Monsters

The car was a rust bucket, but Sally wasn’t interested in its aesthetics. She clambered into it and immediately put the heater on, rubbing her fingers against the biting cold. She looked around the worn-out interior and gave a snort of laughter. Hiding from the police, in a car with fake plates. So conspicuous that she became, she hoped, inconspicuous.

She tilted the rear-view mirror at herself and gave a grimace. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her skin had the dry grainy texture of someone who had slept little, and badly. Tousling her still wet hair irritably she tilted the seat, and set about trying to get to sleep. Exhaustion and the lulling hum of the heater soon sent her into blissful nothingness despite her uncomfortable resting place.

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Sally did not know how long she had been asleep when she was woken by the sound of a car door slamming. All she knew was leaving the heater on had made the car claustrophobically hot, that she had a headache and her eyes stung. A gust of cold air touched the back of her neck, and she paused in the motion of rubbing her eyes.

She saw a glimpse of white and red in the rearview mirror before two gloved hands gripped her throat and right shoulder, and she was physically dragged into the backseat. Her feet kicked pathetically as she was wrenched up and over, and when her eyes finally adjusted to the darkness the Joker’s smirking face was looming over hers.

‘Rise and shine, my pretty Sally!’ he declared in a low, sing-song growl.

She frantically tried to right herself from her flattened position, sprawled across the seats, but he effortlessly slammed her head back down with pressure to her throat, depositing her upper torso on to his lap as he batted away her balled fists.

Tears sprang to her eyes as she struggled, realising how absolutely, ridiculously vulnerable she was. She had no room to fight back, and she couldn’t gather the strength to pull herself upright with her upper body alone.

‘Please, just, just.... don’t, please.’ She gasped around his grip on her throat, her voice breaking as he pulled a knife from his pocket with his other hand. Fear ran blind through her limbs, as she thought of the screwdriver in her boot, that was rendered useless by her position.

‘Now I don’t think begging suits your personality, it comes out sounding....’ he began, sucking his teeth as he thought of the word, ‘In-sin-cere.’ He completed in an annunciating hiss, eyes deathly serious as he pressed the knife against her bottom lip.

‘So I don’t want to hear that from you, right?’ he added, nodding to encourage her agreement.

‘So what do you want?’ she managed tremulously, staring up at him in the dark, feeling the knife bite into her lip as she spoke. He giggled slightly.

‘Oh, so eager to please! Well.... what I want....’. His eyes darkened as he looked down at her, at her bleeding lips, and it was a look Sally recognised, had seen hundreds of times before. Her heart jolted hideously in something like dread as his eyes burnt into hers, his breathing getting heavier.

A taxi passed, casting lurid light on them, and Joker leant down to remain hidden. One scarred cheek was inches from Sally’s face, made pitted and strange by the shadows. Her shell-shocked brain wondered what it would feel like to touch as her eyes traced the dips and contours of it.

‘How did you know my name?’ she whispered, hoping to distract him from where his mind had been drifting earlier. He looked back down at her and licked his lips thoughtfully.

‘Well,’ he began , considering that he was holding a knife to her face speaking in an unnervingly animated and cheerful voice, ‘I happened across the nice Lieutenant who was hoping to take you in to questioning, and he was MORE than willing to discuss you, given enough... en-couragement.’

Sally blinked, trying to take this in. As he spoke, the Joker constantly gesticulated, the knife coming dangerously close to Sally’s eyes every few seconds. She attempted to squirm back away from the knife, but only succeeded in pressing her head closer to his thigh.

‘So what did you do with him?’ she asked, wanting to keep him talking. The grip on her throat was still tight, but she could speak around it. She licked drying blood off her lips and wished the car wasn’t so small, that she wasn’t so close to him that her nerves were screaming.

She heard the car doors opening and felt her feet being unceremoniously lifted and dumped on the lap of whoever had taken the seat. Unease started to creep up on her to keep the terror company, tightening her stomach. She turned her head to see two men get in the front before the Joker yanked her face back round to look at him. Lipstick smeared across her face like an angry cut.

‘Oh I’ve still got him. He’s for you.’

The engine growled into life and they started moving. Panic hit her like a flash flood. They were moving. His intentions were becoming clearer with every moment – she was not going to be released any time soon.

‘Where are we going?’
She did not like how small, how fragile her voice sounded as street lights skittered over the Joker’s gruesome face.

‘Actually,’ he continued, ignoring her question ‘He’s for me, really. You see, I want to see you work.’

