Part Five
Beth, Alex, Bert, and Ernie sat in the private limousine that Harvey Dent had called in for that evening. It was quite an expensive atmosphere to be in, with a bar (of course, none of the passengers decided to drink anything) and an overhead television set (which was currently displaying results from the campaign). Engaged in discussion about the campaign, Beth and Harvey barely even noticed how Alex and Ernie were nearly falling asleep, while Bert was listening in on them.
You’d think Ernie and Alex would be excited to be in a limo, he thought.
What was worst than the boredom itself was the fact that neither Alex nor Ernie had anything to eat yet. Maybe it wasn’t such a grand idea to accompany Beth on this press conference. And it didn’t quite help that, between questions and answers, Alex’s stomach began growling during Beth and Dent’s conversation.
“Would you please do something about your hunger problem?” Beth said.
Alex rolled her eyes and sucked in her stomach—the best way to muffle the noises coming from it. She could’ve sworn that she was pushing the empty thing against her spine. “Can’t we stop by someplace? I mean, how important is it for us to get there on time?”
“
Very.” Beth replied.
Dent chuckled. “It’s not all that important. I’ll have the driver swing us by someplace.”
Alex smiled.
He isn’t such a stuck-up, self-centered politician after all, she thought.
Just as Harvey was about to press the intercom button and contact the limo driver, the driver’s voice had already come through the speaker, sounding very hesitant. “Mr. Dent, we have a problem.”
“What’s wrong, Steve?” Dent asked.
“There’s an accident up ahead. Looks pretty bad. Correction:
really bad.”
Concern quickly overcame the passengers of the limousine. No more interests in campaigns. No more boredom. Not even any hunger. All that seemed to matter at that time was what was going on in the street.
“Pull over.” Dent ordered.
“Since when do you have an interest in road accidents?” Alex inquired, sounding a bit sarcastic.
Quickly Beth was at the defense. “Hey, if he’s going to be district attorney one day, he has to pay attention to all kinds of problems happening in this messed-up city.”
They felt the limo come to a stop and climbed out onto the sidewalk. Looking straight ahead at the accident, they noticed how much of a circus it was around the scene. Ten or twelve police vehicles parked in a semi circle, blocking the entire street. Officers were directing passing vehicles away from the accident. And even news reporters were scattered around, trying to catch an interview with one of the officers or victims of the accident.
“Good Lord.” Beth uttered.
They walked in closer to the scene, trying to get as much of a good look as possible of the accident. What they noticed surprised them: a Mustang smashed right in the left front side of what appeared to have been a carnival vehicle. The Mustang was totally crippled—its front looked like an accordion—and the carnival vehicle’s left side was caved in.
The eyes of Beth, Alex, Bert, and Ernie widened as they recognized the name on the crushed side of the carnival vehicle. It read, “Sleaze Brothers Funfair.” Only after the recent car crash, it now read, “
Sleaze Brothers Unfair.” The “F” seemed to have fallen victim to the Mustang’s wrath.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Beth said, with a chuckle.
“For real.” Alex said. “You’d think those guys finally learned to keep themselves out of trouble.”
Their eyes shifted from the horrendous damage to beyond it, where two men were sitting on the sidewalk, being treated by paramedics. These men were the Sleaze Brothers themselves, Sid and Sam. If the name of their rundown, rip-off carnival on the side of their car was not obvious enough, the sight of them wearing slings, bandages, and neck braces should be proof that they were definitely in the accident.
But the pain in their bodies was the last thing on the brothers’ minds. They were more focused on who caused the crash. And they didn’t hesitate to let the nearby group of reporters in on it.
“He came at us out of nowhere! Nearly tried to annihilate us!” Sam exclaimed. “We would’ve been done for, if it hadn’t been for our seatbelts and airbags.”
Sid then whispered to Sam, “Our car doesn’t have that stuff, Sam.”
“Shut up, Sid.” Sam whispered back to him.
“Do you know who it was that hit you?” One reporter asked.
“Was it the Batman?” Another did the same.
A horrified expression appeared on Sam’s face as he said, “Nah. It wasn’t the bat. It was someone…” Sam failed to think up the right word to describe the man responsible for the hit-and-run accident.
Sid, however, summed it up perfectly in one word: “Scarier.”
A series of mumblings swept over the crowd of reporters, as they wondered who could be scarier than Batman and caused such a horrible crash. That’s when yet another reporter asked, “Was it the Joker?”
Sam and Sid exchanged a quick, awkward glance. “No comment,” they both said.
Their glance didn’t go unnoticed by the
Daily Planet reporters, which gave them a reason to believe that this accident was done with a purpose. If it was neither the Joker nor the Batman that caused it, then it had to be someone outside of both sources. But what was the plan? Why come at the Sleazes? Were they somehow connected to either Batman or Joker?
It was outlandish to think that way, but yet it was also rational, especially considering all that had occurred in recent years in Gotham City. And the Sleaze Brothers were too small (and too dense) to be hanging around there. Metropolis was hard enough for them, after being released from prison in 2006. But they had a reason for being there, and they were getting help from someone who knew the city a lot more than they did.
After tying to get some more answers from the officers surrounding the area, Harvey turned back to the
Daily Planet reporters and said, “I’m going to take you all back to the hotel. I think it’s too dangerous to be out on the street this time of night.”
“But what about the press conference?” Beth asked.
“With half of the media here on
this?” Alex remarked. “You might as well be asking:
What press conference?”
Harvey nodded. “She’s got a point.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” Beth bantered.
