Terra Firma

Joker

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.

And boy, was I a convict of love.

It's funny, when people think you're incapable of something that comes naturally, to everyone, everywhere. It doesn't matter if you're Mr. Reese across the street or Mr. Napier from the asylum--you've got the potential to lose everything you've got to a woman.

And like it.

I'm not afraid to admit it. I'm an honest man. And she was no ordinary little bitch. All the others who'd come onto me... all the mob whores... they had brains emptier than my goons and were about as interesting as a sack of potatoes. Oh sure, they could be pretty. But none were beautiful. And they... they were all replaceable, hollow things. I must've murdered hundreds.

But Ivy--even without the vines and the lipstick and the anger like a cat thrown to the water--she was her own person. Real. Not caked in pumpkin-orange makeup and eyeliner thicker than my soot-rimmed eyes. No bodies felt like hers. No minds thought like hers. No eyes understood me like hers.

She didn't follow. She paced alongside. She resisted. She dared to challenge.

"You want this town? Sure. But you can't have any fun with a toy that's been broken..."

"Oh, the old familair faces..." I giggled, remembering the old times--the good and the rage-filled. The ferries, the falling. The smell of burning guts the time we sat in Gordon's cage, the feel of Ivy's back against my fingers, making dumb faces with Daisy, the madness that filled me when Battyman grabbed her shoulders like he was going to snap her in half.

I peeked out of the darkened car window to the entrance of The Gotham Police Department. All was quiet. Just peachy.

Must've taken them a couple of years to rebuild their little fortress. Must've been hard, but they did it anyway. Humans... people... they're stubborn. They'll fall down, down, down. But they'll get right back up sometimes. Some of them--like the Batman or Gordy Boy--would brush their suits off and continue seeing justice as that concrete, immovable thing.

But some.. some rolled further down, down down. Like a rolling stone--picking up speed and becoming something unstoppable, a force of nature. Some liked catching the dirt between their fingernails. Some liked the flow of blood between their fingers

(her hair it's like blood like christmas i like feeling it in my fingers)

some wanted to turn tables, tip the balance justice held in her hands. Shake the earth. Crack a smile. Terra Firma.

Some men... just wanted to watch the world burn.

I looked over at Ivy slyly as I whistled and finished applying my lipstick, where she sat in the front seat, ruffling her locks of blood and blinking her sparking green eyes up at the Gotham Police Department in slight anger and confusion.

"Why, of all places...?"

"Said his Sis was at the Police Station..."

"Oh. So we're just going to waltz in there?!"

"Uh. Yeah. Well ...not waltz. I can't dance, you know."

She rolled her eyes at my smartass remark. I licked my lip.

"...Jack, they'll kill us! This is suicide." She growled impatiently, glancing back at the dozing little boy I'd just hit. His nose had some dried blood dripping from it, but other than that he was okay. Just shaken up.

I could pity him. But I don't pity. I only understand.

Worse things happened to me as a boy.

"Yes Momma. What wine bottle Momma, this one here? Can I go outside and play with the girl picking flowers Momma? WHY NOT? You n-never let me talk to people. No, no don't hit me again I didn't mean it...!!"

"Love is suicide." I said seriously. A rare thing for me.

She said nothing, merely pursed her lips and scowled, ignoring my attempt to get her to admit what she knew she felt.

This little game she was playing with me wasn't helping my already skewed train of thought.

Half of me wanted to take that pretty face and smash it in the glass, watch blood drip down--the mouth and the eyes and the heart all bleed. Maybe then she'd say it--if I was a bad, bad man to her.

But the other side of me, the tortured "romantic" little byronic hero in me, seemed to hurt her more. And for that reason, I gave it to her. She wanted to torture me by not returning my emotional displays of affection (she returned the physical side enough heehee). So what's a guy like me to do? Torture her back.

Yeah, that's mean you say. That's not love, you say.

But what you're thinking of is romance. Romance is fleeting, just full of butterflies and sunshines and happy songs with high voices.

Empty things. Hollow things.

(like those mob bitches HA)

Love is a bullet with butterfly wings. It is a downpour of rain, a strange duet with disonant little harmonies--barely detectable to the "normal ear." It lasted through anger and sorrow. Something romance could not do.

