"Hush little baby, don't you dare speak a word,"
His swift flight was joined in this dark, slimy tunnel that held the stench of rotten leaves and discarded litter, as an orchestra of sound blasted off from the roaring train above his head.
"Mama's gonna buy you a mocking bird."
The wind was blowing rather heavily tonight. Was God angry with him? Surely, most definitely, He had every right to be...
"And if that mocking bird don't sing."
Lightning? Was that lightning in the dark, so high above the world in this black night? Rain. There was rain. Terrible drops, each one sounding like a slapping footstep, the pitter patter of feet terrible in his ears...the spirits would surely find him soon, and then, he would suffer...
"Then mama's gonna buy you a diamond ring."
He screamed. It was a hollow sound, poisoned by the rankness of the cigar taste that still lingered about his gums, but this was not the source of such a foul song. No, it was the insanity. It was breaking through. Or was it a different form of sanity? Although physically he was bound within the confines of Park Row, he was truly, metaphysically, trapped in a darker realm, and the evil demons were laughing at him, taunting him. He could hear their voices so clearly...so terribly...
"I had to do it!" he screamed at them, banging his fists against the side of a nearby hardware store, its flashing red, neon CLOSED signs like the fire of Hell taunting him with its horrifying inhabitants who teased his fear and fed his anxiety. His desperation had a place, though where it was, few could know...because reason could surely not exist in this situation. No escape with bitter, begging children. "I had to do it, do you hear me!? I...I needed...needed...Oh, God, please help me!" He was tearing at what little hair remained on his head. Though it was not much. The chemo treatments had seen to that. If anything, his long, dirty fingernails, painted by the layers of homelessness and desperation, bled his scalp red with cat-like scratches.
This specific radius of Park Row was abandoned at the moment, save for a few owls who had perched themselves on a nearby, black fence surrounding a small church, peering with their yellow eyes at him in the dark, wondering what demons tortured him tonight. One of them hooted, and the sound was like a gunshot in the man's ears, no better than the jeering of the demons. How he hated them.
His hand flew up and he drew back the string of the birdslayer. Without hesitation, he released it. The bullet blasted from the Luger and the owl who had taunted him, the filthy demon, vanished in a mist of red and feathers, while its two companions frantically flew away in their own terror, horror only mirrored by the pained man who had taken away their friend. The gunshot was a monster in itself, and briefly did the gunman's ears fall into a void without sound save for the distinct buzzing, like a terrible static. The owl's blood, the Waynes' blood, it had all become a useless observation. What did madness care of, concerning the blood of others? Madness cared for the sanctity of the maddened one's own mind, his own heart, and how easily it could be shattered like a mirror, sending the fragments flying in every direction.
"I'm sorry, Joe," said the poor soul. "I am so sorry. I know there is only one alternative. It can't be forsaken, nor wasted, but enjoyed. The exit door. Exit stage right." They had exited through the back. Damn kid...damn, damn, damn kid...
"Hey mister..."
Joe Chill jumped in his skin, frigid as it was already in this chilly night air. A child. A child? He stared at the young boy, dressed in brown, dirty furs, it seemed, from some unknown animal. His moppy blonde hair was laced with dust flecks and he had the strangest piercing eyes, gold and shining even in the dark. He was accompanied by no one.
Something about the child deeply unnerved Joe Chill. He had come out of nowhere, as if he had just been formed by the air itself, an illusion, and yet he was real, there and solid, and that scared Joe.
"What the heck do you want, kid?" whimpered the mugger in a harsh breath as his lungs seemed to freeze for a split second. "Get out of here." He became all too aware that he still had a gun in his hand, and that the boy was looking at it with a kind of awe.
"Nice gun, mister."
"You want to see how nice it can be!?" spat Joe, and he aimed it directly between the kid's eyes. He had already killed two people tonight...what was one more...right? Right? This kid had seen him with the gun, had seen him use it in public. That was a dangerous thing to let wander free. "Kid, I'm dangerous..."
"Oh, I know, Joe. I really do."
"How the heck do you know me, you little shat?"
"Pronunciation is beautiful. As for how I know you, let's just say, I have never been apart from you. Joe, I saw what you did, and it was beautiful. They had it coming, those rich sons o' bitches."
"Watch your mouth ki- what!? How the heck do you- I-..." Joe was panicking now, more than he ever had in his entire life. The child spoke with such simplicity, such casual malice, and his smile...such a malevolent grin on a young body... "What the heck are you?"
