A/N: Thanks for loyal readers and comment-ers. I will say for those who don't like this story, I have a simple solution: Don't. Read. It. It is written how I WANT it to be and how I see fit. If you can't handle that then please go somewhere else. My fanfic, my rules. Now, enjoy the next chapter…it's a bit more gruesome. (quote in intro paragraph belongs to Ripper (2001, movie)).

[**EDIT: I have had to split it into three parts because it's so long and taking so much time to write out. So the part 3 will hold all the gruesome detailing and fun]

14th of October, Friday 12:13am

"Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candle stick," the boy with a jack-o-lantern head muttered out, the eyes of his 'head' wide and cruel, staring vacantly at him. "I know I am Jack. Cunning Jack. Quiet Jack. Jack's my name. Jack whose sword never sleeps. Not the good shepherd. Not the prince of peace. I'm right Jack. Spring out Jack. Saucy Jack. Jack from Hell—"

"Cool it Jack." Baal said, shoving the smaller figure roughly out of the way. Now almost out of sight line, he watched Jack turn his empty eyes on the leader and stare for a moment. Then Jack slithered away into the night. "Now,"

Baal turned his attention to their captive.

…

14th of October, Friday 11:25am

"Uh, hey Callie," Wally said, inching towards the girl's locker sheepishly.

"Oh. Hi Wally." She said, hardly giving him a glance.

He felt the ice slide off her shoulders in response to his presence. He knew she was mad at him—she wasn't trying at all to hide it. She was stiff and unresponsive and didn't even try for a smile.

"Is there something you wanted?" she asked curtly, slamming her locker and squaring her shoulders to face him; she held all the authority of 'queen-bee' now, tossing her hair back over her shoulders.

"…well…yeah…I just…I wanted to say I'm sorry," he said, offering an apologetic smile up to her with a little shrug of the shoulders.

"Oh. Alright," he couldn't read her face—there wasn't any expression there to read—as she began to turn away from him.

"Is that all?" he said suddenly, stopping her before she'd walked away, his brow furrowed. "I mean…look, I know I was kinda a jerk and all but…I've been having a rough time and I just was having a bad day. I didn't mean to—"

"To what?" she interrupted. "to take out your frustrations on me when all I've done is be a friend? To treat me like crap for absolutely no reason at all? Like I said. Fine, whatever Wally. Catch ya around." She sneered; she knew it was wrong. She had the voice at the back of her mind like anyone else that told her she should be shutting her face right about now. Not that she listened to it.

"That's not fair, it was one bad day." He said, completely bewildered as to why, out of nowhere, she was so angry with him.

"…and, your point is…?" her eyes were cold as she purred out her snotty reply before turning with a flip of her hair and walking off to lunch.

…

"Geez man what's eating you?" Conner asked as he settled his tray on the lunch table.

Wally picked at his food, not in the mood to eat. "Nothing,"

The other's exchanged looks with each other, resuming the everyday ritual of lunch.

…

[2:03pm]

"Hey,"

"Hey," Wally replied as Artemis took an unexpected seat next to him.

"So..."

"Look…"

"I'm sorry" they said in unison, looking to the other with surprised eyes.

Artemis smiled and rolled her eyes as she got out her notebook and pencil and Wally allowed himself a clownish grin of amusement.

Class preceded as usual, the teacher instructing them to write for fifteen minutes in their journals. Despite sitting at the front of class, Wally and Artemis dared to pass notes to each other throughout. It boiled down to why they'd been acting how they had (even though Wally tried to goof the situation off smoothly). The dismissal bell rang at 2:40 they stood and erupted their conversation to spoken words instead of written ones.

"I just don't understand why she's got you all twisted up." The blond asserted, blocking Wally's immediate escape path.

"…I dunno. It's not like it matters now anyways. I messed things up and she won't talk to me. Can we just change the topic already? Like, how 'bout to Conner's stony and emotionless terminator-face, huh?" he nudged her in the side, grinning like a loon at his poor attempt at some humor.

"Tch, Wally." She shook her head at him. "…What happened?"

With a shrug and nonchalance Wally joked his way through the story of the 'fight' he'd had wit Cailan in the hallway, after he eluded to the previous confrontation. He was moving fast in his feelings about the girl; from infatuation to possibility of romance to…wherever they were with each other now.

"Look, I know you had a serious thing for her and all, but, tell me this," she took him by the shoulder and looked him intently in the eye. "Do you really know anything about her?"

The ginger looked at her as if she were crazy. "Yeah. She's a cheerleader with killer dance moves who…until today, was nice to everyone."

"No, that's not what I mean." Artemis sighed and continued walking along. "Like, what's her favorite color?"

Wally paused and thought a moment.

"Alright, what kind of music does she listen to?"

"Oh, oh! I've got this one!" he punched the air. "She ALWAYS plays Tokyo Hotel at the practices,"

Artemis just stared at him. "…okhaayy…. But, what music does she like? To, ya know, just listen to?"

Wally was again perplexed.

"Okay, what sort of movies does she watch? What sort of food does she like to eat? Or, say, what are her hobbies? I mean, she's got to do something other than dance. What do you really know about the girl Wally?"

