Anthem

“Good morning, Princess!” Scarecrow said brightly, pulling her completely from her bed.

“Morning?” she asked, quite confused. Her voice was raspy and her skin hurt. Her arm ached where he was grabbing it, and she stared at his hand until he awkwardly released her.

“Well, it’s afternoon, actually. I figured you deserved some extra sleep after last night. Speaking of which, how did you sleep?” he said, and she could hear the smile on his face, even if his mask prevented her from seeing it.

What is he, my doctor?

Suddenly, this bothered her. “Not well. Why are you wearing a mask?” she asked, before thinking her actions through. She winced, waiting to be hit again.

He raised his hand, but hesitated for a moment, as if deciding. Fox twitched and trembled, afraid of him and the pain she associated with him. He lifted his mask uncertainly. Azalea held her breath until she could see his face, bracing herself for something hideously ugly, something worthy of being covered by a mask.

She let herself breathe again once she saw his face. He looked absolutely normal. His red hair was slightly askew, and his neck looked almost too small to hold up his head. His Adam’s apple protruded from his neck, and it moved when he sighed. She couldn’t fathom how anyone who looked so normal could be so evil. Her father’s own normal face sprang to her mind, and she felt a sharp pain in her chest, along with a resurgence of loathing for the man in front of her.

“Now, Princess.” He said, and his expression reminded her of her grandfather. If he hadn’t killed her father, she might have given him a hug. Maybe, but not likely. “Listen to me carefully. Until your brother comes to retrieve you, you’re going to be my assistant. Can you do that for me?”

Fox nodded, knowing that she had no other choice, and she might as well take the path of least resistance. She could remember her father lecturing her on what to do during a hostage situation, and one of his top rules was cooperate. It seemed like the opposite of what she would want to do, but if her father had told her to do it, she was going to do it.

“Good girl.” He said, turning and heading out the door. She blinked a few times, wondering if he meant her to follow. He poked his head back into the room. “Well?” he prompted. She swallowed nervously and followed him down the hall to his laboratory.

It would have been a pretty cool place, with bottles lining the walls, and a huge fish tank sitting in one corner, had she not known what was concocted within its boundaries.

“The first thing I need is for you to test… this.” He held up a small beaker of white gas. It had a stopper in the top, holding the contents inside. She stared at it as he put a gas mask on his own face.

“Why, don’t you already have something that’ll make people head for the hills?”

Scarecrow grinned crookedly at her. “Yes, but you see, the problem with that particular formula is that it wears off.”

Fox began to shake at the sound of his growl and the implicit threat in his voice, but she knew better already than to retreat. It could only end badly for her.

Fox gulped, knowing her life here would be hell.

Almost five weeks passed without much incident. Scarecrow tested on Fox, and she learned to fear and respect him. Her mistakes, and consequently her beatings, became less and less frequent. Her cuts and bruises healed into scars and memories, and her skin was decorated with fewer shadows and lines. Her brother never came for her, and she never heard word from Scarecrow whether he ever would or not. Truth told, she never heard much from him at all. She would participate in his little experiments, and the next thing she knew, her fear would subside, and he would storm away from her, growling and muttering curses under his breath. Occasionally the concoction would produce undesirable side effects, like the time it caused her throat to swell shut, cutting off her air supply, or the time it caused nausea so terrible she was throwing up for three days and he could not use her for any of his experiments. He was mad about that one, which caused her to have a black eye.

Over the weeks, she grew fairly fond of Gary, although Scarecrow never liked her to hang out with any of his henchmen. The rest of the henchmen scared her. There was one in particular, with sandy blond hair and small eyes, who would stare at her lustfully every time she walked by, causing her to speed up and search out Gary or the Scarecrow.

Then one morning, she woke up completely bewildered. She paused a few minutes to think, hurriedly glancing about the small room. She took in the shapes of the dingy, off-white dresser, the dirty lamp atop it, the door with the chipped paint, and the squeaky, lumpy bed she laid upon, and it triggered nothing. She couldn’t remember why she was there, or what she was doing.

A man opened her door, and she sat straight up. He smiled as he approached, looking very grandfatherly. If he hadn’t seemed like a stranger to her, she would have given him a hug.

“Wh-who are you?” she stammered, clutching her thin sheet to her chin in a slight state of panic.

The man laughed, scratching the back of his head, messing up his red hair. “You mean to tell me you don’t recognize your dear old Scarecrow, Princess?”

Scarecrow. The name sent unwarranted chills tumbling down her spine. She visibly shivered. Why was she so afraid? That name triggered something within her, some shadow of a foggy, dim memory. She struggled to hold on to that memory, but it faded away just as fast as it had come, leaving her more confused than she was before.

