The city is in an uproar.
Michelle gets stared at more often nowadays, because they know that she's got history with the psychopath roaming the city once again. She's dangerous to be around. They stop talking to her; stop inviting her to their ritzy parties, stop pretending that they're her friends. She's got a virtual shadow of death looming over her, bony claws dug into her shoulders and glimmering obsidian eyes ringed with black glinting, laughing.
They all distance themselves from her once again. James has a new girlfriend, a pretty model, and they ignore one another now. Nathan has cut contact again, but still pays for her expenses. All her new friends are gone. Michelle's an island once more. She gets a pet to fill the space opened up by the lack of people willing to talk to her; a Rottweiler, a huge, drooling monster of a dog that she names Donovan, and another huge, drooling guard dog of the same breed that she names Bruno. Nathan picks up the considerable bill, deciding that a couple guard dogs couldn't hurt.
Michelle spends her days waiting, mostly. She's waiting for something to happen. She's mainly waiting to be shot dead while walking home one day, if one is completely truthful. Bruno and Donovan lie around her home and eat whatever Michelle tosses them, which happens to be a lot since she's a total sucker for those dogs. Oh, and they bark at the door a lot, and anyone who even comes within five feet of the door is met with a pair of snarling, foaming dogs wearing imposing chain collars and baring every single bone white tooth in their heads. The mail man just abandons the mail around five feet away from her door instead of risking getting too close and getting mauled.
Days pass. Nothing happens, and Michelle begins to think that he's forgotten about her. She's paranoid about being grabbed and gutted like a fish; the numbness that had pervaded the entire situation has faded away, and now she's terrified again. She barely leaves the house, and never for more than a few minutes; she takes a week off from work to do this, and give no one any chance to get any chance at her. Unless they want to tangle with her huge guard dogs, of course. A week passes without incident; Bruno and Donovan bark at nothing but birds and squirrels (they catch and eat a cat alive, tearing it to shreds across her living room floor, too), and she's becoming laxer in her paranoia.
Then, one day as she pulls into the parking lot in front of the bookstore she works at, she sees that there's a crowd around something. She's just finished her two hour commute to work (terribly inconvenient, but it's still a bookstore that'll hire her) and wants a cup of coffee before she starts rearranging books and getting stared at. She's on her way to work and nudges through the crowd (people start moving as soon as they see her, and that's a very bad sign) to see what the commotion is about and freezes as she sees it.
Miss me? Is written in either red paint or blood on the side of the building, and she instantaneously feels sick. She was wrong. He's coming back for her, and he's going to drive her insane with paranoia and terror before he does it. Police arrive. The day of work is cancelled for everyone while they search for bombs or any other potentially hazardous things he might've hidden in there at some point in time. Michelle goes straight to a bar, orders a beer, and she drinks as much as she dares. It's about six PM when she leaves the bar (having passed out on the counter for an hour or two before someone noticed and woke her up), and answers her cell phone as it rings.
"Hullo?" She answers, her voice slurring slightly.
"Michelle?" She hears a familiar voice on the other end of the line, and blinks. She can't recall the name of whoever it is right now, but it's one of the few friends she has; a nice cop.
"Hey, uh…police officer! Wassap?"
"Are you…it doesn't matter. We want to put you in the Witness Protection Program, until the Joker is caught again; you're in danger being out and unguarded."
"Whass 'at? Witness Protection Program? Why'd we wanna do 'at?" She leans against the wall of the building, staring up at the sky blankly.
"Are you drunk?"
"Kinda."
"…Alright…and I already told you; you're unprotected. Just come to the station and we'll talk about it. Wait, can you even drive?"
"Prolly not."
"Where are you? I'll come pick you up."
"'M at...uh…a bar."
"Where is this bar?"
"…It's near a sidewalk."
"And?"
"And…uh, there's a…tree…over there…"
The cop on the other end of the line groans in frustration, and Michelle offhandedly knocks the side of her shoe on the building. She spends a moment to marvel at how ugly her shoes are, before she begins talking to try and help out.
"Listen…I think I can just walk home…I was on my way back when I stopped anyway…probably only a block or two…" Michelle mumbles, trying to shake free of the haze in her mind. She's not wasted, just a little tipsy, and her speech is slurred a tiny bit, but she's still pretty sharp. Except for being unable to figure out where she is, that is. The cop starts talking, alarmed, at her suggestion.
