"They weren't flexible enough, Batsy, and you know I like them flexible."
The Joker's voice slithered out of every screen in the city like poisoned honey, distorted by that signature manic giggle that made the skin crawl even through static.
Yesterday's entertainment had been a masterpiece of his particular brand of theater: one of Gotham's aging steel plants reduced to a blazing pyre of twisted girders and molten slag.
The explosion had lit the night sky for miles, a false dawn that smelled of burning metal and charred flesh.
His henchmen had swarmed the streets in coordinated waves of violence, random assaults, carjackings, a few theatrical stabbings just to keep the GCPD chasing shadows, all designed to pull the Bat away from the main act.
Batman had been too late, as always.
He arrived in time to stand amid the ruins like a silent accusation, cape flapping in the heat shimmer, but the plant was already gone.
Another piece of Gotham's industrial backbone snapped and fed to the flames.
The news cycles were still looping the footage this morning: orange hellfire, collapsing smokestacks, and Joker's recorded laughter playing on repeat.
I lit the cigarette between my lips and took a slow, deliberate pull, letting the smoke curl through my lungs like a lover's whisper.
From my window, the traffic below moved in sluggish rivers of red taillights, crawling beneath the garish neon that painted the wet streets in sickly pinks, acid greens, and electric blues.
The massive board on the corner tower repeated the same loop: flames consuming steel, Joker's painted face frozen mid-cackle, the Bat-Signal cutting through the clouds like a desperate prayer no one answered.
Freaks and psychos.
Gotham had long ago transcended mere criminality. It was no longer just a battlefield for crime families and street gangs carving up territory with knives and ledgers.
Now it hosted something far more exquisite, lunatics and mad geniuses who turned the city into their personal canvas for derangement.
The Joker wasn't robbing banks for money; he was conducting symphonies of chaos.
Two-Face flipped coins not for profit but to prove the universe was as arbitrary as he was.
Riddler left puzzles because the need to be seen as superior burned hotter than any drug.
And presiding over it all, of course, our very own vigilante, a man dressed as a nocturnal animal and believed he could impose order on entropy itself.
His light shone like a shining beacon projected into the bruised sky, the Bat-Signal cutting through the low clouds.
A symbol. A warning. A lie.
How many nights had that light gone up only for the cycle to repeat? How many orphans created, how many widows made, how many bodies dragged from the river, just so the Bat could arrive fashionably late to another atrocity? The corruption was elegant in its inevitability.
They would demolish an orphanage or a low-income housing block by next week to make room for the new plant.
Insurance payouts, backroom deals, campaign contributions.
That was how the machine worked, crush the weak to rebuild the bones of the city, then act surprised when more freaks crawled out of the wreckage.
I exhaled smoke toward the glass, watching it fog and dissipate.
The city stared back at me, indifferent and hungry.
Gotham didn't care who won or lost. It simply consumed.
Every idealist who came here to fix it ended up broken, corrupted, or buried.
Even the Bat was just another symptom.
How long until he snapped? How long until the weight of all those failures turned him into something worse than the monsters he hunted?
I took another drag, the ember glowing like a dying star.
"Light, you wanna come back to bed?"
Harleen's voice was a low, husky murmur, still heavy with sleep and the kind of need that bordered on desperation.
Her nails traced slow, deliberate lines down my bare chest as she pressed herself against my back, one arm sliding around my neck like a vine seeking anchorage.
I felt the warmth of her bare breasts against my skin, her nipples hard from the morning chill that seeped through the cracked window.
"You're going to be late, Quin."
She pulled away just enough to glance down the hallway at the clock, a soft curse slipping from her lips. "Oh shit, I am."
She leaned in quickly, pressing a kiss to my cheek, then tilted my jaw toward her with surprising insistence. Our lips met, and I exhaled the cigarette smoke directly into her mouth, watching the way her body reacted with a slight jerk and the cough that followed.
"Bitch!" She laughed through the cough, swatting at my shoulder as she retreated toward her own room.
I do not have a proper word for what exists between us, 'Roommates with benefits' is the clinical label I apply when necessary, but it fails to capture the quiet pathology of our arrangement.
Quin is monotone on the surface, reserved, professional, easy to please in the physical sense.
A naturally passionate lover who keeps her deeper hungers chained behind layers of insecurity and clinical detachment.
She had restricted herself for years behind the veil of academic propriety, studying monsters at Arkham while slowly becoming one in her own quiet way.
I offered her something refreshing, something forbidden, a release from her otherwise plain life.
Sleeping with an underage guy gave her the illusion of control in a life spent cataloging the deranged.
She tells herself it's harmless, a thrill, a secret. I let her believe whatever narrative keeps her pliant.
"Hey, I'm gonna be late tonight, alright?" She reappeared in the doorway, long blonde hair pulled into a neat ponytail, glasses perched on her nose in that studious way that always seemed slightly performative.
