strap of his suspenders, running her thumb over the patterned fabric. She looks up at him expectantly.
"Eighty-seven," he drawls, and she pulls back from him, her nose crinkling with laughter.
"You're not eighty-seven!" she exclaims, exasperated. "You're just saying that because you want more birthday candles!"
"Yeah."
She huffs, but isn't deterred from the undertaking of this new task. "It'll have to be a really big cake."
"The biggest," he agrees.
She bites her lip thoughtfully, "Okay," she says. She slips off the barstool and then stands there, clasping her hands, where they hang down near her thighs. Her expression is full of dampened-down excitement when she looks at him, like she's trying not to get her hopes up. "Seven o'clock, okay?" She bends to pick up her backpack beneath the counter, looking at him, slipping it over her shoulders.
"It's a date."
She blushes furiously and spares him a shy little smile, cast over her shoulder, before she is out the door.
He makes her go to school—not because he cares about the importance of higher education—or education in general, but because he has to get her out of his hair for a few hours. He can't exactly have her trailing along at his heels while he crashes mob meetings and incites political riots and plays with Batman.
Also, Oswald would have a fucking field day. He can imagine that fat little bastard's beady eyes sliding all over Taylor, his gaze oily and slick. He looks like the kind of dumb shit who'd have a thing for little girls, wants to be called Mister while some doe-eyed twelve year-old in knee-highs and pigtails shyly spreads her legs for him; then he'd beat her black and blue with his cane or an umbrella, and she'd cry and squeal, and he'd stop only when she begged him to. "Please, mister, please," sniveling and snot-faced, and then he'd drop the offending weapon and give himself a good tug—once, twice, it wouldn't take much—and spend himself over the glowing, red ladder-mark of welts on the back of her pale thighs.
Yeah, he's definitely the kind of gross shit that gets off on little girls, maybe a little differently than guys like Jervis Tetch do, but by a thin margin. Fucking creep.
He can imagine the scene now, Oswald looking, looking, and looking, like Taylor is something he'd like to swallow whole, and the Joker would know he was thinking about how he might proposition her when he found a way to get her alone.
It wasn't exactly a well-kept secret, Cobblepot's little sex ring—girls he could pimp out for a smooth 70/30 profit. The ring went mostly unbothered by the GCPD. There were bigger fish to fry—Oswald's money laundering, for one—than chasing down women and girls who may or may not be directly involved with his more seedy operations. It was easy tracking down the women who consented to being a part of it—older women with addictions, women like Taylor's dead mother, partaking in one nasty, grotesque need in order to fulfill another. It was the women who hadn't consented—underage girls, usually—who were harder to find, little girls taken from bus stops and public restrooms, girls sneaking out after dark from their bedroom windows, luredto some discrete location, enticed by the promise of a date with a hunky, hunky senior who didn't actually exist.
Anyway, Oswald would look, and the Joker would bleed red.
"Mind your own fucking business," he'd hiss.
"Oh, is that what you're calling that?" his gaze would slide to Taylor. "Just business?" His breath would smell sour, like old milk. The stench of ammonia from a bad cigar clinging to him, his bald head sweaty and shining from the heat of the overhead lights.
The Joker's hand would come down hard on the table separating them, where Oswald sits behind it like a fucking king. The impact would make both Taylor and Oswald jump. "Eyes up here, sweetheart." He'd move to block Taylor from Oswald's view, then he'd tsk. "You really know how to make a guy feel objectified, staring like that."
Oswald would look at him in that way that Oswald always does, that "we're-not-finished-with-this-yet-but-for-now-I'll-let-it-slide" way, but they'd go back to talking shop, and the Joker would close his hands into fists and splay them on the desk, using them to support his weight, but also effectively blocking Taylor from view. A friendly reminder that he'll deck the rubbery, fat sonofabitch if his eyes start to wander again.
Oswald would take the punch if the Joker doled him one though, waving off his henchmen with one hand while he cradled his crooked nose with the other, I'll handle this one, boys, like he's dealing with an errant toddler, only, the two of them both know who's really in charge; they both know who'd flop like a fish in the end, belly up and stinking, a swarm of buzzing flies eager to feast.
