Half Jack

Homer

"You smell good. I bet you look even better."

Angel laughed, turning her head softly in front of the mirror. I could hear a small click as she fastened her earring closed and then she stood tall, wearing what a "seeing" person would view as a long, flowy white gown. All I saw was a soft white shape.

"Are you going out on a date?" I asked bluntly.

"No, no." She sighed stubbornly. I frowned, considering pestering her again, like I had been for the past couple of years. But I decided against it, remembering the last time she'd come home from a date. It had ended badly, but she wasn't the one wounded. She never was.

"Did you have fun with Jimmy?" She asked sweetly, "You guys were out late tonight."

"We were racing along the bridge. You lose track of the time there." I lied.

"Yes, you do lose track, don't you?" A long pause, then cold air whooshed in my face as she walked past me quickly, grabbing her purse by the couch.

"I'm not sure when I'll be back... you know how these parties are. But Cosette really needs me," Angel sighed again, "She's been acting like a ghost...."

"So are you." I turned around, 'staring' my sister down. I found this easy to do to people--I could keep a stone face for days and my body was always stiff. It helped that most of my wardrobe was black and other serious colors. It made me feel important, like I knew stuff.

But I didn't know why Angel was keeping secrets from me.

"There's hot dogs in the fridge, on the first shelf." She ignored my statement, opening the door to leave.

"It was the bridge, wasn't it? Where it happened. I can still smell..."

She slammed the door shut.

"Death." I finished, turning into the bathroom and, like a burn victim unveiling the bandages on his face, I slowly, carefully, took my sunglasses off and stared into the mirror. I'd gotten curious as to what I looked like these days, and I found it frustrating that I wasn't allowed to know.

Nothing. Just a faint white blur.

I was invisible, I realized. No face, no identity. An invisible pre-teen who would grow into The Invisible Man--blending into the night and as fleeting as the wind.

Was I real? Did I exist? Did Homer really write all those epics? Was I imaginary, like The Purple Man and The Flower Lady?

I snatched my glasses and returned them to my ears, shaking my head as I turned off the light. Not that it mattered much, I relied on memory to get around more and more.

Cosette

"This isn't real." I told myself in my bathroom mirror, "You're not real. They're not real. The Joker... Poison Ivy... They're gone. They're not here. I'm. Not. Here."

I can't tell you how, but the makeup bag had followed me to the bathroom. Perhaps I'd carried it in here, I wasn't sure anymore.

You see, madness isn't always as cliche as voices in your head or twitching, although it appears that way to most.

My definition of madness starts when lines begin blurring every which way, and everything feels like a dream when you wake up. The kind of dream where you feel you're dying slowly. Where your heart beat pounds and everything around you suddenly grins, making you sick. The walls start dripping and your lungs become balloons, ripe and ready to pop. The idea of ordinary tasks becomes frightening and warped--while stranger, primitive instincts are fancied often. Thoughts seem broken to the third party but everything is connected--associated with memory, as opposed to reality. Everything whispers, and humans start looking alien.

I know because every great artist--writer, painter, actor, musician--or leader has some touch of the "disease". You must, in order to put yourself into a different mold or frame of mind every day.

The problem is, dehumanization, primal instincts, and association with bad memories are the first steps to becoming a... a...

(serial killer say it say it accept accept it kill your friends before they kill you)

I was trying to wrestle with this fact. And fight against it. I was trying to forget all about my childhood, my teen years, and especially six years ago.. that fire...

(you can still smell the flames why did they just leave you like that? you never got to say goodbye)

This was probably the thing that was making me most bitter, and I grabbed a container of white face paint from within the bag absentmindedly in my rage. I was slighty surprised to find it only halfway gone, but in good condition.

(Are you a mime? Or are you a daisy? The choice is yours. Let her create herself)

When the make up touched my skin, I realized the bag wasn't just a hallucination. It was cool like the kiss of death and almost soothing against my feverish forehead. I remember when I was 16 it felt like ordinary paint, and now it felt necessary--a security blanket.

I'd made a grab for the eyeliner pencil when my door buzzed.

And then I dropped it instantly, running--practically sliding--to the door and opening it wide

(green bowler hat suit cane)

"Oh. It's just you." Angel stood before me, tapping her foot a little. She looked up at me and her jaw froze for a second.