“Oh, Princess, no need to fear.” He sighed, sitting beside her and throwing his arm around her shoulder. She didn’t recoil, so he decided to push his luck and kiss the top of her head. She still didn’t react, just sat there and stared at the chipped paint on the door he had come through. She identified with the door, in a way. They were both missing something. He rubbed her arm. Something inside her told her that what he was doing should have her terrified, and she should be pulling away, but she couldn’t tell why.

“Is something wrong?” he asked, slightly alarmed at her abruptly changed reaction.

“Who are you?” She asked again, her voice sounding hoarse and slightly strangled.

“I’m the Scarecrow,” he answered, his eyebrows furrowing together. He sounded frustrated, so she decided to drop it.

“Oh, ok,” she said, in a voice that clearly said that she had no idea what he was talking about. She paused, pursing her lips. “Who am I?” her voice was small.

“Oh,” he said, a wide, wise grin flashing across his face. “Oh,” he said again, beginning to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” she asked, indignant. Why was he laughing at her? Had she said something funny?

“I want you to understand that I had no idea anything like this was even a possibility. This was completely accidental and inadvertent, dear. You, Princess, are my assistant. You help me with my experiments. Right now, we are attempting to discover a chemical, preferably in a gaseous form, that will inspire fear in the hearts of each person it comes into contact with, but the effects will not go away over any period of time without an antidote. Very useful in my line of work, you see. Apparently, though, that last batch had some unforeseen consequences.” He explained calmly, a small, understanding smile playing on his lips.

The slight wrinkles around his eyes enhanced his grandfatherly appearance, and she found herself trusting him despite her reluctance. He looked so kind, looking at her like that, so full of reassurance that everything was going to be alright.

Princess thought for a full minute, processing the information through a shocked brain. “So, what are you saying? What’s wrong with me?” Tears started to form in her eyes, and she tried to repress them.

“Princess, you have amnesia.” He stated, patting her shoulder comfortingly before standing and walking to the door. “Get dressed. We have a lot to do today. We’re expecting a visitor tomorrow, and I am in need of a freshly cleaned living room to impress our villainous guest.”

Princess nodded and smiled, opening the top drawer of the plain dresser beside her. As the door clicked softly closed, she pulled out a simple green T-shirt and some old-looking, paint splattered jeans.

When she was done changing, she exited her room into the hallway. In an instant, she realized that she had no clue where she was. Luckily, though, a man came out of the door to her immediate right.

“Mister?” she called, her voice oddly childlike. He turned to face her. “Where’s Mister Scarecrow at?”

“In his lab, Princess” he sneered, but his voice didn’t sound so much mean as simply teasing. She blinked at him, not comprehending.

“Hey, stop messing with her, Gary! You remember what happened last time.” A gruff voice called from the room he’d just been in.

“For your information, Rob, she was talking to me. She initiated this conversation thank-you-very-much.” He said, sounding just as childish as her.

“So he’s in his lab.” Princess muttered, her voice far too low for Gary to hear her childish verbalizations. “Um, Mister?” she asked, raising her voice to a distinguishable level.

“What do you want?” He said, exasperated. He looked at her strangely. He couldn’t understand why she was calling him ‘Mister.’

“Um, where’s his lab?” she timidly squeaked. He was intimidating her, whether he meant to of not.

Gary rolled his eyes and pointed to a slightly ajar door only a little ways down the filthy hallway. “He’s in a bad mood, so watch yourself. He was muttering something about side effects when he went in there.”

“Oh, ok. Thank you, Mister Gary.” Princess smiled, skipping down the hall to the Scarecrow’s lab. She tried her best to ignore the bodies of dead cockroaches piled in a corner near the doorframe. Gently, she pushed open the door, peering inside. The only light emanated from the table Scarecrow was leaning over.

“Mister Scarecrow, sir?” she politely called, announcing her presence. She stepped inside and swiftly shut the door behind herself. She immediately regretted that as a sense of dread swept over her, just from being in the same room as him. She shook her head, though. He hadn’t done anything to her, and he had told her earlier that he hadn’t even meant to give her amnesia.

“Just… Scarecrow.” He said with a heavy sigh. “Why are you here, not cleaning the living room?” he put down his complicated-looking work and swiveled the chair he was sitting in to face his Princess. He pulled the surgical mask down from his face with his blue glove-clad hands, and the look on his face was one of distaste and mild annoyance.

“Well, to be honest, I kind of forgot what to do.” She admitted reluctantly, looking down at the paint covered denim on her thighs. She began to pick at a spot of deep green paint.

