Squad Stories: Skating the Edge (one-shot)

More gunfire. The reverberating rattle of it clanging through her ears. Another explosion tears through a nearby wall as men, half incinerated, stagger around in shrieking agony. The smell of charred flesh, somehow similar to the scent of barbeque, hits her like a truck. It’s barbeque, but there’s something toxic in the smoke.

 

She takes no notice. She cackles and shrieks with delight as the hammer falls. A sixteen-pound mace, crushing heads and battering bones. She giggles as another arterial spray hits her face.

 

“This is living!” Harley shouts, just before tearing off a screaming man’s ear with her teeth.

 

“Not bad,” roars King Shark in regard to Harley’s display, seconds before tearing the head off another man.

 

With a practiced fluidity, and despite the hammer’s weight, Harley leaps over the heads of another group of guards, who stumble headfirst into the flames of El Diablo, roasting them alive, and melting their flesh into mere putty. More toxic barbeque.

 

“You feel the devil’s wrath!” he shouts.

 

In the rafters above her, Black Spider slinks, expertly throwing little blades into the throats of men on the catwalk. With a smoothness that matches her own, he crawls across the thin metal frames and into a throng of men. Slashing with wild abandon, gouging eyes and removing fingers with a ferocity.

 

“You will pay for the sins you’ve committed.” He snarls under his breath.

 

From somewhere, Harley withdraws a heavy revolver. There’s one man left in her line of sight, and he’s sobbing. He drops to his knees and pleads for his life. Pleads for his family, for the wife and kids he’ll never see again. A shot rings out, and he’s no more. A newly blossomed hole where his forehead once was.

 

“Ha!” Says Harley, “All that over a cork-gun!” She pulls the trigger, and a little cork on a string spits itself out over his still body. Deadshot, across the warehouse, lowers his smoking rifle.

 

“That’s enough, Quinn,” he says. “Let’s get what we came for.”

 

“Aw cowboy, you’re no fun!” She whines, “At least no fun when you’re standing up.”

 

Deadshot doesn’t justify it with a response. Instead, he just points at a set of heavy, iron doors.

 

“Shark, do your thing.”

 

King Shark lumbers forward, his tiny black eyes taking in as little light as possible. With a grunt, he begins to pry open the doors, tearing them back like cardboard.

 

“Madre de dios,” whispers El Diablo, upon witnessing their quarry.

 

In a beam of light, held aloft in a glass case, the disembodied, skinned face of Harley’s once-beloved rests on a stand.

 

“Puddin? What’ve they done to you?” whispers Harley.

 

“All this way? All this death? For this?” Asks Black Spider, incredulous. “Why?”

 

“The boss lady wants it,” replies Deadshot, “in order to extract the DNA from it, and use it to synthesize a controllable clown army.”

 

“That’s disgusting,” protests El Diablo.”

 

“It’s orders,” replies Deadshot. “Now who’s gonna help me break it out of there, and who’s head’s gonna burst?”

 

They argue, and they bicker, but Harley takes no notice. Gingerly, she steps towards the case.

 

Yes. Good girl, Harley.

 

Closer. Almost there.

 

Her hand lifts the hammer just a little.

 

Higher.

 

Harley. How I’ve missed you.

 

“Quinn? Get away from there.” says Deadshot.

 

Harley. You know what you have to do.

 

“But,” she says softly, “they’re my friends.”

 

Friends? Abuse you! Torture you! Shoot at you! They’re not your friends Harley. I am. I am your everything.

 

Harley.

 

I made you.

 

I love you.

 

“Quinn!” Shouts Deadshot, but it’s too late. Harley unhooks a grenade from her belt and throws it headlong into King Shark’s open mouth.

 

A second later, the explosion knocks the rest of the squad off their feet. Spider’s first up, and with a near untraceable speed, he rushes towards Harley, who sidesteps at the last minute and grabs Spider by the back of the head, bodily slamming him into the glass case. Blood seeps from his face as he crumples to the floor.

 

“Fry her!” Shouts Deadshot. El Diablo bursts a flame from his hand, but it’s too late, in another leap, Harley has cleared the span of floor between them and mashed Diablo’s brains out onto the floor with her hammer.

 

“You sick fuck,” hisses Deadshot, “I told Waller you’d be a liability. I hope you and that bitch are comfortable in hell together.”

