The Cougar's Date pt. 2
Aug. 4th, 2009 10:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tinhuviel Joker jumped out of the car and was up the steps of the old warehouse before Cathy had even gotten the heavy door of the Gremlin open enough for her to maneuver herself out of the unwieldy car. Gremlins had always been a bitch in every way. She was glad they were near extinction. Finally making her way out of the blue monstrosity, Cathy made her way up the steps and followed the Joker into the old warehouse.
Inside, it looked like it may have been a rag factory at one time. Cathy could almost see the neat rows of sewing machines, a harried woman sitting at each one repeating the same stitch for 8 to 10 hours over and over and over again. Now the place was nothing but dingy dust. She looked around and found the stairs. Yes, a two story rag factory. The boss probably would have lived here, too, to oversee his textile empire at all times. There were probably apartments near the back of the building.
“C’mere Twist Tie, follow me. My place is back herrre,” Joker said, taking Cathy’s hand and making a dash to the back of the warehouse. Cathy was in heels. She couldn’t go that fast and she faltered. The Joker stopped and looked at her.
“Can we just go at a normal pace?” she asked.
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Why don’t you go at your normal pace and I’ll be back there waiting on you?” And he was off in a full run, laughing the entire way. Cathy was beginning to feel a little hurt by his attitude. Still, she followed.
When she joined Joker at his little apartment, she found a bedroom with two mattresses on the floor covered in a crumpled blue sheet and patchwork comforter. Beside it on the floor was a boom box and about half dozen CDs scattered on the floor. Adjacent to the bedroom was a small bathroom and a kitchen nook. And that was it. No money, no gold, no spoils of the Joker’s reign of terror on the Syndicate’s pawn racket. She wondered where it was, not that she was interested at all in the Joker’s riches. No, Cathy was here for one thing and one thing only.
“What do you think? Comfy, hm? Sit!” The Joker offered a hand to ease her down on his mattress. Cathy sat down on a wonderfully soft pillow top mattress. This was going to be glorious… The Joker sat down next to her, looking into Cathy’s eyes, studying her face. “You’ve got lovely eyes.”
Cathy found herself actually blushing. She felt like a school girl. “Why thank you… You’ve got – well, you’re just – I mean, I find you very attractive.”
The Joker fell back on the mattress and chuckled. “You mean I don’t-t scare you at alll? Because, really Toots, that’s what the war paint is all about, scaring pee-pull. What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing! I just think you’re…intriguing.” Cathy reached out to Joker, to touch his cheek. He shied away from her.
“Don’t-t. Do. Not-t. Touch me,” he said lowly, with menace dripping from his voice. “Especially on my face.”
“Wh-what happened? To you, that is. Your face.”
Joker leapt up and walked toward the kitchen, tossing the CD to her as he moved away. “Turn on some music and stay there, Kitten. I’ll be back…”
Leaving a perplexed Cathy sitting on his bed, the Joker stole a glance back her to see if she was staying put. She was. Good. A couple of moments later, Pink Floyd was playing “Shine on You Crazy Diamond.” Syd Barrett. Joker had an affinity for Syd. He nodded in approval, despite his current dilemma.
He had to figure out some way to scare Cathy. This stupid bitch thought she could trail him for a week and him not know it? He hated to be followed. And he hated even more to have his nights at the Ritz interrupted. He was trying to work it out there. It happened around there, he could sense it, he knew it. And now, he’d have to wait until next week because this meddlesome boy collector thought she could seduce him. Him!? First of all, he wasn’t a boy and second of all, no woman was going to take him as a trophy. He’d been with women older than Cathy who looked a hell of a lot better than she did and had more class in their little finger than she could ever hope to have. He could tell she thought an awful lot of herself. That, combined with her single-minded lust, blinded her to the gravity of her situation. No matter what he did, she persisted in her delusions. Until that was shattered, he couldn’t have his fun.
Joker looked around his kitchen nook. He really hadn’t examined it much, preferring to eat on the go, grabbing whatever he could, whenever he could. After tonight, he’d be doing that again until he found another nest. That’s why his car was packed full of the treasure he’d been amassing. Opening one cabinet door after another, Joker peered into dusty emptiness until… At the very back of one of the cabinets was a large box of Easter egg dye. He grabbed it and studied the instructions. He needed vinegar? Screw the instructions! He ripped open the box to find only two tablets left, both of them green. He got his pot he used for heating tea water and filled it full of hot water. Taking his tea mug, he crushed the tablets into a fine powder and scraped the powder off the counter into the pot. The water began to turn green. Joker grinned.
