Body Count

The trip to County was endless.

Every emotion, wildly disproportionate with fear and rage, coursed through her like sharp, blistering, murdering wildfire. Every incoherent sob turned quickly into a scream of nameless fury. Every short-lived blink of an eye brought back memories coated in red, dripping in hate, stinking of sadness.

And every second brought Shane Fatello closer to madness.

She kicked the infuriatingly shining backs of the police cars' leather seats, screamed obscenities at them, and even threw herself against the impenetrable glass doors. They paid her no attention - they simply sat in the front, chatting quietly, acting as if they hadn't just shattered the life of a young girl into small, blood-stained pieces. This did nothing but anger Shane further - she shouted until her throat was raw and she could taste the savory tang of copper sitting on the back of her tongue. Her shoulders and skull grew sore due to the constant abuse she caused them, banging them against the seats, the doors, and the roof. Her vision faded to various shades of gray, grief started to pound at her resolve, and a shrill ringing interrupted her every thought, but still she screamed.

Along with the emotional pain the car ride was bringing, and the physical pain she inflicted upon herself, her old injuries were beginning to crack open and bleed. The left shoulder of her tattered shirt, already stained with dry blood, blossomed rouge afresh. Droplets of blood spilled down her face - out of the scar that had brought her so much pain, ridicule, respect, and joy - soaking the collar of her chest like ruby tears. With every subtle and every violent move she made, the broken ridge along the back of her hand cracked and spilled forth more blood and oozed more clear, glass-smooth liquid.

And still she screamed.

When the cruiser started to slow down, hot tires rolling over slick black top, she became suddenly still and breathed deeply. Her eyes, wide and frightened, darted to and fro cautiously. Her hands clenched on her lap, and she felt cold metal press into her wrists - handcuffs she hadn't been aware of, which she ignored now. Outside of the spit soaked window she sat next to, she saw a long, one-story building of white brick and barred windows. Her heart rate quickened.

A cruel gust of bone chilling air hit her like a wall of ice, and her head whipped around. Her skin prickled unpleasantly, and she drew away from the door like a terrified cat.

"Get out," one of the cops said, reaching in to grab a portion of her shirt. He didn't wait for her to respond - nor, she thought, would he listen if she did. He pulled her roughly out of the vehicle, a grim expression on his slightly aged face, and pushed her ahead of him after slamming shut the door. "Come on," he murmured. "Let's go."

"Lynch!" the other one called. "Hold her more steadily. She's liable to snap at any provocation."

She seethed inwardly, but made no physical reaction. They couldn't know how liable she was to do anything. They couldn't know how she was burning inside.

The other cop - the one who wasn't shoving her along the enclosed parking lot - pushed a door in the side of the building open with clear authority. She saw, dimly, as he flashed a badge at a flustered looking blond lady at the front desk before striding off into the depths of the building. Shane and her chaperon followed. She was forcefully reminded of play-dancing conga lines at family parties, and a burst of humorless laughter escaped her dry lips.

They weaved in and out of dull rooms, narrow hallways, and deserted stone and glass-walled rooms that sent a shiver down her spine.

Finally, after so much walking Shane's feet started to ache, the leading man slammed a door open and ushered Shane inside. She was pushed forward, and she stumbled over a metal table. Trying to right herself, she shifted over, but fell over a chair of the same cold metal as the table. Her breath started to come in long, lung-bursting gasps. Her body wasn't reacting well to the physical exertion it was being urged through, but her mind clung to consciousness desperately. She found a second and third chair in the room - two on one side of the table, one on the other. She took the lone one.

The other two men - one of them a Constable, she saw - sat down opposite her and sighed simultaneously. It was so comical an image she could have laughed - instead, she folded her hands in her lap, slumped her tired shoulders, and stared at them blankly.

After an eternity, the second man - sitting very far over the table, in contrast to the Constable, who was sitting with a rigid spine and crossed arms next to him - dragged a hand over his worn features and spoke.

"You're young."

She nodded. "Seventeen in a month, if I can keep time properly." She said so not condescendingly, nor matter-of-factly, but exhaled it as if it were her dying breath.

