Nervous woman in a Plexiglas room


The same day Mrs Laneford was kidnapped in the merciless streets of Gotham city, 36 boys and 53 girls were born, the famous soap opera Macondo! aired its episode nº twenty-six,  young Dick Grayson – known in the heroes’ circles as Robin - was performing a most embarrassing performance (be worth the redundancy) from his school’s adaptation from “An Ideal Husband” , and Mr Laneford was explaining (actually exploring)  the Marvel Ink’s main principles to a group of five specialists:

One: The Marvel Ink (as he baptized it) behaves as a sentient and acts in response to the mind of its user.

Two: The Marvel Ink cannot be created nor copied by any other means than from “stemming”.

Three: The Marvel Ink cannot be erased if it hasn’t been used for its true purpose; however it can vanish harmlessly from sight.

Four: The Marvel Ink can manipulate an object if the latter has anything written or drawn on its surface.

These principles, shown in a computer simulation to a crowd of five persons, had nothing to do with the real principles of the ink, nor with its true potential which would be manifested sooner and greater than would anyone even think at that time.

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The craving, the vertigo, the sensation of having her mouth filled with cardboard and cotton were the things that woke up Mrs Laneford. At first, the memories of that day didn’t appear in her tired psyche at the moment she opened her eyes, giving her the idea (and the fear) of her trip being a simple dream, as many things in her day to day.

Slightly dizzy at first, she started to open her eyes which encountered with a grey ceiling; she closed them again as she stood up the bed she was lying on. While rubbing her head to ease the headache, Mrs. Laneford confirmed her notion of not being in her hotel room by observing the environment around her: A parquet floor, small walls separating one room from the other, a mix of dinning room and studio, and a tiny bathroom; at sum, what seemed to be a singleton’s apartment except for the lack of a washing machine and decoration in general.

  "Dreaming awake again, are you?",  said Mrs Laneford to herself whilst she looked over the spaces, " You seem to dislike it, right? Reality, all the large and tiny failures, your relationship to Joachim, the memories, the sickness - -"

Mrs Laneford interrupted herself in the moment her twig-like fingers posed upon the air. Or more correctly a surface, transparent as air but far from being intangible as air; frightened, she tipped the surface with her hands as she ran over the places she went, only to realize that the “singleton apartment” was a cell.

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     Although his boss originally desired the Laneford scientist to be kidnapped, one of the Riddler’s spies suddenly had a hunch and manipulated the entire plan which ended on the abduction of the scientist’s unfortunate wife. The said spy was a human “hound” who went by the name (or perhaps surname) of Smythers and his argument for such disobedience was that Mrs. Laneford was carrying a sample of the cherished Marvel Ink.

     When the Riddler knew that his main spy manipulated the operation and caused the kidnapping of the wrong person, he reacted with a rage out of proportion to not only to an intellectual like him but also to a man of his physical complexion. The way he stood up his chair, ran towards the hall and held Smythers above the floor while shaking him and yelling him about questioning his superior’s authority caused the usually impassive man to almost flinch off his skin and his camouflage suit.

    Nevertheless, the poor woman was already brought to the lair and sent to one of the cells in the grey level and letting her go was too risky, so Riddler decided to approach his prisoner to explain the entire situation…and to check her belongings in order to confirm the hound’s testimony.

    At the very moment they arrived at the grey level, a terrified Mrs Laneford was knocking the invisible walls with her fists and crying for help. Running from one corner to another, she gave the same impression of a trapped puppy, whimpering for his master to open the door and allow him to come out.  

Such was the intensity of her panic that her captors passed through her eye view field without been truly seen ; eventually she gave up on her frantic cries and she fell on the bed of the room where she was at that moment, rolling her body in similar manner to a shaking foetus inside an unwelcoming womb.

In the meantime, the Riddler, Smythers and two strongmen clad in gimp-like suits entered the cell from the other side, walking through each of the rooms as the human hound sniffed both Mrs Lanerford’s and the ink’s scents, until they stopped in the threshold of the “bedroom” , as if they were awaiting for a special sign of the prisoner to allow them to enter, but nothing came from that nervous being facing the cold wall and shivering like an impotent sheep at the sight of the butcher’s knife.

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Riddler was the first to enter the place, silently followed by Smythers while the strongmen stood at the threshold. During the seconds he took to approach Eileen, he felt a feeling similar as being struck in the nose by an unexpected breeze of perfume, being confirmed such sensation when he saw her curled body in the bed and, in the same way a perfume works, the initial impression of surprise gave space to a strange nostalgia slightly mixed with compassion and other thing…other thing he couldn’t identify at the time*.

