RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Writer's Block the trying hand

It had been nearly twenty-five minutes of silence. Harley hadn't spoken a word since the guards had brought her in and Joan was getting tired of it. It was obvious why she wasn't speaking: she didn't want to talk about the incident that had landed her here. Joan needed her to discuss it, because once Harley began the whole story would come spilling out and then they could move forward with her therapy.

But first Joan needed to get her talking. So far, all of her attempts had been met with indifferent shrugs and her patient refusing to meet her gaze. This wasn't like Harley though, who was usually so joking and talkative. Something had definitely happened that had affected her so deeply she wasn't even willing to discuss it with Joan, her one true confidant.

Finally, having had enough of this, the psychiatrist sighed heavily and decided to be upfront about it. "Harley, what happened?" she asked firmly, leaning forward.

Beginning to sob uncontrollably, the young woman managed to work her story out between sniffles. "Well Joan, it all started with a surprise…”

Harley crouched behind a small wooden crate trying to stifle her own giggles and the soft whimpers of the woman she held against the floor. The woman, or really, the girl – she couldn’t have been more than nineteen, had stopped struggling a few minutes ago. Maybe it was the wire they had used to bind her hands, which had probably started to dig in. The woman seemed to regain her drive and tried to fight again at the sound of her husband? boyfriend? baby-daddy?’s voice. Harley leaned down closer to the woman’s tear-stained face and softly shushed her, trying to calm her down with a gentle petting on the woman’s pregnant belly.

Harley perked up at the sound of a second man’s voice. Mister J. She listened carefully to the conversation taking place elsewhere in the cavernous room, ever approaching her concealed location. Harley chewed her lip. She had to wait for her cue. She had to hit it. Or else.

“Dear boy, did you think it was a present? That I would not expect my due?”
“No, sir. I-“
“You thought I was a fool, then.”
“No! I-“

“Then the problem here is rather eluding me. I let you have a generous loan… it was quite generous, don’t you think?” Joker’s brilliant grin was visible to Harley now, peeking slightly around the crate. The second man’s back was toward her hiding place.

“Yes, sir. It’s j-“
“And all I wanted was a tiny smidgen of gratitude with the returns, that cannot be too much to ask for, can it?”
“Oh, oh NO sir, it’s just the amount-“
Joker smiled wider, “The amount, boy, is non-negotiable. You will see this.”
“It’s just so soon! I don’t have it yet! I tried-”
“You didn’t try hard enough.” His smile fell, replaced with feigned confusion, and Joker continued, “Do you expect a bank to let you slide on your payments? The government, even?”
“But those loans are for years! You loaned me last month!”

“Ah, and that is really the point, now, isn’t it?” The pair stopped. They were mere feet away from Harley and the woman. Harley shivered with excitement and tried to concentrate on Joker’s words and not his voice. “I’m not a bank. I didn’t run your credit. I gave you thousands, no questions asked…” Joker’s eyes sparked up and his voice became quiet, “although you told me anyway, didn’t you? Yes you did. You told me all about your little sob story, your little oven cooking up your little bun.”

“Oh god…” it finally dawned on the man what a terrible mistake he had made.

“It seems to me you have a choice.”

“I have a kid. Oh god. I can’t -” He looked at the tangle of hot wires looping along the wall.

“You could give me my money…”
“Oh god pleasedon’tkillme!” the man dropped to his knees; his eyes followed the wires to a dark corner behind him where, near a wooden crate, there was a large vessel full of water.
“OR…”
Harley sprang from behind the crate, jerking the woman along, shouting, “Surprise!” The man screamed.
“…maybe I burn the toast.” Joker finished with a hearty laugh from the belly.

“Don’t you touch her!” the man demanded as he rushed Harley to protect his wife. Harley kicked him in the face, knocking him back into a sobbing heap on the floor. The woman screamed a little under her gag and Harley shoved her toward Mister J, turning her attentions to restraining the man with more wire.

Joker dragged the woman and tossed her into the tub of water, clipping the wires around her wrists to a tie affixed to the side so she couldn’t remove herself. Harley grabbed a handful of power-cords and the wire-clippers, skipping into place by her man. Joker took the supplies from her and addressed the pitiful, horrified boy, hogtied on the concrete. He cut the wires.

“What’s it gonna be?”

“Harley, stop. I know what happened next,” Joan looked a bit nauseated.

“Oh yeah, you probably got the police reports, huh.” Harley blew her nose again and sat back, slightly less tense than before, on the sofa in Joan’s office.

“Actually,” Joan corrected, “he’s one of our patients now.”

“He did have a pretty bad day…” Harley got a scowl out of Joan.

“Harley, you weren’t found for two more days after this incident. What does it have to do with anything?” Harley returned a scowl to Joan and dropped her eyes. “You’re avoiding the issue; what happened?”