"Why did you do what you did?" he asked.

She raised an eyebrow - a jolt of pain assaulted her briefly, but soon passed - and looked at him with slowly growing respect. No beating around the bush with him, no playing games, no. He was to the point. Succinct. She liked that.

"It depends on what you're talking about," she replied, her voice just as lacking of energy as before. "I'll need more clarity."

He sighed again, his head drooping and popping back up determinedly - as though he would not let fatigue get the better of him while there was a job at hand. Shane's liking for the man grew.

"You killed seventy-three innocent citizens, Shane," he said, his tone earnest but his voice weak. "You, alone, cut short the lives of nearly one hundred people. Why?"

She stared at him harder than ever. "I don't know anymore. I've changed."

The Constable slammed a fist down on the table. "You murdered, Fatello! That isn't going to change! Why did you do it?"

Her eyes flicked over to him, but soon traveled back to the second man. When she replied, it was to him that she spoke. "I can tell you why I think I did it, Constable, but I can never tell you the real reason. Nobody would be able to. As soon as you kill, you change. And as soon as you move on, you've changed again. And once you change, your reasoning and your logic dim and refocus in a completely different light."

"Quit stalling!" the Constable bellowed, his face fading to a dull shade of red. "Tell us why, Fatello, or I'll have you in a padded cell within the next five minutes!"

"You're already putting me there, Constable. No need to hurry." She still spoke to the second man.

"Tell us!" he roared.

"Have you never changed, Constable?" she muttered quietly, her lips hardly parting. "From elementary school to high school, high school to college, college to university - you must have changed. Would you make the same stupid choices you did in the eleventh grade?"

The Constable glared at her, fuming silently.

"Like I said ... I can tell you ... theories," She struggled with herself momentarily - her body was rapidly losing the will to function on its' own. She inhaled deeply, seeking revitalizing oxygen. Her weary cells found air-freshener pumped, factory-produced gas. But it helped her nonetheless. She plowed on. "Five months ago ... five? I think so ... five months ago, I went to see a movie with my friends. To have a good time. To enjoy myself, and be with people I cared about. And all of that ... I got it. But ... there's obviously something wrong with me, Constable. Commissioner," she said, suddenly remembering where she'd heard the tired mans' voice before. "There is something imbalanced in my brain. I can't deny that - right now, in my right mind, I know I'm not normal. Insane people aren't always constantly insane, you know," she said quietly, scratching her nose against her shoulder. "Some of us have periods of complete sanity - for me, I guess, I have them more often than others. That's not to say I squirm at the sight of blood when I'm ... normal. Or that I feel queasy at the thought of murder. I just ... I know what's wrong with me in those times, and I'm much more effective at making moral choices. When that chemical imbalance in my brain is active, though, my reason escapes me. That's all that happens. My morality is wiped out, and I can murder without any qualms. That's my theory about what happened - I finally overbalanced, and my actions didn't strike me as particularly wrong. Wait, no, that's not true. I knew it was wrong. And it was the perverse side of my heart that drove me to do it simply because it was wrong. Have you ever read "The Black Cat", by Edgar Allan Poe? The man in that story had something of the same condition, though his was brought on by alcoholism. He killed his cat, he murdered his wife, all because he was fascinated by the feeling he got in doing so. A perverse satisfaction. That's all I wanted that night, but I deluded myself into thinking I was punishing them for wrongdoing. I know better now."

The two men, Constable and Commissioner, stared at her for a long while after her speech. She stared back, letting her confused mind wander in denial for a few moments. The Constable, of course, was the first to speak.

"For a murdering psychopath, you have a fancy vocabulary," he spat. She waited, but nothing followed his attempt at insult.

"A lot of intelligent persons are mentally unstable," she said drowsily.

Another silence followed this. Shane peered around the room, but nothing that met her gaze piqued her interest. The walls were all white-washed, and the only furniture in the claustrophobic space were the table and the three chairs. A mirror - or rather, a two-way mirror - was set into the wall to her left, but she doubted anybody was behind it now. Her capture had been too sudden for a warning to the rest of the police force.

