Chapter One
"It came upon a midnight clear . . ."
The pain was unbearable. His spirit in a constant state of mourning.
"That glorious song of old . . ."
He watched the shoppers hurry past him on the snowy sidewalks of Gotham City, all smiles and light and fluffiness . . . like a Publix commercial.
"From angels bending near the earth . . ."
The families were the worst. He hated looking at them, but could never help himself, and detested his longing.
"To touch their harps of gold . . ." The bag he held brushed against his leg with each stride. Inside, wrapped carefully in tissue paper was a gift, although its intended beneficiary was missing. This would be Oswald's tenth Christmas without Cassandra.
The state had just declared her dead, thanks to a change in state law that took that decision out of the family's hand—removing the bereaved their right to petition the court in their own time—and shoved it into the eager hands of government officials whose main interest, although it was argued otherwise, was to get their grubby paws on the estate of the deceased where applicable. Oswald thought the change in law ingenious really and, had it not affected him personally, would have applauded such modifications. A brilliant scheme to increase state coffers.
In his case, the state could not touch Cassandra's assets because Oswald would claim them. The reason he had not wanted the death certificate was not because of any fear of her holdings being taken from him, but the knowledge that the declaration—death in absentia—made it concrete, real, case closed, next—at least in the eyes of the law. How powerful this square of paper, deflating the tiny balloon of hope he had clutched all these years, waiting for her return.
He did not want or even need her life insurance. Nor did he have any intention of spending the cash he had given her ten years ago . . . property he would not be reporting to the government, had never reported. After all, it had been claimed in Jeb Green's name. With all the supposedly dead people running around in recent years, Oswald almost wished Jeb would rise up so he could have the pleasure of killing him again. Between Jeb and Ed Ogilvy, it was hard to pick his favorite execution. He supposed it was actually yet to come.
Death is very official. Very final. Or at least it had been, until the deceased started popping up almost a decade ago. Caused quite the fiasco and was another reason for the change in state law—an impotent attempt to curb this type of "scientific" research, although the government still branded such research a conspiracy theory—one that Oswald knew firsthand was anything but, having been privy to parts of it many years ago. As if the higher-ups had not known exactly what was going on, but . . .
Deny, deny, deny.
In very ugly reality, a study was being conducted on Gotham's degradants and lunatics. Literally being perpetrated right under the noses of Gotham's clueless, a hidden lair beneath the concrete and dirt, facilitated by their golden boy and missing prince—Bruce Wayne—the masses remaining ignorant of this fact. Where was the hero? they would ask, and Oswald would answer with a remodeled school, a scholarship, a free clinic. I am right here! I did not desert you like others. Never mind that his charities were covers for other endeavors. The city benefitted from his philanthropy nonetheless, so why would that matter?
Even with the pain Gotham had caused him, with Oswald always being on the outskirts of society—a solitary figure with fingers splayed against the window of an expensive restaurant, nose pressed against the fogged glass, believing entrance was due him, but always denied—he could not leave his city. Although she barely tolerated him, Gotham was the last living thing he possessed that he could claim was his, that gave him a connection to those he had lost. He had tried to hate her, even made up his mind to leave her—a rebellious son, a spurned lover, an abused pet—but another who was also an outcast (although Oswald refused that mantle for himself) convinced him to stay. Punish her a little. Wreck some havoc.
Havoc-wrecking was so much fun—as was evident from the dead people walking around.
Most people thought it just really good plastic surgery anyway when they saw the very alive faces of the very much deceased bobbing and weaving and smiling throughout the streets of Gotham.
Look like the criminal of your choice!
A cosmetic surgeon actually used this as a slogan for her struggling practice and almost overnight, she became a millionaire, capitalizing on resurrected rogues. What is wrong with people that they would want the faces of the criminally insane, the jailed, the deformed? It was hard to tell the difference between who was the walking dead and who was wearing a plastic face.
The doctor entertained the wealthiest of the wealthys—those with questionable kinks; the seediest of gang scum—who used the disguises for criminal activities; and those lucky recipients of such services, such as burn victims willing to alter their visage and movie stars who received the coupons in their gift bags at any and all award shows. Regulations finally had to be placed upon the limit of how many times a villain's face could be used—a cap of sorts—which in turn led to an uptick in deaths among the look-a-likes. The numbers were discovered when the patients, whose doctors were required to list them on a registry for aggregation purposes, started showing up in the morgue. Reporters, ready to spin more in a minute than a spider does its whole lifetime, were happy to draw their own conclusions into the spate of deaths, the deduction being that it was to expand the opportunity for more people to own the faces of their fancies. A departed doppelganger only served to add that person's preferred fascia back onto the availability list.
