Do Not Burn

Word Count: 1.4k

"Have you considered taking up acting?" The light of the electrics blinked in the reflection of the lens nearest the interviewer's head as she shifted in her seat, tilting her head in the process. He blinked back, feigning bashfulness.

"Aha, no, it never occurred to me. I don't think I'm made for the silver screen."

"Really? I think I speak for everyone when I say that cameras seem to love you, Mr. Wayne." Indeed, they do. He noted three industrial cameras trained on him, surveilling him, awaiting a witty response to clip.

"Oh?" He raised a manicured eyebrow, "Do they really?"

Bruce tilted his head in kind, flitting his eyes to the centermost camera, again to the live studio audience, and once more to the interviewer before him. He met her eyes with a twinkle and the corner of his mouth twitched into a playful smirk, a calculated slip, "I didn't notice."

The audience's echoes of her laughter faded naturally as she looked away to regain her bearing.

"But, ah, seriously, you're a natural." Anyone would seem so if they spent the better half of their youth on the worst side of the camera.

He chuckled, "Well, thank you. But, believe me, if you've seen me dance, you'd know I'm better off supporting the arts, not participating."

"Speaking of, it's no secret that you're funding the opening of a new arts and sciences museum. Would you mind telling us a little bit about that?"

"No, not at all. Gotham's Museum of Arts and Science History is being established with the express intent of making both art and science history more accessible to the public. Next Friday evening, we'll be hosting the opening night which, to truly embody the mission of--we've been calling it "M.A.S.H."--will be fully open to the public, free of charge." It was upon those last words that the audience felt moved enough to cheer and applaud without the prompting of a stagehand.

"Wow, that's really wonderful of you, Mr. Wayne." She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and, in the same move, swiped away a bead of sweat forming on her temple from the heat of the electrics before shifting in her seat once again, crossing her legs at the knees. "I've got to know, though, when you say the public, does that mean you are extending an invitation to the Batman as well?"

"Well, if he has the time in his schedule of doing whatever it is he does in the shadows, he is more than welcome. The arts are for everyone. Even the dark, mysterious types."

"Even criminals?"

The electrics hummed over the tiny mechanical whirrs and clicks of the cameras zooming in and refocusing on his face. She was angling for a soundbite for views where the audience was waiting for a new opinion to adopt regarding crime or Bruce himself. They leaned ever so slightly in their seats, creaking quietly as they awaited his next words.

"Like I said, the arts are for everyone. I imagine a life without art leads to a life of crime. If you can't see the beauty of the world, you're bound to recreate its ugliness. The least I can do is bring some beauty to Gotham in the continuing efforts to return our home to what it once was. Who knows, maybe Gotham's criminals are simply... uninspired Picassos."

-----

The sounds of the city below were a familiar melody, punctuated by a screech and spray of a taxi skidding to a halt, reluctantly halting to accommodate a gaggle of young adults crossing the road, braving the rain for the sake of a good night. The shape of their giggles and light conversation echoed into a nearby alley and broke off into the night noise. Uneven footsteps and mostly indiscernible words interrupted the monotony of the patrol.

"... damned thing."

It was workers spending their resting hours at work, hoping to avoid the pain of laboring in the humidity that had been characteristic of this Gotham summer. Priceless works of art and displays on scientific discoveries were shuttled into the museum at a steady pace, a fleet of men and women moving swiftly and undisturbed. Unusual. A new building in this city often invited opportunistic crime, a stray, nameless citizen trying to make life a touch easier. Easier by way of making someone else's harder, more often than not.

Small-time thieves wouldn't have had the foresight to intercept the trucks and career criminals could not have circumvented the security around the museum's development. It was critical that it went up with little to no difficulty. He meant every word he said in that interview. At least about the museum.

The people deserve more than "the least I can do". He shook his head once, dismissing the thought.

It was lifeless on the roof of the museum and those of surrounding buildings. In fact, aside from the rain, the occasional taxi, and the slowing happenings of setting up the museum, the night had grown still. The cowl's audio system crackled alive, the police radio speaking over the fleeting thought. "We have a situation down at Noonan's. Some guys are getting rowdy and the bouncer's nowhere to be found, over."

