It had not been the day Jack was born where it had all begun, on October 24th, early in the gray veil of morning.
In fact, no one suspected at all that the little bundle, swathed in a downy blue blanket as he was handed to an exhausted mother, was anything more than the most beautiful creature they'd ever beheld. His grandparents had been ushered in from the hall, their worn, faded expressions illuminated by the mother's newfound glow of motherhood, and they were all left alone with their cameras and wide-eyed wonderment. Robert stood by, his svelte figure bent and withered from long hours of tension, and the slouching shoulders wove quite a tale of desperation that nearly ended in tragedy.
Over the months of the pregnancy, Alice had misplaced the radiance, exchanged for morning sickness and an uncannily quick temper. Robert could assure any who dared undermine the small, petite woman's ability with the story of how the house lay in utter ruins after she'd catapulted their entire collection of faux porcelain plates across the room.
The episode had left their walls gouged and bleeding white plaster, their small, inexpensive chandelier, a gift from Alice's grandparents, in ruins, small sparks from the short circuiting electrical system popping and slowly fluttering in a burst of light to the cracked kitchen table. After that, Robert dared not cross her, even if it meant dragging his sleepy figure from under the coverlet and going out into the unsavory nocturnal world to buy her ice cream sandwiches and pickles. Whatever she needed, she was given – and even in the following months, Alice could never shake the regret of wreaking havoc on her own beloved home.
But upon entering the small room, they disregarded the thick heat of the air and past instances, seeing only their fatigued daughter, staring down at a little angel of an infant who returned the inquisitive gaze with its dark, fetching eyes. Alice watched them with wonder; they were so round and undaunted, as if he already knew the darkest secrets of the world and hardly feared its perpetual enormity.
Her father had asked, after snapping pictures of the monumental moment, what she would call the little angel.
Jack, she'd said, unwavering and confident in her choice. Jack Robert Napier, for his father of course.
She'd then looked down at her son, grinning through the exhaustion and the gathered creases of the powder blue blanket. Robert had nestled himself into the scene, taking the infant's plump little hand into his own and marveled at the sheer delicate size of it, seeming as if it would break in its vulnerable fragility.
Hello little Jack. This exquisite lady here is your mother, Alice. You're finally here, after all these months of waiting. And let me just say...it's good to meet you, son.
The months which followed were bereft of suspicion. Jack did little else but sleep and in the hours he spent restive in his curiosity of the space that filled his surroundings, his mother coddled him and spoiled him with trips to the park, walking beneath the willow trees and their slender, reaching branches. Even as an infant, Jack would attempt to catch the spidery leaves with his round little hands, and was fascinated by the ethereal beauty of the melancholy trees.
Alice devoted her every whim to her baby who, as the months progressed, began to sprout whorls of gold from his silky head that fell over his brow in flaxen, angelic curls. The dark eyes soon became defined as a deeper russet, like his father, but even in their familiar color, they seemed to adopt small, surprising flecks of green from Alice's shocking tinge of jade.
Amidst the trips to the park and the city zoo, there were birthday parties and family gatherings in which his grandparents would arrive with many gifts and adoring croons for their grandson. Jack would simply giggle at their conspicuous absurdity, amused by the harebrained faces and the intriguing block toys they'd bring along. No one ever seemed to notice the stuffed bears and dolls they'd bring would be shoved aside, ignored completely as if having no further use for him other than proof of their admiration.
Despite the deception of his angelic guise, beneath the russet eyes and the golden curls, there seemed something dark about her son that Alice Napier couldn't recognize. As he grew from infant to toddler, the peaceful existence the Napiers had established in their small community began to show fissures in its blessed normalcy.
They had already known Jack was gifted, and his first step had only been a testament to the intelligent mind beneath the flawless curls and inquisitive eyes. He had taken to the activity two months before his first birthday, a mere month after discovering a use for his hands and knees. Alice had been in the kitchen, setting the tulips her husband had bought her in a vase when a voice had cried out.
"Alice! Alice, come in here quick!"
