Shadow of the Knight

by Susan Lee

"You remember now?" Mickey asked, leaning closer once again. But not close enough to let him reach her. "Because I remember. I remember seeing you. I remember you saving me. Now say it. Admit it. Admit it, Bruce Wayne."

  Rick's panicked gaze swung to Patty and the blood pooling under her chair. Despite this, Patty shook her head vehemently in disagreement. The knife was still in Mickey's hand but he could do nothing about that.

  Mickey watched him and Patty exchange looks and thoughts. Still, she waited. He would never let anything happen to Patty. Batman wouldn't let a victim suffer because he was a hero. Although Batman was more of an anti-hero sometimes, but she was confident he would still protect her victim.

  "I remember that night," Rick ventured carefully. "The day of the convention. The night my brother had his car accident." Mentioning the car accident made Mickey twitch, so he knew he had to proceed carefully. "We had lunch. If you can call hot dogs and chips lunch. But I thought it was nice. To get to talk to you. I mean, really talk. Like we are now. Just talking."

  "Yeah, that was nice," Mickey agreed, her beleaguered brain running back to that day, that lunch. The lunch that had held such promise.

  "I liked seeing your artwork," Rick continued, watching her get lost in the memories and he fought to keep voice even. "Your pin-up stuff I especially loved. Most women are afraid to draw something so sexy and so beautiful. I really admire you for that." He watched Patty carefully and they both knew their fates relied on him pushing the right buttons.

  "Glad you liked those," Mickey answered, her hand lowering the knife and her eyes looking deep into the past.

  "I wanted to get to know you better," Rick said honestly.

  "I wanted to get to know you better, too." Mickey's voice was barely a whisper.

  "We could still..." But Rick saw it happen. Saw the shift happen in a second.

  "That's why we're here," Mickey fairly snarled. "Get to know the real you. Get to know each other. Drop the bullshit and remove the masks, as it were." She dropped her mask on his chest. "I've shown you mine, now you show me yours."

  Mickey gave him credit because he didn't exactly freak out. She watched as he tried to figure a way out of this situation, and she knew there were only two ways out - admit to Batman and maybe he would walk out with her, or keep denying it and nobody walks out. In her heart, she kind of knew that the last option was the bigger possibility.

  "Can you tell me something?" Rick asked. "Why do you think it was me that night? I just need to know that. Why me?"

  Mickey pondered this, studying his face and trying to reconcile it with the figure that night. It had been dark. The shadows had distorted things. But she remembered the guy attacking her and the knife slicing into her shoulder.

  She stared down at the knife in her hand, then at Rick, then Patty. Her shoulder flinched in phantom pain as she remembered the knife descend into her. Her hand trembled as she flashed on slashing Rick with her own knife, his reaction to the pain. And Patty's. Somehow, all of that jumbled together in her head in a fractured set of panels, almost like something out of her comic book. Images fighting for her attention, both past and present.

  "So," Rick tried again, "why me? Why do you believe it was me?"

  Maybe it was because he was so calm, or maybe it was because Mickey really needed to say it out loud, but Mickey found herself confessing.

  "It was dark," Mickey began. "I saw him. The guy who... who stabbed me. He was a huge shadow, just coming out of nowhere. I didn't know what was happening." Mickey realized she hadn't really told anybody the whole story. Even with the police, Officer Not David Tennant, she only told them what she thought they needed to know. They never found the perpetrator, so she figured maybe she should have told them more. The honest truth was that she hadn't seen much. "He was just a shape, a shadow. I just know it was big. He was big."

  Mickey stopped, not wanting to admit what came next. She had kept it inside for so long and had been punished every time she admitted what she thought she saw that she was actually afraid to say it out loud.

  "It was dark," Mickey repeated. "And... and he stabbed me. And I kept wishing that someone, anyone would help me. I kept wishing that you would help me. That Batman would rescue me."

  She stopped, tears finally coming as she knelt beside Rick. She was lost in the moment, kind of looking at Rick but kind of looking past him, as though she was back to that night.