"Roger. We're headed that way."

Trouble begets trouble.

His cape whipped. Primed to grapple to a roof behind the museum, a darker something pulled at the corner of his vision. His boots made naught a sound as he redirected, examining the ground and listening for discrepancies in the city's soundscape. He caught the rain easing up to a light drizzle, droplets falling slower and out of rhythm. The clouds started to part.

"Catwoman."

It had been weeks since he had seen the woman who slinked out from the shadows nearest the museum, voice sultry and smooth. "Aw, how'd you know?"

The cape didn't whip so much as flutter before she found herself face to face with the mask of night, his crossed arms falling just below her shoulders.

"What are you doing here?"

"A girl can't say hi to her part-time boytoy?"

"Selina."

The lady sighed, letting her shoulders slack before knitting her fingers and reaching above her head, her leather suit tightening impossibly as she stretched. "Fine." A hand dropped to rest on her hip, the other between their chests, nails up and palm down. "I'll level with you, darling. The new museum has piqued my interest. That pretty boy has cash for days and he's handing over a week to the whole city. I'm thinking about getting myself something small but pretty, since you never do."

"Someone would notice. And the security's too high, even for you."

"And how would you know?"

"..."

"Right. Anyway," she took the cape in a gloved hand, walking it around the pillar of a man slowly. "What are you doing up here?"

"My job."

"That's not what I meant."

He knew what she meant. The hairs on his neck stood. She dropped the cape, but continued to circle him, her mechanical claws dragging along the midsection of his suit. They were catching on the micro-indentations of the suit, sending tiny vibrations down to his skin, his nerves. She peered up through her eyelashes, unknowingly landing the eye contact she sought to simulate. Her eyes were green and unblinking. The moon's reflection twinkled up at him. His right eye twitched.

"Gotham could benefit from a center like this."

"You would say that. But what about that Bruce Wayne?"

"What about him?"

"Heard he doesn't care for you much. If I was you, I wouldn't waste my night protecting stuff he could easily afford to replace." Her fingers. Her claws had been withdrawn and she began to poke at the surface of his armor with her fingertips, pressing through the skin of her gloves as if he might feel the skin of her bare hand if she pressed hard enough. It twitched again.

He slipped his hand from his chest and firmly took her by the wrist, stilling her before pulling her to face his front, using his other hand to hold her still at the waist. "That's why you're not me."

A beat of silence. She raised her free hand to his neck, thumb resting lazily on his jaw for another beat. A soft, imperceptible click from gritting and immediately un-gritting his teeth when she followed along the bone. He didn't blink and his eyes didn't water. Despite staring right at where his eyes were, she wouldn't have known if he looked away. He didn't look away. The thumb of her glove was wet.

"I wouldn't want to be."

___________________

It's been a minute for me, sorry.

*1.75k word count*

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The thrumming of my racing heartbeat had been indistinguishable from my footfalls. Well, they were before the rain started. The soft “shh” of the late night shower was just loud enough to dull the sound of my heart pounding in my ears. The moon was hiding behind the few rainclouds, letting slip two slim beams of light - one just barely lighting up the surface of a nearby puddle of gasoline and rain. I was hiding too - trying to steady my breathing as I squatted behind some abandoned grey sedan in the parking lot of a closed cinema. He can’t hear me. He can’t see me. He can’t hear me. He can’t- “Wanna go for a ride?” His low, gravelly voice cut harshly through the static of the rainfall. He didn’t have to catch his breath.

A shriek was supposed to leave me if it wasn’t so hard to breathe - much less, scream - with a leatherbound hand gripping my throat, begging to crush my windpipes. Can he feel my pulse? A minor reprieve came when the hand shifted to take hold of my jaw, turning my head up to face him. Faceless him. His mask was a mockery. Like he knew he’d catch me terrified, slack-jawed, and paler than death in the too appropriate glow of the cowering moon. He stared - or so it felt - at me with his head cocked to his left, like he was waiting for a real response. Was that a real- Does he actually want me to answer? I continued to stay silent - positive there was no right answer. “How rude. Maybe you didn’t hear me—” 

My body was jerked upright to my feet, his hand planted firmly around my neck - my head went light from the motion, his hand like a noose - so he could speak into my ear. “— do you hear me now?” 

