Chapter Fifteen

Jessica stepped out of the elevator onto the Eighth Floor to a room shrouded in austerity. The walls were completely black with nothing hanging on them, and a simple wooden chair without any decoration stood in the middle of the room. The wood floors didn't have a shine of any type. A quaint little shrine of Buddha set in the west end of the room with a white mask with a black tear drop under the right eye. She repeatedly asked herself if she came to the right place.

"This isn't the Joker's lair," she said in a soft voice.

Jamie walked over to the Buddha, grabbed the mask, and gave it to Dennis. He looked at her, and then said, "Thank you, dear." He placed the mask on his face, and let out an pernicious laugh that startled Jessica.

"It fits you perfectly, my liege," Jamie said with a wicked smile on her face.

Jessica's eyes grew wide as she watched the way Dennis and Jamie interacted like old pals. "You duped me!"

"Welcome to my fortress," Cornelius's said. He pulled off his suit, and he looked like nothing more than a bag of bones. "Did you come to kill poor old Cornelius, Jessica?" He asked laughingly. She couldn't read his face or see his hideous scar with the mask. "Why do you care about those retched sewer people?"

She walked near the fireplace, and put her hand on the wall. It was hard for her to comprehend that the leader of the Jokers was nothing but a frail, diminutive man about the size of a baby fawn. "You murdered innocent children."

He laughed.

Jamie placed her hands on his shoulders, and then played with his woolly hair. "Let's just kill her?" She asked softly.

"Not so fast," Cornelius said, "Not until she tells me why she cares."

"'Cause they're innocent," she said in a stern voice. "What makes you better?"

Cornelius's pulled a small bag out of his shirt pocket. Jamie walked into a small room in the rear, and came back with a glass of water. He took several of the pills, and then popped a few into Jamie's mouth.

"This is a drug called Pump," he said, "It'll pump you up." He giggled. Bowing his head, he looked as if he was concentrating, and then his veins poked out of his head. He grew into a massive creature with muscles everywhere. His shoes popped off his feet, and he kicked them across the room.

Jessica didn't let his grotesque appearance startle her; but when Jamie turned into a seven foot creature with muscles just as big as Cornelius's muscles, she thought she may not have enough speed, strength, and agility to fight both monsters.

"Get her," Cornelius screamed.

Jamie ran across the room, swung violently at Jessica, but missed her both times. When Jamie struck the wall, she tore a hole in it—sheet rock flew into the air like it exploded. Cornelius hopped up and down like a little kid, and screamed at the top of his lungs. Jamie tried to kick Jessica, but the young Titan was too agile; she rolled out-of-the-way without any problems. Jessica hit the monster with a right fist to her left rib cage. The monster flew into the wall.

Jessica walked over to Cornelius with a grimace on her face. She slowly walked around him in order to see what he might do, but she couldn't see his facial expressions because of the mask. He hummed in a low voice, but she couldn't decipher the tune. She could see his eyes through the mask following her closely. When she walked behind him the second time, he took the chair, and slammed it into her back. She slid across the wooden floor, and screamed in agony. Holding her back with an angry scowl on her face, she slowly stood to her feet. She stuck out her right hand, and the glove appeared like magic.

"What's that?" Cornelius asked. Walking towards her with a nasty look on his face, he tried to grab her, but she side stepped him. She grabbed him by the left arm with her gloved hand.

"Show me your pain," she said with a soft voice. Mesmerized, he stood in front of her with a look of fear on his face, and then he fell to his knees. After letting go of his hands, he placed his head in his hands, and wept loudly. Without warning, he slowly morphed into his smaller self, and sobbed loudly.

"I killed her," he said. He pulled a picture of Tara Jones, the girl he once dated, out of his pocket, placed it on the ground in front of him, and said, "She used me to make her boyfriend jealous." His sobs turned to a bitter laughter, and then he started to cry again. "I put my gun to her heart, pulled the trigger, and watched her take her last breath."

"Let me know your pain?" She asked.

