Work Text:
It had started out with small things; a hair tie you knew you’d taken out the night before, odd socks turning up more frequently than usual, a magnet with your name on it from some road trip years before you came to this city.
The magnet must’ve fallen under the fridge, socks get lost all the time, and you had a million other hair ties.
It wasn’t anything to worry about, not that you had the time to look deeper into it anyway.
You’d come home from work, throw some leftovers into the microwave, and let your body melt into the sofa as the growl of your stomach tried its best to keep you awake long enough to eat something. After food you would clean up and then go to bed, ready for whatever Gotham wanted to throw at you tomorrow.
Then clothes started to go missing; that summer dress you’d worn to death and hadn’t found the time to fix those missing buttons so you’d pushed it far back into your wardrobe as a ‘do later' project. Then a pair of trousers you’d surgically turned into shorts, a favourite pair that hadn’t seen much love in the winter and early spring months but now the sun was trying its best to shine through the oppressive Gotham clouds you’d had a mind to dig them out again. You must’ve thrown them out, the hem was getting tattered and there was that stain near the waistband that refused to come off. Next came a shoe abandoned by its match, an old pair with more than a few holes to fix but its absence was instantly noticeable when you were moving some things around and an off-balanced box spat out only one tattered sneaker.
You weren’t sure why concern wasn’t bubbling up inside you, it was a mystery that would have any other person searching high and low for the missing items. But truthfully you didn’t have the energy, you could only conclude that in your sleep-deprived after-work state you had misplaced these items and they’d turn up eventually.
It wasn’t until your water bottle went missing that you gave the situation another, more probing look.
The bottle was yours. Your name carefully written in black sharpie around the middle and on the side of the removable cap. Metal in a light green colour with various animal stickers dotted along the body, it was easy to pick out of a lineup.
And now it was missing. You wouldn’t have thrown it out, you knew this, and a quick search through the recycling and then more reluctantly through the general waste bin confirmed this. You searched through the fridge, pushing past tubs of carefully labelled leftovers and meal preps for the week ahead. Again the inspection yielded nothing. It was definitely missing from its place in the fridge right next to the halfway to expired strawberries and the always just full enough carton of milk that never seemed to run out.
Your roommate was good like that. You had barely seen them this week, work keeping them almost too busy for a hasty goodbye yelled through the door before they left. But they always made sure there was food for both of you in the fridge.
Your roommate wouldn’t have done this, wouldn’t have started taking your things. You’d lived with them for coming close to two years now and they had quickly become one of the only things that made living in this city bearable. They had never given you any reason to be suspicious or to think they might have a little bit of a kleptomania issue.
For all your closeness with them, you were reluctant to mention this or bring it up on the rare occasion that you did get more than five minutes with them. And nothing seemed to be off about them, they were the same as ever if a little more bone-weary than usual.
You’d heard them come home in the early hours of the morning, when Gotham wasn’t fully awake yet and didn’t intend to be for another few rotations.
You had heard them creak around the apartment outside your door, halfway to rising out of bed you had been reassured by their hiss of something and a colourful curse in what could only be their voice, and you settled back down to sleep.
You were finding it harder to sleep as the days went on, which made it harder for you to find your focus at work. Your eyes staring numbly up at the bedroom ceiling and equally so at your computer screen, emails and shadows flitting by as you wondered what the next thing to go missing would be. It felt almost like a game sometimes, a puzzle you crafted for yourself when you returned home and began the search to find something that wasn’t there anymore.
You wanted to be more vigilant, carefully memorising the location of every one of your personal items each time you left the apartment, writing everything down in the hopes of maybe presenting this to someone of authority but there was something sharp in your stomach that told you not to. Maybe you wanted to see how far this would go, how long it would go on for. Maybe you needed to install some carbon monoxide detectors, you’d read online about the invisible gas being the answer to many people’s memory issues. Maybe you still just felt like this wasn’t anything serious enough to bother the police with.
Could you even file a police report for something like this? The Gotham police weren’t exactly the most helpful, they’d probably agree you had memory problems and to stop wasting their time because they had to catch some freak who was killing people with kites.
This city was a nightmare.
But the rent here was cheaper than dirt so you couldn’t complain too much about the incompetence of its law enforcement.
Still it would’ve felt nice to have somewhere you could turn to when you found the muddied footprint on the floor of your bathroom. A parting gift from whoever in exchange for your toothbrush. Nothing else throughout your entire apartment or anything else out of place to suggest the presence of an intruder, nothing except for the still shining imprint that had shaken you to your core.
Before this you could afford not to take it too seriously, blaming your memory or rolling your eyes with a smile at the thought that maybe a ghost thought you had good taste.
