Author's note: These dreams are freaking me out. Am I going to have recurring nightmares about the poor dead Riddler until I finish this story? First the Frank Gorshin Riddler, then the Animated Series Riddler, then the Robert Englund Riddler. What version of him will die a horrible death in my dreams next?
Do you have any idea how humiliating it is to get mugged by someone you know? This guy lived next door to me until I was eleven. He and my older brother used to rob gas stations after school. Once they even took me along.
I guess I grew up.
He took my money. No big deal. I might not have had much, but there's always more where that came from.
When he looked like he wanted something else, I threatened to tell his mother. And, trust me, that's no small threat. I know his mother.
So, that left me alone, on the street, in the middle of the night, broke. Hey, I've been worse off.
At least I wasn't a kid anymore.
When I first went to work for the Riddler, I was eleven years old. I told him I was fifteen, but he didn't buy it. I figured stuffing my bra and wearing some of my sister's makeup would be enough to make me look older. Maybe I should have tried it on the Joker, because all it did was make me look like a clown.
Thing is, at eleven, I was scared to death of the Joker.
Not the Riddler, though. I thought he was handsome, and he looked like my father. How I would know that, I don't know, because I never met the guy, and the only picture there was of him was an old black and white snapshot of him and Mom from ten years before I was born. But he (the Riddler, I mean, not my father) did look kind of like my oldest brother. Tommy had those same kind of eyes, and a smile that could make babies cry.
So I went to the Riddler because, for some reason, I thought he would be nice and let me work for him. He told me to come back when I was older.
So I waited a month, and came back the day after my birthday.
He couldn't deny that I was older then.
And since he was short a henchman or two, he decided to let me stick around and prove myself.
That went well.
But I ended up staying, anyway.