What happened

Is it supposed to burn?

That had been the departing question from the Joker. House didn’t know for sure if it was supposed to or not. He hadn’t experienced the initial treatment which had colored the man’s skin. He’d left soon after. Skin grew back and comical history showed that the Joker loved pain. So the burning meant very little to House.

His attention, between the dreary cycles of the clinic, had found its way back to his lame leg. It was throbbing. The pain had doubled since he’d arrived. The humdrum of the clinic provided only so much pills and now he’d graduated. He was taking whole rims of morphine shoots on his way out. One day he’d have to send the mayor a fruit basket because it had all started the day the bodies came in from the gas-line explosion.

But House wasn’t from a ‘verse where people actually bought into air-balloons causing mushroom clouds. House came from a very cynical world. He knew something was being covered up but there was very little he cared to do about it. What would a cripple do? Hop over there and pry? No, he was in far too much pain to just be annoying.

Though, he did like to be annoying.

It was his third shot of morphine right into the leg. His eyes were glazed over like doughnuts at a police conference. Sheets of paper lay astray across his apartment. The never-used dining table had vials of green, blue, orange and pink. Some bubbled.

House slumped back. There was sweat on his brow but he was freezing.

Everything told him that this was the cure. This time. This was it. It had to be.

Is it supposed to burn?

House poured it into a small container and stuck it behind the meatloaf.

House stood in the former lobby of the Arkam Asylum. It shared more in common with barn now than it did a lobby. It was obvious that the prisoners were running the prison or something of that affair. None of that was his business. Unless they touched his cane. Then they might have a problem. He took down the drawing for him. It had a quasi-map scribbled on it as well as a doodle of himself.

He didn’t have that many wrinkles did he?

In the right pocket of his coat was a former pill-container turned transporter. It held Experiment 1. A sticky sludge with opposite components to what he’d deciphered from The Joker’s writing. Sadly, there wasn’t a hobo melted into it. There may have been horse. Horse found itself in so many strange products whether they be medical or not.

Cane made thuds along the trail the drawing had indicated for him to meet. He was pretty sure there was a man licking the wall to the left of him. He decided it was best not to look. If he did, he may lose the day and end up watching for hours. The City continued to interest him more and more.

( Read more... )

“Hemorrhoids.” House said more than asked upon entering the examining room.

This had become his life for the past couple of months. Doing clinicals since his takeover concept didn’t work nor did it win him his own practice. It was an early twenty-something who sat on the bed. Boy had long hair and an equivalent goatee.

House leaned on his cane with both of his hands.

“This is where you talk.”

Gowns weren’t flattering things. The boy wrapped his arms around his stomach. “Well, yeah, about a month ago it hurt to sit. And then there was a growth. My friend told me about how he had ‘roid problems but his popped. These haven’t popped… they just throb.”

“Well, as you know, we took a few tests. To make sure you were a good boy and didn’t deserve coal for Christmas.”

There was a hopeful look on the boy’s face.

“You’ve been naughty, son, and that’s not hemorrhoids on your ass. That’s venereal warts. I bet you believed all that business in Sex Ed about how condoms were latex Jesus Christs.”

The boy’s eyes were the size of cup coasters.

“I checked into it. Your insurance covers cryosurgery. That means we’re going to prop your bare ass up and have our way with it with nitrogen. This doesn’t mean you’re cured. So, next time I see you, I want to hear how you’ve been spreading your disease. You’re infected, might as well infect everyone else.”

House smiled and nodded as he began to walk out.

The boy simply blinked.

Sitting in House’s inbox wasn’t another room number and file. Instead, it was a request on behalf of Arkham. House flopped on the lobby couch as he thumbed through the file. A patient gave the doctor a bizarre look and House snarled back.

There were errors everywhere. The Joker’s real name was never revealed. But House could help Arkham (if only to get to go to the magical land of Batman’s rogue gallery) because The Joker was never ill. He found it amusing that his resume could get him respect to validate the body of a murdering comic-book psycho but god forbid it get him any respect at the hospital. After awhile, the lobby began to get thick with actual sick people and House decided it was time to exit left.

As always, he walked. There was no hurry when approaching the epic Arkham. Once inside, there was the paperwork to fill out to prove that he wasn’t a nutcase (which could be argued) himself or someone attempting to break out the Joker. What shocked House the most was the fact the man wasn’t Jack Nicholson or Cesar Romero but he did have the character. This Joker seemed to inhibit the feral nature of the comics.