Keeping Taylor out of his business affairs isn't for her protection. It's for his sanity.
The door swings open suddenly, and she comes bounding in, her backpack bouncing behind her. She runs to him, breathless, and suddenly her arms are around his middle, enveloping him in a tight hug. She pulls back to look up at him.
"Happy birthday," she says.
And then she's racing back out the door again, and he thinks, Christ. Oswald cannot have her.
Emily Ferguson is talking about her vacation in Santa Eulalia again. They go every year for Christmas, and she always brings back little gifts for her friends, key chains with palm trees on them that say 'Ibiza', fridge magnets in the shape of flip-flops and beach chairs, or colorful sunglasses she had distributed to her friends in little cloth bags she had decorated herself.
Taylor wonders what it would feel like to be the recipient of those gifts—what it must feel like to have a friend who thought enough about you to want to bring you back a present from her lavish vacation, the way she must have tucked each item into her suitcase with care, imagining the look on each of her friends' faces as she gave them their gifts.
Emily's dad is an ER doctor at Gotham General, so she knows all the juicy gossip that goes on there, like when Rebecca Baughn had to get her stomach pumped, or Kacy Hartsell's mom had to be admitted for five days because she'd swallowed a bunch of Oxy and tried to kill herself. In the cafeteria, at lunch, she regularly fills her friends in on all the sordid details, whispering to them all the things she'd overhead her dad tell her mom when they assumed she wasn't listening.
But Taylor and Emily are not friends, and Taylor stares longingly over her shoulder for a moment, looking at the group of girls sitting behind her, all huddled close together, gossiping and munching on snacks.
There's four of them in total. Becca has bright red hair and is covered in thick patches of freckles from head to toe. She still plays with dolls and has softball practice every day after school. Her mom always packs her Scooby Doo gummy snacks in her lunch bag, which everyone teases her about, like she's still five or something. Katie's the youngest, with yellow hair that she always wears in two smooth French braids that trail down her back. She's an only child and her parents are divorced, so she lives with her mom. She is the prettiest one, with a button nose and a metal-free smile. She is carefree and sweet and dare devilish all at once. Katie has a boyfriend, too—Michael—and through careful eavesdropping, Taylor has learned Emily is incredibly jealous of this recent development.
Logan is Emily's right hand. She is bossy and fierce—the most boyish of the group, and the tallest, too—somehow able to maintain her status within their inner circle without sacrificing her individuality. It might help that she and Emily have known each other for the longest, the pair having met in kindergarten; even then she went by Logan instead of Leah, the name given to her by her parents. Sometimes her birth name became a weapon in the hands of her friends, like when Logan was being goofy or annoying and Emily would snap, "Cut it out, Leah," and Logan would snarl but stop whatever she was doing. Walk away until she had cooled down.
Logan has long, shiny brown hair—pin straight—which she pairs with rugged combat boots and acid-wash jeans. Taylor likes it best when she wears her baseball hat; she likes to pull it low over her eyes, and whenever someone speaks to her, she lifts her head up to see beyond the rim of the visor and narrows her eyes, like she's squinting at the sun. Sometimes she'll wear her older brother's t-shirts, and nobody says anything. She exists as a fascinating paradox, a series of beautiful contradictions. Sensible but reckless, very good at listening, but too loud. Observant when she wants to be, but sometimes a little obtuse. Too tomboyish for her friend group, but still the unspoken right hand, still calling all the shots when Emily will let her. She's on the softball team with Becca, too, and sometimes after school, Taylor will sit out on the bleachers under the scorching sun—notebooks piled neatly on her lap, pretending to study—while she watches them practice.
They have a class together, too. History. One time she asked if she could borrow Taylor's pencil, and it was Taylor's only one, but she said yes and used a pen for the rest of the class instead. And another time Logan groaned, "This test kicked my ass," as she handed her test booklet to Taylor to be passed to the front of the class along with everyone else's. Taylor said, "Me too," and then felt all kinds of warm for the rest of the day, elated that Logan had actually spoken to her. Sometimes she kicked the back of Taylor's chair on accident, and she'd murmur 'sorry' and go to bouncing her knee beneath the desk instead. Taylor could always feel the vibrations of her, this girl who could never sit still.
