The Darker Side Of Life (Asylum Romance Sequel)

3: The Rat

I showed up in Old Gotham, heading towards the building that my father owned. The large, creepy circus.

I walked in and quickly avoided looking in the eyes of the henchmen. Dad told me to never look at them without the makeup, they couldn’t know what I actually looked like.

I ran into the bathroom and started to dress, putting on my green shirt and pants with my black cape and black boots, messing up my hair and putting in the temporary black hair dye. I smeared my face with white and put black circles around my eyes, but instead of putting a red smile, I smeared black along my lips and made that into a large smile with little stitch-like marks so I looked like a skeleton.

I put everything in my backpack and walked out, throwing my stuff into my father’s office and catching all of his henchmen off guard.

All of them immediately became silent once they saw me. My father made it clear that they’d suffer horrible deaths if something bad happened to me.

“Someone here is a snitch.” I looked around to meet the eyes of someone around me, trying to strike the fear my father showed me into someone around me. “Who is it?” I bellowed, more threatening this time. Everyone around me cowered back in fear. I laughed lightly, shaking my head. “I guess I’ll just tell my fa—“

“Don’t. I know who it is,” One of the goons spoke out, stepping forward. He was twice the size of me and fully capable of knocking me out with just a flick of his finger, but I still kept my ground. My parents taught me how to fight, and my father wouldn’t let this guy get away with hurting me. “It’s this girl. She just joined with us. The boss didn’t want her to join but she knocked out two of our best men and we decided to keep on with it.”

“What is her name?” I questioned, frowning. A girl? My mother definitely showed me that gender made no difference in the field, but I couldn’t help but be confused. Rarely any girl joined this kind of job. 

“Errr, I dunno. She went by Smiles. Boss gave her a nickname, didn’t really bother to ask for her actual name.”

“Do you know where she would be right now?”

“Here.”

I turned around to follow the voice and locked eyes with harsh, determined ones. I stepped back and frowned a bit, staring at this young girl’s face that was covered with a purple mask. She couldn’t have been any older than I, yet she seemed far more advanced than I could ever dream of. Her clothing consisted of a crop top with a white line going vertically down her chest and crossing right above her breasts in a horizontal line, her shorts lined with gadgets and such. I had never seen her before, and I doubt my parents had, either.

“It was you who went through my home. . . .” I spoke slowly, recognizing the purple and black of her outfit. 

“I’m afraid so. And soon Batman and Robin will be going through your home. Only a matter of time. . .” She sighed, shrugging. “You know how it is in Gotham.” she held up a crossbow and aimed it at me, I scowled and backed up as my father’s henchmen started to ascend, standing on both sides of me, but I knew they wouldn’t hold her back from killing me. Henchmen never do against these high class criminals.

Before she could fire, she was thrown to the side by a blur of blue as an eerie laughter filled the room. My eyes widened as I turned to see my father, who had taken his place next to me. His smile was as calm and collected as it had to be to instill fear into people, to emphasize The Joker’s carefree attitude, but his eyes told me I was so grounded. I gulped, turning to see my mother as she punched the young girl in the face, but I could tell she was holding back because the girl was indeed young. 

My mother backflipped back and ended up right next to me, and I wondered how she could still pull off moves like that even though she was an adult.

The girl wiped her mouth and spat blood to the left of her on the ground, my mother wrinkled her nose. “Oh dear, oh dear! Blood on our floors. Joker, honey, you shouldn’t have fired that maid!”

“Well, my dear, she didn’t do a very good job. I mean, look at everything else! Positively dirty. Shame. See, look at the dried blood she left on the walls. Pity.”

My mother gave a small giggle, turning her eyes onto the girl who had gotten up and was staring at her crossbow, which had dropped out of her hands and was quite the distance from her, but not far enough to where she couldn’t just jump onto the floor and grab it, but my father took out his knife and my mother took out a long whip and cracked it at the crossbow, pulling it towards her as my father eyed the young girl carefully, probably making sure the girl had no button that would make the weapon just go off like Batman did on his arms inside of the clasps.

“Do you realize the mess you just put yourself through?” Joker laughed. “You just waltzed into the playground of Gotham’s most infamous criminals, and almost killed their son. You do get that, right? That makes me verrrrrrry mad,” Joker gave a dark chuckle, walking up to the girl slowly. “Unlike my wife, here, I don’t care what age you are, I’ll kill you either way.”

The girl was now practically on red alert, her eyes watching and slowly narrowing at Joker, who totally lost all fatherly image I had in him for a brief moment. That wasn’t the man who taught me how to ride a bike or who cooked for me in the mornings when I was craving pancakes, or the man who would run into my room when I woke up screaming from a childish nightmare. This was the cold hard killer that put Gotham City on edge every single night, and I envied him for a moment.

“I don’t think you could even if you tried.” the girl lurched forward and kicked Joker right in the head, causing him to collapse on the floor. Cerulean screamed in shock, and it looked like she was unsure of the move she should make, her mind seemed completely irked by this girl as if she was a new subspecies of Human. 

I turned to look at my father who had made a wise next move, grabbing onto her legs and laughing like a madman, sticking a knife into one of her thighs and pushing it so the girl had no choice but to back up or the knife would go in deeper. Cerulean took this moment to leap forward and shove the girl back into the wall.

“Boy!” she screamed to me, I knew it was to me because we hadn’t constructed a name for me yet, and hell if she was gonna just give my name away just out of the moment. I smirked a little, laughing a bit. Even my father was, in his loopy state on the floor. He did not look like he gave a single fuck of the world at the moment, and I knew I’d talk to him later out of curiosity. “Get the cuffs.” she spoke, sighing softly. 

I nodded, scrambling to get the chains and cuffs we used to hold down people like this for questioning. I threw the heavy metal chains to her, she caught them with one hand and started to latch them onto the girl, who, with every clasp seemed to realize the sticky situation she had gotten herself in. Finally, the realization had hit. She had waltzed right into The Madhouse.