THE STEEL CAGE OF THE LAW

by batfan60

 

DISCLAIMER: Most of these characters belong to a giant corporation, not me. This is a work of fan fiction; no infringement intended. I welcome your comments at batfan60@yahoo.com

 

 

 

 

1.

 

The attacks began without warning. Within a month, two city judges, three councilmen, a state representative, and a trio of prominent newscasters had all been either wounded or killed, and the notes left near each of their bodies had grown increasingly threatening. Most of these were close to incoherent in their rage, but each one was embossed with a stamp bearing a distinctive variation on the familiar likeness of a blindfolded woman holding a pair of scales: Justice. Now there was word that a beat cop from the downtown precinct had been missing from work for over a week, his absence marked by a piece of paper taped to his locker bearing the same imprinted image.

 

Batman had worked tirelessly to track down the specific style of stamp, the seven local companies who produced such items, and the most likely candidate among the three customers who had ordered variations in the last two years. His efforts had led him to a dark alley in the wee hours of a very cold night, where he waited on a nearby roof for some sign of activity outside the ancient brick apartment building occupied by one David Perkins.

 

There were several things about Perkins which made the lanky 35-year-old a likely suspect in the case. He'd been a star student in the graduate Criminology program at Gotham State a decade earlier, only to drop out when his favorite professor was murdered by an assailant who'd never been caught. In the intervening years he'd become withdrawn and eccentric, his temper violent enough to summon the police on four occasions.

 

Batman reviewed the facts as he shivered in the snow. His suit was well insulated, but the lack of motion chilled him all the same. The clanking of a metal door around the corner brought him back to the present moment. Batman spun around and caught a lycra-clad man ducking inside the rear entrance to the building. The caped crusader sprung to his feet, descended from his perch, and reached the door in seconds flat.

 

He turned the knob and entered,  instantly on his guard because the room was pitch black. The detective had to rely on his acute hearing for signs of activity until he could engage the IR lenses built into his cowl. As he raised his right index finger to flip the switch, he already knew that he was in some kind of stairwell, with concrete floors and metal railings. Sound reverberated in every direction, and he strained to pick up traces of the stranger's presence. All he could hear was the slow drip of water somewhere in the distance.

 

Once the night vision was activated, he began to survey the room in better detail. No sign of company -- but Perkins had to be here somewhere. A tiny nagging voice deep in Batman's head told him he'd walked into a trap --

 

--and at the precise instant he'd convinced himself he'd been set up, a BLAST of noise from an airhorn blared through the darkness, bouncing off the walls and threatening to puncture his eardrums. Simultaneously, half a dozen high-intensity halogen spotlights flicked on all at once, further disorienting him.

 

Temporarily blinded, Batman felt someone's forearm emerge from behind his back and wrap its away around his throat. The masked manhunter leaned forward to try and shake his unseen assailant loose, and soon he was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the shadowy attacker. Now flooded with light from every direction, the IR lenses had become a liability, but there was no time to deactivate them, so Batman found himself taking random swings at the air.

 

It took at least three minutes of fruitless punches for the crimefighter to realize he was once again alone. The exertion and adreline made his breathing erratic, even desperate; he was taking in huge gulps of air without even thinking about it -- something he thought he'd trained himself to avoid years earlier. Stopping to catch his breath and collect his thoughts, he realized he was feeling light-headed, dizzy. He became aware of the weight of his feet in his boots, his hands in his gloves, his body in his batsuit. He staggered and stumbled, trying to maintain his balance by reaching in vain for a railing.

 

"Smell something funny, Batman?" a voice asked, its tone full of condescension and scorn. "How very observant of you: it's gas, of course, a very special blend I've cooked up for just for you. It will make you sleepy sleepy slee…"

 

As if on command, the caped crusader slumped to the ground. On his way to the floor, he fumbled with various pouches on his belt, searching with rapidly disappearing efficiency for a certain compartment.

 

"That's your solution to everything, isn't it, Batfuck -- pop a pill and it will all be okay," the voice continued. "Well, guess again, ASSWIPE. Nothing on the belt of yours will save you this time."