Her work clothes were steamed and pressed, the white coat folded neatly into her bag.
She was an assistant psychotherapist at Arkham Asylum. I knew it was only a matter of time before one of the senior staff either lost their job or their life to one of the maniacs housed there.
Quin would rise, she had that particular blend of ambition and fragility that the asylum devoured and reshaped into something sharper.
"You have a full day?" I stood, stepping out of the bedroom, letting my face settle into its usual emotionless mask.
She blinked, a flicker of uncertainty crossing her features. "Uh… yeah, why?"
"No, I just thought we could—" I shook my head slightly, turning as if reconsidering. "It's nothing."
"Hey, hey! What is it? Tell me?! What are we doing?" She stepped closer immediately, that familiar hunger for reassurance flaring in her eyes like a moth to flame.
Even the smallest hint of unfiltered affection and she threw herself at it with almost pathetic eagerness.
It was endearing in its broken way. A lever I could pull whenever needed.
I offered a sad, gentle smile, the kind that suggested vulnerability without actually revealing any. "No, I just thought we could have dinner together. I could cook. We haven't done that in a while."
The effect was instantaneous. Her face lit up with desperate enthusiasm.
"Uh… I could call in sick. No, I can't do that again." She muttered to herself. "I can ask someone to cover my shift. Yeah, Brian would do that."
She was always like this, loyal and malleable, wrapped so neatly around my finger that I sometimes wondered if she even realized how tightly the string was pulled.
I tested it like this, occasionally, just to confirm if the calibration remained accurate.
I stepped forward, hands sliding around the back of her neck with deliberate possession, the other moving down to rest against her throat.
The kiss was long, deep.
When I pulled back, thin strands of saliva connected us for a lingering moment.
"I'll be waiting for you then."
"Huh… Yeah… See you… soon." She blinked, dazed and flushed, stumbling slightly over the shoe rack on her way out.
The door clicked shut behind her, leaving the apartment in sudden, blessed silence.
I let out a slow, measured breath and returned to the bedroom.
The cigarette in the ashtray had burned down to a stub, a thin line of ash trailing across the wood like a question mark.
On the table lay the remnants of last night: two firearms, my wallet, the damp clothes, and the notebook.
Discarding the guns was necessary and it would be straightforward.
Wipe them thoroughly with rubbing alcohol, empty the magazines, and dispose of them in the river under cover of darkness.
The clothes from last night had likely been cleansed by the heavy rain, but caution demanded a dumpster fire regardless, I can't risk a blood mist.
The wallet was irrelevant, easily replaced, I could throw them away, they were minor details.
The real problem was the notebook.
It wasn't his. It certainly wasn't mine.
The alley had no windows overlooking that stretch, and even if someone had been on the rooftop, they couldn't have seen the exchange clearly enough to drop something so precisely.
It was as if the thing had simply fallen from the sky.
I rubbed my temples, the faint throb of a headache beginning to form behind my eyes.
I really hope there were no witnesses to the incident.
I reached out and picked the note up.
The cover was matte black, unnaturally pristine despite the downpour. White lettering stared back at me in bold gothic fonts.
Death Note
I opened it slowly.
The first page was clean, elegant, almost like any other note in its layout.
How to use it
A usage manual? For a notebook?
The being whose true name is written in this note… shall die?
My hands pressed against my lips as they quivered into a small smirk.
"That's a good prank if I've seen one."
Hats off to whoever made this. They had gone through a lot of trouble for a prank item.
I had seen similar things before at school, goth kids pulling psychological stunts. A gift card that sang nonstop. A ring that whispered at night. An app that supposedly showed the body count of everyone who downloaded it.
This note was clearly in the same vein, though far more elaborate.
This note will not take effect unless the writer has the person's face in their mind when writing his/her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected.
That made sense. There were too many Johns, Jameses, and Muhammads in the world.
If the cause of death is written within the next 40 seconds of writing the person's name, it will happen.
If the cause of death is not specified, the person will simply die of a heart attack. If the person lacks a heart, they will suffer brain death instead.
What did lacks a heart even mean? Someone with a pacemaker?
After writing the cause of death, details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds.
This felt far too elaborate for a prank but surely this was a joke.
I picked up a pen and pressed it against the page, but stopped before writing a name.
This was definitely a joke, but on the extreme off-chance it wasn't… did that mean I would be killing someone voluntarily?
I was pretty sure the guy I shot yesterday was dead, but that had been pure self-defense.
Something the courts would never see that way, but I knew the truth. If this worked, though, it would be different, it would be deliberate and premeditated.
Should I still do it?
…
Who cares?
Liam McBeth, at 1 pm tomorrow, gets stabbed 12 times in the chest and once in the head.
The Spanish teacher had been becoming an eyesore anyway.