Jason Todd is (thelazarus) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-07-26 23:11:00 |
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Entry tags: | red hood |
Who: Jack [Narrative]
What: Jack, as expected, falls off the wagon.
Where: A strip club, then a nondescript ranch house.
When: The night following the memories plot.
Warnings/Rating: Violence, gore, mentions of sexual assault.
Notes: Don't usually do this, but considering I had it on repeat while I was writing, reccomended soundtrack.
He should have taken more time to prepare, more time to track down his target, but he'd never operated on a scheme of long term planning and research. Jack's had always been targets of opportunity, people he saw doing something they shouldn't, or heard had been up to things they ought not to be, and then tracked down. Sometimes he was even able to stop them in the act, and nothing was more satisfying than that.
This particular man was someone he'd noticed a few nights he'd been out late in the past few weeks, skulking in the general vicinity of a few of the strip clubs. Some well-placed questions had gotten him a description and a name, at least the name the man gave the girls, and an indication he'd visited the brothels outside town as well.
Jack hadn't tailed him right away, because a gut feeling and a look from the women he spoke to wasn't enough to go on, but now, now he had a need, a purpose. Something needed to be done tonight, and his odds were better going with a lead than wandering the city hoping and waiting.
He went back to his old apartment in the afternoon, stocked up on supplies, and then went out close to sundown. He took a black pack with him, and he wore black. He took the bike, because it would be easier to maneuver if following the man was necessary, and he wore a black helmet with a dark, tinted visor.
It took driving past a few clubs before he spotted the man, yet again attempting to proposition the girls as they came out. It was clear enough that he wasn't very good at it, and the proprietor caught him after about ten minutes. All it took was the threat of a fight, a fist drawn back and a threatening step, and the small man scuttled away. He ducked into a side alley, and Jack thought perhaps he had misjudged him. Just a creep with no skill for picking up women, not a danger.
Then the man doubled around. He came out of the alley, looked down the street, and spotted the last girl to leave, a knockout blonde, with hair to her mid-back and tired eyes.
The man got into his car and began to follow her.
Jack followed too.
He hoped, for her sake, that she would stick to well lit areas, or that the man would do something to justify Jack going after him directly. But the man kept his distance, and then the girl turned down a path between buildings. He parked the bike quickly about a half block down. The man was driving around to the side the girl would come out of. Jack ducked his head and slid out from the shadow of one of the buildings, running to the mouth of the alley.
He made it there just in time to hear a heavy, falling sound, and then there was the man, appearing in the glare of the streetlights on the other end, pulling the girl beneath her arms. He opened his car door, slid her inside. Jack couldn't tell from the distance whether or not he'd given the girl something or just taken an opportunity and knocked her out. He was back in the driver's seat before he even had a chance to really think, and Jack had to run back to the bike to catch him.
It took some creative dodging through traffic to follow, riding against the curb and skimming around partiers and tourists. No one had yelled out for the girl as the man pulled her into his car, and no one had asked him what he was doing. It was Vegas, after all. Pretty, young, passed out girls getting dragged into cars by weaselly men, that was par for the course. Even if Jack hadn't already been numb with fury, that would have been enough. He gunned the engine and the bike flew down the street, a dark gleam in the eyes of passers-by.
He kept pace with the man without getting spotted, but just. The man was clearly much too jumpy, too worried about his prize in the back seat, to notice a motorcycle a block behind. Even as he drove into a quiet residential neighborhood, the man paid his follower no mind.
When the man at last stopped at a small ranch house, Jack killed his lights and parked around the corner. A quick peek showed the man walking up the drive, struggling under the weight of the girl, carrying her wedding style. Something lit up behind Jack's eyes. Was that what he thought this was? A romance?
Jack came around the corner with surreal calm. He hadn't felt this right, or this together, in years. The black sack swung loose at his side. He was a black silhouette under the streetlight, then nothing.
The door was unlocked. Of course it was. What did the man have to fear from the girl, after all? Jack pressed the door open, and remembered. A door ajar. This was how it had happened, when he came back and found them with Helen. A door left just an inch open, a sign something was wrong.
The house was nicely (if sparsely) decorated. The man was in some form of middle management, if Jack had to guess, enough money to afford a nice house for one in a nice neighborhood, but not enough to deck the place out. Normal, normal, normal.