 

 

***

 

2.

 

The Masked Manhunter woke up to find his entire frame jammed into a small wire cage intended to house a medium-sized dog. He was forced to crouch on his hands and knees, and although he did not know how long he'd been out, his aching back told him he'd already been confined this way for quite some time.

 

Staring beyond the bars of the cage, he spied a fellow captive on the opposite side of the room: the missing beat cop, who had literally been beaten and bound to a chair. His uniform was torn and every piece of official insignia, including his badge and precinct patch, had been removed, evidently with some degree of force. A white gag covered his mouth. The cop stared back at Batman, helpless. He looked like he'd been worked over for hours, maybe days, his soul and spirit already broken.

 

The costumed crimefighter next took note of a table about five feet away from the police officer. On it lay the cop's duty belt and Batman's utility belt, along with both men's boots and gloves. This was bad news, since it suggested the assailant might know enough about his masked prey's equipment to be aware of the several smaller gadgets hidden in his footwear and gauntlets.

 

Even so, there was still a ray of hope. His movement extremely restricted by the cage, Batman began the laborious process of extracting a thin wire from the edge of his cape, meticulously prodding it a quarter of an inch at a time through a small hole in the cape lining until at last the full five feet had been removed.

 

Grasping the wire in his bare hands, he slipped it through the bars and into a tiny opening at the bottom of the padlock on the door to his undersized cell. Escape was only a few short seconds away.

 

Or at least it would have been, had a few thousand watts of electricity not come sizzling through the wire at that very moment.

 

**

3.

 

Batman twitched and writhed and howled involuntarily until his entire body went numb and his brain shut down. He released his grip on the wire and his grip on consciousness and rolled or fell onto his side. The small cell stank of smoke and the aftermath of concentrated sadism.

 

The captive crusader slept for half an hour or so in his cramped quarters until the harsh spray from a bucket of water brought him back around. If the bars had still been electrified, he'd surely be dead by now, but instead he was merely soaking wet.

 

He opened his eyes slowly and took note of the man who towered over him. Clad in skin-tight lycra which accentuated his muscles, the figure looked considerably more formidable than the disgruntled intellectual Batman had expected to find.

 

"Get up," the attacker barked.

 

"You know I can't move, Perkins," the caged crimefighter replied.

 

"WHAT DID YOU CALL ME?" yelled the man in black. "You will address me by my true name. I am The Law."

 

Batman's eyes rolled upward, the gesture hidden beneath his mask. "The Law"? Where do these guys keep coming up with these idiotic names? he asked himself.

 

The Dark Knight refused to play along. "Whatever you say, Perkins. Now why don't you tell me what you're up to."

 

The man who called himself The Law was not intimidated. "Listen, Batshit, I don't think you're in any position to ask the questions around here. In fact, I don't think you're in a position to WALK unless I give you my permission. See that cop over there? While you were sleeping a minute ago, I gave him a choice. I said I'd release one of you. He picked you. Stupid fucker."

 

As he spoke, Perkins unlocked the cage and kicked one of its walls to prod Batman into crawling out. "Don't try anything. You make one move I don't like and Officer Friendly here gets his brains in his lap."

 

Batman looked up and saw Perkins had a gun in his right hand, its barrel pointed across the room directly at the policeman's skull. The masked man started to rise to his feet, but Perkins kicked him hard. "I didn't tell you to get up yet. You don't do one fucking thing unless I tell you to, understand? I told you I'd release you, not set you free. I AM THE LAW HERE, do you understand me?"

 

Batman was silent a moment. "Sure," he mumbled.

 

Perkins kicked harder. "That's not the answer I was looking for," he said.

 

Batman knew the drill. He'd faced pushy tops before, both on the job and off. "Yes … sir," he said, his voice sounding almost humble now.

 

"Take off your cape," Perkins demanded. The pain in Batman's shoulders, knees and back was almost unbearable after his lengthy imprisonment in the cage. Eager for "permission" to stand up, he did as he was told and unfastened the clasp beneath his stubbled chin and handed the trademark garment to his captor. Perkins threw it on the floor beside the table bearing the other discarded costume items as he walked to the chair housing the police officer. He pointed the gun at the masked man and traced a path from the cage to the chair with it.

