Nightmare in Arkham
Chapter 24: "The Poisoned" (Part 2)
-Poison Ivy slowly walked through the night in a trance like state. She had no knowledge of where she was or what she was doing. For it was not her own will that was driving her, but the memory and data stored within the dormant part of her brain. After the doctor's harsh words had entered Ivy's head, they seemed to poison her subconscious.
-It was these words that seemed to trigger the response that forced her to get out her bed, slip through her window, and begin her zombified journey along the path of which the blueprints that mapped "to" and "from" had been stored within Ivy's head. And this path was leading her straight back to Robinson Park.
While Ivy walked blindly in the waking world toward her pre-determined destination, Alice moved swiftly but aimlessly through the dream world as she ran for her life down a narrow sewer tunnel with Gourmand hot on her trail. She had tried multiple times to hit him with her Bug Zapper but it had finally started to run low on juice.
-Alice had thus far evaded Gourmand in the zigzag twists and turns of the sewers (as a crocodile, Gourmand had severe difficulty making sharp turns while giving chase) but Alice inevitably started to tire and before long she had reached a dead end.
-She turned around, panting heavily, and saw the monstrous creature closing the distance between them, its mouth gaping in preparation to consume its morsel.
-Alice backed up against the wall, making one last attempt with her weapon but all she got was a miniscule spark. The reptilian monster closed on her as she began to prepare for her death when suddenly the concrete wall on her right side burst open as something large smashed its way through.
-Gourmand froze in his tracks at the sudden appearance of Bane, who now stood between him and his quarry.
-Bane looked about his surroundings to see where he had bashed his way into and the first thing he saw was Gourmand, who hissed at him menacingly. Then he looked to his left and saw Alice on the ground starring at him with a startled gaze.
-"Dr. Johnson, go. Flee while you can," he said to her, then he turned his attention over to Gourmand, "I will hold off the reptile."
-Alice opened her mouth in attempt to protest but couldn't get the words out. Eventually she rose to her feet and started making her down the passage Bane had made. Before she got too far, she stopped and turned around and said to Bane, "Please, be careful Dorrance."
-"Please do not address me by that name. That was my prison name," then he narrowed his eyes on Gourmand, who was getting ready to pounce, and said proudly, "I am Bane, as this monstrosity will soon discover."
-Gourmand lunged at Bane, letting out a ravenous growl, and Bane grabbed the huge animal as it slammed him against the wall. As the two titans battled, Alice ran down the collapsed corridor, taking care not to scratch herself on any of the shards of rubble or steel that lined the walls and ceiling of the tunnel. When she reached the end, she gave one final look over her shoulder and saw Bane throw Gourmand off of him before rushing him. Alice continued onward.
MEANWHILE…
-Victor Fries woke up in a completely dark environment that was ice cold and so dense that he could barely move his arms or legs. He tried to sit up but when he lifted his hands they almost immediately touched the ceiling of whatever he was inside of.
-Victor began screaming, certain that he had been buried alive. As he banged on the roof of his alleged coffin, a hard force jerked the coffin forward and Victor saw that he was actually in so kind of cupboard. When he looked at his surroundings, it looked as if he were inside of a morgue.
-The room was so cold that he could see his breath as the air escaped his lungs. The walls were frozen under a sheet of dense ice. And, lining the wall from which Victor studied his environment, were rows of cold chambers for which dead bodies were usually kept.
-"But…but I'm alive," Victor said to himself in disbelief of his predicament. He quickly stepped out of the storage cupboard and it slowly closed.
-Victor turned around and noticed on the far side of the room what appeared to be another storage container. He walked closer to it and he soon recognized it as, not a container for stashing cadavers, but as one for temporarily freezing living begins until a they could be cured of an aliment. It was a cryopreservation chamber. And as Victor approached it he saw something written on the top of it that he could not decipher due to the ice covering it. He gently wiped away the frozen patch and could now clearly see the inscription: "Property of GothCorp". Victor gasped and backed away.
-"Property", "Property", that's what the wretched monster who took her referred to her as: "His property". She was nothing more than a toy to him, a lifeless doll that he could either use as a means to make profits or to use as his personal plaything. An anger began to well up inside of Victor's mind that made his head feel as if it were burning. Ferris Boyle's words were circling, echoing in his head until Victor unleashed a loud cry of pain and rage. He dropped to his knees and slammed his fist on the ground.
