Page 73 of Twice as Twisted

“That girl told me,” she admits. “She snuck down and talked to me.”

“Huh,” I say. “I wonder if Baron knows.”

“I wasn’t sure I trusted her,” Jane says. “But when you took me out of the house, I had a bad feeling. Around the time you gave me a cigarette, I knew I was going to die tonight. If you brought me back smelling like smoke, Baron would kill me. But I didn’t know you were going to do it until you wanted to walk. I thought you were taking me for my last meal and then he’d do the execution. I didn’t expect it from you.”

“I’m not like him,” I say, scowling at her. “I know you think so, but I’m not. It actually hurts when people think that. Like I can’t be my own person.”

“You can,” she says, her tone gentler now. “You don’t have to do what he says. You’re not a prisoner.”

“No,” I say. “I’m the Joker.”

“Does that mean Baron is Batman?”

I cast her a dark look. “Obviously.”

“I don’t think the Joker would kill someone if Batman said so,” she points out, sliding down her tree to sit on the ground, her back to the trunk. “I’m not even sure Robin would.”

“I’m not Robin,” I growl, kicking at a root beneath the pine needles. “Robin’s gay. Batman doesn’t need him. He needs the Joker.”

“He needs the Joker because the story needs an enemy who’s worse than him,” she points out. “Because he’s an anti-hero, especially in the Dark Knight rendition. He needs a foil,a villain who’s truly evil, so that we can still root for him even though he’s kind of a dick.”

“You don’t get it,” I say. “You’re talking about the story, the comic book. I’m talking about the character himself.”

“The character of Batman wants to get rid of the Joker.”

“Yeah, well, we make our own story. Batman and the Joker and our Harley Quinn. And we all live happily ever after. The fucking end.”

“That girl,” she says, rubbing her heel on the ground. “She’s your Harley Quinn? That’s the real reason you’re doing this?”

“What did you think?” I snap, reaching into my pocket and pulling out my cigarettes.

“You love her?”

“Of course I fucking love her. I did some really bad shit to her, and this is how I redeem myself. That’s what she asked for.”

Jane nods slowly, like she already knows me, and she can tell I’m full of shit. We both know I’m doing this for Baron, not Mabel.

“Just remember who Harley Quinn loves,” she says. “It’s her and the Joker, always. Batman is their enemy as much as they’re his. They wouldn’t let him join them, and if they pretended to, it would only be until he let his guard down. Then they’d kill him, just like he’d kill them.”

I stare at her as I light up and take a drag, thinking about what really happened yesterday morning. Mabel asked Baron to kill Jane. Baron’s the one who gave me the task. Mabel would never ask me for something like this. She knows I’m not a violent person, that I’m not a murderer.

So does Baron.

That’s why he made me do it.

Suddenly, I think about all those murders. The Black Widow Killer.

Mabel said the feds were watching her, that she’s a suspect. Is that why they sent me to do it? So I wouldn’t be followed? Baron said it wasn’t him, but what if it is, and he didn’t want them too close?

If they’re following Mabel, why is she out here in her car, driving up and down the road? Is Baron with her? Are they leading the cops right to me? I try to remember how many cars I’ve heard on the road out there, if any of them slowed, maybe pulled into the lookout with my car. Will a cop be waiting for me when I get back?

Mabel went to the basement and talked to Baron before they came up and asked me to do this. I thought she asked him, and he put the task on me to make me prove myself equal to each of them. But maybe they decided together. Maybe Jane isn’t the sacrifice Baron is making to keep Mabel.

Maybe I am.

“You don’t have to do it,” Jane says quietly from her spot on the ground a few feet away. She looks up at me with big, innocent eyes. “You don’t know how bad it’ll be, Duke. It’ll stay with you forever. What you did. The guilt. It will haunt you.”

I look away, up at the branches and needles, like ghostly silhouettes in some grim childhood tale. “What choice do I have?”

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