 

“You’ll see her first,” smiles Harley, and, like Diablo before him, brains him with the hammer.

 

She laughs and waltzes to where her beloved’s face hovers encased in shattered glass. With a gentle tap, the glass gives way, and she wraps her arms around the glistening, grimacing flesh, waltzing through the carnage with a smile in her arms.

 

But then the beeping starts.

 

Harley begins to panic. Frantically, she tosses aside the face and scrambles for one of Spider’s blades. She finds one, and frantically begins to claw at the back of her own neck. She feels the blood pouring down, but dig as she does, she can’t find the nanite. Harley begins to giggle. To laugh. To guffaw uproariously as the beeping commences. She picks the face back up and cradles it in her arms; hugs it to her chest, it laughs uproariously along with her. Then as the beeping hits its final note –

 

Harley stops for a minute and asks aloud, “Wait a minute. What the hell is this?”

 

She looks at the face in her hands and drops it, disgusted. Turning, she looks to her dead teammates. Baffled, she glances at her own skimpy attire.

 

“I’m sorry, but either this is either some kinda traumatic flashback, or we have seriously regressed the Squad program back a few years.

 

A nasally voice shouts “Cut!” And to Harley’s confusion, the voices’ owner drifts into the room.

 

“Oh come ON!”, he shouts, “That was about to be so EPIC. Just BLAM. Blaze of glory. And after taking out all your friends? AH! The Drama!”

 

I’m sorry,” says Harley, “But who, and what, are you?”

 

The little imp sighs. “You can call me Squad-Mite,” it says. “I’M the Suicide Squad’s biggest fan!”

 

“Then why all of . . . this. I admit we get kinda dark at times, but this just seems kinda excessive. I mean, I love Floydy! I haven’t wanted to bash his brains in for months now!”

 

“I know, I know,” Replies the Mite, “But this Squad series is just so slow, and introspective. There’s so little time for Action and Death when all you guys do is stand around and monologue about your kids! Or go to a funeral! I mean, sure you got some gruesome visuals from it, but you guys spent one whole arc wandering around an overgrown prison! Eight whole issues of that!”

 

“Series? Issues?”

 

“Oh you don’t even know. The best part? I barely had to make any of this up. I just borrowed some stuff from your own subconscious; dug around deep in the pits of your mind that you’ve tried to repress and voila! A page turner! People love trauma after all.”

 

Harley stands for a moment, feels something boil in the pit of her stomach. It’s rage. She swallows it back down and takes a step back.

 

“Look, whatever you are, I have endured a lotta abuse in this line o’ work. I’ve seen a lotta things. But at no point would I ever consider murderin’ my friends. Or that Spider guy I don’t recognize. Y’can’t just boil somebody down to their traumas and their darkest, impulsive thoughts and brand that as their only traits, there’s more to people to that! There’s more to me than that! I dunno who you think you’re appealin’ to with this rancid crap, Mitey, but you can leave me the hell out of it.”

 

The Mite sighs. “Very well,” he says. “Just for that, I’ll set it all back to the way it was.”

 

“Wait, y’mean this wasn’t a dre-“

 

The Mite’s snapped his fingers,

 

Harley’s sat at her desk. Same office. Same plant from Ivy. Same little mis-painted figure of her, wedged between paperwork. For a moment, she stares dumbfounded into nothing.

 

There’s a knock at her door.

 

“Come in?” she says.

 

“Oy, Jesterbells, me’n Floyd here are gonna catch that boat off the island an into town. Hit a pub or two. You in?”

 

“Look like you’ve seen a ghost, Harls.”

 

“I. Yeah! Yeah, I’ll meet you guys at the dock okidoki? Just gotta wrap up this paperwork.”

 

“Alright luv, but don’t be too long!”

 

The door shuts behind them. Harley takes a deep breath in and lets it slowly out. She stands, paces for a moment, glances at the bottom drawer of her filing cabinet. And sucks in her breath again. A minute later, she’s fished the key out of her pocket and knelt down to the drawer.

 

The shiny red and black lycra inside glints in the office lamplight. The little domino mask stares up at her with empty eyes. She lets the breath out, and gently pushes it shut.

 

 

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I'm not back, this is just some exercise. A brisk jog is all. Cheers, all.

Done