Logan stood up to people, too. Bullies, older kids, and even teachers, sometimes, if the situation warranted it. That was what Taylor admired about her the most. She was a fighter. She was brave. She didn't take no for answer. She wrestled with boys. She defended herself, and she spoke up for the underdogs who couldn't do it themselves.
Taylor bites her lip and stares at her from over her shoulder, trying to be discrete about it. She is confused by this attraction, this strange, quiet longing that has blossomed slowly over time into a cornucopia of flowers and vines, weaving in and out of her heart valves, wildflowers nesting in the bases of her lungs, Queen Anne's lace and larkspur, a tangle of daisies and sweet goldenrod sprouting up from her inferior vena cava. A bouquet of aster and forget-me-nots nestled in her throat. A heaviness she bears all the time. The line between wanting to be friends with Logan and perhaps just wanting to be Logan is tenuous and thin, and she often conflates the two until they converge into one indefinite shape, the two thoughts fused so tightly together she cannot pull them apart.
She thinks about the way Logan swallows her friends in big bear hugs, coming up behind them and wrapping her arms around them until they squeal and push her away. Or the way she folds her arms across her chest and slumps in her seat in history class, hat lowered over her eyes, the kind of tiredness that originates from sheer boredom, the irritating inability to be outdoors in the sun, forced to be cooped up in a freezing classroom all day instead. Maybe the easy way she grins, or the way she laughs with her whole body, so loud, hands on her stomach, like she just can't hold it in. Or that time Becca fell and scraped up her face real bad at softball practice, and Logan sat on the bleachers next to her and rubbed her back while Becca cried.
Maybe she doesn't want to be just friends with Logan.
The bell rings. Taylor quickly spins around and keeps her head down as everyone shuffles out of the cafeteria. The sound of zipping backpacks, the metal clank of silverware, leftovers being dumped in the trash. The plastic clatter of empty trays as they're stacked haphazardly on top of the rack over the trash.
Taylor keeps her head bowed but watches Emily carefully. She never eats the lunch her mom packs for her— a mustard and turkey sandwich with lettuce, tomato, and cheese; the only part she eats is the tomato. She heard Macy Windfall say that Emily was anorexic, a dirty word whispered in the locker room one time to her friends, when they were all changing after soccer. Taylor quickly looked away. Pretended that she hadn't heard. It felt too intimate of a secret to know, too taboo, like finding out that Mr. Branson from her social studies class was into kiddie porn, only, the whole school found out before he even knew his secret had been discovered, and when the police came to escort him from the classroom, the only person surprised was him.
She doesn't really know what anorexia means, just that it sounds bad, it is bad. She knows Emily eats the celery sticks her mom packs for her—something about celery being negative in calories because you burn off what you chew—but she never touches the peanut butter her mom always put in a little plastic disposable cup for her, like the little condiment cups they put ketchup in at McDonald's and stuff.
It always makes her late for her next class, but she has to wait until everyone's cleared out of the cafeteria before she can get up. She is slow to shoulder her backpack, climb out from the picnic-table style seating.
She finds Emily's leftovers without having to dig too deep. The worst days are the ones where Emily doesn't rewrap her sandwich before throwing it in the trash, and Taylor has to wipe off the leftover sludge from someone's half-eaten sloppy joe, or try her best to scrape off coleslaw mixed with burnt mac and cheese.
Today, her sandwich is wrapped, and she even finds the discarded cup of peanut butter. She wolfs down the sandwich first, then scoops a glob of peanut butter out of the cup with two fingers, feeling both greedy and embarrassed as she sucks her fingers clean. She feels feral as her gaze darts around the empty room, making sure there is no one to witness her display. She wipes her hands on her jeans, and then she is off to class, shuffling through empty halls, hoping she doesn't run into a teacher.
Sometimes if she hurries, she can make it to class while everyone is still unpacking their backpacks, getting their notebooks and pencils ready, and Taylor can sneak in unnoticed, and only a few people will turn to look at her instead of the enormous and too-heavy gaze of the whole classroom.