"Your face, Cosette. What have you done to your face."

"I had to. To see if it was real. And it is. This is bad, Angel. They won't leave me alone..."

"What are you--"

"Is it Friday already?" I snapped.

She looked impatient and slightly worried--for a moment it appeared she was going to slap me in order to wake me up--but she did not, "...Yes. We're late."

"You're supposed to be late sometimes..." I could hear my own voice whine as I turned away from her and went to go pick out some dress. The sound made me disgusted with myself.

"Fashionably," she added--always the corrector, "I tried calling you... Are you... alright?"

Angel

Of course she wasn't.

But I wasn't going to do anything.

Sometimes, even Angels have little faith.

Cosette

I think I called a semi-confident 'yeah' but I can't remember. After that night, everything sort of ran down a thick black drain in my mind.

Angel

Our tardiness wasn't a problem, when we arrived, it didn't matter. People clambored to see her.

She'd become something bigger than herself--more mysterious, enigmatic, something as sought after by the ravaging media as Bruce Wayne himself. Appropriate, since she was his proclaimed "niece" and was expected early on to become a high scale socialite. Her writing had given her some fame, sure, but it was the famed Riddler crimes and kidnappings that had blown her image out of proportion. Mostly because she ignored all questions related to the events.

Tonight she wore a little black dress with a spin: it was covered in dark sequins and spikes. She'd washed the white paint off her face, but replaced it with even heavier make up. The kind of thing that screamed "look but don't touch". It was this persona that sucked the other young famous no-names to surround her like a swarm. I could see from my position at her side that she hated each one for different reasons, hated these glowing lights and shining floors up in this newly rebuild manor--but she wore a smile so wide her face threatened to break in two despite it.

I hated these parties, too. I became an accessory, a prop. Something showcased, to be looked at. I missed the old days, when Cosette and I accompanied Jay to strange clubs and smoky restaurants, walked the streets and smiled at each other.

I stared across the room, beyond all these strangers, into the reflective dark windows of the lavish room. I saw myself stare solidly back, dressed in a long sleek gown that glowed with my face.

(You are a ghost, invisible) Homer's voice in my mind.

"I am." I said. No one questioned my sudden vocalization or even acknowledged I was there. They were only laughing. Cosette's, of course, was the loudest and most frightening.

Cosette

I wasn't laughing at their jokes. I could no longer hear them. Their voices were garbles, their whine glasses something they held to taunt with, to threaten with--guns pointed at me. I could hear myself say some things in response, but I couldn't tell what I was saying because I was only getting sicker by the minute, from their heads.

They had strange, twisted heads. Sometimes they were animals. Some of them were things that don't exist.

One of the men surrounding me was a fish, his eyes unblinking and mouth agape. I suddenly wanted to gut him, tear his bones out like you would a fish. I smiled and he thought it was because of something witty he'd said. His girlfriend was a mule, yelling about politics. I hated politics. Another fellow had a red mask burned into his face and his own girlfriend was nothing, a blank slate with three mouths. She was buzzing about how The Batman should just cease entirely, nothing was going on in the city anyways. They whizzed a mile a minute.

(you're dehumanizing stop it stop it the guns will get you)

I turned, and Angel was there. She was a face. She had a face. Her beautiful shining face on the blight of this party. Good.

I nodded to myself, and turned back to my "friends". I could do this. I'd survived nights like this before.

Right?

Jay

"You just gonna take a gun? What if Jean struggles. Musta been tough, to get out of that trap. We should bring...she'll fight..." A lower goon of Penguins looked at my weapon choice quizically.

I loaded it, a frown on my face, "She won't. She... trusts me."

Cosette

It was past midnight when Angel and I were snacking on some fancy sort of shrimp kabobs from a table. A woman in a glittering dress had joined us, dragging her boyfriend over. I'd seen her pointing and whispering from across the room. I rolled my eyes discreetly before greeting them warmly.

The boyfriend said something, cracked a perverted joke. The girl--something of a hyena--brayed a laugh and said, "You are so, so crude, (some uppity name I can't recall)! Really you are."

"My mother always said all men were crude." I heard my voice respond faintly, from faraway.

"Did she?" That grating, disgusting laugh again, "What was she like, your mother? I don't believe I've heard of her."

