Chapter 11
Chapter
Eleven
JEX
“The problem with the world, Pip, is that everyone is so damn polite about their sins.”
I’m standing in the kitchen of a penthouse that belongs to the City Comptroller—a man who spent his afternoon signing off on a budget cut for the asylum’s food supply and his evening enjoying a vintage Bordeaux.
He’s currently sitting at his own dining table, though ‘sitting’ is a generous term.
He’s taped to the chair with silver duct tape, his eyes darting between me and the silver platter I’m prepping on the marble island.
I’m wearing his wife’s floral apron over my purple coat. It’s a bit tight in the shoulders, but the ruffles are a nice touch.
“You see, Monty,” I say, picking up a paring knife and testing the edge on my thumb.
A bead of red blossoms. I lick it off. “You think you’re a good man because you use a pen to kill people.
You sit in your air-conditioned office, you click your tongue at the ‘unfortunate statistics,’ and then you come home to your silk sheets.
But me? I like to look my work in the eye. ”
I hop onto the counter, sitting cross-legged next to a bowl of fresh gala apples.
“People think madness is a scream,” I muse, tilting my head. “But it’s not. It’s a whisper. It’s the realisation that the rules are just a bedtime story we tell ourselves so we don’t have to admit we’re all just animals with better wardrobes.”
I reach out and pat Monty’s cheek. He’s hyperventilating, the tape over his mouth fluttering.
“You know what Hallow told the board before you locked her up? She told them that the city didn’t need a saviour; it needed a funeral. I liked that. It had poetry. It had teeth.”
I stand up, my movements fluid and jagged, like a marionette with its strings tangled.
I pick up a heavy, glass decanter of $5,000 scotch and pour it—not into a glass, but directly into the open piano in the corner of the room.
The golden liquid splashes over the strings, filling the air with a rich, peaty scent.
“Why are you doing this?” Monty’s eyes seem to scream.
“Because it’s funny, Monty! It’s hilarious!
” I bark, a sudden, sharp laugh escaping me.
“You spent thirty years climbing the ladder so you could buy this piano, and in thirty seconds, I’ve turned it into a very expensive puddle of booze.
That’s the joke! Nothing is permanent! Not your money, not your power, and definitely not your skin. ”
I walk over to him, the paring knife gleaming under the chandelier.
“I’m not going to kill you, Monty. That’s too easy. That’s a one-act play, and I’m a fan of the epic.”
I lean in, my face inches from his, the ‘Joker’ grin pulling so wide it actually hurts my cheeks. I can see my own reflection in his panicked pupils—a pale, painted monster with eyes that have seen the bottom of the abyss and found it cozy.
“I want you to be my messenger. I want you to go to work tomorrow—well, if you can still walk—and I want you to tell them that the Dealer is in town. Tell them I’m not looking for money. I’m not looking for a seat at the table.”
I grab his hand, the one he uses to sign those death warrants, and spread his fingers out on the mahogany table.
“I’m looking for my Queen.”
With a movement so fast it’s a blur, I drive the paring knife through the centre of his palm, pinning his hand to the table. The sound he makes—that muffled, agonising soul-shriek—is better than any symphony Aris ever played in his office.
I don’t flinch. I don’t pull away. I lean in and kiss his forehead, right between his sweat-beaded brows.
“There,” I whisper, my voice dripping with a terrifying, honeyed affection.
“Now you’ve got something to remember me by.
Every time you try to pick up a pen, you’ll feel me.
Every time you try to sign a girl away to a white room, you’ll remember the man in the purple coat who reminded you that you’re just meat and bone. ”
I spin around, grabbing a handful of gala apples and juggling them as I head for the balcony.
“Knuckles! Pip! Let’s go! I’m bored of this set! The lighting is terrible!”
I walk out onto the terrace, the wind whipping my hair across my face. I look down at the city, the lights twinkling like a fallen galaxy. Somewhere in that mess of concrete and cruelty, Hallow is waiting in the dark.
“Two hundred and fifteen days,” I shout into the void, tossing an apple into the night. “Can you feel the punchline coming, Hallow? It’s going to be a riot!”
I let out a long, howling laugh that drowns out the sirens starting to wail in the distance. I’m not a hero. I’m the fever that’s going to break this city. And God, it feels good to be the one holding the thermometer.
The penthouse was a scream; the funhouse is a heartbeat.
I swagger through the mouth of the giant fibreglass clown, my boots crunching on the broken glass and discarded candy wrappers that litter the floor. The air inside is stagnant, smelling of salt-rot and the metallic tang of the blood I still have under my fingernails.