The tone of her husband's voice had struck a chord of fear in her so hard that the depths of her intuition reverberated with the hollow terror. Had he stepped on poor Jack? Something terribly silent crept upon the child and strangled him before Robert had a chance to prevent it? She was so dizzy with forethought that she reeled forward and rushed into the living room, only to find Jack on staggering feet, extending his hands toward his father with a look of forceful determination in his darkened eyes. Upon reaching his destination, Robert snatched the child from his feet and Jack squealed with delight.
With Jack's ascension into his toddler years, turning two became somewhat of a milestone for Alice. Upon reading books and articles that prophesying the advent of the 'terrible twos', she had become anxious of the surfacing of tantrums, screaming and overall disobedience to her every word and command. But it never came.
Instead of screaming, there came silence. Instead of the loving angel she had known, there was only the detached cruelty and the blatant refusal to recieve the praise and adoration that she had once showered on him without hesitation. And in place of tantrums, there was a dark, unsettling look that seemed to rouse a cold, squirming fear that stemmed from pure survival instinct. It was predatory, that look, and at first it was more akin to an attempted pout she'd read so much about in the parenting guides. Upon her first few times of receiving this look she'd laugh and pinch his cheeks playfully, inspiring a vivacious giggle from her curly-haired angel. But it did not always work, especially as the months progressed.
Jack had perfected the expression a mere month after first discovering its uses, and Alice's attempts to erase the shadowing doubt from her son's face grew more futile with each passing week until it ceased in its efficiency at all. She'd been witnessed to many a sulking toddler before, and even the best of them couldn't stimulate the same emotion in her that Jack's sulking seemed to inspire. She began asking questions and received the same string of answers; anger, frustration, and sometimes even laughter would follow 'the look', as the parents told her. Fear? Never.
Alice would often pale upon hearing accounts on the raising of children and dealing with their 'terrible twos'. Why on earth would her baby invoke fear when others only seemed able to make their parents merely frustrated or, sometimes, laugh? The worry chewed at her insides like a parasite, latching onto her and bleeding her dry of all enjoyment as she'd take Jack for a ride in his stroller along the procession of willow trees in the park, like drooping sentries with weary hands brushing against the lush, dew-spattered lawn. And as her concerns about Jack grew, her reservations expanded. Did it seem natural for a child to be so fascinated by the willows, trees that seemed ever mournful and a sentinel of suffering itself?
She began rifling through her husband's belongings, looking for anything she may have missed putting into storage as Jack became more mobile and curious about his surroundings. And at first, upon finding a collection of horror films, she was relieved, though slightly irritable with the fact that her husband had rebelled against her hopes to keep such rubbish away from their precious baby. But as a film of composed dust coated her fingertips as she withdrew them from the box, she realized they'd not been touched – not by her, not by her husband, and least of all by Jack himself.
Her parents began seeing changes in Jack too. He was a far cry from the simple, jovial baby they once knew, and it was not long before they discovered the toys they had once bought for him, long before he could even remember, had been disposed of. But not because of lacking interest on Jack's part, but because they had been decapitated and thoroughly mutilated by the boy himself.
"I already handled the situation, as you can see. It's not a problem anymore...already taken care of."
Her father held up a dissected blue rabbit. "Is this what you call handling it, Alice? Shoving it out of the way and pretending it didn't happen?"
"And what was I supposed to do? Slap him on the hand for being a little boy?" She tore her hands through her curls, her expression clouded with impending rage. "He's a child! He didn't know what he was doing!"
"Of course he knew!" He had retorted, dangling the stuffed rabbit in her face. "This is not the mark of a blameless child! Jay did not just take apart this rabbit, darling - no, he's smashing lizards with rocks and pouring salt on snails. He's pretending that his stuffed animals are his victims and is carrying out mock brutal murders on them. Decapitation, dismembering, gouging out the eyes and pouring red paint on the fabri proceeding to set fire to the remains. How is it that Jackie even knows how to set fires, Alice? He's only three years old!"