That tongue flicked out over his lips reflexively, as Sally’s mind sank back in to somewhere dark and safe and empty, where she didn’t have to understand what he meant.

‘I.... no...’

‘Oh don’t worry, I don’t mean your “work” work – the hoochie mama in you isn’t the issue here. I mean your REAL work, where your TALENTS are. I’m all about nurturing talent.’ he confessed, tangling one hand in her hair. Smacking the driver in the back of the head, he waved right. Sally desperately wished she could sit up and see a street name, anything, but even tensing her neck earned a vicious retributive yank to her hair.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said only to have her head dragged back by the hair so aggressively she felt like her neck was going to snap. She let out a whimper, unable to see anything but the car door, her throat stretched and exposed. She recoiled involuntarily as she felt his hot breath on her pulse point, lips skimming her skin. Every time it did her entire body spasmed in hyper-sensitivity.

‘Don’t, Play, Stupid, either. This is only stage TWO of the interview, which meaaaaans you can always be removed for a less.... tedious model.’ He growled against her skin, sending vibrations up and down her spine.

She started shaking, but this time it was with pure fury. Blind, futile rage coursed through her, growing all the more intense by her inability to act. She bit down on her own tongue and tasted blood, clenching her fists in a pointless act of self-assurance. She wanted him DEAD, she wanted to slash him to pieces in that second. The more she knew she was helpless, the more her head screamed murder.

He yanked her head up again and stared intently at her. ‘Now THAT’S an expression that suits you. Keep it up cutie.’ He cooed in a teasing baby voice, patting her cheek idly with one hand.

Snarling, she attempted to launch herself up at him, only succeeding in scouring a long scratch mark along his neck before he flattened her on to his lap once more with a hand to the throat.

He let out a manic howl of laughter, eyes glittering in delight. ‘Now this I much prefer to when you act stupid. But we’ll have to save the flirting for later.’ Even as the car was grinding to a halt the Joker was opening the door and dragging her out of it by her hair. She had no opportunity to see where she was going, where they were in the cool night air, she was so desperately trying to not trip. Even when she did trip, unable to keep up with his rapid pace with her head being pulled along at knee height, he continued to drag her, and only by holding on to his wrist did she manage to not have clumps of her hair ripped out.

‘FUCKER!’ she screamed in absolutely fury, twisting with both her hands on his wrist, sending him tumbling down to the floor with her. Even as she did it he was laughing manically, and it only made her angrier. Scuttling away from him on her back she wrenched the screwdriver from her boot and gathered her legs under her to leap at him and stab the sick bastard to death. ..

Only to feel the pressured sound of gunfire exploding in her ears. She recoiled on impulse, remaining frozen in the minute of deathly silence that followed. Achingly slow, she looked over the crook of her elbow, at the clown-masked follower who still had the gun pointed at her. The Joker was giving the man an absolutely incredulous look, before marching towards him, smacking the mask off his face and thrusting his knife into his mouth. The man let out a gargled grunt of pain as blood started trickling out of his mouth, the Joker gripping a handful of his hair and holding him close to his face.

‘WHAT, is the point, of wasting all that time bringing her here, only for you to kill her? No try thinky, ok? It’s not your forte.’ He hissed through his teeth as the man continued to sob and pour blood. He pulled the knife clear of the man’s mouth without ceremony and he sank to the floor making wet ugly noises and spitting blood onto the floor. When the Joker turned that black gaze upon Sally she knew with horrible, vivid clarity that there was a very real chance that she could be dead in the next few hours. And the more fear she felt, the more anger she felt at her own weakness, at her inability to save herself in the face of this.

I WILL NOT DIE. I CANNOT DIE.

She didn’t know which feeling won out, absorbing it all in a maelstrom of sensation until she felt like she was standing on the edge of something huge and horrible. She had been a fool for thinking the Joker would not come back. Everything was broken, her ability to hide was destroyed, because he had SEEN her and he had known in a way that no one ever had before.

‘A screwdriver? What are you going to do with that pumpkin? It’s all.... eeugh, RUSTY.’ he said, his face twisted in mocking confusion.

‘I thought we could play pin the red nose on the clown.’ She grated out, breathing heavily.

He gave an amused giggle before pouting, ‘Now that game is just NO fun. How about we play stick the pig instead?’

‘I don’t like bacon.’

He waved dismissively ‘Me neither. Let’s just throw him in the river once you’re done with him and go get Mexican, hmmm? Bring him on out, I don’t think this should take too long.’