And she wanted love, deep down. Not romance. Which was good. Because I am incapable of giving romance all the time.

I fight back. I play games. And I fight and play dirty.

I'm like a snake, you see: I crawl gracelessly on the ground, with the worst of the worst, the dirtiest of the dirt--with the ants and the rats and the maggots and the dead. And you can step on me. Fine by me. But I'll reach around and dig venomous fangs right into the heel of your clean, prim little foot.

As an added bonus, I'll reach a hand out to help you up when you fall. And when you take it, I'll pull out my knife and slit your skin. And I'll just laugh and spit in your face while you cry.

You can call me crazy, a freak, a rascal, a dog. A manipulative mastermind, an aloof fool. A problem, a nerd, a clown, a goblin, a dirty rotten sonofabitch.

A psychotic, sociopathic, merciless bloodthirsty monster.

I know I'm those things.

But no matter what, I am an honest man.

No matter what, I love.

Jay

"Homer? Homer!"

I spun around in the makeshift med ward, rubbing my dark face with my hands. I'd gone to get him while Angel sat in my office, looking over that file I'd brought her. I'd tried to snap her out of it, get her to apply her mind to something else. But she'd waved me away, eyes fixated on the unopened manilla folder in a persistence I knew I could not touch.

"I have to take a look Jay. I've always suspected... but now. Now I've put it off for too long..."

So I'd left her.

But now Homer was gone.

The Batman wanted nothing to do with my plan, with my twisted 'bend the rules' sort of thinking. Gordon went home, too stressed to think anymore.

Cosette was in the spare, lavish bedroom in a revived mob bar, mind filled with murderous thoughts and bent on killing a man who, unbeknownst to himself, loved her so much he'd developed the fear of touching others.

But we didn't know that yet.

All I knew was, Homer was gone and Angel was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Angel

Suspect said nothing. Appeared to be dumb.

The police reports didn't help.

I flipped, finding a transcript of a conversation between Jeannie Gimble and her school counseler, just a day or so after the "abduction".

"Tell me, Jeannie, what did The "Joker" do that night?"

"Nothing."

"Oh, come now, you can't tell me he didn't do anything..."

"Really. He didn't. He shot the guy who brought me down, muttered about not playing with kids because kids weren't corrupt yet. He told me I had to stay the night. To learn a lesson. About wanting to be a freak."

"And?"

"I was scared, so I cried. Rats would run by and I would scream. But no one helped me. Ivy came a few hours later."

"Ivy? Who's Ivy?"

"Yes, yes. Ivy. She was pisssseeed because she thought he raped me or something like that. She talked with me and made me feel safe. Then she went to his ...room.. and I heard crying and screaming and I thought she was dead and I was going to die..."

"What kind of screaming?"

"The kind only a few people ever hear in a lifetime. The kind that splits your eardrums and makes your heart bleed in an achy sort of way... it makes you squint your eyes and clench your teeth. You don't want to hear it. It's horrid. But you can't ignore it because it creeps into the walls like a rush of cold wind, making the blood in your head flow and the gears in your stomach twist uncomfortably. You do everything to stop it, you know? You tear chunks of hair out from a white skull, cut up bits of yourself. But it stays... it stays with you. Because it's a sound that is so real it clings like a newborn with tiny gnarled fingers to your shirt..."

"What is it? What kind of screaming is it?" I heard myself say aloud desperately in the deserted office to the imaginary Jeannie in my head, my eyes wild and absorbed on the words spelled plainly across the page:

I could practically hear the pause she must've made breathe in the dim room,

"The scream... the scream of a clown dying in the gutter. Dying so hard and so fast he lives. The scream of a man turning on himself, stabbing himself in the eye with a pencil, turning his soul inside out as he realizes fully what he could of had, what he wants. He turns on himself with an icepick, cracking up a hard black shell of face paint and revealing a beautiful gem, glittering beside firelight and wrapped in leaves. It's the scream of a man who is dead, being jolted alive. By fire. By electricity. By poison lipstick.

By love."

I cried then, letting tears spill onto the report paper.

No one wrote like that, spoke like that, had a stream of conciousness like that. No one except--

"HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT"

"WHA"

"OH MY GOD"

"DROP THE WEAPON! DROP THE WEAPON NOW OR I'LL SHOOT!"

