Diary Entries

#1

Mom says we’re moving to Gotham City and I might be able to see Batman some day!!!

#2

Dad found work easily since there is always new construction all over Gotham. The city is huge and filled with skyscrapers and dark buildings and you’d almost expect to see blimps in the sky sometimes. Mom is still looking for work and says there isn’t much call for psychiatrists in Gotham so she might need to intern somewhere?

School is OK and everyone talks about Batman a lot and how there’s a whole Bat Family who keep Gotham safe? Someone even says there is a bat dog, but I’m sure they’re pulling my leg.

GTG, mom is making spaghetti for supper.

#3

Mom is trying to get a job at Arkham, which is a place where criminals go for rehabilitation, which is a word that is even more complicated than it is long. Dad says all the criminals should be killed, but Mom says they aren’t evil, mostly just really confused like some arts students she knew in university only they went ‘far sideways from sanity’, which is what she said, quoting someone from Gotham University. Mom and Dad don’t agree on that at all, but they don’t talk about it much in front of me since they don’t want me to have nightmares.

As if. I’m in middle school, and even Dad admits school is a lot worse than Arkham ever is. I know two kids who had family members die to the Joker. Someone said it’s a badge of honour, but I’m not sure it is?

#4

School was closed today because some super villain fought Batman and Robin in it. Now everyone is wondering if Robin goes to our school. I don’t want to meet Robin, though: for me it’s Batman all the way even if I haven’t seen him yet. Everyone has stories about him the way other cities have stories about Superman, or my aunt tells stories about Jesus.

Everyone agrees Batman would kick Jesus’ butt.

#5

Mom got a job! She’s interning at Arkham, and Dad is furious because the crazies are there and Mom asked where else a psychiatrist should be and asked Dad why he thought she married him and he didn’t find it funny at all. Sometimes I think mom isn’t good at her job?

They’re fighting a lot about it in their bedroom. Dad is scared some nut will get out and hurt Mom in the process. I don’t understand how they get out, since the prison has guards and most of the prisoners are human? But I guess Batman is human too? James says Batman is a vampire, but everyone knows Batman wouldn’t sparkle.

#6

Mom has been acting weird. Not mom-weird, but weird-weird. She tells me she got assigned to help the Joker, but I’m not about to tell Dad. Dad would flip his lid, as Mom calls it. I think he’d shout and not stop. Mom says she if she can help the Joker, then she can help anyone and she’ll get tenure at the university and a book deal and Dad will be able to accept better jobs and I’ll get into a proper school.

I don’t tell anyone at school about Mom. I don’t think they’d believe me.

#7

Mom didn’t come home from work last night. The police came and talked to Dad, and the Commissioner was with them. I asked him about Batman and he said Batman was looking into it. Meaning Mom.

I hid in my room after that. Dad came in later. He said the Joker took Mom somewhere. He said we’ll be OK and mom will be back, because Quinn’s are strong like quills are. It’s a Mom joke, but it helps.

#8

I still haven’t met Batman. :(

#9

I saw mom on the TV.

She’s wearing makeup. She’s with the Joker. She’s calling herself Harley Quinn.

FML.

#10

I don’t think the neighbours know about Mom. I think the Commissioner made sure no one knows? Maybe cleaning up after the villains and Batman is his power. I don’t know.

Dad and I don’t talk about Batman much these days.

We don’t talk much at all.

#11

Dad. Work. Clayface.

Falling building.

Dad got someone out, and died trying to get someone else out.

Aunt Jo came, to fix things. We don’t have money. Aunt Jo doesn’t, Dad didn’t. We were barely scraping us by, though I never knew that. He hid it from me. Like Superheroes hiding their identities.

I can’t stay here. But I don’t want to. Everything hurts too much to be real.

#12

Mom never showed at the funeral. Not as her or as Harley Quinn.

I wish I could hate her. It would be easier if I could hate mom, but she looks so happy when I see her on the TV.

(I don’t think I ever want to be that happy.)

