She has no idea exactly how long she's been in that room. But she knows it's been a…while.
Michelle is sure that he's going to kill her soon, though. She's not interesting. She's as boring a person as humanely possible. For the last however long since he reminded her who top dog was, she's been weepy and boring. That changes on occasion, when she damn near randomly becomes angry (they're horrible mood swings) and rages at the heavens and everything under them, but that's not fun; that's futile. Sure, there's probably some amusement factor in seeing (or hearing) a woman screaming at a concrete ceiling, attempting to provoke God into coming down so they can argue it out face-to-face, but it never lasts long, and she never finds a reason to believe that He's even listening.
When she's not wandering around the room in a daze, she's sitting on the mattress and waiting for something, dear god anything to happen. They still feed her (it's grunts that do the job, because she's caught sight of the uncanny clown masks they wear in the open crack of the door), so they still know she's here, but there's only so much time one can have when they're living on the whims of a very unbalanced psychopathic terrorist. Michelle knows that she's living on borrowed time.
And then, one day, out of the blue, they toss something else in. It's not food, it's paper with inked lettering on it. It takes her a moment to recognize that it's a newspaper, before she practically dives for it and goes to sit in the bathtub, door closed, tropical print shower curtain drawn. It's not like she's any more isolated here than out there (indeed; there isn't a lock on the bathroom door), but it's all psychological. She's here, alone, in a small place that she can control. And the newspaper is clutched to her chest so tightly that the white t-shirt has ink stains on it when she peels the front page off of herself, taking delight in the one link to the outside world that she has.
Well, a lot seems to have happened while she was gone. And there's a good explanation why she hasn't seen the Joker lately. People are dying like animals; she doesn't really recognize most of them, because she's always left the political side well enough alone, but there was an attempt on the Mayor. Some guy died to save his life; Michelle's scanning the words too quickly to recognize any names. In any case, that's on the front page. She flips through the pages, hunting for any sort of recognition that she's been kidnapped, that she's gone. That she's important to someone, somewhere. Anywhere.
On her second hunt through the newspaper, she finds a small article about a missing woman. An unidentified woman used as a hostage for the Joker. She's unnamed, and no one has stepped forward to identify her. She's presumed dead.
At first, it's anger that she feels. It's directed towards Nathan, towards that useless coward James, and towards whatever sick minded God could ever allow it all to happen this way. She has no allies, no friends, nothing at all. Nathan wants to save face; James wants to cut all ties with her; the people she works with at the bookstore are the owners, a senile old couple that, though they're very kind to her, still don't know her name and misplace documents so often that they probably have no idea who she is anymore. And nobody mourns a clown.
After the anger fades, and she realizes exactly how hopeless the situation is, she throws the newspaper against the wall of the bathtub and presses her ink-stained palms over her face, hiding her eyes, and she screams. It's not a very long scream, and it's not a very loud one, but it's a high-pitched keening, a wail of despair from the very centre of her spirit. The fear of death is settling on her shoulders again, heavy like lead and sharp, like the knife that's probably going to gut her soon. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in a week, maybe in two minutes; it doesn't matter when it happens, because it's going to happen. There's absolutely no way that the situation can become any worse.
That's when the lights go out, and Michelle King is drenched in total, terrifying darkness. She bounds out of the bathtub, but trips and falls (clumsy woman she is) and very slightly nicks the edge of the small counter that the sink is situated in. If she's injured she has no idea, because she wrenches open the bathroom door to find that it's not just her bathroom light gone out; the room's light has gone out too, and she's got no way out of this horrible pitch blackness.
She starts screaming again, and this time, it is long, and loud, and shrill.
The building lights have gone out. Breaker flipped. He's sent some poor bastard down to the basement to find the breaker box and fix it. But right now, the Joker is on a mission of pure interest. As soon as the lights went out, a captive woman started screaming. Bloody. Murder. If there isn't a good reason why she's screaming, then there is going to be a bloody murder. Sure, the building is pitch black, and the thugs of his, the intelligent lot they are, are tripping all over themselves trying to navigate the building. They're not calm enough about it to actually be able to move around in the dark. He himself has a hand on the smooth concrete wall, sliding it along as he walks so that he has a way to track where he is.
Well, the screaming getting ever closer is also a good way to find out where he's going, too. That does help. Joker does notice, however, an odd scratching, scraping noise as he gets closer to the room. It sounds like someone's lighting matches off of concrete. And just as his hand closes around the door, the lights come back on. It took long enough. The screaming cuts off into ragged sobbing, and the scratching noise stops.
