May 28th

When I first saw the man who has been coming into my apartment I was unnerved, and understandably so as I peered at his dark form moving around through a barely open eyelid, pretending that I was asleep. He was as silent as a dead thing as he deftly slid my window open from the outside, slipped in and paused, breathing steadily. I couldn't see him at this point, being that I was lying on my side facing the other side of the room, gazing blindly through the doorway into my bathroom and then to the side of the doorsill at that huge mirror, just a gleaming slice in the semi-darkness.

I heard him move around the side of my bed and to my utmost horror I felt the end of my mattress sink as he sat upon it. My heart was pounding – what on earth was he doing? I was desperate to turn my head and get a proper look at him but I was terrified of what he would do if he realised I was awake. I heard some faint clicking, artificial things against the pads of gloved fingers...

...He was doing something on my laptop! Not that it means much, if I don't know the passwords then I doubt he does. I felt the bed shift as he leant further over the low-hung table near the end of my bed upon which this laptop is kept, along with the cell phone and the newly arranged knife collection. He sighed. I heard him sit back a little, making my mattress creak. Little bleeping sounds met my ears; he's doing something on the cell phone now. He pressed only a few buttons and then set it softly back in its place on the table.

Confusion and fear was pulsing through me. I couldn't make heads nor tails of the situation – Hell, the situation didn't even have a head or a tail. My already uncertain existence was being thrown into further uncertainty. Terrible possibilities of my true identity were pillaging the borders of my mind and they were marching ever closer, such was the bitterness of the thought that I might in truth be a hunted criminal.

I nearly jolted out of bed in surprise when the man's dark form suddenly sidled into my vision, peering through into my bathroom. I closed my eyes, afraid that he would see me awake, watching him. I heard him move into the bathroom. His boots made a strange noise upon the old linoleum floor. I daringly opened my eyes a little once more, but he was nearly lost in the deeper shadows. He was tall; I could tell that much but his build remained a mystery.

He turned back and l snapped my eyes shut. He cleared his throat lightly and then moved with deliberation around the bed and back to the window he had entered through. A shallow thud and a clunk of metal signalled his departure, but I continued to lay motionless for what felt like hours before I opened my eyes and launched myself at the window, slamming it shut with a shout.

At 3.42am I found myself pacing the apartment filled with rage. I felt raped; I felt that my privacy had been completely nullified.

Does he watch me during the day; follow me when I go out?

Is he just one man, or part of a larger organisation?

May 30th

When I wake up at the ungodly hour of 5.30am every morning I can't help but feel horridly exposed. My window is always open, I doubt that will change anytime soon. I considered nailing it shut, but I thought the window man might become suspicious. I'm sure he would become aggressive if he caught an inkling of my suspicion. I have no idea why I am being... observed by him, or them perhaps, who is to say it is always the same man?

Yesterday I went out again. I was determined to not let this thing unsettle my life, what little evidence of its past I had gleaned and the little I am experiencing presently. I have been thinking about who I might have been before I lost my memory, often drawing up the conclusion that I was little more than a criminal, illustrious perhaps but for all the wrong reasons. I feel this is something I cannot escape; I am beginning to accept it as a fact. It is the mystery of what scale my criminal tendencies existed within that frightens me most. I could handle the thought of having once been a petty sneak-thief, a hot-wirer or hired muscle even, but anything more than that...

...Why are they frightened of me? When I went out yesterday, the 29th that is, I crossed paths with one of the acquaintances from the place where I had my steak meal. Of the three I saw that day he was the most distinguishable, had I cast a fleeting glance at either of the other two I doubt I would have recognised them, but there was no mistaking the straight and broad-bridged nose of this man, the quivering black eyes and small mouth. He was almost rat-like I pondered, as he stared with horror into my face. I knew he recognised me. He was frozen. I didn't really know what to do. Having accepted the possibility of a criminal past I wondered if it was dangerous to be seen in his company, though I did also wonder who would be in more danger, me or him?

He was still staring at me but was not gaping like a fish anymore. I imagined how on earth this man and I came to meet each other before my memory was lost. Wild daydreams chased each other's tails in my head; maybe we were friends once upon a time? Maybe we went to school together, and then tumbled into the crime infested underbelly of Gotham? We were then torn apart perhaps, divided by loyalties to opposing mob lords, forced then to destroy each other's kingdoms in a bloody feud which left him... rattishly nervous and I scarred for life?

As I smiled at my invented history with this man I saw him flinch. I quickly closed my lips, feeling ashamed when I remembered how yellow and rotten my teeth were, but the puckered twist at the corners of my mouth remained. This here is my friend.

'So...' I began, deciding to tread carefully with my words. He might not remember all the things we've been through together. 'What have you been doing these past... this past week?'

He stuttered and I watched with fascination at his perfect, unscarred lips, how they trembled as he tried to speak.