"No, wait Michelle! Don't, it's too dangerous-"He begins, before Michelle claps the cell phone shut and shoves it in her pocket, making sure her car is locked up and then walking home. Her purse is still on her shoulder, along with the pistol concealed within, so she's not worried (plus she's also kind of drunk, so she's not worried anyway). She walks down the street and comes up to her apartment, and stops about five feet from the door. There's a handful of what appears to be hamburger in little chunks at the front door, and as she walks forward to examine it, sees the glint of light off of it. When she looks closer, she pulls out a shard of something and recognizes what it is.
"Is this…glass?"
From under the closed door, she can see a red smear on the door mat, the dark red liquid soaking into the mat. From inside, she thinks she can hear…music, too. The haze in her mind is almost gone now; she's snapped back to coherency at the sight of the disquieting smear. It doesn't stop her from neglecting to do the most intelligent thing and call the police; she's still lacking in common sense enough to pull the gun from her purse and creep towards the door, throwing it open and staring inside. She follows the red trail across her carpet, slowly; now and then noticing a larger red stain on the carpet here and there, like something was…bleeding…
It hits her now that Donovan and Bruno are silent and nowhere to be seen. They should be jumping on her right now, looking forward to what she's brought them. She whistles, nervously, for them. "Bruno? D…Donovan? C'm…C'mere…boys…" The last word is so hoarse as to be nearly silent, as she continues on a very stupid search for her dogs instead of turning around and running screaming. Curiosity isn't letting her go. She thinks she can hear the music coming from the stereo in her living room, and is chilled at what she hears playing. Strawberry Fields Forever floats through the air, a song off of one of her mix CDs, and it sets a disquieting mood of calm music against one of the most terrifying moments of Michelle's life.
There's whining coming from the living room, and Michelle very slowly, shakily, walks into the living room and looks around, her gun pulled. There's nothing amiss (other than the red smears and puddles on her white carpet), at first glance at least. Then she hears a wet gurgling noise and follows thick blood smears leading to and going under the couch. Hesitantly, she gets down on her hands and knees, and looks under the couch.
Bruno is there, curled up in the corner, vomiting blood and hamburger and glass and teeth. Someone's kicked him in the mouth and knocked out all his teeth, and his eyes are gone. He whimpers, pitifully, before gurgling more thick blood onto the carpet. Michelle, completely blank and unable to respond, stares at him a moment longer, before she calls the dog over quietly.
"Come on, Broo. C…C'mere…" Her eyes are tearing up, and as the dog practically drags itself towards her (his back legs are smashed as well) and hides his head into her chest. She strokes his head, whispering comforting things to the dog, before pressing the barrel of her pistol against his head and firing. He goes limp and quits making noise, as blood splashes up across Michelle's front and across her face. She pulls the dog out from under the couch and presses the body against her chest, closing her eyes tightly and crying.
After a minute or two (or maybe an hour, she can't tell time anymore), she lets go of the body and stands up, shaking. She's staring after the blood trail leading into the bathroom, and the cracked door. She follows the red smear to the bathroom, swaying as she walks (though it's not from drunkenness), where deep crimson is pooling on the linoleum. The door is cracked enough for her to see the puddle, but not what's in the room itself, and without even thinking about it really, she reaches forward and pushes the door open.
Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?
The message is scribed in blood on her bathroom mirror, and in the shower is Donovan's body, bisected, hung from the shower head by tied together socks. Rainbow striped socks. There's no doubt of whose work it is; few others in Gotham have a sense of humor so sick. Michelle dumbly walks into the bathroom, staring at Donovan's body (the organs have slumped out of the corpse and are resting in her bathtub), before she turns to look in the mirror again. Her makeup is running down her cheeks, her face and clothes are stained in blood, and dear fucking God he's right behind her, smiling very courteously at her reflection. She whirls around; screaming and pulling her gun up to try and shoot him, before she's clubbed in the temple with something very heavy. Her vision instantly fuzzes; she sees double, no, triple of the Joker as her knees go weak and she slumps against him, and he laughs in her ear while tossing aside a Lil' Slugger baseball bat.
"Wow; good to see you too, Michelle." He chimes, tossing her over his shoulder and calmly strolling out of the apartment with the incapacitated woman slumped against him, whistling loudly in the night silence. A white van (it's always a white van, he suddenly realizes, and wonders why he always picks white vans) pulls around the corner and the back doors come open, Joker tossing Michelle on the floor of the van and climbing in himself.
"Never liked the parade at the end of that song," He muses, as the doors are slammed shut and the van starts moving. "Comes right outta nowhere."