RUNNING TALLY

By Jason McDonald

Gotham City
The labyrinth alleyways behind Ristorante Magalaria

He gazed down into the alleyway, plotting exactly how to stop the crime occurring before him in a bright hue of monochrome jade.

Batman sat high above the streets of Gotham on his perch next to a stone gargoyle, witnessing the scene below. He pressed a button on his night vision goggles and the view telescoped in, giving him a crystal-clear close-up of the hoodlums stalking the alleyway.

His alleyway in his city.

There were four of them in total; he’d been trailing them for some time. One lookout, hiding a sawed-off shotgun in the bulge underneath his jacket, and two holding the poor young woman wearing just a bit too little and just a bit too buzzed to know better than to walk along this street at this time of night, especially with a shiny, glittering purse like the one being torn from her shoulder right now. She was probably fresh out of the nightclub down the street, given her flashy apparel and judging by the movements of the final man in the wife beater, she would be wearing considerably less than that in a few moments.

The brutish quartet had shot themselves up with steroids not a minute ago and had already pulled the woman into the darkness. Batman had seen at least four people watch her being dragged off by the thugs toward her fate—and simply continue on with their business. Clearly, none of them could be bothered to dial the police. Clearly, someone else’s problem.

That’s the kind of town Gotham was. You needed to know where your priorities were. ‘Watch out for Number One, because no one’s watching out for you.’ Or so they say. The only problem was that the man in the cape was too busy diving off the rooftop perch, proving them wrong.

A swooping silhouette of malleable darkness, Batman pulled two heavy metallic objects, gleaming with obsidian sheen, from a thick pouch in his belt. With the eye of an expert marksman, he tossed them toward two of the thugs in particular as the colossal mass of his body dropped into the other two that were currently roughing up the young woman. The thugs dropped into the pavement as their shoulders made sounds like wet meat. Batman stood upon the downed men, knowing at least four of their ribs were broken—apiece. With the breath knocked out of them and their internal injuries, they were out of the fight, even with the rush of steroids coursing through their bodies. The dark knight had known just where to strike.

The figure draped in darkness knew—rather than saw—the thug guarding the alleyway scream from the batarang impact and topple headfirst into the street, momentarily dazed. The impending rapist in the wife beater behind screamed and reeled in pain, the batarang having sliced up his scalp quite nicely. He ripped at the gaping wound in his head and pivoted, clutching at the small semi-automatic handgun strapped to his belt. With a right snap kick, Batman knocked the breath out from his chest as he pulled a small rope from his utility belt, anchored at the end with a bat-shaped clip.

Batman threw the rope toward the thug at the edge of the alleyway, who was already producing his shotgun. Before the lookout even knew what hit him, the rope had wrapped itself around the shotgun and yanked the poor man off his feet. The shotgun flew easily out from his hands as his jaw collided with the dusty pavement in defeat.

The man in the wife-beater, blood pounding with synthetic chemical rage, leaped toward the figure in black with a sudden psychotic madness. Batman noted the sloppiness of the attack briefly, and took a millisecond or two choosing between a few painless takedowns. He then remembered the poor woman in the alleyway—still too terrified to move—before deciding on something different; a hard elbow to the side of the skull that would leave his head pounding and his world spinning for days.

Severely concussed, the man in the wife-beater fell face-first into the ground, his bloodshot eyes tearing up from the unbelievable pain and pressure mounting inside his skull. The dark knight didn’t even have to look at him to know that he was seeing all kinds of colors and shapes in a twisted kaleidoscope of painful unreality, and that the concussion would leave him writhing in agony for several hours. The man in the cape kicked the semi-automatic out of the concussed wife-beater’s reach—just in case the hoodlum made the insanely-stupid decision to fight back.

Batman reeled in the rope, gripping the shotgun in his hands as the lookout began to recover from his tumble. Glaring at the terrified hoodlum, Batman slowly disassembled the shotgun in front of him—snapping off the individual pieces with the skill of a practiced, highly-trained soldier. The lookout watched in horror as the dark figure unclipped the trigger, disassembled the magazine, snapped apart the ejection port and threw away the barrel right in front of his eyes. Batman focused on the hoodlum, drowning in the fear emanating from his shaking, glassy-eyed enemy. He watched in delight as the hoodlum could barely catch his breath, jumping in response to each of the Batman’s footfalls.