For a long moment Harley was quiet and Joan feared she had clammed up again. When Harley finally spoke, all the animation and life that her previous recollection had afforded her was gone again. She looked down to the far corner of the room, her eyes unfocused. Her voice was at a whisper, “It got me thinking about babies…”

“Puddin’?” Harley peeked around the front door for the fifth time in the last hour and a half, convinced she had heard them come back. Like before, the hallway was empty. “Phooey!” she sighed and again closed the entrance. Mister J had gone out with the boys to get some celebratory booze forever ago. They should have been home with it by now.

Harley sauntered back to the couch and tussled her hair. After this morning’s escapades with the electro-shock “therapy” she felt all sweaty and gross, so she had taken a shower to freshen up. Her hair was dry now and she busied herself by pulling it back up into their familiar piggy-tails as she slouched into the worn cushions.

Time passed as it always does when you’re waiting for someone: slowly. Harley turned on the television for a distraction. Some show about prenatal babies was on. She watched the grainy images and the CGI wantonly. Her hands rested on her stomach, remembering the different feel of the woman’s belly earlier. She sighed and daydreamed, as she often did, of a day that she and Joker could have a couple rug rats tearing around whatever abode they happened to be living in.

Mostly she anticipated how fun it is to make the little bundles of joy.

“HARRRRRLEY!” Joker exploded through the door, obviously skunked. He clapped his hands together and smiled drunkenly at her. Harley rocketed off the sofa and smashed the television set to “off” in a mad dash toward her beloved companion.

“Puddin!” she squealed and leaped onto his tall and currently unbalanced frame. They toppled and the two ended in a pile halfway out into the hall of the apartment complex. Harley grinned and adjusted herself to straddle his waist. Joker put his finger to her lips.

“Shhhhh… we gotta be quiet” he pushed her off and tried to stand back up, pausing to motion downstairs “the boys are sleeping!” He fell over again in a fit of giggles and Harley helped drag him into their abode. Before she closed the door she peeked down the stairwell to make sure; a pool of blood crawling across the floorboards confirmed she and Joker would have to wake the dead to wake the boys. Harley giggled at Mister J’s joke, skipped back into the apartment, and bolted the door behind her.

Joker was leaning on the wall behind the door and grabbed Harley when she entered. She gave herself to the embrace and initiated a kiss.

“Today was wonderful, Mista’ J,” Harley beamed at him. “I especially liked how you took care of the Bat-Brat!” They both lingered on the memory of dispatching the little mute cutie and Joker laughed at her misfortune. Harley pressed herself against him to absorb the rumble of his mirth that resounded through his chest, and lightly commented her wonder on whatever became of the old redheaded Batgirl. Joker grasped Harley’s shoulders and pulled her off him, pushing her down. She trailed her hands along his sides, expecting to stop at her knees. To her surprise, Joker knelt instead and took her down to her back on the floor.

Joker’s fingers traced lightly over her bosom as he unbuttoned Harley’s fitted blouse. He leered at her nakedness for a moment before the change. It wasn’t a big change, just a slight dulling of the wildness in his eyes. He continued to stare at Harley who was becoming anxious under his gaze. After an extended moment of his continued inaction, she became restless and asked, “What’s wrong, Puddin?”

He pressed a thin finger into her stomach, hard, about halfway between the bottom of her sternum and her navel, “bang.”

“Ouchie! …Puddin’ …?” Harley called after Joker as he abruptly stood and stalked out of the room to the back of the apartment. She stood and followed to find him rummaging through a collection of old belongings they had pulled out of a storage facility a month prior. Poisoned joy-buzzers and flag-pistols and other random gadget projectiles launched themselves out of the pile Joker rummaged through with seemingly reckless abandon. As suddenly as it started, the furious search froze and Joker again stood at his full height. In his hand he held a collection of photographs. He flipped through them and started to laugh.

“It was a GIRL!!!” Harley sobbed into the chair in Joan’s office. “Some red-headed floozy and she was naked and he had pictures and he wanted THEM and not ME-e-he-“ her words again became indistinguishable from the blubbering tears. It was obvious that Harley had reached her limit for this session so Joan closed her notebook. She walked over to Harley and reassured her that things will eventually make sense (although she was far from believing so herself) and to calm down. At Joan’s direction the guards approached to manacle Harley for the trip back to her cell. Joan sighed and hoped vainly that a comparison to the notes of the next few Joker therapy sessions might shed some light on the girl in the photographs. She knew the possibility was slim to none and Slim didn’t live in Gotham. If it actually meant something it was assured that the Joker would never divulge it to a doctor.

Joan sighed again and looked through her top drawer for the aspirin.