The Descent

Chapter 1: Picture of a Pink Unicorn

There's always this burning question I asked, every time I flipped through a comic book, 'what's exactly going through the mind of a superhero when the shit hits the fan'? What exactly happens to Bruce Wayne when his parents were killed? Or how about when Rachel was blown up? Sure, we'd get the words and carefully drawn sad face off a page, or a good Bale performance, but what were they really thinking? Feeling?

After almost two decades, I guess my questions were finally answered. The biggest part about being a superhero, as it turns out, wasn't the flashy weapons, or the team-ups, or the cool factors. It was all in the head, how much pain you could take inside and keep going. It's all the difference between Batman and Two-Face, and I found that out the hard way.

8 months ago…

"Kill me! KILL ME, cunts! Kill me!" A rather young, but foul-mouthed voice screamed, her voice cracking from dryness, losing even more innocence than it already did, if that was even possible anymore. On the television screen, a girl not even 12 years of age was, with great difficulty, being stuffed into a straitjacket by four burly men, the best in their fields. Yet, they were having trouble, as the kid was continually tearing herself away from the straitjacket just as they were about to secure it.

As they finally pulled a strap over her flat, prepubescent chest and locked it, she delivered a precise kick at one of the orderlies, right in the throat. He stumbled back, his eyes wider than normally thought possible, as he struggled to breathe. Leaning on a wall, he slid down, fell unconscious, "I'll fuck you up! All of you! Fucking fuck all of you!" She was screaming between threats, panting like an athlete on shots.

Another strap came in place, and then another. What looked like the devil's daughter was finally in control. Another of the orderlies took out a syringe, plunged it into a bottle containing a clear fluid, and sucked it all out. After knocking it and testing the plunger, he leaned in, near the girl's head, so that he could find a vein on her neck.

Despite his size and muscles, he was near-sighted, and preferred to be safe, which was when a surprise head-butt knocked him back. The girl was struggling against her restraints, growling and screaming like a possessed case, but another orderly took over, and stabbed the syringe in her neck, injecting the clear fluid. The girl screamed, and her high-pitched voice actually had the orderlies covering their ears.

I could still hear the screams, even after the television in Doctor Paul's office was turned off. Couldn't help but to lean forward, cover my eyes. I could still see her contorted face as she was trying to get out, trying to kill everyone and get even with me. The darkness my hands gave me didn't help. Instead, it made the scene even clearer. It was even worse than the scenes from The Exorcists. This was real, that one wasn't, "Oh God… Jesus, no." I couldn't help but to let a few tears crawl – it certainly wasn't superman from a comic book page we're talking about, it was the same girl who saved my life back at D'Amico's, the same girl who started feeling like a sister after that.

She was even worse than a shadow of her former self. From the video recording, I could see her pallid face, yellowish in some parts, her hair messy. I saw the whitish slits on her arms, not exactly scars, but they will remain there for years to come, and even longer in her mind, in all of ours'. She wasn't herself. She looked so thin and frail, yet she was somehow still able to fight off men five times her size. It was frightening to me even when it shouldn't have been.

"Is there anything else I could do? To help?" I was swallowing saliva like cups of water, I wasn't sure what else to say, what else to do. It was no longer my arena. It wasn't about crimefighting any longer, not that I was that good to begin with. For months, I had been filling out questionaires, writing reports the size of essays, as long as I could possibly make them. It was a good way to make me feel helpless and worthless, after all, what I knew about her case made it worse. I made it worse, I started it all, "And please… Something more than papers, anything."

My voice was quivering, I couldn't help it. I hated it, I wanted to be strong for her, but I couldn't. It was that hard I suppose – Well, that's another level of badassness for those superheroes I've been reading. An epiphany at the wrong time.

"Yeah, well, okay." Dr. Paul was flipping through his clipboards. I could tell that he, too, was a little taxed. The beads of sweat on his forehead, and his shivering fingers were all tell-tale signs that he had met his match. It didn't help my own confidence, "She's been a little quiet for the past couple days. She was usually swearing and beating people up. There's one thing you could do. Please, come with me."

The psychiatrist led me out of his office, through white, spotless corridors that managed to irk me. Hey, the cleaner it is, the more shitty the place actually is, but as far as asylums go, it wasn't something that could run me out. I was used to it since the beginning, I had to be, for her, "I believe a little bit of positive stimuli could be beneficial to her mentally. I believe you are the positive stimuli. After all, if your reports hold true, you are what stopped her where half the police force and mafia didn't."

