Glycerine
" 'There must be some kind of way out of here,'
Said the joker to the thief…."
- Jimi Hendrix, "All Along the Watchtower"
The picture on the front of the freshly printed brochure was so thoroughly misleading that, for a minute or two, Bruce Wayne had to stop himself from chuckling. It wasn't really something to laugh about; the city badly needed a better drug rehabilitation clinic, and the Sunrise Foundation's new center in East Gotham (funded, of course, by Wayne Enterprises) would be a godsend. But Bruce knew good and well that the picture on the pamphlet Alfred had brought him was laughably idealized compared to the real building Sunrise had set up in. He held the slick paper up in front of his face and studied it. The picture showed a gorgeous brick building surrounded by white-painted wrought iron fencing and backed by cool, shady maple trees, all surmounted by the art-deco Sunrise Foundation logo. The scrolling letters at the bottom read, "Recovery is a New Day."
Bruce tossed the brochure back onto his dresser and smirked. The real building was a dump. But, he amended, that was what the Wayne Enterprises funding they were getting was intended to fix.
After a quick glance in the mirror, Bruce picked up a second tie from the pile in front of him and held it up next to the one he was already holding. Black? Or should he liven it up a little and wear the red one? It was just a dinner appointment with a university researcher, but he had to at least look like he cared. He'd be changing out of it pretty quickly afterward anyway; the real party was scheduled for that night. Today was Halloween, and to raise some extra funds (and awareness) for the new rehab clinic, the Gotham Police Department and the Sunrise Foundation had teamed up to throw a Halloween block party outside the clinic building – complete with a massive haunted house maze, built and manned by GPD volunteers. As one of the biggest investors in the project, Bruce was expected to make an appearance… in costume. So, whichever tie he picked would only be on for an hour or so, and then he'd be ditching it in favor of the Dracula cape and fangs in the back of the Lamborghini.
The irony of the costume struck him as particularly amusing, and he smirked again at his reflection.
"Something funny, Master Wayne?" Bruce looked up from his ties and saw Alfred in the mirror, depositing something on the table behind him.
"Hey Alfred," he began, ignoring the question and turning around. "Which one?" He held both ties up against his chest for his butler to compare. The old man straightened up, tucked his hands in his pockets, and regarded his young master with a raised eyebrow.
"Hopefully neither, sir," he quipped. "Both look a bloody fright. Here…." Deferentially nudging Bruce out of the way, Alfred reached into the pile of neckties on the dresser and pulled one out. It was a deep, rusty orange silk, and it looked like it had never been worn. "May I suggest this one, sir? In light of the holiday?" He draped it over Bruce's wrist and stepped back as Bruce grinned.
"You always did know how to pick 'em, Alfred." The other two ties went back into the pile as Bruce looped the orange silk around his collar. Alfred smiled.
"Well someone has to, Master Wayne. Otherwise you'd go on wearing those two rags over and over until the Second Coming." He chuckled, and Bruce returned the laugh convivially. Alfred had been critiquing his employer's sense of style good-naturedly for years, and the jokes in their verbal pas de deux were as familiar as a well-rehearsed dance. "And who are we meeting for dinner this evening, sir?" he asked as Bruce struggled to even out the knot in his tie. Bruce reached down and pushed a small leather book across the dresser to him, and Alfred flipped it open to October 31st. His eyes scanned the page until he found the dinner reservation. "Doctor P. Isley," he read aloud. Bruce nodded slightly as he finished straightening the knot.
"One of the researchers Wayne Enterprises is funding over at Gotham State. Some sort of… botanist, or… biochemist… something like that. Something about plants."
"What's the P stand for?" Alfred inquired.
"Pamela. I think…" Bruce replied, pursing his lips. "Which means she's probably eccentric, near-sighted, and frumpy as hell."
"All that just from her name, sir?" Alfred teased.
"You think I'm wrong?" Bruce walked over to the bed, picked up his jacket, and pulled it on. Alfred grinned.
"I don't know, Master Wayne. Are all Pamelas frumpy?" He watched Bruce grab his cell phone from the night table and smirk.
"Have you ever known one who wasn't? Put those ties back on the rack, would you?" He sauntered back over to the dresser as Alfred obliged him by picking up the armful of neckties and heading for the closet. Over his shoulder, he returned his young master's smirk.
"I believe… Ms. Pamela Anderson… might disagree, sir."
Bruce checked his phone for messages and laughed. "Silicone doesn't count, Alfred. She's probably a frumpy soul, deep down, trying to make herself look like a Barbie. Playing dress up." He patted Alfred's shoulder and grinned as he headed for the door. "Kind of sad, really." He walked out then, leaving Alfred standing at the closet door with an armful of ties. Alfred shook his head.
"Says the man who goes out every night in a Kevlar bat costume…" he mumbled, then shuffled into Bruce's closet to rearrange the ties.
He was letting himself kiss her again. So much for …self control…, he thought, his internal voice snarky and disgusted. He had scolded and then berated himself for the past two days, telling himself that he was only digging a deeper hole… and… that he was ruining his chances of getting out from under her, and oh wasn't that a poorly chosen idiom… and none of it did any good. Because here he sat, slumped in the corner of a cargo van with Harley in his lap, her legs wrapped firmly around his waist and her tongue doing an un-choreographed tango in his mouth. It was pathetic.
The Joker and his crew were piled into the back of the unmarked van, which was rolling along in the direction of Gotham's northeastern suburbs at a sedate 65 miles per hour. Billy sat stoically behind the wheel; in the passenger seat, Dan was drumming the dashboard and growling in tune with the soundtrack of "Heavy Metal" blasting from the stereo. A distended rubber zombie mask hung on his knee, strands of greasy-looking gray-blonde hair straggling back from its forehead. Strapped to the headrest of the driver's seat was Billy's hockey mask, streaked with theatrical blood. In the back of the van the rest of the crew were similarly outfitted. The big guy, Peter, was hidden behind a Hannibal mask; scrawny Bobby crouched in the corner in a Beetlejuice costume that looked like it had seen much better days; and Dionté was dressed as a zombie pirate, his dark skin making the fake blood look much lighter than was natural. The Joker pushed his own mask – a zombie clown – out of the way so he could stretch his legs. As he changed positions Harley squeaked in surprise and fell backwards an inch or two. When she tried to resettle herself, the Joker pushed her abruptly off his lap and leaned forward.
"What time is it, Billy?"
"5:30," Billy called back, looking at the dashboard clock. The Joker grunted in reply. Good, he ruminated. They would get there around ten til 6:00… juuussst enough time for the party to be in full swing. The… apple-bobbers and the haunted house tours would be aaaalll wrapped up in their Halloween fun, no time to pay attention to a few scary extras sneaking into the backstage doors. The Joker leaned his head back against the van wall and closed his eyes. The back entrance to the haunted house would no doubt be easy access, especially to a bunch of guys who looked like part of the cast. If they— His thoughts were cut off as he felt Harley crawling back into his lap. He opened one eye peevishly, and felt himself getting angry again. Angry, and annoyed with himself… and oh, God, so very… very turned on.
Harley was dressed as a zombie Catholic schoolgirl. She had kept the red and black color scheme of her cat suit for this costume, but that was where the resemblance ended. Her face and neck were covered in smears of brown, grey, and white paint. Her dark blonde hair was pulled up in childish pigtails that were streaked with fake blood; a few drops of it had run down her neck and onto her chest, outlining the cleavage that was spilling out of her black button-up shirt. None of the buttons were done. The shirt was simply tied together in front between her breasts, and the Joker had to resist the momentary temptation to pull it open with his teeth. That really would be digging the hole too deep. And he couldn't afford to do any more digging tonight. But…. The Joker licked his lips. Below the tied-up shirt, Harley's bare stomach was randomly streaked with fake blood and patched with glue-on prosthetics that looked like rotten skin, and below that, her black and red plaid skirt rode low on her shapely hips… a skirt that was barely 7 or 8 inches long. There was very little left to his vivid imagination. The Joker sighed. He resisted the urge to slide his hands up under her skirt and pull her onto his lap… but he didn't stop her as she crawled there herself.
"Now… where were we?" Harley simpered, settling herself solidly across him. Her hands found his tie, drawing it seductively up out of his vest, and she pulled his face closer to hers. "Oh, yeah… right here," she grinned at him, winking. The Joker sighed again. He should put a stop to it, he grumbled internally. How hard could it be to say 'enough, get off me, I'm done?' He knew he could, and probably should. Right here and now. Just… push her off into the floor. Thunk, and she'd fall on her (insufferably attractive) little butt. And he'd get up and go menace one of the goons… or crouch up front with Billy and Dan and listen to the "Heavy Metal" soundtrack with them… and he'd be the Boss and discuss their plan of attack… aaaaannnnd…. Harley gave the tie a little tug and their lips connected with a solid smack. The Joker growled in the back of his throat. Way to put a stop to it, he thought. Showed her, didn't you? And what was worse, he realized the goons were watching now – Peter probably with something like amusement, Dionté probably trying to look away, and Bobby with a likely mix of fascination and horror. The Joker bristled under their gazes and consciously willed himself not to get too aroused. It was his only defense. He apparently couldn't resist these little moves she was making, but as long as he didn't let it go too far, he'd be okay. He'd play along. He could do that. Right? As looooong as he kept his wits about him…. He slipped his hands up under her skirt and pulled her tighter against him. He could go back to ignoring her tomorrow.
Interpreting his growl as one of excitement, Harley began pulling at the tie in an attempt to undo the knot. It took her a few tugs before it came loose enough for her to get at his shirt, and when it did, she immediately went for the buttons. The Joker started to reach up and drag her hands away, felt her hot, anxious fingers begin tracing his collar bone, and decided it wasn't worth the effort to stop her. He needed all the energy he could spare to keep himself focused on the task ahead, and it was taking most of his conscious effort not to give in to her again. They were only a few minutes away from the block party; surely he could control himself that long? Harley let her hands slip out of the Joker's collar and slide further down his chest, tracing the contours of his body through the thin fabric of his shirt and then through the thicker cloth of his vest. When she reached the waistband of his pants, she giggled, and her fingers began searching for the buttons.
The Joker sighed resignedly. It was going to be a long night.
Police Commissioner Jim Gordon felt like a complete fool. He was uncomfortable, he smelled like greasepaint, he looked ridiculous, and worst of all, both of his nostrils were partially obstructed by a red foam nose. He adjusted it for the millionth time that evening as he leaned back against the post supporting the tent, moving very carefully to avoid knocking anything over with his oversized clown shoes. The huge red-and-yellow monstrosities had already kicked over his chair (twice), a plastic skeleton figurine, and a tin of popcorn.
Gordon was running the popcorn and peanuts booth at the GPD's Haunted Halloween Block Party. All around him, the party seemed to be in full swing. Booths stretched up and down the street on either side of him, all operated by volunteers from the force and all doing a rousing business selling food and prizes to Gothamites of all ages. The Commissioner scanned the area around his own booth; this part of the street was teeming with the younger crowd, mostly college students from Gotham State University. They loitered in groups of four or five, window shopping at the souvenir booths, pooling change to buy snacks – Gordon saw one entertaining his friends by arranging one of the grim reaper decorations in an obscene pose. Scattered among the college kids were an elderly couple or two, a young man fussing over his verypregnant wife, and a harassed dad trying to hand out four caramel apples to his bouncing offspring (who currently resembled hungry piranhas). They were standing in front of the booth directly across from Gordon, a food booth with dark purple curtains and a hand-painted sign that said "Eats, Drinks, and SPELLS." That one was being operated by a rookie cop named Edmons, who was slowly being swallowed by a wizard's hat that was entirely too big for him. To the rookie's left, Gordon's right, was "Madam Darvula's Fortunes," being manned tonight by a grumpy Detective Montoya. She was covered head to toe in a spangled, see-through veil, from under which she answered patrons' questions about the future for 50 cents per revelation. The Magic 8 Ball she was using was stowed under the counter. On the other side of Edmons and his Eats was a game booth – "DEAD-Eye" – a shooting game in which players had to use a water gun to shoot out the eyes of zombie cutouts. Gordon himself was hemmed in by a bob-for-apples booth on his left and a novelty booth (selling plastic vampire fangs, cheap paper masks, etc.) on his right. His eyes roamed back and forth across the crowd, looking for potential customers – and potential security threats. While he was enjoying the sense of festivity and the smells of popcorn, caramel, and nostalgia, he knew as a police officer that public celebrations like this one were like magnets for criminal activity. He hated to be a pessimist, but this place just felt like a disaster waiting to happen – besides, it was Gotham. Here it paid to be a pessimist. Gordon had his badge and sidearm ready and waiting under the silk folds of his clown suit, just in case.
"How's business, Bozo?" Gordon turned his attention to the pack of college students descending on his booth, directing his gaze to the young man who had spoken. He was wearing a long black pea coat with a turned-up collar, and his dark blonde hair was swept over into long, tapered bangs streaked with several shades of platinum. He was regarding Gordon with a sarcastic smirk that verged on cynicism. Gordon opened his mouth to reply, but the girl who had walked up with the young man beat him to it.
"Gregory, be nice," she whispered harshly. "He's probably a cop." She was a pretty little thing, Gordon thought, with a turned-up nose and a blonde highlight in her dark hair that combined to give her an elvish look. She turned sharply back toward Gordon and flashed him a winning, "please-don't-mind-him-he's-impossible" smile, and Gordon noticed with some amusement that the young man's confrontational air had completely withered under the girl's scolding. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his pea coat as the girl pulled out a snap wallet and looked up at Gordon ingratiatingly. "You are a cop, aren't you?" she asked timidly.
"You could call me that, yeah," Gordon replied as he opened the popcorn machine. "I suppose 'Commissioner' still counts as a cop, doesn't it?" The girl's eyes bugged in surprised recognition. Gordon smiled at her reassuringly before continuing. "What'll you have, miss?" Recovering herself, the girl opened her wallet and glanced over at her boyfriend.
"Do you want any, babe, or are we sharing?"
"Share," Gregory mumbled, and his girlfriend looked over her shoulder at their two friends.
"You guys?" Both of the others, a stocky girl with Native American tattoos and snakebite piercings and a nerdy-looking boy in a green hoodie, nodded at her, and she turned back to Gordon. "K. Then I'll have… two regular popcorns, and one large. Please." She counted out dollar bills as Gordon scooped the hot kernels into striped paper bags.
"You kids been in the haunted house maze yet?" Gordon asked conversationally. The girl shook her head as she distributed the popcorn to her friends.
"Not yet. But we're headed there right now." She handed him the money. "Do you know if they'll let us take our food in with us?" Gordon dropped her change into her outstretched hand and nodded.
"I would think so. Just don't get scared and throw the popcorn all over the place." He chuckled, and the girl laughed with him. "You kids have a good time, all right?"
"Thanks, Commissioner," the girl answered as Gregory's arm stole around her shoulders. Gordon watched the four of them walk off in the direction of the maze entrance and snuffled around his mustache and the clown nose. He was glad someone was having a good time, because he sure wasn't.
Gregory and his friends walked down the block toward the entrance to the haunted house maze. His girlfriend, whose name was Ellie, snuggled into the side of his pea coat as they shared their popcorn. Behind them, the stocky girl shoved a handful of popcorn into her mouth, grinned around it, and then swallowed half of it before speaking.