Mrs. Lundhaven always eyes her when Taylor comes in, wiping leftover crumbs from her mouth with the back of her arm, but Mrs. Lundhaven never says anything, never berates her or writes tardy slips, just lets her slip into the classroom unannounced. Taylor is grateful.
She avoids eye contact with Logan as she slides into her seat, afraid that if she were to look, Logan might know what she'd done, might find her disgusting or gross. She slithers into her seat, trying to draw as little attention to herself as possible.
Mrs. Lundhaven writes WARSAW PACT - 1955 on the chalkboard when the door to the classroom unceremoniously bursts open. It's a teacher Taylor has seen before but doesn't know the name of.
"Deborah," she says, breathless, "channel four." She gulps in desperate lungfuls of air as Mrs. Lundhaven reaches into her desk drawer for the remote.
Everyone directs their worried gazes to the small TV mounted to the ceiling in the corner—the one they watch movies on when there's a substitute.
"—receiving preliminary reports that a bomb has just gone off at Gotham State University. It appears the device has been detonated near the South campus, where we have received reports of at least two confirmed deaths. No word yet on what is purported to be the motive for the attack, but according to eye witnesses at the scene, the Joker is thought to be involved. All schools are being asked to evacuate at this time. If you have any further information—
Mrs. Lundhaven's face is pale, but she springs immediately to action. "All right people, you know the drill, let's MOVE." She is ushering everyone out of the classroom, urging them to leave their backpacks, there's no time. Everyone stands. Taylor does, too, but she is rooted to her spot when they flash a photo of Mr. J across the screen. She swallows.
"Oh, my God." Taylor rips her gaze away from the TV, turning to look at Logan, who is standing next to her, mouth agape, eyes glued to the screen. "My brother goes to GSU." It's the first time Taylor's ever seen her look afraid. She's so pale, all the color drained from her face. Taylor's heart convulses desperately in her chest, like it's going to cave in. She opens her mouth to say something—some words of comfort, a heartfelt condolence, anything—but nothing will come out. Her throat fills with sand. She tries again, and again, but the sand keeps coming, filling up her lungs now, so she can't breathe. "I have to go," Logan says, to no one in particular, and Taylor watches helplessly as she hurries away.
Her eyes dart to the TV where the words 'JOKER ATTACK' are printed menacingly across a red ribbon at the bottom of the screen, written in big, fat block text. They're in a helicopter now, showing aerial footage of the wreckage, massive plumes of thick smoke, falling debris, a rainstorm of black ash and dust; the shock of a nearby red firetruck, surveying the damage. She is hypnotized by the destruction, the hairs on her arms all standing at attention. Around her, panic unravels, a flurry of activity and worried chatter, but all she hears is a sharp ringing in her ears.
She's cold, suddenly, and standing in snow that comes up to her knees. She watches from a distance as the whole city bursts into a firestorm of color, a riot of red and orange. The force of the explosion knocks her back against the car. The heat of the flames makes her eyes water and her face burn. It takes her a moment to regain her strength. A trickle of blood slides down her face, and she tongues at her upper lip, tasting copper. A whine of sirens and police cars, but they all sound far away. She collapses into the snow, but is horrified to find that it's bloodstained. She looks back up, cold wind biting at her cheeks. It's just started to snow. The whole city is black from the power outage, and the skyline burns red. Her mouth opens in a cry, but no sound will come. Somewhere, Mr. J is laughing that sharp, shrill hyena laugh that makes her blood curdle. She combs through the snow to find him, keeps calling his name, over and over again until her throat is raw from it, but it's like he can't hear her. He keeps laughing, and when she finds him, head bowed to the snow, bloodied, hunched over on his knees, his whole body warped and convulsing from the force of his laughter, Taylor is terrified.
"Taylor. TAYLOR!"
Her eyes snap to Mrs. Lundhaven, who is standing near the door. She quickly looks around, realizes they're the only two people left in the room. "Come on, hurry up!"