We went through the low security zone, and like any movies about asylums, and definitely not Arkham Asylum, there were patients milling about, playing card games, reading, watching televisions or zoning out, supervised by orderlies. I was hoping to see her there, but none of the patients were even remotely her size.

Instead, we ended up in the maximum security area, right past the high security zone, where the worst cases were held. There were a lot of orderlies, four in a checkpoint, a few others standing by these huge steel doors. There were even a few security guards present, and they weren't just packing tasers or batons like the orderlies.

"Hey Paul." One of the guards greeted my psychiatrist as they let us through. Inside, we were flanked by four orderlies and a guard. Even then, I couldn't help but still feel unsafe. I was trying hard to beat out that fear like fire. I owed it to her. Passing by doors, I couldn't help but to look in, hoping to see her in one of them. All I saw were men or women, all mumbling crazy things, or sitting still, too still. One of them was frantically writing giant letters on pieces of paper that I didn't feel like reading.

"Here we are. Indeed." The doctor said as he nodded to the guard escorting us. The four orderlies got ready. I could see sweat everywhere, just pouring. I tried hard not to, "I want you to talk to her, try to get her to communicate. Okay? Good. Alright, outstanding."

I looked in, but I didn't want to see. Instead, I forced my eyes close, drew back. I wanted to wait, hope against hope for any good surprises. The guard was still fumbling around with his keys, and my heart was thumping, hoping that she would remain docile even as I entered the cell. It took a while as I waited in the rather stereotypically dark corridor, but the guard managed to get the heavy steel door into her room to open with a very loud series of clicks. It felt like facing some final boss, for some reason. I entered the room, which was actually quite spacious, followed by everyone else. There were seven of us.

Inside was her, sitting on the floor, wearing a kid-sized patient's gown, facing away from me, facing a wall. She was working on something with soft-looking crayons, I couldn't see what. The Doctor nodded to me as he held his clipboard up, ready to jot down notes. I took a step. Another. Trying to be cautious. Took a deep breath, and released. I came closer, trying to be as casual as possible.

"Mindy?" I whispered, trying to be as little as possible, to be her size. I figured that it was somehow the tactful way, even knowing full well how she was like even before she even tried to kill me. She seemed far more vulnerable, far smaller, "It's me, Dave…" She continued drawing away with her crayons. Looking at the crayon case, I noticed that the red one was missing. It was as if she didn't notice me.

"Mindy, hey…" I whispered more, put a hand on her shoulder. I could hear feet shuffling back as everyone else were doing the smart thing. After another moment of colouring with crayons, she finally turned around. At least I got to see her face clearly. It was thin, like nothing I remembered. I could see her cheekbones, rounded and young. At first, I was a little taken aback, but as I noticed she wasn't regarding me with the look of out-of-place hatred in her child's eyes, I could feel a little warmth inside – things might work itself out after all.

"Do you like my drawing?" Mindy said mildly, her voice weak. I took in every word. In her shivering hand, she held up a drawing block, A3 sized. There was a drawing of a unicorn, the kind you'd find lining a toy store or even Youtube. It was better drawn than most – could be the byproduct of her past training with Big Daddy, or maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe she's just older.

The unicorn itself was pink and white in colour. There was a forest in the background, with oddly shaped trees green and yellow in colour and the ground, dirty brown. The trees had balloon-like bulges in the middle, and their branches were all the same, four facing diagonally upwards and outward. Funnily enough, the base of the tree trunks were thinner than the top. The sky was blue with white fluffy clouds.

"It's beautiful." I couldn't help but to smile. I couldn't help but to smile wide. It felt like a magical moment, one that will start us off well after all. Then I saw amongst the green and blue of the background, the unicorn's horn wasn't coloured, "Oh, you missed that spot, Mindy." She smiled back, and went back to hiding her paper and getting to work colouring. When she was done, she held the picture up again.

"Beauti-" She was holding it wrong, upside down. Somehow, the picture she was drawing had changed. The unicorn's smiley face was turned into a frown. The trees in the background weren't trees anymore, but somehow resembled a lot of Kick-Asses with a noose around the neck – the yellow did seem out of place. She coloured the unicorn's horn red.

Immediately, she lunged at me, managed to knock me over and get on top of me, trying to stab me in the eye with her red crayon, which she had sharpened from drawing. Before I know it, I was getting the Demoness treatment again, and boy did I took it well as things descent into violence. Wheezing from fear and shock, my hands locked on her wrists, I was trying to get the red crayon as far away from my eyes as possible. She was weaker than her former self, and yet she was winning.

