Chapter Nine
"He's not going to save me."
The Joker swiveled toward Skyler, the camera still in hand.
"Aw, of course, he will. He'll try to at least." He smiled widely.
"No… he really won't. The Batman doesn't even know who I am."
He quirked his head and raised an eyebrow. The expression on his face was curious. He made her feel like she was about to be given a pop quiz with no correct answers.
"So you, uh, know who he is then?"
The question made her pause. Of course, she didn't know who the Batman was. He could be anybody. She guessed that was probably the point of the Batman being masked. In a different situation, she might have even reflected on how this symbol he had created was oddly beautiful. Then, she remembered that the man in front of her was also masked in a sense and that there was nothing beautiful about it at all.
"No, of course, I don't."
He twirled a finger into her hair and leaned in closer to her ear. She could smell him; a unique mixture of greasepaint and gunpowder. It made her heart race.
"Well, then how do you knowww he doesn't know you?… besides it really doesn't matter either way. He isn't going to risk you blowing up his beloved citizens."
"If you think I'm going to hurt anybody for you you're even more psychotic than I thought."
He clicked his tongue and pulled her hair tightly.
"Funny… I don't remember saying you would have a choice."
Her head began to ache from the pressure of his hand in her hair, but she tried not to wince. She didn't want to let on that he was hurting her.
She hated him.
The thought must have read on her face because he laughed and let go of her hair, circling her so that he was in front of her once more. He remained standing, and she could feel his presence in front of her, but she refused to look up at him.
"I'm curious to see how everyone is going to react when they realize that their precious Batman can't even save the one person they've labeled to be the love of his life."
Anger built up inside of her.
"I'm not the love of his life!... and I'm not going to let you use me as bat bait."
His eyes darkened to match the color of the makeup surrounding them, and then… just as suddenly, they changed drastically from black to hazel as laughter racked through his body.
"Ha ah ha ah ha… Bat bait."
He took off a glove and wiped his eyes, smearing black makeup onto his pale hand.
"Oh, that's a good one, you're funny…"
He walked out the door, still laughing, and slammed it behind him.
Great… she was actually being held hostage by the Joker. This was really happening.
She tried to hear what was going on in the next room, but aside from some indistinct mumbling, she couldn't gather anything of importance.
She considered her options.
Option #1… she could try and break out and run. She tested her wrists and ankles against the tape and rope attaching them to the chair and sighed in frustration. The holdings were tight and would be almost impossible to break out of. Almost.
Option #2 was to… well… wait it out and hope she survived. All of Gotham was looking for her now... Batman was looking for her. Even knowing this though, she still didn't have much confidence that she would be found in this room.
She struggled again against the tape on her arms, pulling her elbows away from each other with as much force as she could to try and get the tape to break. The chair screeched loudly against the floor and she froze. The seconds came and went slowly until she finally felt like she could breathe again. Either no one had heard the noise, or they didn't care.
She sighed. Why should they care? Even if she had managed to get out of the damned chair there was no way that she alone could get past the Joker and all the men in the next room.
Even so, one thing was for sure... she couldn't just sit there and do nothing.
She continued her attempt to free herself with little results and a half hour later she was still sitting in the chair with her limbs aching and feeling even more exhausted than she had been when she started.
She gave her arms another vicious tug, more out of anger than a belief that it would do anything, but a miracle occurred; the tape snapped. She let out a deep breath and a tiny smile formed on her lips. Blood seeped back into her mouth from the punches she received earlier and served as a cruel reminder of the situation she was in and how much worse it could get.
She got to work on the rope tying her hands behind her back, which luckily seemed to have loosened a bit from when they were first tied at the cafe. After a few minutes that felt like hours, she had managed to shimmy one hand out of the rope and the remainder slipped off her other wrist and joined bits of tape on the ground. She ripped off the tape on her ankles, not really believing that she had been able to get out of her restraints.
She knew better than to get excited though… an uneasy feeling seeped into her stomach as she went to the boarded up window and took a peek through one of the gaps in the wood. Her stomach dropped when she saw how high up the room was. She had to be at least twenty floors up from the ground level.
Adrenaline rushed through her. She didn't have much time. It had taken long enough to get out of the chair and she knew the someone could come in at any minute. Her eyes wandered to the door that no one had been exiting or entering out of. Opening it revealed only an old bathroom.