"Omph…" she grunted, a loose kernel escaping from the corner of her mouth. "Popcorn is sooo much better when you buy it at places like this. Ellie, I'll pay you back when my work study check comes in."
"Same here," the young man in the green hoodie agreed. Ellie waved them off.
"It's fine, guys. Seriously. It was only a few dollars." She grinned at them sweetly. "Oh, hey, does anyone want anything to drink before we go into the maze?" She looked up at her boyfriend again. "Greg?"
"Eh," he shrugged, a motion that amounted to Whatever you want, babe. Ellie brushed popcorn crumbs off his pea coat.
"Okay, we'll get something after we get through. Eddie? Karlina? You guys want to get something?" Eddie shook his head almost imperceptibly from the depths of his green striped hood, and Karlina patted her messenger bag.
"Nah," she mumbled, adjusting one of her lip rings with her tongue. "I've still got half a Monster in here. I'm good."
"K," Ellie simpered and turned back to Greg. "Do you have the tickets, babe?" Greg nodded and pulled four purple squares of cardstock out of his pocket. They were decorated with a black silhouette of a haunted house and topped with the Sunrise Foundation logo and GPD seal. The admission price was outlined in silver foil - $5 per ticket. Ordinarily it wasn't something Greg or his friends would have wasted money on, but as it happened they hadn't had to waste anything. There had been a prize drawing at the student center that afternoon, and Greg had scored the four tickets when his name came up in the pool from his dorm. He counted them again as they approached the entrance to the haunted house maze, a huge black arch draped with obviously fake cobwebs. A fat cop dressed as the Grim Reaper stood at the door with a slotted box, checking tickets; Greg handed them over, tucked his arm tighter around Ellie's shoulders, and ushered her into the maze, with Eddie and Karlina following close behind.
As soon as the kids had gone inside the maze, the fat cop looked around to make sure they were the last of the current group. Then he reached into the folds of his Reaper robe and pulled out a (mildly squished) Bavarian crème pastry. He had taken crap from some of the other officers for always eating on the job (and eating donuts, to boot), but what the heck? It was almost dinner time, and his replacement wasn't due until 7:00. And besides, he thought as he shoved the dessert into his mouth, this wasn't exactly a donut, was it? He answered his own question with a shake of his head, wiping crème off his lip. Nope. Bavarian crèmes were not donuts. And he would defend that belief to the death.
"S'cuse me, Officer," a voice began, and he turned sharply, almost choking on chocolate glaze. A young lady was standing behind him, dressed in a short skirt and some kind of Halloween makeup, holding a mask under her arm. A tall man in a zombie mask stood behind her.
"Yeah?" he coughed, brushing away the remaining crumbs. The young lady reached into the waistband of her skirt and pulled out a police badge, flashing it quickly for him and then returning it to its hiding place.
"Detective Quinton," she offered as she tucked the badge away. "Detective Kerr and I are volunteering as extras in the maze. Is there a separate entrance we're supposed to go in, you know, for back-stage people?" The fat cop relaxed a bit and pointed around the corner.
"Oh, yeah, sure thing. You just go around here and follow the outside of the maze around to the spot where it connects to the big warehouse building. There's a door there right at the corner that goes into the room where they're controlling all the sound effects and that jazz. I think one of the head honchos is in there, and he can tell you what part of the maze you're working in." The detectives nodded, the lady detective flashing him a cute little salute.
"Thanks!" she simpered, and as she and her partner headed off around the maze perimeter, the fat cop watched them move out of sight before bending down to look under his ticket table. He thought he remembered another pastry in that box, if he could only find it.
The entire first room of the maze stank of mildew and theatrical fog. Ellie immediately started coughing and tried to shield her face behind the lapel of Greg's coat. Behind them, Karlina wrinkled up her nose.
"Eeeeeewww….," she grumbled. "This place smells like death."
"I concur," Eddie murmured, trying to pull his face even further back into his hood. Greg smirked at them over his shoulder.
"I dunno, I think I've smelled worse. Bathrooms in Anders Hall, for example. And it's not even the sewage that smells. I think it's something coming out of the walls. Clearly, you've got problems if there's something in a bathroom that smells worse than the shit."
"Gregory, that's ugly," Ellie reprimanded, tugging on his coat, and he half-smiled down at her.
"How about crap? Does that work?"
"I'd go with poop," Karlina offered before shoveling another handful of popcorn past her piercings and into her mouth. Eddie raised his head slightly.
"Excrement is a fine word," he suggested mildly. "Or there's always the criminalist TV show classic, fecal matter. If you prefer."
"Well aren't you the linguistic charmer tonight," Greg muttered at him, pretending to be annoyed but following with a good-natured grin. "Any other gems of wisdom from that hooded brain of yours?" He adjusted his hold on Ellie's shoulders as, behind him, Eddie laughed oddly before tilting his head to the side and nodding.
"Actually, I was just thinking that there might be a strategic element to the olfactory stimulation in venues like this one." He ate a single kernel of popcorn before continuing. "I mean, consider it; what are the standard scents which the general population most commonly associates with frightening locations?" Pushing his hood back suddenly, he quick-stepped around until he was in front of Greg, walking slowly backwards as the couple began walking further into the room. "It's the smell of decay. Mildew, coming from places that are unkempt and / or abandoned, and brought on by moisture, which is necessary for decomposition of any organic matter… and then the sweet, cloying scent of the decay itself, bringing to mind images of Stoker's crypts, the smell of death permeating the subterranean world…. It's the perfect combination of scents to elicit memories of graveyards and other frightening locales, which, in turn, enhances the level of fear the operators of the maze are able to elicit in their patrons. So theoretically, lacing the fog generators with a scent that replicates that one, and purposefully including stagnant water and other sources of the smell of moisture, would be perfectly acceptable ways of enhancing the Halloween experience."
Greg stared at him for a moment before smirking again. "Yeah, I think I liked you better inside your hood." He and Ellie moved on toward the doorway to the next room, and Ellie giggled over her shoulder at Eddie as he pulled his hood back up.
"Geez, Ed, I feel like I just listened to a thesis."
"You did," Karlina joked as she poked around in her bag for her drink. "It's an excerpt from his dissertation on the Merits of Nerd-dom."
"HA HA Ha ha ha ha that doesn't even make sense," Eddie murmured around a mouthful of popcorn. Karlina chuckled.
"Neither did that speech you just gave. Ooh!" The others turned to look as she jerked her head up and grinned, her hand closing around something in her bag. "Heheheh….," she giggled to herself. "I just found the solution." Still chuckling, Karlina drew her hand up out of her messenger bag, producing a long bundle of what looked like weeds. They were covered in dark, wilted flowers. Ellie started coughing again.
"God, Karlina, what is that stuff?" She covered her nose as Karlina began waving the plant coyly in front of her face like a geisha with a fan.
"Sage…" she replied, and giggled again behind the flowers. "The Cherokee used to use it to cleanse the air of evil spirits. At least, I think it was the Cherokee…."
Greg shook his head and headed for the door, pulling Ellie along with him. "Karlina, do you have to bring your whole freakin' medicine man kit along everywhere we go?" Karlina simply laughed and waved the sage around his head as the four of them left the entryway and headed into the next room of the maze.
The first segment of the haunted maze walk was designed to look like a series of rooms from an abandoned Southern mansion. There was a table with rotten food and skeletons sitting around in decayed hoops and cravats, a long hallway lined with ugly portraits whose eyes moved, and a cobwebbed drawing room inhabited by a creepy "woman" in an armchair. Eddie pointed out that her hair was reminiscent of Elvira or Morticia Adams. Greg was fairly certain she was a he. And both Ellie and Karlina were fairly certain that he was the traffic cop who had pulled them over for speeding on the freeway last month and had offered to forget the ticket if the lovely ladies could do him a favor. Karlina snarled at him menacingly as they walked past. The only scare in that series of rooms was a traditional jump-scare – courtesy of the woman in the long grey wig who had been (poorly) hidden under a blanket. Ellie jumped, squeaked, and hid in Greg's coat for a second; the rest of them laughed, waved at the maze workers nonchalantly, and moved on.
At the junction of hallways up ahead, the gang chose to go left, which brought them into what looked like the halls of an insane asylum – one of those places from the 1800's that specialized in lobotomies and shock treatments. It was shaping up to be another boring walk when the strobe lights came on and two "corpses" in straightjackets dropped down from the ceiling. Karlina shrieked and threw her handful of herbs at them, which gave Greg a pretty good laugh. "Did it cleanse the air?" he asked snarkily, and Karlina glared at him.
"Oh, just wait. There'll be at least one thing in this stupid maze that will make you scream like a little girl."
"Doubtful," he replied as they headed toward the next junction of the maze. After a right turn, two more left turns, and one complete about-face, the group had made it through a Dracula themed room, a series of alcoves holding rotten corpses (police officers with nasty gunk-covered spaghetti on their stomachs), an Egyptian tomb set with a cursed mummy, and what looked like a recreation of the Alien set; at the end of that series of rooms, they found themselves facing a doorframe made of concrete blocks. They had reached the part of the maze where the outdoor, hand-constructed part of the set joined the abandoned warehouse that housed the most elaborate rooms. There was a scream from somewhere inside the building, and Ellie flinched back a step.
"Gregory… I don't think I want to do this anymore."
"Hey, come on…" Greg murmured, hugging her. "It's just a soundtrack, you know that. Besides, if what we've already walked through is any indication, the rest of this place is going to be just as boring." He kissed her on the forehead, and she looked back at the door reluctantly.
"Okay…."
"Besides," Karlina put in as she crumpled her empty popcorn bag into her pocket. "I don't think there's an exit until you get to the end." Glancing over at Eddie furtively, she flicked her hand out and snagged his nearly-full bag of popcorn out of his grasp. He raised an eyebrow, but then let her have it without a fuss and headed toward the door.
"Look at it this way, Ellie. The biological processes involved in the experience of fear actually heighten romantic feelings, so you and Gregory could make a nice little date of it." They all laughed a little, and as they headed into the next room, Karlina poked Ellie in the ribs.
"Just as long as you two don't sneak off somewhere to suck face and then get lost. 'Cause I ain't coming after you." Greg looked at her over his shoulder.
"Your concern is touching." He smirked at her, and she grinned back at him around her piercings as the door closed behind them. The room they had entered looked like some kind of freezer or meat locker. The walls were lined with ice-covered jars of what looked like human organs; huge pipes held up long chains of stalactites, and several "corpses" hung from the ceiling on meat hooks. The whole room was bathed in a pale blue light. Ellie shivered; the room was actually cold. Eddie looked around and confirmed her thoughts.
"I think this room might once have actually been the freezer room for this warehouse. The walls are certainly well insulated enough for it to have served that purpose." He went over to one of the pipes and ran his finger over it. Ice crystals came off under his fingernail. "Hmm. These pipes seem to be functional." He turned his head to the side and tittered again, a bizarre laugh that always made people look at him awkwardly. "I think the Gotham PD may have outdone themselves, at least on this particular room. It was clever of them to utilize their resources like this." Greg snorted at him.
"It'd be the first clever thing GPD's done in about a hundred years." He grimaced in disdain for the general population of law enforcement, then glanced down at Ellie. She was shivering more noticeably than before, and her lips were pale. She was staring straight ahead at one of the dummy corpses, arms clasped against her to conserve warmth. Greg went to her and put his arms around her. "You need my coat, babe?" Ellie shook her head stiffly.
"No, let's just get out of here. It's freezing… and that dummy is giving me the creeps." The others looked at the female corpse on the meat hook in the corner of the room, and Greg's eyebrows came together. Something about that dummy was different than the other two. They all stared at it for a moment, then Karlina took a step back, and Eddie pulled his hood off and narrowed his eyes, looking the dummy up and down. Ellie pursed her lips. "See what I mean? It's freaky. It doesn't look right, it's too…."
"Detailed?" Eddie offered, and Ellie nodded. He was right; the dummy in the corner wasn't the same as the cotton-filled sacks hanging elsewhere in the room. Greg's biology major instincts took over, and he began to examine it like a cadaver in a lecture hall. What he saw made his skin crawl. All the hair looked like individual strands, right down to the long eyelashes. Under the thin glaze of ice, the pores in the skin were visible, and the clothes looked like they were clearly separate pieces. He even saw a tag under the thin fabric. It was plastered tight to the skin, as if the body had been wet or sweaty when frozen, and, Greg noticed with some discomfort, the nipples were clearly visible through the fabric. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to rise. That was a little bit too detailed for his liking. He took a few steps toward the dummy, Ellie shuffling along beside him, and leaning over, he took a peek at the back. He saw what might be an entry wound from a bullet, a dark stain spreading downward over the dummy's backside and legs, and below that, mixing with the presumed bloodstain, was a different splatter that covered the whole crotch and extended down the thighs. Greg felt himself begin to shake. That wasn't a detail he'd ever seen on a Halloween dummy; that wasn't a detail many people even knew existed. It was the stain from the automatic release of the bowels that accompanied death. Greg suddenly felt the flesh on his testicles begin to creep inward, and he reached out to take hold of Ellie's arm.
"I don't like this. Let's get out of here. Ellie?" Beside him, Ellie was still staring at the body, moving slowly toward it as if in a trance. Before he could stop her, she reached out and touched the dummy's skin.
"Holy SHIT!" she squeaked. "It's real!" Her voice came back to her in sharp, cold echoes, and she jerked backward, trying to distance herself from the body. As she moved, her foot grazed a frozen puddle of something dark and glassy, and both legs went out from under her. She hit the floor with another frightened squeak. Greg spun to help her, and as he did, his shoulder brushed against the dead woman's frosty breasts, leaving a sprinkling of ice crystals on his wool coat. The body on the meat hook began to sway with the motion, and as Karlina shrieked out a warning, its frozen wrists parted with a sickly crunch, and the whole corpse fell directly onto Greg's back.
He heard himself scream as if listening to a recording – and he was pretty sure that he did indeed sound like a little girl.
Uttering a series of inarticulate grunts as he scrambled out from under the dead weight, Greg found his friends' hands and was pulled to his feet. The four of them backed into the opposite corner, panting and shaking collectively; Greg, with a stony face but blue eyes widened til they looked like they would burst, Ellie crying softly into his shoulder, Karlina digging broken fingernails into the messenger bag she was using as a shield, and Eddie, hood hanging askew over a face that was completely taut with panic. Freed from the position in which it was frozen, the corpse lay stretched on the floor in front of them, looking absurdly like a swimmer at the height of a butterfly stroke. The dead woman's hair lay in crunchy piles around the frost-caked face, in which one eye had popped open – its dark pupil and iris staring at them without a hint of glaze to soften the accusatory glare. For a moment, the only sound was Ellie's soft whimpering.
"We've…," Eddie began in a timid whisper. "We've got to… tell someone. Call the cops. Something." He pulled his hood first forward, over his face, then back again, making his dark curls stand up with static. In front of him, Greg swallowed hard and tried to regain composure, although his eyes never left the body on the floor.
"No cops to call. They're all here in the maze, remember?" He gnawed his lip anxiously as he put his hands on Ellie's shoulders. "We've got to be careful; whoever whacked her could still be in here with us. Let's just go through to the next room. We'll get one of the cops in costume to drop the act for a minute and come investigate. Then we're getting the hell out of here."