And just when I thought the shock was over and done with, she sunk her teeth into my shoulder. I was wearing a jacket over T-shirt, and yet I could feel her teeth underneath. As if knowing what will happen, the orderlies came forward, trying to get her off me. While I was crying my lungs out, she was latched onto my shoulder like a rabid dog. Again, it took four orderlies, PLUS a guard and psychiatrist to wrench her off, and before they could hold her down, her sharpened red crayon had found its way into an orderly's right eye. The only thing I could only be glad about was that I wasn't the one who needed a pirate patch.

The last thing I saw was one of the orderlies plunging another syringe into her, this time into her arm, as the guard took me away. He had to drag me, as I was screaming for Mindy, crying. My legs felt like superman's after a blast of Lex's Kryptonite. That was the last time I saw her eight months ago, and heard of her, getting strapped into bed as she was yelling for me to die. Sure, Doctor Paul did contact me once in a while, gave me the usual bad news, and even that stopped after a while. Mindy was still Demoness, that eight months ago.

If only that was the only bad thing going on. A few months before this, Mindy's adoptive father, Sergeant Marcus Williams of the New York Police Department, died of complications. He survived getting peppered by Demoness' bullets, he survived surgery, only to lapse into coma and quietly slip away. No heroic speeches, no last hugs and kisses. Another stab by reality. Big Daddy had a chance to talk to Mindy, but no, not Marcus.

Even if Mindy got out of Paul's asylum someday, what would I tell her? That she killed her own dad? It was a question I asked myself every day, every morning and every time before I go to bed. Sure, Peter Parker did lose Uncle Ben, but at least he wasn't the thug who pulled the trigger. I bet he'd completely lose his shit and mind if he found out he was the one who shot Uncle Ben to death all along. Thankfully, telling Mindy about Bid Daddy and Marcus wasn't something I had to do, at least not in the next eight months or so.

Present…

"So bloody weak. So full of shit." A juvenile but hateful voice spat. I didn't know who it was, I couldn't see, "No surprise you were stabbed and knocked down by a car."

"Fuck you!" Somehow, I knew the lines, like reading off a high school play script. It came out of my mouth without my control.

"No surprise your 'friends' suffered from your fuck-ups." The voice continued, unfazed by profanity – it was profanity incarnate itself.

"Once a loser, always a loser." I could see an figure-8 mask and a set of steel teeth coming in closer, floating towards me. The teeth were moving, talking, "Just an idiot in a giant, blue condom."

"Let me end your suffering..." Slowly, the rest of Demoness came into shape, her albino features, white as snow, irises red as blood, came into being. She was in a black and silver costume, had a Katana, aimed downwards at me. And she brought it down upon me, the blade sliding past my Kevlar vest – I was wearing one? Into my chest and through my heart, each pump of blood harder and more painful with the red hot iron coming through.

Pain reverberated throughout my body as I stared into her mouth, smiling, smiling hard like a kid's mouth during her birthday party, except this wasn't a birthday party. My heart continued to beat in defiance, each pump hurting more than the next, sounding more and more like an alarm ringing each time – Ringing towards what?

It got louder, and louder, my heart in pain. Instinctually, I reached out with my hand… And muted an alarm clock. My bed creaked with my body. It was a nightmare I was used to. In the beginning, I was bolting up from bed just like in the movies, but these days, it was just like in I Am Legend.

But there was still ringing, and it sounded different from an alarm clock. Vibrations to the tune of a Batman theme song, which I couldn't remember the generation of as I was still fighting off grogginess. It took me a few seconds to figure out that it was the phone on my desk. Brushing past my literature textbooks and comics, I got up, just barely, feeling a little lousy as it was Monday. After stopping my night life as Kick-Ass, the Monday blues'd become a reality once again, creeping back, reminding me that I'd gone from hero to zero once again. It was still something I'd yet get used to.

"Uhh…." I was still groggy, pinching my nose, almost regretting the previous night spent stoning behind my television, watching reruns of Lost, trying to put a cover over the past, distract myself, forcing myself to forget that I was ever a man in a green condom, "Hello?"

"Hello, hi, good morning." A somewhat familiar voice boomed through my cellphone, on the highest volume. As I was still stuck on trying to remember which generation's Batman theme song was on my cellphone, I couldn't figure out who it was at the moment, "This is Doctor Paul, head psychiatrist of the Jameson Psychiatry Institute." The name woke me up just about, there and then.

"Yeah, Dave Lizewski!" I shouted into the phone, unable to contain the strange mixture of excitement and anxiety within me, of hope and fear fighting one another "Is this about…"

"Yes, it is."