“Princess, I told you -” Scarecrow began, sounding incredibly impatient, but Princess cut off his sentence, knowing that he was just going to be mad and scold her for forgetting.

“Only sort of.” She scoffed.

She fell back against the counter behind her, gripping the cheek he’d just punched. The metallic taste of her own blood filled her mouth. “What the -”, but suddenly, she was on the floor, a very angry Scarecrow peering menacingly down at her and a fresh bruise forming on her back. His hands wrapped around her neck, applying just enough pressure to let her know that he could end her life right there if he wanted to, and there was nothing anybody would do about it.

“Never interrupt me, Princess.” He spat, placing a knee on either side of her stomach so she couldn’t squirm away had she not been too confused to try. He pulled her head up off the ground a bit, just enough to make her neck hurt.

“Why the hell did you hit me?” She demanded, glaring up at him.

“Such foul language and impoliteness coming from a child.” Scarecrow growled menacingly. “I do believe you need to be taught some manners.”

He pulled out a small, sharp scalpel, lowering it agonizingly slowly to rest on her shoulder, gathering both of her wrists in his right hand and holding them tightly to her own chest. Princess trembled, mute, at his threat, simply staring horrorstruck into the Scarecrow’s merciless eyes.

“Good girl. Control your fear, be its master.” He murmured, stroking her cheek once with the flat of the blade before plunging the knife deep into her flesh, just inside her shoulder, twisting it painfully.

Princess screeched, unable to stop the sounds from escaping her lips. Instantly, tears sprung to her eyes, spilling over. The knife was withdrawn immediately, the pressure leaving her shoulder as quickly as it had begun. The Scarecrow was suddenly looking directly at her agonized face with sympathy. He almost looked remorseful. She attempted a smile in return, bitter tears of pain shimmering in her dark eyes.

“While I do like a little spirit, my dear, you’ve just got too much. I’m going to have to break that spirit. I have to break you. I don’t like to punish you, my Princess. I really don’t. Please, could you refrain from doing anything that would make me do it again?” he said, pulling her roughly from the floor without any regards to her fresh stab wound. “Now, go down the hall, and the living room is the one at the very end.”

She trudged slowly in the direction he’d indicated, wincing and groaning whenever her bloody shirt pulled at her new puncture. She was starting to feel dizzy, and the pain was making her feel sick. The same phrase kept replaying itself in her head:
I have to break you.

“You already have.” She whispered.

Talking to yourself is crazy, you know, she scolded.

“Is not.” She countered.

Is too.

“Is not.”

Is too.

“Is not.”

Is too.

“Not.”

Too, too, too!

“Shut up!” Princess roared, clutching at either side of her head at her temples. Maybe it was just another of the side-effects of whatever had caused her amnesia, but she felt like she was going crazy. She looked at her shirt, and the blood that was rapidly seeping down, inching its way towards her bellybutton. Then again, maybe it was just blood loss.

Someone coughed nervously right behind her. She turned, flabbergasted at being caught in a moment of clear insanity, to face Gary.

“Come here.” He said in a monotone, looking at her shoulder with a carefully blank expression. He turned and walked down the hallway. After a second of thought, she followed him. He led her around, in a circuitous route, through the absolutely trashed living room she was to clean and into the kitchen. He deftly picked her up by the waist and set her onto the counter, careful not to disturb her shoulder. Princess shivered, then started to sniffle.

“Change into this.” He said, pulling his own black muscle shirt off and handing it over to her. “Yours is ruined, and this one is clean.”

Doubting him, she pulled the dark fabric to her face and inhaled deeply. It smelled of detergent and citrus fruits, and a not-unpleasant scent that could only be described as ‘man.’ She looked at Gary again, but with a slightly less amount of suspicion. “… No looking.” She cautioned. He theatrically turned, putting his big hands over his eyes. Princess giggled at how silly and childish he looked.

“Do I need to plug my ears and hum too?” he asked.

Princess laughed. “Shut up.”

She peeled her bloodied, red-stained shirt off of her body, wincing as the already-drying blood pulled at her raw skin. She slid into Gray’s shirt which was far too large for her petite form, draping over her shape like a tent. “Ok, you can look now!” she stated, rather chipper. Her dizziness was starting to make her giddy. She giggled again.

He turned back around to face her, his eyes immediately landing on her mangled shoulder. He gasped. Apparently it looked just about as bad as it felt. Blood ran in thick rivers down her arm and matted all her hair on the left side. She assumed that it got in her hair when she was pinned to the floor in the laboratory. It dripped from the corner of her mouth from where the Scarecrow punched her in the face, mingling in with the blood from her shoulder seamlessly.