  "And you did," Mickey sighed. "The shadows moved and morphed and suddenly, there was a cape and a cowl and two beautiful, stormy eyes. And I knew. I knew it was you. I knew that you heard me. I knew you were Batman and that you rescued me. Because who else could it have been? Who else would have rescued me?"

  She gently reached out and rested her fingers on tattered and battered arm. Her tears flowed freely now, the salt coating her fingers and stinging Rick's arm.

  Even with that, Rick couldn't take his eyes off of her. She was so broken, so lost, so desperate. Despite everything she had done to him - and to Patty - his heart broke a little bit for her. He spoke again, cautiously, almost afraid to startle her.

  "He could have been anybody," Rick whispered. "Why me?"

  Mickey lifted her tortured eyes, the honesty of how damaged she was showing through unlike ever before.

  "It had to be you," Mickey admitted desperately. "Who else could it be but you? I needed you to be him. I needed you to save me. Because I needed you to save me from the first moment I saw you. It had to be you." She kept stroking his arm. "It had to be you."

  The twisted trio sat in silence. The admission echoed through the emptiness. "It had to be you." Mickey had finally said it. And no one knew what to do.

  Rick moved his hand around so he could link his forefinger through hers. Her pain was palpable and pouring out of her. Suddenly, he wanted so much to be the hero she longed for. But he knew he couldn’t.

  "It wasn't me," he stated.

  He didn't even feel the knife as it penetrated his heart. He could only see the madness that had replaced the sorrow as she pulled the knife out and plunged it again. And again. And again.

  Mickey could hear Patty trying to scream through the duct tape. I'll have to deal with her soon, she thought, but she was too focused on the work in front of her that she wasn't ready to turn around yet.

  Mickey didn't realize she was screaming "it had to be you" as she perforated the man who could have loved her, if she had let him.

  Finally, her arms gave out and she had to stop. Besides, the blood was making it hard to hold on to the knife. So she dropped it to the floor and sank down beside it, still repeating her mantra, still believing it had to be him.

  Mickey eventually realized the sobbing wasn't coming from her. It was coming from Patty. Slowly, struggling with effort, Mickey got to her feet. That stopped the sobbing as Patty held her breath.

  "And then there's you," Mickey taunted as she staggered over to the wheelchair, her hand having found the knife again. "What do I do with you?" She laughed as she watched the panic fight for freedom inside Patty.

  "Ya know, I was afraid you were going to call the police the night I saw you at In N Out. And yet you let me come back here and do that to him."

  Mickey waggled the knife at Rick's bloodied corpse. She whipped the knife back at Patty, stopping just shy of her jugular. "Why? Why'd you let me go?" A sob caught in Mickey's throat, then turned into angry growls. "Why did you let me do that do him?! You could have stopped me that night! Why didn't you stop me?!"

  With one quick motion, Mickey yanked the tape off of Patty's mouth, then swooped into her face. "Why?!"

  Patty looked her friend straight in the eye, not blinking, not flinching. "The Mickey I knew couldn't have done that," Patty spat out. "The Mickey I knew doesn't hurt people. She only hurt herself. And I was trying to prevent that from happening again."

  This brought Mickey up short. She studied Patty for a long moment. Her words hit home. The Mickey-That-Was couldn't have hurt anyone except herself, Patty had
that right. But Patty didn't know about the current scorecard the Mickey-That-Is was now keeping.

  That's when Mickey began to laugh. Truly a villainous laugh - raucous, uncontrolled, maniacal and just a smidge batshit crazy. The sound bounced around the rafters, amplifying it and turning it into some weird twisted chorus. As scary as that was, it was even scarier when she stopped.

  "I am not that Mickey," Mickey pronounced. And she proved it by running the knife through Patty's throat. Mickey's laughter drowned out Patty's final sounds, growing in volume and mirthless insanity as her full villainy took over.

  TWELVE

  The laughter was what kept the nurses away from the room at night. They said it was too creepy, too disturbing. These were psychiatric nurses who had dealt with creepy and disturbing throughout their long careers. But something about Mickey's laugh terrified them to their cores.

  It was even worse for Patty and Rick. They had come often to visit after the police had found Mickey. She had only poisoned herself when she had tried to take down the whole office and kidnap Rick. Apparently, YouTube videos weren't the best place for information on how to mix chemicals correctly when implementing them into your evil plot. The vapors had overcome their friend and done something serious to her brain.