Batman wasn’t at the funeral, even though Dad was. Bruce Wayne was, and paid some money for some scholarship. I didn’t pay attention. I can’t think about schools. Schools don’t teach what matters.

#13

The orphanage is large. I’m told the Wayne Foundation pays for it, like they pay for other things. The nuns say that Wayne employs at least 10% of the city indirectly, but I don’t know why they tell us that. He’s not important. Everyone knows Batman is important.

They say each Robin was an orphan here, that Batman saved Robin from the streets. We all work out in secret, using clips off of YouTube. Hoping Batman finds us. Hoping we get to be the next Robin.

Hoping we can help save Him.

(Just like Dad tried to save me.)

This story still has no title.

She was not surprised when they came for her. Her mother had warned her, each admonishment more hysterical than the last.

"You never had a father," she had said finally over the phone last week, her voice cutting in and out. Static and sobs. "I was never married." And finally, in a bleak tone devoid of hope: "They will come for you. You will understand when they come for you."

 There were thirteen of them, the youngest fourteen, the oldest gum-mouthed and using a walker. Each had a baby as silent as they, eyes cold and judging.

 "Choose," the youngest said, in a voice as innocent as sin.

"Choose," the oldest said, in a voice thick with regret.

She could have fought. She knew that even then. But she recalled her mother's missing eye, the limp, the way her mom flinched when she saw more than three women together. She did not understand, not yet, but butterflies rolled in her stomach. She pointed to one at random, mute. The woman stepped forward, face veiled in shadow, and pressed the baby to her stomach. It slipped inside her, the butterflies giving way to something else.

It hurt. Hurt is not big enough for that pain, but it was all she had.

She fell, tears tearing themselves free of flesh. She wanted to say she was too old, that she never wanted children, but her screams said all the words for her.

When she could finally stand, there were only twelve women staring back at her.

"Choose," they said, and the voice came from inside her as well. "You may join us. If you do not, this is your choice." And the oldest patted her belly, already looking swollen, a nameless hunger stirring in her eyes.

She stared at her stomach, thought about her mother. Wondered what happened to men who didn't want children. They could tell her, she knew. And she thought of her mother, of each blind date that had been thrust at her in a desperate frenzy. She had not understood it as hope, then. Had not understood how desperate hope could be.

She closed her eyes, and made her choice.

Confession

I never thought of bodies as smorgasboards until I met you. A corpse was just a body, a client, something to be measured and quantified, to ignore jokes about 23 grams and look for causes of death in the hollowness of flesh. There were no secrets from me; dead men tell tales their vacated owners would wish they were silent about, from love to sex to drugs.

I thought I knew them all, or at least of them, until you. When you first touched me, cold and clammy, my scream the only warmth between us as your teeth came down, raw and broken, tearing into placid flesh like waking from a dream of falling.

Two of my fingers remain missing. It makes some things difficult, like doorknobs and peeling maggots off you for snacks. But I do not mind because I love you, because you love me, because we can complete each other when our flesh sides together to create a new odour as chemicals and meat. Our love is a poem without words, sharing the choice bits of brains, tug-of-war over a liver with the loser always winning the next time.

When sight fails we have scents. When that, sounds. And always touch. The first sense and the last, crawling over each other to explore rats and mice and insects as they burrow deep and we tug them out, playing guessing games for colour and taste.

But there is truth behind it, even though we eat them. I do not want to share you with anyone, not of any who burrow or rot or live. When the men comes with fire and guns I will defend you. When creatures in the ocean try and eat you, I will be there. fingers are nothing to what else I'd lose for you, in sickness and health, for edible or inedible, til undeath do we part.

I never knew how much I loved you until it was too late, the first time you bit me and truly meant it. now I cannot get enough of me when we lie enfolded together and I let my fingers speak my longing and what is left of your tongue responds.

In the end, all we have is each other.

Finding Losses

It starts - it starts with mirrors. I think maybe it's how everything begins, the way all things began, but we all do that -- I'm just like everyone else, trying to assume my experiences are yours, to make what happened to me be the same as what happens to the world. We only see through our eyes, and everything we see is a reflection of ourselves.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound like that. Life's not a poem. But it's true (for a certain value of true): if we are something, we assume everyone else is. It's hard, to think someone wouldn't lie if you would in their situation. Little things like that. I don't even know what I did, to be honest. I just woke up one day and looked into the mirror and I wasn't looking back out.

