Hello everyone! First of all, welcome! I need to say that I'm not a native english speaker, so please forgive me if I ever misspell something, and please let me know in the review section, it woud truely help!
Enjoy!
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Prologue: The proposal
Or how to end up disgusted with alcohol in one night.
He was trapped.
His body fed up with alcohol was staggering, hitting itself against the thundering walls of the alley. The ground was pitching up in waves, reality was distorted: she was going as mad as he was. Unknown colors danced before his eyes, made him nauseous.
He laughed about it, actually. To blow his lungs out, to get a stomachache. It could have been a very good evening, a little -actually a lot- of alcohol, a good slaughter and a great laughing spree. Unfortunately, what had caused the latter was not, not funny at all. Laughing would only allow him to temporarily extend the deadline. In any case, in regard of the silence emanating from the man still standing a few meters behind him, this man had perfectly understood his response to the proposal he had just submitted to him.
"You must know what your refusal means," he says simply.
That voice! It'd make him puke. He wanted to kill him, to kill him so bad. To drown him in his own blood. But he couldn't. He had abused again. He definitely shouldn't have drunk that last bottle. Maybe even the last two. He forgot, anyway. Walking already seemed difficult enough to him, and even if killing had become a sort of reflex in him, he could not even hope to approach the man. No more bullets in the desperately empty barrel of his good old Magnum 500 Smith & Wesson, and he was way too drunk to attack anyone with a knife. Anyway, there was no doubt that snipers were posted on the surrounding roofs, he would have been quicker to shoot himself in the head. So he was laughing, waiting for a plan, a way out, at least a better option. He wouldn't surrender so easily, though. Who knows what he'd do with him if he caught him?
No, stupid question. He knew exactly what he would do with him if he let himself be caught.
He turned, and between two bursts of laughter, waved a reproving finger.
"But my refusal is adamant!...How could you.. Think I-I'd accept?"
The man did not answer, and just stared at him with his piercing eyes. He took one step forward, the Joker took two steps back, still in that great burst of laughter that terrorized Gotham.
He continued to stagger towards the exit of the alley, half crawling half walking and once he arrived in the main street, he placed himself under the light of a lamppost. He slid on the snow, stood up, laboriously, and greeted an imaginary audience in front of him.
"Would you like to make him suffer the same fate as our protectors back there? But I am an artist you see, and he is... My muse!"
The man did not even deign to turn his eyes to the horrible massacre committed a few minutes earlier in the said alley. What a deadpan. He really didn't know anything about humor. The Joker was twisting enough laughter for two anyway.
"Protectors?" He repeated calmly.
They had proved to be poor defenders, it is true. Simple henchmen, seven to be exact, brought here by the two protagonists. Four giants with the sinister air for his interlocutor, and three young and ambitious thugs for the Prince of Gotham, It had something funny that the mercenaries supposed to protect them were exterminated so quickly. Nothing like a good bloodbath to end the day, right? He made them howl in a spectacular burst of laughter, under the neutral gaze of his interlocutor. Shots fired first. Clumsily placed, randomly entering in the bodies twisting with pain under her ticklish trigger. Then, when the bullets had run out, but the poor, poor corpses could already barely drag their own weight out of reach, the knife. Elegant, precise. The skin was torn to shreds, tearing smiles on the faces of the poor victims, praying for his kindness and mercy. They were trying to escape, to survive at all costs. This vision of these larval men had made him strangle himself with laughter, leaving behind their creeping this red and sticky trail. He had only taken more pleasure in mutilating them, dislodging the eyes of one, eviscerating the other. Every body lying at his feet was a new whiteboard. And he was very inspired tonight.
"That was funny!" he laughed, holding his ribs. "Don't you think?"
"Them?" He asked with a scornful pout, the first real expression he let through,"No, not particularly."
"Oooh, I see" he hiccupped,"A difficult one, huh? What do you find funny, then?"
"You" he replied "You're the most fun thing I've seen in years."
The man then approached with a brisk step, so that the Joker only had time to step back against a street lamp cutting his path. He grabbed the Joker by the collar in an abrupt and precise movement.
"I will have these informations," he spat with his dead eyes that characterized him so well. "And this, whether you give them to me or not."
"You're more alike than you think!" He replied with a laugh,"He too makes me miserable when I'm being bad!"
His interlocutor let him go, a light mocking air now coming to stain his face too often impassive.
"Batman?" He said, almost as an insult,"As if he cared about you."
The Joker's laughter became sour. He hated alcohol after all. He would have reduced anyone to a smoking pile of flesh to have dared that, but unlike these idiots of subordinates, the man was perfectly aware that he could not have done anything against them if they had struggled. What a nice bunch of morons. Well, natural selection, one might say. Now, the man in front of him was another caliber. He was helpless, and he hated that.
The face in front of him took up an empty expression, and turned away adding:
"You're disgusting, and much too drunk for me to get anything coherent out of you tonight. I'll come back for what you owe me later."
"...Not if you don't find me."
He stopped in the middle of the deserted road, and turned partially towards the Joker.
"I'll find you," he simply said.
"Why" he sighed with amusement as he disappeared into the snow,"It's so much more fun to play hide and seek!"
Before I start, I'd like to point out that the story and looks of the characters are not borrowed from any particular movie or series, elements come from everywhere, from the 1989 Jack Nicholson movie to the Batman animated series (mostly the 1992 one), through The Dark Knight, comics and my personal version. (hehe)