Oswald actually found himself agreeing with the media on that count. One would think that fifty Jerome Valeskas roaming the streets would be enough.
Part of the new law granting the government exclusivity in declaring people dead after seven years (or whenever they saw fit) backfired. Too many people who had been filed away as deceased, were committing crimes and getting away with it. How can you arrest someone who by law does not exist? And, then there was that wonderful Double Jeopardy loophole where someone could not be tried again for the same crime (this did not include appeals) after acquittal or conviction. Ah, the Fifth Amendment, Oswald thought. One of my favorites. They could just slither back into the alleyways or drainage pipes or sewers . . .
Of course, it would make them easier to kill as well. Nameless nobodies returned to the earth from which they had come and should have stayed.
C'est la vie! Or, more appropriately—c'est la mort!
Oswald was grateful there was no one walking around Gotham with Cassandra's face. He would not—and did not—want a clone of Cassandra, or someone with her features. He wanted the real thing. He wanted his wife back, with all her insecurities and annoying habits. He missed her clever brain and the way she laughed. He missed her touch, her scent.
Now in his breast pocket was the official, signed, word-from-on-high government death document complete with city seal, handed down by the fools in charge. He had received it this very morning, having put it off for as long as he could . . . he often wondered if the real reason he had been able to delay the declaration was that the state was waiting on him to die too in order to seize his assets since he had no next of kin.
When year seven had slithered in—the standard time the bureaucrats, who "only have the state's best interests at heart", declared a missing person dead—Oswald had "persuaded" officials here and there—some of them losing a body part or two, and bribed others to not declare her dead. It had worked and for the past three years, he had made his convincing argument for delay, but for some reason, now . . . ding, ding, ding! Time was up! How was that for a Christmas present? An unwelcomed and unexpected surprise. A certified document telling him his wife was deceased—his sweetheart, dead. They decided. They did it. Not him. Never him. He would have continued to mutilate and threaten, cajole and buy her another year, every year, for the rest of his life. But they had taken that from him.
It is not the gift most men want to receive during the jubilant, hopeful holiday. At least, not the ones who loved their wives.
Still love their wives. Wife.
"It's the most unwonderful time of the year . . ." Oswald hissed when the next tune blasted out of an adjacent store as he marched passed it, trudging his way through the snow and avoiding snowball wars declared by little urchins who were running wild around him. He took an opportunity to hook a teenager's ankle with his umbrella and sent the pimply-faced boy sprawling to the ground, causing Oswald to grin.
Cassandra would have chastised him for that.
His smirk quickly vanished when the boy commenced in making a snow angel instead of becoming angry, and was joined by other kids who threw themselves into the fluffy white piles, creating a small army of glistening angels before running off down the street, no doubt to dinner on the table.
Oswald stood there, staring at the imprints, ignoring the fact that the wind had just blown his hat from his head and tousled his bangs, black except for a strip of white down the center. He needed to purchase more dye before they started calling him The Skunk instead of The Penguin.
Tiny snowflakes sparkled in the garishness of the streetlights that had just flickered to life. Folks were hailing taxis or hopping onto buses—those were either the tourists or the lower-class elites. Some walked hurriedly away from the stores and restaurants, back to their apartments where Oswald imagined a friend, a lover, a spouse, a child . . . a parent . . . was waiting for them. Grimier others were slinking into the bars, lured by the promise of warmth from a bottle and perchance from someone's arms. Anyone's arms.
A chill went through him as the stared at the recumbent angels in the snow. Were they dead or asleep? The snow started falling again and he leaned over, balancing himself on his umbrella and good leg, to scoop the white substance out of the impression of the angels.
A little snowbird of angel. That's what he had thought of her when he had seen her standing outside the trailer. Waiting on him.
Is she still waiting on me? Cassandra, do you need me? His gut twisted. I fail her daily. I have failed her. She is dead, and it is through my own careless decisions—by own hand. He looked at his gloved hand and turned it palm up. Some of the pristine flakes clung briefly to the black leather before dissolving away. Gone forever. He glanced back down at the angels at his feet to see their bodies quickly being filled in by the icy substance.
I must remove the snow, he thought frantically, a sudden irrationality bombarding him—keep it from suffocating the winged creatures.
The snowflakes became heavier and were filling in the cavities.
Once these canyons are filled, the angels will be gone completely. Disappeared, as if they never existed.