-As he lay down on his hands and knees breathing heavily, he heard something roll across the floor. He opened his eyes as his snow globe came to a rest directly beneath his face. Victor picked up the tiny sphere and examined it. He was puzzled when he saw that the young, beautiful blonde woman that reminded him so much of his wife was now absent from the globe.
-Victor starred blankly at the empty treasure for a few moments before rising to his feet, his eyes still fixed on the snow globe. As he lifted his head, he saw through the transparent glass of the snow globe an image of Nora.
-Victor gasped and covered his eyes thinking his mind was playing tricks on him. "No! No! Be gone specter! Do not haunt me! I cannot bare it!"
-He slowly turned back, expecting the vision of Nora to have vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Instead, it now stood directly in front of him.
-Nora's sun blonde hair hung down past her shoulders, her lips were as pink as a fresh blossom on a Spring day, her white dress gave off a bright glow that lit the dark passageway in which Victor stood.
-Victor's mouth hung open in a dumbfounded gape, unable to speak. He slowly raised a hand and gently placed it on Nora's pale cheek. Victor couldn't believe it, it was really her!
-Then, for the first time in what felt like an eternity, Nora opened her eyes. The soft, blue irises meeting the cold, frozen eyes of her long lost husband. A tear fell from Victor's eye.
-Nora's hand slowly rose and rested on the hand that her husband still held pressed to her cheek. And then Nora smiled at her husband.
-Tears began to pour from Victor's eyes as he gazed at the most angelic image he had seen years. And then, Nora's body changed.
-The image of the woman Victor loved so disappeared to be replaced by a mass of glowing white light.
-Victor was startled. "Nora? Nora?!" He called out.
-The white light began to move out of the room and down a narrow passage. Victor raced after it.
-Although the light moved about as slowly as a ghost aimlessly floating through a haunted house, Victor still found it difficult to keep up with it. Every time he would turn a corner the light would already be down one ahead of him.
-As Victor continued to follow the apparition of his beloved wife, the glow cast by her light revealed a macabre scene on the walls as he past them. On both sides of the halls stood a line of display cases that had animals, objects, and even people who were either frozen or stuffed and put on display like hunting trophies.
-There was a copy of The Looking Glass that sat next to a horribly decomposed headin one case. In another was a pair of severed lips that hung alongside two stuffed hyenas. There were two massive alligators with a broken neck and back hanging from the ceiling. There was a cat with four slash marks running down one side of its body. There was also an entire line of horribly burned cadavers that looked like they were young teens. A severed nose sat alone in a cubic display case. But the most horrid display was yet to come.
-As Victor carried on, he began to see trophies and displays of….children. Children with eyes cut out, children with skin torn from their bodies, burned children, skeletal children, beheaded children, there were at least 20 of them, most of which were hanging from the ceiling by chains.
-"What sort of un-Godly place is this?" Victor asked terrified. He began to think that maybe he really was dead and this was Hell. And then Victor caught sight of something that lay past the jungle of corpses: A large door with a neon lit sign that said "My Crown Jewel".
-He starred at the door in silence before slowly approaching it. As he passed the dead children, one of their arms seemed to reach up and grab Victor's shoulder. He screamed and tore away from the lifeless arm.
- Victor placed a hand on the door but before he could open it, he turned around we heard a noise that caused him to freeze.
-"One, two, Freddy's coming for you…" Victor looked around to find the source of the noise. Then he saw one of the heads of the dead children turn and stare at him before singing, "Three, four, better lock your door…"
-Then another child turned to him, a little girl with no eyes. "Five, six, grab your crucifix…". Then a severed head of a little boy picked up the next verse, "Seven, eight, better stay up late…". And then the song was concluded by one of the skeletal corpses, "Nine, ten, never sleep again."
-Then all of the corpses started singing in unison for a few moments while Victor stood frozen in sheer terror. Then, the door behind him burst open allowing a blinding light to flood the room.
-Victor had stepped through the door and beheld the "crown jewel": a display case within the Arkham cellblocks that showed Poison Ivy's deteriorated mind still balled up in the center with a red mist filling the case just as it had done with Barbara.
