SHADOW OF THE BAT: What's A Girl To Do?
In Gotham City, no one is safe from the ruthlessness of the criminal underworld, or so Jelic Dragic comes to realize. On what was to be a normal evening, a prowler comes a knocking and drags her and her daughter into a meeting with a highly volatile associate of one of Gotham's most notorious super-criminals. Only with a cool head can Jelic hope to survive long enough for help to arrive but she has to consider her daughter's well-being above her own. In a city so full of evil, will help come in time…if at all?
"What's A Girl To Do" is a short story that cameos one of Batman's well-known Rogues re-imagined and then flavored with grit and violence. Can you guess who it is? Strap on your capes and pull on your cowls, it's going to be a crazy one!
By Killa Kenny
Disclaimer:
I do not own Batman. DC Comics and Bob Cane do. I'm just a huge fan that grew up in the shadow of the bat, that wants to expand the mythos.
I swear the Gotham News Network disgusts me. Every time I turn on the TV, all I see is gore.
Gang warfare, vigilantes, murder, and corruption are always the topic; it just doesn't stop. It's as if the greedy media tycoons have nothing better to do than to profit off of the victims by shoving the most terrible things about Gotham City down everyone's throat. As if we all didn't know that Gotham was dangerous. Ugh.
Once I would just like to sit down and hear the news-casters talk about something other than the sickos that live in this damn city and the terrible things that go on.
The funny part about terrible things is that you never think they're going to happen to you. And when they do, you can't believe that something terrible is actually happening until everything's hit the fan and you're the new target of GNN.
My name is Jelic Dragic and I should have left Gotham City a long time ago. In fact, everyone should leave Gotham City. This place is hell on earth. I always knew it but I never felt like I was going to suffer because of it. Walking to the monorail station on a street ruled by gangs just seemed like a formality—normal even. I never thought I would become a victim of it. Not that I didn't think I couldn't have been victimized, I just never foresaw something terrible happening. My life is boring. I'm just a single mother trying to get by. What would a bunch of hard-nosed criminals and gangsters want from me? I don't have anything.
Plus, leaving isn't easy.
It isn't easy for three reasons: First, leaving requires change and I don't like change. Second, I'm Croatian and Croatians aren't typically fond of leaving their homelands—my grandparents not included. Third—and the most important—I finally have a job that pays enough for me to survive and I just can't uproot my life and leave. The economy is terrible and I'd be hard-pressed to find another job that allows me to raise my daughter with some type of stability.
Oh yes, I have a nine-year old daughter named Krishna who is half-Croat and half-Indian. She's awesome but her dad is a bit of a deadbeat. I can't ever find good men.
Krishna sat on the couch next to me finishing her homework while I watched and cursed the news like usual. Krishna always asked, "Mom, why do you watch it if you don't like it?" The question was rhetorical but she didn't realize the wisdom in it. The answer was surely, because I'm a glutton for punishment. And, I am. That's why I had stayed with her father for as long as I did. It's the reason why I stayed in Gotham City. It's also the reason why I was still watching GNN even when I was sick of it.
Fed-up, I reached for the remote to change the channel when there was a knock at the door. No, someone pounded on my door—like the police. I wasn't expecting anyone. It was probably Krishna's father, drunk and looking for sex, again.
"Go away, Arjuna!"
He pounded on the door again.
"I said go away!"
He had always been very abusive, both of me and our daughter. It was just best to avoid him. Fortunately, my daughter knew better than to ask questions. She knew he was a loser. Thank goodness her judgment was better than mine.
Arjuna banged harder.
Krishna looked at me. Her face read, Do something.
I groaned agitation and got up from the couch. "Goddammit, Arjuna!" I yelled as I approached the door, "How many times do I have to ask you to stop this?"
He banged again.
I looked through the peep-hole and all I saw was blackness; he had it covered up. What an asshole! I thought about going back to the couch and ignoring him and just letting him bang on the door until his knuckles bled. But when I looked back, my daughter was staring at me over the back of the couch. Her eyes were helpless and exhausted. She couldn't focus on her homework with her dad pounding on the door. I couldn't just let this go. What sort of message would I be sending to her?
My frustration turned into anger and I slammed the deadbolt open and reached for the door knob. "Okay Arjuna! You're not going to keep—"
The door flung open with wicked force, hitting me in the face and knocking me to the ground. The world around me went gray. There was suddenly all this screaming—my daughter shrieking in terror and men yelling, "Get on the ground, bitch!" I was already on the ground, though. Not really sure what more they wanted. The impact from the door left me confused. Then there was a hollow thump and pain in my cheek. The gray turned to black.
Ba-boom.