"Sounds good," Ellie hiccupped, and Karlina nodded vigorously behind her. There was another tense moment in which the four of them stared transfixed at the corpse; then they broke into a fast shuffle toward the far door.
"HA HA HA Ha Ha Ha ha…." Greg stopped short in the doorway as the laughter rumbled lowly through the room, and his companions thumped into his back comically. There was a loud, mechanical squeak, the sound of speakers being manipulated to do something they weren't intended for, and the four youths looked up, searching for the source of the noise. Eddie swallowed nervously, his Adam's apple bobbing under sweaty skin, and pointed at the corners of the ceiling.
"Speakers," he whimpered, and the rest of them saw what he was indicating. Hidden behind fake foam icicles and cotton cobwebs were four small speakers, part of the PA system running throughout the haunted house maze that had been subtly playing grim orchestral soundtracks and the occasional recorded scream to enhance the maze experience. They realized simultaneously that the music had stopped, and that the low, gritty laughter was coming through the speakers in its place. Greg instinctively pulled Ellie close in to his chest as the laughter trailed off into a chuckle; he recognized it, and he was pretty sure everyone else did too. It was a laugh that had been played and re-played, on radio broadcasts, on breaking news alerts, on every TV in every home in Gotham since that summer.
"Greg, is that—" Ellie began, and he nodded against her head. It was. The Joker.
As if in answer to their thought processes, the speakers crackled, the static getting louder, and then the laughing voice composed itself into words. "Gooooood EVEning, ladies and gen-tle-MEN…" it chuckled, and there was the sound of lips brushing a microphone. "I, ah… I hope you all have been enJOYing your maze experience tonight. C'mon, folks, a round of applause for the good ol' GPD and their…outstanding effort." There was a series of hollow-sounding, disjointed claps, and in the background, the sound of someone giggling. Then the mic rustled again as the Joker picked it back up and resumed his speech. "However, there has been a slight change in tonight's program. Sorry for the inconvenience, butttttt… that's show business, folks. Now. I think… that most of you know… ex-ACT-ly who you're listening to… so let's not waste time with introductions. Let's talk about… why we're all really here. Hmm-hmm… hmmm…." Behind the humming, Greg and his friends could hear the sound of a piece of paper flapping near the microphone, the sound of stiff folds being unfolded. The Joker cleared his throat into the mic. "Ahem… the Sunrise Foundation: Recovery is a… New Day… right? Oh-ho… heh… ha-ha…. This, ah… rehab center? That's why we're all here? These druggies? The… nasty METH dealers selling stuff to your kids, starting gunfights outside your houses? And we're all here to help these poor, unfortunate lost souls find their way? No… no, no… we're not here for that. And why should we be? Exactly. SO. Whyyyyy… are we really here? For the …'haunted' house? Hmph. Some haunting. Ah, NICE job, Gotham's Finest. We're all TER-rified. Really. The, ah… cotton stuffed corpses and the fat guys in Michael Myers masks… yeah, they really do the trick." There was a minute pause in the Joker's speech, and Greg found himself grinning wryly in spite of his fear. Mass murderer, sure, but the guy had a point. This wasn't exactly five dollars worth of scares. Over the microphone, the Joker chuckled as if he knew his point had been taken. "Now, y'see… I've always been of the opinion that getting what you pay for… well, that's part of the American Dream, right? We aaaaaaalllll deserve to get our money's worth. And you… all… PAID… to get… SCARED. So I'm gonna give it to you, just like you paid for. Tonight, you all get to be a part of the scariest haunted house maze in the history of Gotham. Just remember, folks, it's interactive, and it's no fun if you don't play along. Ready?"
Under Greg's arms, Ellie whimpered into his coat.
"Here's how it's gonna work," the Joker began, clearing his throat theatrically. "Since this is a maze, it only makes sense to have a prize at the end. And to help us out with that, we have a special guest with us tonight. Why don't you tell everyone your name, Special Guest?" Silence over the mic, then a harsh growl and the sound of something being shaken. "Tell them your NAME!"
"Nathan," a voice said thickly, too far from the microphone to have any power. The word was slurred, as if spoken around lips that were too swollen to move nimbly.
"And what do you do for a living, Nathan?"
"Pizza… del… d…."
"Ah, what our friend means to say is that he's a pizza delivery boy, folks. You'll have to excuse him; he's a bit sleepy right now, concussions tend to do that. Now. Nathan, everyone, is going to be the cheese at the end of your maze. My friends and I are… entertaining him… somewhere in this haunted house farce. Find him, rescue him from his guards, and he's aaaaalll yours. Congratulations. You can have him. But it's got to be one of YOU fine people, citizens of Gotham, not one of the cops running this place. If Gotham PD gets involved in any way, our friend Nathan dies. If nobody comes to rescue him by midnight… he dies. If any of you tries to leave… YOU die. Soooo… looks like you have two options. You can either stay exactly where you are, huddling like rats in a corner to save your own sorry skins… or you can fight for the life of this innocent pizza boy. You wanted to be scared. You get what you pay for. Enjoy the rest of your evening, ladies and gen-tle-MEN… - oh, and Happy Halloween."
The voice on the speaker suddenly launched into a gale of cold laughter, and then abruptly, there was a loud rustling click, followed by silence. The four students in the freezer room stared at each other in blank horror as the full impact of what they had just heard sunk in.
In a room somewhere on the other side of the maze, someone screamed.
Billy caught the microphone as the Joker tossed it absently in his direction. The Boss was acting pretty edgy tonight, and that made him nervous – he didn't look like he was enjoying the carnage and chaos as much as usual, and when creating chaos didn't give the Joker pleasure, something was up. That was one of the things Billy had learned from experience. He wondered if any of the other goons were noticing – he doubted Dan was capable of noticing anything that wasn't shiny, but Dionté seemed astute enough to pick up on things. He had been astute enough to volunteer for guard duty outside the room, anyway. And that was exactly where Billy wished he was right about now. The Joker had been mumbling to himself again – rhythmically, repeating certain phrases every now and again, something about "leverage" – Billy didn't know what he meant, but that rhythm of repeated words had started to remind him of the ticking of a bomb. He fervently hoped he was out of the room when it went off. But then again….
If he wasn't around when the Joker exploded, that would mean Harley would be taking the brunt of the explosion alone. And Billy flatly refused to let that happen.
Sighing, Billy blew a puff of air up into his face to push his bangs back where they belonged. Harley complicated everything. Not her actions – she was actually shaping up to be a fairly competent criminal – but simply her presence. He hadn't quite known what to do with the idea of the Joker having a henchwoman when he had been re-recruited, and the only thing he knew now was that the entire dynamic had changed. Among the goons, between them and the Joker – and the Boss himself wasn't exactly the same Joker Billy had left hanging from the top of the Prewitt Building a few months ago. That Joker would never have had a henchwoman to begin with, much less…. Billy raised an eyebrow as he pondered the Boss's behavior. Much less let the henchwoman drive him even crazier than he was, Billy mused. That was his only explanation for it. Ever since the girl had joined the gang, the Joker had been… out of sorts. His dangerous silences had become longer, his violent outbursts had become more intense, he mumbled to himself more frequently… and he alternated between viciously attacking Harley and an almost sickening need to cling to her. In public. Sometimes Billy wasn't sure which was worse. Then there were times like tonight.
He hadn't noticed anything until they had arrived at the block party. The Joker had dumped her off his lap as quickly as he could and had burst out of the back of the van like a horse at a starting gate, and as the other clowns had piled out of the van, strapping on their masks, Billy had stayed at the back door to help Harley down. It was a high back bumper, and Harley was wearing a pair of clunky '90s Mary-Janes with heels that looked like they were just itching to get caught on something and send her sprawling. It would have been easier to just grab her around the waist and lift her down, but he had a hunch that putting his hands anywhere near her bare midriff might get him shot, so he had settled for grabbing her hands and helping her jump. She had winced at his grip, her face screwing up even before she hit the ground. Harley had tried to beat a quick retreat, but Billy had stopped her and tried to get a look at whatever injury she was nursing. She had pulled her left hand in to her chest protectively.
"It's nothing," she had murmured, not meeting his eyes. "I just accidentally sliced it open on one of J's knives the other day. It's fine."
"Harley, let me see it," Billy had demanded, and when he had finally gotten enough of a grip on her wrist to pull it away from her body where he could see it, she acquiesced and opened her fingers. What he had seen had almost made him puke. There was a huge, jagged letter J carved into her palm, the flesh a hot, angry red that looked as if it were barely beginning to heal. "Harley, what the hell…?" he had quizzed.
"I told you, it's nothing," she had responded as she yanked her hand back away from him. "It's just sore because it's healing. Now leave it alone."
"Harley, did you do that to yourself, or did he?" Billy had growled, and Harley had started walking away after the others, still not looking him in the eye.
"It's not important, Billy, really. I'm fine. Just get your gun and come on." And he had. And that was that. As usual.
Now, across the room, Billy watched as the Joker and Harley took turns menacing the bound and gagged pizza boy. They were camped out in the Room of Mirrors, and the Clown Prince and his newly acquired princess were multiplied a hundred times over in tessellations of various size and shape in the glass that covered the walls. Their prisoner sat in the center of the floor, tied in the fetal position, still drooping but beginning to regain enough consciousness that his eyelids were staying fully open. He looked like he desperately wanted to say something, but there was a strip of duct tape slapped crookedly over his mouth, and all the pronounced jaw below it could to was bob ineffectually like a cork in water.
"Whaddya think , Harl," the Joker was saying. "Should we lose the tape? A silent victim is sooooo… boring."
"Yeah, but he might scream for help," Harley countered, crossing her arms and raising her eyebrow at the pizza boy in a way that would have been quite fetching in other circumstances. The delivery boy's dark eyes widened and he shook his head from side to side vehemently, seizing on his chance to get rid of the gag. He glanced up first at her, then at the Joker, flicking his eyes up and down as if to draw their attention to the corners of the tape. The Joker clicked his teeth in mild disapproval, then bent down in front of the prisoner and made a face at him.
"Tell you what, Nate old buddy. You… don't scream when I rip that tape off… and I don't cut out your vocal chords before putting it back on. Deal?" Nathan nodded severely, his prominent chin almost touching the Domino's logo on his chest, and the Joker nodded mockingly along with him for a moment before reaching up to remove the tape. It came off with a harsh rasping sound, and the prisoner only winced for a second before stretching his jaw and taking a deep breath.
"Oh, thank God, my braces were starting to dig into my lip." He made a few awkward mouth-stretching motions as the Joker wadded up the used tape and tossed it over his shoulder.
"Bound and gagged in the middle of a maze with a couple of terrorists, and you're worried about your dental work?" the Joker sneered at him. Nathan turned wide, frank eyes up to his captor.
"Have you ever had braces?" he quizzed. The Joker raised one eyebrow ever so slightly, and the prisoner took it to mean no. "Let's just say, between braces and …oh… Chinese water torture, I think I'd rather get dripped on. At least that drives you insane after a while. No such luck with these things."
"He's got a point, J," Harley allowed, giving the pizza boy an appraising glance. "I've still got scarring inside my mouth from mine, and that was junior high." She turned to the Joker, who was staring at both of them as if they were missing the entire point of the exercise. "What?"
"Shut up, Harl," he growled after a moment of glaring.
"What did I—"
"Just…," the Joker began, reconsidered, and then finally said, "just stop talking. You agree with the prisoner, and ah… they just start getting friendly, and then you've lost your ability to intimidate. Torture lesson number one. Think you can remember that? Hmm?" He was bent close to her face, and now he patted her cheek in a way that would have looked loving if the smacking sound hadn't been clearly audible. Harley stuck out her lip, but said nothing. The Joker grunted approvingly at this and then turned back to the pizza boy on the floor. "Sorry about the …informality, Nate, but I'm ah…. I'm currently training a new recruit, you know how it is, and we're still getting used to all the… procedures involved. If—"
"Oh, I know! Training is a nightmare! They used to make me teach the new guys how to run the cash register, and oh God, the wasted hours of my life!" Nathan looked as if there were more words behind those, but the Joker's annoyed stare made him fall silent.
"All done?" the Joker grumbled, and when Nathan nodded, he nodded along with him. "Good. Now. As I was saying, this… is my newest recruit. Nathan The Soon-To-Be-Dead Pizza Boy, meet Harley Quinn. My…."
"Henchwoman?" the prisoner offered.
"…Associate," the Joker corrected, ignoring Harley's pouting. She could stick out that lip all she wanted, he refused to introduce her as his lover. Or girlfriend. Or whatever. And they weren't having that conversation again. "Now like I said," he went on slowly, "Miss Quinn's a girl of many talents… not all of which are work related…." He winked at her saucily and, pulling her over to him, gave her backside a squeeze that was not at all gentle. "But she's new to this whole, ah …terrorism business, so let's make this a… quality learning experience for her, shall we?" He nodded until Nathan took the hint and nodded along. "And, ah… let's make this a collaborative team effort, whaddya say, Nate old buddy? Which means…." The Joker bent down until he was at face level with the prisoner and grinned, a smile that made the pizza boy suddenly realize exactly how much danger he was in. "You… have a very important role to play. You get to be Miss Harley's very first torture subject. Billy!" The Joker stood back up as Billy reluctantly joined them, motioning absently to him as he took hold of Harley again. "Tape him back up," he ordered, and Billy obliged, jerking off a long strip of the tape and plastering it over the squirming pizza boy's mouth. Then he got out of the way.
The Joker stood behind Harley, wrapping his arms around her waist as he murmured instructions into her ear. "Okay, private. Your first mission. You remember Rule Number One?"
"Start with the extremities and work your way in?" Harley answered, and the Joker cackled over her shoulder in approval.
"Ya learn quick, toots," he quipped, then he gave her a little shove toward the prisoner, his chuckles becoming a gale of wild, hooting laughter.
Nathan struggled for a moment against his bonds as he realized what was about to happen. Then the Joker passed Harley his knife, and the pizza boy tried vainly to scream through the duct tape. All he managed to get out was a series of muffled groans before Harley got to work and he blacked out from the pain.
By the time the appetizers had been ordered, Bruce Wayne had decided on two very solid facts. First, he needed to invest in better table linens for his restaurant; and second, Dr. Pamela Isley was most definitely not frumpy.
Bruce and Dr. Isley were sitting across from each other at a round table in the corner of Riche, one of Bruce's three new French-style bistros in Gotham's upscale business district. The dinner was already going a little better than he had expected. Generally these types of engagements were torturous – spending time and money on a dinner he couldn't enjoy because he was stuck listening to the esoteric ramblings of some researcher or theorist or engineer who looked like he or she hadn't seen sunlight or a hairbrush in about ten years. That was what he had been expecting when he had walked into Riche, waving to the maitre d' and fidgeting with his orange silk tie. They had pointed him to the corner table where he usually entertained clients and cut deals, the one with the high-backed circular leather booth studded with silver buttons. He had nearly jumped out of his suit when he rounded the corner and saw the silhouette leaning nervously against the table.