He was becoming desperate. The pace of the snow was increasing. He looked heavenward upon this very unclear night, almost as if he were begging the rising moon for help, but encountered only darkened clouds. Snowflakes landed on his lashes and in his eyes. He gazed back down at the angels who seemed to be holding a collective breath, waiting to see if he would help them.
He could only save one.
Oswald tossed aside his umbrella and sunk to his knees, the agony in his leg his penance for his failures—I cannot even keep her alive on paper!—and dug at the snow like a rabid dog discovering raw flesh. The icy wetness that permeated his pants from the knees down did not bother him, the cold never did.
From behind him came the sudden squall of a bagpipe and a lively holiday ditty as someone exited from the bar a few feet behind Oswald. The drunken patrons continued to slur the song as they tripped towards him, one of them shoving his side. The gentlemen were in such a booze-filled stupor that they had not noticed Oswald or the collection of angels reclining in front him, instead absentmindedly traipsing through the soft, glittering snow, kicking a fine arctic mist upon Oswald's face and effortlessly destroying the heavenly host.
Oswald glared at them as they weaved down the walkway, his mouth pinched so tightly that his lips turned white and very nearly disappeared altogether. Their interruption had jolted him out of his trance, and he considered which one to kill first before the presence of a black limousine diverted his attention. Gabe got out of the driver's side and opened the passenger door.
"You okay, boss?" Gabe asked, attempting to help Oswald from the sidewalk. He brushed his lieutenant's hand away, using his umbrella to hoist himself (and the extra fifty pounds he had incurred over the years) up from the snow, still clutching the small bag. He no longer cared if Gabe or Fara caught him displaying any vulnerability. The three of them were far past that by now.
"I am fine. Thank you, Gabe," he responded, then frowned, looking around the burly man and then back to him. "No replacement?"
Gabe shook his head and answered, "Working on it."
Oswald had deposed of the chauffeur only last week and no one was showing an interest in the position. He may have to volunteer someone already within his organization. Funny, he had always been under the impression that people coveted jobs right at Christmas. Pick up some extra moola.
Maybe it was because that was the third driver in five months to succumb to Oswald's wrath. Seemed that The Penguin was particular when it came to drivers. Word on the street was they were calling it "The Spinal Tap Syndrome", named for the untimely deaths of every drummer the pseudo band had ever had in its employ.
Or, maybe the drivers were just too incompetent. Oswald shrugged as he slid into the backseat and grabbed a bottle of Dom Perignon resting just inside the door, already chilled. It was going to give him gas, but he guzzled a third of it anyway and was glad in the fact that he did not have to demand that Gabe shut off the radio. It was already silent.
Every store he had passed and every business he had graced for the last two months played Christmas music, even the bars were not immune from the cheery music. Made him want to vomit honey. Maybe next year I will stay at home and order everything from online.
When one walked in a state of perpetual gloom, the music was more a funeral dirge than an ode to joy. Did the purveyors of these glorious compositions not realize that the suicide rate went up at Christmas? Perhaps, that was what the music was for—to prevent it.
Well, he was not dead—no thanks to holiday tunes. Although, he was partial to Handel's Messiah. It was listening to that oratorio—an uninhibited declaration of adulation and pure happiness that moved Oswald. The only Christmas music he could stomach.
He had stopped at a toy store earlier in the day—the same one he had patronized for the past ten years—and picked up a clockwork toy. This year he bought one that hopped—a little frog, in honor of the real ones Cassandra had chased when summer had come to her plot of earth outside of Gotham. He now had ten of the tiny, tottering toys, and he would add this one to the hope chest (what a stupid name) he had been forced to graduate her things into—moving her clothes and snow globe and other memorabilia from a box that could no longer hold his memories. He had placed the chest in an area he had set apart for Cassandra as her sitting room, should she have ever needed a quiet escape to read the many books with which he had adorned the mahogany shelves. In the same room was her parent's chest, once used to deliver a Wayne Enterprises executive to Theo Galavan, but was now back in Oswald's possession. For special deliveries, Oswald had told him, wanting to keep the chest near, and lo and behold, Galavan had needed another important parcel in the personage of Mayor James. Fortunately, that had been the last delivery, and the chest was safe and sound in Oswald's home, awaiting Cassandra's return. He took a mental inventory of the presents he had bought her since her kidnapping.
Every Christmas, an automation.
Every birthday, a book.
Every anniversary of their nuptials, he procured something that would signify the corresponding traditional year-of gift. He thought himself rather clever this year and knew Cassandra would think so too—he had removed ten license plates from the cars in his chop shop, cut them into strips height-wise, arranged the numbers and letters to correspond with the date of their marriage, and then soldered the tin back together—a plate of many colors.