Studying the ground as they walked to the slightly un-authentic 'bodega' together for sodas, Wally thought long and hard about what Artemis was saying. It was true: he really didn't know anything about the girl. He knew she wore the school colors a lot, and that she liked to dance, and that she was usually seen alone or with the girls from either cheerleading or the dance squad. But his friend was right: he didn't know who Cailan was.

"Look, Megan is on the j.v cheer squad, and she couldn't tell me anymore than you could about this girl. Ask around school Wally, find out who, if anyone, really knows this girl."

…

[12:15am]

"What do you want?" Jake asked through his busted lip.

"Sh." Baal spat out with a wicked grin, putting a disgustingly long fingernail-ed digit to his lips. "Here, see this?"

The Raggedy-Anne girl, Patch, brought out a tray of candies and flourished them around like a very slutty Vana White.

"Know what this is?" Jake shook his head quickly. "Hahaha! This is the Joker's newest product. Genius, really. We're calling it Product X, for now. Here, try some,"

Unwrapping one of the poison-purple candies slowly, letting it glimmer in the light of the exposed bulb hanging from the warehouse ceiling. He then proceeded to forcefully thrust it into Jake's mouth, almost making him gag.

"Pretty good, isn't it?" Baal leered, his nose nearly touching Jake's.

Jake's brown eyes rolled back in his head as he sucked on the candy. It felt like little explosions were going off all throughout his brain making his body tingle. Then all of a sudden he was flying. His body had absolutely no weight to it at all, it seemed. His body became hot and sensitive to everything; the feeling of the ropes around his arms and chest were making him squirm and his breath start to hitch. He began hearing colors; the candy appeared to have the ability to reroute connections in the brain. He began to see 3-D life in 3-D, sending his mind into a tangle of sorting out dimensions until he felt like he was falling through empty space.

"Heh, yeah. The only trouble, at least, for you, is that this stuff is highly addictive; I'd bet two to one you're hooked after one taste." Baal said, grabbing the teen by his burnt-umber hair and pulling his unresponsive head back.

The ring-leader grinned over at his associates whose smiles loomed back at him in the dim lights. He nodded to Patch who set down the tray of drugged-sweets and straddled Jake's lap. She slowly began dancing on him, aggravating his senses and snapping him into a semi-lucid state. With a smile she took a piece of her outfit and wrapped it around his neck, slowly pulling it tighter and watching him gag helplessly. She'd relax it, grind down on him and then snap it tight again.

"Alright, enough fun," Baal grabbed Patch by her hair and threw her off their prisoner, pulling a pen-sized needle from the tray and dragging it along Jake's skin. "See, this drug makes you really sensitive, not just to this whore's grinding, but also your pain receptors. Here, let me show you,"

The demonstration was a pin-prick to Jake's forearm. The prick sent Jake screaming and twisting in agony, as if he'd had an ice pick stabbed straight through his arm.

"Alright Fleabag, lock him up. We gotta wait for our demonstration to wear off." Baal commanded.

The hyena-like boy snarled, foam decorating his snout and slashed the ropes from around their captive, dragging him by the collar to a shipping container stored in the warehouse.

…

17th of October, Monday 1:09pm

"Hey Amanda." Wally said, using his goofy charisma for the umpteenth time that afternoon as he sidled over to the varsity cheerleader.

"Hiyy…..urhm, what's your name?" she asked, tilting her head; she had hair as black as space but she had the personality of a snow-white blond.

"…Wally. Wally West?"

"Oh, right! Hiyy Wally! What's up?" she smiled a big, lip-glazed smile at the kid and set her salad lunch aside, as if listening to him required all of her concentration (which, for Amanda, it probably did).

"Uh, right. Well…I wanted to do something nice for Calie. We…kinda had a fight I guess. But, here's the thing, I can't really pin down what she'd like or what she's into."

"Hm. Well, you and the rest of the school. Cailan seems to be having issues with everyone lately." The girl said, looking up to think. "The girls on the team are really starting to pitch a fit about her."

Wally waited while the girl sat musing for a while longer before clearing his throat.

"Hm?" she asked, looking to him with big brown eyes.

"…uh, well, could you help me out?" she looked at him, as if dazed. "…with…things that Cailan is interested in…?"

"Oh!" the girl's face brightened as her memory was refreshed. "Sure! Well…she's really good at dancing. And…she wears nail polish that matches the school's colors! Hm. Oh! And she was saying that she needed a new purse."

"…" Wally looked at the girl who sat grinning before him. She seemed so happy to have helped him that he just thanked her and walked away, more disappointed and worse off than before he'd started his endeavor.

All morning long Wally had been asking around about Cailan—who'd pulled another sick day at school—with any cheerleader, dancer or gymnast he could come across, which included guys he knew personally who were on the team. And after a morning of searching, probing and questioning, he come up with nothing. The only thing anyone was able to say about Cailan was that she was graceful, liked dancing, and wore the school colors, a lot.

They didn't know anything about her family, like if she had siblings or if her parents were divorced; they didn't know what Cailan's middle name was, or why she was into dance. No one could tell him her favorite color, or flower, or food. They couldn't even remember having ever been to her house or heard where she lived. For three years, Cailan had sat at the top of the high-school-food-chain, and not one person could tell him a thing about her.

"I don't get it." Wally said at lunch. "She's like…a ghost. How can no one know about her? It's like, other than her face, her dance and her school spirit, she doesn't exist."