Author: Dave Heilker (Page 3 of 5)

CHAPTER 26

December 30, 2021 /

CONTENT WARNING

graphic violence • gun violence • violent death

“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

Mao Zedong • August 7, 1927

The sun was setting in Gotham City, casting the college campus in vibrant magenta, violet, and tangerine light that glittered off the calm waters of the Gotham Harbor.

There was something of an amphitheater set up here. There was hardly any slope to the hill, with just enough to make it easier to get a view of the stage, which had a concentric semicircular shell to provide for better projection of the performers. The area was located to the left of a standing placard that read: 

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CHAPTER 25

December 30, 2021 /

CONTENT WARNING:
graphic violence against the mentally ill • violent death

“Sometimes you make up your mind about something without knowing why, and your decision persists by the power of inertia. Every year it gets harder to change.“

Milan KundeRA • THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING

Inertia

TOP COP GELIO: “BATMAN IN CUSTODY”

By Lois Lane

Nov. 1 – (GOTHAM) Commissioner Yiannis “Johnny” Gelio, the top cop at Gotham City’s Police Department, claims to have the so-called “superhuman” vigilante and alleged child-killer known as The Batman in custody, according to an exclusive interview granted to this reporter.

“Today, Gotham City becomes the first city in the world to have peacefully apprehended a superhuman,” Gelio said. “The costumed criminal has terrorized our citizens long enough. We have the Batman in custody.” 

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CHAPTER 24

December 30, 2021 /

CONTENT WARNING:
gun violence • death • police violence

“Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”

Kurt Vonnegut • Slaughterhouse Five

Parallels

Sitting in the Commissioner’s office, hued a high blue-green by the fluorescent lighting, Aurelio Liberatore considered the work he was doing. Aurelio wore a badge and had access to every police building in Gotham, but he wasn’t truly an officer of the Gotham Police Department.

The job paid well, and he got to keep himself in fighting shape. But the title of officer wasn’t extended to contract workers. Contractors – like Aurelio –  were placed with the department through a company called “Henshaw Allied,” a multifarious organization with a speciality in “private security services.”

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CHAPTER 23

December 16, 2021 /

“Hades, all the fine suits in the world won’t change the fact that you stink of death.”

Rachel Smythe • Lore Olympus

Loose Ends

Gotham Police Commissioner Yiannis “Johnny” Gelio was spinning an ever-more-precarious number of competing plates.

There was his new position on the Board of Estimates. Three hundred Henchmen (Johnny hatedthe nickname, but it refused to come unstuck around the department) furnished by Henshaw Allied, which was in no uncertain terms, a shell corporation for Carmine “The Roman” Falcone. And those henchmen needed to be groomed into loyalty to him, to the work of Justice. The work of preserving the enlightened Man against the brute force of Gods. 

Carmine Falcone represented the Old Way. Something unencumbered by the modern understandings of quote-unquote legitimate business, and Johnny was providing a modern take on police work with a mind on the future, corporatist organizing that was doing so well in Falcone’s homeland.

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CHAPTER 22

November 18, 2021 /

“Anyone who believes what a cat tells him deserves all he gets.”

Neil gaiman • stardust

Nine Lives

“Superman follows the law,” Mayor Basil Karlo explained. “Maybe they have some kind of code?”

“He’s a vigilante,” Councilman Jonah Jackson rebutted. “He breaks the law every day. What’s the use of this? People feel safer with Superman around.”

A beat.

“Do you honestly think that the Bat will just hang up his cape because we make a law against it? Murder is illegal, but he does that, too.”

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CHAPTER 21

November 11, 2021 /

“In these days of difficulty, we Americans everywhere must and shall choose the path of social justice…, the path of faith, the path of hope, and the path of love toward our fellow man.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Half The Sky

“I am pleased to announce that, this afternoon, with generous donations from The Pennyworth Foundation and Wayne Enterprises, the Project ALICE initiative has the funding it needs to operate for the next three years. In that time, it is our great hope that we will either have proven our program’s worth sufficiently to Gotham that our esteemed councilmembers will consider subsidizing a portion of our operating costs, or more optimistically, that we will, by that time, have ended poverty in Gotham altogether.”

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CHAPTER 20

November 5, 2021 /

“We’re just going around all day like unconscious machines, and meanwhile there’s all this rage and worry and uneasiness just building up and building up inside us”

Wally • My dinner with andre

My Dinner With Demigod

Dick Grayson winced as the alcohol touched the tattered flesh of his ribs, he held a cold compress against the burn on his chest.

“It was stupid,” Bruce chided. “We lost a suit, and very possibly a bike, and all for what?”

Dick didn’t respond.

“You knew it was a trap! We discussed how it was a trap! You risked so much!”

Bruce paced anxiously – he wasn’t anxious, but the way he stalked back and forth in the mine fomented anxiety in Dick.

“And that wasn’t a rhetorical question!”

“What wasn’t?” Dick asked, confused.

“What did you get from Fries?”

Dick glanced down and to the side.

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CHAPTER 19

October 28, 2021 /

“It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.“

Mary Wollstonecraft shelley • Frankenstein; or, The modern prometheus

And Into The Storm

A hail of brick and mortar pieces hit Batman in the back as he fell.

The only things he could hear were the tinnitus-muted murmuring of the gunman, and the low-volume static of a police scanner that had definitely had a wire knocked loose.

He’d plotted for a run from the rooftop, but he was falling toward the third floor of the speakeasy.

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CHAPTER 18

October 22, 2021 /

“I intend to leave after my death a large fund for the promotion of the peace idea.

“But I am skeptical as to its results.“

Alfred nobel

Out Of The Frying Pan

A simple note, written in haste:

Thursday, 10:00 at Welsh Cannery – Fries

Bruce had spent a day trying to work out what Dr. Fries, Gotham’s Coroner, could want to tell Batman. He pondered why it needed to be in person, and he considered whether it was a trap.

Thoroughly convinced that the note was an invitation to a trap, Bruce wanted to run it by his closest confidant, for a second opinion. However, with Alfred still being away with family, he would have to settle for Dick.

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