“Joker?” that irritating voice of hers called from the other room.
“Be right there, Love Cup!” he said, wondering if the idiot would even catch the Who Framed Roger Rabbit reference, since she so obviously, desperately wanted to be as sexy as a Toon married to a Toon rabbit.
He smacked his lips in disgust and turned his attention back to the water. Hopefully this will work; otherwise, he was going to have a sore head for nothing.. Leaning over the sink, the Joker scooped his blonde curls forward and positioned the pot. Slowly, he let the water pour onto his head. He sucked in air through gritted teeth. The water was almost scalding, but Joker compared it to the vague memory he had of night he was cut, the night he lost her, whoever she was. His Grace, that’s what he called her. The fury of losing a night of trying to remember that horrible day steeled the Joker against the heat of the dyed water. He began to massage the water into his scalp as he continued the trickle. Soon, the water petered out. Joker set the pot to one side and used both hands to work the dye in. He felt rivulets of water worm off his scalp and down his face, probably marring his war paint. He didn’t care. He was aiming for something horrific. He wanted to scare this crazy slut. He wanted her to not doubt his insanity and he wanted that crazy in his eyes to be the last thing she saw with hers. He squeezed the excess water out of his hair and stood up, slinging his head back. The Joker had no towel, so he took off his jacket and scrubbed his scalp vigorously. He could already feel the skin growing pink and sensitive. He’d be sore tomorrow but, if this worked, it’d be worth it. He tossed the jacket to one side and peered down at his hands, which were dyed green. Joker grinned….widely.
“Another Satellite” by XTC was playing when Joker re-entered his bedroom to find Cathy stripped and lying on her stomach reading his Psychology Today (You had to keep current on things when you were someone like him….whatever that meant. He was trying to figure that out himself.). The song was appropriate. He stood behind her, listening.
Abort your mission let's just say you tried
Before you glimpse I have a darker darker side
I say why in Heaven's name do you come on these trips
Only to freeze in a total eclipse
Don't need another satellite
He cleared his throat and Cathy looked over her shoulder….and screamed. Glee filled the Joker. He leapt at her, landing astride her waist just as Cathy spun around to grab her clothes.
“Too late!” the Joker barked with laughter. Cathy began to fight him, clawing at his face with her overly-manicured nails. He wrestled with her, clasping her wrists together between his hands. “Now now! What’s the matter, Poose?! Yer actin’ like you’ve seen the Boogie Man! I’m your Boogie Man, that’s what I am!”
And Joker howled with laughter at his song-reference within a black pun. For some odd reason, Cathy didn’t share his mirth, which made it all the more deliciously funny for him. He thought he was on to something here… It wasn’t just the clown disguise to hide his marred features now. The jokes were starting to sink in for him. He was achieving an epiphany regarding the absurdity of it all. The absurdity of a world that tolerated the likes of Cathy Callahan and her self-absorbed, vapid, bourgeois demeanor. The absurdity of an existence that robbed you of yourself, leaving only disfigurement and large holes of lost time. The absurdity of…everything. Joker succumbed to a sublime mental break as he straddled this frightened woman who was old enough to be his mother, and the hilarity bubbled up out of him like Champagne. He laughed like he’d never laughed before, and never would again. He laughed at everything because, really, everything was a great big knee-slapper. Tears ran down his cheeks, he laughed so hard.
Eventually, the laughter eased and Joker found himself in a completely different head space. He was clearer, more focused, than he ever remembered being. Slowly he looked down and saw Cathy Callahan looking up at him, her face wet with tears and her sculpted lips turned down in fright. And the oddest question came to him at that precise moment. It was a question he’d heard before and would repeat on many occasions from this point on.
“Cathy…. Candy cane… Why so serious?”
Silence. And the laughter bubbled up again. This was an exquisite moment in his life, one that the Joker would never forget. It marked him. It defined him. Once the laughter was given its due, Joker returned his attention to Cathy.