Taylor grabs her backpack, and Mrs. Lundhaven guides her out of the classroom with a hand on her back. Her teacher's flats tap noisily against the floor as she hurries Taylor along through the bustling hallway.
There must be something worrying about whatever expression is written all over Taylor's face, because Mrs. Lundhaven escorts her all the way outside to the front of the school even though she doesn't have to, even though it's chaotic, everyone moving and converging to the front entrance of the school, trying to get out of the building all at once.
It's a cool, sunny day. Bright blue sky, cloudless, the trees are red and gold. Leaves scrape and skitter against the concrete. The wind is cool. There was supposed to be a football game tonight, Raiders vs. Panthers.
Mrs. Lundhaven is surveying the unfolding scene, the parade of buses lined up alongside the curb, everyone clamoring in, two, three at a time. Her brows knitted together in concern. Taylor can see the gears turning behind her eyes. They've prepared for things like this—disaster training, active-shooter drills, bomb threat scenarios—she can see her desperately trying to recall all of that training now, the protocol, but nothing ever happens like it's supposed to. There aren't supposed to be parents lining up outside the school creating a mini traffic jam in their cars, preventing the busses from getting out. There isn't supposed to be shouting and crying and police officers yelling and honking horns. There isn't supposed to be overcrowded busses when there are seats for everyone. It isn't supposed to be chaotic.
"Will your mom come pick you up?" she asks, her eyebrows still pushed together in concern, already thinking five steps ahead. "Is she out there?" she nods to the traffic, the worried parents trying to locate their children. Kids weaving in and out of the traffic, creating even more of a mess as the police try to push them back towards the buses.
Taylor shakes her head no.
No, her mom will not be coming for her. No one will.
Mrs. Lundhaven looks down at her, the sun hot on her face, and for the first time, Taylor notices how young she is—the lack of worry lines or wrinkles, her eyes blue and clear, her hair still its natural color. The slightest hint of a rounded belly, like maybe she might be pregnant with her first child but hasn't told anybody yet. So young, maybe she even went to GSU. Maybe she knows professors and other students there. Maybe she's wondering, horrified, if the two confirmed deaths are anybody she knows.
Her teacher walks her to the buses, quickly. Her palm is slick when she puts it on Taylor's shoulder. "Will you be alright?"
Her concern touches Taylor differently than it ever has before. Maybe because for the first time, Taylor feels responsible for everything that is transpiring right now, a weight she has never had to bear. Not like this. Her heart is all jammed up in her throat all the sudden. She feels like she might puke it out, and she thinks, good. She doesn't want it anymore. She doesn't wantto feel this.
She gets on the bus. Stands somewhere near the back. The bus vibrates and buzzes with everyone's loud chatter, everyone pulling up videos on their phone of the explosion. It's loud, and too crowded. There's fear, and there's also arrogance; "At least we get out of school early," she hears some boy say, and his friends laugh. Taylor feels nauseous. This isn't her usual bus. She doesn't know any of these kids.
The bus takes them to a location that only parents are supposed to know about—it changes every couple of months, for their safety. This time it's an overnight parking lot for commuters. It's close to the train station, and luckily her train pass doesn't expire until tomorrow. The train dumps her onto Walton Street, and from there it's a twenty minute walk to home.
Home.
She bursts through the door and runs straight to the bathroom, puking up the contents of her measly lunch all over the yellow-stained toilet bowl. She grips the toilet seat with both hands, panting. The gross upheaval does nothing for her nerves, and when she can work up the strength to stand, she flushes the toilet and rinses out her mouth with sink water, washes her hands. She uses the hand towel to pat her face dry and thinks about how it smells like greasepaint. How it smells like Mr. J.
She turns on the TV in the living room. It's old, one of those TVs with the bunny ear antennas you have to position just so, and the screen is cracked, but it's still useable. She kneels in front of the TV and flips through the channels using the buttons on the front. There is no remote. She stops on the first news station that comes up, and then she's watching the footage in real time. Twenty confirmed deaths now, and not one explosion, but two.
They all still think it's the Joker, and she has to swallow and digest the horrifying possibility that maybe it is.
