Issue 6:
Tragicomedy and a New You
Madness is a rainbow, and all the crazies fall along their comfy spectrum. Red brings the blood- runs down the broken bird's face, dark eyes lit, fear escaping, pursed lips white, crack and brain matter grey against red smiling lips, lost loves and worn out sneakers, howling Baptist preachers- bellowing bearded imams, souls slapping sidewalks soundly searching somewhere safe so serenely so saintly- Red go the eyes- the old lady trips, young girl cries, father threatens, mother appeals, young man flees, old man bragging, begging, buying like a disillusioned auctioneer- gun, bomb, gasoline, toxin, crowbar, fist, but the sweetest of all: red on black…
Mister J scanned the morning paper detailing mass bombings, global climate change, and corrupted politicians. Black and white and red all over the madness spread, but what simple, boring madness it was. Any true discourse or revolutionary thought drowned out by a thousand howling critics. Before him on the stage a trembling amateur stand-up comic sputtered out jokes he ignored like the last four before her. The previous acts lied out in various positions of terror, blood dripping from multiple holes across the stage.
"A Zen Buddhist walks up to a hotdog vendor and says, 'Make me one with everything'". Joker looked up from the paper and smiled. A chuckle slipped past his lips. The comic stopped and nearly dropped the mic.
"Harley, I think we're done," he said, "Kill this last one and let's get out of here." The young woman on stage fell to her knees and bawled.
"WHY?! I did what you asked! I made you laugh," she protested and wept. Joker walked up to the front of the stage and looked her square in the eye.
"So?" He turned and his lackeys followed him through the back door of the club. Harley picked the girl up and held her.
"If it's any consolation I thought you were hilarious," she whispered in the comic's ear, "Us girls gotta stick together after all." With a well-practiced twist Harley snapped her neck and followed the crew outside.
"You feeling any better, boss?" she heard a goon ask Mister J. In the next instant he doubled over laughing hysterically. Mister J scowled at him as the man raked strips of flesh off his face with his fingernails. He'd done nothing to the goon Harley saw. The man just erupted as though he'd been kissed by the Joker gas.
"I'm tired Harley, and there's nothing to do in this empty town," Joker stated, "Let's go be normal people for a day."
"Sure thing Puddin', the car's around the corner." Riding across town the Clown Prince saw orange barrels zipping by like an animated picture that never moved. Always the same barrel he thought. Construction, creation pushing against the unending enemy Time. Faster the orange flashed by like a seizure stemming from collective bargaining. The radio blasted a racing death metal track that helped ease the wailing in his head. White noise and white stripes on the orange barrels, soothing and smooth but the unbelievable reality kept crawling toward the front. Alone, he thought.
Orange was fear: love and joy- liars- hope like bubbly teenage girls hands held out expecting all the happiness they can carry and then some, the taste so juicy and rotten, poison they swallow smiling, preaching its flavor they die from it, put up a headstone that says "He led a good honest life" then go inside to pitch the empty liquor bottles and burn that "bit too young" creepy 70's porn mag stash in the fire pit out back, man could justify murder on hypocrisy alone, a mercy killing the joyful- yet it came back unbidden, unwanted, other worldly, a color of reaction and rebirth: the figurine you can't touch in the cupboard, the upholstery unstained by the dripping ice cream cone, some off screen voice whispering "sacred"- There was fear there for him. Yes, there was fear in orange.
The buoys on the lake were orange, lifesaving and unperturbed by the wake. From down the dock he could hear Harley on the phone. As though her hair wanted to take off it blew west toward the far shore. Her buckles swung loose and jangled amidst the wind.
"It's bad, Ivy. I've never seen him like this. The whole city seems confused and lost. No one knows what to do or not to do without him. Like when your parents go out of town for the weekend," Harley paused listening to the other end.
"Some of the boys been talking about them. They appeared from nowhere. None of the bosses hired them, or so they claim." Another pause.
"Just be careful. If anyone else goes missing call me." She hung up and noticed he was looking her way. She smiled and waved him down. Sometime later they set sail with the hijacked tugboat and crew tied up below deck. Behind them a barge of garbage trailed slowly.
"This is what people do when they retire isn't it, darling?" he asked her. They sat on the bow watching the waves ungulate.
"Some do," she answered pensively, "You're not thinking of retiring are you, Mister J?" Later, they stopped in the middle of the lake. The sun shone its fake yellow happiness down on the lake. So bright it hid the darkness on the other side of the world, the black surrounding the planet and the universe. They spun on into the nothingness beyond the edge of space jetting towards the eventual heat death of everything.