Doctor Pamela Isley was a knockout. The hand he had been extending in a half-hearted greeting had stopped short as the young woman in the booth had turned her face up to his. It was an Irish face of the finest variety, the kind with delicate but sharp features and skin the color of fresh cream, high brows arching above eyes that were a seductive and misty shade of dark green. She was not a tall woman, but Bruce could see even under the table that she had legs that kept on going; in fact, the rest of her body didn't look like it would need to stop to rest any time soon, either, and Bruce had to yank his eyes up to avoid getting them stuck on her breasts, which were round and perfect and precisely the same creamy color as the rest of her skin. Her dark eyeliner and deep emerald blouse stood out in distinct contrast to that porcelain skin, and she had a pouty lower lip which seemed to announce very delicately that it always got its way, thank you very much. Topping it all off was a crop of the most gorgeous auburn hair Bruce had ever laid eyes on. It spilled down from the top of her head in tight spiral curls that were so red they glowed, and although Bruce saw she had attempted to comb and mousse it into a classy 1940s wave, he could tell that it was the kind of hair that generally had a mind of its own – the kind of hair men fantasized about digging their fingers into. Bruce had dimly heard himself mumble, "Doctor Isley, I presume?"
"Mr. Wayne, thank you so much for coming!" she had replied, taking his hand in a grip that was both confident and nervous. It had taken all his willpower not to let the word "coming" start his brain down the wrong path.
Now, as the waiter put down Bruce's plate, refilled his glass with the restaurant's newest wine selection, and walked away, Bruce was trying to get down to business while pondering just how a woman like this got stuck in a research lab as a career.
"So, this proposal," he said, slicing into the center of his steak and being rewarded with a splash of warm pink and the steamy, metallic aroma of a perfectly grilled piece of meat. "What are we, uh… what are we researching in this little program of yours?" Across the table, the young woman's nose wrinkled as she watched him take the meat from plate to mouth, and he looked down and noticed her plate – she had ordered the vegetarian mushroom ravioli, with a hefty side salad (no ham, turkey, or bacon bits, he noticed). Gorgeous, brilliant, and a rabbit, he thought snidely.
"It's a medical research program," Isley replied, twisting her fork in circles in the blush sauce between the pasta bits. "Cancer treatment, primarily. We're attempting to synthesize new, more effective treatments from exotic species. We've seen quite a bit of progress; but our initial grants are running out, and we haven't come far enough into the research to end the program." Bruce nodded internally over his drink. Ah. That makes more sense. Concern for the common good. Guess she figured she could get more done as a scientist than as Miss America.
"And where do you see your biggest spending?" he said aloud. He was trying not to sound too disinterested, but her lipstick had an almost metallic shimmer to it, and he was having a hard time not wondering what it would be like to nibble on that pouty bottom lip. Dr. Isley's nervousness had begun to evaporate, and if she sensed his lack of concentration, she ignored it.
"There are two areas that eat up the most of our grant. One is the actual acquisition of the plants from our botanists in the field, which generates lots of expedition and shipping costs, and the other is developing the technology to work with these elements in the lab. We're right on the edge of a breakthrough, but without the proper equipment, we can't take the work much further."
"Mm-hmm," Bruce answered, mentally calculating how much it would take to feed a handful of tree-huggers and buy them some new microscopes. "So how, exactly, would you be utilizing Wayne Enterprises funds, Ms. Isl—"
"Doctor," the young woman corrected immediately, and Bruce made a mental note. Very career driven, this one. Attached to her title. Like she needs to prove herself. Either she's insecure, he thought, or she's a feminist. He wasn't sure which was worse.
"I'm sorry," he continued placatingly. "Doctor Isley. And I apologize for interrogating you, but I do need to know where my money is going, you understand."
"Oh, of course, Mr. Wayne," Isley responded, smoothing down her ruffled feathers and resuming her presentation. "And I already have the whole proposal laid out right here in this portfolio, including allocation of funds for all segments of the program. The majority of the cash would be spent on the lab equipment and computer programs required to separate…."
Doctor Isley's voice faded to a murmur as Bruce suddenly became aware of a buzz stirring among the other diners. The normal sound of conversation and tinkling silverware had been replaced by the subtle mumbling of people asking each other what was going on. Bruce followed the other patrons' gazes to the flat-screen TV that was mounted on the far wall above the reservation desk just as one of the waiters responded to a call for the volume to be turned up. The screen showed a GCN Breaking News logo above the head of a statuesque blonde anchorwoman, who was in the middle of an anxious recital of a news alert.
"…live to the scene now, where our very own Summer Gleason is in the middle of the action. Summer?" The camera cut to a shot of a wide-eyed redhead who looked like she was barely out of internship, bundled up in a garish pastel pea-coat. Behind her, police lights lit up a wild carnival of booths and tents like a gypsy Christmas show, and Bruce nearly choked on his merlot as he recognized the Sunshine Foundation building in the far background. The girl with the microphone glanced sideways to an unseen cameraman before looking back and clearing her throat.
"Thank you, Vicki," she squeaked nervously. "I'm here on the north side of Gotham outside the Sunrise Foundation Drug Rehabilitation Center, where a hostage situation involving over thirty civilians is under way. If you look behind me you can see the game and food booths set up for the Haunted Halloween Block Party, co-run by the Sunrise Foundation staff and GPD officers and funded by Wayne Enterprises. We have been told by the Gotham Police Department that about half an hour ago, control of the block party's Haunted Maze was lost to a small group of what can only be described as domestic terrorists. There is no official word on who these criminals are, but reports here on the street – citing cell phone calls made by hostages inside the maze – are saying that this situation is, in fact, the work of the infamous "Joker," who terrorized Gotham last July. We are still waiting on an official statement from Police Commissioner James Gordon, who…."
"Mr. Wayne, are you all right?" Dr. Isley's voice brought Bruce back to the reality of the table and his steak, which was getting cold. He pulled his eyes from the television back to the researcher across from him, who seemed very concerned. The look on his face must be quite unsettling, he realized.
"Oh, yeah… um, it's the, uh… the news alert…."
"What's wrong?" the doctor pressed, putting down her folder full of charts. "What's going on?" She twisted around in her seat to get a look at the TV screen, but it was at the wrong angle for her to get a clear view. Bruce rubbed a hand over his face anxiously.
"It's, umm…. It's the Sunrise Foundation. There's a hostage situation. It's one of my funding projects, I, ah… I was supposed to make speech tonight…."
"Oh!" Dr. Isley gasped, her brows shooting upward in her white face. "Is anyone hurt? Thank God you were still here, you could have been in there with them!" Bruce's eyes were still locked on the television. He was thinking about the Dracula costume in the back of his Lamborghini – and about how he might have to trade it in for a different costume tonight. He had been trying to lay low ever since Harvey Dent's tragic death, for which he had taken the blame, and he still couldn't risk a public showing as the Caped Crusader. But Gordon would need his help. If it truly was the Joker, then GPD wouldn't be able to handle it alone. He would have to remain unseen by the hostages and the other cops. But if he could catch Gordon alone…. He snapped his eyes back to the young woman across the table, his mind going a hundred different directions at once as he planned his course of action.
"You'll have to forgive me, Dr. Isley, but I have to go. This project has my name on it. I have to take care of my end of things." He folded his napkin sloppily and sprang up out of the booth, waving to the valet to have his car brought to the front. Isley looked up at him with an expression that resembled panic.
"But Mr. Wayne, I—"
"I'm sorry, Doctor," he mumbled, taking a few steps away from the table. "Stay, though. You stay, finish your dinner, my treat. It might be nothing I can help with. Might just send me back here and we'll finish. If not, though, call and we can reschedule the appointment."
"But Mr. Wayne, the board told me they set a…." Her eyes fell as she watched Bruce dodge through the line at the door and hit the sidewalk outside, almost leaping into the Lamborghini she heard purring restlessly through the window. "…Deadline…," she finished to herself bleakly, not sure if the lump at the back of her throat was ravioli or the beginning of angry tears. The university board had set a deadline for approval of her proposal, and in two days, it wouldn't matter if she rescheduled with Wayne or not. Without his signature at the meeting Sunday, there was no deal. No deal meant no new equipment, and no equipment meant the little potted leaflets under the sunlamp in her lab would never yield up their healing secrets to her team. And those were secrets that could decide life and death.
Pamela Isley looked down slowly at the portfolio lying open on the table next to her salad. Then she put her hands over her face and, hidden by her veil of thick auburn curls, she gritted her teeth and tried not to cry.
"I don't care if he's off duty, GET ME THE DAMN TECH SPECIALIST!" Commissioner Gordon ran a frustrated hand over his face as the rookie Edmons scurried off to find the department's computer expert, ditching his wizard costume as he went. Gordon was about three steps away from losing control of the block party, and he knew the rookies were terrified but God, he just couldn't deal with that right now. They needed to get the technology people in here. The whole maze building was equipped with security cameras, but while the Joker and his accomplices had access to the camera feeds from the maze control room, which they undoubtedly had set up in first thing, there was no way for GPD on the outside to see any of the images. The computers were wirelessly networked to the computers in the actual Sunrise building across the street, but the Joker's men had blocked that signal. If the techies could get that working again, they could at least track the Joker's movements in the maze, see the condition of the hostages, and maybe work out a way to get SWAT in without tipping off the Joker and losing the primary hostage.
It had all started when nobody could find Detective Shaughnessy. She had been stationed in the computer room inside the maze with the event organizer, Steve Chandler, and the nerds who were running the light and sound effects. At six, she was set to trade with Montoya and run the fortune teller booth while Montoya took over helping in the maze. Montoya had come across to Gordon's popcorn booth at 6:20 asking what in God's name had happened to her replacement, and they had both tried her on their walkies with no luck. She wasn't responding; and after the first few times, they couldn't even get static. Gordon had just been starting to get worried when all hell had broken loose. Calls had started coming in from inside the maze, yelling and crying and saying broken and terrified things about him. The Joker. By the time they realized that all communications with the maze control room had been cut off, they had a count of fifteen missing cops and almost thirty Sunrise staffers, all presumed trapped inside the maze, along with a group of about twenty-five civilians who had been touring the maze at the time. Then Lane had gotten out – his costume as a moving part of the scenery had enabled him to evade the Joker's men and make it out an emergency exit – and had filled them in on what he had heard over the intercom. Gordon was almost nauseous. Unless SWAT was very careful, or very lucky, that poor pizza boy was as good as dead.
Gordon ducked into the alley at the end of the tent-lined street, heading for his squad car. His Kevlar vest hadn't fit under the clown suit, so he had left it in the car in case of an emergency. And wouldn't you know it, here was an emergency, right on cue. "Well, that's Gotham for you," he mumbled to himself as he grabbed the door handle. He caught a glimpse of himself in the side mirror then, the greasepaint on his face smeared almost beyond any recognizable pattern. And he had lost the nose, somewhere. Good riddance, he thought as he bent into the car and pulled out the vest. He wasn't particularly fond of clowns anymore, anyway.
"What do I need to know, Gordon?" The Commissioner almost jumped out of his skin as the gravelly voice came out of the shadows behind him. He froze, one arm in the vest and one out, and spun around on his heels. There was no one standing behind him, but in the stack of old cardboard packing boxes against the alley wall he thought he heard the faintest hint of movement. His eyes scanned the darkness – and found a familiar shape among the natural shadows.
"And here I thought you decided to stay put in your cave," he murmured to the cowled figure, with more than a little relief in his voice.
"Gotham needs me," the silhouette growled, and this time Gordon thought he could make out the tips of the Batman's pointed ears at the edge of one of the packing crates.
"If they see you, I can't do anything to help you," he warned, putting his other arm in the vest and closing the squad car door. And it was true. The Batman was a fugitive; he had been ever since the craziness at the end of the summer, when he had bravely taken the blame for Harvey Dent's crimes in order to preserve the late D.A.'s shining legacy and thus retain the headway he had made in cleaning up Gotham's political scene. So far it had worked. The city had been (relatively) quiet, GPD had been able to do the job of policing without the Batman's help, and the Batman's plan to let Dent remain the hero had been a good one. The people of Gotham had needed an icon with a face they could see. And they got one with two faces for the price of one, thought Gordon wryly. But he had been right in believing that the Batman knew what Gotham needed. And right now, he admitted, what it needed was its Dark Knight. The shape in the boxes moved slightly closer to him.
"That's my risk to worry about, not yours. I saw the news. They said it was the Joker."
"Yeah," Gordon replied, feeling a little hopeful for the first time since the beginning of the evening. "I can't stay here with you long, and we can't communicate again like this… but here's what we know. About an hour ago, the Joker and his gang infiltrated the haunted house maze. They hacked the intercom system. He's turned it into another one of his …interactive social 'experiments.' They've got a pizza delivery boy, uh… Osborne. Nathan Osborne. They've got him tied up somewhere in the maze. Joker announced that if one of the civilians searches the maze, finds him, and frees him, everyone is free to go, but no one can leave the maze and GPD can't get involved. If we go in or any of them go out, the kid dies. He's the cheese at the end of a very big lab rat maze. We're in the middle of trying to get connected to the wireless systems so we can see through the security cameras. Maybe if we do that, we can see where the kid is, where everyone else is, and where the Joker's guard is weakest."
"How many inside?" Batman grumbled from the shadows. Gordon did the math.
"About seventy people all together. Fifteen are GPD, trapped inside without their weapons or anything. The rest are staffers or patrons."
"Building schematics?" the shape asked.
"I can't risk getting you a copy. You're on your own," Gordon sighed, glancing at the mouth of the alley. If he was gone much longer, someone would come looking. "But I can tell you that they're most likely in the main building, not the part of the maze we added on. That's where the control room is, and that's where all the most complicated hiding places will be."
"How many clowns with him?"
"At least five," Gordon answered, "but we can't be sure." The Dark Knight was silent for a moment, taking in all the information. Then he leaned his head ever so slightly out of the shadows.
"Does he have the girl with him? Quinn?"
"Yeah," answered Gordon grimly. "I think Lane saw her go in with them. Does that make a difference?"
"It makes it more complicated," Batman responded. Gordon nodded, then glanced at the alley opening again. Good, no one coming yet. He turned back to the shadows.
"If we send in the SWAT guys, will you—" But he stopped. He was talking to a blank wall and a pile of boxes. He gritted his teeth in momentary frustration, then he just shook his head. "Every…time," he grumbled. Then he left the squad car and headed back toward the lights and sirens in the street.
"What's up, Boss?" Peter mumbled into the walkie around a mouthful of pizza. He was staring at a monitor showing a feed from one of the maze's handful of security cameras; there was a fight about to break out between two maze-goers in the mad scientist room, and it looked like it would be interesting. Behind him, Bobby crouched nervously at the computer room door, eyes flicking back and forth between that position and the exit at the other side of the room, which led to the alley behind the building. At his feet lay the bodies of maze organizer Steve Chandler and the three computer whizzes who had been running the show, riddled with bullet holes. Peter's walkie-talkie hissed static at him again.
"Gimme an update, Pete. It's 7:00 PM. Do we know where our… fine, intrepid Gothamites are?" Peter scooted his chair back to give himself a wide view of all the monitors.
"Okay…," he began, putting down the half-eaten slice of pepperoni and wiping marinara out of his beard. "Here's what we got, boss. Nobody in the front room, but I got a visual on Dionté watching the door; Dan's covering the emergency exit in the zombie room, and so far he's scared off one or two attempted escapes; we've got four college kids leaving the freezer room and heading for the evil dollhouse room, good luck to them, that place makes me want to shit my pants; two couples in the mad scientist room and the boys are about to fight—"
"Anybody near the mirrorroom is what I meant, Petey," the Joker's voice clicked in through more static. "I need to know if any of those brave souls out there are actually close to finding us."