“I believe you asked me a question earlierrr… You wanted to know about my face. Well, that’s a funny story.” The Joker tried to no avail to recall how he really got the scars, then realised yet another epiphany: when memory fails, imagination becomes sacred. He lifted his eyes to the heavens and let his imagination soar, or was this an actual memory? From here on out, Joker was never truly certain himself. “You see, when I was a young teen, only ten years ago, I lived next door to this woman in her mid-thir-ties. She wasn’t a bad-looking woman, no. In fact, she was a lot-t better looking than you, Pumpkinhead. A lot-t.”
He paused to let that sink in to Cathy’s narcissistic brain (that Psychology Today was really paying off!) as he allowed Sting’s “Fragile” to wash over his new persona. Music was what had always grounded him. Joker imagined that, someday, it would be music that would save him. Whatever that meant. He watched Cathy’s face crumple as the insult took hold and he reveled in how much uglier it made her. She deserved it, the stupid slag.
“This woman wassss a little odd,” Joker said, biting his lower lip in thought. “She liked me a great deeeal, you see. She kept trying to get me alone in her apartment. Now, I wanted-d no part of it. I was only thirteen. How old were you in 1992, eh Cathy? Oh, that’s right, you werrre 36, 37? Something like that? Same age as Miss Bartholomew. Gotcha. Now, liiike I said, I was too young for the Worrlld Series of Love, as Prince so apt-tly called it once. All I wanted to do was ride my bike and practice skateboarding! I was a boy, just-t a lit-tle boy.
“But but see Miss Bartholomew didn’t see a boy. She saw a conquest. She saw the young man to be, with his saaandy locks and soulful eyesss. She saw an object of her misguided-d deesiiire. She saw me ten years from then with an old woman’s hand down his paaants. So one day, Miss Bartholomew caught me on my way out to the skate park on the outskirts of the Narrows (yeah, I’m Narrows trash, you haughty so-and-so..) near my family’s home. She told me she had the latest version of Sonic the Hedgehog, would I like to play? Well, what’s a boy to say to something like that? And I’d always been kind of fond of prickly little beasts like porcupines and such, so I was drawn in hook..line..and-d sinkerrr..
“Well, imaaagine my surpriiise when I found out she didn’t even have game system? It didn’t take me too long to find out. From the moment I stepped into her web, skateboard in hand, she was on me like a freck-kull. I fought her off, calling for help-p, but pleas for help pret-ty much go unanswered in the Narrows.
“’Oh please, J,’ she said. ‘Please, baby, you’re such a pret-ty thing, just one kiss.’ And she pulled me to her, kissing me fully on the lips. Of course, a boy my age, about to go into puberty can’t control his physical reaction to something like that. She saw that as encouragement and, trust-t me, she checked! Eventually, I wrested-d myself from her clinging and grabbing, and ran for the door, only to find it locked with a special key. And nowww, Miss Bartholomew was angry. She had me cornered now and she had a knife. ‘You horrible boy,’ she said. ‘If I can’t have you, I’ll make sure no one else wants you!’ And she pinned me to the floor and did this.”
The Joker turned his head to and fro to proudly show off his scars to Cathy.
“Ever since, I’ve had this thing about creepy old women following me. Y’see I don’t like it. Not at allll. Oh, yes, Olive Loaf, I knew you were watching me! I might be young, but I’m farrr from stupid! I’ve just been waiting for the opportunity to get you close enough to do…thissss…” the Joker said with a hiss, as he transferred Cathy’s wrists to one big hand so he could use the other to pull a knife from his pocket. He held it between his thumb and first two fingers, out in front of him like it was his show-and-tell project. Cathy began to struggle again. “Oh sh-sh-shuuush now. What did you expect after watching me this past week, or were you reaaaally so caught up in yourself that you never thought about what you were watching happen?”
Joker leaned down, his face very close to Cathy’s. He saw green drops of water fall into her eyes and smiled viciously. “I have been told by so-called experrrts that I sufferrr…from….” And Joker looked to the right as he tried to remember the exact phrasing. “Borderline Personality Disorder, Schizotypal Personality Disorder, and just your general mom’s apple pie verrrrsion of Anti-social Personality Disorder, probablee bordering on Psychopathy. Do you know what that means?”
Cathy moved her had just a little to indicate that she did not, or that she was really quite nervous. Either way, Joker continued. “It meeaaans that I’m crazy as hell! But you know what? I think I got cured tonight, thaaanks to you, you rickety old sack of shit! I hope you’re happy about that.”
