I love the reviews!
To J-Horror Girl and Purple Ghost Sausage: I'm glad you enjoy the references. I absolutely love writing them, and I really don't know why.
Rvish: Stephen King is my favorite author of all time.
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The door was locked. While Crane had been in the backyard hosing himself off, the damned Joker had locked him out of his own home. The Scarecrow, for reasons of security, didn't keep a spare key hidden anywhere. Now, he was wishing he had taken the risk.
Like Fred Flintstone pounding on the door and screaming "Wilma!", Crane was forced to do the same thing. He shouted "clown" instead of Wilma, but pounded with the same frustration. He was freezing, despite the relative warmth of the day. He was also venomously mad.
The Joker, who had been enjoying hot water and soap, as well as Harley scrubbing his back for him, smirked. Poor, poor, stupid Scarecrow. All his supposed brains, which he never seemed to shut up about, were not going to get him through that door.
Harley appeared in the bathroom doorway, holding a folded towel. The Joker took one look at her, two at the towel in her hands, and frowned.
"What color is that towel?" He asked.
"Gray?" Harley replied uncertainly.
"And what are the only two colors worthy of drying my glorious backside?" The Joker inquired.
"Green and purple."
"Do you see the problem, Harley?" The clown asked.
"But, Puddin', this is all Professor Crane has. Gray and white. There was a brown rag, but I think it might be part of his costume, or something." Harley said.
The Joker stuck his tongue out in disapproval. "What sort of deranged man only has gray and white towels? The humanity of it all!"
While the Joker moaned about the Scarecrow's lifeless color scheme, Crane had more important things to worry about. He needed a way into his house. The doors, both the front and back, were locked. That left only the windows. He knew the large living room window was out. It was the most obvious path for any burglar to climb through, so he always made sure it was locked. The downstairs bathroom window was probably open for ventilation purposes, but the Scarecrow was not going to risk falling on top of a naked and freshly showered Joker. The sight alone would blind him, and maybe even stop his heart.
That left the kitchen window. It had been opened in one hell of a hurry four days ago, back when the cupboards weren't bare. The Joker had been cooking a can of chicken soap. Then he had gotten bored of watching it simmer. Like a kid with ADHD, he had wandered off to find something more stimulating without bothering to turn off the stove. By the time he remembered the soup, it had boiled down to black noodles and caught on fire. In desperate need to dispose of the flaming pot, he had opened the kitchen window and thrown the whole mess, pot included, out into the yard.
Crane couldn't remember if he had locked the window afterwards. He had been so furious at having one of his few pieces of kitchenware destroyed, he probably hadn't. It looked like the Scarecrow had his entrance.
The window, as in many kitchens, was directly above the sink. Luckily, no food meant no dirty dishes. There weren't any knives just waiting to impale the Scarecrow's foot, or forks fated to stab the sensitive webbing between his fingers. Maybe running out of supplies wasn't always a bad thing.
Miracle of miracles, the window was open! The same God who people claimed ran the entire universe with the precision of a Swiss watch took time out of his busy schedule to make sure one window was unlatched so a villain with a large monetary reward on his head could slither through it. If Crane wasn't so thankful to find the window sliding up with no problems, he would have laughed at the absurdity of it.
Hoping the Joker was still singing in the shower, or scrubbing Harley's toes, or whatever kind of freaky things he did in the bathroom, Crane boosted himself through the window. His height and almost unnatural thinness served him greatly. A man with any kind of gut would have gotten stuck and required rescue.
Consisting of mainly arms and legs, like a terrestrial octopus, Crane soon found his physique to be problem. With his upper half through the window, he had no place to put his lanky limbs. Between the sink and the floor was a three foot drop. He did not much like the idea of falling flat on his face; he didn't like the idea of dangling like a half-born giraffe much more.
"Mother-grabbing bastard." Crane muttered. He was trapped in a classic Catch-22. If he wasn't so tall, he wouldn't have been able to reach the window to begin with. Because he was so tall, he was now faced with either giving up and throwing a rock through the living room window or trying to fall with grace. He minds well try to lasso the sun while he was at it.
