Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
I stared at the fork between my fingers, tapping the rim of my full plate. Ten minutes and I hadn't touched a crumb. The bacon seemed to glare at me and the fries looked like they were scowling. I was hungry yet I couldn't bring myself to eat, and that meant I was drinking twice as much water. And even that didn't fill me up enough.
It was because I was worried. Or stressed, or paranoid. If the shoe fits, I felt as though everything were grim. It was raining. It was dark. And I was so strained by fear.
It was 5:50.
I gulped. Ten more minutes.
I could've just, y'know, not go. Sure, the guy knew where I lived and he could've easily waltzed up to the front door and stuck a bullet in my face, but there was a possibility, I suppose. My mom would've gone nuts if she found out I let some stranger know where we live. She had no idea I'd ever met anybody on the bus that day. She wasn't going to, either.
Speak of the devil, she just so happened to walk into the room, toffee hair up in a ponytail and steel grey eyes stern on my plate. She stopped walking and sighed. "You gonna eat that?" She asked, carelessly pointing a hand at the cold bacon and hard fries.
I glanced at her, then back at the plate, heaving out a shallow breath. "I'm trying to."
She huffed in sarcastic laughter and turned the radio on. "Well, good luck with that. Seeing as you're trying to will it into your mouth by telekinesis or something, whatever."
I cracked a little grin. As miserable as she was, we both shared the same attitude of cocky sarcasm.
Not willingly listening to the radio, it crackled on. "This morning, officers of the GCPD found a dead body in a warehouse a mile off the Sionis Steel Mill. The body was found with a blunt pencil through its skull and a joker card on the desk, and police and investigators are stating that without a doubt, this is the work of the Joker. Since his recent terrorist attack in Gotham's bank, police have not yet traced him and he is still on the loose. More on this as it progresses."
I grimaced. A pencil? What a sick bastard. I couldn't imagine it was much of a quick death for the poor guy.
My mom sighed heavily, turning on the sink taps. "A pencil through the guy's head, huh? What kinda freak've you gotta be to do that?" She rhetorically asked, shaking her head.
I stared ahead blandly, still refusing to eat my food. I thought about it for a while. Him. The Joker, I mean. He suddenly appeared out of nowhere. I had surely never heard of a villain like him before, and all of a sudden he was wreaking chaos on the streets. It was like he'd generated himself into the universe out of nowhere. It really irritated me how nobody at the college mentioned anything, not even the teachers, so I had beforehand decided to do my own research and Googled him.
I just quickly flicked through a few forums and news reports, and it said he escaped Arkham Asylum For The Critically Insane. 'Critically insane' was an understatement, this weirdo must've been a right nut job to stick a pencil through someone's head. It was also strange and unexplainable that he had no other known aliases. No real name, print matches, anything. The Joker had truly and literally appeared from nowhere.
Everything about him and Jack seemed fairly... coincidental. It was strange how the day the Joker invaded Gotham bank, I had met Jack right after it apparently happened. But that raised an argument. Jack could've been on the bus whilst the invasion happened. I knew nothing about the Joker, I barely even knew what he looked like, except that he wore stupid looking facepaint and a purple coat. The thought of not knowing enough scared me- like what if I ran into him?- but I was confident I could spot a loon like him from a mile away. Especially if he was wielding a machine gun and wearing stupid face paint.
