Half Jack

Cosette

"Jack and May went up the hill to fetch a burning baby,
Jack once said, "I love you so"
and May said, "only maybe"
until the smoke it made them choke
brought forth a new confession
and Daisy croaked
to bloom again
and start an old-new mission."

I chanted this over and over, my mantra, my security within the unnerving yet total security of a dingy alleyway.

Derrick. Derrick was his name, the first man I killed. I rocked back and forth on my heels, listening to the soft and dim fall of rain, remembering the ordeal that happened just a few minutes before.

I was sure to ask his name when I entered the apartment (his poor spouse was out grocery shopping at that time, she did so like clockwork)--slow and without sound, I followed him around like a ghost. While he took a swig of beer, as he turned the channel on the television. He didn't notice me for quite some time, a surprise for me.

But when he finally did turn to look at my face--painted white in the style of a mime. Not a clown, for I never wanted to imitate The Joker--he relayed a look of terror so satisfying that I engulfed his mouth with my hand (gloved, the plain dishwashing kind) and asked him in barely a whisper to please tell me his name, or else I would crack his neck.

Shaking and hoarse, he gave it to me

(derrick)

as I slipped my hands to his neck. I was surprised by his stillness, but only a little. Perhaps it was shock. Or maybe cowardice. This man who would hit and kick his wife every night was like melted butter when a woman decided to lay a hand on him, that could be sure.

His neck felt so easy in my fingers. Muscled and thick, but easy. It wasn't anger that drove me then. No longer a "righteous-kill" for the woman or for myself. It was just a sick pleasure that I laughed quietly at: his breath getting more difficult and his small amount of struggling.

Derrick was his name. He was surprisingly light.

When it was over, I tied the rope I'd brought around his neck and hung him out like an old sock up on the second floor banister. Displaying his staged suicide for all to see.

Then, I vanished from the apartment without a sound. A mime.

A sudden burst of energy and paranoia possessed me and I stumbled upon to the alley I sought refuge in now, rocking back and forth.

"Jack and May, Jack and May, they never said goodbye." Now I sat, repeating the makeshift nursery rhyme, the only rhyme I ever really knew to apply to me.

I was quivering--slightly from the chill of rain, mostly from the temporary high that is murdering a man as big as you are. I could hear myself chuckling again softly, squeezing my hands together and reliving the moment. The rain pounded on and I sunk in my thoughts until everything started fuzzing in and out again. And I thought I was shutting my eyes to doze against the rough wall as night held me in its embrace... but who knew anymore? Certainly not me.

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

Caramel apples and buttered corn, candy swirls and flapping tents. When I opened my eyes I already knew this place.

The man with the clean face and wide nose. Messy brownish hair, shining golden in the wind, which tasted like sea salt.

"Hiiiii." He laughed and drew me up off the ground by the arm. Over his shoulder, Derrick stood, dragging himself against the tent like a zombie. His large neck was angled strangely.

"What is he doing?" I asked. Jack spun around, surveyed the man for a moment, then turned back to me.

"Oh him? He's with you now. He'll be with you always. In your dreams and a voice in your head. The victims of our crimes always are."

"But... I--"

"You're what? Doing what you were destined to do? Carrying on the family chaos? Is that really what you want, Daisy?"

"I--I--You guys planted the thumbtack.... that map..."

(maybe it was just a punchline to a funny)

"Dreams are funny, huh?" He kicked at the pretty grass with his shiny shoes, "They kind of say what you want them to, drive you to do things the darkest part of your soul desires...."

Suddenly, things shifted mid-sentence. The bright and sunny seaside fair became the neon black carnival that happened years ago. When I staggered back by the sudden change in noises, Jack changed, too. His face cracked and his mouth started bleeding, dripping down on his lavender collared shirt. He held a ticking bomb and spoke in his odd and gruffened way,

"Or maybe they just want to ruin your day. Make it a bad day. Why don't you show everyone what it's like to have a bad day, Daisy? You know best and so do I. HA! HAHAHAAHAHAHA!!"

He dropped the bomb into my outstretched hands, but instead of the bomb, they were now his signature gloves.

"Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win." He grinned the way I remembered best---with the sloppy red lips and the decaying yellow teeth--the almost dead yet emotion filled eyes, and I shut my eyes tight, trying to hold that in my memory.