"She was the most beautiful woman part of the planet." I looked off into the black windows distantly. My eyes looked as if they were losing something.

"On the planet. You mean on."

"I say what I mean." I said seriously.

She laughed again. Her mouth was a large snout and her teeth were exaggerated. I wanted to pull them out and string them around my own neck. I could feel the veins in my head pulse. I imagined this all very carefully, and began to laugh with her.

This must be how my father felt, only now I had the words to really describe it--in its true and ugliest form.

"This is interesting, they say you never talk about your parents."

The hyena-woman took her wine glass up to her lips. Something happened in my brain then, burning me like a hot needle. My scar felt like it was dripping with blood, so much blood.

I grabbed the glass from her hand. She looked shocked. Angel made a movement, but second-guessed herself. I simply stared, dropping the glass to the floor with a crash.

"My father was a bit neglectful. He tried. Really, he did," I could feel myself shake as this animal bored into my face hatefully, yet with fake affection and concern, "He was a monster, and a fiend. But he was more human than you'll ever be."

And then I spat at her.

She gasped in shock and defense. I began to laugh uncontrollably and my hands were moving up, up and out for her boyfriend's neck because he just looked so stupid.

Angel put a hand on my shoulder. I turned to look at her for a moment and she looked frightened.

"Please." She said.

I waved her off and stomped away, rubbing my face and my hair, but mostly my question-mark scar hiding above my brow.

Angel

I approached Bruce, clutching the small coin purse I had tied around my wrist complusively.

I took a deep breath, poked one of his broad shoulders, and drug him over to a darker corner of the large space.

"What are you--"

I grabbed him by the front of his black suit jacket, didn't dare let him look over my eyes.

"You need to do something," I said intensely, "And you need to do it now."

He gave me an odd look.

"Listen to me." I commanded, "Cosette is having a breakdown. She just physically attacked one of your guests. You--we--need to find her. Before she hurts herself."

He blinked into reality and we both rushed out into a long hallway.

We couldn't see her.

"Is that... screaming?" He flinched worriedly at me.

"No. Laughing."

Cosette

Maybe if I kept laughing, he would leave. They would leave.

"Leave.. me... alone." I gasped, feeling sweat on my trembling palms, on my quivering face. The only thing to do now was run. Run and laugh. Laugh and run. Get out before my friend could ask me all these stupid questions and before her lovely face started looking like another species. I didn't want to hurt her. I didn't want to hurt anyone. It was just something happening inside me, something that no one could cure. I knew, because many--even myself--had tried.

I could run away... I thought.

They would follow. I wasn't a middle class person, I wasn't Jeannie Gimble anymore. They would look for me and they would find me. The aliens laughing with their champagne guns.

I panicked, breathing hard and running faster. I ran right past lines of cars and people and trash and bums, laughing because I couldn't believe how real everything felt--how the wind was kissing my skin and my heels were clicking against the ground--and how unimportant it all was.

I took the elevator up to my apartment in an attempt to try and calm myself. I cornered myself because the smell of gasoline and flowers suffocated, and everytime I turned to look into the warped silver doors, The Joker's wild eyes and Poison Ivy's pouty mouth stared back.

"No." I chanted cupping my ears with my hands, "Stop. No."

I banged the walls with my palms--lightly and sporadically, because I was somewhat tired--and the doors dinged open.

The silence in the hallway was painful, and I opened my door in a panic and was somehow led to the makeup bag again. I tripped into the bathroom, half chuckling/crying because I was moving worse than my father would.

I stared at myself in the mirror, and I looked sick. My eyes now looked completely bottomless and my face was dripping into the sink. My lungs heaved. I felt sick. I gripped the sides of my beautiful, white sink like it was the only thing keeping my body up and hissed in and out. There were faint brownish-blue circles forming under my shifting eyes, and my lips were drained of color.

Maybe I was sick.

"Maybe I'm dead..." I laughed loudly and it filtered off into an almost crying sound.

My head snapped up like a small mammal, when he hears a lion moving in the grasses behind him.

Heavy, rhythmic footsteps approached the bathroom door. Not Angel. Angel's steps were light and airy, as if she could walk on water.

I looked weakly at the door, then back at my reflection. The sound of the sweat trickling off my forehead and my heartbeat and my lungs intensified, but the footsteps still reached my ears.

Someone was in my house.