The Smiling Penitent

A story based in the DC Comics universe, with The Joker.

Midnight in Gotham. The haze of lights and smog cast an eerie, netherworld light over the city, a cloak for nightly sins.

Father Luke Harris sat behind his desk, a bible resting forgotten in his lax hands. More and more now he found his thoughts turning away from the Good Word, seeking answers elsewhere, in thoughts he would have once considered heresy. It was Gotham, he knew. This city had a way of eroding faith and hope, of mocking the possibility of any benevolent creator. Tonight, on the news, there had been a triple homicide �" three Girl Scouts, going door to door, had been taken one by one this afternoon, snatched from the street. All three had been found later in an alleyway, dead, with a scrawled note left atop their limp bodies �" I wanted my money back.

Girl Scouts. Oh, Lord… Luke let the bible thump to the carpet and lowered his head in his hands. He did not weep, but it was there, a rage he could feel building in him. Anger, fuelled by the greed and hate and madness of this city. Even out the window, now, he could hear the ever-present wail of police sirens, now distant, now close. Even the sky itself, hazy and dirty, seemed to taste of hell. And throughout the city even now ran lunatics with evil in their hearts and knives in their hands, and no god, not Christ nor Allah nor Jehovah, did anything to stop them. There were no angels here. Nothing of light or love to illuminate and heal this city.

How long he cradled his throbbing head, Luke didn’t know, but his reverie was disturbed by the sound of footsteps. The homeless often came into church at night, where it was warm, and it was known that the good father would even make you breakfast in the morning. Some even came for a service or two, though it seemed to make the rest of Luke’s small congregation uncomfortable.

However, whoever this was didn’t claim himself a spot on the pew. Instead, there was the creak that was the confessional door, and Father Luke knew that even now the visitor would be waiting, patiently, ready to confess his sins. They’d have to be damn heavy, he thought. In Gotham, even the darkest evil often went unrepented.

But Luke knew, whatever his own doubts, he owed them that came to him for succour. So he stood, carefully composed himself, and went to the confessional.

Inside there it was dark and soft, a blessed cocoon of silence and privacy. Father Luke cleared his throat, and the dim figure on the other side of the partition shifted slightly.

“Forgive me, father,” the voice began, “for I have sinned. It has been...oh, ever so long since my last confession.” It was a strange voice, tense even now, but somehow delighting in its words. There was a deep current of amusement behind it.

“And what are your sins, my son?”

There was a sudden, high-pitched giggle. “How long have you got, father? I have lied and I have coveted and I have been cruel to them that love me. I have cheated and stolen. I have hurt people’s lives simply because I could. I have revelled in fear and I have hated �" oh, you have no idea how I’ve hated. I have mocked God and I have told some very, very bad jokes about Him.”

He sounded drunk maybe, or high. Luke couldn’t tell. There was something surreal in his voice. “You confess to some grievous sins, my son, but through the Lord Christ, all can be absolved. Have you �"”

“Oh,” the voice interrupted him again. “And I have killed.”

Luke paused. The silence stretched, but the penitent seemed in no hurry to break it. The dim outline of his posture looked relaxed, his long, slender body resting against the back of the confessional.

Eventually, the priest swallowed, trying to wet his throat. “You…killed, my son?”

“Killed your son? How would I know? Do you have a son? Naughty, naughty, father.” Another giggle, cold and high as a gust of wind. “If you have a son, and he was killed, it might have been me. I told a teeny lie, father. Well, not a lie…but I did omit. Yes I did, and it is bad of me, I know. But I have not killed just once.”

“You were…a soldier?” Luke hazarded desperately.

This time it was a full laugh, a mad cackle, that sounded from the box. “A soldier! You think I was over in the desert, spilling blood for oil, toppling regimes and shooting people in turbans? I’d be damn good at it, sure, but I’m afraid my complexion could never stand the desert sun…ahahaha! A soldier! Oh father, you’re a joker. I like you. I was never a soldier, I was…well…I don’t think they have a name for what I am. A perfectionist, perhaps. I dream of a perfect world, all smiles and silence…a world just like a bicycle built for two.”