Out of the corner of her eye she saw two of the henchmen going up some concrete steps into a storehouse off to their right. She remained where she was, trying to force her body to draw breath. The Joker had already taken a knife from his pocket and was blowing lint off it, squinting down the length of the blade.

‘I’m not just going to kill a man for no reason.’ She said slowly, trying to make her tone adamant. He already thought he had won. He thought killing was as natural to her as it was to him. Either that or he didn’t care. It was more likely that he didn’t care.

He rounded on her and came forward suddenly, with enough speed that she leapt to her feet and held the screwdriver defensively. ‘Reason, reason, what REASON? I killed him ‘cause his shoes didn’t match his tie, I killed him in self defence, I killed him cause I Just. Felt. Like. It. How is one of those “reasons” any better than the other ones? You know what reasons are Sally? Excuses.’

The two masked men shoved the bound and beaten Lieutenant down the stairs; she knew this was happening but she also knew that looking away from the Joker right now would be a very bad thing to do, when he was standing inches from her with a far more deadly weapon than what she held. But he was not threatening her right now. He was coercing her. She couldn’t stand how he looked at her and knew what she was.

‘You, my darling, are, Enthuuu-siastic, when you kill. And you know what’s just.... a tiny slither of effort away from enthusiasm? Hmm? Enjoyment.’ He giggled at her vehement shaking of the head. ‘No? Prefer the excuses? The reaaaasons? Oh Sally, Sally Sally Sal Sal.... You want to know what your problem is?’

‘Why, you going to save me from my problem?’ she responded in as blithe a tone as she could manage, her eyes skittering unbidden round to the Lieutenant. Dried blood clung to his face, and as he was shoved down on to his knees by the henchmen he looked as though he was inches away from dropping altogether. It took a while for her to realise that his right ear had been cut off.

‘You have spent, your entire life, hiding.’ His voice was practically a guttural purr, and she didn’t want to hear anything that he had to say, the way his words delved in too deep, and found a place that never got acknowledged.

‘Shut up.’

‘Me? I’m not doing anything, I’m just telling you the truth.’ He pointed his finger in childlike accusation.

‘You’ve been hoping no one will notice you, as if that will somehow, get RID of what you are, but it doesn’t work like that princess! Why would you want to get rid of what you are?’ Hysterical laugher exploded out of his throat. ‘You just do it so well!’

‘What the fuck do you know about what I am?’ she spat out, ire rising at the same pace as her fear. There was a buzzing of pure sensation in her ears and she would have noticed the sweat on her palms if she hadn’t still been holding the screwdriver at white-knuckle strength.

‘You think that people can’t see you, but I’m afraid to tell you sweetheart, that you’ve been hanging around the wrooong, people. And I can SEE. You.’


Her vision felt like it was pouring static, and then she felt his breath on her neck, and he was close, too close, unbearably close. Her breathing was deafening in her ears as her eyes flickered round to look at him, his body up close against her right hand side. He was barely even a man anymore, he was dark eyes and blood-slicked smile, he was the interior of her heart but he was NOT a man.

‘I don’t kill unarmed..... tied up men....’ she heard her own voice from a long way away, and saw him cackle in delight. Even this, was a concession of defeat.

‘But you’ve killed sleeping men, haven’t you? I bet you have, watching them after they’ve, exhausted themselves with you. Done everything they wanted with you...’


She should have killed him. She did not know why she didn’t. Maybe because he wasn’t a man in that moment.

So instead she stepped forward and plunged the screwdriver into the Lieutenant’s stomach. He let a heaving, hollow breath of shock around his gag, eyes wide and white as she wrenched the screwdriver out again, and stabbed once more in to his upper chest. The final stab was more of a bludgeon, a two-handed assault upon his throat that probably snapped his neck even as the chiselled tip of the screwdriver met the back of his neck.

She backed away, two steps, three steps, eyes wild before her swinging vision found the Joker.

‘IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED?? IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED YOU SICK SHIT??’ she screamed at him even as his face remained impassive.

‘Yeah, actually. That will do me nicely.’ He said cheerfully, as though he were talking about the weather. Even as he was speaking, the three henchmen were picking up the still twitching body of the Lieutenant, and carrying it towards the car. When they flung it into the back seat Sally had a violent urge to be sick. They got in the car and drove off without a words communication with the Joker, whose eyes had not left her for a second.

‘Well. It looks like it’s just me and you for a while.... Sally.’

Her screwdriver was still lodged in the throat of the Lieutenant. And now she was alone with him.