Cat-Tales

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 We were furious. We were rip both of your lungs out, tear your heart out for good measure, ram offending body parts down your throat furious. And that was if the unscarred side came up. As you might expect, we left The Hatter’s under something of a black cloud. I’m told that a silence descended on the gathered rogues after the door had slammed behind me. It was only broken by it’s glass panel falling out of its frame and falling on the floor with the inevitable smash. "So then." The Joker is meant to have said. "Who’s for Kiss Chase?"

Eddy caught up with me four days later. We heard the bell of our apartment ring its sad chime, but didn’t bother to get out of our arm chair.

Incidentally, that arm chair is a personal favourite of ours. Once, it was a plush red velvet chair, probably owned by some Gotham big wig. But it had fallen into some disrepair, and had been abandoned over at that favourite haunt of ours, Gotham City Dump. Some would argue that the final word of its name might as well be dropped as the city is in such a poor state that the line between city and its dump is becoming indescernible.

We feel that’s a little harsh. No we don’t. This shit hole of a city [b]is[/b] a dump. We're not sure. We'll flip for it later and tell you then.

Anyway, the arm chair. It was a gift from the illustrious Mr Kittlemeier, who claimed he had been some material left over from one of Hugo Strange’s ball gowns. Apparently, he didn’t have enough pink polka dotted fur to upholster the entire chair, but only discovered this error once he was half way through the task. The half finished monstrosity reminded him of yours truly, and that’s why we have it now.

Quite why Huge Strange would want a pink and polka dot furred ball gown is beyond us.

The mind boggles at the very thought.

Dear oh dear. Two digressions in the first 400 words. Our humble apologies.

We didn’t get up to open the door for Edward. We knew it was him because he shouted some inane question about whether it was Dr Jeckyll or Mr Hyde that was at home, and whether or not the good doctor could come out to play. We ignored him, our head throbbing, in the seemingly vain hope that he would take a hint and get lost. We heard the creak of the door opening, and remembered with a grimace that taking a hint simply wasn’t Eddie’s style.

That and we had leant him a key to look after our pet hamster, Gemini, when we went on a business trip to Metropolis a few months ago.

We closed our eyes. We still heard the gasp though as Edward entered our apartment properly. We opened our good eye, and surveyed the scene with disdain, as if it wasn’t us that created the mess. We closed the eye lid again.

Eddie has always been a fairly tidy chap. They say that those of us with intellects as vast as his find mess intolerable and an affront to their intelligence. We can only imagine with glee what he must have thought of the seemingly hundreds of empty beer cans that littered the floor of our apartment. He probably cast his revolted eye on the hideous brown stain that runs up one of our walls. He probably also saw the smashed bottle of Jack Daniels that caused it.

We ourself must have been a sight. We sat in said armchair, eyes closed, a full beard on one side of our ravaged face in a silk dressing gown that was half white and half black with a red flame motif, arms folded with classic negative body language. We hadn’t moved from said arm chair, other than to carry out bodily functions and reach for another can. We must have stunk like a dead skunk as well.

Ooh, rhyme.

The King of Filth on his throne, surrounded in his own waste. A sad metaphor for American society, maybe. The object of Edward Nygma’s concern - definitely. We could imagine him trying hard not to pinch his nose as he spoke, bravely ignoring the mess all around him.

"It’s been four days Harv. Since the thing at Jervis' I mean. I guessed this would be long enough for you to cool down. That and four is 2 squared, which in itself is a 2 symbol."

"Is there a point to this Maths lecture?" we said, sounding as bored and frustrated as we felt, speaking without opening either eye.

"Question. What is wrong Harvey?" Said Edward, sounding slightly perturbed at having his musings on his own intelligence interrupted. There was a trace of something else in his voice though.

Fear.

We smiled slightly.

Good to know we still had it.

"Answer." We replied. "I’ll take 'Isn’t it fucking obvious' for ten." Riddler said nothing. We continued, the corners of our mouth turning up slightly more, eyes still closed. "You would make a terrible lawyer Eddie. A good lawyer never asks a question that he doesn’t already know the answer to."