Whatever he was on, it had him good, Luke thought. His voice went high to low and back again, his arms and hands twitched as he spoke. Luke peered closer. What is that…a suit?

The shadowy figure waved his arm in the air, a flash of violent colour in the dark. “Listen to me go on. I do become quite misty-eyed when talking of myself.” He heaved a great sigh. “But you wanted to know my sins. Well. I blackmailed a mother to lead her child into my clutches and then I beat him to death and left her to die with him �" which I’m quite certain she did. I shot a girl in the spine and crippled her, then stripped her naked and photographed her bleeding body, all to drive an old man insane…but that…that didn’t work.” He sighed again. “One of my great failures. Still, I got mine back �" I shot that same old man’s wife to death later. I have tried, times beyond count, to murder this entire city at once. Greedy of me? I know. Much better to take it one day, one body at a time. I’m sure my murder rate is higher than this city’s birth rate…simple mathematics is on my side, wouldn’t you say? But I’m a showman, I admit it, and I can’t help but aim for the grand finale.” He shrugged, and continued talking, his voice taking on a flat neutrality, as if reciting a rote list. “I’ve killed city officials. I’ve killed gangsters. I’ve killed cops. I’ve killed moral and upright citizens. I’ve killed puppies. I’ve killed girls for selling inferior snacks. I’ve-”

“That was you?!” Luke forgot himself enough to snap. “You killed those girls today?”

A flat, malevolent chuckle. “Oooh, aren’t you up on current affairs?” He shifted in his seat, allowing the light to catch a glimpse of his grin, long and red and twisted. “It was I. I blush to admit it. I had to hurry �" but it was worth it. I can just imagine him hearing about that as well. Does it make him feel ineffectual, I wonder? Now he knows I don’t keep his hours…maybe he’ll come out to play in the sun as well.”

 Luke’s hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists, but even through the thundering in his ears, he felt himself speak again, the priest’s training taking over while his mind battled itself. “’Him’? Are you talking about God, now?”

Wild laughter echoed down the nave. “Oh! Oh God! Hahahahahaaa! Ha…oh…oh stop it father, you’re killing me. God? No, I don’t think even he would go so far as to call himself God. An angel though…he might think of himself that way. But he probably has about as little patience for your fairy stories as I do. It’s one of the many things we share.”

“If you don’t believe in God,” Luke said, “why are you here?”

“Trying to get rid of me already?” There was a pout in the voice now. “Oh, but father, I’ve so much to tell you. You can’t know how much of a relief it is to get this stuff off your chest. If I go out unforgiven…well, who’s to say where my evil urges might lead me? Why, I might blaspheme, father. We all know that’s a one-way ticket downstairs. He can forgive everything else, but you better not take the name in vain.”

Sweat beaded on Luke’s forehead.  He clenched white-knuckled fists together. “I should call the police,” he heard himself growl.

The penitent chuckled again, lower, malevolent. “That’s breaking the rules too father. Confessional seal. Heh heh heh…why else do you think I came here? I can tell you every vile crime I’ve done, and then come back tomorrow night with a burden of fresh sin for you, and you can do not a thing about it.”

“Then what do you want?!”

“Oh, simply to talk…I have a few questions I’ve been yearning to ask a man of your…calling.” There was a rustling, and the shadowed penitent pulled out a notepad in one gloved hand. Luke, his eyes growing accustomed to the dark, peered into the other side of the box. The man there seemed unusually pale, his skin almost ghostly in the shadow.

Flip, flip, flip…the penitent turned over a few pages. “Aha! There we go…now, Father, tell me this. What is superior, love or hate?”

