Update (2013): I have added a couple things to this chapter, including a dream sequence, and thoroughly edited dialogue and any rough patches I encountered. Enjoy!
I put on the most malicious smile I could muster, saying confidently, "So we're in agreement, then." The Joker's face lit up like a Christmas tree.
"Look! She's a smiler!" He cackled, slapping his leather-clad hands on his knees, skipping around the two lifeless bodies pouring crimson all over the tiled floor. I couldn't prevent the shock settling over me when I realized their deaths were my doing. I'd shot them in areas I thought, no, I knew, would not be fatal. I shot them, and the Joker finished them off. "I always enjoy the smilers in this world."
He grabbed a handful of my blonde hair in his fist, which barely budged at the yank, and threw me forward onto the stained tile. The last gun I had in my possession slipped out of my hand at the pull, but the sharpened blade in my pocket remained intact and out of view. I took comfort in that thought as one of his men lifted me up and locked my arms behind my back. It was a position I couldn't get out of on my own. The tight hold he had on me painfully strained the joints in my shoulders when I struggled, so I did my best to keep a composed, Lacey-like face—my mouth quirked into a half-smile, eyes narrowing in challenge at the remaining henchmen keeping me rooted in place.
"Is this gonna be your form of… initiation?" I laughed, blowing strands of hair out of my eyes to focus all of my attention on the maniac three feet away. It was like toying with fate, speaking against him. I literally felt my heart pound irregular, frantic beats, as if it knew someone in the room could stop it in a second. I refrained from kicking the kneecaps of the man restraining me and trusted the only form of instinct I had that told me I wasn't going to die today. The Joker spun on his heels, directing all movements toward my reluctantly immobile body.
"Ha! Initiation!" His breathing came out in thrilled pants as he grazed his tongue across the disfigured scar carved into his cheek. The Joker's cackles made the men around him shrink back, even after all of their reunited days working with their boss. He pressed the point of his switchblade to the corner of my mouth, popping his lips a second time when he lowered his face closer to my line of vision. "Let's see. How about implanting a couple of bullets in that petite body of yours and see if you survive!" He seemed to be in hysterics at the idea.
Staring at the space above me due to his looming height, he gripped his chin, tapping at the smeared white paint as if in deep thought. It was only a distraction.
"Nah, too mind-blowing for a puh-tential re-cruit." He hunched down to my level and slid a long purple clad arm around my neck, tracing a line with his switchblade down the unscarred section of my skin. "I was thinking…" He waved his free arm in the air like he had a magic trick he wanted to reveal to me. "Maybe carving a fresh set of body art may prove your loy-al-ty to me." The Joker annunciated the word with heavy emphasis. His hand gripped my chin, lifting my face up into his view. The characteristics of Lacey kicked in, and my mouth labored a suggestive purse. Before I could wittily shoot back my protest, he dropped his arms away from me and let one of his men hold me up again.
I didn't struggle against the painful vice this time. My eyes were wary of the Joker instead. His stance complemented mine, and if I hadn't fallen for the diversion he set up, I would've noticed the intentions in his blackened eyes. The acting might have worked before his arrival, but at this point, anything was inevitable. It was like watching a scene in slow motion. The sinister cackle rung in my ears, filling up my heart with a burning trepidation; the way he gripped the handgun, hunched, sliding his heel at a ballpoint on the unclean floor. I only had time to take in everything at once. The deviant acknowledgement. The psychotic glimmer. He flipped the gun to its base and whipped it at the side of my head in an unforeseen blow.
I fell roughly to the tile as the black spots clouded my vision. I had enough time to say what needed to be said before my voice would fade into nonsensical muttering.
"That's more like it." A subconscious sense of fear and failure flooded my senses, preoccupying me enough to cover my head wound with a hazy laugh. I brought my palm back from where it smeared a warm substance on my forehead and stared at the red painting my fingers. He had won this round, and I wasn't sure if this would be my last round of his game. The thud of a gun falling beside me and the Joker's stifled merriment faded with the silent darkness awaiting me.