She knows he does bad things, that he is bad. But he tells her that everyone is, that nobody in this world is good, that everyone only cares about themselves. Tells her that it's a dog-eat-dog-world, that people will eat each other alive in a crisis just to save their own skins. He tells her that people are pathetic, easily manipulated, coercible. He tells her the world is cesspool, and people are fake—disingenuous—and he is simply showing everyone their true colors, like he's an artist with the whole city as his canvas.
She wonders if he'll ever get tired of wanting to paint the same thing. But does an artist with an underlying desire, a need, ever tire of its muse?
It sickens her to think she is in love with a leviathan. That she can love a monster, someone capable of causing so much hurt, so much unadulterated cruelty and suffering. Seeing the panic and worry on everyone's faces at school—seeing Logan looking so scared, for the first time ever, a girl who has only ever been brave in her life, always so fierce, moving with all the pulverizing force of a hurricane, suddenly reduced to terror at the thought of losing her brother to the hands of the Joker.
The Joker. Her Mr. J. The only person who has ever given a shit about her in her entire life. Was she wrong to want him this whole time? Hasn't he fed her nothing but lies, like the terrible truth about Nathan, that he had orchestrated the whole thing, conducted this monstrous symphony from beginning to end?
She turns off the TV. No. No, she can't start thinking like that. She can't villainize him. He is all that she has. She is nothing without him. She exists only in the warmth of his shadow. Without him, she is nothing. He chose her. He saved her from herself. He planted all her seeds, and then he allowed her to grow, watering her soil, tending to her like she was a secret garden, allowing her the freedom to blossom. Allowing her the freedom of choice, unshackling her from the illusion of society. Reality.
The only reality is her and him. She knows that now. She knows it.
She wipes her tears away with the back of her hand. There isn't any reason to get all worked up. Everything will be fine. She can go back to how things were before. He can have her trust, pure and unfiltered. He can have her undying loyalty. He can have it all. She would give that to him. She has given that to him.
She tongues at her upper lip, where she can taste the salty brine of her tears.
She feels stupid for doubting him. And she's wasted all this time—she has a birthday to set up for.
Taylor starts on the cake first. She had bought chocolate cake mix a couple of weeks ago in preparation, with the weekly allowance Mr. J had given her for school lunch. She'd been saving it for months.
Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting—and rainbow sprinkles—but those were mostly for her, because she loved sprinkles and she didn't think he'd mind.
She measures and mixes all the ingredients together carefully before pouring it into the pan and setting it on the middle rack in the oven. She sets to decorating next. She'd bought a whole pack of streamers and birthday things, candles and kazoos and balloons. Everything's pink and yellow because it's the clearance leftovers from Easter, but it was all she could afford.
She uses duct tape to hold up the streamers—and she puts them everywhere. She uses the stool from the counter to drape them from the doorway, that way Mr. J will walk right into them as soon as he steps in. And she hangs them like bunting in the windows and open doorways. She creates a spiral of color around the chair legs. She spends the most time creating his Happy Birthday banner, making big bubble letters she goes back to fill in with the Crayola markers she borrowed from school. When the markers run out of ink, she switches to her colored pencils, which she's practically worn down to the nub. She hangs up the banner in the TV room, above the couch.
She feels a little nauseous as she decorates, thinking about the explosion and all the confirmed deaths, thinking about Logan, hoping that her brother is okay. She forces those thoughts away and tries to focus on Mr. J instead, how surprised he's going to look when he sees all of this.
She takes the cake out of the oven when the timer goes off, and then she blows up some balloons while she waits for it to cool. When she's finished, she slathers on a thick layer of chocolate icing and dumps too many rainbow sprinkles on top. And then she meticulously counts out eight-seven little red candles—Mr. J will think that's funny, her putting those many candles on it—counting twice just to make sure she gets the number right. She sets the cake on the counter and has a box of matches nearby so she'll be ready when he comes home.
Then she waits. It's six thirty, so he should be home in half an hour. She sits on the barstool in front of the counter and thinks about how she'll greet him when he comes home. Maybe she should hide behind the counter and jump out and surprise him? Or maybe she could listen by the door and when she hears him coming up the stairs, she could start lighting the candles on the cake, so they'll all be ready and glowing when he walks in?