 

"I want to see you crawl, Batman. CRAWL. Get your ass over here, pronto."

 

Clad only in his bodysuit, briefs and mask, the humbled hero moved slowly across the floor on his bare hands and stiffened knees, his cowled head bowed low. The short journey felt like it took ten minutes, punctuated by the mocking laughter of his captor and the occasional grunts of the gagged policeman. When Batman arrived at last at the chair, he felt his hands being pulled behind his back and heard the snap of handcuffs around his wrists. A swift kick to the center of his back sent the upper half of his body directly into the lap of the cop.

 

"Let me see you suck his dick," Perkins ordered.

 

Batman looked at the bound patrolman, who squirmed in his chair. "Officer, I apologize in advance for the indignities we both are about to endure. I assure you--"

 

"Cut the shit," barked Perkins as he unbuttoned the cop's breeches and pulled the man's penis out of his underwear. "If I don’t see your lips wrapped around his cock in sixty seconds, I'm putting a bullet in both of your heads."   

 

**

4.

 

Batman's knees ached even more as he knealt before the chair containing the captive cop and buried his masked head in the officer's crotch. The waiting penis was flaccid at first but quickly hardened at the sensation of warm moist lips caressing its surface.

 

"Attaboy," said the onlooker. "You boys like that, doncha? You're having a real good time, aren't you?" Perkins slapped a cat-o-nine tails across Batman's back several times. Without the protection of the crusader's cape, the instrument burned its way into his back.

 

Batman's head slid slowly back and forth across the length of the cop cock, back and forth, back and forth, gradually picking up momentum on its journeys along the shaft. Perkins dictated the pace of the procedure with the cat-o-nine tails, whipping Batman with it if he appeared to be sucking too slowly or too quickly. Each time the ever-stiffening rod approached the back of Batman's mouth, it went a little farther down his throat until it seemed at last that there was nowhere else for it to go but down down down into the very center of this handsome hero's muscular body…

 

When the captive cop could hold back no longer, he tensed every muscle in his own body and then relaxed them as sperm spewed from his cock into Batman's mouth. Traces dripped onto the crusader's chest emblem and a few other stray places on his costume.

 

The dark knight said nothing and continued to kneel. "Swallow it," ordered Perkins. "Every drop."

 

Batman did as he was told. The warm, salty ejaculate slid down his throat in one gulp. The moment he'd consumed it all, he felt a pair of hands working their way under his armpits and hoisting him upward.

 

"On your feet, prick," Perkins said as the Cuffed Crusader rose. The captor shoved his hapless victim forward with such force that Batman nearly fell back to the ground. Instead the detective caught himself and stumbled a few feet before hitting his head on a small round metal cage suspended from the ceiling.

 

"Perfect," said his tormentor, snapping the device snugly around Batman's skull like a second mask atop his more familiar (and more comfortable) signature. "That ought to hold you. A new cage for an old cocksucker."

 

His head now immobilized, the Dark Knight was ready to be repositioned. Perkins removed the handcuffs and yanked Batman's hands up in the air over his head where they could be attached to a beam on the ceiling. Next came a heavy wooden bar at floor level to which the crusader's ankles were shackled.

 

"The Law" stood back and admired his own handiwork. Batman's limbs were now fixed in place and his head was encased inside a medieval torture device. Escape would be impossible.

 

Perkins laughed. "Now the fun begins."

 

***

5.

 

The Law balled the fingers of his right hand into a fist and planted his knuckles directly in Batman's gut. The captive man's belly constricted as much as his restraints would allow, which wasn't much. A second punch followed, and then a third.

 

Batman tried hard not to make a sound, intuiting that any sign of pain would simply reward his captor's sadistic efforts, but a grunt or two could not be avoided. The blows kept coming, one after another, with the relentless fury of a machine. When Perkins tired of using his own fists, he turned to a variety of ever-crueller instruments: whips, studded paddles, a baseball bat, and a few devices too horrible to bear names.