The Commissioner buried his face in his hands, and so his next words were muffled: "Who were the men you've been with since the murders? We have intelligence that it's a group of some copy cat killers. Who are they?"

For the first time since leaving the cruiser, she showed emotion on her face - anger. "Copy cat killers?" she said, allowing the heat to flow into her tone. "They weren't copy cat, sir. I was with The Joker."

He looked up at her. "You've been very forthcoming up until now, Ms. Fatello. You have to tell us who these men were - teenagers, friends of yours? Escaped convicts? This is vital."

She banged the table with her clenched fist, spilling blood over its' clean surface. "I haven't lied during this entire interrogation Commissioner, and I'm not lying now! I'm telling you, that man has sheltered me for the past half-a-year!" She paused, her chest heaving, and went on quietly: "And he'll break me out again, just like he did the first time."

Constable Lynch stood up, his chair flying against the wall, producing a resounding clang that almost deafened Shane. But she stared at him defiantly, daring him to object, which she knew he would.

"Stop playing games, Fatello! We don't have time for this! Just tell us who they are and I'll make sure you're not sharing a cell with a convicted rapist!"

"I'm not lying!" she shouted, disgusted at how childish she sounded. "I do not lie!"

"Who are they?"

"Names?" she said hysterically, rising to her feet, too. "You want names? I'll give you names! Odie MacMillain! Tyler Baker! Ronald Weaver! Stone Bruner! Clifford Jaren Oxford! Max Jones! William AIden-Leat! Rick Marlin! Daemyn Roberts!" The utterance of every name made her sick to her stomach, as she knew these men would all be caught and thrown in jail - but her reason was, as she said, slowly leaving her. All she wanted was to see Constable Lynch proved wrong.

Lynch laughed in her face.

"We've searched those names, Fatello! Every single one! Do you know how we got them?"

She glared.

"During that little foray at that dump of a warehouse, one of my boys found a list of names. Those names. Did you write them down, Fatello? Want us to find them? Well, sorry to disappoint, but those names didn't come up on our criminal's list."

Shane blinked, furious. He was lying, of course. She'd spent half a year of her life in the company of those men, mostly being abused by them, occasionally respected, and from time to time sharing a laugh or friendly nod. She could see their faces, all of them, frowning at her. Tell him who we are, they said, tell them.

"They're his ... his employees," Shane spat, shaking a lock of greasy purple hair out of her face. "They work for him. The Joker. They were with me at the bank!"

"There was nobody to bear witness to that."

She screamed in outrage, remembering The Joker's orders to have all witnesses murdered. The images of her only companions faded in her mind, but remained there, shimmering and flickering. Tell him.

"They killed with me! They hit me! They abused me! Look at me, Constable, and try to deny my scars!" She tried in vain to calm her racing heart, tried to hold on to the reason that felt to be racing away with every beat.

Lynch looked coldly at her. "All of which you could have gotten less than an hour ago. No, Ms. Fatello, we searched those names. And not only do they not have a criminal record ... they don't exist."

Shane froze. Didn't exist? Crazed laughter filled her head, though whether it was The Joker's or her own she couldn't tell. Of course they existed! How foolish the Constable was! Images of the clowns stampeded through her mind, blocking out all sound, until she realized quite abruptly that she was on the ground, rolling from side to side, and the laughter in her head - high and shrill - was her own.

A pair of rough hands yanked her upright, and suddenly sitting in a chair wasn't a choice but mandatory. She was handcuffed to it, still giggling at the absurdity of the Constable's words. Across from her sat the two men, the Commissioner looking uneasy and the Constable angrier than ever.

"They won't be happy to hear that they don't exist," Shane giggled, her head rolling back. She stared at the Constable from a painful angle, but her stiff and joyful smile remained. "Especially their families. They won't be happy."

Lynch huffed. "Fatello, I'm telling you this once and only once: those men are not real. They don't have any records, we can't find them or any of their records at hospitals or schools, and everybody who shares any of their surnames says they don't know anybody on that list. Their DNA didn't even turn up on the system. They do not exist."