"I was only a boy, a teenager with a distorted face, a sordid history, and blood on my hands. My sad life made the front pages of every tablet PC in Gotham City. Sewer Urchin murders influential businessman was the headlines; but when my case graced the halls of the city's court system, the elite ensured I wouldn't be convicted, as long as I didn't snitch. After the sham of a trial, the Libertines shuttled me to Metro City, put me up in a nice hotel with all the amenities, and gave me an enormous amount of money. It was more cash than I knew what to do with, and it came every month.

Since I was still a teenager, I attended Metro City High in order to get my high school diploma. The school had a lot of meta freaks too, but it didn't bother me. The majority of kids didn't have one superpower, and it was easy for me to blend in with them. Of course they asked repeated questions about the scar on my neck; so, I started purchasing sweaters in order to conceal my sin. I probably was in town no longer than two months when I first saw Tara in the school's library. She wore her hair in a ponytail, and had soft, smooth brown skin about the color of a pecan. Her beauty was subtle. It didn't scream from across the room; but when she opened her mouth, her innocent voice forced her inner beauty to the surface. The jock that sat across from her was Derrick Burk, a star football player, rapist, and possibly a meta freak.

When she tried to leave, Derrick grabbed her by the arm, and said, "Where the hell you going?" I saw her struggling to get away from the brute, but he was far too strong. Without thinking, I walked up to the jock, tapped him on the shoulder, and struck him in the stomach with repeated blows.

'What the f...?' He screamed. He fell to the ground, and I kicked him repeatedly. Tara grabbed me by the arm, and we ran out of the library.

'Never seen anybody fight like that,' she said sheepishly. I instinctively tried to hide the scar on my neck, even though I had on a turtle neck shirt. I thought the ruckus with Derrick might have exposed my sin. The scar was hideous. I don't think anybody ever talked to me in those days without focusing on my sin.

'Just didn't want him hurting you,' I said. I grabbed the top of my turtleneck sweater to ensure it covered my scar.

'I know you have that scar," she said. She rolled the top of the sweater down a bit. 'Everybody has scars. Not all of them are on the surface, though.'

The daylight wore increasingly thin, and I felt a bit overbearing in my approach to get to know her. She kept telling me that it was getting late, but I didn't want to let her go. Her soft spoken voice made me want to protect her from anything that might harm her. The dark, ominous clouds crept into Metro City on that night, and the snow fell forcefully to the ground. I held out my hand to capture some of the fluffy stuff, and then I said, 'See you later?'

She smiled sheepishly, and waved goodbye.

I don't know why my face turned bright red with joy because a pretty girl like Tara noticed me, but not in a deviant manner. I knew the lustful heart of a man's unwarranted touch, but I never felt the love of a woman. I knew so much about the evilness that had woven its way through Gotham's underbelly, but I didn't know anything about the love of a woman.

The walk home went by so fast because Tara's voice replayed over and over in my mind, and I couldn't hardly sleep that night because of it. The next morning I rushed out of the house in order to meet up with her at school, but I couldn't find her. The other students crowded into the gymnasium in order to escape the deep snow, but I didn't see Tara. My eyes stayed on the main entrance to ensure I didn't miss her. And about when I lost wind for the moment, I felt a set of hands cover my eyes, and asked, 'Guess who?'

I turned to see Tara, and for some reason I felt relieved to know that she wasn't trying to avoid me.

'We're eating lunch together, right?' She asked with a huge grin on her face.

Everything appeared to move so fast in my mind that I could barely enjoy the moment. I took a deep breath, and softly said, 'Sure.' I felt a warm feeling that encompassed every portion of my body. For the first time, my sin wasn't standing in the way of me being me, like it did so many times since I had arrived to Metro City. She stood in front of me grinning, and gave me a warm and enduring hug.

'See you at lunch?'

'Yeah.'

I trotted off to my first class, which was Algebra, and tried to collect my scattered thoughts. So many bad, unmanageable memories of Gotham's underbelly plagued my every waking moment, and I didn't want my life as a sewer urchin to sully my relationship with Tara. A panicky feeling overwhelmed me for a short period because I swam in a sea of insecurities. Tara had to be one of the prettiest girls in the school, and I had her attention. What if it was all some big game, a sham? I asked myself that question every time a happy thought crossed my mind. The only thing I could do to settle my jittery nerves was to take some muscle relaxers that I purchased a few days earlier at Chong's.