Stalking his prey, the Batman listened as the lookout spoke to him in a hushed whisper, “…you…you’re him…you’re the…”

Batman fixed his eyes on the hoodlum, sneering at the once-predator with a righteous rage pounding inside his dark heart. He let out a low, guttural growl. “Yes. I’m him. And this is my city. Never forget that.”

Batman delivered the final knockout punch, watching the man’s unconscious form slap against the hard, unforgiving pavement. He walked over towards the two unconscious men with the cracked ribs and bent down, retrieving a single glittering handbag from the mound of testosterone scum littering his ground. The Batman walked over toward the still-frozen woman and offered the purse to her. He narrowed his eyes. “Go back to the nightclub you came from as quickly as possible and call yourself a cab. Keep your purse close to your body as you run. Stay near large crowds of people. Don’t go anywhere near Ninth Street or Chester Boulevard. Straight to the club, call yourself a cab from Dwight’s Cab Service. They’ve got cameras in the back to keep the cab drivers honest and the passengers safe. Understand?”

“Y-yes…yes, Mr. Batman, sir.” She stammered in-between long locks of flowing brunette hair, wiping off the mascara dripping across her face. “Anything you say.”

“And never—never—walk around this area alone ever again.”

“I swear I won’t…I swear on my mother’s life, just please don’t hurt me…”

“I’m here only to protect you.” Batman said—in a much softer tone this time. “Now go.”

The knight watched her go, following her movements as her heels slapped against the pavement toward the nightclub. He wanted to follow her—to make sure that she would get there safe but he knew how quickly criminals—even ones as seemingly defeated as these—tended to disappear into the labyrinth city and strike again. He’d learned that lesson the hard way once. Never again.

He heaved the criminals together and tied them up in a nice bow. A gift to the police—and a message to all the other rats in the city. Gotham washis.

Gotham City belonged to the Batman.

There was no room along these streets for the likes of thieves, rapists and murderers.

Gotham City Police Department Headquarters
The Rooftop and the Batsignal

The gray-haired police commissioner gazed along his city with hardened eyes, lighting up another cigarette atop the aged roof of the Gotham City Police Department building.

He adjusted his glasses—they pinched too hard against his nose—and lifted them off his face. Sarah had been telling him to ‘stop fussing with them’ and ‘get some glasses that were worth a damn’. Jim Gordon just shook his head and held back a chuckle. The woman never could wrap her mind around the concept of sentimental value. Oh, she’d be the death of him yet.

Commissioner Gordon pulled a cloth handkerchief from his brown coat, wiping the muck from the windswept city off his lenses. Unfortunate, he thought, that even the foulness from the streets could reach such heights as these.

Squinting from the near-daylight bright of the Batsignal, he looked up at the heavens toward the beacon shining across the dark city. His city. The police chief searched across the windswept skies of Gotham, looking for his longtime partner-in-crime. Looking for the symbol of hope that had, for years, beat back the hordes of madness and uproot the weeds of corruption that had nearly choked this city to death in its clutches. Even now, after all this time, the duo were still dealing with the elements of the city’s rot that threatened to bring Gotham right back into the hell it started as. Jim wondered if they would ever be finished cleaning up this city; setting it to rights, finally. Making Gotham what it should have been all along—a safe place to live.

Jim paced back and forth along the cement, listening to his shoes scuff themselves against the aged, grimy ground beneath his feet and tried to summon up the patience that he was so well-known for.

Dammit, I’ve been forty-five minutes up here, he thought to himself in frustration. He sighed, rubbing that obnoxious itch at the bridge of his nose.Where are you, old friend?

Jim Gordon suddenly heard a low fluttering sound in the breeze. All these years, and the Batman still thought he could sneak up on him. The commissioner didn’t turn around. No reason to break the man’s pride.

“Jim.”

“Batman.” Jim Gordon sighed, turning around a little slower than he’d like. He wasn’t getting older, really. That was just hogwash. “Decide to finally show up, eh?”

“I was detained.” The man in the mask said, stalking across the rooftop toward the commissioner. His black cape fluttered in the breeze, catching the wind in such a way as to make him appear as a black ghost gliding through the air toward an unsuspecting, fearful prey. Gordon suddenly felt very glad the Batman was on his side.

“Detained, huh?” Jim smiled, “Bastards had it coming, did they?”

“Naturally.”

“How many?”