The mask’s gaping mouth brushed against my cheek as he shifted my head to face him. With his body shielding me from the drizzle, the water trickled down the forehead of the mask and struck between my eyes, forcing me to blink. The rain was getting heavier, louder. The clouds were shifting to expose more of the moon, casting faint light onto the mask - just barely through the mesh of the sunken, sloped eye sockets. If I really looked, maybe I could see his eyes through the mask. Or maybe it wasn’t mesh. My head was getting lighter and thinking was getting harder. I nodded once and slowly, lifting my hand to his - the one still squeezing around my neck. A glint of the second beam of moonlight caught my eye from below. Why hasn’t he stabbed me yet?  “Oh come onnn,” his voice dripped with amusement in his enunciation, his stress of each word, “Use your words, doll.” 

Doll? I certainly felt like one in the moment, virtually dangling from his hand, growing more and more useless the longer he held me. Tap. I tapped his hand. Please. I was tapping out, almost blacking out. I can’t play along if I can’t breathe. His fingers pressed into my neck, tensing at the contact - either from shock or resistance. Another tap and a tug at his glove. Please. A beat. Two beats. The pressure let up. Just a bit. Just enough. Enough for me to cough and wheeze out a pathetic little response. “Yes, I wanna go for a ride.” More words than I expected from myself. More enthusiasm than I meant to offer.

“Good. I was starting to think you don’t like me.”

.

.

.

While I had never been chased by a killer before, I was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to let you sit in the front seat - let alone drive you to the dumpsite while you’re still breathing. He had hotwired the sedan and broke the clock adjacent to the stereo. None of the stations were playing anything quite to his liking, so he took to softly singing Rooney’s “When Did Your Heart Go Missing?” between muttering to himself and fiddling with the windshield wiper switch - all while driving with one hand. The other remained attached to the hilt of his knife - an extension of his being, as far as I was concerned - the blade of which he pressed into my thigh through my damp, clinging jeans. My skin is crawling. I hope I live to take these pants off.

The rain was getting heavier. Droplets colliding with the windshield like they wanted on the ride to nowhere. Where are we going? I hadn’t really thought to ask. A part of me hoped that, if I was quiet - or boring - enough, he’d ditch me on the side of the road, alive. Well, that would be a first. I had to give him as little material as possible. And that proved more impossible - the more he drove, the higher he dragged it up my leg, the deeper he pressed it into my leg. It hadn’t broken skin yet. Not that I would have noticed. He had been letting the rain build up on the windshield and dodging imaginary obstacles to earn a reaction, get my blood rushing - the face of frozen shock focused on me more than the road. Every jerk of the car made me jump in my seat… and onto the knife. “Oh, don’t be such a backseat driver, doll.” Doll. He must think it’s a game. 

And it was. For him. It was life or death only for me. I was the only one in that car at the mercy of a known murderer. The only one sitting silent in fear. He, on the other hand, was laughing. A soft, soulful chuckle. Much more unsettling than the expected maniacal cackle. It was as if the scene tickled him inside out. As if my visible fright and discomfort brought him genuine joy. Imagine how his laughter seemed to consume the night, drowning out the downpour once he pulled over to the edge of some forest on the far outskirts of some park that should have been closed at that hour. How each pause in his laughing fit sent a shiver down my spine. How still I became when he lifted his blade away from my leg and up, up, up to my chin all while still laughing. Then he stopped. As suddenly as he began, he stopped. He didn’t even have to catch his breath. “Do you want to drive instead?”

What?

“Did you not hear me? Or are you trying to hurt my feelings?” His weight shifted in the driver’s seat, blade pressing into my neck, mask level with and close to my face. I should have felt his breath on my nose, my cheek. I wasn’t free to move. I can’t speak. I can’t-

“Geez, doll. Here I thought you were warming up to me. Did you not like my serenade?”