When he tries to open the door, there's weight against it. He gives it a good kick and there's the noise of something getting knocked back, and the door swings open enough for him to see her. And she's a disgusting, pathetic mess, clutching her hands close to her body and practically wailing. It's wretched. It's pathetic.
It's annoying.
"Is there a problem?" He doesn't bother with a greeting, and the last word is clipped; he's in a bad sort of mood, and a rather expendable woman screeching like a banshee isn't helping it either. Michelle just hangs her head and continues to sob from her place on the floor, her long hair hanging as a tangled veil that hides her face. She's ignoring him.
Her crying is interrupted when he snatches her by the hair and pulls her up enough to see her face, and she's terrified of how angry he looks.
"Answer me." Joker growls and that's when Michelle knows that she's on very, very thin ice now. When she tries to answer, though, she can't be understood because of all the choking and the stuttering as a result of her crying. He gives up and throws her to the floor, roughly, before spotting her hands barely in view. They're bloody, and her nails are torn and cracked. And when he looks to the concrete wall beside the door, he sees the bloody streaks along the gray cement. It goes pitch black for maybe ten, twenty minutes, and she's trying to claw her way out of the room, through a concrete wall. The dark is a trigger for something. And, seeing how she's still sobbing to herself on the floor, it's a trigger for something very traumatic.
He doesn't care, of course. Trauma or not, the sound of her sobs is starting to grate on his nerves.
"Shut up." He says, almost quietly, and she tries, goddamn does she try. She doesn't try hard enough, and she doesn't quit crying. He whirls around and grabs her by the front of her shirt, dragging her to her feet roughly. "SHUT UP!!"
This time she goes completely quiet, terrified into silence at the pressure of a knife on her jugular. It's pressed so tightly into her flesh that she's already been cut, and blood rolls down to soak into the collar of her t-shirt, though the old blood stains there are already dark brown and dried.
"I-I-I'm s-so-sorry!" Michelle whimpers, raising her bloodied hands in surrender. She's so wretched, so pathetic, so disgustingly human, and for a moment, he decides on cutting her throat right then and there. To hell with waiting for some sort of amusement factor from her later; if she's so pathetic, then she deserves to die. And when the knife presses tighter, cutting deeper, she seems to think of something. Something that makes her stop crying.
Something that makes her start laughing.
He throws her to the opposite wall, and she doesn't stop. All of a sudden, she's not wailing anymore, she's laughing like she's heard the funniest joke in the entire world. They're dry, wheezing laughs, come straight up from the lungs. They're hysterical. Maybe, he thinks, maybe she's lost her mind. And the sudden laughter is so odd that for a moment, it throws him out of his bad mood from the confusion of it.
"What's so funny?" He asks her, perplexed, and she sits up from her seat leaning against the concrete wall opposite of him. Michelle is still crying, a steady stream of tears running down her cheeks, but she looks up at him without fear in her eyes and says one word.
"Pagliacci!" She shrieks, still cackling with mad laughter, before laying a hand over her eyes and putting a hand on her stomach. They're not happy laughs; they're painful sounding laughs, completely dry and wheezy and there's a distinct edge of sadness to them as well. He just stares at her, not comprehending. The laughter turns into dry choking, a guttural gagging noise that sounds absolutely horrible. He can't tell if she's laughing or if she's crying anymore. And at this point, he's not even angry anymore, doesn't even want to kill her at the moment. But, before he leaves, Joker does give a good kick to her midsection, and the air gets knocked out of her so that she can't laugh anymore.
"Make another noise and I'll gut you." He growls, though the venom in his voice is gone now, before walking out and slamming the door behind him. There's something wrong with her, there's something incredibly damaged about the woman. She's completely silent in her room again, though he thinks he may hear very quiet chuckling, and marches off to wait. It's only a matter of time before Batty has to pull off his mask (he's a guilty one), and the Joker's going to wait for the big show. And, in a flash of very colorful chaos, like all of his good ideas, he gets an idea of what he's going to do with Michelle. It'll be grand.
((Just in case nobody got it: Pagliacci is the name of a play about clowns that act in a play. The main clown and leader of the troupe, Pagliaccio, has a miserable life. Michelle's figured out that her stage name has come true, in a way, and finds it ironically hilarious.
Plus, she's a little bit off. You can sorta tell. And, if you've got criticism, can tell me if I suck or not at writing the Joker (I can't tell but I'm paranoid), even if you've got absolutely nothing relating to the story to say, I'd be happy to have another review or two. You know, it sorta brightens the day and all.
:D))