Yellow was a liar; it was a false comfort and momentary diversion from an endless horror of nothing. Yellow- that broad toothed bitch, showing up naked in the window next door then slapping you when you go for the squeeze, the artificial backdrop to that too bright herpes medicine commercial, that's yellow glinting gold like fake teeth in a hobo's mouth, a sheen of sweat on the businessman's forehead as they close the gates on the factory; sorry Billy, momma's back to hooking to pay the mortgage, make yourself scarce but clean up your room first in case we need to use it, wearing a yellow dress- All Is Good And Just In The Land Of Yellow, retching over a spray painted gold toilet, too late, been had, water in the flower, 100,000GW hand buzzer grasping your nut sack, saccharine nothings that exponentially increase the risk of colon cancer- yellow is the too wide smile from the bug eyed man in the van, flowers at the funeral, the non-extended hand hiding a knife behind her back…a felonious clown, yellow is the color of sleight of hand.
Springing from a spark of the lighter the flame appeared yellow as it touched the wick of the dynamite. Joker watched it eat its way to the top and dropped it into the murky water. A muted explosion rocked the vessel, and he watched scores of fish float to the surface. Harley stood next to him and reached down gently grasping his hand. Two more of his crew succumbed to laughing fits since they left port.
"Harley I don't think I like fishing, and I'm not ready to retire," he stated. Her yellow pigtails nodded in agreement. Even looking at her he felt very little if anything. Before they left she made the shanghaied crew walk a makeshift plank. Since no sharks resided in the water she bound their hands and feet and watched them sink. He couldn't so much as fake a smile.
Strobing neon colors flashed across the dim lit club. Bodies heaving, limbs flailing the crowd began synching to the beat. Those heavy speakers taller than a man thumped furiously against the roar of the people-monster, a two hundred backed beast. It might be Hell with a rocking sound system, but Joker imagined Hell as a gymnasium filled with well-behaved kids and a droning principal reading the same ten announcements on loop. Hell could never be as exciting as people created in their heads.
Without an age restriction the club contained mostly young men and women. The girls danced with focus and cunning while the boys observed them like a reversed mating ritual. He looked at Harley next to him backstage and felt some small urging completely undefinable to him. Feeling a slight chill despite an irradiated crowd on the other side of the curtain Joker buttoned up his tattered green suit coat. It was an ancient relic that Harley had patched up in nostalgia going so far as to leave the old spot of blood now black on the shoulder. His blood, he thought.
"We were young once, right?" he yelled over the electronic bass. Harley twisted her face up and put her hands on her hips as she was apt to do.
"Once? I'm as beautiful as I was on the day you were wheeled into my office. All gagged and tied up tight. They only strap down the stuff that can hurt ya." The last part she spoke in his ear.
"You're even more beautiful darling," he promised and kissed her hard. When it ended the void remained aching like a dry wisdom tooth socket packed with fiberglass insulation, specifically the brand with the Pink Panther on the packaging. Did they still make that? He wondered idly. Did I hallucinate that? Glancing in the makeup mirror he saw a pale, gaunt, drooping visage staring back. His face had lost that bright white luster he boasted when in the thick of it with him. His hair appeared thinner and more brittle than usual. His eyes seemed dimmer and the green, oh the green-
No, he thought. The party was what he needed to focus on at the moment. A welcome back party would bring him home. Often times some motivation spurred the big man into action. Harley and some of the crew would block the doors and light the place up. At the moment of peak panic and fire the curtains would shoot up, and he'd introduce his one and only. While his midgets in diapers on tricycles entered stage right, (and Harley complained I'd never find another use for them, he thought) the doors would bang open and Batman would yell JOKER! in that dark fake voice. He'd beat up some goons, and they'd shake hands. Joker would agree to go back to Arkham for a month, and they'd duel again in exactly four weeks. We'll both live forever he thought. That's why he can't be gone.
Gazing into his own eyes the green glimmered. Green. Envy that mankind still draws breath, a life-giver, an overgrowth on Death, creator/destroyer: green chemicals, give something and take everything, no face just blank white slate, draw on, draw back hammer, crippled/risen, Green paper in the wind drifting past third story windows and Spanish nannys/housekeepers/slaves supervising the guards in their prisons, scratch off lotto tickets, exchange exchange ex change, society's veins green thick ready for the hit, first spring buds to the rot, the honest rot, gentle everpresent fair all encompassing rot- the infection grinding into purity into order, roots travelling under, spread wide, release spores, lungs pounding for unarriving air delayed by destruction, old age and projectile vomiting; Sickness God of Decay and Devolution, Green- the color of his hair. He smiled.