I floated in an abyss of black for some time, full of confusion when the shooting pain in my head numbed and disappeared completely. In the distance, if I focused long enough, I could hear the faint cries of a child. The voice seemed familiar, and I recognized the weeping coming from a young girl as her sobs grew louder. My head whipped in the direction the sounds emitted the loudest, feet carrying me until the dark started to dissipate like a fog. The light was bright for a dream, and I couldn't understand my primary role in it when screams started to accompany the cries. Then the shouting started.
I watched a girl around eleven years of age huddle in the corner of a lackluster living room, who stared wide-eyed at the image of her mother being struck by a massive, dark-haired man twice her height. Her mother didn't cry out during her father's repetitious blows to her gut—instead, she silently wept in front of the girl, curling in a protective ball when the beast of a man moved toward their daughter.
He screamed unintelligible, disgusting words in her pale face, directing a thick finger to her frail mother lying in a trembling state of fear on their stained carpet. When the girl, who was preoccupied with clutching her stuffed rabbit rather than letting her eyes stray to the horrific evidence of her broken household, chose not to answer her father's questions, he seized her by the collar of her nightgown and backhanded her. He continued to threaten her, shaking the child until she burst into shrieking sobs that did no more than anger him further.
I watched this spectacle at a distance and took note of my hands quivering the more the violence escalated. The pain in my head was beginning to return, thudding with rapid rhythm of my heartbeat until I heard nothing but a backdrop of pounding played to the music of screams and bodies hitting the floor.
I was slowly regaining consciousness when the seal of sleep broke and left me in a layer of sweat and blood. Loose pipes rattled above me, a light swung creakily overhead, and I heard the smallest sound of the clang of a blade on a glass table. The skin on my wrists ached from the pressure of the metal handcuffs locking my arms in a crisscrossed rest. Little efforts in moving them only resulted in an intensified pain shooting up my forearms. A crusted, irritating texture lined the right side of my forehead when I furrowed my eyebrows. I released an indignant groan from my lips, tipping the weight of my head from side-to-side when I came to a comprehensible state of alertness—enough coherency to converse with my interrogator. There was humming in the corner of the room, but I couldn't distinguish who it was. But I had an idea, to say the least.
"La-cey Fowl-son. Lac-ey. Lacey, Lace…" He rumbled in a low growl. The black areas of my sight didn't stop my eyes from detecting a tall figure in the distance. He turned his shoulders at my groan, the blood-red smile the first hint of color standing out to me. "Ha ha! She lives!" The Joker's stretched grin was prominent from across the room. His figure drew nearer through my blurred haze until I made out what he was holding in his hand.
There sat my new ID card, glaring up at his painted face. He turned it over, front and back, numerous times, narrowing his eyes at how real it looked. It confused him, I could tell in the way he furrowed his eyebrows. He exaggerated a sigh and sauntered over to where I was seated, almost bored.
"So… Lacey. Is it true you really are as foul as your name?" He broke out into a round of fitful giggles, twirling my paring knife through his gloved fingers—the blade that used to be hidden away in my inner coat pocket. My jacket sat folded on the table along with the pistols I used previously. The Joker hummed to himself again, continuing to shift his heavy gaze from the knife to my face as he circled me. He bent down to my eye level, holding the blade to my mouth. "For a criminal, sweetheart, you definitely came… under-equipped."
I opened my mouth to say something sarcastic to him, but he pushed his finger onto my parted lips.
"Shhh, it's not your turn yet, now is it?" His yellow teeth flashed at me, bringing me back to the sudden memory of when I first saw his painted smile up close. "What makes you think, my lovely Lace, that the job is handed down to you?" I closed my mouth, anxious that I could have blown my cover already. My stomach contorted into knots at the thought of what he would do if he knew. His face drooped at my crestfallen expression. "Oh, you look disappointed, toots." He pouted his lips, mocking me. "Not to worry," his voice went up a pitch, "you'll just have to puh-roove yourself."
"Isn't that why I'm here?" My vulnerability had gotten under my skin, and I believed the Joker could sense my agitation. "Can I have my weapons?" I had the sudden urge to have my finger on a trigger, now that my paring knife was being waved threateningly in my face.
"Now let's not get… too ahead of ourselves." He winked, holding up the knife again. Two of his men, now disguised in their plastic clown masks, entered the room. "I'd like to see…" he barked a laugh, unlocking my handcuffs quickly, "how you can handle yourself. If you realllly are the criminal you claim yourself to be."