ORIGINAL SIN

Chapter 3

Author’s Note: I know, it’s taken forever to get this final installment up. I hope, if anyone’s still reading this, that it turns out to be worth the wait.

There is the very slightest of pauses.

“We live in the electronic age, Father. He called me on my mobile at work and told me all about it. He was terrified - he had to tell somebody.”

More sirens scream past outside, and a little more dust trickles from the roof of the battered confessional. The priest is quiet, and the woman leans forward.

“You see why I can’t go to the police. The Joker will kill me too. He knows where I live. I can’t even go back and do anything about Ben’s body, Father, I’m too scared.”

“I understand your fear, but I’m afraid I can’t leave this,” says the voice of the priest, and he does sound sad, weary - and not a little angry. “From what Ben told you I’m guessing the Joker is heading for one place tonight: the Gotham Children’s Benevolent Fund Charity Gala.”

The woman takes in breath in a sharp gasp. The priest’s voice continues, relentless.

“You must go to the police. They will not blame you. They will protect you. Think of the children, and the hundreds of innocent people he plans to kill at that gala tonight. They deserve to be warned.”

The woman turns her head away from the screen, into the shadows.

“I can’t!”

The door on the priest’s side of the confessional creaks as it opens, and his steps echo in the nave as he emerges. The woman jumps as the door of her own booth rattles, but the tiny golden hook that holds the warped door in its frame remains in place: the door stays shut.

“Think of Ben,” the priest’s voice says, from just outside. “You couldn’t save him, but you could help save all these people.”

The woman squeezes her knees, childish in her anxiety.

“Ben used to come here, you know,” she said. “He was a good guy, church every Sunday. He wanted me to go with him.”

“I know.”

“He was going to come to confession today. Had it written down in his diary.” Her voice falters. The voice from outside the door is low, mellow again.

“I know.”

“I thought, you know, if I came instead, perhaps…perhaps…”

Into the gap of her inability to continue, he speaks, and his voice is sincere, comforting.

“It isn’t your fault. Go in peace. Your sins - “ he pauses “Your sins are not the sins you imagine. Go to the police.”

The nave rings with his footfalls as he turns swiftly and strides up between the pews. Black cloth catches on the worn carved edges of the font as he passes. And behind him, in the far left corner, there is a tiny metal scrape and click as a little golden hook is unfastened and the woman pokes her blonde head out into the cool of the church.

She is just in time to see her confessional partner’s shadow, cast by the light from the big red-and-green arched window above the doors. No servant of God, this - gods do not tend to recruit men who wear saturnine cowls topped by sharply pointed ears. The black cape flicks once before vanishing out into the overheated streets, and the heavy doors of St Michael’s whisper shut behind him with barely a creak of protest.

The woman slips out of the booth cautiously, her full lips parted in an “O” of apparent surprise, her kitten heels making little tap-tap-tap sounds as she tip-toes across the dusty stone floor. When she is sure he has gone, she reaches up and undoes the elegant little bun she’s had her sleek blonde hair tied in, giving her head a shake.

The blow seems to come out of nowhere, a ringing open-handed slap to the side of her head. She falls with an outraged and whining cry, grazing her forearms on the flagstones. A black and white patent leather shoe prods her in the stomach, disdainfully.

“I thought, you know, if I came instead, perhaps…” The Joker snarls, in an ugly masculine parody of her girlish voice. The girl twists at his feet, turning to try and face him, the elegant cream skirt hiking up around her hips. The Joker’s grin is a savage baring of teeth framed by blood red lips: he continues to mock her, imitating her. “Oh Ben. How I loved you, Ben. It was all my fault, Ben. If only you hadn’t been such a complete chowder head, Ben.”

The woman controls the tears that prick unwanted at her eyes. She wipes them away with the back of her hand, smearing mascara across her face, seconds before the Joker’s white fingers snag her frilly blouse and he hauls her unceremoniously to her feet.

“Honestly,” huffs the Joker, inspecting her closely, her face inches from his as she sniffles loudly, “women. Can’t be trusted to do anything right, and jeez do you look a state. Ahh, stop crying. What, did someone die or something?”

The woman’s red-painted pout deepens: the shining, full lower lip trembles.

“But I did it,” she wails. “I told him everything you asked me to!”

The Joker snarls again, massive teeth snapping together so close to her nose that she flinches, blinking rapidly.