"Come on, Jonathan. It's not like you were never dropped on your head before." The Scarecrow said. It was sad but true. Crane knew a thing or two about head injuries. Between Batman, the boys and girls in blue and old ladies with anvils in their purses, he'd taken a few good knocks to the brain.
Whether it required falling through a window or climbing down the chimney like Santa after three years of crash dieting, Crane was getting inside his house. Resolute, he pushed himself over the edge of the sink. His stork-like legs finally cleared the window. Unfortunately, they did so in a hurry. The Scarecrow tried to brace himself with his hands, only to be a little too slow. He got his right hand down in time, only to plant his face before his left hand. Linoleum, though not as hard as diamonds, wasn't exactly a feather mattress, either.
The Scarecrow toppled over. The resulting crash brought Harley and the Joker running. Crane was outraged to see the Joker was wearing nothing but a towel—Crane's towel!—wrapped around his waist. There went one more item he'd have to incinerate for sanitary purposes.
"You locked the door." Crane accused.
"Do you think I want a stranger wandering in while I'm showering? No thanks, Spooky." The Joker said.
"I had to climb in the window." The Scarecrow said.
"Yeah, we can see that, Professor. You didn't do a very good job of it, huh?" Harley asked.
The Joker smirked. "I guess you know what that means, Johnny-Boy. Strike ten, for not having any athletic talent at all. How many times did they pummel you with dodge balls during Gym, anyway? If I ended up on the same sports team as you, I'd break my leg on purpose."
Crane didn't waste his breath on a response. Anyone who took one look at him, or at the collection of chemistry books he read like some kids read comics, knew Peg the Scarecrow had been the unofficial sport of his high school. To this day, dodge balls had a special place in the darkest recesses of Crane's heart.
Trying to ignore the Joker's laughter and taunts, the Scarecrow forced his legs to cooperate. He absolutely refused to cringe at the sick clown's mention of badminton, despite the memories it dredged up from the dark depths. With all the dignity he had, and it wasn't enough to fill a tablespoon, Crane exited the kitchen. He was going up to his bedroom. If the Joker followed, he was going to push the lunatic down the stairs.
"Come on, Spooky! Regale us with stories of your baseball heroics! What about basketball? Swimming? Wait, the Scarecrow in a bathing suit? Ugh. I don't want that image." The Joker said.
"Would you kindly take a long walk off a short pier?" Crane muttered. He didn't have the voice, or the motivation to shout it.
The Scarecrow reached the second floor without any interference. Before he could enter his bedroom, he noticed that the linen closet adjacent to the bathroom had been ransacked. His towels were strewn all over the hall. Some of them were still neatly folded, but most of them were unfurled. Crane felt that desire to murder a great many people surface again. Didn't the Joker realize how difficult it was for a man on the lam to do a decent load of laundry? He could get hauled away while trying to buy fabric softener!
Since he was still dripping water from his clothes, Crane decided he would need one of those towels. He selected one that was folded, praying the Joker hadn't touched it for any length of time. With his gray towel in hand, the Scarecrow retreated to his room.
Much to the Scarecrow's chagrin, he found an intruder sprawled out on his bed. Lou, looking as comfortable as any hyena in all of history, was resting on his back. His paws were in the air, his tongue was hanging out, and he almost appeared to be smiling. Crane wasn't about to disturb 150 pounds of powerful scavenger. All he could do was hope the hyena wasn't spreading fleas or ticks all over his bed.
"Enjoying my bed, Lou? I still would rather your company to that clown's." Crane said.
While Lou rolled around, no doubt shedding a monstrous amount of scratchy fur and hyena dandruff, the Scarecrow went to his closet. He was a minimalist, having little in the way of furniture, foodstuffs, and clothing. Hanging in the closet, there was only two other outfits.