Princess winced at his expression. He looked like her pain was causing him some sort of pain of his own. Princess looked at him in wonder for a moment. Something tugged at the strings in her brain, begging her to remember. She had no idea who this man was, but she got the feeling she could consider him a friend, a safe harbor in any storm. He raised a hand as if to touch her shoulder to try to take away the pain, but then thought better of it, not wanting to hurt her any more, and dropped his outstretched palm.

Princess tilted her small head to the side. “Am I really that bad?” she questioned, scrunching up her nose. She knew she felt awful, but surely she was just being overly dramatic.

“Yes.” Gary said after a few moments of thought. He turned on his heel and went digging through the cupboards for a washcloth, preferably one that looked at least mostly clean. He found one and dampened it with warm water from the tap behind him before he turned to Princess with a look of sympathy on his face. “This is really going to hurt, I’m not about to lie to you.” Gary laughed, but his eyes were serious. “Try your hardest not to scream. That’s why I got in trouble last time. I’ll bandage it once you’re clean. Hopefully it won’t get infected, because that would suck.”

He brought the warm cloth to her skin very carefully. She gasped, biting her lip as hard as she could without drawing blood.

“Sorry.” He said, an impish smile on his face, but he sounded sincere.

“Do you have, I don’t know, a rag or something I could, um, bite down on?” Princess whimpered.

“Sure.” Gary responded, ripping the single clean sleeve off of her already torn and bloody green ex-shirt and handing it to her.

She stuffed it into her mouth immediately. Gary looked at her, stifling a laugh at how ridiculous she appeared.

“Shut up.” She tried to say, but the sleeve in her mouth muffled it into a quite garbled mush. Gary shook his head.

With her shirt sleeve in her mouth like that, and with Gary apologizing for hurting her every twenty seconds, they were done in no time.

“Thanks so much.” Princess finally sighed, removing the sleeve from her mouth as he taped the last piece of gauze into place. “But…” she bit her lip, not wanting to offend this large, dangerous-looking man, even though she felt that somehow she could trust him. Oh, out with it! “Why in the world are you helping me?” she blurted out, without any time to edit the words coming from her mouth. It had sounded much less rude in her head.

Gary sucked a deep breath in through his nose. His eyes closed, he looked lost in thought. He sat in that manner for several minutes, and Princess worked to refrain from poking him just to make sure he was awake. When he spoke, it was in a severely pained whisper. “I once… had a daughter.” He managed. Princess didn’t dare to say a word. He swallowed loudly, eyes still closed. He appeared to need every ounce of self-control in his body to say this calmly. “She… died. Four years ago last Tuesday. She was only seven.”

The last part was so quiet Princess had to strain to hear it. She yearned to reach out and wrap the big man in her arms, to let him know it was going to be okay. She just didn’t know how, and she wasn’t sure she was allowed to. “I’d… better clean the living room.” She mumbled, exiting the kitchen quickly and surveying the damage area she was to sanitize. She supposed she was fairly lucky. It only smelled about half as bad as it looked. Who am I kidding? This sucks. There’s no way to get around it.

She scrubbed, rubbing every surface of the room with mildly soapy water. At times, she would gasp and shriek, frustrated and absolutely appalled at some of the molds, fungi, stains, and other unmentionables the men Scarecrow hired lived with on a day-to-day basis. The floor was coated in a layer of grime almost half an inch thick. It appeared to consist primarily of blood. Heck, judging from how she’d been treated by him earlier in the day, some of it was probably hers. She scraped at the floor and shined it until it was a pretty grey color. The wood had probably been some sort of brown at one point, but years of neglect and abuse had permanently bleached it the color of old porridge. She continued to scrub the wood until it shined, wanting to give the Scarecrow no reason to hurt her again.

Once finally finished, the living room looked livable. She’d managed to clean most of the gum out from under the table, though she wasn’t sure why the table had gum under it in the first place. Were the Scarecrow’s men adults or middle schoolers, for crying out loud? The walls were a pretty blue under their grey layer of smoke and dust. The table had been attacked with a knife beyond repair, so she’d simply cleaned it and placed a large red piece of fabric over it like a tablecloth, hoping that the Scarecrow wouldn’t get mad at her for not fixing it. As she covered it, she couldn’t help but think about the wound in her shoulder, and wonder whether the dips and cuts in the wooden table were caused by the same instrument. She carried her bucket of reddish-brown water back to the kitchen to empty it. While it was draining, she studied her fingernails. Five of them had been broken from scratching at the floor, trying to pry up layers of grime, and she had a crescent-shaped red stain under each one. She looked at the stain and tried very hard not to imagine the diseases probably carried in the blood she’d just been in. She shuddered delicately.