There were sounds coming from the bedroom, and Jack reached into the backpack, rooting around for something appropriate. He grasped something and pulled it out, glancing at it. A crowbar.
Fair enough.
When he opened the door to the bedroom, the blonde was tied to the bed, her legs and arms spread. The man had shoved her dress up, and was beginning to strip his clothes off. She was half awake now, weakly struggling, and she bore the beginning of a bruise on her forehead. No, he hadn't planned this. Not outside his dreams, anyway. The ligatures that tied her were just bath towels, sliced with something -
The man darted forward, a pair of scissors in hand. There was a long cut on the girl's leg, sluggishly bleeding, and the open blades were red.
Everything that came next was a blur of sensation, moving very, very fast. The scissors darting out. Slamming a hand into the underside of the man's arm, neatly diverting the weapon and forcing him to let it go, tossing it across the room. The girl's crying coming to a short, sharp stop from shock. The man's face as Jack landed a sharp kick to his chest, and then the visceral satisfaction of hearing and feeling his ribs crack and he stomped his boot down again. Watching him flounder like a fish for air, and the bleed of something, something at last, into the numb.
More cracks. His arm under the boot, crack, like a piece of wood. Remember when you said The crying started again, but he wasn't sure where. It was the crying from the memory, short sharp sobs, so close it was like they were in the helmet with him. Pulling the crowbar back, and bringing it down, and he felt like a truncated breath. No satisfaction, not enough, but he would find it, he would dig it out. The sobbing went on and on, and he brought the crowbar down again, and again, and again.
And there it was, trembling in his fingers and caught in his throat - the sickness. Well, he'd get it out, one way or another.
When the crowbar was slick and dripping, when the floor was wetted and thick with clotting and skull fragments and bits of gray, Jack picked up the scissors from the floor and walked over to the girl. She was trembling, and he paused a moment, looking down at her through the visor of the helmet. Crying. She was crying. Afraid of him.
Of course she was. He dropped the scissors, pulled the long, sharp knife from his belt. He cut her bonds with it, one by one. She pushed herself up, still hiccuping, still clearly dizzy, and slipped bare feet off the edge of the bed onto the floor. She stepped in the pool of blood, half slipped, caught the doorway, and then ran, leaving one bloody footprint behind with every pair of steps.
She was out of the house. Jack put the knife away. She was safe. Safe.
He stepped around the pool of blood. Didn't want to leave a track behind, after all. The crowbar dripped a trail to the living room, and he slid it into the bag, zipping it up again, hauling it over his shoulder. He looked out the picture window. The girl was sitting on the sidewalk, still crying, heaving great breaths. She began to scream.
He went out the back door, through two backyards, and sidetracked to the bike. Once there, he pulled out a phone, and made a brief call. He lifted the visor of the helmet just enough to be heard. 911? A girl, crying in front of a house. Bruise on her head, possibly concussed. Address? Please stay on the line until He gave it, and hung up. Pulled out the sim card, snapped it in half, and dropped the two halves into his pocket.
He flicked the visor down all the way again, fixed the pack into place, and he kicked off.
Murder was easy. People thought it wasn't, but they were wrong. They just didn't know how it was done.
He drove around the city, then out of it. He tossed the cell phone out into the desert. The SIM card halves met their end in a man made lake in front of one of the big apartment complexes. The bright, colorful lights of the strip slipped over his helmet, off, and then disappeared like they'd never been. The crowbar smeared blood around the inside of his pack, but the outside was clean, black, and pristine.
It was time to give it up. He'd tried to pretend everything was fine, that he could be fine, that he could be a normal person, and there was no use in it. Pretending was no good. It would always come back to this. He couldn't change the past, any more than he could be a different person, than he could be a whole person. It was what it was, and it was high time he stopped running. The burning had stopped, and the crying had stopped. The numb hadn't gone away, but that was alright.
He went back to his old apartment, dropped the bag by the front door. His gloves went into the sink to be washed, and the clothes into the bathtub to be rinsed clean. He fell into bed, and slept like he hadn't in months.
He dreamed about the blonde girl on the sidewalk, tired-eyed. Cutting that long hair. Going home to her parents, crying.
But safe. Safe.