“I told you to make me sound ruthless! I wanted you to dazzle him with my sheer, boundless appetite for cruelty to the young and the clueless! And what do I get? Almost half an hour of slushy crap the script jockeys on Sunset Beach woulda turned down!” He is breathing hard now, the words rattling out between his teeth like machine-gun fire, and the blazing green eyes are as virulent as acid. His dark green fingernails dig painfully into her neck, hard enough to bruise. The Joker’s anger itself seems a physical thing. This close, his rage bathes the woman like scalding water. “Ben this. Ben that. The guy’s dead and he’s still raining on my parade!”

He hurls the woman away from him and she gasps as her back strikes a pillar, cringing away from the follow-up blow she knows is inevitable.

It does not come.

Flinching with every tiny movement, she relaxes her screwed-up face and dares to open one big blue eye. Still nothing. The Joker is standing in front of the big Garden of Eden stained glass window, with his sharply angular purple-clad back turned to her. A rhythmic, dusty slapping announces that he is tapping his foot, crossly.

It takes a few more seconds for it to dawn on the woman what the real issue here is, but when it does she breaks into a beaming smile, radiant and pixie-like.

He’s jealous. Actually jealous.

“Awwww, puddin’,” she coos, sneaking up behind him and reaching up to tie her hair back into its habitual pair of bunches. “You know I only said all those things about that good to make the Bat-sap believe I was really his girlfriend.” She slips her arms around tense, unwilling shoulders and shudders gleefully at the resulting growl. “Don’t be mad, baby. It was just acting, ya know, make-believe.” She pets his shock of green hair as she would a puppy, nuzzles into the familiar scent of his shoulder. “I wanted to make it really believable, and it was real scary, just that little bit of wood between me and the Big Bad Bat.”

His sharp profile turns towards her just a fraction, so she can see the blade of his long nose, the gash of his mouth.

“You were scared?”

She pouts again, nodding so her blonde bunches bounce. “Uh-huh.”

Mercurial as a child, he whips round to face her, hands that were aiming to bruise mere moments before now stroking solicitously at her cheeks, stroking over her hair lovingly.

“And yet you do all those scary things for lil ol’ me?” he purrs. She smiles, rubbing into his hand and pressing a lipstick kiss to the centre of his palm. “Harleykins. My best girl. All that acting must have been such hard work.”

“Don’t forget sitting with that goon’s dead body!” she sulks. “Ick.”

The Joker drags her in against him, grins at her tenderly, and ducks his sharp head to brush the rictus smile against her lips, too briefly, and she sulks more as he pulls back.

“Have I told you,” says the Joker sweetly, “how homely you look when you do that? As a reward for all your hard work, dear, shall I let you play with Father Henley?”

The pout vanishes. Harley squeaks and bounces on her heels, while her real boyfriend throws back his head and laughs.

“Can I, puddin’? Can I? Do we got time?”

“Oh, plenty,” says the Joker, magnanimously. “Especially now dear old Batsy’s going to be putting on the soup and fish and heading out to that stuffy gala. I do hope he remembers his Pepto-Bismol. The canapés at charity gigs are always awful. They just don’t spend enough money on the catering.”

She follows him, curling around him like a kitten, as he kicks open the door to the vestry and advances on the priest who is tied to a chair, his terrified eyes flicking to follow the madman’s every move. Father Henley had been alarmed enough by the arrival of Batman several hours earlier, and had only agreed not to go out and take confession with great protest: but the arrival of the Joker, while Batman was closeted in the confessional, had been pure gut-wrenching terror, enough to test the faith of the most pious holy man. Harley pats the priest’s pale cheek coquettishly, and looks up with adoring eyes as the Joker stands back to give her room to play.

“What are we gonna do tonight, Mistah J? Seein’ as we don’t get to go to the gala.”

The Joker leans his thin face on one hand and passes her yet another Pez dispenser, Yogi Bear this time.

“I don’t think it matters, do you, Harls?” he grins as she strips away the priest’s gag and the man draws a huge, lurching gasp. “What matters is we’re not doing what Batsy thinks we’re doing….” He tips his head back and trills a laugh. “You know, it’s these little moments that should show him just how much I care. He’d be so bored without me.”

The screams of Father Henley make the stained glass Garden of Eden window ring and the dust motes dance in the cool of the nave. God’s eyes look blindly down on Adam and Eve, while around the base of the tree the snake lies coiled, forked tongue between its fangs, and smiling.