Ba-boom.
I could hear my pulse in my ears. Then I became aware of a high pitched whine. It was endless and completely out-of-tune and off the beat of my pulse. God it was annoying. What the hell was that? Wait. That wasn't a whine that was my daughter crying!
"Krishna?"
Everything was still black around me. I couldn't move my hands either; something was squeezing them together and there was an uncomfortable amount of pressure on my chest.
"Mommy!" she cried.
What was happening? I became instantly panicked when I heard the fear in her little voice. "Baby, mommy's here. Are you okay? Where are you?" She cried to me again and my eyes began to burn with tears. I began to suspect the worse: Had Arjuna kidnapped us?
"Arjuna? This isn't funny! I swear—I swear you'll pay for this!"
Then there was a voice, "Shut up, bitch."
That wasn't Arjuna.
The blackness disappeared as the owner of the voice snatched a bag from my head. My eyes strained to focus through the sudden intensity of the light in the moderately lit and strangely familiar hallway. I looked around trying to get my head together. It was still buzzing from being hit. I tried to rub my aching cheekbone but my hands were bound with duct tape; my fingertips had turned white. Come to think of it, I couldn't feel them. And, my chest was covered in duct tape too.
My mind shed the thoughts about myself and refocused on my daughter. "Krishna?"
She responded with tears, sitting on the other side of the hallway with a man holding a gun to her head. Electricity shot through my body and my heart began banging against my ribcage. Fearing for my daughter's life, I tried to tear my bindings with my numb fingers and my teeth. I bucked wildly, slamming my back against the wall.
A man next to me pressed the barrel of his gun to the top of my head and said, "Chill the fuck out, bitch. That's dynamite strapped to your chest. You'll get us all killed."
I didn't know what to do or say, so I sat back down. I felt helpless. I always felt helpless. The look on Krishna's face begged me to protect her, to wish away all the bad stuff but I didn't know how. I felt like I was failing her.
The daze was finally clearing. I realized that there were three men with guns keeping us company in a hallway and there was a strange looking woman at the far end.
The woman was average height—about five-and-a-half feet tall—and petite with little to no figure. She stood beneath the exit-sign digging under her nails with a knife and looked as if she was mouthing the words to a song, paying us no attention.
What she lacked in curves, she made up in appearance. Her hair was long, wild, and two-tone pink and black with bangs cut perfectly just above her eyes. Her skin was porcelain and nondescript but her make-up was extreme. Her eye-liner: thick and pink. Her eye-shadow: black, all-consuming circles devouring her eyes. Her lipstick: An absolute mess of bright-red and green stripes outlined in black.
Like her make-up, the woman's clothes were equally extreme; all mismatch colors and materials with chains, grommets, and laces everywhere. She also had a freakish anarchy symbol tattooed on her arm and ridiculous numbers of piercings. She reminded me of something out of one of Krishna's cartoons.
One of the men knelt in front of me and used the barrel of his gun to lift my head to meet his gaze. "You with me?" He had an accent. Not sure from where, maybe Ireland.
"Yes," I replied knowing that he was referring to me being conscious. "Where are we?"
"At your job."
My job? Oh crap. We were at the Gotham First National Bank in Freedom Heights and I was the newly promoted Vault Supervisor. That was what this whole thing was about.
"Now, listen," he demanded softly. "You're gonna open this vault and there ain't gonna be no funny business."
"But I—"
"But nothing. You're gonna open the vault or we're gonna blow your daughter up and make you watch. Then we'll blow your stupid ass to bits outta spite. Capiche?"
I nodded fearfully. The other man standing next to me cut the tape from my hands with a knife. "You got twenty minutes," the accented man said. "Use the time wisely."
I hesitated. Twenty minutes wasn't enough. Even after I dialed in the combination, the time lock wouldn't open the vault for an hour. My eyes started to fill with tears when I looked at my daughter. There was that look again.
"Nineteen minutes and forty-five seconds. Better get your shit, together."
Turning the tumbler was a pain. My hands were sweating profusely and trembling with fear. I could barely get the dial on the needed numbers and I constantly forgot how many turns I had completed. Even if I had unlocked the vault like they demanded, once the twenty minutes elapsed, the door wouldn't have been open and then they'd have killed us. I had to do something. But, what could I do? People always said that mothers could perform superhuman feats to protect their children but I wasn't feeling a bit superhuman and no one ever told me a story of a panicked mother snatching the weapons from three gun-toting criminals. Then there was a sudden moment of relief when I remembered that if the combination was entered improperly three times, the silent alarm would go off and alert the police. But, that relief was strangled a half of a second later when I realized that the police wouldn't get here inside twenty minutes—this is Gotham City after all. The police weren't much better than the criminals. All I wanted to do was cry.