She tore the rumpled mound of burnt fleece from her father's grasp and tossed it angrily across the room. "I will not stand for hearing this in my own house. My son is not a freak! He is as normal as they come, and I know this!"
"Please listen to me, darling…it's for your own good, and Jay's as well.."
"Get out!"
"Alice, sweetheart…" He beseeched, taking her hand and recoiling when she wrenched it agitatedly out of his grasp. "Your child is not well. He is becoming something….something you may be able to prevent if you deal with it now."
But Alice would not listen. No mother wanted to hear that her child was gradually yielding to the will of an unseen force, submerging beneath the guise of a monster. She stubbornly compelled the misplaced guidance from her thoughts, and would hear nothing more of her father's asinine assumptions.
"Out, I said. Get out!"
Her shrieks rattled the walls of the peaceful home and expelled the cynical grandparents. No one, not even her own parents, would be allowed to speak of Jack in that way; she would not allow it in her home, and so they left for the time being, awaiting the quelling of the tempest that had consumed the Napier home. But it was only the beginning, the calm before the storm that settled in churning miasmas over the unsuspecting community.
They begged with Alice to comply as Robert simply faded into the background, silent and knowing fully the aberrant behaviors of his son and the potential malice they presented. But Alice would not hear them; she was immersed in her own denial, seeing the illusory appearance of her angel, his radiant curls and rosy cheeks. How could something so beautiful be so repugnant beneath the deceiving surface?
Her own parents were not fooled; they, just like Alice, saw the underlying shadows in Jack's eyes and would not betray their own parental instincts.
"Alice, dear…please, you must listen to us," her mother had begged, tears lining the corners of her eyes. "You must get help for Jack. He needs medical intervention and if you don't put him in an institution now, you will regret it later."
The murderous look in Alice's eyes had been enough for them, marking the end of their visits. Jack was only three years old and as the months wore on, her parents' predications became alarmingly true.
Not only was Jack tearing apart his stuffed dolls and bears, but no sooner did he witness his mother's first cut from a kitchen knife, sitting in the corner, playing with his blocks, he became enthralled by the sight of the flowing, ribbons of scarlet. At first, thought it was what had bitten his mother, the culprit itself. But as he saw it was on the knife too, the intriguing red matter, he watched with growing fascination as the scarlet droplets fell to the freshly mopped floor.
He rose from his spot and waddled toward the round spots of red that tarnished the tile. And no sooner did he dip his fingertip into the blood was he instantly taken by the concept of it. Warm and almost as if it were alive itself, the measly little smatter of red.
"Jay, no!" Alice had realized, after soaking her cut, that her son had begun prodding with interest at a clean floor. She kneeled beside him and took his small hand into hers, wiping the dirty finger clean of its refuse. Jack's look darkened as he watched his new fascination disappear from the floor.
"Mommy, what was that?" He pointed to the floor, where the red matter had been before.
"That's blood, darling. We don't play with blood, alright?"
"But I want to see it!" His squirmed only a little, to show his frustration, and his expression began to plunge beneath a cruel shadow. "Let me see it, mommy. I want to see it now."
Jack never raised his voice; it was the tone in which the words executed that made him seem so threatening and demanding. Alice swallowed hard against the growing fear in her throat, staring at her child as he glowered back, his deep russet eyes, once so innocent and jubilant, now utterly foreboding.
"Why do you want to see it, Jackie?" She asked softly.
"Because the Monster said so. He wants to see it!"
That was the first time the monster was mentioned, but hardly would it be the last.
The monster soon became a response for everything. For why he hurled his spoon at his mother's head, fortunately missing more often than not. It became the reason that Robert found dismembered, scorched toys in his son's closet and burns on Jack's hands, save for one clown plush with a startling look about its stitched mouth and blank, black stare. It became the explanation for his troublesome acts, which would always end in a smacking and endeavors to succeed in more mischief just to obtain more beatings.
The monster likes to be spanked, he'd explained.
