Childs Play

Seven A.M; Waking up in the Morning

     Jessie knows something's wrong as soon as she turns the corner. She had let her guard down throughout the day, compounded by the time that has passed since the incident. That's what she calls it in her mind. For a while, other people called it a lot of other things, in reference to her, but over time it became known as simply, the incident. That way, it could sound like some sort of war or a stupid accident.

     However she thinks of it, the incident remains in the past.

     Which is why, for a split second when Jessie rounds the corner and sees those joke teeth scattered across the ground forecasting their own form of chaos, her immediate thought is that she is dreaming. But she remembers how she got here. She just woke up this morning and then left her bed, then her room, then the kitchen, and so on and so on.

     Her second thought then is to absolutely lose her goddamn mind-freaking the fuck out because holy shit how did he find me. This resulted in enough of a fight or flight or freeze phenomena to freeze Jessie in place for her to see that there was something, off. About this whole situation, well, more off than joke teeth on the ground in Gotham city.

     That being that they were painted with question marks.

     "Mayhaps, a collab?" Jessie spoke out loud, vocalizing her situation; something she had learned during her time at Arkham. "Mayhaps, a bomb? Mayhaps, I should leave right now."

     Just as Jessie was about to act on that, one of the teeth began shaking and chopping and mashing it's little plastic teeth together. "AH SHIT." Freezing up again the girl's eyes closed tightly along with her fist until she gained enough mental control to slowly start breathing again and counting to ten. Once that was over with she opened her eyes to survey the situation to find a path without the little chompers of spooks.

     One set, in particular, Jessie notices has something taped to the top of it. Then, like all good stories start Jessie said, "What could possibly happen!" And went to go pick it up. This one hadn't been chomping or moving around like the other ones, in fact, it had been completely still.

     Upon closer inspection, there were words etched into the top.

     "Often held but never touched, always wet but never rusts, often bites but seldom bit, to use me well you must have wit. What am I?" She mumbles to herself, reading the riddle out loud. As a person who did not break the 90% percentile threshold on the SAT Jessie can say with quite a lot of confidence, she is not qualified to answer this question. However, like most teenagers living in a first world country, she does have immediate access to all the world's knowledge.

     She types the question straight into the Google Search bar on her phone. The first hit, www dot riddles dot com backslash six three three has the answer.

     "A tongue?" Jessie asks absolutely no one in particular. "That's nasty." She muttered to herself as an afterthought. But little did Jessie know that was not the nastiest part of this exchange. For when she finished that thought, a little pop noise could be heard from the teeth she was clutching quite tightly in her hand. As she loosened her grip to see what had happened her immediate reaction is to recreate the cinematic masterpiece that is the now extinct vine of, "This bitch empty. Yeet." And hurl that sucker into the Andromeda galaxy. What her brain goes with is shrieking at WAY too high a decimal and dropping the teeth within milliseconds.

     There, within some probably 99 cent joke teeth is a real-life actual tongue. Probably human knowing this situation! And carved into the tongue, yes you heard her CARVED, is some sort of symbol that looks like it's supposed to mean something.

     This is the point in time where Jessie closes her eyes and takes three deep breaths in order to ground herself before she has a full blown panic attack at oh, seven fifteen in the morning. She is considering just turning around and going home, calling it a mental health day, but she does have that test in English she doesn't want to miss and-

     "Don't you dare touch me!" Jessie screams as she feels the telltale presence of a hand on her shoulder. "I got a knife!"

     "Whoa, Jessie it's me, Connor." He spoke calmly, quickly removing his hand and holding them up in a gesture of surrender. "I stopped by your house to see if you wanted to walk together, but your mom said you left. Then I heard you scream and I got really worried. Are you okay?"

     "Okay?" Jessie repeats. "Does it look like I am okay?" She says in a hysterical tone as she gestures wildly to the street that is COVERED in joker teeth. "There is a tongue. It touched me. I want to die. Now it is on the ground." Jessie believes that pretty much covers it. All she wanted to do was go get her mediocre public school education.

     "It's okay Jessie. No one is here. There's no Joker, nothing. It's just a whole bunch of Dollar Tree toys okay." He looked back up at her reassuringly. She knew he was right. She also knew that if he kept being this nice to her it would be harder to keep up her manifest of 'no dating until I'm not crazy'. She rubs her arm on her shirt because she still has the tongue feeling on her hand.

     "You're right. Fuck these bitches." She said with a false amount of confidence before kicking one of the toys down the street. "Who even does this."

     "I'm not sure but, I know we can find out. " Connor replied leaning down to pick one up off the ground. Jessie just grabs her man's hand, because she knows first hand this is NOT worth it. Of course, the price of that is now they are holding hands, which isn't really all that bad. Connor's hands are really soft and they are just the right size to fit within Jessie's and she-

     "Let's get going! I have Spanish first period and Ms. Vea always gives you the, 'I'm not mad I'm disappointed' talk whenever you're late." Jessie spits this out at breakneck speed. She turns around and figures it would be the worst thing she has to walk an extra mile since Connor is still holding her hand.  

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Hey guys, thanks for reading this first chapter hope you liked it! I would like to thank Grace for being my editor and helping me with this story <3