Anthem

“Move it, girl.” A voice growled from behind her. Its owner probably meant to sound intimidating, but the voice just came off a bit gravelly and unpleasant. Ah, she thought, an anger vent.

Princess laughed, trying to provoke the man. She wanted so badly to hit him. She wanted to feel the give of his skin against her fist. She wanted him to have to fight for his life. She wanted to witness pain.

She kept her eyes closed when she spoke. “Do it yourself, loser.” She commanded, using her peppiest, bubblegum-and-pink voice.

Suddenly, there was a rough hand around her throat, not quite constricting her airway. “What did you say to me?” he asked, sounding as if he were restraining himself. It wasn’t really so much a question as an exclamation. Princess torpidly opened her eyes.

All traces of human warmth and compassion had vanished from them. The only thing contained within their fathomless depths was a strong contempt for the foolish man with his hand around her throat. A sarcastic smile tilted the corners of her mouth upwards. The man stared down at her, his messy blonde hair falling into his crazed green eyes. Princess folded her arms sedately across her chest. Somewhere within her, she knew that she knew how to fight. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did.

“I do believe I said ‘do it yourself, loser.’ Are you deaf, as well?” She made sure to enunciate every syllable, a thick layer of false concern coating each word like a winter coat. She looked up at him sympathetically, resisting laughter.

His hand compulsively twitched, temporarily cutting off oxygen to her brain. A flicker of disgust passed through the man’s features.

Princess’s expression slowly turned speculative, one eyebrow rising minutely. She searched, but she could find no traces of fear within herself. This man, the one with her neck in his grip, her life in his hands, meant nothing to her. Her heartbeat remained steady, and her eyes were only wide with confusion. She didn’t even notice that she could no longer breathe, so immersed was she in the lack of fear. She marveled in the power it gave her, as though she could see everything exceptionally clearly.

“I’m going to kill you, punk.” He growled, tightening his hand still further. At this point, Princess realized that she couldn’t breathe. Her field of vision was clouded with fuzzy purple spots. She began to scratch weakly at his arms, still not really afraid. She had waited too long, and now she was going to lose this fight. She struggled to reposition herself, placing her foot in between the man’s legs. She had one last chance to win, and she was not about to give it up.

“Travis!” Scarecrow’s voice shouted, startling both Princess and the crazy guy choking her. Princess felt her stomach tighten; she tried to gulp, immediately forgetting about her plan to kick the man, now known to her as Travis, where the sun don’t shine.

“Oh, um, hey Scarecrow!” Travis, the deranged blonde said, removing his hand from Princess’s throat. She coughed and sputtered, trying to pull as much oxygen from the air as possible. The two men stood silently until her coughing fit subsided. Eventually it did, and she watched them warily, rubbing her neck. It was raw and pink, and she was positive she was going to have a handprint-shaped bruise later.

“What were you doing to my Princess, Travis?” Scarecrow said in an oddly smooth voice that only made him more threatening. Travis couldn’t seem to look him in the eye. He stuttered an explanation, stumbling over his own words and becoming very frustrated with himself. Scarecrow looked at Princess, who was sitting frozen on the disgusting couch.

“Get out of here.” Scarecrow whispered, talking to Travis, but not looking away from Princess.

“But I-” Travis began.

“Now!” You have five seconds.” Scarecrow said lividly, turning to face Travis, who was still fumbling around for a reason to be choking Princess. He took one look at Scarecrow’s expression and took off like a bat out of hell.

Once Travis was out of sight, Scarecrow returned his gaze to Princess. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why couldn’t you fight him off?”

“To be honest, I hadn’t even thought about that until it was almost too late. I was just about to when you came by. I was more amazed that I wasn’t –” she said, attempting to tell him about her glorious lack of fear, her words all coming out in a rush.

“Who couldn’t you fight him off?!” he roared, his fist catching Princess just under the chin, sending her tumbling off of the couch.

She lay there motionlessly, shocked at his random outburst and unwilling to move. She felt awful and betrayed. Someone she didn’t even know had just tried to kill her, and not Scarecrow was about to beat her up? That’s just messed up, she thought, closing her eyes.

“Get up.” He commanded, prodding her in the side with the toe of his shoe. Maybe if I don’t move, he’ll leave me alone.

“Get up!” he said again when she didn’t comply. He kicked her hard in the side, and she felt something in her side pop, most likely a broken rib.

Wonderful, she thought, working not to scream as she fought the pain and climbed to her feet. She struggled to arrange her face into the least hateful look possible. She settled for a kind of dead-looking face, and cemented her features into it. If it offended him, he didn’t say anything.

“Go to the door and welcome our guest when he arrives.” Scarecrow said, pointing to a door at the end of a short hallway she couldn’t remember ever being down. “I’ll be in my lab. Call for me when he gets here.”

She stared at the ground, not realizing he wanted some sort of affirmation until he cleared his throat. She gave a single wordless nod, seething with anger. She could have sworn she heard him chuckle.