It became the excuse for terrorizing his babysitters with talk of blood and headless teddy bears when the Napiers ventured out for a night to themselves, soon regretting it after arriving home to find the aftermath of their son's misconduct. And most frightening of all, it soon became the excuse for the fear-provoking thoughts surfacing over the months that followed and, soon, a frequent pastime for Jack.
While putting some of his socks away once, a few months before his fourth birthday, an awful scent wafted about his room and a terror loomed within Alice's smothered chest. She searched for it, looking through his dresser, the closet, and even in the secret compartments he'd carved in the floor and dexterously covered with scraps of carpet he'd used for playing with his toys.
But upon finding an entire container full of bloody bird wings, some even deteriorating already to the point of giving off a hideous odor, she called Jack in with a wavering voice.
He looked completely unaware as he walked in, eyes sincerely questioning and wisps of blonde curls dangling over one dark eye. But she knew better – it was only his manipulation, working its soft magic over her compliant mind.
It didn't work so well on Alice anymore.
"Jay? Jay, please be honest with mommy." She knelt down beside him and showed him the container, tears stinging her eyes and trickling down her ruddy cheeks. "Why…why are you doing this, sweetheart? This is…very, very cruel. I don't want you to do it anymore."
"Why?" Jack tilted his head slightly, his dark eyes beginning to brim with unhinged anger. "I like doing it. It's fun."
"Why did you do it, Jack?" She repeated, her voice rising as he artfully evaded her answer.
"The monster told me to do it. He told me it'd be fun and so I did. He was right…the monster is always right."
Most little boys collected bottle caps or baseball cards. But when it came to Alice, her little boy collected the severed wings off birds he'd likely tormented until they met slow and painful ends. That night, Alice cried harder than ever into her husband's shoulder, and he ran his fingers through her curly blonde hair to the patterned beating of his own twanging heart. They began locking their doors at night, feeling guilty in doing so, but fearful of what ideas the Monster would instill in their son's darkening, intelligent mind.
And as reluctant as they were, they locked their windows too.
It was quiet for once in the Napier house. Jack had only just nestled under his red comforters for an afternoon nap, and Robert lounged on the patio, indulging in the crisp breeze which brought in encroaching notes of winter on a dying autumn musk. The curtains billowed in the soft wind, curling in on themselves as they danced within the willowy cadence, and the only sound was the running dishwater as Alice, her eyes vacant and underlined with betraying shadows, scrubbed a difficult stain off a plate. She'd been too tired to finish last night before bed…just as weary as she felt now.
She hadn't expected visitors that day. In fact, her son's behavior had warranted a lack of socialization with her neighbors as they slowly observed the dark nature of the Napiers' son. She hardly blamed them; Jack seemed only to grow more demented with the passing months, and he seemed intent on pursuing the unraveling path he'd long since surrendered to.
And like Jack, Alice had capitulated to her own reclusive fate. Robert had even become more introverted over the years, taking to his newspaper and books more often than not, speaking only with his sons of the merits of morality, ethics and emotion. Jack wouldn't listen; he never listened.
Naturally, it came as a surprise as Alice shut off her running faucet, listening hard for that familiar sound she'd thought she'd heard. And when it came again, this time uninhibited by consistent sound of the tap water flowing from the spigot, she rushed for the door, her heart hammering in her chest. Visitors? For her? It was almost unheard of.
"Robbie!" She hissed, and he appeared at the window, his expression curious. He'd heard the doorbell too. "Robbie, come inside, quick!"
Unable to hinder her probing interest, she did not wait for Robert to arrive before opening the door. The door swung open and there, on her porch, stood someone she thought she'd never see again.
Her father.
"Dad?" She stepped forward, peering into the milky eyes behind thick spectacles, hoping she wasn't mistaken. "Dad, is that really you?"
She knew her father had hardly looked that way before. He looked as if a plague of worry had devoured him whole, leaving only a gaunt, weary skeleton of the man he used to be. His glasses had inevitably thickened, his lips thinner and more chapped than ever, and his clothes seemed to flutter around his figure, as if they were made for one much larger than himself. He looked god-awful, and she felt terrible for thinking such a thing about her poor father.
