Ace of Spades
I sat at the dilapidated card table, and she sat across from me. She was smoking a cigarette. Camel. The only kind she'd ever smoke, she said. Something about the way they were made was different. All I know is no matter what kind she's smoking, I don't appreciate the smoke rings.
"Y'know I hear second hand smoke's worse for me than the first hand is for you," I muttered, playing with one of my knives. My favorite one. My switchblade.
She blew a smoke ring into my face, a devilish grin spreading across her face. "You mind?" she asked. "We're all gonna die at the end of this anyway, aren't we?"
"Eventually," I nodded. "But that's half the fun of it,"
"What is?" she asked, putting out the smoke in the ashtray.
"Not knowing when 'Eventually' is," I grinned, licking the smoke from my lips. "No one knows when that is, not even us,"
"Bonnie and Clyde to the end," she nodded. She liked the sound of that. I could tell.
I'd met Ace about two years before. She had a name then. An identity. She was walking the streets by night, trying to be normal and innocent by day. No record, though. That's what mattered. I can't have someone who the idiot cops already know. You're thinking I saw a beautiful woman, right? Wrong. Nah, I don't see anything like that. She is beautiful, yeah. Half the beauty is the damage. The scar that runs from just above her eyebrow down the lid, and down the slope of her cheek. It stops about an inch up and an inch away from her mouth. Only part that bothers me is she needs one on the other side, too. I wanna put one there someday. But not today. For now she can stay uneven. I prefer her unbalanced for now. Makes her easier to fix my way. But when I saw her, I said to myself in my head, I said "Now there's what I been lookin' for."
She's the mule, see? She gets in places I wanna go, but can't. No one lets me in anywhere. Like they don't trust me or something. I can work around it, sure, but why bother? It distracts me from playing my game my way. Why waste my time, when I can send her in and let men fall over themselves to open the door for her? And I mean if they don't open the door, well, there's still always gunpowder and knives, right? She knows both very well. I don't train second-rate sidekicks.
But mules can't have names, either. She doesn't have one anymore. I took it. She's a card now. Just a card. My lucky card. My Ace of Spades. She almost understands the rules of the game, too. Almost. But no one else seems to get what the game is really about. I explained it to Harvey, and he almost got it, but he forgot to not die. He wasn't good enough to stop The Batman. To be honest, I never planned on him getting it. All Gotham needed to see was his face plastered all over their television screens, half gone. Even if The Batman took the heat for all he did, it still killed their spirits to see him killed. Even worse that those poor innocent people that loved The Batman so much and believed in him had to see him turn into a maniac criminal just like me. He has to run even faster than I do, you know. That's the best part. We're running from the same people, but he doesn't get it and I do. He still doesn't get that in the end there isn't room in this town for either of us. He still thinks it's "This town isn't big enough for the two of us." He's right in a sense, he just needs to realize he won't fit in either when all the cards drop.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked, raising one eyebrow. The eyebrow split by a thick pink scar. It was shiny in the right light. The eyelid drooped in a way that made her look menacing. Something wild was inside her. I knew. I was gonna bring it out, too.
Problem was, she didn't get her place in all this. She seemed to think she was my permanent side-kick. For life. She didn't seem to understand that I am the only one that can do what I do. I am The Joker. I run this game alone. She was just another pawn. Glorified in her pretty little head. But she was just a tool. And all my tools end up blown up. Both the metal kind and the living kind. In the end, only one part of my plan stays standing, and that part would be me. I infiltrated Police Headquarters two years ago alone, I corrupted Harvey Dent alone, I blew up Gotham General Hospital alone, and I went to jail for it alone. No one helped me out of there, either. I got myself out. How? Hah. I did what I do best. I took their precious little plans, and their perfect little systems, and I turned it all upside down against them. It's so fun to watch them freak out. I can't help myself! It's too entertaining to give up! The look of shock and hopelessness on the face of someone with a ruined plot is better than anything else.
But now, what to do? Sure, I've been robbing the mob as usual, setting them against each other and watching them battle it out to the death. I've been breaking into and out of jails and mental hospitals and gathering pawns along the way, but I haven't given Gotham a show in a while. But I thought of it the other day. See, Gotham Police under their precious commissioner Gordon have been "searching" for The Batman. Problem is, Gordon knows the truth, and so he's trying to keep his own little agenda in order by sending them down all these dry paths. You'd think someone would have caught on by now, but I can't say this is a city full of geniuses. Well, what can Gordon really do if his entire squadron finds The Batman? This town hates him right now. Both Batman for all the crimes he didn't commit and Gordon for doing such a bad job finding him. What can anyone do if The Batman gets caught, bound, gagged, and delivered to the Police Headquarters' front door?
The fun part will be breaking him out again. The entire system here is such a joke here, too. No one else sees the humor in it. But I do. Their pitiful plans just make it more fun to jumble things all around.
"What are you thinking about?" she repeated, more impatiently this time. She was tap tap tapping her purple polished nails on the peeling plastic wood laminate of the table. Insufferable. Damn, she could be insufferable.
"Nothing to worry your pretty little head over, Sweetheart," I muttered, running a hand through my hair and wiping it off on my purple blazer.
"I want to know!" she insisted, trying to stare me down with her empty blue eyes. Her only luggage from Russia, I'd assume. She was dirt poor when I found her sniveling in the streets. Broken Baby mail-order bride, not even given a green-card. To her husband she'd been nothing, and to this city she is nothing. Not even a document. I don't know why she thinks she's something to me. It's almost pitiful. Almost.
"Well you can't always get what you want, Cupcake," I smiled sweetly.
"I've had it with you! What do you want from me?" she demanded, her eyes welling with tears. "I love you! But I cannot live like this! You use me, use me, use me, and nothing! I do every. thing. you. want.! And for what?! This dump you call a lair?!" She threw her chair across the room, and it broke with a Snap! I'd had enough of her tantrums. That had been my favorite chair!
"You're always complaining," I replied calmly, shaking my head. I can't stand it when people are unhappy for no reason. Makes everything so depressing. I can't have that. So I told her, I said, "You should smile more." Then I smiled at her, see, now she knows what I want. She sees it. "Why so serious, Dollface? Why always so serious? You know how I got these scars?" I asked her as I caressed along her cheek with my blade. She was shaking at my touch. At the blade's edge grazing her pale cheek. "Well?" I asked. "Do you?"
"No," she replied, trying to be brave as she stuttered.
"Would you like to know? Well? Would you?"
She just shook her head, and the tears broke loose from her eyes. Poor Baby. So curious she was crying.
"Well, I'll tell you," I nodded, moving the blade inside her mouth. "My mother never really liked the way I was, you know? She always thought I was no good. Thought I should play around and be "normal" like everyone else's kids. Well, one day, she was in the kitchen. Snorting lines, like she did most weeknights. I was getting some water, see, I was thirsty. And she sneezes the stuff and coughs up a storm, sounds like she's dying. Then she sees me. Grabs me by the jaw like this, see? She takes the kitchen knife off the counter and says 'You're always so gloomy, son, never laughing, never playing, never smiling. Why so serious, son? Why so serious?' Then she takes the knife, see, still in my mouth, and she carves a smile right through my cheek," I slid the knife across her skin, barely cutting. Just enough to sting. Just enough to scab. Not scar. Scab. I did it to the other side, too. "And then you know what she did?" I asked. She shook her head, crying harder now. "She laughed," I finished with a hysterical cackle.