“Four of them this time. Gangbangers. The steroid variety.” Batman’s cold voice sent a chill up Gordon’s spine. “Attempted mugging. Attempted rape. Possibly attempted murder. They’re in the alley behind the Magalaria, right before Chester Boulevard.”

“I’ll get the boys to pick them up.” Gordon said, pulling his handkerchief from his pocket and wiping the soot from the night air off his glasses. “Nice work, by the way. With the Riddler. They transferred that shmuck to Arkham yesterday night. How did you figure out that last riddle of his, again?”

“What has one eye but cannot see? A needle. As in, the Gotham Needle—the bullet train he intended to rob.”

Gordon smacked himself on the head, “Unbelievable! Can’t believe I didn’t catch that. I must be going senile–”

“If you are, then I am too, old friend.” Batman narrowed his eyes at the police commissioner. “However, you didn’t come here to talk riddles.”

“No, no. I suppose not.” Jim clenched his fists and sighed heavily, “Zsasz has escaped from Arkham.”

Gordon watched the Batman’s shoulders imperceptibly slump, and felt he’d just delivered the weight of the world upon his partner. No passerby would have ever seen a difference in the dark knight’s countenance, but Jim could feel the Batman’s frustrations from a mile away. They knew each other too well. They’d both been at this for too long. So when Batman’s reply came, Jim Gordon was not at all surprised.

“There’s nothing riddling about that, Jim.” Batman said, “With Zsasz on the loose, we’ll need to start looking at the morgues.”

The Spencer Building
Apartment #515

Batman walked across the room, looking upon the massive upheaval and debris littering the ground. The crunch of broken glass sounded off beneath his feet as the caped crusader stalked his way through the darkness and the silence of the solemn crime scene.

They fought, he thought grimly, they fought to their last breath…

The black wraith slinked stealthily throughout the shattered apartment, gathering evidence with each step. He filled his pouches with poly-bagged glass fragments and swabbed for samples of coagulated blood that had sprayed across the furniture in the living room. He analyzed the footprints left in the off-white carpet in the hallway, as his thoughts became increasingly frustrated.

For the past three days, Batman had been after the murderous psychopath.

Three days, he thought angrily, glaring at the scene of death before him.

Three days of chasing this madman. And yet, I seem to be no closer to catching Zsasz. I cannot allow one more innocent to be murdered at his hands.

Not. One. More.

The dark knight finally made his way into the kitchen. Batman clenched his fists, gazing upon the grisly scene before him. A middle-aged woman with reddened hair and a freckled face, sitting across from the wizened features of her heavily-built husband, their heads both held down seemingly in prayer. To her right sat her son—a fair-haired young boy—joining his mother’s and father’s hands in a religious show of grace before eating supper.

Except for the fact that their skin was white—pasty white—without the peach-rose color of flesh with flowing red blood beneath, except for the fact that their limbs were frozen solid and cold to the touch—the touch of rigor mortis permeating the seemingly peaceful dinner service and except for the simple fact that their life’s blood lay stained the fronts of their shirts, necks sliced open ear-to-ear with the perfect, exacting cuts that could only be made by a surgeon or a skilled career murderer.

Carotid arteries emptied. Whole families tied up, slaughtered, and then re-arranged as a perverse mockery of typical family life. Batman could see the marks that the ropes and gags Zsasz used had left on the victims’ bodies before they were viciously executed. Batman gazed upon the murdered family with an infinite regret.

This was all the exact modus operandi of Victor Zsasz.

Batman looked at the signs of struggle and injury on the corpses. Zsasz was an exceedingly sociopathic individual. He believed that all life was meaningless, and that legions of people mindlessly worked their ways through monotonous, purposeless lives. So mindless were these creatures, in Zsasz’s mind, that he referred to his victims as “Zombies.” So meaningless were these lives that the souls of the “Zombies” cried out for those lives to end. In order for the “Zombies” to be saved from the hell of life, they needed to die, of course. According to the murdering psychopath, only after having their life’s blood drained could these “Zombies” know peace and salvation.

Zsasz had essentially set himself up as a savior—a religious figure with the godlike power to choose who lived and who died. In this way, he became the most important part of his own delusions—supplanting his own negative self-image and depressive state with a god-like role of total superiority.