Your legs buckled, the bone of your wrist catching sharply on the edge of the bathroom countertop as you sank like a stone. You felt the pain, understood that you were hurt possibly bleeding, but the shiver that scraped up your spine and forced your lunch out onto the tiled floor won the contest for your attention instead.
After the retching had stopped and your body was heavy with sweat, you rose on unsteady legs and stared down at your own mess and then quickly let your eyes drift to the mark your visitor had left.
It had rained today, the small untended garden patch outside your apartment that was more mud than anything pleasant to look at had flooded over and spilled onto the adjacent path. An unavoidable mess you yourself had found the soles of your shoes muddied and in need of a soak under the tap before the dirt hardened.
There were no other tracks in the apartment, not even outside the door or the corridor leading into your home. The fire escape that twisted down the outside of the building was the only place you hadn’t checked, hadn’t even considered it as a point of entry it was so rusted and unsteady. In the event of a fire you would probably feel safer just jumping out a window than trusting that thing. The only thing it was really good for now was sitting with your roommate and watching some far-off part of Gotham light up the night sky with explosions, being grateful it wasn’t closer.
You left the bathroom, not even registering each step as you floated towards the fire escape. You opened it up and were met with several muddy footprints, half-baked in the late afternoon sun. Footprints up and down, you hoped they’d cut themself on the flaking metal of the bannister.
You went back inside, your focus returned to the floor, feeling bile rise again as your body moved and the bathroom lights became too bright. The footprint wasn’t perfect, a small section of the heel not quite as dark as the rest of it like someone had started to clean it up and then stopped for whatever reason.
You weren’t sure how you were supposed to feel about the undeniable knowledge that someone had broken into your apartment, let alone that they had perhaps decided that they wanted you to know they had been there. Fear was a flash in your mind, suddenly emerging like a hidden blade from where you had tucked it away all those weeks ago when your biggest concern had been an odd pair of socks.
Numbly you cleaned up the mess, your stomach turning again upon finding a discarded and muddied cleaning wipe already in the wastebin.
Your roommate didn’t come home that night but a note left on the fridge the next morning let you know that they had been around. You took it down, read it and shoved it into your back pocket.
Work needs me doing some overnight shifts. Back Saturday. Leftovers in the fridge. Don’t have too much fun without me!
____________
It was Wednesday morning so that meant you’d be home by yourself for three nights. This wasn’t the first time your roommate had found themself stuck overnight at work, locked into fixing an issue caused by someone who thought they knew better.
You had never given it a second thought before, taking those few lonely days like any other, sometimes grateful for the way you could lay all your work papers out on the dining room table and not have to worry about them being in anyone else’s way.
But you were on your laptop, checking available hotels nearby. Like every square inch of accommodation in this city, rooms were practically being given away and it didn’t take you long to find somewhere that was cheap but not ‘you’ll be rooming with the bedbugs’ cheap.
You packed a small suitcase, just a few clothes and essentials. You had looked for your toothbrush, your stomach twisting when you remembered too late that someone else had it now.
It was almost dark by the time you arrived at the hotel, new toothbrush tucked inside your case. You checked into your room, locked the door, then double locked it, placed your case on the mercifully clean bed, and walked to the window. You knew you could see your apartment from here, it was the reason you’d chosen this room. You weren’t sure why, you told yourself you wouldn’t be sitting at the window all night waiting to see a shadowy figure scrambling up the fire escape. But still you stared out at it for a moment, its stillness in the late evening, before closing the curtains tight and heading off to bed.
You slept comfortably if a little restlessly. Your head flooded with thoughts of your apartment bathed in moonlight, the fire escape opening so quietly and something else being taken. You stared up at the hotel room ceiling, remembering the items in your room like counting sheep. You tried to guess what would be missing, three days meant three items. If you hadn’t had to spend it on a hotel room then you would’ve put money on a hairbrush, maybe some of the photos hanging above your bed, and perhaps another pair of socks. You only hoped they wouldn’t go further into your drawers, leave your more intimate clothes alone.
You had no idea how much of a creep this person actually was and the thought had made you turn your back to the covered window, bunching up under the quilt.
It wasn’t until you woke and started to get ready for work that you realised you’d left some documents back at the apartment. You closed your eyes and could see them on the kitchen counter, the apple green folder with the light purple sticker telling you what was inside. You needed it today and you didn’t want to make the trek from work to get it during your lunch break.
The creak of the front door made the hair on your arms stand tall, your home never feeling so unfamiliar before. You didn’t want to spend too long searching but a quick scan of every room revealed nothing amiss. You tentatively checked your drawers as well, keeping your distance like you were expecting something to jump out, but you only found what you expected to see.