As they were heading back to the limousine, Beth heard her cell phone playing the “Ladybug’s Picnic” tune from her purse. She reached in a pulled it out, seeing who was on the caller ID. The moment she noticed the name of Sean Thomas on there, she instantly went into panic mode.
“It’s Sean!”
The others turned their heads toward her, looking just as shocked as she was. They all stopped and stared at her phone for seconds. Snapping out of the trance she was in, Alex anxiously said, “Well, answer it, you goof!”
Beth shot a glare at her for a moment and then pressed the green “call” button on her phone, placing it near her ear afterwards. “Sean? Where are you? Why haven’t you—”
“Just listen to me, Beth, and don’t say a word.” He said, sounding as if he were in great pain over the phone. “You, your sister, Bert, and Ernie have to get back to Metropolis as soon as you can.” She was about to respond, until she suddenly remembered not to say a word. He was talking so rapidly that she barely had enough time to say anything at all. “Something big is about to go down in this city, and you have only a short amount of time to get away from it all.”
“What’s he saying?” Beth heard Bert saying, and she rose up a hand to signal for his silence.
“I got what I needed from the Sleazes.” Sean continued. “But I’m starting to doubt letting them off the hook like that. The last thing I want to do is get a soft spot for a couple of mindless crooks, whether they’re reformed or not. After what they’ve done, I
seriously wonder if they
really are ‘reformed’.”
Beth wanted to tell her cousin so much at that moment. She wanted to tell him to just come home and leave all of this mess behind. There was people back home—back on Sesame Street—that were starting to wonder if he was ever going to come back. Some even wondered if he were still alive. It was breaking her heart knowing that he was so fixed on fighting this so-called “War On Crime” in Gotham City. It was tearing her inside to know that he could put himself in great danger from all of this. And the revelation that he—not Batman, not the Joker—was responsible for the Sleazes’ accident was even more unsettling. The pain he sounded like he was in was a direct result of it.
Then Beth had to wonder in her mind:
What was the point? Why did he do it? The Sleazes are crooks, yes. But what did they have to do with this war?
Beth made an attempt to speak these thoughts out. But she heard a click over the phone and then that darn message, “Your line has been disconnected. Please hang up and dial again.”
She hung up, but had chosen not to dial again. It would be pointless to even try, knowing how far he had gotten into all of this. Glancing over at the others, who were watching with anticipation to find out what the phone call was all about. But she didn’t say a word to them. All she did was walk back over to the limousine and climbed back inside.
“What was that all about?” Bert asked.
“You’ve got me, Bert.” Ernie replied.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Larissa felt like hours had passed since Dr. Quinzel had led her through different hallways and floors of Arkham Asylum. It was no wonder Bob, Linda, or Teressa would come after him, after being gone so long. Then again, they might’ve gotten lost themselves.
“How much farther before we come to whatever it is you want to show me, Doctor?” She asked.
Quinzel was silent for a brief moment, as she and Larissa came across a huge, rusty steel door with a small rectangular peephole at the center of it. “We’re here, Detective.” She stopped and glanced at her, with a strange look in her eyes. “I remember when I first came to Arkham. The things they had here look just as primitive as they do today. The city never really did spend too much of their funds on a grungy little place like this.”
Larissa looked around at the area they were in. The walls had heavy amounts of mildew on them, the floors were stained with yellow and brown material, and cobwebs were spread throughout. Not to mention there were bugs crawling all around, from spiders to cockroaches. It was a grouch’s paradise.
But it was Larissa’s worse nightmare. She had enough of Arkham for one day, and she wanted to get out as soon as possible. “Why did you bring me here, Doctor?”
Quinzel grinned and then awkwardly stated, “I want to show you the proper way our patients should be reborn.”
Reborn?
The word echoed all the way down the hall. It came off as a weird way to describe how treatments were done there. For a moment, Larissa wondered:
Maybe she meant something else. It had to, because it absolutely made no sense whatsoever.
Opening a few latches and locks, Dr. Quinzel began opening the heavy, rusty steel door inward, allowing Larissa to step inside first. The instant she walked in, a foul smell overwhelmed her. It smelled like a thousand people had gathered around and done every unsanitary thing possible, like peeing all over things or throwing up. It almost made her do the latter.
The room looked like something out of one of those
Saw movies. Turquoise walls at four sides, covered with same yellow and brown material that Larissa found on the floor out in the hall—with an addition of pink as well. There were old shelves with labeled bottles of many shapes and sizes sitting on them, filled with pink liquids (some of which included much more, like lobes of a brain).
In addition, there was a workbench covered with surgical utensils of all types—some of which still had blood on them, although it looked as if it were decades old. And there were two chairs: one was a typical wooden stool, the other was incredibly menacing. It resembled the type of chair that dentists use for their patients, except there was no cushioning. There was only metal all around. But what also made this chair different from dental chairs were the restraints on the arms and at the bottom where the feet rested.
There was so much inside that room that Larissa failed to see the most important thing of all: a four-foot tall machine that had several buttons and switches on it, as well as an indicator with a small black needle that pointed to numbers ranging from 0 to 100. On that indicator, the space between numbers 80 and 100 were shaded in red and labeled “Danger.”
Larissa wanted to get out immediately. And as she turned towards the doorway, she was suddenly met with an intense, shocking pain in her abdomen that paralyzed her whole body. Falling back towards the floor and hitting it hard, she realized that Dr. Quinzel had just hit her with a taser.
“W-Why?” was all she could muster to say.
“Because I can’t let my best patient be stopped from bringing a smile to such sour faces.” She said with a creepy grin.
That grin was the last thing Larissa had seen before she blacked out entirely.
TO BE CONCLUDED...
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