@misswould : “ YOU’RE THE DEVIL. ”
the echo is loud. cavernous. like howling in a well and finding your voice has never really left you ; it was there all along, with its darkness. sometimes the voice and the well are one and they’re blurred together into something rare and horrific — the laugh of a cave. the joker doesn’t laugh. his roar doesn’t fade. any sound is just an impalpable protrusion of what birthed it : his roar stays on his teeth, bared as they grind within the line of a grin. out of all the things he’s been called, and in spite of his own very reaction, the devil is the funniest one. but holli is serious, she doesn’t laugh ; her wide doe-eyes following the tip of his fingers half-expecting to see them clutch around a weapon, or her neck. again, like in a familiar song.
“ if i’m the devil, what ... what does that make you, ah? a saint? a martyr? ”
that word’s spat almost too crudely for his usual swaying, languid mannerism. he tilts his head to the side, savoring how uncomfortable his closeness makes her. taking in all the little twitches in her sheet-pale expression, the joker grabs her chin. two fingers, is all it takes to keep mrs would still and quiet as a pretty wax statue ; eyes cloudy with a fumous regret at having even dared to feel eased enough to be that careless. “ no ... no, hmmh? you’re neither. c’mon doll, gimme your hands. ” her wrist’s snatched with a brutish force. oh, he knows why holli’s so freaked out, he does. people know a bite only when announced by a bark. they’ll watch the bloody edges, the snapped white bones, and they’ll say oh but you got warned, bad girl ! he turns her hands, showing the thin uncracked palms ; a net of wiry blue veins just beneath the skin. what kind of dog doesn’t bark, what kind of dog is all bite? what kind of monster? “ ya know whose hands these are? soft ... smooth ... opportunist’s hands, ‘s what they are. vulture chicks like you wanna pass for doves sooo bad. ”
the splitting of people into saints and sinners gives religion a rotten stink to the joker’s nose. he clenches his jaw, twisting her wrists with a bruising strength. “ dya see haloes ‘n horns on people’s heads, doll? — ahaa? ” holli seems to try to resume her character, pull together the fragments of her battered ego ; he doesn’t leave her the time. he thinks of repentance. the christian concept of a free out of jail card. he thinks of it, throws his head back and laughs. “ no, no ... no. listen. we’re all in this together, luv. everybody’s got the, uh, the rotten. the worms. me? ” he bops her nose with tip of a gloved finger. “ i’m, ah, just a humble clown ... on a mission from ... god. ”
