Adrienne's POV
"Adrienne Hart?"
Alcohol swirled in my veins, clouding my head with fumes and making me weak at the knees. It was well past eleven o' clock, nearly midnight, and I was at someone's frat party. I certainly hadn't been expecting any calls.
"Addy!" a drunken shout from the next room over distracted me. It was followed by a loud crash as my friend Kay staggered into the room and crashed into a table, giggling.
"Ms. Hart? Hello?" My attention was brought back to the phone, and the crisp, somber voice on the other end.
I cleared my throat and attempted to keep my voice steady. "Mmmyeah?"
Well, that didn't work.
The voice lowered, grew yet more serious, so that I had to strain to hear it over the thumping bass of the party.
"We have bad news..."
I waited, not saying anything, clutching the wall for balance. My mind was too fuzzy to really process anything the woman had said so far.
That is, until she spoke her next words.
"Your mother was killed in an explosion earlier tonight. A target of the Joker. I'm, so, so sorry, Adrienne..."
Everything faded away then.
The cup of beer, warm and sloshing in my hand, splashed to the floor in slow motion. The alcohol evaporated right out of my system. The sounds of the party, thundering music and loud laughter and the buzz of conversation, all of it dissipated.
All that was left were the woman's words.
"Your mother was killed in an explosion earlier tonight..."
"A target of the Joker..."
"Killed in an explosion..."
"Your mother..."
They all chimed together, all of the words, scrambling into a deafening cacophony of something I did not want to believe. The woman was still talking, but all I heard was that single sentence, over and over again like an awful chant.
I think I screamed. I think I dropped the phone and fell to the ground and clawed at my head to try to tear away those words, that phone call, this nightmare.
Then the floor opened up and swallowed me whole.
I fell deep into the earth, still screaming, with blood running down my head and dripping into the blackness. I fell into a lake of molten lava that burned off my skin and boiled my blood into a bubbling, frothing mess.
My hair burned away. My skin burned too, and my muscles, until all that was left was my skeleton and my heart, which pounded out of control like a mad drum.
And still I screamed as the searing lava burned me to ashes, just like my mother.
My eyes snapped open.
The glowing green numbers on my clock read 2:44 AM.
It was ice-cold outside my blankets, and I could see the curled pattern of frost beginning on my window.
Yet I could still feel the scorching of the lava on my bare skin.
I wonder if it will ever really go away.
The Chimera's POV
It was so hot you could have fried an egg on the sidewalk.
That was what Alison's mother had said that morning, when Alison woke up and came down for breakfast- which, incidentally, was eggs and toast.
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Humans. Monsters. Heroes. Villains.
फैनफिक्शनIt's been 9 years since the Joker was first locked up in Arkham Asylum. Sure, it had its benefits at first - seeing the terrified faces of the workers when they passed his cell, watching people jump when he so much as breathed at them, laughing mani...