"No worries, boss," Pete answered calmly, switching a couple monitors to show different camera views. "Looks like…. Okay, we got a couple big guys in the hall with the crazy doors, but they're just sitting. Looks like they gave up. Got a… couple of old farts in the creepy hillbilly cabin room…. Okay, the closest to you is a guy and pregnant chick, two rooms over. I don't think you've got anything to worry about."
"Any noise from Gordon and his monkeys outside?"
"None so far, boss," Peter replied as he leaned back in his chair again and retrieved his pizza slice. "I'd say they're working on getting the wireless back up so they can see the cameras, trying to keep a low profile around the actual building. Good move on their part. Don't think they'll get it for a while, though. I screwed up that router pretty good." And here he rewarded himself with an extra large bite, taking off half the crust. There was a moment of silence from the Joker's end of the walkie-talkie, then he clicked back in.
"Any sign of Mr. Tall, Dark, and, Raspy?" the Joker's voice quizzed from across the maze. Peter laughed around the pizza, then swallowed (with some effort).
"Nope. No bats in sight. We got clear skies." He finished off the pizza slice and glanced around the control room. Bobby flicked him a paranoid glance, which was made even more intense by his Beetlejuice makeup, and Pete turned back to the walkie. "The Boob is about to have a panic attack, as usual, but other than that, seven o'clock and all's well."
"Okay," the Joker's voice hissed. "Keep me posted. Any movement, I need to know immediately."
"Will do, Boss," Peter responded, and as the walkie clicked off, he rocked back in the chair and selected another slice of pizza. He grinned. If it were up to him… everyone they kidnapped would be a pizza boy. Nothing in the world tasted quite so good as free pizza.
The Joker turned off the walkie-talkie and tossed it to Harley, who was sitting on the floor next to the half-conscious Nathan. True to her training, Harley had started with the extremities – she had spent most of the last half hour playing tic tac toe on the pizza boy's legs with the Joker's knife. Now she put down the walkie and got up, dusting off the butt of her plaid skirt before handing the blade back to him. The prisoner was bleeding from four or five different grids she had sliced into his skin, but he had recovered consciousness and, other than being woozy from blood loss, he seemed relatively unmoved. The Joker frowned at him.
"Yooouuu… are one tough nut to crack, Nate old pal. Aren't you? Mmm?" Leaning down into Nathan's face, he grabbed the large chin and shook him, squeezing his cheeks together to make absurd faces. "Yeah, you are. All this… carving, and… blood loss…. Most people are screaming for Mommy right now, but not… you. No, …no, no. No, we've gotta find something else to do with you, because this is just… no… fun. Hmm?" The Joker punctuated each of the words with a little smack to the pizza boy's face. "Yeaaahhh…. You're one tough nut." He paused at that, as if struck by a thought. "Hmm. Speaking of…." He turned to Harley. "Hey, Harl."
"Yeah, J?" she responded, sidling up to him as he stood up.
"Nuts," he repeated. "Why not chop them off? Maybe that'll get things started." He eyed the prisoner keenly, checking his reaction. Nathan's eyebrow was raised, but he huffed mockingly behind the duct tape. Was he trying to imply that the thought of losing his balls didn't intimidate him? Or was he putting on a great poker face in hopes that the Joker would try something else? The Joker didn't know, but he was more than willing to call his bluff. Running his tongue pensively over his scars, he bounced the knife in his hand a couple of times and approached the prisoner. Harley wrinkled up her nose.
"Eew," she gagged. "Well I'll help hold him still, but I ain't watchin'."
"Ah, developing a weak stomach, Harl?" the Joker quizzed. Harley scoffed.
"Oh, God, no!" she laughed as she walked around behind Nathan to hold his shoulders. "I just got no intention of looking at this kid's balls. On or off his body." She was smiling sardonically, and then she let the expression slide into seductiveness. "I've already got all the man I wanna look at." Harley let her eyes run up and down the Joker's body at that, hoping to get some kind of flirty response out of him in return. He simply stared at her, darkly, and a little bit of the hot anger from a few days before seemed to bubble up behind his eyes before he bent down and turned all his attention to the hapless delivery boy.
THUD. All three heads turned simultaneously toward the door to the mirror room, where the sounds of a scuffle could be heard. The thud came again, the sound of Billy forcing somebody up against the wall outside the door, and the Joker sprang to attention like a pit bull on guard duty.
"Buckle up, Harl, we got company," he growled, and Harley reached automatically into his coat and drew out the revolver he always reserved for her, the magnum she had affectionately nicknamed "Dirty Harriet." The Joker grinned excitedly. "Aaaallll right, good. Let's see which rat made it through the maze first. And then let's see if they can earn the cheese." They stood between Nathan and the door, weapons drawn, as Billy dragged his opponent into the mirror room and shoved them to the floor.
It was an old lady. Well, Harley amended, not old old, but definitely retirement material. She looked like everyone's Aunt Mildred. Her graying hair was kept in short curls, she was wearing coke-bottle glasses and some sort of sweatshirt with kittens, and her socks matched the color of the sweats. Typical retired schoolteacher, most likely. She was a hefty woman, which was why Billy had needed more than thirty seconds to subdue her; but now that she was on the ground, most of the fight seemed to leave her. Harley lowered the revolver, and the Joker raised one skeptical eyebrow.
"This is it?" he sneered. "Maze full of people, including Gotham's FINEST, and the first person to find the cheese is Grandma?" The woman didn't respond; as it often did, her first look at the Joker in person had completely erased anything she might have been thinking of saying. Impatient, the Joker nudged her with a dirty suede shoe, and she fell over onto her generous rump with a little gasp. "Well, congratulations, Granny. You found the poor, helpless pizza boy. Good job. You might win the prize after all. Oh. There's one more thing, though." Stepping back, the Joker held out his arms. "You've got to fight us for him. Earn everything you get, right Harl?"
"That's right, J!" she giggled, her eyes starting to take on the same gleam as his. The woman's wide, terrified eyes looked up at Harley, as if seeing her for the first time. They appealed to her, but she ignored them coldly. This was starting to be too much fun. Finding no help in her fellow female, the woman flicked her eyes first to Nathan, bound and gagged on the floor a few feet away, and then up to the Joker with an expression like a rabbit staring at the tire of a semi truck.
"Come on, now, time's a-wasting…" the Joker grumbled in an eerie sing-song. The old woman pushed her glasses up on her nose with a shaky hand and looked back at Nathan. Their eyes met across the room, and for a moment her expression was unreadable. Then Nathan's eyes widened, and he gasped behind the duct tape.
"I'm sorry," the woman whispered to him. Then she sprang up and made a run for the door. It was unexpected, and she almost made it; then Billy got a fistful of her sweatshirt and stopped her with a hard grab. She made a little choking noise in her throat as the collar dug in. The Joker tut-tutted at her.
"Granny, Granny, Granny…" he murmured. "You'd think a woman of your… advanced age would have more… gumption. Mmm?" Folding his arms seriously, looking for all the world like a businessman sizing up a deal, the Joker turned to Harley. "Whaddya think, Harl; that looked like an …escape attempt… to me. Hmm?"
"Oh yeah," Harley agreed. "Definitely." As Harley nodded, the woman's eyes bugged. What was it the Joker had said on the speakers? Try to leave, and you die? But…. But she hadn't been trying to leave the maze, just the room! The woman struggled vainly against Billy's grip on her sweatshirt.
"No, wait!" she protested. "I wasn't escaping, I was—"
"Billy, shoot her."
"No!" Over her cries, Billy instinctively shoved her to the floor and leveled his automatic rifle at her face. Then he hesitated for a split second. It was a good thing he did.
"Wait!" the Joker barked, and Billy immediately turned the gun away. The old woman tried to crawl for the door, but Billy deftly stepped down on her wrist to hold her still.
"What?" Billy said nervously. The Joker was looking the woman over coldly; then tilted his head slowly and turned to Harley.
"I've got a better idea." Retracting Cupid back into its handle, he slipped the knife into his coat and came around behind Harley, hovering over her shoulders as his hands slipped up to trace her collarbone. "You do it." Harley shivered from the tickle of the Joker's breath on her neck, and the gun in her hand suddenly felt like a living creature she wanted to drop. Shoot her? She, Harley, shoot the old lady? It was a predicament Harley hadn't really given any consideration but, obviously, one that was inevitable. And Harley wasn't certain she could actually go through with it. Oh, sure, she had spent the past month brandishing needles and hammers and pointing guns at people – and looking damn good doing it, if she did say so herself – but she had never actually dealt a fatal blow. As the Joker's henchwoman, she supposed it was almost a prerequisite for the job but… Harley had never killed anyone before. And she wasn't entirely sure she could trust herself to pull the trigger.
"Me, J?" she asked timidly, turning her face up to his. There was a dark hilarity dancing in his eyes that made her both nervous and a little aroused, and she noticed absently as he grinned that his face paint was smudged where she had kissed him earlier.
"You wanna be promoted from associate?" he quipped, squeezing her shoulders, and she nodded. "Okay, then, Har-ley-kins, she's all yours. Your first kill. Ah… do a good job, and we'll take a picture and hang it on the fridge." He grinned that animalistic grin at her, the one that was both vicious and childlike. Harley gulped.
"If you think I can," she began.
"Oh. You can. You just, ah… aim, aaaannndd…." Closing one eye, he mimicked the firing of a gun with his thumb and index finger, pointing directly at the space between the old woman's rather saggy breasts. Harley took a deep breath as the Joker motioned to Billy. "Hand her the rifle, Billy-boy, let's do it right."
"Here," Billy mumbled, passing the old lady off to the Joker (who held her still by her hair) and bringing the gun over to Harley. The girl waved him off.
"No, I don't want the big one," she said nervously. "I use that thing, it'll throw me across the room. And besides," she mumbled, bringing her revolver up level with her face to examine it. "I want to use my own. It is a special moment, you know." Her eyes flicked up to the Joker, who grinned approvingly.
"Thaaaat's my girl," he murmured, digging his fingers tighter into the old woman's gray curls. The lady was crying now, and coupled with the coke-bottle lenses, it made her eyes look enormous and slimy. The Joker shook her. "That's enough. That's ENOUGH, hey! Hush. You're the young lady's first kill, try to act presentably."
"Okay," Harley sighed, trying to calm her breathing. It wouldn't be good to have shaky hands and miss the bulls-eye. Billy was making a pained face, but he didn't voice all his thoughts. He had only one comment.
"Glad it's you and not me this time, sis." He grimaced. "Lady reminds me of my grandmother."
Harley thought of Billy's Nana, the woman they had used as blackmail to get him to rejoin the gang. It was a bad train of thought. She stopped herself before it caused her to chicken out and instead, she looked at the Joker's face, painted with a thick layer of grim satisfaction. She grinned at him in return. Then she answered Billy without even looking at him.
"Yeah, well. My grandmother's a bitch." And with that, she pulled the trigger.
Gordon was about thirty seconds away from pulling his hair out with frustration when the cell phone in his back pocket buzzed quietly. He eyed the other cops standing around him in the van; they were all watching the computer experts working their magic on the disconnected wireless network, and he took advantage of their distraction to slip out into the chilly street. It was beginning to rain, a cold, slow drizzle that was too light for a hood but too annoying to simply stand in. Gordon pulled out the cell phone and brought up the text message, wiping away tiny droplets of rain as they hit the screen. The number made him pause. They were digits he hadn't seen in months, a number he had never saved into his contact list but that he recognized on sight. The message was short.
Back of the maze. Mirror room. I'm going in.
Gordon wiped the rain away and read the message again, just to make sure. Then he pressed delete.
"Good luck," he murmured in the direction of the maze building, and before he climbed back into the van, his sharp eyes scanned the roof for any dark, familiar shapes.
The Joker was in a fine mood. For once that night, something felt like it was going well. Everything had been a little iffy, a little out of whack, since Harley had joined the gang… and he'd been more than a little nervous that his… moment of weakness… the other day had damaged his control of her, but…. The Joker looked over to where Harley stood over the body of the old woman, looking for all the world like a hunter with a big buck behind her and eyeing the underbrush for the next target. He figured maybe he hadn't damaged anything after all. Maybe, he thought with some surprise, it had actually helped. He had worried that she'd resist the eventual command to kill – she'd been reluctant with Billy's grandmother, and that was just intimidation, so he had imagined all sorts of horrors for when she actually had to take a life. He'd been prepared to have to ditch her. Literally. There was a good drainage ditch at the edge of the Narrows not far from her old apartment where bodies went unnoticed for months. But she had surprised him. All it had taken was a little …caress… of her shoulders, and she'd blown a hole in the old lady without a second thought. It looked like giving her what she'd wanted had only whetted her appetite for more.
Well.
He could certainly use that new leverage to his advantage. He walked over to where Harley was pulling herself away from the corpse to recommence menacing the prisoner.
"Did I do it all right, J?" she piped childishly, big blue eyes turned up to him like a first grader showing off a drawing. She'd been scared to death she'd miss, even from a few feet away, or that she'd hit the wrong spot and blow off the lady's arm instead of hitting vital organs. And she'd also been worried that she'd freak out when the woman's gut exploded in front of her. As it turns out, though, she hadn't. It hadn't even been that bad, really; she'd pulled the trigger, braced her ears for the shot, and watched as a small hole had opened up in the woman's chest. Her sweatshirt had barely wrinkled, although the kittens on the front had slowly seeped up a large amount of dark blood. It had all felt sort of detached, like someone else had fired the shot.
Of course, the reality had sunk in when she'd seen the splash of blood and tissue on the mirrored wall behind the body and had gotten a look at the softball sized cave of an exit wound in the back. That had been a bit of a shock. But the Joker's wild hilarity and obvious approval had more than made up for it.
"Ah, well, Har-ley-kins," he grumbled not unpleasantly, slipping his hands around her waist, "there aren't really many wrong ways to shoot someone. As long as you don't miss. Now… with a knife… there's technique, skill, all that… buuutttt…." He trailed off, wrapping his arms further around her and burrowing his chin into her neck so he could look both at her and at Nathan on the floor. It was a great angle; all he had to do was flick his eyes downward and he could see directly down her shirt. Nerves from her first kill had made her sweat, and he could almost smell the excitement still on her. Plus her skin was still slightly damp, so the fake blood drizzled down her chest was red and vivid again, and her breasts were glistening in all the reflected lights from the mirrors. The Joker thought distractedly that they looked like plump little pastries covered in crystallized sugar.
Suddenly he found himself developing a sweet tooth.
"You did fine," he finished, aware that his voice was thickening a little with desire. Harley bounced a little in his arms, making a small "eep" noise that the Joker realized he was unfortunately becoming accustomed to.
"Really, J?" she grinned, feeling him shift his grip and slide his face further down into the hollow of her neck. Harley giggled against his face. "Yay! I was worried I'd screw it up or something." On the floor in front of them, Nathan was raising a dark eyebrow and mumbling something under the tape, and Harley tilted her head at him. Her forehead scrunched up with a sudden thought. "Hey, J?"
"Hmm," he grunted, far too engaged in the feeling of her hot skin against his face to actually care what she was asking. Harley reached her hand up and began playing with his hair absently as she spoke.
"I just thought of something. You remember what he said earlier about Chinese water torture?"