Batman had read the psychoanalysis profile of Victor Zsasz long ago. The dark knight knew that Zsasz did not see his actions as murder, and did not see himself as a murdering psychotic as Arkham had summarily labeled him. He instead saw his actions as acts of deliverance. Delivering the “Zombies” to the “Promised Land”, and himself as the instrument of that deliverance.

So he would kill without mercy, without hesitation, without thought. He would stalk families such as this, putting off his murder sprees as long as possible until all the family members were present. Only then, could he complete his work and Lord help whoever got in his way.

He scored each murder as a tally mark across his own skin. Zsasz—a religious man himself—knew that murder was a sin, despite the fact that each murder was an act of “salvation”. He compulsively needed to mark each of those sins across his body. He had to carry these sins—his hundreds of violent sins—with him always, all the way to the grave.

But when he encountered his victims, Zsasz always killed every single one of them.

Always.

He was compelled to it. He needed it. To him, killing was like breathing, unless he’d been interrupted during his ceremony and there was no evidence of any such interruption in this case. The murders had only been discovered once the smell of the dead had reached the other apartments across the building.

So why was there a fourth, empty seat at the dinner table? And why was there a photograph of this family—a recent photo—with a daughter clearly visible amongst the deceased? Why was this poor, orphaned girl not among her family right now, having joined in their fate?

This was a question Batman could not answer.

Somewhere Dark and Cold
A place where hope dies

Nemina Verde sobbed uncontrollably beneath locks of green-and-blue-dyed hair, tugging hard against the handcuffs that chained her to the disgusting bed.

Between choked breaths, her adrenaline-soaked mind played back the horrible events of yesterday’s horrible ordeal: The man with the cuts all over his body had forced his way into their house just twenty minutes after she’d come home from school. At gunpoint, he’d forced them to tie each other up, gagged them. He’d talked about Zombies and deliverance and carrying the souls of the dead with him wherever he went. He’d yelled to them all about how he was going to free them from the unneeded suffering of this mockery of a life. He’d smiled, saying they needed to understand how merciful he was being and how lucky they were to be saved by him, a divine instrument.

At that point, he’d placed the gun on the table and pulled out his blade, still stained with the dried blood of his previous victims. Nemina remembered that horrible, sick look in his eyes as he walked toward her and her family. And then…

SLICE!

SLICE!

SLICE!

Nemina screamed as the memories of her family’s violent murder flooded her mind. So consumed with pain was Nemina that she didn’t even hear her captor enter the room.

“Oh, be quiet!” Zsasz growled, as he smacked the young girl across the mouth, causing a spurt of blood to leap from her bruised lip.

He forcefully gripped Nemina by the throat and shoved the gag into her mouth, tying it tight behind her head. So tight was the gag, in fact, that tears welled up behind her eyes. Her screaming continued, unabated, in the form of a muffled moan of helpless fury.

The madman smiled at her, bringing his face inches away from hers and lifted up a gleaming metal dagger just inches away from her right eye. “Scream again, and you lose the eye.”

Nemina sobbed, her body instinctively hyper-ventilating until she was no longer crying. She had no choice but to look directly into his hypnotic gaze—with eyes that harbored no feeling, no remorse, no sympathy whatsoever. She looked straight into the eyes of the Devil, and she was far too terrified to blink.

“Even though you are one of the Zombies, I have kept you alive for a very specific purpose. I hope to open your eyes to the nature of our world as my eyes were once opened. I hope to bring you into the Light, and deliver you to greatness…”

Zsasz yanked her head back, eliciting a yelp of pain from her gagged mouth. He smiled cruelly, “just remember, you don’t need that second eye to ascend with me to Greatness. Now, let’s watch some television, shall we?”

He grabbed the remote and turned on the television, flipping the channels until he found something that caught his eye. She shivered, realizing that he had turned to the late night news coverage. Current topic: The gruesome murder of Nemina’s own family.

Grabbing a beer from the small fridge, he turned up the volume and made Nemina watch, still gagged. And for the rest of the night, Nemina somehow managed not to scream as the darkness enveloped her and dragged her very soul down into the depths of hell.

NEXT: Zsasz is on the loose! And the only clues that Batman has to his location are the evidence gathered at each crime scene. However, the questions still remain: Why has Zsasz left this one kidnapped girl alive? What is his master plan? And how far will he go to achieve his dark purpose? Peer deeper into the insanity of the madman known as Zsasz and the conviction of the Batman to catch his monstrous adversary in “The First Cut is the Deepest.”