  Perhaps it was for the best. The police had found her treasures and called it evidence. They knew what she had done. She would have been in prison for her crimes. This was just a different kind of prison.

  Rick and Patty came to see her together, always. As they were together always now anyway. A wedding in the spring would only seal that deal. Though they both felt some guilt over how they had come together, they had come together anyway.

  They peered through the window to Mickey's room, watching her battle the restraints, listening to her cackle and babble, wondering what could possibly be running through her head to create that horrible sound.

  Suddenly, she was quiet, seeing them in the window. A brief second of lucidity surfaced, as it had occasionally, giving them the tiniest moment of hope.

  "It had to be you," Mickey stammered, then the laughter took over and she was lost to them again.

  "I understand if you don't want to continue to come," Mickey's psychiatrist told them, studying Mickey through the window. "She will never come out of this. She doesn't even know you're there."

  But it was moments like this that made Rick say, "No, we have to come. We have to be the ones."

  Patty started down the hallway but Rick hesitated. He put his hand on the window, holding it there for an eternity. The heat from his body hitting the coolness of the hallway left an imprint behind as he finally joined Patty and returned to the real world.

  Mickey stared at that imprint, knowing deep down inside that it was him and that, in his own way, her Batman was still trying to rescue her.

  "It had to be you."

  Acknowledgements

  I have been a writer since I could hold a pencil and this book is merely me finally being able to put enough words in order to fill more than a few notebook pages.

  So I guess I would start with thanking the teachers who taught me how to write and who encouraged me to write. There are far too many to list here, but I am grateful for each and every one of them.

  Thanks to Richard Brewer for always being a literary ear when I need one and for all the advice over the years that I have coerced out of him.

  I am very grateful to my geeky family. Those who I only see once a year at Comic-Con and those I see all the time. You gave me permission to be a geek, to embrace comic books and to let my geek flag fly. You all taught me what a pull list was, how cosplay works, and showed me there was a place for literature within this weird space.

  I want to thank and acknowledge those brilliant artists at the Original Drink and Draw Social Club in Los Angeles. You guys (and gals) believed in me when I needed it the most. You let me peek inside the comic book world and treated me as a peer. And Jeff Johnson, you will probably never realize that your belief in me and support of me changed my life. Eternally grateful, sir.

  Thanks to Donna Allen-Figureoa for giving me guidance with publishing this novel. And Barry Drake, for proofing this and saying, “Wow, now I’m a little bit afraid of you”.

  Thanks to the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) gang. I would never had made this novel a priority without trying the insanity of writing a novel in thirty days. Wait and see what I do next year.

  And there aren’t words to thank those who I hold dear in my heart: Sarah Allen Bauer, Erik Engman, Andrew Hagan, and my sister, Cindy Weber.

  And most of all, Patty Jean Robinson, because you always know when I need to know I am loved. And Tracy Berna, because I don’t understand why you continue to tolerate me in your life but I am grateful that you do, my amazing friend.

  And for MG. Heartbreak makes the best art.

  This is dedicated to my parents. My crazy, wonderful, volatile mother, and my zen-like, sane, centered father. Their DNA gave me my creativity and their love and support was never-ending, even now that they’re gone. I love you both so much and hope that you knew that.

  And one last word - thanks to Ingrid, who whispered to me one night at a party that she sometimes walked home down dark alleys at night, hoping Batman would rescue her. I have lost touch with her but hope that she found her Batman - in a far saner way than that.

  About the Author

  Susan Lee is a comic book creator, a fine artist and a director. She has been a writer since she could use the alphabet, writing poetry no one will ever read, and volumes and volumes of prose hidden in numerous notebooks throughout her various living spaces. Her graphic novel, "Wraith of Love", is a three part series that was inspired by the works of Frank Miller and Jim Steranko. Never one to be still, Susan has also been a theater director for most of her adult life, as well as a filmmaker, specializing in short films. She lives to create. And to hang out with her weirdo cat, Indiana Jones, because every creative needs to have their familiar and he is hers.

  www.LifeOnItsSide.com