-It took him awhile to realize whom he was looking at because of the mist, but he eventually recognized the plant woman's silhouette.
-"Miss Ivy?" Victor called. Ivy did not respond, "Miss Ivy, can you hear me?" Still no response.
-Victor tried banging on the glass. Had he been in possession of his freeze suite, he could have shattered the glass with no effort. But the glass was ballistic, strong enough to repel bullets, and Victor's meek hands left little more than a smudge as he banged his fist on the glass trying to break it.
-Then he heard footsteps. He turned to his left and saw a figure slowly approaching. Victor focused his vision and as the figure drew nearer, he recognized Alice.
-"Dr. Johnson!"
-Alice shot her head forward. "Oh Victor, thank God!" She exclaimed running toward him.
-"Dr. Johnson, I need your help," Victor said with fear in his voice, "It's Miss Ivy; she's trapped in there," Victor said pointing to the cell.
-Alice immediately ran to the cell and peered inside. She saw Ivy but could not yet see the severity of the damage that had been done to her. Alice instructed Victor to stand back before she ran at the glass and kicked it as hard as she could.
In the waking world, Batman raced to Robinson Park. He knew that would be the one place Poison Ivy would return too; at least, that's what he hoped. He knew her plants had been destroyed but he also knew Ivy was not one to abandon a place she called home. Please Ivy, Batman thought to himself, Don't do anything stupid.
-Batman had arrived back at the storage shed he and Alice had discovered in the forest and he pulled up the floorboard and ran down the corridor.
-"Ivy!" Batman called out, "Ivy! Are you here?!" "Ivy, please! I want to help you!"
-Batman turned to a wall and noticed something peculiar on it: There were two pictures hung up that had been shot several times with mini arrows. One was a headshot of Batman, the other a headshot of Bruce Wayne.
Within the dream world, Alice had exhausted herself trying to break through the glass with no luck. As she was about to make another futile strike on the glass, she heard loud footsteps approaching. She and Victor turned around and saw a bloodied and battle-scarred but victorious Bane proudly walking toward them.
-"Bane!" Alice shouted, happy to see he was okay, "You made it!"
-Bane chuckled, "You had doubts that I would?" Then he held up his arm revealing a massive tooth embedded inside, "Little bastard got a lucky bite, but I doubt he'll ever have the same luck again…without his teeth," he said with a smile. Then he noticed Ivy trapped inside her cell.
-"Oh Dios mío!" Bane exclaimed.
-"We have to get her out of there," Victor said anxiously.
-"Stand aside," Bane instructed. He ran at the glass and slammed one of his gargantuan fists into it. The glass shattered to pieces and the red mist escaped out of the cell. Now able to see the physical damage that had befallen her, Victor, Bane, and Alice were horrified.
-My God, what has he done to her? Alice thought to herself. She ran to her and placed both of her hands on Ivy's shoulders as Ivy stayed in her fetal position with her head buried in her knees.
-"Ivy, can you hear me?" Alice asked, desperate for a response. "Ivy?" Alice shook Ivy but she wouldn't look up. But now Alice could hear Ivy's weeping.
-"Ivy?" Alice asked more determined now that she knew Ivy was alive.
-"It's gone," Ivy said through her crying, "Everything's gone."
-Alice looked confused, "Ivy…Ivy I don't-"
-Ivy's crying grew heavier as she replied, "I let her die"(sob)"I'm sorry, Harley. I'm so sorry."
-Alice was silent for a moment. Then she felt a lump in her throat. She swallowed and then slowly moved one of her hands to Ivy's discolored hair, gently stroking it. As Alice stroked away a strand of hair on Ivy's forehead, she noticed the bruise she had inflicted on her long ago. It had turned into a brown, devitalized blight. Alice closed her eyes and sighed with dismay.
-"No Ivy, you're wrong."
-Ivy was silent for a moment, then she slowly lifted her head up. Alice let out a silent gasp.
-Ivy had wept for so long that her tear ducts had become irritated to the point where Ivy was now actually crying blood from her eyes, which had covered her cheeks in an algae green.
-Alice looked into Ivy's eyes, trying to contain her shock. Then she reached into the chest pocket of her lab coat and took out the Queen of Hearts card.