It wasn't only the need to travel lightly that kept Crane's wardrobe scarce. He wasn't exactly an easy man to shop for. Most men his height outweighed him by 50 pounds or more. The fact that people kept getting fatter wasn't helping the Scarecrow, either. In the near future, he might be reduced to sewing his own clothing. He had made his costume with his own two hands, but burlap was an ugly fabric. It didn't take Tim Gunn to sew a frightening sackcloth mask. Any kid with a needle and thread, and bad thoughts in his head, could probably manage. Cotton, denim, polyester and nylon wouldn't be so forgiving.
While some company in India or Vietnam still made clothes he could wear, the Scarecrow was happy to take advantage of them. Seeing as how he was like a woman with a size 13 shoe, he had to take what he could get, no matter the style or fashion. The sole condition was that the clothing had to be long-sleeved. Crane was not like those beach-goers who resembled stranded porpoises and insisted they still looked good in Spandex. He knew how scrawny he was, and had the decency to save others the trauma.
Crane's low standards were apparent on the two outfits hanging in his closet. They were severely mismatched. One shirt was a drab gray, similar to the towels. The other he had snatched from a thrift store after the clerk recognized him from the nightly news and forced him to run for it. That shirt was a bright St. Patrick's Day green. It was so vivid it might honestly glow in the dark. Crane shuddered at the sight of it. He must have been suffering from a concussion to even consider stealing something so bright and garish.
"Green is out." The Scarecrow said. There was no way he was going to wear the same color as the Joker.
At least the pants wouldn't be a problem. Both were slacks, and each had been faded by approximately four hundred washes. A normal person would never have risked police intervention to nick two worn pair of pants. Crane, however, was probably the only man on the planet who would say his favorite color was gray.
Though it might have been mere coincidence, Lou barked a trademarked hyena laugh when the Scarecrow stripped off his shirt. Crane gave the scavenger a look that could have made birds fall dead off telephone lines. The hyena apparently had a very strong constitution, or was secure in the knowledge that if the Scarecrow tried to do him in, Harley and the Joker would torture Crane to death in retribution.
"It isn't funny in the least. I know I'm a bag of bones. I don't need a beast reminding me." The Scarecrow said.
Lou's tongue flopped from his mouth, like a slimy pink eel. Every time the hyena did that in front of Harley, she probably smothered him in kisses and cooed about how adorable her baby was. Crane restrained the urge to deliver a kick to the animal's hindquarters.
"Mangy, unclean, carcass-picking laughingstock of the Savanna, that's what you are. You deserve to be back in Kenya, with a lion chewing on you." The Scarecrow said.
The hyena's ears pricked up. Despite his annoyance at Lou, Crane couldn't help but note something. Scientifically and genetically, hyenas were much closer to cats than to dogs. Bud and Lou, however, behaved more like canines. It was almost like Harley treating them like dogs, with the fetching, letting the hyenas sleep in her bed, and rolling down car windows so they could stick their heads out, was making them into dogs. As a (former) psychiatrist, Crane found this interesting. It seemed to answer the age old question about nature versus nurture. With Bud and Lou, it all came down to the disgusting amount of nurturing Harley did. Fascinating.
"If I wasn't in constant danger of being dragged back to Arkham, there might be a decent research paper in you and your brother." Crane told the hyena.
Were Bud and Lou really brothers? The Scarecrow realized he had never asked any questions about the two mutts. Maybe, if he believed the Joker wouldn't humiliate him for it, he could ask Harley to enlighten him about her babies. There were certainly some things his inquiring mind wanted to know: where the hyenas had actually come from, if they were from the same litter, and how effective they were against the Bat, just for starters.
He could always ponder these questions later. For now, all Crane wanted was dry clothing and a few minutes of peace. It would be helpful if the hyena would look somewhere else, or leave the room entirely, but the Scarecrow was not embarrassed enough at his bony self to shoo the mutt out.
"If you go blind, don't tell Harley I didn't warn you. That mad bastard of hers will probably put my eyes out." The Scarecrow said.