Six thirty turns into seven, and then seven thirty, and then eight. She paces around the living room, gently kicking the balloons around, watching them float lazily back down to the floor. She checks and then double checks the streamers, the banner, making sure everything is perfect. She sucks and chews on the pipe end of a kazoo until the cardboard is soaking wet and she has to throw it away. She uses the spatula to scrape the leftover cake batter from the bowl until it's nearly clean. Then she does the same with the frosting container, getting chocolate all over her lips.
She falls asleep like that, curled up on the couch with the spatula and the chocolate frosting container clutched in her hands.
When she wakes up, everything is dark. She startles, bolting upright.
She stumbles off the couch and finds the light in the kitchen, flicking it on. She squints against the brightness. The clock on the stove reads 11:08. Everything in the kitchen is just as she left it.
Mr. J isn't home.
Taylor's shoulders slump, and suddenly angry tears are burning behind her eyes. He's late. He's four hours late.
At first she feels anger, and then as she turns off the light and stomps to her bedroom, she feels shame. Disgust. She feels dumb suddenly for thinking that she loves him—for thinking that he might love her—that he was looking forward to his birthday party. Is she really that delusional? That stupid?
She doesn't change out of her clothes. Falls asleep on top of the covers with her jeans still on, hugging her pillow, smearing it with her tears and snot. She cries herself to sleep, but that's nothing new.
She wakes to the sound of the door slamming shut, violent and sudden, like a gunshot. She jolts upright, panting. Her room is still dark, though a light from the kitchen filters in from underneath her door. It's freezing. She slides out of bed and finds a hoodie on the floor, slips it on over her head and ties her hair into a pony tail. There's banging in the kitchen, the sound of cupboards open and closing, the loud, suctioned pop of the fridge.
She opens the door slowly. Mr. J is making a lot of noise. She shuffles into the kitchen, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, and then she sees him.
He looks big.
He always looks big, but there's something about seeing him in his purple suit that makes his shoulders look broader—wider—and makes him appear as if he takes up more space than he actually does. His back is to her as he works at something on the counter, and she hesitates at the sheer bulk of him.
But the longer she waits and stares, waits and stares, the angrier she becomes. He won't look at her.
She crosses her arms and angrily stomps her foot hard against the hardwood floor, and Mr. J spins around. Finally she has his attention.
The shock of his painted face startles her for a moment, and her arms loosen, her face going a little slack from surprise, but then he breaks into a grin, and she straightens her shoulders, resuming her power stance.
"Well, there you are," he croons, "I was beginning to think you'd forgotten about my party."
Taylor is fuming. She can feel her nostrils flaring. She imagines steam coming out of her ears, like she saw in a movie once. "I didn't forget!" she snaps. Her arms are still crossed, and she digs her fingernails into the flesh of her upper arms until it stings, but she doesn't stop. "You're late!"
"Sweetheart," he says, moving slowly across the room, towards her. "Honey." When he comes out from behind the counter, his whole body in full view, Taylor swallows and feels her resolve falter. Her arms loosen, starting to unfold, and as he slinks closer, predatory and slow, head tilted, his eyes fire-dark, her arms instinctively drop to her sides. Her throat is sandpaper dry. Her shoulders draw up to her ears, and she clenches her hands into fists. Afraid.
He stops in front of her, and she can smell him, the overwhelming stench of smoke and gasoline and sweat, that heady but familiar musk. He blocks the light from the kitchen, and it fans out all around him instead, like he's illuminated in a full body halo. She swallows as she looks up at him. She wants to be angry with him, but it's hard when she's paralyzed, caught in a stranglehold of fear. She feels suffocated by his presence, the heat and energy radiating off him, an energy that she recognizes as fresh from a kill. He's still juiced, riding that electric current of adrenaline as high as it will go.
