Patchwork

The prospect of hours alone in the dark scared Sarah far less than the minutes she had spent in company with the lunatic who called himself the Joker. Still, the silence and emptiness of the big room made it impossible for her to do anything but stare into the pitch black.



The Joker’s laugh echoed around her head, filling the spaces left by lost memories. To avoid thinking about what she wanted to avoid, she focused on filling the empty spaces in her head with memory.



Some things were still in her head. She could remember her childhood, for example. Her family all gathered together at her grandmother’s little apartment for Christmas and Easter dinner. She could remember most of her teenage years, and college. Big bits and pieces of her most recent years were obviously missing, but nothing that concerned her too much. Even without the missing memories, she got the gist. She remembered watching television in her apartment most of all, for some reason. Memories of stories about the Batman flitted through her brain, but nothing so concrete that she could recall names or faces. She remembered when the stories started running about the Joker. Those memories were crystal clear and perfectly intact.



A brief recollection of something very recent skittered past her mind. Concentrating, she pinned the fragment of memory down. A knock on her door early in the evening. She had opened the door, and - what? Something bad.



Closing her eyes for a moment, Sarah hung her head. What had the person at the door looked like?

She focused hard on the face. Stringy, dark hair; small eyes, nose, and mouth that made his face look too big. And when she had opened the door, he had opened that little mouth and said -





~~~~





“Delivery.”



Sarah peered around the edge of the thick wood door. “What is it?”



The man ignored her, instead holding out a clipboard with a slip of ratty paper attached. He dug in the chest pocket of his uniform and emerged with a pen clutched in his grubby hand. “Sign please.”



Narrowing her eyes suspiciously, she opened the door a little wider and took the clipboard from his hand. Grabbing the pen, she looked at the paper and got incredibly confused. It wasn’t a form, just a piece of dirty paper scrawled with the words ‘Deliver to: Sarah Ann Parker. One way trip.’ She looked up at the man outside her door, and managed to open her mouth to ask a question when he shoved his way inside.



The heavy door caught her shoulder, spinning her sideways as the man grabbed for her. He seized one of her shoulders with one hand. She saw the other one ball up in a fist. Before she had time to react, it slammed into her chest just below her sternum. All the air in her lungs was gone in a flash, and she collapsed to her knees. The man let her fall.



Sarah choked and gasped, unable to inhale more than a tablespoon of air at one time. Her breath squeaked in her lungs, and she could see the edges of her vision going grey from lack of oxygen. She fell onto her stomach and rolled onto her back, still trying to breathe. Nothing in her vision registered. Nothing, that is, until the boot appeared in her sightline and smashed into her ribs.



Her gasps for air turned into a shrill whine. Another boot crashed into her ribs on the other side. Her vision lost all color, and she saw only shades of grey around her. Unable to even roll in a ball to protect herself, she took two more kicks to the ribs. On some level, she was sure she was going to die.



“Now, now, now,” she heard a voice above her and off to the side. It was raspy, but full of sick amusement. “I gave you spe-ci-fic in-struc-tions. She wasn’t to be harmed. Does that look unharmed to you?”



The man’s beady-eyed face suddenly appeared in Sarah’s vision, his greasy hair entangled in someone else’s hand. Her lungs chose that moment to produce a particularly deathly-sounding gasp. The face in front of her looked afraid.



“You didn’t listen,” the invisible voice said softly, even more amused. A little moan of pain and fear issued from the man’s throat as he was dragged out of sight again. There was a sick squishy noise followed by a gurgle, and little drops of warm water splashed her face. Footsteps stomped around her apartment for a moment before coming to rest next to her. Her vision was starting to clear a little and her brain was functioning again, though her breath still gasped and whined in her lungs.



Over her stood a man in a brilliant purple suit. He stood with one leg on each side of her body, his head cocked slightly and one hand clutching a red-stained knife. He kneeled slowly, his knees on either side of Sarah’s hips. Carelessly, as if she didn’t exist, he wiped the bloody knife on her shirt.



Panic reared up in her stomach. She took a shuddering breath, barely bringing in enough air to stay alive. Her mind was working in overdrive, identifying each and every vulnerable point in the man’s body, starting with the groin that was well within arm’s reach. Her brain sent specific messages to her arms, telling them to hit the groin hard and fast and now. Somewhere along the way, the messages got lost, and she succeeded only in flailing her arms ineffectually in his general direction.



The man perched above her just laughed. He grabbed one arm, then the other, peeling them away from her body and pinning them to the floor above her head. He bent over, holding his white painted face mere inches from hers. Sarah’s eyes locked on the hideous scars stretching from each corner of his smiling mouth.



“Naughty naughty,” he said, wagging a finger in front of her nose. The hand holding her wrists down tightened. His other hand retrieved the knife from where it lay on her stomach, waving it in front of her eyes. “Now be a good girl or you’ll get in trouble.”



A strand of the Joker’s hair slipped down, brushing her face. Her gasping breath made it sway gently. A second passed, then two more. Slowly, so slowly, his face lowered to hers. At the last second, she turned her face aside. The feel of his breath on her cheek made her shudder.



“What’s the matter?” he asked mockingly, his voice a whisper in her ear. “Don’t you like. My. Scars?”



His hand lunged at her throat, seizing it in a grip that threatened to crush her windpipe. Pushing himself back into a kneeling position, he dragged her up by her throat until she was half sitting. Her freed hands scrabbled uselessly at the hand around her throat, the fingernails unable to find purchase on the gloves.



“Don’t worry,” he hissed in her ear. “I have ways to get around that.”



He seized a hunk of hair in his other hand, and slammed Sarah’s head into the tiled floor. Her vision went grey with sparks of light flashing in front of her eyes. Using his grip on her throat, the Joker hauled her back upright and slammed her head on the floor again.





~~~~





Sarah’s head snapped backwards, her mind reeling from the force of the recovered memory. The trauma of her head injury explained why she hadn’t remembered. Her chin sank to her chest. Despair settled over her like a horrible blanket. She had been kidnapped, tied up, and threatened by the most insane criminal on the streets of Gotham.



Dropping her eyelids, she tried to find something in herself to give her hope. Faith, some prayer of rescue, anything. There was nothing there.