I tried to enter the combination over and over again. For some reason, I just couldn't get it right. I apologized several times and pleaded for them to give me more time but they always responded the same way, "Shut up and open it, bitch." I tried to remain in control of my emotions, at least for my daughter's sake. I didn't want her to panic because I started to break up.
Then I heard a sound like a drumroll from what must have been the bank's atrium. Then there was screaming and more drumrolls. No wait that was gunfire. It was just muffled by the walls and doors, but gunfire meant the police were here! Omigod! We were saved!
The men looked at each other. There was an unsettled tension building between them as the gunfire and screaming became more constant. The accented man signaled the door to atrium and all three of them disappeared through it. It was just me, Krishna, and the woman.
I swallowed hard waiting to be sure that the three men had truly left and then I dashed over to my daughter, coddling her and making sure she wasn't hurt. Tears streamed down her little face. She asked repeatedly why this was happening. I told her that I didn't know but everything would be alright because the police had just shown-up, that's why there was all the gunfire. The woman, who remained beneath the exit sign, didn't seem the least bit alarmed nor concerned that I wasn't trying to open the vault anymore. I was scared to go for the exit though. I didn't want the accented-man and his partners to come back in and see us making a break for it and open fire.; we couldn't just sit there either. And, I couldn't get a read on the woman. I didn't know if she was one of them or another hostage.
Just then the accented-man burst through the door; the gunfire and screaming clearly audible while the door was open. "The Bat just showed up! We gotta get the fuck outta here! He'll fucking kill all of us!"
The woman finally spoke, "Is he alone?" Her voice was nasal and her accent was heavy too; perhaps, New Jersey, New York, or New England. Either way, it was really heavy.
"Hell no!" His free arm cut a line through the air. "He came with an army!"
The woman pulled a cell phone from her pocket and thumbed through its menus. The accented-man looked puzzled. "What're you doin'? We gotta get leave!"
The woman made a zipping motion across her brightly colored lips and pointed at the phone as she placed it to her ear and then directed the accented-man back to the door with her hand. The accented-man threw up his free arm not understanding why she wasn't taking him seriously and then he disappeared through the door again; the gunfire muffled once the door shut completely.
Someone answered and the woman spoke into the receiver, "Puddin'? Hi!" She was bubbly and all smiles. "Fatman and Birdbrain just showed up. Uh-huh, they're beating up the help. You're in the clear." She paused while the person on the other end spoke and then she laughed obnoxiously, snorting several times. "You're so funny! No, I'll keep 'em busy as long as I can. Yeah, I got a plan. I love ya, too, Mr. J."
The accented-man burst through the door again, his face was as white as a sheet. "Oh jesus! We ain't got much time! They're laying waste to everybody out there! We gotta go! We gotta go! Out the back, let's go!"
He rushed over to her and grabbed at the material of her shirt with his free hand, pointing his gun towards the door to the atrium. The woman jerked free and then pushed him backwards by his face with the palm of her hand.
"What's all this we-stuff, Fergus?" she asked, straightening her top. "You're gonna stay here and keep 'em busy."
"What? Are you serious?"
"As a hole in the head..."
"You can't be serious!"
She put three fingers in the air. "Scouts' honor."
"We never even got the vault open! There's no point in trying to fight the Bat! We ain't got shit to fight for!"
"I was never trying to get the vault open—or fight the Bat for that matter," she said tapping his nose with the tip of her finger to each syllable of her response.
"What?" He jerked his head back. "Then why are we here? Is this some sort of set-up?"
"No." Her eyes became innocent and her voice childlike. "Yes. Sort of. I guess so, if you wanna call it that. Either way you're staying here."
"I can't stay here!" He stomped his foot. "This ain't my first run-in with the Bat! And, he don't forget nothing! Do you know what he'll do to me when he finds me here? The Bat don't believe in mercy!"
"Well, neither does the Joker." She did a little jig for emphasis. "And, I doubt anything the Bat and his loser sidekicks can do is worse than what the Joker would do if he finds out you left your post. Your call, though, pal."
"No, hold up—!"
"Fergus," she cut him off, her face becoming strained. "You're scaring our new friends. Stop screaming."
"The goddamn Batman is here!"
"Toughen up, chief." She slapped Fergus' arm. "He's just a clown in a suit."
The woman gestured him back to the door and then walked in my direction. I stood up and pushed my daughter behind me.
"I apologize for all the commotion. The drugs make these clowns act like little girls when they're under pressure. They start seeing things like giant bats hanging out with teenagers. Weird, huh?"