You felt stupid. They hadn’t even come and you were quivering in some janky hotel room, unwilling to admit to yourself just how scared you were to go back.
You shut your bedroom door, feeling the apprehension that had built almost to boiling point begin to dissipate, simmering down until you felt like you could breathe alongside a steady heart again.
You saw the folder on the counter, striding quickly towards it a flash of colour caught your eye and brought your steps to a grinding halt.
You’d bought a jar of bright, magnetic letters in different colours months ago with the intention of using them as a more interesting way to pass messages along to your roommate. You both quickly realised it was far more interesting to use them to write cusswords, nothing more entertaining than waking up on rent day and seeing the word ‘ FUCK’ in comically colourful letters rainbowed across the fridge.
The letters had been left scrambled for a while, neither of you finding the time to form them into words.
But this morning someone had made an effort.
Where
Are
You?
Arranged on the fridge in your colourful, chunky magnetic letters, you noticed each e was replaced by a green number 3 magnet.
Three nights away.
You didn’t find any more sleep in that hotel room.
You didn’t return to the apartment until Friday evening. You should’ve stayed away until Saturday morning, get your money’s worth, but part of you didn’t want your roommate returning to an empty apartment.
Everything was normal, even more so than last time. The letters on the fridge were as you’d left them; mixed up and free of any questions.
Again nothing was missing, you even chanced a look around your roommates' space and didn’t notice any glaring absences. You were somewhat disappointed, feeling like any chance to catch this creep might have slipped from your fingers like goo.
The building was old, the doors and floorboards creaked like they were haunted. Living here for the time that you had, you’d started to learn which floorboards creaked naturally and which ones needed a bit of human intervention.
The first groan came from the wooden slats across the floor.
The second did not.
“What has an eye but cannot see?”
It didn’t hurt, not straight away. It felt like a wasp sting, the initial prick and then the pain blossoming out across the point of impact came like an afterthought. You felt the venom pump itself through your veins, turning your blood into jelly.
You dropped like a brick in the Gotham river, usually roped to a pair of still twitching feet.
Your fingers twitched now, the only part of your body that you were sure you could still move. The rest was TV static.
The voice, just inches from your ear, had been muffled, distorted like it was coming through a radio. You didn’t recognise it.
You recognised the face, the green mask, you’d seen it flicker in faded colours on the hotel’s lobby TV. You forgot the name they’d given him, something stupid like all the others. You briefly wondered what they’d say about you in tomorrow morning’s news report.
He crouched down to almost eye level, watching you curiously like you were an insect he’d discovered under a rock. Huge, clear-rimmed glasses sheltered gentle eyes. You tried to imagine what the face looked like under there.
“You left,” he was muttering, sounding genuinely hurt as he cocked his head to the side. “Why…why did you leave? I was so enjoying our game.”
You heard rather than saw him swallow hard, his breath coming out in short puffs like he’d run a mile to get here. Maybe he had, you had no idea how much he watched you. Had he seen you leave the hotel? Or did he just have his eyes trained on your front door?
“Was it the toothbrush that scared you off?” he was saying, more to himself than you. “I knew it... I, I did. It was a step too far but I, I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to know what you taste like.”
He let out a sharp breath, more like a strained gasp and stood up to his full height again. You watched him leave your line of sight, unable to turn your head you couldn’t see where he went.
You felt his weight on your back, the press of his fingers into your shoulder blades and his breath vulgar against the back of your neck as he breathed in and out raggedly.
You heard the sound of velcro being removed, something tossed to the floor beside your head.
“You didn’t... didn’t answer my riddle,” he panted, your ear halfway down his throat. His voice was clear now, normal, he could’ve been anyone.
You attacked me.
You wanted to hiss back. You wanted to thrash around, knock him sideways and run. You could barely lift your thumb off the floor.
Another deep inhale, his lips in your hair against your scalp. Almost a kiss. You could be sick.
“What,” he said again, enunciating every word like he was scared you wouldn’t hear him. “Has an eye but cannot see?”
Blood trailed out of your nose down to your mouth, you tried to speak but the clot just bubbled on your lips. Your bones ached enough to splinter, the blood in your veins was travelling backwards you were sure of it.
You could feel the point on your back where he had stabbed you, pulsing and beating like a heart. Yours was slowing down quickly.
You heard the screech of the duct tape, frantic. You couldn’t be running out of time, you had all night.
“What has an eye but cannot see?” He sounded like he was begging now, his voice watery and desperate even as he slotted something into your neck again.
Something sharp, you barely registered it as your vision began to fade. His desperate breaths above you silenced by the ringing in your ears.
You managed one last, coherent thought before becoming just another number on some investigator’s list:
A needle .