Flytrap | WATTYS 2022 SHORTLIST

3 | Evergreen

Barbara only nodded, scarcely listening to him over her furious scribbling. "Sorry, but I have to leave this for Pamela." With a loud rip, she tore the page off and left it on the table.

"Really? Why?" Officer Bard glanced over her shoulder.

"Because she treats me like a two-year-old instead of a twenty-two-year-old." She pursed her lips together into a frown. "Anyway, are you ready?"

"Yeah." Officer Bard's response had barely left his mouth when Barbara spun around, already halfway down the hall. By the time he made it to the door, she was waiting next to his patrol car.

"What's got you in such a hurry?" He quirked his eyebrow as he unlocked the passenger door. "The library doesn't close for like another six hours."

"We're not going to the library," she said as she hoisted herself into the passenger's seat.

Officer Bard looked up from the wheelchair he had started to fold. "But you said—In the note, you even wrote—"

"I know what I wrote. But we're not going there." Barbara's gaze narrowed at the officer. "We're going to the Isley mansion."

Nearly losing his grip on the wheelchair, Officer Bard managed to catch it just in time before it hit the pavement. "The Isley mansion? Why would you want to go there?"

"So it does exist," Barbara whispered, her eyes growing wide. Richard hadn't been lying like she initially thought.

"Of course it does." He laid the wheelchair on the backseat before shutting the door. Making his way back around to the driver's side, he hopped in and let out a deep sigh. "I used to go over there when I was a kid. It was like the local haunted house the kids used to dare each other to break into."

"So it's abandoned?"

"Yeah." His jacket rustled against the leather seat as he started it. "Why are you asking about this? Because of Pamela?"

Barbara nodded, adjusting her glasses. "I was told that she has a mansion. At first, I was skeptical. But now..." She tore her eyes from the fogged-up windshield to look at him. "I have to see it."

"Why? It's just a rundown mansion covered in ivy. Not much else." He cracked a smile. "Don't tell me you believe it's actually haunted."

Barbara, however, didn't return his smile. "No, but it's not the ghosts I'm interested in."

**

The Isley mansion was located on the other side of the city, across the Gotham River. Why any kid would want to make the miles-long journey to it puzzled Barbara. She could only imagine how they must have felt crossing the corroded bridge on their bikes, only a strong gust of wind away from the murky depths below.

Or maybe they took the subway that ran through the underwater tunnels. But even then, the thought of the subzero water pouring through the cracks in the concrete was not any more comforting.

Keeping her gaze on the bridge stretched before her, Barbara strained to see what was on the other side of the endless white fog that covered it. Its cables seemed to sway over the dark water, not enough to cause worry but enough to imagine them suddenly snapping loose. Much like the rest of the city's crumbling infrastructure, the bridge didn't fare much better.

In the rearview mirror, she could see the city's skyline against a backdrop of looming clouds. She had never known the true definition of the color gray before coming to Gotham. Even in the day, it looked like a city perpetually stuck in the apocalypse with its colorless, archaic buildings and equally colorless skies.

As the forest around them became denser and the buildings in-between more scarce, it wasn't long before they arrived at the Isley mansion. She must have dozed off somewhere down the road since the next thing she saw was at one time, one of the most beautiful and elegant estates in Gotham, now darkened and weathered from years of neglect. Although it was nowhere in the state it had once been in, its sheer size was enough to take Barbara's breath away. To a city kid like her, it looked like something out of a forgotten painting with its lush forests of evergreen trees and red oaks.