Breaking away from the mirror Joker physically shook his head attempting to will these flashes away. Stumbling towards the curtain he peeked out into the crowd. A young man was kissing the neck of a young woman. Leaning her auburn locked head back she giggled coyly. Then she laughed smiling wide, and she kept laughing.
And she kept laughing with skin tightening and lips stretched. She laughed as her summer tan faded into pale ivory, and when the blood came up from her throat she laughed it into the horrified face of her male counterpart. To his own surprise the boy began to chuckle. Joker counted five separate points where the hysterics began to emanate. Multiple things happened at once: the first being his realization of just how bad his sickness was.
The second was the doors exploding inward before the fires had even been lit. Troops wearing clean white armor swarmed in knocking their way through the crowd. Joker hopped off the stage. Batman's not here, he thought. Some of the infected club-goers went for the well-equipped mercenaries but were quickly shot down. Three at the front moved in on him guns raised.
"Get down on the floor now!" One screamed. Joker stood slack jawed in disbelief. Jackbooted Nazi thugs, he thought. A scream came from behind and Harley brought her hammer down on the middle one's head. She knocked the gun out of the second's hand and took the third's legs out from under him. Two more slipped in through the back unnoticed. From nowhere the knife appeared in his trembling fist, and he slashed and yelled.
"You're cheating! That's not how you're supposed to PLAY!" From amidst the crowd the remainder of his crew began firing on the soldiers who easily outmatched them. Now Harley led him out the back towards the waiting car in the alley. Troops stationed on the rooftops and nearby windows fired down on them. Anonymously slipping into Gotham traffic Harley glanced at him out of the corner of his eye.
"Mistah J, what happened in there? Did you change the plan?" Joker looked her straight in the eyes and fell into a sea of blue.
Blue is the final sadness, lowest of all shadows and counterpoint to sunshine's sinful alms, blue babies in eight hundred dollar cribs that you never even got the satisfaction of shaking. Blue is the history of the world. It's deep mournful chords from a depressed guitar strumming variations of slave songs in hundred part harmonies under the royal sky. The crystal clear ocean and the saturated bodies thoughtlessly hidden under the crest. Blue is for boys crossing an unexplored frontier of death equipped with only a puppy and a baseball sized rock. A forlorn lover over the cliffs of Dover face misted with water that could never quench her thirst. Blue is the upside down lake in the crusted desert where reptiles gorge on the everlasting buffet of sand. A grandmother's wake, a five year old child, a three letter question of why.
We all know blue when the curtain draws back, the strings revealed, the fiction spoiled, our heroes pencil and paper for a hungry baby and rent a week past due. Blue is the shape of the barrel in his mouth and a note that raises questions unapologetically answering none. A fast food bag slid under your sheets as they roll you into your gastric bypass surgery. Blue knows every secret you ever thought you kept safe. A cheating, synthetic calm, an embalming fluid inhalation after the strike of a match, there's no meaner color than blue.
The rainbow lies in its divisions, indelible lines as a portion of the whole. Control has no place in madness. That great unknown digs spurs in your sides choking you with rejected reins. It lives between the false separations where you can't see. It whispers orders in a language that doesn't exist. Hemingway's bells ringing at a moment other than the hour, possibly a fire or funeral or public execution. You only know something bad happened or is happening. In the past you're left like an old woman's corpse with ten starving cats lovingly licking her face. No more pranks, good natured homicidal experiments, or expensive one-time-use death traps, that "something else" is finally in the driver's seat and doesn't care a whit for fun. The only thing left to do is pretend everything is ok.
"Yes Harley. Plans change," he stated and their driver burst out laughing. As Joker and Harley exited he was banging his head into the steering wheel. Eventually blood began to splatter, and the airbag went off. Like a giant pie in the face Stooge's gag, he thought and didn't crack a smile. They were hard to come by these days.
"I don't know what's going on but you better start clueing me in," she began as they entered the safe house.
"Clue you in? What do you think this is? You think I don't know what I'm doing?" he yelled slipping his gloves off revealing deep scarring across his hands.
"No honey of course not, I'm with you all the way. You know that." He cut her off with a sharp slap across the jaw. Harley fell with a gasp.
"Please Puddin', I didn't mean it. I'll be your good girl…Puddin'?" She wept and wordlessly he fell on her swinging. At some point he was screaming "I love you" until he ceased all together.
"I never want to see your face again," Joker said simply. As she limped her bloodied and broken body towards the door he watched her with love. For surely this was the closest thing to love a monster could provide. Truly he believed he loved her as so many men do that choose to abuse, but what was slapping around a woman to the greatest criminal ever imagined?
What was anything?