The Scarecrow stepped out of the rest of his clothing. He quickly wrapped the towel around himself, once again grimacing at the idea the Joker had laid his mitts on it. Crane made sure the door was still closed, the hyena wasn't cackling, and the window shades were drawn. He hurriedly dried himself off. Once he was sure he wasn't going to soak his new clothes, he threw them on. He got the shirt on backwards, and hastily turned it around. The tag scratched at his neck like the hairy legs of a tarantula.
Now that he was dry for the first time in hours, Crane decided his house should be given the same treatment. He had enough troubles without adding mold to them.
Neglecting socks, which would just get soaked on the flooded carpet around the bathroom, the Scarecrow left his room. The second floor was still abandoned. Below him, he could hear Harley and the Joker arguing over something. He hoped it didn't involve him.
On his way to the bathroom, Crane picked up a few of the towels. He threw them down on the squishy, swamped carpet. What he really needed right now were some of those magic German squeegees, the ShamWow.
Once the problem outside was covered up and forgotten about, the Scarecrow entered the bathroom. He was mildly amazed to find a mop and bucket sitting in the middle of the floor. It must have been Harley; the dear child had a kind heart, despite the best efforts of her lunatic lover. Crane was now glad he hadn't abused Lou too badly.
The Scarecrow went about mopping up all the water the toilet had disgorged. When the bucket was full, he poured it down the drain in the bath tub. Taking three gallons of water off the floor, Crane discovered, was hardly noticeable. The Gotham Aquarium could still open a new exhibit in the here. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to have some piranhas swimming around. The Joker would think twice before clogging up the toilet, that was for sure.
Nine gallons of water later, and the floor was merely damped, as opposed to 40 days and nights of rain submerged. Crane and his mop were certainly winning the battle. Things were going his way.
That couldn't last, because Crane's name was blacklisted under every deity of every major and minor religion. Just as he was emptying another bucket down the drain, the Joker appeared in the door. The clown took in domestic Crane, his new outfit, and his floppy mop. The only logical response to the scene was to fall over laughing.
"Johnny the housewife! Johnny, the new Martha Stewart! Johnny, Lord of the Mops!" The Joker exclaimed.
"You damn dirty clown." Crane muttered.
"And what are you wearing? You look like the Gray Lady. If I had any empathy at all, I'd feel bad for you." The Joker said. "Do I even need to say it?"
"Strike eleven?" The Scarecrow asked threw gritted teeth. He was one more chuckle away from using his mop like a lance and stabbing the Joker in the face with it.
"You are smart, Spooky." The Joker said.
"Yes, I know. Now, would you mind getting out of my bathroom? I still have to dry that lake under the sink." The Scarecrow said.
"There's nothing to do downstairs." The clown complained.
"Why don't you stick your finger in a socket or drink the chemicals under the sink?" Crane suggested.
"Why don't you let me break your arm in six places?"
The Scarecrow glared. His throat still hurt too much to risk another tangle with the demented, grinning freak just yet. As much as Crane hated it, he didn't really have another option. He'd just have to ignore the Joker's presence and finish cleaning up the bathroom.
When the Scarecrow turned his back on the Joker and began mopping again, the clown soon became jaded. To regain the center of attention, the Joker started to sing a little ditty that followed the beat of Frosty the Snowman. It was called "Johnny, the Mop Man" and was perhaps the worst song ever composed.
Crane endured six choruses of "Johnny the Mop Man was a grumpy, nerdy soul" before throwing his mop down in disgust. He was at the very end of his endurance. He honestly couldn't take any more. He had one escape, two if he included suicide. He'd just have to do one final nerdy thing, and he'd be free.
There was nothing, not dignity, not pride, not scientific credibility, that was worth the Joker's singing voice.
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Author's Notes:
Tim Gunn is a fashion designer and host of Project Runway.
Ah, the Shamwow. If you haven't seen the commercials, you probably don't own a TV. It's this supposedly magic towel that can absorb like 20 times its own weight.
"You damn dirty clown" is a play of "You damn dirty ape" from Planet of the Apes.
The Gray Lady is a ghost from Harry Potter. There is also a non-magical Gray Lady who haunts a library in Evansville, Indiana. She's got her own website.