“I’m home, Giggles!” I shout into the rafters. My voice bounces off the warped mirrors in the Hall of Distortions, throwing a dozen jagged, twisted versions of me back at my face. I stop in front of one. The glass makes my head look like a balloon and my legs like toothpicks.
I tilt my head. “Looking sharp, Jexy. Real sharp.”
I move toward the back, past the rusted tracks of the ‘Tunnel of Love’ where the swan boats look like bleached ribcages. Knuckles is there, sitting on a crate of ammunition, sharpening a machete with a stone. The shhh-shhh-shhh of the blade is the only music I need.
“Status report, Knuckles! Give me the dirt! Give me the gossip! Did the mailman bring my invitation to the gala?”
Knuckles doesn’t look up. He just points a thick, scarred finger toward the centre of the “office”—the space under the missing-jaw clown.
There’s a man tied to my chair.
He’s wearing a Hillside Sanitarium security uniform—the grey one with the blue piping.
He’s young, maybe twenty-one, with a face full of freckles and eyes that are currently trying to exit the back of his skull.
He’s not taped like Monty. He’s tied with thick, industrial hemp rope, and there’s a Queen of Hearts tucked into his breast pocket.
“Oh ho!” I hop over a pile of theatre seats, my eyes alight with a manic, hungry glow. “A guest! And he brought his own uniform! How thoughtful!”
I walk a slow, predatory circle around the chair. The kid is shaking so hard the chair is rattling against the floorboards. Rattle-clack. Rattle-clack.
“He was sniffing around the pier, Boss,” Pip chirps from the shadows of a popcorn machine. She’s tossing a heavy brass key ring up and down. “Caught him trying to radio back to the white house. I think he’s a scout.”
I stop in front of him, leaning down until our noses are almost touching. He smells like cheap tobacco and terror. It’s an intoxicating cocktail.
“A scout,” I whisper, my voice dropping into that dark, velvet crawl. “A little bird from the cage. Tell me, little bird… how is she? How is the girl with the blue and red hair? Is she sleeping? Is she dreaming of me?”
The kid tries to speak, but his jaw is locked in a frozen tremor. I reach out and gently, almost tenderly, unbutton his collar. I find his name tag. Officer Higgins.
“Higgins,” I say, the name tasting like ash. “That sounds like a butler’s name. Are you serving her, Higgins? Are you bringing her tea and crumpets while Aris plugs her into the wall? Or are you one of the ones who holds her down so she doesn’t ruin the Doctor’s nice clean rug?”
I grab a handful of his hair and yank his head back. “Answer me, or I’ll start using these cards to perform a very messy tracheotomy.”
“She—she doesn’t talk!” he gasps, tears finally spilling over. “She hasn’t made a sound in months! Aris says she’s… he says she’s stabilised! Please, I just work the perimeter! I don’t go in the Soft Room!”
I freeze. The word stabilised hits me like a physical blow. It means quiet. It means the fire is under a lid. It means Aris thinks he’s won.
A low, guttural growl starts in my chest, building into a jagged, manic laugh that echoes through the funhouse like a death knell. I release his hair and spin away, kicking a bucket of old grease across the floor.
“Stabilised! He thinks he’s stabilised an earthquake! He thinks he’s put a leash on the sun!”
I turn back to him, my face a mask of terrifying, white-hot fury. I pull a canister of ‘The Punchline’ from my coat and hold it up to his face.
“You see this, Higgins? This is the cure for ‘stability.’ This is the alarm clock for the girls who have been put to sleep by men in lab coats.”
I lean in, my grin returning, but this time it’s sharper, meaner.
“You’re going back tonight, Higgins. But you aren’t going back alone. You’re going to carry a little gift from the Dealer. And if you drop it… well, the joke’s going to be on your entire shift.”
I pull a small, high-frequency detonator from my pocket and tape it to the canister. Then, I tape the whole package to the kid’s inner thigh, right against the femoral artery.
“If you try to remove it, boom. If you don’t get through the main gate by midnight, boom.” I pat his cheek, my eyes shimmering with a beautiful, psychotic light. “But if you do exactly what I say… you might just live long enough to see the greatest show on earth.”
I stand up, spreading my arms wide to my Choir.
“Two hundred and fifteen days! The clock is ticking, the cards are dealt, and the Doctor is about to find out what happens when you try to own a ghost!”
I grab my hammer and smash the flickering green light on the desk, plunging us all into a jagged, blood-red shadow.
“Midnight, boys! Bring the gas! We’re going to turn that asylum into a goddamn circus!”