Legend's Apprentice

Grievous

This chapter may be disturbing for those sensitive to sexual assault.

His unhinged grin appeared and he stroked my throat with his long fingers. My skin tried to crawl, but nothing was moving. Including, I realized, my eyes.

"You'll want to keep calm, pretty," the Joker said as he stood and walked over to my desk. "If you get too worked up, you might stop breathing. It's a wrinkle that Ivy hasn't been able to work out yet." He messed around a little; I couldn't really see what he was doing.

He returned and looked at me. "I need you to be able to look at me," he said. "I need the terror, the emotion, pretty. It's not nearly as fun without the response." He casually poked around in his pocket and withdrew another capped syringe, which he held in front of my eyes. With a flourish, he uncapped it and I felt two injections under each eye. In a couple minutes, I was able to blink and move my eyes. It also apparently enabled my tear ducts again. "That's much better, pretty."

He pulled me so that I was sitting up (with his help--I was limp rather than rigid as I'd thought) and I could see that he had a battered old-fashioned camcorder on the desk. He got up, turned it on, and sat beside me on the bed. "Revenge is sweet, isn't it?" he said, a hard tone in his voice. "I reach out to a colleague in crime and I get a drug that induces paralysis. Based on curare, originally. I do a little research, or hire it out, actually, and I find out who the little bitch is who got away from me and took away my prize as well. It was baby Wayne who gave me the first clue--he said "Alex" while I was administering the fists of justice, so the plan began to come together. I had an associate hack local high schools until he found your school photo and address. It was just luck that the couple you live with went away. I'd have had to deal with them otherwise.

"So as I've been saying, I've been planning this for awhile. And while originally I planned to have some fun here and kill you, my ideas have...evolved. There are so many possibilities for revenge. All sorts of scenarios to choose from. But I'm going to take you away from all this. Expand your horizons." He nuzzled my hair and his hand closed hard on my breast. I'd have screamed if I could. "So I'm going to break you, in mind, and in body, and in spirit, and then perhaps the police will be fishing you out of the river." He sighed happily. "I have quite the pharmacopeia. The Scarecrow mixed me up a little somethin'-somethin' that induces terror. It can make you psychotic with repeated exposure. And I have other little cocktails, too. I can hardly wait." He got up and turned off the camcorder, but he left it, which I didn't expect. "When you don't show up at work, you'll be missed. Nobody will be able to reach you. They'll come here, eventually. And find this. They'll have lost so much valuable time." He leaned down and nipped my earlobe. Hard. And he picked me up, pulling me over his shoulder, and carried me out. There was nobody on the street. He carried me right out to his car, double parked right in front of the door, and dumped me in the back. We drove for quite a while, but it was still dark when he stopped the car and got out, carrying me the same way to a dilapidated-looking house. "Honey, we're home!" he caroled, kicking the door shut behind us.

It was dark inside, and my heart dropped as he went down stairs to a cellar. He flicked a switch in passing and light flooded the large concrete room. Then I was dumped on a flat firm surface. He pulled me to the center of it. "Yes, this is a bed," he said genially. "And we'll be making good use of it." He got up and left my field of vision. I couldn't see what he was doing, just heard him humming and arranging things. All I could see was the ceiling, which seemed strangely saggy. I hoped it didn't cave in and bury me. Or maybe I should.

"Almost ready, pretty!" he sang, and then I blinked as the ceiling started to ripple. I realized then that it was a sheet. It covered a huge mirror. I could see myself, full length. The Joker appeared and laid down beside me so we were both looking up. "Wouldn't want you to miss anything, pretty." He reached out, grabbed my hair, and rolled my head to the right and left. There were cameras on tripods. "I'm going to be filming all of this, pretty. For my personal fun, also to show others, if they earn the privilege. See, my plans for you evolved. At first I just wanted to kill you. Horribly. But then I still wanted to rape you, and then I wanted to kill you. And then Harley got herself caught, and, well, a man has needs. And that was when I hit on my new plan. Harley has been great, but not only is she showing her years, she's got a distressing tendency to walk out on me now and then. I let her come back, but I'm shopping for a more devoted companion these days." He rolled away energetically to retrieve something, then he stood on the bed over me, a wicked pair of shears in his hand. He bent over, opened the shears, and slowly cut up the arm of my sleeping t shirt, across my chest to the other side, and down that arm. Then he cut down the neck to the hem, catching the drawstring waist of the shorts I wore and cutting down each leg. Then, slowly, carefully, he peeled each section off my skin until I lay on the ruin of my clothes, naked. The Joker looked me over avidly. I couldn't help it, I panicked. My diaphragm froze, and the Joker's expression turned from lust to annoyance. He jumped off the bed and I heard a rattle as he pulled a cart over to the side of the bed.