I can’t speak. I can’t speak. He expected an answer. I couldn’t imagine what he would do if I didn’t answer. He was growing visibly impatient - or so I could see in the dim light of the moon and a distant, dying streetlamp. “I—” Ow. “I- I don’t want to…” Fuck. I think I might bleed if I speak anymore. “... t-to—” FUCK. “—to drive.” Am I bleeding? Maybe I’m just being dramatic. 

“Good. I thought maybe you didn’t like my driving. So,” the tip of the knife dragged along my jawline, “Why were you squirming so much?” It halted. “Do I…” The dragging resumed, now up and back down the side of my face. “... make you nervous?” 

He touched the flat of the blade to my cheek, earning my full attention - not that he ever lost it. Nervous is an understatement. He reeks of blood. Blood, petrichor, and… mint? Has he been chewing gum the whole time? It doesn’t matter. It really didn’t. The smell of blood - decay, even - was written in the human code to inspire unease. I nodded curtly, terrified of nicking myself from any sudden, loose movement. The mask tilted to the left. I just realised he never had a seatbelt on. I did. He strapped me in himself. The knife fell from my face. A controlled fall, the weapon never once leaving his hold, just my view. “Wanna know something?”

Another short nod. He’s so close. Why is he so close? Why are you so close? I can smell your gum. You smell like wet dog. Why are you asking me so many questions?

His other hand entered my view, thumb and forefinger closing on a dangling zipper I hadn’t registered. What the hell is he doing? I responded. I answered. I should’ve used my words. Ziiip. It was an agonising moment. The sound of the unzip at a harsh juxtaposition with the steady roll of rain beating against the roof of the car. 

“I wanna know.” Another sound. A strange, wavering voice. My strange, wavering voice. He has no retort. He just pauses for a beat, before continuing to unzip his giant black hoodie. If I looked closely - and I did - his fingers were trembling.

“You make me nervous too, doll.” He took a breath for the first time that night. “Very nervous.”

I didn’t know the car had a sunroof until he opened the hoodie, because that was when the clouds decided to further expose us to the moon. The light spilled into the car, painting his chest a nearly true white. Oh my. No wonder he lifted me like I weigh nothing. No wonder he smelled of blood. Spotting his sculpted abdomen were bandages and patches of gauze still turning red. The others fought back. Why is he showing me this? Are you calling me weak? Are you mocking me? Further still, there were scars freckling his chest. Claw marks, bruises. There was a brilliant and startling contrast between his… his trophies and his natural skin.

“I hoped I would be healed up by now. But I got impatient.”

I nodded again - eyes never leaving his bare chest. Who put those marks there? Who fought tooth and nail and still lost? Whose legacy is now just one of too many scars on some deranged guy? “I am so sorry.” Sorry? For killing so many people? For kidnapping me? For taking so long to get to killing me? “They meant nothing to me. I just…” His voice dropped to a whisper that made something in a deep, dark part of me twist. “... needed to practise. To be perfect for you.”

-----

[Check out Part 1] Volcanic eruptions were a disaster of the past and, as such, there were no measures in place to protect against them. The land and people that were not destroyed by the Yellowstone “overflow” were not yet in the clear and were, instead, met with a different fate.