He turned and left; Princess glared at his retreating back, anger boiling inside of her. She concentrated on taking deep breaths and keeping her hands from shaking. She stood in this manner for about five minutes before moving to the end of the hallway Scarecrow had pointed at. She stood there for almost twenty minutes, her back pressed against the wall, her hands balled into tight, angry fists. She glared at the door to the closet directly in front of her, not really seeing it, until she finally began to relax. Her breathing settled into a normal pattern and she began to realize that she was hungry, and she wanted a cookie.

She had just turned to head off to the kitchen for one when she heard a barely audible knock on the door. Princess sighed, turning around and opening it, expecting to see… Well, she didn’t really know what to expect, but the man that filled her field of vision was nothing her imagination had the ability to come up with on its own. She stared at him for a moment, trying to categorize his appearance.

His skin was pale – not in the ‘you need more sun’ kind of way, but in the ‘holy crap, are you a corpse’ sort of way. His grin, so wide it looked like it could split his face in half, revealed yellowed teeth, though she figured even her teeth would look yellow when set against the stark white background of this man’s skin. His hair was slicked back in an old-style hairdo, and it was the oddest shade of dark green. He wore a purple velour suit, several sizes too large for his body.

A vague snippet of a memory flashed quickly in her brain, triggered by the stranger’s presence. She was sitting in bleachers in a big tent, with a familiar male next to her. She was whispering something into her ear.

“Look at the clowns, dear!” he said excitedly, but she couldn’t quite hear the tone of his voice, it was like she was reading the words off of a printed page rather than hearing them spoken. She knew he was supposed to say them, but she couldn’t quite hear them.

“I see them, Daddy!” she said just as excitedly. She watched the clowns right in front of her fighting over a tiny car, their huge grins and pale skin matching each other. The one with the rainbow-colored hair eventually won, pushing the fat bald one with a hat to the ground and climbing into the car. He drove away with a big puff of dirt. Then, her mind faded back into the present.

Daddy…

The man with the too-pale skin simply grinned at her, as if expecting something. “Oh, come in!” she said distractedly, barely realizing her rudeness.

“He’s here!” Princess called in the general direction of Scarecrow’s lab.

Who is my father? Princess wondered, immediately attempting to fit Scarecrow into that role. It was like shoving a square peg into a round hole – it simply wouldn’t work. The hitting didn’t make him a good candidate, but a small part of her wished that he really was her father, if for no other reason than the satisfaction of knowing the truth. She knew it wasn’t Gary, because he would have told her when she asked him why he cared about her.

“Scarecrow?” she said timidly as he entered the room. She winced; it was beginning to hurt her side to talk. Lightly placing one hand over her ribs, she grimaced.

“Yes, Princess?” he turned to her, looking genuinely concerned. His eyes darted to her hand, pinned closely to her side. “Gary used to be a nurse – find him and he’ll fix you up.”

“Thank you.” Princess said, kind of irked because she hadn’t gotten to ask her question, but not showing it because she knew better than to reject any semblance of kindness offered by him. She trudged off in the direction of Gary’s bedroom, searching for him.

She finally found him in the kitchen, after thoroughly searching the rest of the house. He was eating one of her freshly baked cookies, facing the wall and looking altogether out of place. She tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention. “Gary?” she asked, one hand still clamped over her ribs. “Can you fix my side?”

He quickly helped her over to a chair, and then began poking at the tender spot, trying to determine the extent of the damage. Finally, he concluded that it definitely wasn’t broken all the way through, and it was probably just cracked, or else bruised. He taped it up tightly and handed Princess a tall glass of water and some Tylenol.

She thanked him, took the pills, and then went back out to the living room to find the Scarecrow. She didn’t want him mad at her again.

He was still sitting in the living room, but the clown was nowhere in sight. Princess softly tiptoed over to him, placing one light hand on his shoulder. She was determined to ask him what she had planned to earlier. Her stomach tied itself into a huge knot and her knees trembled. For some reason, she just couldn’t picture him reacting well to her question. It didn’t matter much, though. She had to ask it.

“I’m waiting for the Joker to get his money from his car.” Scarecrow explained unnecessarily, tapping his fingers restlessly against the arm of the one oily couch. But his voice didn’t betray any anger. The knot in her stomach tightened considerably.

“Scarecrow?” she said, using her least offensive, most childish voice. She paused, biting her lip, unable to ask him about her parentage. She gulped, trying not to let him see how much he terrified her. She sat on the couch beside him nervously.

“Are you my daddy?” she finally managed. It wasn’t quite the question she’d intended. She really wanted to know who her father was, not just whether or not the Scarecrow was him. She looked up at him, surprised to see genuine warmth in his eyes. Maybe he was her father after all. It made her smile. The door swung slowly open, coming into contact with the wall with a soft click. Princess’s eyes never left Scarecrow’s. His expression shifted from some sort of tenderness to disgust, and finally settled on anger.

