Cherry Bombs & Bursting Buttons

"But did he…" Arkham cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Did he ever…?"
Harley's face twisted into a smile that caved quickly when her mind had stumbled past the awkward bits. "He's an animal, Doc. They have their tendencies."
"I'm asking this out of pure professional interest, Harleen." He was beginning to get a little red around the ears.
"Are you trying to save the people of Gotham from a severe sexing-up?" She attempted to worm her way around the obvious reasons for his question.
"Look what he did to you," he said pointedly. "If it's true that he can do to this city what he did to your body, I'd like to know what sort of man we're dealing with."
"No." Harley winced, one of her cracked ribs twingeing. "Not man. Monster."

It's so strange that after that night, the entire city seems to be lining up to see the damage done. Look at this scar, and this, and this. What remarkable technique. You'd think it'd take hours to tell how I got them all. But it only took just the once, and the wine was the blood in the water.
Ladies and gentlemen, I can move you, I can shake you. I just want to tear into you and make you mine.
That's what he said to me, with his eyes and his fists. And that is what he's saying to this city.
I guess this is why you need to listen. It's not all about Harley. It's that soon, my blood will be yours.

Arkham eased back in his seat. "They performed a rape kit when you got here," he stated in an even voice.
She shook her head. "They didn't have to."
"Are you meaning to say something about the willing, Miss Quinzel?"

He wasn't wearing his jacket and I found that odd, but the enormity of his presence pushed the thought to the back of my mind. In his usual methodic search-and-destroy way, he tore through cabinets, made himself at home, poured something that tasted like merlot and seemed to flow indefinitely.
"So, Harley, so, kiddo…" I wasn't even listening to him speak. I'd downed the glass so quickly that only the sharpest parts of his voice seemed to come through, deformed and monstrous. A couple more and the world started frosting over in beautiful warm, dark colors.

"No wonder you lived through it," Arkham stated, trying to sound positive. He always enjoyed kidding himself a bit- it "frosted over" the edges. "You were intoxicated. That was rather intelligent, Harleen, with the notion of what came next- a makeshift anesthetic. You probably didn't feel much."
She couldn't bring herself to smirk anymore. "Not by a longshot, Doc."

Shortly after the last swallow, the world became like this: blurred, everything but him, blurred, and his voice, which seemed to reach inside me and grip something essential that threatened the whole's collapse. I sat there numb and dull and terrified all at once, waiting for the punch line, but the joke went on and on.
His voice morphed into obscene overkill. I felt blindly for a way to make it stop, but it, he, had such a hold on me. I could have torn his smile right up the seams.

"You did what?" For a moment he forgot his own rule: never act surprised. You've heard it all before.
But this one was freakishly, preposterously new.
"You know when you were a little kid," she said calmly, "and your dad would act like a zombie just to scare you? And you couldn't get away because he was so much bigger than you, but there was no one else around, so you just hugged him to make him stop?"
"Please…don't even compare it to that, Harleen."
"Well, it's what I did."
"And it worked, I see."
She followed his eyes down to the yellow and blueness of her arms.

I could have torn his smile right up the seams. The next frame in the scene: him, lucid, everything else, a dream. The violent flow of words, the terrible voice stopped instantly at the crush of mouth on mouth, and it was silent for the merest moment. Daddy stopped his zombie act and loved me again.
There was the idle drunken wondering of a how-did-I-get-in-your-lap nature, then the silly, dumb acceptance of the fact. I burned beneath his deadened eyes in that second of silent questioning, and then the conversation ended, and another began.
"So, Harley. So, kiddo."

Arkham, at this point, had forgotten all about professional know-how. He stood up to stop himself from saying something of the you-are-absolutely-fucking-nuts-woman variety. He'd seen a lot in his years as a doctor, but nothing even remotely close to this raging freak. He'd taken to turning off the news lately before he had to hear that voice or that laugh again. How anyone would want to get within a ten foot radius of the guy was beyond him. It was bad enough on TV. But this? It was back-out-or-lose-it time. Fold. Sorry, Harleen: that shit's incurable.
"It's time for my break. Just…write the rest of it out. I'll be back with you on Friday."
Harley leaned forward, confused. He was gone before she had time to open her mouth.
"Was it something I said?"

Dr. Arkham,
They say your body is a temple.

"So, Harley, so, kiddo." I tore his vest but it tore back, a hidden knife in the pocket slicing my finger cleanly open. Cherry bombs and buttons bursting, I can't answer to anyone but you, you made me what I am. I tore the vest in two, so much for custom-made clothing. He just looked at me and smiled, though I could feel him aching beneath me. Man or god or monster, I am still not sure which.