As it happened, while the brilliant minds that stayed on Earth focused their energies on preventing the eruption and working to create a more efficient and equitable society, they had allowed all Terran residents to forget about and, eventually, lack awareness of systems of nuclear weapons and power sources in the Earth. Some speculate that they had not been completely forgotten but were uncovered and in the process of being analyzed shortly before the eruption. Others argue that they had been repurposed for functions unknown [whether or not they were unrecorded or simply unrecognized due to time is also debated]. None of those details matter though. Return, then, to the scene. The ash and lava had settled - humanity had experienced half of its first extinction-level event in millennia. Fortunately, for a society unused to gore and true misery, bodies didn’t litter the ground - for there were no bodies to litter the ground with. Mourning simply wasn’t enough - and there simply wasn’t enough time to mourn. The window between the eruption and the activation of the nuclear weapons has been estimated to be anywhere from one week to twelve hours. Had these devices been in peak condition, there would be no story left to tell of the Terra(n)purists. But time, as it tends to do, wore these “missiles” down and reduced their effectiveness to a third of their original. Why the potency dropped as such a significant rate is also yet to be determined (though there was an era in their history when they summed it up to “divine intervention”). Instead of obliterating all life on Earth - it only mutated them. Of course, there were a number of Humans killed by launch and explosion of these rockets for cities had been erected on the land that governments used to harbour these weapons away from the innocent and the dangerous. But, again, those who weren’t killed so violently had been subjected to undergo mutations. Due to the abundance and aggression of the various chemical compounds in the air, mutations happened relatively quickly. It was like a virus. It crept into their systems. Sometimes, it would kill them immediately. Sometimes, slowly. Sometimes, never - that was when the changes would begin. As records presently state, in the beginning, the mutations were too diverse and some Humans could not be differentiated from affected wildlife - as such, their evolution - if they had one - did not mimic the majority’s. However, there were four common denominators: (1) laughter, (2) the desire to (or attempting to) manipulate fire - despite injury, (3) shoulders, and (4) patchy exoskeletons created from reactions between melanin, keratin, and uranium nitrades. 

---

Maybe her fear is well-founded.

The fear that their great many similarities - overlaps - means her life has already been lived and she will be this history's next go-around.

Today I indulged myself by exploring the bottomless pit of my YouTube watchlist. Lo and behold, Alt Shift X’s 40 something minute video on All Tomorrows. I never began to watch it and I never heard much about “All Tomorrows” before this morning. Needless to say, it scratched the haso + worldbuilding + author + creature design + theorizing bits of my brains maybe a bit too well. So why are you here peeking into my blog? Because I’m gonna do it again. “It” being writing short space fics until I burnout or no longer receive praise.

--

All Tomorrows seems to pose that all humans left Earth for Mars. However, knowing human nature, that simply wouldn’t happen. There would surely be a group of people either unwilling to leave or unable to leave - perhaps because of personal philosophies, religion, health, or finances. Regardless the reason, there will be humans left on Earth and - to deter the ones leaving from regretting their decision and to encourage their descendants to stay on Mars, misinformation was spread. “Those who stayed on Earth were racist and xenophobic cowards. They were terrified of what people Mars might be the home of. They were afraid of leaving the familiar.” They were so dubbed the Anti-Martianists or Terrapurists. The so-called Terrapurists never learned of these names and, as such, continued to call themselves Humans. 

So then there was only the poor, the sick, the scared (because it was a frightening prospect to leave a planet for one no human had set foot on in known history), the close-minded, the ignorant, the eager, the hungry, and those who had been overlooked by society. They could rebuild the world for themselves. Some geniuses had chosen to stay on Earth, that they might preserve and restore the planet before it could finish dying. To save you the tension and angst, yes. They were successful. But communications with the red planet were not - for reasons then unknown. Or so they said. It is argued that the “Overlooked” had interfered with comms, so they may enjoy the world that was made for them. That their utopia, their paradise would not be corrupted by those who had forgotten them and their ancestors (for this took a century - only a century - and as such the original pain still burned hot in the descendants). 

Unfortunately, as is a trend with Human successes, the good times did not last too long - though it did last longer than some periods - only about three centuries before what was once known as the Yellowstone volcano erupted. The aforementioned geniuses were well aware of the threat it posed and set forth to prevent it. Again, they were mostly successful, which is more than what could have been said of their distant human ancestors who would have seen fit to pray to and feed the volcano instead. The technology they conjured had slowed down the movement of the magma and the tectonic plates to a speed so slow that even their computers were unable to detect the virtually molecular levels of movement. The process to slow down and “stop” the pre-eruptive activity was a sensitive and chronologically costly matter and, once all came to a stand still, the treatment was concluded - because it would have been a waste to continue when they achieved their goal (effectively freezing the tectonic plates and magma in place). The eruption elicited a reaction not dissimilar to that of those in “Pompeii”. Volcanic eruptions were a disaster of the past and, as such, there were no measures in place to protect against them. The land and people that were not destroyed by the Yellowstone “overflow” were not yet in the clear and were, instead, met with a different fate. 

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