“What?” Luke was thrown. The giggling, gleefully cruel tone of the man’s voice had changed. He sounded genuinely sombre now, as if he was truly interested in the answer. “Well �" I mean, love, is �"”

“Wrong!” the stranger shouted. “Wrong, wrong, wrong! You deluded little termite! Love? What can love offer? Love, father, is so uncommon it’s worthless. You might as well say a unicorn is better than a pony.”

“But �"”

“Look outside your church, little man. Look into this vile, degraded city and see if you can find love anywhere. Brief, fleeting glimpses perhaps, but nothing constant, nothing meaningful. And it ends. Just like everything good and unrewarded, love ends. But hate…ohhhh…” a shudder went through the stranger’s voice. “I hate, father. I hate…so…much. I hate this city, the crawling louses that infest it. I hate their dullness, their vacant, cow-eyed docility. I hate their submission to a flying gargoyle who pretends he is a monster to scare them into servility. I hate the hypocrisy of my own peers, who pretend they do what they do for some higher purpose �" for money, or for science, or for anything but the thrill of unchecked sadism. I hate God for His indifference and Satan for his ineffectiveness. I hate everything. I hate…I hate…I hate! I hate myself for these moments of weakness that make me come in and talk to mealy-mouthed disinterested creeps like you! I hate you! I hate myself! Do you know how damn hard it is to hate everything so much and have to smile �" every �" moment �" of �" the �" day?!”

Luke was frozen, in near terror. The man was punching the wall in front of him as his voice grew wilder and rose to a near scream, the wood beginning to splinter before that inhuman rage. He wondered if he could run, how far he could get before the man caught him, because this man, Luke suddenly realised, simply would not be able to resist chasing him. He was a shark, and Luke was the blood in the water of his world.

One final punch, and the stranger stilled, his heaving breaths slowing until they were quieter than Luke’s own. “And, so, father,” he said, his voice now ice and stone, “what do you know that can stand before that? I couldn’t. My own mind…it…it couldn’t. Sometimes I wonder if it might have been…different. If there was any way I could be anything but what I am. I don’t know. Most of the time…I don’t care. But on some nights…on some nights, I do.”

“Then…then you feel remorse?” Luke was talking automatically now, his hands folded tight between his knees to stop their trembling. Sweat poured from him.

“No. No remorse. Not exactly. Simply a curiosity. I thought you’d know the answers.”

Luke nearly laughed. “I don’t even know the questions anymore. You think you’re the only one this city gets to? You’re the first person who’s sat in that confession booth for months. And you �" you don’t even want to confess, you just want to sit there…” Luke’s mouth twitched. “A-and it’s just a joke!” A wheeze escaped his lips, and then, like a broken dam, he laughed. He laughed and laughed, and after a moment’s shocked silence, the stranger began to laugh too.

“Ah, you’re a funny man, father!” The stranger cackled, rubbed his face with one long-fingered hand. He stood, reached for his own door. “And that just makes this so much harder.”

“What?” Luke asked, still laughing. “You’re leaving?”

It sounded like an explosion when the stranger kicked the door of Luke’s booth. Once, twice, and it wrenched open with the sound of tearing wood. Luke flung his arms up in front of his eyes to stop the splinters, then lowered them and knew he would never forget what faced him.

Tall, thin. White-skinned, where the skin was visible, clad in a purple suit, a clown’s costume. A violent shock of green hair, eyes narrowed in hate, and the grin. That long, red grin that went on forever, like a shark’s, a smile that was a promise of agony.

Another explosion.

Blackness.

*****

The Joker stood smiling down at the crumpled, black-robed corpse. The priest’s mouth was open slightly as if in shock, and his eyes were far wider. Blood was pooling quickly about him.

The priest’s murderer felt his grin stretch a little wider. “Well…” he said. “Well, well. Maybe that was the answer, after all.”

He holstered his pistol and walked daintily down the church’s aisle, out the doors, into the night, whistling jauntily.

And miles away, a flying gargoyle looked at three small, twisted bodies and felt his gloved fists clench with impotent rage.