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It’s all my fault.
The thought skittered, black, cold, chitinous. It burrowed through his mind, clicking, twisting, drenching his dead grey prison sheets in icy sweat, knocked against the back his eyes, bulging them in aching sockets.
It’s all my fault. I made him.
The thought slithered over his tongue, pushing against his teeth and lips, attempting to force its way into the world. He had to clamp a hand over his mouth to keep from screaming it into the prison yard, into the dining hall. His palms were peaks and valleys of laceration, where his teeth had sunk into flesh, fighting to keep the thought inside. They would kill him if they knew. He, or one of his damned kids, had put almost every single one of them inside. Every con in the shower, in the weight room, had a Bat-story. And every one would put a shiv between his balls if they knew.
He didn’t know for sure how he knew he’d created the Bat. Sometimes he remembered the Bat coming to him, showing him the face beneath the cowl, telling him the story. But that couldn’t be right…could it? He would remember the face, the name….
And he had told someone, in another time, another place? Hadn’t he? And they’d…hurt him….
But no. He’d never told. Never told, because they would hurt him. They might not even kill him, because death would be too good for the man who made the Bat, wouldn’t it? The suffering the Bat had inflicted would be paid forward a hundredfold, a thousand.
He’d been destitute, drunk. Angry. He’d been stiffed on a score, and needed money. He still had the gun from the heist… the guy was just supposed to hand over his wallet, if that bitch had just handed over the pearls like he’d said….
It’s all my fault. The gun just…went off. And the guy, the guy in the suit, fell down. No witnesses. In for a penny, in for a pound. He shot the wife, because he couldn’t afford to get caught, two strikes already, and if they pinned the robbery on top of the manslaughter charge, he was done. But the kid… how do you shoot a kid? What kind of Hell is there for men, even fallen men, who shoot kids?
So he ran. He ran until running put him in a cop’s flashers.
It’s all my fault. No more running. Mostly, his body just lay in his cot, shaking, crying. His mind still ran, though. That thought did laps around his skull, all day, all night. I made the Bat.
I made him. It’s all my fault.
And if they ever found out? If they ever knew who to blame?
No rest. No relief. No salvation.
It’s all my fault.
He didn’t know how he knew, but he did.
He screamed into his pillow, over and over, until the screw on duty ran his baton over the bars and barked at him to keep it down.