The clock became the bane of my existences during the last period right before lunch, because it moved slower than ever before, and lunch couldn't come fast enough for me. But when the bell sounded, I darted out of the classroom, and raced down the hallway to the cafeteria. It teemed with tons of people talking and eating and playing—and even fighting. Tara sat in the middle of the room with a group of well-dressed young women from the upper middle class of town. They snarled at me, but Tara quickly grabbed me by the arm, and walked with me down the hallway. I could hear her friends snickering as we walked away.

'Don't mind those idiots,' she said with a giggle.

'Okay,' I said, 'Where are you taking me?'

Before she could answer, I felt a fist strike me in the back of the head, and I fell face first to the ground. After that, I didn't remember anything, but I awoke in a hospital bed with an IV drip in my right arm. The room looked bare: no television or any amenities. Confused, I asked the nurse how long I had been in the hospital, and she smiled, and said, 'Let me get the doc, okay?"

When the doctor entered the room, he said, 'Son, you've been in a coma for two months.'

It didn't take me long to realize that Tara's ex, Derrick, attacked me, and put me in the hospital. I had lost nearly twenty pounds off my thin frame. I tried to climb out of bed, but it was useless. I didn't have the strength to stand to my feet. Every time I made an attempt to rise to my wobbly feet, I fell back down on the bed. Frustrated, I hopped to my feet one more time, and stood erect for approximately ten seconds before I fell to the floor. Angered, I beat my fist against the cold floor, and prayed for death. The nurse came back into the room, and helped me into the bed.

After several more weeks of physical therapy, I left the hospital a little wiser, a little stronger, and a lot angrier. On many levels, I felt a change inside of me, an anger that I never felt in my life. Tara never visited me once, but that was okay. It wasn't like she was my girlfriend. When I returned to my flat, I realized that it looked cluttered. I no longer had a use for all the extra junk in my life. I wanted an austere looking apartment, prosaic. A man didn't need anything more than a bed, a chair, and a good book in his home; and anything more than that, I thought was a crime against nature.

When I went to the library to return my past do books, I saw Tara and Derrick sitting at the table in the back of the room. I overheard her say, 'I was only using Dennis to make you jealous. You didn't have to kill him.' She laughed a little, and then said, 'Well, he was a loser anyway."

Her words tore through my soul, and I rushed out the library before she had the chance to detect me. During my rehabilitation, I repeatedly told myself to decathect from her, but I couldn't. And by the time I made it back to my flat, I felt nothing but antipathy for her. The same love that I carried in my heart for her turned bitter like old milk, and now I wanted to cull her from the planet. I had a hard time dealing with the fact that she was once my buttress, and that it was nothing more than a farce, a way to make Derrick jealous. I grabbed my pistol from underneath my mattress, took a long look in the mirror, and then headed out the front door. Repeatedly, I played shooting Derrick and Tara in the face, and watching them as they died in front of me. The restive feeling that overtook my body forced me to run down the narrow street to the library.

The sun had set, and it was pitch black outside, but still early enough for moderate activity in front of the library. Some of the young kids made a snowman, and used an actual carrot for its nose. Three kids stood in front of the snow man admiring their work; but when I walked past it, I knocked it over without thinking. When the kids complained, I showed them my pistol, and they ran. I wanted to be menacing because of the void that I felt on the inside.

The front door to the library slid open, and the couple walked out holding each other like lovers, and I crept up behind them. Pulling the gun out of my coat pocket, I pointed it to Tara's head. Derrick turned to face, but it was too late. I fired three rounds into his forehead, and he flew into the middle of the street. Tara slowly backed up, and started to scream loudly.

'What did you do?' She asked with a look of fear on her face.

I pointed the snub nose weapon to her chest, and she fell to her knees crying. I kicked her to the ground, stood over, and shot her in the chest. I blew out her heart. The way she blew out mine."

Jessica picked up the mask miscreant by the shirt collar, tossed him across the room, and he slid into his image of Buddha, and the ceramic god broke into a thousand pieces. "You kill so easily," Jessica said with a grimace on her face. She quickly walked over to him, and said, "I'd kill you myself if it wouldn't damage my soul."