"Yeah," the Joker responded uninterestedly. Actually, he only half remembered. Something about being better than having braces. He hadn't really been paying attention, and Harley's fingernails were scratching softly at his scalp, and right now he really didn't care what the hell the kid had said.
"Well, I was just thinking," Harley simpered, still looking at the pizza boy with a detached gaze. "I remember braces. And they really did suck. But you know what sucked worse than getting braces?"
"What," the Joker mumbled, nosing Harley's pigtail out of the way so he could get his face fully against her throat. Harley's eyes narrowed.
"Getting my braces taken off." Her eyes turned down to the Joker's face, waiting for him to catch her meaning. Nathan caught it first.
"Nmmmmmmph!" he protested under the duct tape. "Nmmh phhh mhhhphhphh!" He began scrabbling his canvas tennis shoes against the floor in a vain attempt to scoot himself toward the exit. All he succeeded in doing was falling over. The Joker lifted his head an inch or so off Harley's neck.
"What?" he mumbled, only half catching what was happening. Harley grinned at him viciously.
"Braces, J," she repeated. "He was talking about how awful they were. But the worst part I remember was getting them taken off. All the pliers, and the pulling, and then the sander, having the brackets jerked off my molars…." She let her voice trail off as the Joker's eyes turned dark and sparkling with her meaning. He lifted his head all the way off her shoulder.
"Harley…" he said slowly, sliding his hands up to her ribs as he stared at her. "That might possibly be the best idea you've ever had." Without warning, he grabbed Harley's pigtails and pulled her to him in a violent kiss. His teeth dug into her lip briefly before he released her, giving her a smack on the butt that somehow made it up under the pleated skirt as he moved her to the side. He was grinning from ear to ear, and the smeared areas of his makeup made the structure of the scars underneath more visible. On the floor, Nathan redoubled his efforts to crawl away.
"Now, now…." The Joker began humming eerily as he crossed the floor to the prisoner in two long strides. He reached down and snatched the back of Nathan's collar, dragging him back to his original spot and pulling him upright. "We just want your o-PIN-ion, Nate, old pal, just a liiiiittttllle commentary. Hmm?" He crouched down and smacked the pizza boy's cheek. Nathan looked up at him with sheer panic. His dark eyes were as big as saucers, and he was still trying to scream behind the tape. The Joker practically giggled. "Oh, goodie, he wants to talk! I think he wants to talk, Harl!" Behind him, Harley giggled. She bent over the Joker's broad back, her hands balanced on his shoulders.
"Well, let's hear him, then!" she smiled. She had made a good suggestion, and the Joker's reaction to it had given her a boost of confidence unparalleled by anything that had happened between them so far. She grinned triumphantly over the Joker's head as he reached out and ripped the tape off the prisoner's mouth.
"OH GOD NO NOT THE BRACES!" Nathan spat immediately. "Holy Mother of God, NO! Please, no, GOD NO, ANYTHING but the BRACES!" He tried again to wiggle away. The Joker's face lit up like a child on Christmas morning.
"O-hoo!" he exclaimed, then he began cackling. "Oh-ho, Harley!" he laughed, reaching behind him and rubbing her leg excitedly. "You hit a nerve with this one, Harley-baby! We've FInally found the CRACK in Pizza Boy's shell! Woo-ha-ha! Mm-hmm-hm!" Chuckling darkly, he reached into his coat. "BILLY! Come hold him."
"NO!" Nathan screamed as Billy sauntered over from the doorway. Leaning his gun against one of the nearby mirrors, Billy gave Nathan the barest of stoic glances before grabbing him firmly from behind, one arm around the pizza boy's broad shoulders and the other hand dug into his short, dark hair. He wriggled like a dying fish, but even though he was muscular, he had lost enough blood that Billy easily overpowered him. The Joker, meanwhile, continued to chuckle and hum to himself as he began pulling a variety of objects out of his coat. His hand closed around something, and he jerked it out.
"A-HAaaa….no. Not that." He tossed the potato peeler to the floor and tried again. "Aaaaannnndd…..nope." He dropped the two screwdrivers next to the peeler and went for a different pocket. Three small knives, one corkscrew, and one very old hunk of metal later, he finally found what he was looking for – a pair of needle nosed pliers. "TA-DAAAAA!" he announced. Nathan screamed like a banshee.
"OH, JESUS, NO! Please, I'll do anything!" He was half-drooling with terror, and Billy's grip on his hair pulled at his forehead and made his eyes look even wider. The Joker opened and closed the pliers playfully.
"Sorry to be a DIS-cour-age-ment, Nate, old buddy, but nothing you could do would be quite as… entertaining… as the …Braces Removal Symphony I'm about to conduct." He moved the pliers toward the pizza boys' screaming mouth.
"Why don't you grab the wire in the front and pull, J?" Harley suggested. "It'll be really painful – might even pull his front teeth out." The Joker stopped a couple of inches from Nathan's face, and the prisoner gasped in relief.
"And in one majestic sentence, sweetheart, you have managed to …plummet yourself to the depths of idiocy again," the Joker growled. Shaking his head, he moved the pliers back toward the prisoner, aiming for the spot where the wire began near the molars. Harley frowned.
"Whaddya mean, J?" she simpered. "I was just thinking that if you took it from the front, you'd get the maximum pain for the minimum effort, that's all. You can—"
"Shut UP, Harley!" he spat. The prisoner breathed another sigh of relief as the Joker stood up, gripping the pliers like a knife ready to stab. Harley froze, staring up at the Joker with wide blue eyes as he advanced toward her. "You fail to realize the key elements of torture, Har-ley-kins… so let me spell it out for you. Maybe it will sink into that cute little brain of yours." He tapped her on the head sharply with the handle of the pliers. "It's not about… maximizing pain… it's about …elongating… the pain. Making it last. You start with the front, it's over too quickly. There's no time to play with him. No time to break down his nerves, shut down his logical thought. Soooo, you start from the side. Are you getting this? You start from one end of the wire, and you pull slowly… and you pop off the brackets one… by… one… until he can't even remember his NAME. THAT'S how you torture someone, Harl. See if you can remember that, and maybe you'll turn out to be halfway useful." He wiggled her chin roughly, and at this last sentence he shoved her face away and turned back toward the prisoner on the floor.
"But J, wouldn't—" Her sentence was cut off sharply as the Joker whipped his arm around and slapped her hard across the mouth. It was so quick and so hard that for a moment the handprint stood out white on her skin, and her face felt cold before it felt anything else. The Joker glowered at her.
"NO…more… suggestions. Got it?" His voice had turned dangerous in an instant, and Harley could only nod as she recovered from the shock. "Good. Billy, hold him tight." Behind Nathan on the floor, Billy obliged and dug his fingers further into the pizza boy's hair. He had to keep his head still, or the Joker wouldn't be able to get the pliers in a good grip on the wire. As the Joker pulled Nathan's lips apart, examining him like some hellish dentist at a checkup, Billy's eyes drifted over to Harley. She was standing off to herself, one hand clasped to her face, but although she looked to still be in shock, Billy could see in her eyes that she was calculating how she might win back the Joker's good mood. He often shifted violently from approbation to tongue lashings, and Harley was beginning to develop a system for how to cope with it. But then again, Billy thought, he was beginning to suspect that Harley was often the cause of the shifts. Sometimes her actions, sometimes her mere presence, and the Joker would swing violently from up to down and back again. It was a dangerous little roller coaster, and Billy was a bit scared of how it would end.
Way back in ninth grade, Billy's science teacher had done an experiment once that had really stuck with him. They had been talking about sound waves and vibrations, and someone in class had asked how those opera singers broke glass or whatever with their voices. Mr. Mullis had turned it into a teachable moment, and the next day he had brought in a wine glass, a tuning fork, and a little amp. He had explained that everything vibrates at a certain pitch, its resonant frequency, and when a sound wave matched an object's resonant frequency it could cause the vibrations to be so violent that the object would break. He had used the tuning fork to listen for the wine glass's frequency, played a matching note on a tape, and put the glass in front of the amp as the sound waves blared out. Billy remembered the way the glass had looked just before it shattered – it had almost appeared to be wobbling, dancing even, the sides oscillating back and forth increasingly until finally it had burst into dozens of shards. It was an image he had never forgotten.
Now, years later, as he knelt on the floor of the mirror room holding tightly to the Boss's prisoner, he made the connection. Harley was the Joker's resonant frequency.
Harley was a force that the Joker didn't know how to handle – a force that matched his inner frequency so well that it caused him to waver, oscillating between certainty and uncertainty, between anger and desire, sometimes so violently that the edges of his universe began to wobble. And if the oscillation continued, he would eventually shatter like glass vibrating itself into pieces. Billy gritted his teeth against Nathan's struggles, and another thought struck him. Perhaps that wouldn't be such a bad thing. Perhaps the Joker needed to be shattered – if only so he could be pieced back together again, one shard at a time.
"Ah, come on, Nate-y Boy," the Joker was saying in his characteristic sing-song tone. "Just hold your mouth still, and it won't hurt as much. Or at least, you can tell yourself that." He was trying to get a good grip on the back of the wire; unfortunately for him, the constant movement of Nathan's mouth was making aiming difficult. The pizza boy's eyes were squeezed tightly shut, the lids damp with the beginnings of tears, and he was in the process of reciting every prayer he could think of – making the Joker's task of grabbing the wire infinitely more difficult.
"Hail Mary, full of grace… blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus… MMPH… Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now AND AT THE HOUR Oooo-AAAGHHHH! HOLY FUCK!" The pizza boy's Ave descended into screaming as the Joker found the wire and yanked. It ripped loose from the bracket on the molar and poked a hole in Nathan's jaw before the Joker took hold of it again and twisted it around the pliers for another pull.
"OH, yeah, you LIKED that, didn't you? Hmm? Yeah…. Hmm-hmm-hmm…." Beginning to hum softly to himself, the Joker twisted and pulled again, this time ripping the wire out of two brackets in one jerk. Nathan tried to scream again, gurgled a little as some blood ran down his throat, and was reduced to crying. The Joker's smile grew sickeningly wide.
Watching over the Joker's shoulder, Harley forced back tears of her own. It had been a stupid suggestion, she admitted. She should have known that time was more important than pain level. He'd said it time and again when he was explaining why he used blades instead of guns. It was a process. She should have thought it through. Her face was still stinging from his slap, and it prompted her to start thinking again. She had to get back in his good graces. No more suggestions tonight, she told herself. Just do whatever he tells you, volunteer to help and take direction. Harley took a deep breath and approached the Joker, coming up behind him and kneeling at his back just as he pulled the wire off the prisoner's front four teeth.
"Umm… J?" she murmured, waiting a second for a response and then slipping her hands up onto his shoulders. He flinched.
"What?" He jerked around to face her, prematurely ripping the wire from another two brackets. Harley squeezed his shoulders through the thick wool coat, hoping he could feel the warmth from her hands in spite of the fabric. That might help her case.
"Umm, J, can… can I help? Please?" She put on her most sincere face. The Joker raised a paint-caked eyebrow at her, as if to ask why he should be so generous. Harley gulped. "Please? I just wanna help. No suggestions, I promise! I'll do whatever you tell me!" She let her hands slide closer to his collar. He glared at her for another few seconds, as if he wasn't sure whether or not he should humor her; then Harley slipped her fingers inside the collar of the coat, stroking the back of his neck, and he decided very solidly that humoring her would be a good idea.
"Fine," he grumbled. Flicking his wrist, he jerked the remainder of the wire off Nathan's top teeth, causing the pizza boy to scream again. He shook the twisted wire off the pliers and handed them to Harley, scooting out of the way to let her crouch directly in front of the prisoner. Planting himself on the floor behind her, he grabbed hold of her waist, as if directing her. "Just pull off the bottom wire, like I did, from the side. Slowly." Harley opened and closed the pliers experimentally, then turned her head around to look at him.
"Can I start from the opposite side? Make it interesting?" Her blue eyes opened a little wider in an attempt to be convincing. The Joker thought about it as he tightened his arms around her waist.
"Sure," he mumbled. "Ah, after all, variety is the …spice of life." He snuggled his head back into the curve of her neck as she plunged the pliers into the delivery boy's mouth. She had to tug once or twice to get it loose – there was no leverage at the start of the wire, and her wrists weren't as strong as the Joker's – but then it came out of the bracket with a pop. Nathan screamed again, and Harley almost lost her balance, tumbling backwards against the Joker's chest. She giggled uncontrollably.
"That… was cool." She was grinning and flushed with adrenaline, and the Joker couldn't help smiling along.
"How about seeing if the others will pop like that one did?" he suggested, his mouth against her ear. She grinned again, this time a little maliciously.
"Whatever you say, J," she laughed; then she wrapped the wire around the pliers and began jerking hard on the hapless pizza boy's mouth. Each time the wire pulled loose from a bracket, Nathan's screams became a little less like screams and a little more like whimpers until finally, the other side bracket pulled loose and Harley shook the tangled wire off onto the floor with the other one. After that it took them the better part of half an hour to get each of the brackets off the surface of his teeth. They were cemented on, and the Joker had to show Harley how to quickly twist the pliers so they snapped the brackets out of the cement without pulling the tooth. The first time she did it, the momentum of her hands carried the pliers down hard into Nathan's gums, splitting them open right below his bottom left eyetooth. But she got the hang of it. One or two of the teeth chipped in half under this treatment, and the Joker decided they should leave the shards of enamel inside the pizza boy's mouth – they floated around on his tongue, threatening to cut his cheeks or slide down his throat. The Joker was positively giddy by the time they got all the brackets off; the prisoner was a crying wreck, so weak and demoralized that Billy didn't even really have to hold him still – just hold him up. Harley was doing a fine job of working with the pliers. And best of all, he had gotten to watch the whole ordeal with his head perched in the hollow of Harley's shoulder, a position from which he had already determined the view was fantastic. Sure, she'd had a little bit of a blonde moment back there. But hey. She learned quick. She was eager to please (even if it was sometimes disgusting…). And whenever she jerked the pliers back from the kid's mouth, the view down her shirt got even better. The Joker was mildly annoyed that he could feel himself getting all… hot and bothered again. But it was only a little annoyance. He could deal with it.
"Nnnnnnnhhh-hhnnnnnn…," the pizza boy was sobbing. It sounded a little like he was trying to say "please" without swallowing the pieces of tooth floating in his saliva. Harley giggled at him, relishing the feel of the Joker chuckling against her neck.
"Awww, what's the matter? You got dentist anxiety?" She grinned viciously, and Nathan let out another sob before dropping his head. Billy pulled him back up by the hair as Harley continued. "It's okay. So do I. I hate that place. But don't worry. We're almost done. I just gotta get at those bands on your molars, and then you can have a lollipop!" There was a cackle from the Joker at that, muffled by Harley's hair, and Nathan attempted to struggle again. The wide metal bands had been fitted to his back teeth, all the way around each molar, and they would have to be pried off with all the force the pliers could provide. The pizza boy wiggled his head, but Billy got his grip back and forced him into stillness. As soon as he was immobile again, Harley jammed the pliers into his mouth and grabbed at the metal circle on the back right molar. "Come on… come on…" she growled. The pliers had a good grip, but the band was so firmly set around the tooth that she was more likely to uproot it before she got the band off. If she could pull it outward, bend it away from the enamel, she could get the pliers under and yank upward, but she wasn't strong enough to bend it. She sighed and wiped her forehead. "Hmph. It's no use, J. I don't have the muscles in my wrists, I can't get it out. I guess you get to do this part." Turning in his grasp, she offered him the pliers. After a moment's pause, the Joker peeled his face out of her neck reluctantly and took them.
"Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhh… I suppose I could finish the job for you, Harleykins… but, ah… you owe me later." He raised an eyebrow at her teasingly, enjoying the quick blush that came up on her cheeks. She scooted out of his way, standing up to give her legs a rest, and he allowed himself a peek under her skirt before she backed up and let him sit in front of the prisoner. "Aaaallll right, Nate, old pal, let's see what we have here." He shoved the pliers back into the delivery boy's mouth and poked at the edges of the metal band, looking for a weak point he could get under with the tool. "Nurse… says if you're good, you get a lollipop. What flavor d'you like best, hmm? Apple? Watermelon? Strawberry? Personally, I prefer cherry. Or, more accurately, cherry bomb. Whaddya think? If I put one on a stick, will that be a good prize? I realize your mouth will be a little… sore… after all this …dental work, buuuutttttt… a lolly makes everything better, RIGHT?" He had managed to get the pliers up under the edge of the band, and he cackled at his own joke, drowning out Nathan's moan. Clenching the pliers tightly, he jerked upward. Nathan screamed, almost swallowing one of the stray pieces of tooth as the band warped and loosened. It took another two pulls, however, to actually get it off the tooth. The Joker pulled it out and looked at it; it was dripping with saliva and blood, and had been twisted so it no longer retained the shape of the molar. Chuckling, he tossed it over his shoulder and went after the band on the other side of Nathan's mouth. "Ah, one down…" he smirked, and the pizza boy let loose a fresh wave of tears.
Getting the second band off was easier. The teeth on that side were less crowded, and the band was looser, so it came off clean in one big yank. It was the third band, the top right molar, that gave the Joker all the trouble. It had bent itself under on the edge, which meant there was almost no entry for the pliers. The Joker tried going around to the other side of the tooth, but he had to stretch the jaw so far that the hole he had poked earlier with the wire started to open up into a gash, and all the blood was obstructing his view of the band itself. He eventually settled on a solution – chip the tooth to make an opening. He had to whack at the molar with the pliers for two or three minutes to get it to crack, and all the while Nathan screamed like a banshee – the sounds were muffled by the Joker's hands in his mouth, but they were still impressive given the situation. The band was tight, and so even after the Joker got a good grip, it took three or four pulls to get it off. It came out warped, and the part of the tooth that remained was jagged. All in all, ten minutes had passed before the Joker finally got to the last band.
"Take another step and you're dead, bitch."
The Joker whirled around at the voice, and Billy's eyes snapped upward. What they saw made the Joker drop the pliers in surprise. A young woman was standing a few feet away, near the mirror room door; she had been rendered immobile by Harley, who had a firm grip on her strawberry blonde ponytail and the Magnum pointed in the vague direction of her head. Her intent was made immediately obvious by the large metal pipe in her hand – she had clearly been attempting to free Nathan, using the pipe as a weapon. It was also immediately obvious that she was pregnant. Very, VERY pregnant, Billy remarked internally. Probably almost ready to pop any day now. She was trying to lessen the severity of the baby bump with a peasant blouse, but it wasn't very effective. She was clearly full term. She hissed in pain and arched backwards as Harley tightened her grip on her hair, and Billy could see that Harley's eyes were spitting fire. Of course, he told himself. The Joker had been in danger. Harley had gone into protective she-beast mode. And it was a little unnerving.
"Caught her trying to sneak up on you while you were busy," Harley spat. Billy winced then at the thought of how close they had come; they had let their guard down, gotten too engrossed in torturing the pizza boy to watch the door. If Harley hadn't been on the alert, she might have gotten in a hit with her pipe. Not that one hit would have killed the Boss. But an unconscious Joker would be very hard to carry back to the van… and even harder to deal with when he woke up. It was a good thing Harley had been paying attention.
"Good catch, Harley" he mumbled.
"Thanks" she responded distractedly, her attention locked on keeping the gun aimed at the intruder's temple. She twisted her fingers deeper into the woman's hair for a better grip.
"Ow, God!" the woman gasped. "I can only bend so far back, you know! In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a little bit PREG—"
"Well you shoulda thought of that before you decided to play the hero, huh?" Harley grumbled, shaking the woman's head a little. Her captive grunted in protest but this time said nothing.
"Harl…." The Joker hadn't moved since turning and seeing the two women, and when he spoke, his voice was low, cool, and dangerous.
"I did okay, right, J?" Harley piped. "I got her! She didn't even see me coming!" She waved the .44 around the woman's face as she said it, her finger only half floating above the trigger. She was reveling in her achievement, and didn't notice the Joker's fists as they began to clench into tight, hard spheres.
"Harley…," he whispered, and this time there was something dark and animalistic underneath the cool tone. "I need you to do something for me. Just…something. Little. Can you do that?"
"Oh, I've got this one, J!" Harley replied, pulling the woman's ponytail upward as if she were displaying a hunting trophy. "This time I won't screw it up! It's like you said – time, right? So I figure… instead of just killing this one… we can take some time to mess with her! But not physically like Pizza Brat over there – I say we screw with her head a while. Whaddya think?" The Joker's only response for a moment was a lowering of his eyebrows. His face was taking on a stony look that Harley, in her excitement, was failing to notice. Billy picked up on it, though. He'd seen it enough to know it was the beginning of something very, very unpleasant. Quietly, he let the half-conscious, weeping pizza boy slump to the floor and stood up, ready to act in the event that quick action was required. Harley carried on, oblivious. "Although… now that I think about it… I guess she's got to be pretty brave to have tried this. Pretty brave, or crazy. And either way, that's gonna make her hard to crack."
"Harley." The Joker's eyes were blazing now, although his body was completely frozen and taut, and Billy got the impression that he was tightening up like a spring. "I need. You. To. Stop." He sounded like he was talking through gritted teeth. At that, Harley noticed something amiss and raised an eyebrow.
"Hey, come on, J…" she murmured, confused. "I mean, the chick was trying to whack you with a pipe. The last one didn't even make it in, and she wasn't armed, and you had me shoot her! Surely a little torture is in order for this one?"
"JUST—" the Joker spat, then collected himself. "Just. Put. The. Gun. Down." There was a tension in his voice that implied a great effort in speaking calmly. Harley let the gun droop away from the woman's head, but she stared at the Joker in disbelief. Billy raised an eyebrow too. Had he heard right? Did the Boss just tell Harley not to point a gun at someone? He looked over at the woman, who was bent awkwardly in Harley's grip but still glaring defiantly. Did the Joker have something else planned? Or did he legitimately not want Harley to shoot her?
"But J," Harley protested, the same question running through her head. "Come on, I gotta keep her scared! And pointing the gun at—"
"Harley you idiot that's—" the Joker started to growl. Then he stopped himself again, this time with obvious effort. Billy backed a few steps away from him – just to be safe. He didn't like the look on the Boss's face. "Just put down the gun and let go of her. NOW." He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then flicked them open again, and they were frightening and dangerous but completely unreadable. Harley's brows came together in frustration.
"Well geez, J… I don't know what you want us to do about her! We let her go, and she's gonna run back into the maze and tell everybody else what room we're in! Then we get swarmed, and there's no way we can deal with all of them if they band together!" She still let the gun droop, but she was itching to do something – anything – to the intruder who had threatened her Joker. Why wouldn't he let her? She must be doing something wrong. Maybe…. An idea struck her. "Oh, okay – I'm not doing it right, am I? I know I'm still new at this whole menacing thing. What am I doing wrong?"
"Harley…." The Joker's voice was slow, but there was now a crack in it that betrayed the boiling underneath. "Put… the gun… away."
"I think we should listen to him, Harley," Billy advised, taking a few steps toward Harley and away from the Joker. Harley made a pouty face at him.
"Oh, come on, Billy, I'm just trying to do the best job I can! Seriously. What am I doing wrong?" She wiggled the gun as if to demonstrate her confusion, then another idea hit. "Oh, I know! I'm not thinking about the psychology of the victim! Always go for the weak spot, right? Always go for the psychological throat! And on her, that would be…." Harley thought about it for a moment… then she lowered the gun – and aimed at the round fullness of the woman's stomach. "See how brave mama is when baby is threatened, huh?" With a vicious grin, she pressed the Magnum against the shape under the woman's peasant blouse.
"DAMMIT HARLEY GET THAT THING AWAY FROM HER!" The Joker's words came bubbling up out of some sort of primal screech that echoed off the mirrored walls of the room in a cacophony of wild sound waves. Before Harley quite knew what was happening, the Joker had crossed the room in only a couple of long strides; he slapped her arm so hard it went numb, sending the gun flying into the corner, and then he twisted it behind her as he pulled her away from the captive woman. "I TOLD YOU TO DROP IT!" he hissed into her ear. Then he flashed the woman a look that seemed to say, Leave now before I change my mind. The woman needed no second bidding. She slipped out into the maze hallway without a sound.
"Boss?" Billy started. It was happening, he realized – that explosion he had been worried about was taking place, and he felt a desperate urge to stop it. The Joker gave him a look that silenced him completely.
"SHUT up, Billy. I've got something to take CARE of." With another violent jerk, he twisted Harley's arm up higher before shoving her hard to the floor. She hit with a whimper not unlike a small dog.
"J, what—"
"SHUT UP!" the Joker screamed. As Harley tried to get back up, he immediately stopped her with a swift kick to the stomach. She let out a deflated sort of cry, which seemed to make him even angrier, and he kicked her again, this time lower. "From NOW on, you listen to me when I TELL you things! Do you understand me?" Harley was too busy catching her breath to answer him, and as she rolled onto her other side he kicked her again in the small of her back. She arched and gasped as the toe of his shoe made contact, and as she looked up at his face, the glare she saw was murderous.
"J…," she attempted.
"I SAID SHUT UP!" he screamed again. This time he reached down for her, grabbed her by her shirt, and jerked her upright; the shirt ripped open and left her bra and makeup-streaked cleavage exposed. The pain in her stomach made her try to double over, but the Joker's hand met her neck. He gripped her throat like a vise and slammed her against one of the mirrors hard enough to crack it. "You just HAD to TAKE INITIATIVE, DIDN'T you!" he yelled into her face. Little droplets of spit flew from his mouth and spattered her face, which was turning a sickly shade of purple under her zombie makeup. "And you just HAD to pick RIGHT… THEN… to DO it! Well let me tell you something, Har-ley-kins… you picked just about the WORST POSSIBLE WAY and the WORST POSSIBLE TIME. Hmm? You realize that?" Digging his fingers into her neck, he shook her to make his point. Harley gurgled in pain and scrabbled at his wrist with her nails, but it was no use. He simply tightened his grip, pulled her away from the wall, and slammed her back against another mirror, cracking that one worse than the first. "You just can't stop making stupid decisions, can you? NO. Because you'll NEVER GET IT. NONE of you will!" He gave her neck another squeeze before releasing her, shoving her into the wall as he let go.
Harley gasped for air. She knew she was crying, although couldn't feel it. That was about all she knew at the moment. She had no idea what was going on. One minute she'd been menacing a captive, and the next minute the Joker was going bat-shit crazy and slamming her into walls. She hadn't seen anything special about the woman. No distinguishing characteristics, no particular behaviors that would have merited the Joker's admiration. She was pregnant. That was pretty much it. And it wasn't exactly like the Joker to have a troubled conscience over shooting a pregnant woman. After all, shooting helpless old grannies wasn't on his bad list. So what was it? Did he know her from somewhere? It was possible, she reasoned. There was obviously a time before he became the Joker. Maybe she was part of that. Or maybe he's just lost what little sanity he had left, and there is no explanation, her brain offered up. But she pushed that one away. He couldn't be—
All the thoughts scattered in a blinding flash of pain, and Harley's face felt like it was exploding. Her vision cleared just in time to see the butt of the Joker's Glock winding up for another hit. She had enough time to realize that he was pistol-whipping her – that the only reason he had let go of her was so he could get his gun out of his overcoat – before the next blow landed. She saw it coming almost in slow-motion, a huge black square coming toward her face like a club, and it caught her high on the cheekbone. Her eyes teared up immediately, making the next three blows impossible to see. They kept coming. Harley's whole face was a mask of pain, and it was difficult to tell where one blow fell compared to any other. All the hurt bled together. She put up her hands to shield her face, but they were knocked away sharply; caught off balance, she fell to the floor.
It took all of a second for the Joker to get on top of her; pinning her to the floor with his weight, he used the gun butt on her once or twice more before tossing it to the side. Then he started with his fists.
Across the room, Billy felt his fingernails sink into his palms until they found blood. He swallowed hard, not knowing if what he was forcing down was vomit or a scream. That was basically his sister. He knew he had no real obligation to Harley, but damn it, she had become like a sister to him since she joined the gang and watching the Joker beat her face into the floor was like watching someone cut off one of his limbs. He looked down at Nathan, bound and slumped on the floor but conscious enough now to be watching what was going on. The prisoner's dark eyes rolled upward and met his gaze, and he revised that last statement. It wasn't like watching someone cut off a limb. It was like watching someone cut off his balls. The pizza boy looked up at him from the floor with a condemnatory stare – as if he was saying, Hurting me was one thing, but are you going to let that bastard beat his woman to a pulp? Billy swallowed another lump in his throat. No. No he wasn't.
Wordlessly, Billy stormed across the room and grabbed the back of the Joker's coat.
"LET GO OF ME!" the Joker snarled, trying to swing around and bat away Billy's hands. Billy didn't budge. The coat started slipping, and he let go of that and took hold of the Joker under the arms, dragged him bodily away from Harley, and threw him into the corner. Then he dropped to his knees and reached over to Harley's bloody face, praying that she was at least conscious.
"Hey, kiddo… are you all right? Can you hear me?" He helped Harley lift her head, and she started to respond but instead spat up a good deal of blood. He patted her shoulder gingerly, not knowing exactly what else to do.
"BILLY!" Behind them, the Joker had scrabbled to his feet and was stomping back over to them. "DAMN it, Billy!" he barked. "If you weren't my only competent goon, I'd KILL you for that!" He reached out to grab Billy as he stood up, but Billy batted his hand away.
"Oh, just like you'd kill your girlfriend, while she's unarmed and choking on her own blood?" He looked the Joker square in the eyes as he said it, and did his best not to flinch when the Boss pulled Cupid out of his pocket. The blade shot out of the handle with a metallic shink! that set Billy's teeth on edge, but he stood his ground. The Joker brought his face level with Billy's, his brows drawing together over dark, venomous eyes. His tongue stole out to play with the corners of his scars as he regarded Billy's set, determined expression. Finally, he spoke. His voice was low and strained with anger.
"Do you think I've forgotten, Billy-Boy? Hmm?" It was an imitation of the sing-song lines he usually gave, only this time, there was nothing humorous to be found in his tone or his look. "Do you think I would forget? No…no, no. No. I'd never forget someone like your Nana. That is why you're here, isn't it, Billy-Boy? Poor, sweet Nana… locked up in that nursing home like a target… like food in a trough, waiting for me to …Come and GET IT!... You think I'd forget something like that? I don't forget, Billy. But it seems like you do. Yeah, it really does. It seems like you forgot that little deal we made. The one where your Nana stays safe and keeps all her fingers and toes, and in return, you belong to me. Does that ring any bells?"
