Pandemonium | joker fanfiction

Chapter 2

     That night I lay in bed unable to sleep. For some reason, Elizabeth's sneering face will not leave my mind. I hate her so much it hurts. I feel like a volcano before it erupts. My rage is lava building up until there's too much pressure, too much strain, and everything I've ever held back bursts through the surface. Destroying everything for miles; leaving only toxic air and ash behind.

     I throw the covers off of me and groan. I glance at my alarm clock which reads: 1:34 a.m. Giving up sleep, I make my way to my desk and collapse into my wheeled desk chair.

I spin around for a minute, scrutinizing the layout of my room. My bookshelf sits to the right of me, the paint peeling. Even from where I sit, I can see the small "M" carved into the wood. My throat becomes thick as I remember the night I engraved it.

It was the 4th of July. Fireworks wracked the neighborhood, and I could hear the celebratory screams of families and friends even from the isolation of my bedroom.

My family never celebrated anything besides Christmas and even then it was sad. We never had a tree or a ham dinner and never attended Christmas Eve Mass. Instead, we would exchange a few cheap gifts and head to our separate parts of the house.

On that particular night, my mother had gone to bed early and my father wasn't going to be home for hours. When he got home, he would slide straight into bed not even bothering to shower. I knew no one would check on me.

After an hour of listening to the joy of others, I took a trip to the kitchen and came back with a knife.

I settled myself between my bed and bookshelf so that I could not be seen from the door. Part of me hoped no one would ever find me, but the other half prayed that someone would, and that they would care.

I wanted to leave one last mark on the world so I brought the knife to my bookshelf and wrote one last character: "M". The one letter held so much meaning.

Mangle
Murder
Mourn
Mara.

Tears welled in my eyes as I held the blade above my wrist.

I sat like that all night, without enough strength to put the weapon away or slice it through my skin.

Finally, the clink of my dad's coffee cup in the kitchen sent me out of my trace. I slid the knife under my bed and moved on.

Now, I stare at the lower half of my bed with uneasy eyes. I haven't touched the space since that night out of fear that I'll do something irrational if I so much as see what lies beneath.

Thoughts like the ones I had that night are dangerous, deadly. It's almost like that knife is laced with those dark thoughts.

I don't want them in my head again.

I lean my head back and push off the ground with my feet, sending my chair into orbit. I spin until the ceiling is batter being stirred above me, until my eyes can no longer focus, until my thoughts scramble in my head.

I stop myself and end up at my desk again. It only takes a second for my eyes to catch up to the world around me. I should feel sick, but I don't.

Motion sickness has never applied to me. In elementary school there would be competitions to see who could stay on the tire swing the longest. I was always the last one standing, the only one who could walk straight and speak without puking their guts out.

It's funny how things like that used to be considered talent.

The memory fades away, and I lean over my desk. My fingers fiddle with an eraser cap. The poor thing has been stabbed nearly to death.