And then, of course, was the anniversary of her disappearance. For this one, there was always a complementary death, and this year a certain someone from within "the system" was going to sacrifice themselves on the altar of Cassandra. It had not taken Fara long to find the one who had dropped the ball, refused to keep his sweetheart alive.
They pulled up in front of a flat, the tires crunching in the snow. It looked like a gingerbread house from the good side of the pastry aisle, golden bronze and rimmed in vanilla icing. The perfect brownstone.
"This is the place?" Oswald asked.
Gabe nodded. "Yes, boss." He handed him a fenced and, of course, untraceable gun.
"Married?" he asked, removing his leather gloves and putting on a pair of white ones before taking the weapon and concealing it in his coat pocket.
"Yes."
"Pity. Children?"
"No." Good. Oswald would feel better about killing him. No loose ends crying over mommy and daddy. Not that he had not done that before—well, not himself personally, he only arranged it—he just found he would prefer to not do it again. Such episodes can create monsters.
Oswald had not seen his own child in years. Well, that is to say, he had never spoken to him. On numerous occasions, he had seen Boo darting across the lawn at Gotham Academy, to which Oswald was paying his tuition. He had established a scholarship fund to sponsor students he felt deserving. It was how he got away with paying for the boy's needs without anyone suspecting he had a son, and Boo was his—no matter what the law said. Just like Cassandra was alive—no matter what the state decided.
And, besides, it did not hurt that it made him look like a champion of educational rights for the less fortunate. Had gained him some respect from the elite, even if it was counterfeit. Amazing what people were willing to overlook if they thought you might benefit them in some way, ANY way—whether through power, money, or information. Money seemed to speak the loudest and Oswald was never at a loss for takers, from unfortunates in tattered clothing to those in furs and diamonds—they welcomed him with open arms and would just as easily shove him out if his fortune dwindled. Until then, they begrudgingly endured him.
If his name was sullied, so was theirs. So they pretended his past indiscretions had never occurred and the ones he was committing now were based on unfounded rumors. Citizens draped in imported silk and Swarovski crystals grinned coldly at him, shook his hands, praised him publically, sent him invitations to the most-coveted events, and yet still despised him, feared him, silently, just underneath their pearly-powdered, lavender-lotioned skins.
The underworld elite catered to his appetites, delivering to him the finest in spirits or delicacies, any weapon he requested from anywhere in the world, promises of loyalty and undying devotion (usually forfeited once they found themselves dying), and requests for his presence at various gambling events and boxing matches. For these goons, the words "apathy" and "dread" came to their minds when someone mention the moniker The Penguin.
The lowliest and most vulnerable just tried to avoid him.
Poor Mr. Cobblepot had created these opinions all on his own. As his reputation for violence and avarice grew, so did society's abhorrence of his company. He was not naïve; he knew what they thought.
But, he had bought them—the rich and the poor alike.
Bought them all.
Must have missed one, Oswald lamented as he rode the elevator to the top floor. Another failing on my part.
It was a pity to have to slash the dainty throat of the man's pretty wife. Oswald however was grateful that there were no children around to witness the attack. Had the man not been married, it was going to be a single suicide, but this would work just as well, better even. The bloke would experience for a few minutes the pain that Oswald had felt for ten years—watching his wife suffer, so really—Oswald was being merciful in killing him right away, landing in his wife's blood to boot—an added bonus! The news staff will love that! Oswald could not have staged it better himself.
Oh, yeah, actually . . . I just did. The couple was dead and the radio was playing Christmas music, so he shot it too before throwing the gun down beside the wife, while the knife he had borrowed from their very kitchen, lay beside the husband. He made sure their fingerprints were on each weapon, respectively.
Oswald could picture it now. People would shake their heads and wonder what had gotten into the man, why he just snapped. And, they were such a nice couple too, kept to themselves most of the time, never caused any trouble, their neighbors would say. Then the statistics on domestic violence would air with stories from those who had survived abuse—both women and men—with the added juiciness that it happened around the holidays. That was the tree topper! Sure to sell papers!
When Oswald emerged from the building, he noticed that the snow had let up, and only then realized his hat was gone. He was glad he had not worn the bowler that day.
As the upstairs neighbors' cries for help mixed with the strains of "Deck the Halls" warbling from some distant somewhere, Oswald laid down on the ground in front of the brownstone and made a snow angel before slipping back into the limo and leaving the neighborhood before the Gotham City Police Department arrived.
Enjoy your stocking stuffers, fellas, Oswald thought as he guzzled down the rest of the champagne.
It was Christmas Eve.
Fa the fucking la.