"You should do it again!" the demon hissed at Joe. The boy's features were melting before Joe's very eyes. Black skin had taken his fresh copper tone, and his eyes were losing all light, pitch black as a cloudless nighty, his cheeks swelling and the underparts of his eyes drooping. Joe was terrified beyond the capacity for utter recognition. Never in his life had he ever experienced such a vision of evil, such a testament to abomination.
"Leave me..." He was sobbing now. Sobbing. Tears, like water in the mountains, cascading with such force, such integrity. "Please...leave me..."
"You can't very well leave yourself, can you?" Suddenly the demon's face shifted, warping from the black monstrosity to something utterly familiar.
And if that diamond ring turns brass...
"My God in Heaven..."
Mama's gonna buy you a looking glass...
To see so clearly. Yes, that had been what Alice had meant. The demon's face had become something truly terrifying. Another child. But this child, Joe Chill knew the identity of. A small boy with a greasy mop of long, black hair, and piercing green eyes the color of fresh forest. But it was the scar just below the left eye that gave it away. A scar shaped like an M. Moriarty.
"Baby Joe Chill was afraid, once," the demon said through the mouth of the child image of Joe Chill. He even spoke in the voice that Joe had not heard come from his mouth for so many years. "Afraid because daddy confused him for the Japs that he shot back in his time. The bottle will do that. And you know what else does?"
"The desire?" breathed Joe. Anger was replacing fear. "Is that was you want to effing hear!? "Oh, Joey, son, daddy don't mean no harm. Jus' stay still, and I'll make this real quick like. Your mama don't have to know what goes on between us, huh? Stop whimpering ya little shat! Just stay still you little punk!" "Oh yeah, I bet that's what you want to say next, huh? Go away. Leave me alone."
"Well, your daddy taught you one thing then, huh?" the demon replied, in the voice of Joe Chill's late stepfather, through the lips of the face of Fred Brask. The man had never legally adopted Joe, and thus, Joe had never taken on the monster's surname. "He taught you how to take what you want, when you want it, by force. You like those pearls in your hand, Joe? I bet they're still warm from Mistress Wayne's neck? Me and you had some good times, didn't we, son? Talk about warm."
"Shut up!" Joe Chill lost it. He picked up the gun and took aim. Without a second though, he opened fire on the demon. The bullet slammed into the creature's forehead, striking the devil between its fake, piercing eyes the color of-"
Of blue. Blue? Even as the body of the demon tumbled backwards, smoke billowing from the hole in the head, Joe Chill's body froze in every aspect. Fred Brask's eyes were brown, not blue! And...and that was not Fred's face! No! It was a different child. No, not a different child. It was a child that he recognized quite well. The child that the demon had taken form of at first. The homeless child, perhaps? The demon collapsed onto his back, looking perfectly human...looking perfectly dead. He lay there, without another word. Unmoving and lost. Did demons die!?
The gun fell from his hand. It struck the cobblestone ground and clattered away into the shadows of the building behind him. Joe Chill stared at the body of the child, and dared to breath the terrible question. It could not be...how could it be...real!? Not real!? Not truly!
Some screamed. A woman, by the sounds of it. Sobs. Screams. Were they one in the same? Footsteps, so fast and so intent. Gunshots in the air.
"Don't move!"
A blinding light. Someone had forced him onto his face. But the stone of the ground was nowhere as near as cold as the ice he had inside of his mind. It was frozen in there, and it smelled rank. He hated it. It was beyond an abominable thought. Someone free me. Someone freaking free me!
Handcuffs. They made a clicking noise. One that reminded him of a gun getting cocked. Bullets loaded? That's right. Blast off!
A police siren had sounded off. A distant voice was talking on a radio.
"This is the Lieutenant. Fargus, do you read me?"
"Yeah, Jim, I read you."
"Martha called in and said you found the killer?"
"We have someone. Fired off a shot, looks like he killed a kid. We're taking him in now."
"A kid!? Killed a kid!?"
"Jim, I'll see you soon. Fargus out."
Joe Chill was fading into the darkness. He had not been knocked silly. He had not been hit with gas. He had been hit with the impending force of his own degradation. A degradation he had chosen for himself, with his actions.
"Damn you, Wayne...damn you..." he cried softly into his pillow that night. "Damn you, Chill...damn you..."
And the demon laughed. Oh, yes, he laughed. Laughed all night long, sitting in the corner of Joe Chill's cell room, peering at him from behind the hands of his new guise, that of another young child. A child named Bruce Wayne.