-"I want you to have this," She said to the plant woman, "Harley gave me this as a friendship token. But from what's she told me about the history you and her shared, I know she would have wanted you to have it more had she known how short her time was."
-Bane and Victor watched tearfully from the cell entrance. Victor actually found himself crying, which he thought he had long lost the ability to do. But seeing such compassion brought back feelings he thought he would never feel again.
-Alice took the card and placed it behind Ivy's ear. After Ivy stared silently at Alice, she broke down in bloody tears again.
In the real world, Batman had gone down into the desolated Eden. He shined a flashlight in the nearly pitch black cavern that used to be illuminated in a vibrant display of color from the plants. As he trudged through the brown-yellow grass and dried up foliage, the beam of light eventually caught something that made Batman stop.
-On the barren ground, Batman found the dead, but still slightly intact, message that Ivy had left for her children. The flower petals still had tiny traces of color on them but they were just as dead as the rest of the flowers in Ivy's former home. And then Batman noticed something else.
-Lying right beside the message was the box that contained Ivy's mementos from the children she had fostered.
-Batman took the box and examined the contents. As Batman examined each item, he began to recognize some of them from the pictures he had seen of the children that the city had reported missing in the wake of the earthquake. Even thought the parents had been killed, the childrens' bodies were never found and so they had issued a search to find any of the ones that had not been found along with the deceased families. The case went cold and all the children had been presumed dead.
-Batman looked back at the message and then back at the box and he started to wonder…but his thought was suddenly broken when he turned around and the flashlight picked up the image Batman had feared he would encounter most of all.
-Batman gasped and backed up as he stood frozen with his eyes locked on Poison Ivy as her limp body dangled by her neck with the noose that been fastened out of dead vines swaying gently from the branch of the dead tree that once been a memorial to Ivy's children. Her face had gone from emerald green to almost completely colorless.
In the dream world, Ivy's body began to slowly decay. Her hair began to fall off, the color began to drain completely from her body, and her eyes began to glaze over, but Ivy seemed to be aware of her impending death and made no protests as she continued to cry.
-Alice gasped.
-"Dear God, wants happening to her?!" Victor shouted running to Alice's side with Bane following.
-"Ivy!" Alice shouted as she grabbed her shoulders and shook her violently. "Wake up, Ivy! Wake up!" Ivy's body began to shrivel.
-"Wake up!" Alice shouted desperately as she slapped Ivy across the face. Ivy slumped over as her breathing became weaker.
-Victor and Bane sat her put and tried frantically, along with Alice, to revive her but nothing seemed to be working.
-Ivy was on the verge of death when, in the chaos, Alice suddenly realized, "the adrenaline shot!"
In the real world, Batman had cut the noose and was now holding Ivy's motionless body in his arms.
-"Jesus, Ivy. What the hell sort of an end to life is this? Slowly suffocating alone in the dark surrounded by death? This isn't how Harley would have wanted you to die."
-There was a long silence, and then Poison Ivy's eyes abruptly shot open, once again shining green, and she sprang to life in Batman's arms, coughing and gasping for air. Batman dropped her as he jolted in surprise.
-Ivy frantically shot her head in all directions, screaming hysterically as she continued to gasp for air. She had no idea where she was or what had just happened.
-"Ivy!" Batman shouted as he dropped to his knees beside her. Ivy flailed on the ground, frightened out of her mind.
-"Ivy, it's okay! You're okay!" Batman grabbed Ivy and held her still while positioning her so that she was looking right at him, "You're safe now."
-But Ivy resisted his grasp and continued to fight against him. She screamed as if she were being attacked. But eventually she became exhausted, both physically and mentally, and she slowly sank into Batman's arms sobbing.
-Batman wrapped his arms around Ivy and held her tightly.
-"God. What did you think you were doing, Ivy?"
-"I loved her," Ivy said as she sobbed on Batman's chest, "I loved her more than anything!"
-As Ivy continued to cry hysterically, Batman found himself fighting back his own tears as he held her, for he knew her pain all too well.
-As Batman held Ivy, he felt that her body was cold as ice and she was shivering. He took off his cape and wrapped it around Ivy.
-"Come on," he said, "Let's get you out of the dark."
-Ivy slowly nodded and allowed Batman to ease her up and lead her upstairs into the light.