Harley gazed warily at this woman, this new doctor, and decided to keep a firmly closed mouth.
"I'm Doctor Leland, Harleen."
Harley crossed and uncrossed her legs, wincing.
"I've come to tell you that…" Leland wished the girl would look her in the eye. Oh well…she'd never been much of a conformist when it came to her practice. She kneeled uncomfortably to be on a level with the patient, cautiously taking her hand. Harley trembled visibly at the human touch. "Harleen, I've come to tell you that Doctor Arkham has decided not to file a report about what happened to you. If it was consensual, he sees no need for a continuation of the account."
The girl started quaking. Leland thought it the only appropriate word. Absolutely quaking with whatever had a hold inside of her.
Then she burst into tears.

Dr. Leland,
They say your body is a temple.

After the letter, there was the gift of new stationary and a small smile from Joan Leland. She couldn't bear to hear it herself, but if it helped the girl to write it down, so be it. Harley was only being held for evaluation, not for treatment- it was no one in the building's responsibility to cure her.
Although, Leland couldn't help but pity her, especially after Arkham's quick you-willingly-had-sex-with-the-nation's-top-terrorist-you-must-be-a-raving-lunatic diagnosis. So, willingly. She had to admit, it made sense. But the excitement was still there: Ted Bundy received thousands of adoring letters after his incarceration. There was something about a man who had the power to do those horrible things and get away with them that would intrigue a number of women.
Leland's eyes lingered on the riddle-like sentence Harley had written to her and decided it was best to stay away from it all together.

One moment I tore at the devil and the next he tore at me. A dull thud and an explosion of bright lights as my head smacked against the hard arm of the couch.
"You can't have felt much."
"Not by a longshot, Doc."
The blow caused double vision, and when the world slid back together again it did so with appalling clarity. I could barely breathe under his crushing weight. He held himself poised above me, awful sharp smiling god-creature, the heels of his hands cupped over the shells of my rib cage.
I let out a pathetic whimper, both because my insides were literally caving in and because I wanted him so badly it hurt. He looked down at me thoughtfully for a moment, his head cocked to the side like a mangy, curious dog, and leaned in, presumably, to kiss me.
My ribs fractured with a sickening crunch. Somewhere far off I heard the sound of an animal dying a horrible death, but when I came to I realized it was really me, screaming and screaming.
I began to cry because it hurt to breathe, and because he wouldn't love me, no, not in the way I wanted him to, there must be something wrong with me.
But soon he relieved the suffocating weight, propping me up like a broken doll in the corner of the couch. "Good girls don't make the moves on Mr. J," he growled, though I couldn't tell if he was actually angry because he giggled himself to near tears as he spoke. "Ononono." Suddenly, his lips were an inch from my ear. "But for-tune-aTe-leee, I HATE good girls."

Doctors-
My body is a temple and…

He was one of those people that looked cold to the touch but when you actually did he was warmer than you, and it was all very confusing to say the least. He had always been distant and very important-looking, very very untouchable, wrapped up in his god-complex, straightening his dirty blue tie. I'd always pictured myself on my knees in front of him but not for the reasons you're thinking right now shame on you.
What did that dead poet say, the one who stuck her head in the oven: A cleft in your chin instead of your foot, but no less a devil for that, no not any less the black man who bit my pretty red heart in two? Not that I blame her no, because art is pain is sex is shame is sealing the doors with towels and leaving the gas on.
Mr J.

Dr. Arkham peered hesitantly into the dim cell, shading his eyes from the glare on the glass.
"She hasn't eaten for two days," Leland said from behind him.
"Why not?"
"Writing it out."
Arkham turned away from the sight of Harley scribbling all over the back of the blue asylum memorandums. "At least she's not bleeding it out on me," he mumbled, and suddenly he didn't feel much like eating, either.

I know you're waiting for me to say all those embarrassing detailed things about What Happened Next, and I know that's the reason you shut me away in this room with not enough paper to get it all out of me.
So I guess it doesn't matter what I write if you're not going to act professional about it. J always warned me about authority figures.

He said he hated good girls, with that usual manic edge in his voice that made me go crazy on him in the first place.
And I bit him.
Right on the cheek, like that dead poet did when she first met the man who'd be her husband, and then she went home and wrote about how he was a panther stalking her down and that one day he'd be the death of her. Except he didn't already have a scar there, which split open, a bright drop of blood spilling onto her face. It burst and he laughed and hit me so hard across the mouth that the lights came back.
"Stop," I said ridiculously. "I meant that affectionately." I couldn't feel the right side of my mouth.
He giggled insanely while the awful sound of tearing fabric filled the room. He'd split my favorite dress down the seams. "Me too."
And then

I ATE HER ALIVE
- J

My body is a temple, and he's burning it down.