Nevertheless, he couldn’t let sentimentalisms of any kind to disturb his work, not again, not in that particular plan. So, in order to set an appropriate mood, he first addressed Eileen with a question:  “Do you know why you are here?”

The sentence made Riddler’s captive to stand and face him with a tired expression in the fashion of someone who hasn’t slept well. “Madam, do you know why you are here?” asked the Riddler again, this time pronouncing word by word, at which Eileen simply denied with her head, before asking her own question: “who are you?”

- Names aren’t truly important; however, you shall call me the “Riddler”…and I asked you a question, so I want an answer - said the captor as he rose up his kneeled position, showing his visage and making Eileen gasp at the sight of it:

Although she couldn’t calculate his age, this man should’ve been around his middle or late twenties but his facial features and his voice made him seem much older, he had long black hair falling through his back and shoulders like a shroud, what seemed to be dark makeup on his masked face, and a slender, skeletal-like frame covered by a green suit with a question mark.

The mere idea of being kidnapped by such person caused Eileen a great confusion, thinking that that entire bizarre situation had to be a…

- …mistake, big mistake - - she said to herself, unaware that her words were heard by the Riddler.

- Louder! , he replied.

- A mistake! – said Eileen, or more correctly heard herself saying so.
       
       Riddler seemed surprised of the cryptic way she answered, but he only gave a smirk before continuing:

- Well, um…yes. You are correct Mrs Laneford; I’m afraid that all of this has been nothing but an error. You’ll see: I actually wanted something different, something coming from…your husband.

Contrary to the reaction he expected from his prisoner, Eileen made a grimace of disgust at the mention of Joachim: “Whatever would you want from him? And what do I have to do with this – this insanity?”

- As you may know Mrs Laneford, your husband came to Gotham for the demonstration of his latest invention, from which I don’t think I should ask you about and I expected to obtain… shall we say?  A hint of the treasure to myself…however you’ve shorten the road for me.


- Listen to me, you… you…caricature of criminal: My husband does plenty of scientific demonstrations, more often than the time he stays at home, and the only reason he drags me to some of them is the need of not appearing as a neglectful spouse, because when he doesn’t speak to me at all, he only does to give me orders, or test me like some lab animal or to excuse himself of some - -

- Hold it there, Mrs Laneford! Spare me the whole drama of your marriage to that monster and your fall from grace…I know enough – said Riddler in a hoarse, cruel voice to the horrified Eileen whom realized the kind of hell she was trapped.

- H-How?  How? , she asked with a little thread of voice.

- Can’t you see it, little LeeVee (a pet name her parents used to her when she was a child)?  You’re not sheltered from the horrors of the world and your personal horrors aren’t safe from me: I know everything there is to know about you and your marvel of a husband…I know about your kidnapping, about your youth traumas, about the things Joachim does and you aren’t able to prevent, about your little involvement with the Corelli family and your so-called accident on the side of a freeway…

- I couldn’t control myself – replied a nearby tearful Eileen – it was too much for me.

- Alcoholism is always too much for those who suffer it; and there’s also a question that bothers me like a pebble in the shoe: what is the formula he and you possess to commit your “special performances”?

But the prisoner only stood in silence. Then, he tried a pair of times more with different words and voice tones until the point his rage boiled and, believing she was defending Joachim, he attacked with the most painful memories and tactics:
He told her that it was useless to keep the martyr stance; that neither the man that abducted her at kindergarten and pretended to be her parent’s friend nor the doctors that tried to help her to remove her shyness afterwards, nor the Corellis nor his husband would truly care a thing about her; that she was nothing but another pathetic disposable piece of flesh to the world; that people who were supposed to love her and support her were actually who harmed her the most; and so many other terrible words against the helpless Eileen who tried in vain to deny it all (and partly against his “weakest self”) that finally caused the captive to break down as if in a Greek tragedy, crying and lying in the floor.  

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If the already hardened Riddler would’ve the serenity to stay a bit more in the cell, he perhaps would’ve listened to another weeping: the weeping of his wounded persona craving for consolation but finding another sorrow that mixed and heightened with his. But he didn’t listened to it , as he didn’t see either the stains that were starting to appear on the ceiling like dark tears on a handkerchief…or like stains of ink on a piece of cloth.