Two fictional characters in a padded room.

"They fetch me, of course, because I've nagged the shit out of my superior. Probably sent me here to be scared. Well, I don't scare easily. Even if you fucked a skull. People have kinks. My name is House, don't feel like you have to introduce yourself. I have a clipboard. It has magical things on it. Like your name."

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The groaning, wheezing engine-like sound got louder as a blue Police Box faded into sight just outside one of the larger building in the more British looking section of The City. As the grinding came to a halt, the door slowly opened and a bright blue eyed face peeked out from the bifold doors. A long mane of blond followed by a bright Union Jack t-shirt and blue jeans. A rapid series of blinks as the not rightness of it all sat in. A puzzled look fell across the normally unworried features.

"This isn't Barcelona, not the city nor the planet."

That bit was directed back into the blue box she had just emerged from. No answer came from inside which let the confusion give way to concern.

"Doctor? Doctor?"

A duck back inside to scan over the immediate areas of the TARDIS he could have vanished into that fast. No sign of the lanky leather jacketed Time Lord. That ninth incarnation of the singularly named man was ever watchful over Rose, complaining she took leave to walk off far too often. So where could he be now? For that matter...where was she?

Rose Tyler stepped out onto the street, facing a new world..time...city...dimension?

"Nof'in can ever be simple can it?"

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House’s cane had brought him to the Institute before.

In fact, before the divine pull, he had been in an interview at the hospital. He doubted that it would have looked bad on his part because both the chief and he had to excuse themselves to answer nonexistent phones. They also shared the taxi to the Institute betwixt awkward smiles. House had gotten out several blocks ahead.

This was good because the mob, in front, was everything a mob was supposed to be. Entire floral stores were having to restock. There were breasts. Lots of breasts as the student Lesbian chapter shared their love in their social kaput way.

They were all here. As was he and the chief, whom he saw getting in a line that seemed better placed in front of a concert hall, for a Barbara Gordon. That’s who had called them on their imaginary phones. That’s who obviously yanked off those women’s shirts. That’s who had brought on this collective madness.

And for once, even House was sick. Just as sick as the rest of the mob.

He found himself picking up one of the many roses. He closed his eyes and smelt it.

When his eyes opened, the chief was beating a teenager to a pulp. Breasts were bouncing up and down as some unique form of karate was being performed. A skateboard shattered against a boy’s back and a man was beating his bare chest (which had GORDON written on it with permanent marker) like an Alpha Guerilla.

Ain’t love a bitch?

His cane was pushing past its regular mileage. It would need a tune-up at this rate. There hadn’t been much rest since his had stepped out of his apartment a few days ago. The city was a fascinating creature.

Most of the residents of this new world didn’t see the fractures. They didn’t see the precise cracks in the pavement or how the grass changed oh-so subtly in the parks. No, they couldn’t see the rigorous work that someone or something was doing to piece this Humpty Dumpty together.

He was feeling a bit parched and ducked into a bar that looked like some set-dressing for a movie about The Troubles. He heard what sounded like Leprechauns barking to each other at the bar and opted to sit at a table.

“Hope you don’t mind,” House said to the current populace of the table – a black haired man that hadn’t seen the sun in years and had a yellow tint to his skin signifying he more than likely had cigarettes on him. “But it was either steal your territory or pretend that I was a martyr for the goddess Bridgit. And since I don't play dead well...”

[ Custer ]

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There was a cloudy sensation across House’s brow. The sort that wasn’t completely unusual for a Thursday morning. It was the sort of suggestion or hint that it would more than likely be best for him to stay in bed. That would imply, of course, that he had made it to bed. He stared at the white keys of the piano as the alarm played siren in the master chambers.

His brain eventually stopped throbbing about the same time that his trusty armor was slipped over his shoulders. The suit-coat made him professional after all. He blew a kiss at the Sin City Rosario Dawson poster that made him wish he was just a simple fat 1800s plantation owner.

Gregory House’s eyes narrowed very suspiciously. 221B. This wasn’t his apartment building but it was his apartment.

“Ho-kay,” he said as he decided to follow the ruse.

His cane forged a path of tricks until he stood in the middle of a busy walkway. A passerby was gripped by the arm.

“Where exactly am I?” he demanded.

“The City,” the subterfuge answered between smacks of bubblegum.

“Oh,” he said releasing, “that just answers everything.”

[ Narrative ]