Shane continued to laugh, but with every gleeful guffaw her logic and sanity galloped away. She didn't try to stop it now - her companions, her friends, didn't exist? She laughed harder, humorlessly, agonizingly.

"You were never normal, Shane," Her head rolled forward. She smiled at the Commissioner as he spoke to her, gently, almost lovingly. "Ever since that moment in a movie theater on Third Street, you've been living a life of insanity. The chemical imbalance in your mind caused you to believe that The Joker - that all of these men - were real. But Shane, you have to try to understand this: they were nothing but figments of your imagination, put in place by a desperate need of attention and care. From what we can assume, you've been living alone for the better part of five months. You obviously found these criminals - gleaned some information and shelter from them - but other than that, the men you told us about didn't exist. Never did."

Shane's breathing quickened, and her heart was beating out of control. Her grin was still firmly set on her face, and she was happy when she saw their discomfort. She was happy when she heard her own demented laughter, reveled in the way it bounced off the walls and hit her again and again. She was happy that every part of her body hurt, and she threw herself down, splitting her scar open wider and coating all three of them in a fountain of glorious blood. She continued to laugh, happy of the pain shooting up and down her left arm, happy of the urgent shouting going on all around her.

Happy when everything went black.

--

She woke up. Everything around her was white, blurry, blissfully painless. Heaven? she thought. But no. It smelled too clean to be heaven. She blinked; once, twice, a dozen times before her vision finally sharpened.

She was in the padded cell the Constable had promised her, surrounded on all sides by comforting white cloth - soft, harmless. Underneath her there was a soft bed, comforting her sore limbs. Over her arms, her legs, her chest, her forehead, were leather straps. She wiggled experimentally - and hardly moved. Tied down. Safe. Safer. She was just as harmless as the padded room she was confined to!

And before she knew it, she was laughing again - at the harmlessness of her situation, the irony of it, the grief in everything. She laughed until tears poured down and leaked into her eternal grin, until the room was filled with her deranged cackling. She kicked and flailed, but nothing happened.

Her laughter turned into screams.

Her tears of glee turned into those of bitter sadness.

Her joy became fury.

She kicked harder, harder, letting her ear-splitting shrieks tear the skin of her throat, never saying words, sure all the same that her message was clear.

The Joker would come for her. He would rescue her again - he screamed for her, he cared, so he would come!

He would.

He cared.

The Joker screamed for her.

Her screams tore at her throat and her ears, her fingers curled into fists so tightly clenched her fingernails dug into her palms. Blood spilled onto the table and down to the floor. Her screams became louder and louder, more piercing, more gut-wrenching.

The Joker will come, she thought. He will.

He will rescue me.

The Joker.

He'll be here.

He cares.

He will.

He will.

HE WILL!

She screamed until blackness enveloped her once again. As soon as her eyelids fluttered open, though, she began again. And blacked out again. And woke up only to scream once again.

After countless awakenings, she finally stopped. Not because she thought it to be useless, but because she had felt a strange presence in her dreams. A large one, with a consciousness so immense that she cowered before it. And yet it drew her towards its center, and she didn't care - that was where she had wanted to go. She'd been running towards its warm embrace in her dream, through blackness and despair. And upon opening her eyes to the whiteness around her, she'd found the presence had left a shiver on her spine in her waking moments. She looked around, trying to find something unusual about the room, and finding nothing.

She couldn't know how long it was, but it felt like another week - a week during which she uttered not a sound, and knew no human contact - before something happened.

The presence, which had been crawling under her skin for an infinite amount of time, flared suddenly in the form of pain along her arm. And then it was gone. She looked down, grinning - always grinning -

And finally, finally, lost her mind completely.

Her laughter never died, and even after the wound had healed and the blood had flaked off, she could still read the scars it had left behind. So she laughed, she spent her time in her dreams, and she laughed. She never clenched the fist on that arm, though. Because then the message burned stronger than ever in her flesh, white hot and true.

I WILL.