"Do whatever you want with me," Billy grumbled, his face stony. "I'll fetch and carry, I'll guard, I'll even help you make your stupid points and tie up pizza boys. But the next time I see you lay a hand on Harley like that, I will take that Magnum and I will blow that sick smile of yours all the way to Hell. How's that?" His eyes never left the Joker's, and for a brief second, the Joker raised one eyebrow a tiny fraction, halfway impressed by Billy's show of strength. Then it came crashing down, and suddenly the Joker's face was mobile and fluid again, a dancing mask of expressions like it always was.
"Ya know… I know what's wrong," he half-sang, beginning to bounce the knife in his hand. "I figured it out. Yoooouuu….are missing your Nana. That's what it is. You've just been away from the old bag too long, and you're starting to get grumpy without all the… cookies, and… storytime. Well. I've got an idea. I don't have any cookies on me, buuuuttt…." The Joker's arm came up as if he were going to take hold of Billy's shoulder; then without warning, he grabbed Billy's head in one hand and brought the knife up to his face with the other. "I know… some… great… stories. Have you heard the one about how the clown got his scars?" His eyes opened wider, and Billy found himself staring into two dark, burning pits that looked inescapable in their depth. "Let's see," the Joker murmured, his face inches from Billy. "It aaaallll started-"
"I thought all your goons had heard the stories by now."
Everyone in the room jumped as the gravelly voice came ripping out of the walkie-talkie in the Joker's pocket; the Joker flinched so severely that his blade nicked Billy's cheek, but Billy hardly seemed to notice.
"Batman?" he whispered. "How the hell did he get on our frequency?" He looked to the Joker, who had pulled Cupid's blade back in and was now fishing the walkie out of his coat.
"He's got one of our walkies," the Joker growled. "Which means… he's probably knocked out one of our guys. Either that, or he's got them on the run—" As if in answer to the Joker's statement, Dan came galumphing through the doorway so fast he almost tripped over his own big feet.
"Awww, MAN! Awww, crap, Boss! It's the BATMAN! SHIT, we gotta get outta here!" He almost tripped again as he reached the spot where Harley was trying to get up. The Joker caught him by the jacket and held him still.
"What happened?"
"Awwwww…." Dan whined, reluctant to discuss his own failure. "Maaaaan… I dunno what happened. I was standin' there guarding the emergency exit, and I was just about to radio you for an update, and then I get whacked from behind. I guess I dropped the stupid walkie or something…. But duuuuuudddee…. It was the BATMAN! We gotta get moving!" He jerked in the direction of the exit, but the Joker's fingers were dug firmly into the collar of the flight jacket. Something like a whimper escaped his lips. The Boss was giving him a look like acid burning into his face, and he got the distinct impression that tonight was not going to be pleasant. He had screwed up, and the Joker would make sure he knew it. As the Joker opened his mouth, Dan flinched.
"Did he follow you?" was all he said, although he gave Dan's collar a little shake. Dan took a deep breath.
"Auh… I dunno. Probably… I mean geez, that's what he does, right?" He gulped, looking for all the world like a scared puppy, and the Joker simply grunted in agreement and shoved him away.
"Yeah. Yeah, that's what he does." For a moment, everyone in the room waited for a decision; the Joker's face was absent and slack as he ran through all the possible courses of action. His tongue played with his scars and his eyes flicked from one object to another, rapidly, unseeing. Then he whirled around and shoved his hand into the deep inner pocket of his coat. "Trick-or-treating's over. Time to scram." He tossed his walkie-talkie to Billy. "Radio Dionté. Tell him to drop what he's doing and get back to the van. We'll go out the way we came in." He headed for the door as Billy relayed the message.
Harley lifted herself up onto her elbows gingerly, trying to decide how she was going to manage to stand up given the pain in her gut and the blood in her eyes. She pushed herself up experimentally and fell back with a little cry of pain.
"Hurry UP!" the Joker snarled from the doorway, tapping gloved fingers against the doorframe impatiently. Harley tried again, and this time she managed to almost get up on one leg before she slumped down again. "Oh, for God's sake, someone DRAG her or something!" the Joker spat. Flashing him an angry look, Billy bent down next to her.
"Can you walk at all, kiddo?" he murmured. Harley sniffled back a tear and almost spoke; then she slowly shook her head. Billy sighed angrily. "Here, I'll carry you."
"No dice, Billy," the Joker interrupted as Billy reached for her. "I need you covering us as we leave the control room. You're the best shot in the gang. If anybody's gonna play rescue dog, it'll be Dan. Now get MOVING!" He gestured at Dan, who passed off his gun to Billy with a grunt of assent and picked Harley up with an easy scoop of his arms. She winced at the motion but managed to keep from crying out; then they all made a beeline for the door.
"What's the quickest way out, Boss?" Billy asked as he hoisted the rifle up into a ready stance. The Joker ran through the route quickly in his head.
"Keep as close to the outer wall as possible," he grumbled as they headed into the hallway. "Oh, and Billy?"
"Yeah, Boss?"
"Clean up that mess before we go." His eyes flicked back through the door to where the pizza boy was curled up on the floor, his mouth a dark mess that showered droplets of blood with each exhale. Billy's face crumpled, but he lifted the gun anyway as the other three squeezed past him into the hall. Nathan met his eyes and realized what was happening; he began sputtering around his broken teeth, moaning something that might have been no, please! Billy tried not to listen as he raised the assault rifle, aimed it at the pizza boy, and fired.
Gordon stood behind a line of anxious SWAT officers, his hair fluffy and poking at crazy angles from being grabbed at incessantly by his nervous fingers. They had gotten video feed from most of the cameras, but a couple of rooms still escaped them – no doubt, the cameras had been tampered with. They had no visuals of the zombie room, the Dracula set, the freezer, or the mirror room. And since nothing was stirring on any of the feeds they did have, the techies surmised, the Joker had to be holed up in one of those four.
Gordon was about to rip his hair out. He knew exactly where they were hiding, but there was no way he could reveal this information without revealing his source. And it was about time someone did something – they had now heard multiple gunshots from inside the maze, and Gordon figured the kid was already dead…so why not send SWAT in and end this whole mess? He shoved his fingers into his hair again, staring at the maze defeatedly. Because if he did, and the kid was still alive… well, the kid wouldn't be alive much longer.
Buzz. Buzz. BUZZ. Gordon reached into his pocket as the cell phone stopped vibrating. This time he didn't bother with hiding. He read the text message quickly and desperately.
Joker's on the run. Control room door. Send your men around. Gordon pressed delete immediately, making a quick decision. He could tell them an anonymous witness had tipped him off. Something. But they had only a few moments to catch the Joker before he faded into the shadows again. Gordon waved the SWAT officers around the building toward the exterior door of the control room, calling out orders as he went; then he paused and hung back as the phone buzzed again.
Send in medical. Mirror room. Kid's still breathing. A little bubble of hopefulness threatening to burst in his chest, Gordon waved to the ambulance crew and propelled them into the maze entrance, with a couple officers to cover them and a map of the rooms. Then he pressed delete again.
Dionté's foot hit the gas almost before Billy managed to slam the van's back door. The vehicle lurched, sending him sprawling into Peter and Bobby, who hadn't even had time to sit down. Dionté drove the van screeching out of the back alley and off toward the narrow tangle of streets that would get them (hopefully unnoticed) to the freeway. There was no Bat-car or Bat-bike or any other Bat-thing following them, Billy noticed, and if they could manage to get out of the area of the block party they would be okay. He glanced around. Peter and Bobby were out of breath on one side of the van, puffing for air after their unexpected evacuation of the control room. Peter was especially breathing hard, the four pizzas he had demolished catching up with him. The Joker had taken the passenger seat by Dionté and was staring icily out the windshield, not making eye contact with anyone. Having deposited the woozy Harley on a wad of carpet in the back, Dan was now crouching warily behind the Joker's seat, his brain no doubt running through all the possible ways the Boss could punish him for his shortcomings. Billy took a deep, shaky breath. Dumping all his weapons in the corner, he crawled across the van to Harley and sat down beside her. She was breathing with a hitch, probably bruised or broken ribs, he realized, and her eyes were only half open. He waved a cautious hand over her battered face.
"If you're wantin' me to count how many fingers ya got up, y'c'n forget it," she mumbled through split lips, and Billy laughed in spite of himself. She was too hurt to care about how she sounded, and her native Jersey was coming through in her voice. Billy smiled at her and reached over her chest, pulling up the ripped ends of her shirt and re-tying them. He could at least give her a little decency.
"Nah, you're awake, sis, I know that," he replied softly. "I'm actually more concerned about whether or not you can hold up your fingers. Can you?" He moved his arms out of the way so she could lift her hands. With obvious effort, Harley dragged her right hand up off her stomach and, after a moment of gathering her strength, raised her middle finger at him.
"Good enough?" she whispered, trying to grin at him but letting her face fall slack as the grin split her lip further.
"Yeah, yeah, okay. I get it. You're a big girl, right?" Billy quipped as he pushed some of her hair away from her face. "I just want to make sure you're okay, sis."
"I'm okay, Billy," Harley whispered up at him. "Just… let me lay here for a while. Huh?" She was putting on a stony face, but her eyes were sparkling with unshed tears. Billy sighed; then he nodded and slid himself across the floor of the van. She didn't look okay. But then again, he supposed if she felt well enough to be snarky then the damage couldn't be that bad. He took a deep breath and leaned his head back against the driver's seat.
"You, ah… you haven't asked me yet." Billy raised his head as the Joker's voice floated down to him. The Boss's head wasn't turned toward him, but the dark painted eyes were downcast, looking at him from under grimy lids.
"Asked what?" replied Billy cautiously.
"You know perfectly well what," the Joker snarled quietly. "So ask me. And pleeaaaase, try to be a MAN about it. Hmm?" He had one dark eyebrow raised expectantly, and the look made Billy just angry enough to say what he was thinking.
"Okay. Okay then. Why the hell did you almost liquefy Harley for aiming a gun at someone? You didn't seem to have a problem with it when it was a little old lady. So what did Harley do that was so wrong? Just defend you? What's the difference between the chick and the Golden Girl?" He had risen slightly from his crouch behind the driver's seat, and he realized as he finished speaking that his fists were clenched again. The Joker looked out the window and pretended not to notice.
"Because, Billy-boy…," he simpered finally, "Because Granny had a choice." He let the last word slide over his tongue like silk, ensuring that no one would miss its import.
"But the lady—" Billy began, then he stopped. Up front, the Joker licked his lips slowly as he watched it sink in. Billy thought about it for a moment or two. Then he nodded. "The baby." The Joker nodded along with him as he said it, his eyelids half closing as he settled his head back against the gray velour headrest.
"You remember that point we're always trying to make, Billy-boy?" he murmured, speaking slowly but coldly, his hands folded over his stomach. "Humans… are animals. Inside. Everyone is an opportunist. Everyone is a cannibal. Everyone is a beast, or a mercenary, or a demon. And it can't be any other way. Because we aaaaaaaalllll make choices. And it's the choices that let out the monsters."
"And the baby hasn't made any kind of choice," Billy finished softly, staring down at his Converse sneakers. There were drops of the pizza boy's blood on the white toes.
"That's right, give the boy a cookie!" the Joker piped, still not moving his head or opening his eyes. "From the time we learn to walk, Billy, we also learn to trample on the other kids' sand castles. That's what a human is. A destructive, incorrigible animal. The only purely innocent people on earth are the ones who have never made a choice. And as soon as they're old enough to have a favorite toy, the choosing begins. Learn a lesson tonight, Billy. It's all… about… choices. The quicker you learn that, the less energy you'll waste on sympathy." And with that, he snuggled his head against the headrest and feigned sleep.
"Police Commissioner James Gordon has yet to make an official statement, but as we near midnight here at the scene of the Halloween maze hostage situation it looks like all the reports are in. As we stated in our earlier broadcast, the count is holding at six people dead and only one seriously wounded. Domino's delivery worker Nathan Osborne, who was the Joker's primary hostage, is currently being transported to Gotham State University Medical Center. His condition is unknown at this time, but his girlfriend Madaleine Henderson told our reporters that he is, quote, "hurt pretty badly from a gunshot, and he lost a lot of blood, but Nathan's a fighter, and it'll take a lot more than some [deleted expletive] clown in face paint to kill him." Back to you, Vicki."
"Thank you, Summer, and we certainly wish him all the best of luck in his recovery. Well, if you're just joining us, we'd like to repeat that the hostage situation at the Sunshine Foundation Halloween Block Party has ended. The death toll remains at six; we have word from our sources that event coordinator Steven Chandler, his computer systems expert, and one GPD detective are among the dead. The name of that detective has not yet been rel—"
Todd switched off the flatscreen and stuck the remote control inside the reservation desk where it was always kept. Brushing absently at some missed crumbs on one of the tables as he passed, he walked over to the broad front window of the restaurant, the one that faced the street. The word Riche was reflected back onto his face from the bistro's neon sign outside. He didn't know why, as manager, he was closing up himself; he should get one of the lesser employees to do such tasks for him. But then, he thought, they would probably rob him blind, the little hoodlums… and besides… sometimes there was a situation to be handled like the one he had to deal with right now.
The lady in the corner booth had been there all evening, and if he didn't kick her out, he got the impression she'd just stay sitting there all night. He'd already served her every drop of wine he was allowed, and he knew he'd have to call her a cab, because she was not walking or driving home in her current condition. Walking gingerly over to her table, he reached out and nudged her elbow.
"Umm… Miss?"
"What?" she hiccoughed, jumping a little as if he had startled her out of a daze. Her face had a sickly pallor to it and, framed by her billows of auburn hair, it looked small and frightened. Todd held out his hand to help her out of the booth.
"Closing time, Miss. Some of us gotta go home tonight. Come on. Let me call you a cab." She offered him her hands listlessly, and he noticed as he took them that her nails had all been chewed down to the quick. Once up, she grabbed the leather folder from the tabletop and clutched it tightly to her chest. He walked her carefully out to the sidewalk, glancing over at her every so often to be sure she was all right. Her dark green eyes had a peculiar distance in them. When the cab pulled up, he tried to help her into it, but she refused, muttering something about needing to go somewhere and think. He attempted to pull the folder from her arms so she could climb in, but she jerked away from him with something like a feral hiss. As she did, what looked like a business card fell out of its pocket and fluttered to the sidewalk. Todd bent and picked it up. It was one of Bruce Wayne's contact cards, his information stamped in black over the silver foil indentation of the Wayne Enterprises logo.
"Here, you dropped this," he said placatingly as he handed it to her. She took it with shaky hands. "Lady, are you sure you don't want the cab? Are you gonna be all right?" He watched her as she soaked in what he had asked. The young woman slowly raised the business card up level with her face, staring at it like it was of cosmic import.
"Sure," Pamela Isley murmured as she held the card in the palm of her porcelain hand. "I'm gonna be just… fine." The last part of the sentence was low and throaty, and she punctuated it by crumpling the business card into a tiny ball in her fist. Then, with all the grace she could muster, she walked with severe footsteps down the sidewalk, tossing the wadded-up card into a recycling bin as she passed.