He plucked the spectacles from his nose and sighed, a hollow sound that filled her with dread. And as his mouth parted, he massaged his puckered brow. "I'm not here for a visit, Alice. This is more important than that."
"Well, what is it?" She asked, stepping outside and closing the door as her husband came bounding in on eager, spindly legs. "What do you want?"
His breath hitched in the middle of a nervous intake of breath, as if preparing himself for a breakdown. "You'll have to come with me I…I just can't explain it."
She stood frozen in the doorway. Leave? For where, she wondered?
"Alice, please don't give me that look you just…you just need to come with me. Now, would be best."
He took her hand and began dragging her to the car. She was not reluctant to go, her interest inexorably piqued by his unannounced appearance there. But as he drove through the city, leaving the suburbs of Gotham and descending into the darker, less amiable parts of the metropolis, her dread never slackened. In fact, it only got worse; especially as they finally entered the Narrows.
She'd heard of the place before. It housed the destitute and served as the underbelly refuge for Gotham's most callous criminals. If there was ever a place so much like Hell that existed on earth, it was the narrows. And as they drove through the soiled streets, watching the thick, choking gutter smoke rise from the sewers, Alice began to wonder if she'd actually died and been sent directly into eternal suffering; it was the least she deserved for conceiving such spawn of deviant mischief.
But it was as they neared Arkham that Alice grew nervous. The asylum stood brusque in its towering stature over the derelict slums surrounding it, and the iron fence that enclosed the estate only served its purpose to evoke fear as her father drove through the rusted black gate.
"Dad, what are we doing here, please?" She asked, her voice trembling. "This place gives me the creeps."
"You'll know soon enough." He murmured, and the mournful tone in which he spoke only made her stomach tighten and curl in on itself out of sheer horror.
Know soon enough? That seemed enough food for terrorizing thought in its ambiguous delivery to last her a lifetime. What on earth could prove to be urgent business at Arkham, and especially for them? They knew no one capable of having a mindset that would result in admittance there. Was it…for Jack? Was this a plan to admit Jack? Or perhaps…perhaps it was Alice herself. If it had been Jack, her father would have gone straight for the bedroom and picked the boy up himself. No, this must have been for Alice.
She felt numb as her father led her through the doors of the asylum, and only barely felt the pressure of her father's grip on her arm. Her thoughts vaguely turned to the prospect of running away, escaping and returning to her Jack before he woke to find her gone, but it seemed unlikely as he exchanged conversation with the nurse at the front desk and she began sifting through a collection of files. In a moment, she had discovered the appropriate one and began leading them down the blanched halls, the hem of her white coat snapping behind her. It reminded Alice of the willows in the park…and it seemed so long ago.
"Here she is, patient number 66467395."
Alice surfaced from her numbness, at the sight of the door in front of her and the sound of the woman's voice as she announced their arrival. A moment passed in which Alice merely stared at the door, wondering what was supposed to happen now that they were there.
She turned to her father, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Dad why…why are we here? Why did you bring me here?"
He gestured softly to the door with his hand, placing his palm against the small slit of a window. "I'd like for you to meet your mother, Alice, Jane Thatcher."
A smile attempted to lift the somber mood that had descended over him, but it failed miserably, and the weary visage returned. He was a man defeated once more.
Alice risked only one glance at the woman, peering into the small excuse for a window and saw a fiend inside. There were the familiar flaxen curls, the same both Alice and Jack had inherited, rendered unsightly by years of neglect and tangles. But it was her eyes that unsettled Alice. They seemed murderous – the very same deadly simper that Jack had wrought over the slow-passing years.
She could only gape at the woman as her father began to speak again. This time, the words seemed so loud she could hardly think.
"You see, Alice….she had been found in the streets after brutally murdering a man, with a knife mind you, for a deck of cards she'd wanted, taking only the Joker card and throwing away the rest. When they took her in, they looked at her records and saw she'd been incarcerated numerous times for assault with a dangerous weapon, grand theft and murder, all of times which she escaped effortlessly."