'Uh... we've uh –' (he paused and turned his head sharply in every direction, obviously paranoid that we were being observed) ' –we've been...'

He trailed off. He seemed utterly dumbfounded by the sight of me. I was grinning stupidly at him once more and judging by previous experiments in the mirror I can guess it's not the most comforting spectacle.

Perhaps another question.

'Tell me...' I said slowly, snaking an arm around his bony shoulders. 'How long have we known each other?' I initiated a lolling gait down the sun-drenched sidewalk. He moved along with me, quaking under my arm.

'N-n-not-not long, Boss.'

I grimaced. Boss. And we haven't known each other for very long? Perhaps we're not childhood friends after all.

'Jack.' I said firmly, grinning widely at him, my ship not completely sunk just yet. 'Please – call me Jack.'

He attempted to return my smile but I could sense that he was still in a state of pant-pissing wariness. My tone light, I continued to probe him. I suppose I am already meant to know the answers to my questions, but I guess he thinks I'm being rhetorical.

'So how long is not long...?'

'Ah... well I was on the job at the – y'know, the one with the Mayor, I – got shot though. The other day is the first I've seen of you since then.'

I blanched. Once again ice was coursing through me instead of blood. The Mayor? The Mayor? What the Hell have I been doing to the Mayor?

Of course, I am being rhetorical with my dark-haired rat friend here.

'That's correct,' I said knowingly, pausing at a crossing, remembering to check for cars before stepping off the sidewalk. 'Well...' I floundered for a moment. I wanted to know more about myself, terrifying though the truth seems to be, shimmering ominously at me through a stubborn mist that refuses to melt away. It's just as well, without the obstinate veil blocking my view the truth may very well blind me, obliterate me even. Despite my ache and fear for the truth I also wanted some company. I seemed to do relatively well in solitude, but even a hermit crab wriggles out of his shell now and then, if only to oust another crustacean from his shell and take it for his own.

I quite like the rat under my arm. A fluttering leaf or a honk of a car horn was enough to make him leap from his skin. He's like a little ticking time bomb. In all that has been happening to me since I woke upon my apartment floor, as strange and valuable as every new discovery is, nothing compares to the unpredictability of a human with a nervous disposition such as this fellow. I gazed over the swamp of beings trundling around us. My rat friend is not a trundling meatbag.

'Let's –'

I nearly said let's have lunch at my place but I don't think the rat would compute, as it were. I licked the corner of my mouth.

'Let's go to... Headquarters.'

'We have Headquarters?' he stammered, sounding quite surprised.

I felt regret nibbling at the base of my skull. He's probably thinking of something very grand.

'Well I say Headquarters; it's just where I stay when I'm... laying low, if you know what I mean.'

I had no idea what I was saying, but he obviously took a degree of understanding from my words. He smirked and nodded. A blast from some angry cab drivers' horns made him jolt madly, his rodent face absurdly contorted.

I laughed at this, a high jagged cackle poured from my lips. I gasped and choked at the foreign sound, masking it with a fit of fake coughing. The rat barely seemed to notice. I peered at him out of the corner of my eye.

'I can't remember your name,' I blurted abruptly.

He stared at me, plainly very confused.

'T-Thomas Schiff,' he murmured cagily. 'Or just... Shifty –'

'Shifty!' I repeated with a shriek of that banshee laughter. I bit my lip to silence myself. 'It suits you.'

My arm had stayed about his shoulder throughout our entire amble across the streets of Gotham and as I guided him around towards the direction of my block of apartments – my castle – I saw with a flicker of dread a familiar set of twinkling bespectacled eyes, gazing intently at me through the window of a coffee shop that I know I have passed by before. I could see the grey moustache ruffling and disappear as the face turned away, disappearing into the gaggle of customers, jostling for their fix of caffeine.

Jack Tanner my friend... and rat-faced Thomas Shifty Schiff, have we made a mistake in being seen together?

____

Shifty seemed so wholly overwhelmed as I led him up the hundreds and hundreds of stairs to my top-floor apartment. As I led him I wasn't particularly sure what we were going to do once we got up there. I was definitely hungry, and I'm sure Shifty is too. Would now be a good time to experiment with my culinary skills? I think an omelette would be a fair feast for a rat.

As we came to the last stretch of stairs I couldn't contain my excitement. I was filling up with childish glee at the thought of having some invited company, someone to play with. I felt like a young boy who had caught a small animal in the back yard or at the park, stealing away with it shrieking desperately in my clutches, intent on having all sorts of fun with it. I could imagine a little blonde boy, me I suppose, running across a sunlit green with a black rat trapped between my small hands. When I arrived at whatever den I must have previously constructed, the rat was dead much to my dismay, asphyxiated by my eager grasp. My head felt a little fuzzy, I suppose it's the exhilaration.

