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The studio apartment where he’s set up shop is in the Narrows. Its previous owner is currently cooling in the shower, where he’ll probably remain until he starts to stink or the Joker moves on, whichever comes first.
It’s been two days since he escaped Arkham Asylum, and he knows the bat is after him. That’s fine. That’s good, even. The bat has always featured prominently in the Joker’s plans, and this time is no different. Let the bat come.
He doesn’t like getting in touch with old contacts, because that makes it too easy on the bat, and because he can’t stand being predictable. Everyone he’s dealt with in the past is dead to him now. Onward and upward and all that. In any case, you can get the raw materials for explosives anywhere.
He just needs to figure out the best way to send Gotham a message. They’re waiting for it with bated breath. The news stations won’t stop talking about his escape. There are neighborhood watches in the streets and the police have sent out extra patrols and some people are babbling about closing schools and hospitals, which makes him laugh.
The dead man has leftover Chinese in his fridge, but it tastes like ashes. So do the pickles and the frozen pizza and the bowl of cereal. When he brushes his teeth with the man’s toothbrush, even the toothpaste tastes like nothing at all. It’s a side effect of withdrawal from the meds, he figures. Those things just don’t like to get their fingers out of your brain.
##
He sets the 8th street location of the First Bank of Gotham on fire and films it burning from the alley across the street for a while before he turns the camera to face himself. “Helloooo Gotham,” he says in a game show host voice. “It’s good to be here. I hope you didn’t miss me too much.”
A window bursts across the street and sirens wail. He laughs and laughs. “I spent my time in lockup thinking up some new material because I hate telling the same joke twice. The First Bank of Gotham got a five billion dollar bailout this year and spent all of it on congratulatory bonuses for all of the executives. That’s just wrong, but do they care? Here’s a little secret, Gotham. Two days from now, they’re going to go bankrupt. If you have an account with the FBG, you’ll probably want to close it before then, and if you own stock, it’s time to sell sell sell sell sell.”
He stops recording as the first of the fire engines roll up. He’s just about out of time. The bat will be here soon, if he isn’t already. But it’s not time yet for fun and fisticuffs. The Joker slips away down the alley.
##
His footage shows up on the news the next morning, and he watches while lounging on the dead man’s bed. The new anchors are already reporting long lines at the banks. A press conference shows the FBG CEO desperately urging people to stop. By midafternoon, armed police are moving in and the banks have closed down. By that evening, FBG stock has dropped to the lowest in its history. Pundits are giving dire warnings about what this means for the Gotham economy.
The Joker finds a pack of cigarettes in the apartment and smokes the whole thing as he watches the news and waits for the next phase of his plan. They taste like nothing at all, but he smokes them just as something to do.
Someone knocks on the apartment door that evening. “Mr. Haney?” someone calls. The Joker waits, listening. “Mr. Haney, are you in there?”
If they can hear the television, they must know he’s in there, but shutting it off would only make them suspicious, so he leaves it on. He rolls to his feet and stalks across the kitchen to the door, pressing his ear against it.
The person knocks again and another set of footsteps come down the hall. “Do you smell that?” someone hisses. “Does that smell like death to you?”
“I’m calling the cops,” says the other person.
The Joker straightens. He looks over his shoulder at the bathroom door, then crosses the room and opens it. Mr. Haney’s corpse is bloated and turning black. He sniffs the air experimentally. No smell of death. Not even a smell of cigarettes.
No smell at all.
##
Morning finds him in a stolen car, parked at the docks and listening to the news on the radio. The First Bank of Gotham is closed and under police guard, ahead of schedule and without his help. And it's not just the FBG. All the other banks are suffering in reaction as clients start to close their accounts. It’s lovely when all the parts of a plan just fall right into place. That just means it's time for phase two.
The Joker has found that there is always someone out there willing to give to a man in need, and he is in need of some explosives. Luckily gasoline and wires are cheap and plentiful, and the Joker can pay the favor forward by hiring a couple of guys to put everything in place. And everyone ends up happy.
The thing about anarchy is that if people think they’re being attacked by an enemy, they tend to band together. They have to start attacking each other for anarchy to truly happen. They have to see each other as the enemy.
His next video goes out on the airwaves that night. He watches it from the television of one of his loyal employees, who seems too unnerved by his presence to stay in the apartment with him.
“City Hall is such an eyesore, don’t you think? I think it’s time to tear it brick from brick. If it’s still standing when the sun rises tomorrow morning, one entire city block of Gotham is going to disappear.”
