Straying out of Sanity

Apparently cooking dinner in this house meant cooking, serving with a little help from The Joker, being forced to eat, then doing all the dishes. All sixty eight of them. Yes sixty eight, twelve plates, twelve glasses, thirty six pieces of silverware, two big stirring spoons, the two whisks on the beater, three pots and one pan.

I had been in here for an hour and was done with the pots and the pan, the stirring spoons, the whisks, and barely halfway through the silverware, already bored as hell and humming Mad World from Donnie Darko to myself, when I heard the kitchen door open.

I didn't bother to turn around and instead focused on getting all the baby red potato off of the fork I was currently washing, figuring it was just The Joker or one of his clowns. I then felt a pair of hands settle on my waist and my whole body tensed up. I felt goose bumps forming under my clothes as I closed my eyes and hoping it wasn't The Joker. Whoever they were, they needed to leave.

"That's a lot of dishes," I heard them say and I clenched my teeth as I opened my eyes again.

"Yes," I managed to say as calmly as I could. No matter how much he repulsed me I still needed to be respectful of him if I wanted to be alive tomorrow.

I felt his hands leave my waist and they were replaced by the smallest empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. Oh fuck no I'm not gonna end up like mom, I thought and forced it away. I glanced over at him and he was rolling his shirt's sleeves up to his elbows. He licked his lips as he finished and said, "Move," holding his left hand out for the sponge I was using to wash the dishes. I moved to the side and handed him the sponge with slight hesitation, staring at him perplexed by his actions. He didn't even glance over at me as he started vigorously scrubbing the utensils.

"Thank you," I said, not knowing what else to say.

He suddenly stopped his scrubbing and slightly turned his head, looking at me. Oh shit... I thought and took a small step backwards. Then he did something unexpected. He smiled before going back to work.

I gulped and suddenly felt like I should be doing something besides standing there and staring at him so I walked past him to grab a towel to dry my hands and the dishes I had already washed.

Soon he was done with the dishes and I was overloaded with drying them, I was trying my best to work quickly but I wasn't able to catch up with his work. He drained the sink and grabbed a towel to dry his hands. He stopped a second later and stared at my hands as they dried the dishes he washed.

He finished drying his hands slowly and then started helping me dry them, again working quickly like he did when washing them.

When I finished drying my sister's glass he was already stacking the plates in their spot in the cabinets. At least someone knew where the hell all this stuff went 'cause I sure as hell didn't. I didn't know how to help him here because of that and I felt a bit guilty.

"You cooked, quit feeling so fucking guilty," he told me and I stared at him. How the hell did he know I was feeling guilty? His clown did the same thing earlier...

"You stare at the ground and pout, it's a bit obvious," he told me as he walked back to grab some of the glasses. I grabbed the rest and followed him to wherever he was going.

"It's not that obvious..." I muttered to myself and set the glasses on the counter next to were he stopped to put them away.

He cleared his throat and said, "Yes, it is." I shut my eyes to keep from glaring or raising my eyebrow at him for a minute. I so badly wanted to reply with a "No it isn't."

"Would you mind cooking dinner from now on?" he asked and I opened my eyes to look over at him and he was staring at the ceiling, as if it was a book and he was reading his words. I looked up at the ceiling too, wondering if there was actual words up there but it was all just white paint.

"What about breakfast and lunch?" I asked him and looked back down at his face.
He moved his eyes first, to look at me, and then moved his head to the side to see me better. He was seriously starting to freak me out. Like his scars were going to rip open and he was going to bite my head off. Oh great, now I'm going to have nightmares for what little sleep I'll be able to get tonight.

"Not everyone is here for breakfast or lunch so you won't cook then except for your friends and sister because you look like you'll be full from dinner for a while. And there's no reason to be afraid of me... yet," he finally said to me.

I crossed my arms with my frustration from him reading me so easily and looked away from him. "I don't suppose I have a choice?" I asked.

"No."

I glanced back over to where he was standing before but he wasn't there. Oh so now he's fucking invisible? I turned around and saw him grabbing the pots and pan to put away. I sighed quietly and went to grab the stirring spoons and beater whisks, though I didn't know where they went either, and followed him again. He opened a drawer randomly, as he was putting the pots away, and I saw a bunch of cooking utensils so I put the spoons in there and closed the drawer. When he was finished he took the beater whisks from me and put them in another drawer. And we were done with the dishes. Finally.

It was silent for a few moments, with us just standing there in the kitchen. Suddenly he started walking away towards the kitchen door. I glanced around the kitchen before deciding I had nothing left to do and decided to follow him. I silently walked behind him and slowly realized he wasn't heading for the elevator but instead started up the stairs.

I knew he knew I was behind him (because he fucking knows everything) so I didn't have any idea where he was leading me or why this house had no goddamn lights on at night. I followed him up to the second floor and we made some turns, and up another set of stairs. Sometimes the only way I could follow him was by the sound of his footsteps because it was so dark. We ended up in a room with an elevator because I could see the lit up buttons and quickly recognized it as the library type room. There was only one other light in the room, a small circular red light that I recognized as a camera. So there's fucking cameras around this place.

"Are you coming or do you wanna stay in here all night?" The Joker asked from across the room.

I looked over at his darkened silhouette and for the first time I've been with him he looked like just a person, not some homicidal psychopath. I didn't answer but instead made my way over to him. He turned around and led me down the hall to my room. When I caught up to him he turned around and left.

"Goodnight Jillian," he said as he walked away.

"How…?" I didn't finish my question on how he knew my middle name was Jillian or why he kept calling me that. If he didn't know and it was just a coincidence I didn't want him to know.

"Emmalee Jillian… Oh how fitting," he stopped to say those words and I could tell he licked his lips before he started off down the hall again.

Fuck. "Night..." I said and watched him disappear. I opened the door and noticed my sister asleep in one of the beds. Jay and Mitch were on the other watching the TV at a very low volume. I could barley understand what the TV was saying.

I shut the door and quickly started looking around the room for another little red light. "What are you doing?" Mitch asked and sat up.

"There's fucking cameras in this room I know it," I told him.

"You're being paranoid Emma," Jay said lazily and yawned.

"No, I saw one in that book room thing. I'm not..." I said and spotted a faint red glow in the top corner of the room above the dresser by the door. I quickly made my way over to it and got up on the dresser to get a better look.

"Emma what are you doing?" Mitch got up and made his way over to me.

"Look," I told him and pointed to the camera, sunken into the wall a bit but it could still see most of the room. "I'm not paranoid."

He looked at the camera as I got down and headed to the bathroom. "It's not the kind with sound, I doubt if it's even in color," he told me as I wet a bar of soap and rubbed my thumb in it so I had the soap on it.

"You sure?" I asked him and got back on the dresser.

"Positive," he said as I wiped the soap around on the lens so it would blur the image it was recording.

"Help me look for one in the bathroom," I told him and we searched the bathroom for nearly twenty minutes before giving up.

"Well, I'm going to bed," Mitch told me while stretching, "don't stay up all night."
"I'll try not too," I said and decided to take a bath since I hadn't been able to properly take a bath or shower in almost a year. Please, God, don't let there be a camera in the bathroom.