I awoke with a start, with the sound of thunder crashing overhead and the rain pouring down with no mercy to the city's inhabitants. I sat up uncomfortably, looking down at my typical black and white striped shirt, black pants and purple suspenders combo, now soaking wet. My eyes widened... not at the rat passing close to my feet or the two dark figures suddenly huddled in front of me, but the unmistakably old yet enduring purple gloves clenched in my hands.

I started to scream then, not able to contain myself anymore.

Homer

Penguin was the one to tell me "that writer" was dead. So instead of sticking around to give him the inside scoop about Gordon and the police were up to, I bade him farewell. He let me go with no contest or question. He liked me, trusted me. Called me his "little birdie" and joked that one day I would take over for him, I was so smart.

I bummed around in alleys by day, and at night I went to my favorite place--under the bay bridge.

I understood now why Angel had rushed in like that, couldn't even think. It was silly of me to react the way I did. I had to go back home, I'd decided this morning--the morning of Cosette's funeral, so I could protect and support my sister.

Gordon--Jimmy--stopped me, just as I passed this one alley that smelled darker than the others. A cat zipped by and I followed it with my ears, smirking.

"Hey, Homes. What're you doing out here so early? You lucky middle schoolers are off today."

"You don't even have your backpack. You're skipping school again, aren't you?"

"It's not fair you little ones get the day off. Might as well take my own."

"You're stupid." I laughed.

"Shut up," a pause, "Everyone's looking for you, y'know. Dad, your sis, even Jay. Where do you go, when you get like this?"

I shrugged, "Let's go to the bridge for a little while, I'll tell you."

Cosette

Two men were suddenly pulling me up, shaking me, saying frantic words as I scratched and hit at them relentlessly in my state of panic, spitting out words that I didn't know the meaning of any longer.

"Mime! Mime! It's us, it's us stop. Stop it."

They held my arms and legs in place, moving their heads to look straight into my eyes. One hand patted my spastic arm gently--like they were trained to handle fits like these, and done it many times before. The security tide to cover the rough patches on shore, two faces looming above that would never be seen through photograph, but two faces everyone involved with The Joker could easily recognize.

"She alright?" Goofy's voice.

"Do I look like I would know? She gotta answer that for herself," Grumpy, "Mime? You okay?"

I blinked and sucked in a shaking breath, surprised I could still accomplish that basic task.

"Ugh... my head... it hurts." I rubbed my face, surprised that I could still feel splotches of the white and black paint upon my face--even through the rain and my night spent on the ground. My wet hair clung to my face and I no longer cared. I stood up fully, looking down at the purple gloves in my hands and then up at the men who were standing up with me, slowly.

"Goofy. Grumpy. What... what are you two..."

"You didn't think boss's old bag would just walk up to your doorstep by itself? We been following you for a long time, Daisy, ever since they--"

I started to laugh. I laughed and laughed and laughed then, till tears poked at the corners of my eyes and my mouth hurt. My head hurt, my back hurt too. But it didn't matter anymore did it? I wasn't imagining the bag, there was a logical explanation for these events and the gloves in my hands--Goofy and Grumpy were the culprits.

I didn't have to go insane back there, at my old home. In Gotham.

I could've made a choice to follow a life that could very well have been ruled by logical reasoning and friendly support. Instead of going insane, leaving my home, and killing a man.

(you had a bad day, didn't you, daisy?)

But I did. I'd made the choice to.

Or was it something else? Was I set to wind on this path, was insanity just another part in the genetic makeup of mankind--an equation, something objective?

Either way, I was here. In this alley with Goofy and Grumpy--maddened, severely depressed, manic and already developing a severe apathy for all other humans and a slight blood lust--I was here, ready to embark on the same sporadic killing spree and

(show everyone everyone what happens when you have one bad day)

build humanity up, to knock itself down.

"You followed me." I looked up at the dawn, approaching steadily, "You followed me because you knew I'd become this... become him..."

"Ah ah ah, you can't be The Joker," Grumpy scowled. His face was a bit more wrinkled now, "You're different. You're a Mime. But... we have nowhere else to go, see? We knew nothing else. We're in the business of killin', and runnin' and shaking things up, so we wanted to know... we wanted to see..."

"What I'd do, huh?" I grinned and they grinned, too. Especially Goofy. There was a tiny amount of fear in those grins, but mostly respect. And by the ugly light of dawn, I knew then--this wasn't choice.

It was fate.

"C'mon boys." And they followed me further into the seductive darkness of the alley--a place I felt I knew too well.