He took a breath to stabilize the trembling that had started in both himself and poor Alice standing nearby. "She had been three months pregnant then and, upon realizing her condition, Arkham took great lengths to ensure the birth and safety of the baby. When you were been born, they put you up for adoption and that's how we found you."
She glanced at him, tears beginning to dot her eyes. "What about my tendencies – being prone to obsession and the ability to be easily enraged?"
"You had been predisposed for the condition all along," he explained gently. "But we had caught it early and took great lengths in intensive therapy to ensure that you did not develop the same traits as your mother."
Alice was quiet a moment. All those years left to wondering why she acted the way she did, why she was so prone to such odd habits and rituals.
But as the moment passed, she turned to the woman standing behind her, whom she caught glancing restlessly at her watch.
"Why is she like this, why is she here?" Her voice shook as she spoke. "Tell me what's wrong with her!"
"I am sorry, but patient confidentiality withholds this information and denies me the right to disclose it to anyone else-"
But before the woman could conclude her negative response, Alice reached forward and violently yanked the doctor by her coat so that she was a mere inch away from her face. Her father tried to intercede, telling her softly that she should let go before she got herself into trouble, but after so many years with little Jack and his callous expressions, she'd learned a little from his actions – she cast him a look that promised death if he did not back down.
He surrendered willingly, and she returned to the quivering woman in her hands.
"You see that woman in there? That is my fucking mother. And being her daughter, I think I have the fucking right ask questions!"
Alice was openly seething as she released the doctor; and in fearing for her life, the doctor reached for the file that had been discarded to the floor upon her seizure, her hands locked in a near disabling tremor as she bent for the manila folder.
"Sociopathic personality – a complex personality disorder that is often genetic and presents itself in apathy, narcissistic sense of self, glibness, criminal versatility and lack of moral center. Also presents a lack of ability to show emotion or love."
Alice began to cry as the symptoms were read off in their systematic order. Was this why her father had taken her there? To prove that Jack wasn't just a normal child, a slave to his own curiosity?
If it was true that Jack was hardly the angel she'd hoped for, then it meant he didn't love her. That he would never love her, if he proved the heir to his grandmother's condition. And her sobbing was only escalated by an intruding thought – all I ever wanted was a child of my own…
Not a monster.
Upon realizing her fate and the fate of her son, she slowly quieted and looked up from the sodden flesh of her hands. Her nose still ran freely and tears slowly dripped down her cheeks. She gave a watery smile, a prevention of another sob. "I want to see my mother."
The small doctor made a gesture as if to refuse her, but Alice was too quick. "I want to see my fucking mother right now!"
The woman allowed her in without another word, and the slow groan of the door matched the sinking feeling inside Alice's stomach as she walked inside. Slowly, she made her way to the table, easing herself into the chair that was set across from the silent figure, drooping almost in its silence.
Out of impulse, she reached out with an unsteady hand and curled her fingers over her mother's cold, clammy hand. The woman looked up at her with one dark, malevolent countenance and a mismatched smile, equally cold, graced her exquisite features.
She then withdrew her hand from her daughter's grip and smashed her fist against the girl's unsuspecting fingers.
Author's Note: I really struggled with this one. Not because it was long, but because I was a little tired when I wrote it and wasn't exactly sure how I was to write it, really. But I wanted to get it out there to show you the development of the Jack you will see in the next chapter. This will be the only chapter written in Alice's POV. From here on out, it will be from Jack's view that we see his world.
I hope you'll enjoy this story. I think it'll be a little bit of a different origin piece. I haven't seen one yet in which he's not merely a progeny of his broken background - but of his own broken mind and genes.
Let me know what you think! Please forgive the simplistic writing - the next installment will be better written, I assure you.
I'll answer to reviews and messages later, I promise. For now, I need to sleep. And please disregard all mistakes, as I will edit this later!