"Oh come on Harvey! You've been in a foul mood for four days now. OK, so you're normally in a foul mood."

We opened our bad eye and glared at him. He gulped and continued quickly.

"But this is worse than usual. I bet you don’t even know where your coin is do you?"

We instinctively felt to where our breast pocket would have been if we had been wearing our suit. The cool kiss of silk against our fingers reminded us that we weren’t. We growled softly.

"See! Your a mess Harv! Get off that chair! Kick some ass! Toss some coins, decide some fates!"

We rose quickly, and rushed at him, snarling like a Rottweiler. We stood literally nose to nose, staring into each others eyes, we reading the determined fear in his, he reading the menace in ours.

"But whatever you do, please tell me what’s wrong Twoface." He said softly.

The tone of his voice - quiet but authoritative - struck a chord, even in our addled mind. Feeling like a dog with its tail between its legs, we retreated back to our arm chair. We sat sheepishly for a second, staring blankly into thin air, before falling backwards into the chair, and theatrically placing a hand across our troubled brow.

What can we say? We're a frustrated actor. We'd happily play ourselves in our life story, when it is inevitably made in to the next Hollywood blockbuster. We might even let someone like Tommy Lee Jones do it - he could probably give the part justice. Not like that jerk-off who actually got given the part. How heartbroken we were when we heard of the tragic accident that befell him. Not.

Real acid eh? That will leave a mark.

Eddie of course is a frustrated Sigmund Freud, so he pulled up the chair from the table and sat ready to listen attentively. He placed a hand on his chin, and stroked it thoughtfully, before repeating his earlier question.

"Its like this Eddie." We said. We paused. Trying to find the words. And prevent the wrong ones from coming up in an angry fusilade. We failed naturally. "How DARE she?!" we shouted. A look of confusion passed over Eddie’s face.

"You've lost me Harv."

"Selina! How DARE she? How dare she make light of the divide between herself and Batman?! How dare she try and blur the line between vigilante and villain. Black and white. That’s all we need in this world. We dont need people like her setting up camp in the grey!"

Eddie tried to say something, but we carried on unabated.

"Doesn’t it make you angry at all? OK, so you don’t see the world in the same way that we do, which is incidentally your loss, but doesn’t it make you angry that she mocks us and everything we do in a STAGE SHOW NO LESS?"

Riddler tried to interject again but we cut him off. We will gloss over the next part of our monologue. Sufficed to say, in our fever we did lose ourselves slightly. Eddie has since told us we ended up shouting out how it was people like Selina that lost us World War II, that The Little Mermaid II wasn’t a patch on the original, and that Garfield the cat should run for President in the year 2222. We're sure he’s lying.

Anyway, eventually, he managed to calm us down. He stood up, very battered and bruised, but triumphant. We moaned and growled menacingly.

It’s a bit difficult to do anything else when your mouth is covered in, and your limbs are held down by duct tap. Eddie waggled the roll of tape in front of our furious eyes, and tutted at us as if we were a naughty school boy.

"Now," He said pulling something out of his green question marked jacket with aplomb, "What begins and ends with the same letter and will solve all your problems?"

"Riddler, or more accurately ripping his head off unless he gets this stupid tape off us!" we shouted at him. Of course, through the tape, our words lost a lot of their impact. We might as well have been complementing him on his socks for all the sense we were making through the tape. We think the force of our anger startled him though, and he moved backwards slightly.

"Wrong." he said uncertainly, beaming none the less though, enjoying being the Quiz Show host of this little game. He waved a small piece of paper in front of us, allowing us to read the exquisite lettering.

It was a Theatre Ticket.

For Cat-Tales - a one woman show starring Gotham’s most glamorous Cat burglar.

Catwoman.

Selina.

Eddie beamed at us. "Not such a bad lawyer now eh Harv?" he said, his smile growing larger, if that was at all possible. Maybe he smugly grins at his victims until they commit suicide. We were certainly pretty close.

"The prosecution rests." Edward said, simply.



We really hate him sometimes.