One for the money…
Act five, scene five started. Harley watched in disbelief as Alison fearlessly approached the edge of the castle wall, then threw herself down. Her realistic screams tore through the theatre. The anticipation still clung to Harley, even after the scene. She crossed the beams to where she stood over the ghastly scene below. Or so she thought. Instead, she saw Redgie helping Alison up out of the pile of pillows.
Somehow, Harley restrained herself from audibly shouting her anger-Alison should be dead, or at least wheel-chair bound for the rest of her life. What had happened?
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Joker stood at the very back of the house, watching the show go on. Harley had almost lost her chance-she had to actually murder tonight for him to trust that she was obedient enough for him to trust her. Setting up a death trap, while impressive and resourceful, wouldn't cut it. Luckily, he'd been backstage, disguised as a cast member, so well, that Harley didn't even notice him. He'd made sure that the tech crew had seen the shotty set-up for Alison, and that they fixed it.
He could almost see the confusion and anger on Harley's face,
"Good", he thought,
"That will help fuel the fire"
Part of him recognized the hypocrisy in making sure Harley did was she should do on her own-he ought to let her do it her way, and if she failed, well, then, she failed. But he so very much wanted her to prevail, to bury her old life and destroy her old self. So she would become the partner he desperately needed. Henchmen were reliable enough, but he went through them so quickly. He needed a companion.
The Joker watched the end of scene five of act five end and smoothly fade into scene six.
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In the darkest corner backstage, Harley Quinn stood in a blood-red rage. Her heart thudded loudly in her chest, and she felt heat repeatedly blossom and spread out from her neck. She had less than a half hour before everyone in the building would file out, and her chance to join Joker would be lost forever. To help release some of her anger, she repeatedly opened the cylinder with the three bullets, spun it, closed it and cocked back the hammer. In the dressing room to her left, Alison would be carelessly touching up her makeup for the final bow. To her right, Redgie stood arguing with some of 'his crew' about what had happened with the whole landing set-up. Harley felt some relief that they hadn't yet approached her about it. And almost directly in front of her, but much further than the rest, sat her father. The man that had set her off on this broken existence called life. She slammed the cylinder shut one last time, shoved the hammer back and walked boldly to her left. She reached the door, and went to open it when something occurred to her. If she shot Alison now, everyone would hear the gun go off and come running. She felt another wave of frustration wash over her. She set the safety again, hid the gun away in her jeans and walked in anyways.
Alison stood in front of the long mirror that stretched across one wall of the room. As Harley had suspected, the beautiful blond was applying even more powder to her already incredibly flawless face. Harley couldn't help but notice that several of the fluorescent bulbs were out, and one to the right of Alison was flickering. She also saw that the Alison had finally plugged the cue radio back in. Which meant nobody would be coming in to tell her when she needed to be onstage-nobody would be interrupting them.
"Oh my god, finally you're here! Did you know that those stupid techs had the landing pad set-up wrong? I could have died! Ugh, and now, one of the laces on these stupid boots has broken. I get that you wanted the authentic vintage look, but seriously, you couldn't put in new laces?"
During her entire rant, Alison had continued to fix up her makeup, adding more eyeliner and blush. Up close, she looked like a cheap French whore from the circus. But Harley knew that from the audience's perspective, the ridiculous face paint would just make her face look like a face, instead of being obscured by the poor lighting.
When Harley didn't say anything, Alison started talking again,
"So, are you gonna get another shoelace or something? I can go barefoot, nobody will notice, but you are the costume design director or whatever"
Suddenly, Harley felt as though a light bulb had turned on over her head,
"We can just use one of the laces from your regular shoes"
"Okay, fine, whatever, just do it quickly, curtain call is in two minutes"
Harley walked over to Alison's shoes, sitting innocently on the floor. The pink Skecher's had white laces, miraculously clean. Her fingers tingled with anticipation as she quickly pulled the lace out of the sockets of one of the shoes. When she finished, she stood and walked over to stand behind Alison. The other girl didn't even look up from curling her eyelashes.
"Can you just lace it up while it's still on my foot? These things are such a pain to take off-"
She was cut short as Harley quickly threw the shoe lace around her neck, and pulled it tight. At first, Alison was confused, but soon realized what was happening. She dropped her eyelash curler, the metal clanging loudly in the otherwise silent room, and started to try to pull the string off of her neck. She started making raw choking noses, her face turning red than the slightest shade of blue started to appear near her eyes. Her mascara started to run as tears of fear and pain welled up and flowed down her cheeks.
When she discovered she wasn't able to pull the string off of her neck, she tried to turn around to claw at Harley. But Harley was quick, she was in a higher plane of existence now-that of a killer. Her instincts, laid down thousands of generations beforehand, suddenly came to life, telling her what to do. When Alison started to gain ground on freeing herself, Harley pushed the beautiful blonde's head into the glass mirror. Instantly, it shattered where the impact occurred, shards splashing and shining the light all around. Again and again, Harley slammed Alison's head into the mirror, blood started to flow and the sound of bone cracking could be heard over the thudding. Finally, Harley stopped and looked into the mirror. Alison was definitely dead-part of her skull was visible, and a huge crack ran across it. Harley then lifted her eyes to look at herself. It was then that she realized she was smiling. She suddenly felt excited, exhilarated. A shiver ran down her spine, and she lifted her hands from the dead girl's neck.
Suddenly, a voice crackled over a speaker,
"Alison, we need you out here for curtain call in two minutes"
Harley was still thinking quickly, and knew that when Alison didn't show up onstage in two minutes, people would come looking for her. Unless Harley gave them reason to think that Alison wasn't to be found. With fluidity and speed, Harley stripped the dead girl and donned the gown. She put her hair into a half ponytail, letting the back part spill over her shoulders. She picked up the gun from her own pile of clothes on the ground, and hid it away in her bosom. She was about to walk away when she remembered something. Leaning back down to her clothes, she reached into the backpocket of her jeans and pulled out the four playing cards. She quickly went through them and found the Queen of Diamonds. She brought the card to her lips, kissed it and then placed it in between Alison's still warm fingers. Harley placed the remaining three cards next to the gun inside the dress, then turned to leave the room. Tonight all of her wishes would come true-she'd destroy the witch, the wicked prince and the evil king, wear her beautiful gown and disappear with the man of dreams-and the townspeople's nightmares. With this thought, she clicked off the light to the women's dressing room, locked the door and slowly closed it.