“why….?” Cathy whispered.
“Becaussse, you’re about to get a biiig smile on your face,” and he sliced into the left side of Cathy’s mouth, allowing her subsequent scream to wash over him like a cool shower of glory.
Blood splattered his face as she continued to scream and he continued to cut into her, creating the Glasgow Smile he himself sported. He enjoyed being intimate like this. He’d never done it before. This closeness to his plaything made him feel like the boy he couldn’t remember being. The glee began to rise in him again, giving him an erection and inspiring another fit of laughter. He continued to slice into her with shallow cuts all over her face until she passed out from either the pain or from lack of oxygen caused by the screams. But he didn’t stop. He was enjoying himself too much. He continued on, making small incisions all over her body until the mattresses were soaked through with her blood.
There was still life in her though, so Joker decided to try to wake her. There was something he wanted to do, and he meant to do it. He slapped her. Nothing. He slapped her again, harder. Cathy’s eyes fluttered open, then widened when she saw him.
“Hi there. See me? See my eyes? Selfish, deelusional little perrrson…go to sleeeep now bye-byeee.”
And the Joker slowly inserted his knife into Cathy’s left eye, enjoying the satisfying pop as he went beyond the socket and into her brain. He felt her entire body shudder in death throes and his body shuddered along with it.
And it was this that gave the Joker the idea that maybe he should date more. Perhaps he should meet some swinging Gotham singles and grab himself a little more fun. He could enjoy his date physically first, then he could tell her a little bedtime story before he enjoys her in a completely different way. He could be sated in body, mind, and spirit, all in one wonderful night. The Joker pulled reluctantly away from his former predator. He needed to clean up, collect his music, and be shed of this place.
“Well, Cathy, you look a fright now. Don’t think you’ll be picking up any youngsters for your trophy case toniiight,” Joker said in sing-song manner.
He pulled off his bloody clothes and headed for the shower before donning his only other suit. As he walked past the mirror to get into the shower, the Joker caught a glimpse of himself and he stopped. Slowly, he approached himself, studying the crazy green hair and how the dye had marred his clown features. He was a true fright and, even better, he knew it. This was something he could work with. It was the missing addition to the look for which he had been striving. Now that he had it, the hazy idea of what he wanted to do blazed into a perfect revelation of what he was born to do. The entire thing he had worked out in his head years ahead of time. The muzzi-headedness with which he left Arkham was gone completely. He just gazed at his face and wondered about that day when he lost everything. It no longer seemed to matter now. All that mattered was funding his masterpiece, his message.
That…and his new hobby. He’d never been one to date, or at least he imagined he hadn’t, so this would be uncharted territory. Joker lifted his lower eyelids in a half smile, half smirk. “Hello there, you hip daddio. I have just the snazzy dud-ds picked out for you when the time is right, that is. This is gonna be so..much..funnn….”
©Tracy Angelina Evans
4 August, 2009
In memory of Heath Ledger
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no subject
Date: 2009-08-05 06:36 pm (UTC)your troll met a more interesting end than mine did ;)
no subject
Date: 2009-08-05 07:06 pm (UTC)The Cougar's date
Date: 2009-08-05 09:30 pm (UTC)So, this is how it began? Your ability to describe a totally fucked up, yet completely logical personality is really astonishing. Exellent writing, miss Evans.
And "when memory fails, imagination becomes sacred" is that a quote? I've never heard that one before, should be in the book of Golden Proverbs.
(bows courteously)
All the Best!
Oleander 56
Re: The Cougar's date
Date: 2009-08-05 09:43 pm (UTC)Glad you liked the story. Merging fucked up and logical is kind of my specialty lately. I blame the people with whom I choose to associate. They've all rubbed off on me and now here I am. What are you going to do, I ask you?
Re: The Cougar's date
Date: 2009-08-05 10:10 pm (UTC)Now you really got me confused, are you referring to yourself in third person?
" enough is enough, said the midwife, threw one twin in the waste bucket"
Just teasing you, my dear, what can ANY of us do? Except of course go to bed, it's about six more hours later over here, so I bid thee a good night and sweet dreams.
Yours sincerely,
Oleander 56
no subject
Date: 2009-08-06 12:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-06 12:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-06 12:47 am (UTC)