A crash from the next room sent her moving and she crouched down to the tripod the Joker had kicked into the corner, twisting out one of its legs so she held a heavy metal pole in her hand.
The door opened from across the room and the Joker's humming preceded him. When he closed the door behind him his eyes went to the chair, then to Skyler standing in the corner with the metal pole held up like a baseball bat.
His eyes flashed.
"Not a smart move girlie... tell me… what were you gonna do now that you're out of the chair, huh? What was your grand plan?"
She gave him a small defiant smile and raised an eyebrow, trying to appear somewhat put together despite the fact that she now knew that she was fucked.
"Would it have been smarter to just let you torture me in the chair?"
His lips spread wide across his cheeks but his smile didn't reach his eyes.
"Torture… torture, huh?"
His hand reached inside his jacket and he pulled out a small knife.
"Ya know. I wasn't even considering it.. but, uh, since you clearly know aaaall about how I do things, I wouldn't want to let you down."
His tongue lashed out against the side of his lip and his eyes flashed darkly as he flipped open his blade and lunged at her. A scream erupted from her but she brought the pole down hard on his shoulder, distracting him long enough to narrowly duck past him and run to the opposite side of the room.
"Ohohoh…. You really shouldn't have done that."
His face turned murderous and she flung herself out into the other room and straight into his mob of goons watching tv. A bald one in the center of the couch eating popcorn stopped mid-chew.
All their gazes shifted towards Skyler at the same time. The looks in their eyes resembled dumbfounded dogs but they soon transformed into hungry wolves.
Then the shouting began as all of a sudden they started lunging to their feet. She whacked the nearest man with the pole, hard, resulting in a loud, "I'm going to kill you, you fucking slut!" before taking off running again.
She was almost to the door when one of the biggest men she had ever seen stepped in front of her and slammed her body to the ground hard. Her breath escaped her at the impact and she couldn't move, it felt like thousands of sharp, tiny knives were shooting throughout her entire body.
Then, she heard his laughter and her blood ran cold.
His footsteps reverberated through her school as he slowly walked towards her and crouched over her. He pinned her down with his legs, looking down at her from up above like she was an exotic animal in a zoo. His eyes glimmered.
"Ya know, I'm all for playing games. But-ah I can guarantee that what I find to be fun you probably won't like quite as much."
He brought his knife up to her face and slipped it a fraction of the way between her lips. The blade nicked her tongue slightly and filled her mouth with the feeling of the cool metal and the metallic taste of her own blood. Her eyes flickered to his scars and she whimpered, suspecting what he was going to do.
"It's curious; you just can't seem to stop looking at my scars." He licked them again for emphasis and smiled. "Do they scare you? Hmmm? You, uh, you want to know how I got 'em?" His voice dropped to a gravelly whisper as he pushed the knife into the corner of her mouth. She squeezed her eyes shut in anticipation and her body went numb as white-hot panic coursed through her. Blood filled her mouth and fear like she had never known lit a fire in her veins so fierce she almost blacked out. She felt like she could die right then. Then, he pulled his knife out.
He playfully slapped her other cheek and she opened her eyes only to find his dark orbs staring down at her cheek where the knife had been. With his still gloved hand, he smeared a drop of her blood across her cheek in an upward curve.
"It would be a shame to ruin such a pretty face before the big event but if you try running away again… I'll tell you a joke so funny you'll be smiling even after your death."
He chuckled a little at himself as he got off of her. Her body instinctively curled into a defensive ball.
He sighed, in exasperation and grabbed her by the shoulders, lifting her up.
"Now, it looks like we're gonna be shaking things up a bit."
He shook her shoulders before lifting her roughly into his arms, resulting in his painted face being only inches away from hers.
"Since I can't trust you to be smart and not try to escape again… it looks like you'll be staying with me."
He wiggled his eyebrows and smiled at her before dragging her across the room and opening a door. A second later she was thrown onto a bed.
Her mind was jumbled, and every part of her body was screaming with pain from all the events of the last few days. She tried to hang on to the world around her but it slipped through her grasp. The last thing she remembered was her face up against a greasepaint covered pillow.