"I had a prior engagement," he drawls, "it ran a little… over schedule." He tilts his head, looking down at her. When he reaches up to touch her cheek, she flinches. She can't help it. He strokes his thumb along her cheek, the line of her jaw. It feels hot and wet against her skin. "I had no control over it," he says. "They practically held me hostage!" He changes his tone then, lowering his voice, looking at her with his lids lowered. His eyes dark and searching. "You wouldn't be angry at your Mr. J on his birthday now, would you?"
She swallows again, suddenly overcome with guilt. "No…" she murmurs, lowering her eyes.
He slips his thumb beneath her chin, tilting it up so can meet his gaze. "I like the decorations, by the way."
Tears burn at her eyes again, and will she ever stop crying? How is there this much water inside of her?
He lets go of her chin and she reaches up to wipe her tears away with the back of her arm, feeling stupid for crying in front of him. Feeling stupid for being so angry with him. It wasn't his fault. He couldn't help it.
She sniffles and attempts a feeble smile. "Wanna eat your cake now?" she asks.
"You bet I do, doll face." He reaches around to tug on her ponytail, playful, and he gets a smile out of her.
It's still on the counter where she left it, all the candles still intact, and Mr. J waits patiently while she lights them all. She feels self-conscious of his gaze on her like this as she lights each candle, lighting match after match. But he waits, even when the wax starts to melt and drip onto the chocolatey bed of icing beneath it. When she's all finished, and every candle is lit, she hops off the stool and hurries to flick off the light, submerging them in darkness.
The cake glows on the countertop, all golden and warm. She sits next to Mr. J as he lowers his face to the candles.
"You gonna help me blow these out or what?"
She nods at him, biting her lip, excited that he asked.
When he draws back, all dramatic, sucking in air, she lurches forward, drawing up her hands.
"Wait!"
He pauses to look at her, his chest deflating.
"You have to make a wish first."
He grins, then. His eyes are so dark. "Don't need to."
He blows out the candles, and she helps, but she makes a wish for both of them first, something secret and beautiful. She'll never tell. Then the wish won't come true.
Later that night—or morning, rather—as she gets ready for bed, she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She startles at the dried trail of blood on her cheek, her jaw, her chin—the size of a thumb, all the places where the Joker had touched her.
Her fingers tremble when she reaches up to touch her cheek, staring at herself in the mirror as she does it. Her mouth parts, and she exhales at the dried, tacky texture beneath the pads of her fingers. It is not an unfamiliar sensation.
She tilts her head up and to the side. Mr. J had traced an 'X' with his thumb over her pulse.
She swallows, backing away from the mirror, stumbling into the bathroom door.
She wonders whose blood that is.
She wonders if it belongs to Logan's brother.
Author's Notes: Supriiiise. I'm not done with this yet. I have decided to continue this and turn this into what will essentially become an anthology series. All of these stories will follow the timeline of JK, either taking place during the events of JK or after (all operating under the assumption that Taylor lived at the end of JK, of course.)
I don't really have a timeline for this particular chapter. It cannot exist within the universe of JK, so I imagine this taking place in an alternative version of JK—for example, in a version where Taylor had gone through with killing Nathan, and she and the Joker had remained together afterwards. In that universe, this happens several months after the murder. Taylor is (fairly) well-adjusted.
A huge, huge thank you to Kaitlyn for supplying the idea of Taylor getting the Joker a birthday gift (also: for the reader who requested wanting the Joker to celebrate Taylor's birthday—does this suffice?) Another huge thanks to the reader who supplied the idea for Taylor and the Joker finally talking about what the Joker does for a living… didn't really get to them having a full blown discussion about it, but I think this is the first time we really see Taylor question what the Joker does for a living, and really contemplate all its moral implications. For disgruntledcute, on Tumblr, I also fulfilled the request of Taylor baking something for the Joker. Thanks also to my best friend, Chiara, who requested wanting to see Taylor interacting with other girls her own age… we didn't quite get to see that, either, but I hope the scene that takes place at school manages to fit the bill, at least somewhat.
These chapters will be fueled primarily by your ideas, interactions that you'd like to see, conversations that you want to take place, etc, so please feel free to share. Thank you kindly for those who have shared feedback thus far—it's because of you guys that I keep going. I can never get enough of these two and this dynamic. I hope you all feel the same way.