There’s rioting that night. Police try to protect the building and the mayor blusters that they’ll track the Joker down and stop him before anything can happen. The mayor is depending on the bat. Everyone is depending on the bat.
The Joker is depending on the bat.
##
When the morning dawns, City Hall is scarred and in flames but still standing, and that’s all that matters. The Joker gets a good vantage point. The city block that he’s chosen includes some of the biggest financial institutions in the city, and that’ll be the blow that sends Gotham City toppling like a line of dominos. There will be panic, and the police will try and fail to keep order, and after that, who knows? The Joker doesn’t like to plan that far ahead.
He stands on the balcony of an apartment building quite a few blocks away, while the apartment’s owner weeps into her gag behind him. The cold wind whips into his hair and makes his jacket flap. He grins into the breeze. He has the cell phone in his hand but he hasn’t given the signal yet. It feels like he’s waiting for something. He’s been waiting for days.
“All right, bat,” he says to the confused henchman on the other end of the phone. “That’s all the time you get. Three, two, one, blastoff.”
It takes a second to see anything, but then the flames blossom into the air like a flower, unfurling up into the sky. The smoke follows, plumping up around the flames like pillows. It’s beautiful. He waits for the sound to follow, that distant crack of thunder.
But, like the bat, it doesn’t come.
##
He makes it back into his car and turns on the radio, but no matter how high he turns the volume knob, he can’t hear a thing. He can’t hear anything. And unlike when his sense of taste went, and the sense of smell, he’s suddenly afraid, because this can’t be explained by the meds. Or can it? Is this some new side effect he’s never heard of? Has he been poisoned? Is this an attack? Is this a punishment?
He can feel the bass rumbling his seat but he doesn’t care, even though people are staring. He drives without stopping. Fucking come and find me, bat, he thinks. I’m making it easy for you.
The city is in a panic, streets closed, people fleeing on foot from the devastation. Ambulances and fire engines slide by him in silence, flashing their lights. People open their mouths and gesticulate to each other but nothing comes out of their mouths. He leans on his horn and can’t even tell if it works.
“Where are you,” he says out loud, but he doesn’t even hear himself say it. The rest of his plan, such as it is, means nothing to him. The bat was supposed to show up and disrupt it by now. Things were supposed to go deliriously off script, but not like this.
He slams his car into the back of a parked truck and gets out. Someone shoves him from behind and he stumbles and turns, but it’s just some wild-eyed angry man. The Joker cuts the man’s face off with his knife while people scatter. He makes it messy, and he takes his time.
“Come get me,” he says out loud, but there isn’t anyone around to hear him, least of all himself. He rubs at his ears and thinks I need to get to a safe place but that’s the last thing he needs right now.
He stops on a street corner and lifts his head, staring straight up into the bright blue sky. Come on, bats. He’s looking for a shadow, a silhouette, a sharp black cloud. “Come on!” he screams.
And then a black shape does flicker across his vision, but when he tracks it with his eyes he sees more and more, and it’s not something in the sky. The light is dimming and the curtains are coming down around him. He blinks once more and when his eyes open again, everything is black. It’s not the black of darkness or night fall. It’s the black of absence. There’s nothing there in front of his eyes anymore.
The world is suddenly nothing to him but touch. He cannot taste his own saliva or smell the car exhaust or hear the shouting or see where he’s going. He can only feel the ground under his feet and the breeze tugging the hairs on his skin.
Someone bumps into him roughly and grabs his arm. Is that a gauntlet he feels? No, it’s just a regular hand. He is shoved off balance and he feels it when he hits the ground. You have no right, he thinks. You are not the ones to take me down. Only one person can stop me. He tries to roll back up to his feet but he’s knocked down again, and a foot connects with his ribcage, and another connects with his head. He lashes out frantically with his feet and his hands and the knife and maybe he makes contact, though he can’t hear their cries of pain. Then someone stomps on his hand and breaks it and the knife disappears, and that’s the end of that.
You can’t let this happen, the Joker thinks. You were supposed to be here. You were supposed to stop me and save the day. Where are you?
One by one, like someone shutting off the lights in an empty building, he feels his body parts start to disappear. The legs go, left, then right, and he can’t feel the kicks. His hands go, the broken one first, and that’s a relief. His spine, one vertebrae at a time. His ribcage. A foot connects with his neck, but then that’s gone too.
This was supposed to be you, killing me, the Joker thinks. But if the killing blow ever falls, the Joker doesn’t feel it.