I turned and grinned madly at Shifty constantly as we made our ascent. He faltered everytime.

Eventually we hit the topmost landing; my door was visible at the very end. I all but bounded up to it and blasted straight in – I hadn't locked it.

'Thomas Schiff... welcome.'

I gambolled over the threshold, immediately in my kitchen. Shifty followed me in, his black eyes extremely wide. I couldn't say what he might have been expecting, but I'm certain I detected a slight release of tension when he took his first gulp of my humble living quarters, and reasonably normal living quarters if I may say so myself. My tongue rolled madly over the inside of my cheeks. I took him through the small kitchen and into the living room. I had since tidied the apartment. The mountains of ash and the bloodstains and blank writing paper on the floorboards were scrubbed and tidied away. The notes that the previous occupant had made about The Batman character had been hurriedly collected from the kitchen floor where I had spilt them and stacked semi-neatly upon the wooden table. I motioned for Shifty to take the single, frail chair at the table, which he did so, if a little reluctantly. I loomed over him, taking in every detail of his person from the new angle above him. He was hunched awkwardly, appearing more so like a giant, spindly spider in his discomfort than a skittish rat.

'I'm hungry,' I gushed animatedly into his ear, making him jump. 'I'm going to cook something. Are you hungry? What do you want? Omelette? I only really know how to cook omelette, and some other things.'

As with my own eyes when I had stared into them before my mirror, Shifty's watery eyes were like huge black chasms, a pair of haunting voids gaping up at the world. Shifty gets sad sometimes, I can tell just by looking at him – does having eyes like twin gulfs of nothingness denote a sad person?

Am I unhappy?

'I'm hungry!' I barked again. 'I'll make an omelette.'

I darted into the kitchen, quite drunk on exhilaration. Shifty hadn't said a single word in response to my offer of a meal, but I cooked for two anyway.

As the beaten eggs sizzled in the pan I caught the sound of rustling paper. I leant back, peering around the doorframe and saw my guest tentatively rifling through the transcript. I said nothing, it was an excellent piece of entertainment after all, and that much I knew even though I had only had time to glance briefly over two or three pages. Such brilliant tripe! I wish I had thought of it.

When I finished cooking the omelette, slopping it messily onto a plate and carving it in half with a twisted spatula I realised that Shifty had stood from the chair, the transcript clutched tightly in his hands.

'It's done,' I said.

'Notes!' Shifty exclaimed, a peculiar smile on his face. I detected that it was false. His forehead was sweaty and his hands were shaking. The spatula still held aloft in one hand and the plated omelette in the other I swooped into a trench of suspicion. Notes? I suppose so; the transcript could hardly be called a final draft. 'I didn't realise you kept written records –'

'Excuse me?' My voice emitted as a cold growl that I had never heard before and I nearly dropped the omelette. A scowl remained upon my brow however and my hard gaze might have sliced Shifty's head clean off it had been a tangible force. A chill returned to my blood, though it was quite different from the ice that crept over me in the company of fear.

'I said excuse me?'

'It's – these aren't yours?'

'Of course not!' I shouted, that terrible pillow-tearing, knife-flinging rage swelling inside me. I wondered how I could use a spatula and an omelette to kill a man, but hastily banished these thoughts from my mind – Shifty is my new friend, my pet rat. I clenched my ruined teeth. 'They were left by the previous tenant of the apartment.'

'Oh,' he stammered. 'Well, I'm sorry... I'm not hungry anymore, I-I think I'll ah, I'll go shall I?'

He all but threw the transcript over the table and scurried through the apartment in that mad, rat-like manner of his, squeezing uneasily past me in the small kitchen space to reach the front door. He ripped it open and fled. I swear upon all my days, those forgotten as well as those recently had, that I have never seen a human move to uncannily fast.

A stench of fear remained amongst the oil and egg that lingered in the apartment.

When Shifty's thundering footfalls in the stairwell had finally died away I moved over to the mess he had left, the plate of omelette still in my hand. I leant over the pages that had landed face up on the table and squinted at some scribbles and diagrams I hadn't gone over before. I saw garish characters pencilled messily upon the cheap paper, coloured lines jabbing in every direction. Two men had been drawn, one I recognised as the caped Batman, coiled and contorted, rough pencil marks expressing agony upon his face as a huge knife was plunged into his groin and the opposing character, whose rake-like hand was directing the knife grinned madly with red painted lips and huge black eyes. A sludge-green cluster of scrawls signified his hair and Batman's blood stained his crudely drawn waistcoat of green. A purple jacket flared out behind him in mockery of The Batman's own tattered cape.

In messy handwriting underneath – the same as that of the detailed notes, the same as that inside my journal – was written in oversized lettering: THE JOKER VS. THE BATMAN