I wouldn't have run out upon hearing the panicked screams of the police officers, a few moments earlier milling over coffee and talking about what they would eat for dinner.

I would have been sensible and stayed in the chair, crawled under my desk, prayed that the laughs I heard cackling in the entryway would not come any nearer.

But then I heard Jay's voice, tinted with guilt and shame as he cried out in desperation:

"LET GO OF THE BOY."

Joker

"I'm sorry? What?"

"Please! Please!"

I sneered, disgusted at the dark-skinned fellow's judgement on me, passing so quickly. I had the right mind to shoot the boy, not kill him, just shoot him to rile everyone up, (who ironically enough, despite me pointing a gun around his head, was very calm and almost seemed excited) but I knew that I would be dead before the bullet reached his head, with Ivy right next to me.

I laughed hard, shoving the boy out into the middle of the floor, firing a bullet into one of the men nearby. Another pointed his gun at me, firing quickly. Ivy intervened before he could do any sort of damage, a thick green vine of hers stretching across the room at inhumane strength and speed, flinging the man to the wall with a loud crash.

I smiled wildly at the fear and chaos ebbing into the room like a fresh stream of blood, letting go of the kid when Cosette's little friend rushed in, letting out a cry of pure shock and horror as he ran into her arms.

"Sorry," I heard him say, "I was trying to get breakfast and one of the silver lights got me. But it's okay. My imaginary friends brought me back."

"That's right." I laughed. Guns clicked around us.

I aimed my own around lazily, trying to decide who I wanted to shoot first. Would it be Mr. I'm Too Sexy For My Shirt in the back? Mrs. Dyke Haircut over by the front desk? Mr. I Remember His Face From Somewhere Oh He Looks Like Gambol Haha in the front and center?

I clicked my own gun, but before I could fire, he dropped his own.

"Everyone. Guns on the ground."

"But Gam--"

"I SAID GUNS ON THE GROUND."

One by one, all hands dropped down. The eyes still shifted carefully, nervously in their skulls and I chuckled.

Ivy laughed beside me, throwing a greasy bag to the floor, "Anybody want hashbrowns?"

The little boy took up the bag, smiling, walking a little dizzily over to his babysitter.

"What do you want?" One of the coppers snapped. The Gambol fellow looked back to him, a murderous look in his eyes, then turned to us, raising his hands and shuddering slightly at the sight of Ivy and I, fully makeuped and crazed-looking, standing in the doorway.

Cosette

"Come back here! I'm not finished!" I smiled, swinging the cane with a hidden ferocity I never knew I'd had. He dodged the first few times, causing me to create sizable dents in the wall.

Then, as swiftly as I'd gained power, I felt myself lose it. I cursed aloud many times, realizing as he lunged for his special little cane that he was much stronger than I, especially in that moment. This streak of uncertainty and doubt struck me like a blow to the head, making me fall backwards onto the bed of his, letting out a cry as pain bellowed again within my bruised legs.

"That wasn't very nice..." He scolded, waving his golden cane tauntingly out of my reach and chuckling smoothly. I groaned, coughing, slightly amused that he would back away a little with each sputter I made.

get his weakness take it take control. legs and nails. legs and nails.

I grasped onto the end of his fancy shmancy cane just as he reached in to mock me again, causing him to pull me back up to him. I laughed hysterically as his face darkened in surprise and shock. I grabbed his hair in my hands, giggling, ruffling it.

"What's a matter, Greeny boy, afraid of my germs? You can solve a riddle but can you catch a cold? Aha! Ahahahahahaha!"

I coughed, wheezing and laughing, suddenly aware that things were getting teary-eyed again. I felt myself fall hopelessly to the floor, becoming tired from all the coughing and the pain in my shins.

Fuzzy. Fuzz. Fuzz.

"Police better come get me..." I mumbled to no one, "Fuzz better come get me before this sucker does."

Jay

I never, ever, for one single solitary moment thought I'd say this. Not in a million years.

"Joker... ' I choked on my words, trying to gobble down my persistent and heaping helping of nerves at the same moment, "Ivy. .... We need your help."