What was I supposed to say that? I watched Fergus run back to the door but he didn't leave this time. He just opened the door slightly and peered out.
Okay, my hands weren't bound anymore but I did still have a bomb attached to my chest. I tried not to think about that. Instead I focused on how I was going to get my daughter out of the bank safely. Since the colorful-woman was a lady, I figured I'd try appealing to her maternal instinct. "Um—Please, ma'am—"
"Oh," she laughed cutting me off, "don't call me ma'am. Decrepit old bitches are ma'ams. Just call me Harley."
I was reluctant but I'd use her name if it suited her—and got me and my daughter out of here in one piece, "H—Harley, please, just let us go. We've never done anything to hurt anybody."
"Oh, of course you haven't, honey." Harley flung her wrist flamboyantly. "So there's no reason to hold you hostage. I mean you're not a hostage in the first place. Wait, you didn't think you were a hostage did you, toots?"
"Well, I—"
"Fergus, you hear that?" she cackled loudly, snorting and slapping her knee. "This stinkin' broad thought she was a hostage."
Fergus focused through the door with his gun at the ready, watching the brawl taking place in the atrium. The thought of the police didn't seem to scare him at all but Batman had him terrified.
She laughed some more and then started again, "No, sugar, you ain't no hostage." Harley composed herself. "You're just here to do us a couple favors. That's all."
"Favors? What favors?"
"Well, for one: To open the vault for those greedy, street, used-to-having-nothing, motherf—." She stopped and began laughin again. "Oh, your daughter's still here. I prob'ly should watch my mouth. She waved a dismissal in the air. "I digress. The other favor is to hold this knife."
She flashed the blade in the front of me. I took a step back, pushing Krishna closer to the wall. "You want me to what?"
"Hold this knife."
"The knife?"
"El cuchillo. Are you Mexican? You look Mexican."
"I'm Croatian."
"That sucks. Anyway, just hold the knife. Go on."
Suspicion filled my lungs. "Why?"
For a split second her face looked murderous. "Damn, bitch, you ask a lot of questions." But it suddenly became angelic again.
My expression was skeptical.
"Well if you must know—to stall the Buttman and the Boy Lover, of course. Can you do that?"
"I—"
"Bang-a-rang!" she yelped, clapping her hands excitedly. "Here."
I reached out to take hold of it.
Her hand shot forward. "Oops. Clumsy me."
I felt a pinch in my stomach. It was the kind of sensation that follows after you take a shot of a really strong liquor that you didn't want to drink. Then I tried to inhale and a sharp pain shot up my spine and then back down to my toes. I looked down and the knife was buried to the handle in my gut, the area around it alternating between sensations of hot and cold. My daughter began wailing when she realized what had happened.
"And now for the pointless monologue." Harley took a step back and cleared her throat. "I know what you're thinkin': How could this be happening to me?" She clasped her hands together beneath her chin. "I never did nothin' to deserve this. And, why would this broad do something so terrible to me, especially in front of my daughter? Well the answer is simple: There is no justification. This is a random act of violence. I simply chose your name at random from a web social network.
"As for your daughter, we're all a victim of something. I'm a victim of my circumstance; you're a victim of yours; and your daughter of hers. We're all slaves to it—victimization that is. It's nothin' personal."
"But she's an innocent little girl," I aspirated as the pain expanded when I spoke.
"Was." Harley put a corrective finger in the air. "I basically took her virginity. Someone was going to eventually, anyway. What's a girl to do?"
Things were getting blurry again and I began to stagger. Harley disappeared from view. My daughter screamed and moaned but I was powerless to comfort her, to help her—again.
I fell to the ground, having the awareness to land on my side so as not to push the knife in deeper. My daughter collapsed onto me, hugging me and begging me to get up. I heard Harley say, "Tootaloo, Fergus. Flaxman and Cock-Robin will prob'ly break every bone in your body...twice. But they can't take your dignity, buck-o."
Everything was blurry and the edges of my vision were going black. Over my daughter's crying, there was a sudden commotion near the atrium door. There was a crash followed by gunfire. Fergus yelled. My daughter screamed at the violence. I was unable to pay it much attention; at least the pain was fading. I think I was too. I felt sorry that I couldn't help my daughter—that it was going to end like this. I should have left Gotham a long time ago. What had I been thinking?
Then I saw two silhouettes—or apparitions—in what was left of my vision. The one furthest from me had horns, the one closest didn't. My daughter began to howl in fear at the sight of them.
"Aw crap, Batman, she's been stabbed!" the hornless one said. "We need ambulance!"
"Robin, you take care of the girl. I'll stabilize the woman."
"Dude...there's dynamite strapped to her chest..."
END