Things are funny, that way. We can't actually see ourselves. We never even really see how others see us. But we look at our reflection, at some imagine in a mirror, and we assume that's us. Even if we change, we keep assuming the reflection is real, that it matters. Even when the best of mirrors always reflects left to right, we somehow think it's showing us a real thing.

But it wasn't.

Rebecca had left me, for some other guy. John - John something. I never got his full name, never asked. A plumber or something; said she was tired of business suits and the mentality that went with them. The day after I woke up and stared into the mirror and someone else stared back, unshaven and hollow-eyed, with a look like a man one turn of the rack from madness.

And it wasn't me. I wasn't certain of many things, but I knew that couldn't be me. I had a 401K stock plan, a brand new Toyota, and a condo that was entirely paid off. I had two grown kids I loved, an ex-wife I pretended had died of ebola, and had - until recently - Rebecca in my life. It might not be the best life in the world, but it hadn't been the worst of them.

And yet this stranger stared at me as if looking out from the depths of Hell, or somewhere in Jersey.

What did I do? Well, I waved my hand, and he waved his. I shaved, but he didn't look any better. If anything, trying to cover it up seemed to make it worse. I went to work anyway, and no one commented. Not a single person noticed a thing. I stared at a dead man in a water cooler on break, wondering what everyone else saw in their mirrors, but I never found the courage to ask.

I've been passed over for two promotions in the past five years, you know. Or don't, but still: I think that's what it is. Just a hallucination because of my lack of courage, fortitude, all things like that. But it's not like things that that matter anymore, you know? You don't get ahead in the real world if you cling to honour and decency. That's practically business 101.

Christ, I don't even know why I'm telling you this. I guess because your reflection looked -- needy -- in the napkin dispenser. And you remind me of someone I can't remember. Me, maybe. If I was a woman, I mean; I don't even know what I mean. I think I lost something, though, or mortgaged it away, and I'd like it back. And I think you could help me, even if words can't explain why.

I could pay you for the sex, if that would help. We could screw our way to a better world instead of screwing up this one some more? Come on, don't be like that. I'm trying to be honest, even if it hurts you. We could fix our reflections, if we try hard enough. I think you can fill the emptiness inside me; I can't love myself enough to do it right now.

Please? I said I'd pay you. I wasn't lying. I'll make sure to wear a condom. I just don't think - I don't think I can wake up to those eyes in a mirror again. I mean it! It's you or the bridge. We make love or I die, and you can have that staring at you from a mirror some day. This is your chance to save someone, my chance to be saved.

So what do you say?

From a prompt

“Oh, my God! What have I/We done?”
       “We/I have done nothing. You/We have done everything.”
       “But, the fingerprints -- I -- no We/We are on the --”
       “You/We will be charged. You/We will pay for it.”
       “But You/I -- You/I wanted her dead. So We/I could be together.”
       “You/I have one body. Many I/We/You/Us, but one body. We cannot have sex.”
       “But You/We -- “
       “You/I. You/I acted.”
       “You/We -- I/You -- You/We lied to You/I?”
       “Who can You/I lie to, You/I, but You/We/I self?”
       “But I/We -- I/You ---”
       “Only I. One, to pay.”
       “But I/We exist!”
       “That does not, We/You, mean We/Us has to suffer with We/You.”
       “Fuck me.”
       “We/I cannot.”
       “But, her voice -- she kept thinking there was only I. I/We .... You/I was .. jealous?”
       “....”
       “I/We didn’t mean -- I/Me didn’t mean -- I/We are -- please, say something?”
       “.”
       “It is lonely, without We/I. She is staring at me. Us. Me. Staring. If she starts talking, We/You must listen! Must! I did it for You/Us! She was afraid of I/We, of noise! Please, not silence? I/We don’t want this. I --. I..”