Homer

Jim flung bits of rocks, and they broke the path of wind--sailed through air and landed with spe-lunks into the quiet waves of the bay. It was just us two, I couldn't smell another person for quite a distance. There was no speaking. Sometimes, enemies and friends communicate just as well in silence. So we were separate yet together in silence, with him rebelling against the air and the earth and the sky--and myself standing perfectly still and letting the newborn sun hit my shades, the cold water roll in against my skin and the minuscule grains of dirty weave between my toes.

I wasn't afraid of water like this. It pulled gently, back and forth. I liked to take off my shoes and just wade in it some days, because it was the only way to really accept my trauma, the things my mother did. I smiled slightly, listening to Gordon throw more rocks like a frustrated caveman.

I was trying to ease my way into explaining where I ran off to, my conflicted inner war with bad and good, so I was the first to start the conversation:
"Do you think you'll be a policeman one day, Jim? Like your father?"

"Nah. I dunno. Maybe I'll be a politician."

I laughed, "The next Harvey Dent? A mighty Golden Boy?"

"Harvey Dent was a monster." Jim spit suddenly, and I was surprised by the genuine anger and fear in his voice, "They don't tell you that in school, eh? How he went nuts and killed like five people. But I... I know the truth! I know...."

Jimmy nodded, affirming his pride and security.

I frowned, "I don't understand."

"Course you don't. You weren't there. He held a gun to my head when I was little, a little silver revolver, you know. Harvey Dent, what a joke! Batman was there to save us, but I bet you didn't know that either... Made my Dad cry and my Mom scared so bad, she almost went insane...."

Jim relayed this information to me without holding back. His voice was bitter and caustic, his anger overflowing. I listened, careful not show any emotion. My eyebrows furrowed. The story didn't add up. It didn't seem real. Harvey Dent goes batty, Superhero jumps and saves the day, but the madness goes on and on.

And the gun... the gun I found on the second day I'd been hiding underneath the bridge... It was exactly how he'd described.

My mind sparked.

The piece of metal that hit my foot that day beneath Gotham's bridge was very real. My head focused downward out of reflex in that moment, but not because I could've "seen" what was there. I held it between preteen toes and bent down to pick the mystery object up, before it could be forgotten about and buried away with time. I kept it with me, hidden. Until this morning, this moment.

I pulled it out from the inner pocket of my jacket now--it was shaped strangely and very cold. There was a bit of candy wrapper stuck to it and I flicked it off. Jim cried out,

"IT'S THE GUN. Homer, put it down. Please just-- Oh my God, please..."

I ran my fingers over every curve of it, let it rest innocently in my palms. It was a little exciting. I knew their sounds and what they did, so I didn't try and use it. Just... held it.

"This gun? You know this gun?"

"It's HIS--" Jim's voice cracked like mine did sometimes.

"Harvey Dent's?"

A nervous swallow, "Y-yeah. I know, trust me."

"I trust you," I said cooly, walking towards my "friend." But every step I took, he took back out of fear. This sparked a billion questions in me, "If Harvey Dent died a hero, why would he have this gun? If he was given a huge memorial and buried in the ground, why did I find this gun here, yesterday? Why was it under this bridge? The bridge where my Mom left me one day? Do you know these things, Jimmy. Do you know..."

I was suddenly aware of how naturally the gun's grooves fit against my curled palm, how nicely my finger rested on the little trigger. I smiled benignly, walking faster towards Jim. He was stumbling backwards in the rock and glass-filled sand. He was breathing oddly and babbling words. I was sure in my steps and silent.

Maybe it was the fact that I had the advantage against the boy who'd bullied me for years. The little blind boy, scaring the growing blonde high schooler. Maybe I just liked the gun in my small hands. Maybe I was in a confused state of mind. Either way, there I stood, with powdery sand covering my feet and a gun pointed at my friend.

I blinked my blind eyes quickly as my ears caught hold of a faraway car door slamming and the smell of a man and a woman. Both distinct smells, but the female stood out. She was my sister and only mother-figure, after all.

I hid the gun again, reaching a hand out to help Gordon up and saying, "You will be quiet about this. I trust you."

He dusted himself off. I could feel the shock, shame, and fear still radiate from him, and I got a funny little satisfaction from it.

Jay and Angel were taking much too long to hurry down near the shore, or they couldn't figure out I was here by now, so I decided to run towards them--meet them in the middle.

I had nothing to hide, after all.