“No,” Princess whispered, just before Scarecrow’s fist came into contact with her face. She fell off the couch, anger filling her small body, mixing with the fear into something intoxicating. She felt powerful. She hopped quickly up, ignoring the protest in her ribs, and pulled her fist back. She let it fly forwards, connecting with his jaw with enough force to crack all of her knuckles and send his head flying back. She hit him so hard that it even made a noise, and she was, in all honesty, a little bit proud of the hit.

Before she knew what was going on, she was pinned to the wall by her neck, her feet dangling uselessly beneath her. Vaguely, some part of her brain was glad she had cleaned the walls. She couldn’t breathe.

“Nobody, and I mean nobody…” Scarecrow growled, shaking her body. Fuzzy spots appeared in her sight, “hits me. Ever! Do you understand me?”

Princess tried to nod, but she couldn’t move her head. She tried to say yes, but not enough air could reach her vocal cords to make any noise. Weakly, she raised her hands to his face, pushing at his chin and neck. She might as well have been pushing at a brick wall for all the good it did her. A laugh sounded somewhere near the door. Through her oxygen-deprived brain, Princess figured it must be the Joker.

Princess felt herself fall to the floor, the hand removed from around her throat. She cried out pathetically, gasping for breath and choking as someone started to clap. She coughed and sputtered, wondering what it was about her that made men want to choke her. If she didn’t have bruises before, she certainly would now.

“She’s got spunk!” an unfamiliar voice said, and Princess figured it must have been this mysterious Joker character. His voice sounded like it was on the verge of more laughter. “I like her.” The voice lowered in an intimidating fashion.

He laughed again, stepping over to her body and offering her his hand. She took it and pulled herself up off of the ground, hiding herself slightly behind him. Whoever he was, he didn’t seem to be as big a threat to her well-being as the Scarecrow was at that moment. And besides, he didn’t scare her as badly. He was just a clown. As far as she could remember, she liked clowns. They were funny. Scarecrow stood by, watching as his assistant huddled behind the body of another madman. His hands were in fists, and his eyes were two murderous pits of fire.

“Get away from her.” Scarecrow said, his voice shaking with the intensity of his fury. “She needs to be taught a lesson in respect.”

Princess peeked around the Joker’s body, whimpering when the Scarecrow’s eyes narrowed. She pressed herself against the Joker’s back in a wordless plea for him to help her, for him to save her from the man who had been subjecting her to her worst nightmares.

She gulped compulsively, wrapping her fingers tightly around the cuff of the Joker’s big purple suit jacket. She tried hard to keep her knees from trembling, but failed miserably. She knew the Scarecrow wouldn’t just punish her – he was going to destroy her.

Abruptly, with seemingly no provocation on either party’s behalf, Scarecrow and the Joker were in a fist fight. And from the looks of it, the Joker was winning. He head Scarecrow pinned to the ground and was beating his face in relentlessly, laughing and grinning like a maniac the whole time. Princess watched, intrigued and not at all worried about the master of fear’s safety. In fact, she’d much prefer he died. The Joker gave one especially hard punch to Scarecrow’s face, and Scarecrow cried out before going limp, unconscious.

Joker laughed harder than before, holding his sides and rolling around on the floor. Princess stood by awkwardly, watching him. She didn’t really know what to do, and a part of her was beginning to wonder where Gary was. Surely he had heard his boss fighting with the clown. Eventually, his crazy cackling ceased, and he stood up and walked over to Princess, placing a hand on her shoulder comfortingly.

“How old are you?” he inquired randomly. “Fifteen? Sixteen? You old enough to operate a firearm? Vote? Drink, even?”

Princess opened her mouth to speak, but quickly closed it when no answer came to her mind. She glared at the carpet like it had gravely offended her, trying to remember her age. Come on, you know this. This is something you should know! Everyone knows how old they are! She finally gave up, shrugging. “I don’t know.” She mumbled, disappointed in herself.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” he demanded, letting out a short, brisk laugh. “You can’t just not know your own age!”

Princess shrugged again, feeling like he was making fun of her. She was strangely ashamed. “I don’t. And I’m doubtful that Princess is my real name, too. I think it’s just what he,” she pointed to the Scarecrow, wrinkling her nose at his unconscious form splayed out on the nice, clean floor, “calls me. I have amnesia.”

She hung her head, as if there were great shame in admitting that fact.

“Hm.” The Joker said, stepping to the table in front of the couch and retrieving a familiar blue bottle. He stashed it in his pocket before turning and walking out the door. “You may want to leave.” He called behind himself.

Princess stood completely still for a moment, perplexed and tying to process what was going on, before dashing out into the bright sunlight behind him. She wasn’t stupid. She knew there would be hell for her to pay if she were still there when he woke up. The sun felt so good on her skin. She inhaled sharply, tasting the sun-tinged air around her, not minding the pain in her cracked rib. She smiled genuinely, and caught up to the Joker in no time at all, just before he entered his car. “Wait!” she said, grabbing his arm. “Where am I supposed to go?”

He laughed. “When in doubt, take to the sewers!” he suggested, “I recommend the manhole in front of the library.” He doubled over, clutching the side of his beat-up blue car for support. He climbed in, still laughing, and drove erratically away.