 

A lesser man would have prayed for relief, but Batman kept as silent as possible even as whelts and bruises began to appear on his flesh in the many spots where his costume was ripped and torn. Sweat and blood soaked the intact portions of his batsuit.

 

After at least forty-five minutes of this treatment, Perkins stopped to catch his breath. He lit a cigar, took a drag, and mashed the lit end into an exposed bit of skin on the underside of Batman's left arm. The crusader didn't flinch.

 

"Taking it like a man, I see," the tormenter snarled. "Well, maybe your little suckbuddy here isn't quite so tough," he continued, puffing at the cigar as he headed for the chair where the officer sat squirming. When he was close enough to do some damage, he ground the hot cigar into the cop's bare and bound hand. The officer howled in pain, his cries blocked by the gag over his mouth.

 

"That's more like it," Perkins said. He paused for a second, then slapped the back of his right hand across the cop's cheek. "Trust me, this guy's way past the point of no return. And you'll be there, too, when I get through with you."

 

"But -- but why? What did this man -- what did any of us -- ever do to you?" Batman asked, hoping to trigger the inevitable demented monologue and buy the hapless officer at least a brief respite.

 

The strategy worked. Perkins walked away from the chair and devoted his full attention to his other captive. "It's what you DIDN'T do, Batfuck. None of you ever did ENOUGH to rid this town of evil. Criminals walk the streets every day no matter how hard you claim to fight them. They call you the Guardian of Gotham, but from where I stand you don't look like you could guard a fucking sand castle."

 

Batman watched helpless as a marionette while Perkins resumed his earlier stance and took out his rage on the already-broken police officer, pounding and slapping and punching with the full fury of a maniac. The mute cop slumped over in his chair, closer to dead than alive.

 

Perkins left him and walked to his table of torture instruments where he selected one which looked like an exacto knife, then stood beside the cage while he watched the weapon glimmer in the light. He held the blade at the throat of the man suspended before him. "You've never known what it means to suffer, Batman. And now you will."

 

***

6.

 

The blade penetrated the neckline of Batman's tunic, cutting through the fabric with the slightest amount of effort. Perkins sliced downward, splitting the top of the costume in two. The bat emblem on the chest took additional attention, but it too was eventually destroyed. When he was done, the upper half of the fabled batsuit was little more than a suit of rags.

 

Batman remained as stoic as ever, but beads of sweat streamed across his flesh. Beneath his double mask, his hair and forehead were drenched. He was beginning to lose the feeling in his arms, stretched painfully high above his head. His ankles were also growing numb. His knees were weak and wobbly, and his vision was beginning to double.

 

Perkins fingered the controls of a device resembling a car battery. "I hope you're ready for a little jolt, Batman. That cage around your face and the shackles holding your hands and feet in place? They're all electrified -- and the charge is a hundred times stronger than what you experienced earlier. When I throw this switch, the bitterest juice on earth will course through your body. I’m going to start you off easy, so you get a taste of what's coming next. I'd kill you right away, but to be honest, I want this to last as long as humanly possible."

 

"Listen, Perkins. Do whatever you want with me, but let the officer go," Batman said. "He's had enough."

 

The madman picked up a bucket of ice cold water and threw it at the caged man who dared to challenge him. "Cut that Negotiator crap, Batman," he snapped. "We're not playing games here. I am The Law, and you are … dead meat. BOTH of you."

 

Perkins rested his hand on a large black switch. Batman strained against his shackles one last time, but it was no use.

 

 

***

 

7.

 

The first place Batman felt it when the switch was thrown was in his mouth. He felt like he'd been socked in the jaw with a sack of bricks, again and again and again. Then came the taste: something severe and acidic, something like poison, like puke, like pain transformed into liquid. It seemed to flow throughout his body in an instant, shooting out along his limbs in every direction, travelling through his nerves and blood vessels at lightning speed until it reached his flesh and had nowhere left to go.

 

Every part of his body twitched and danced in horrifying spasms completely out of his control. It was futile to pretend he wasn't in pain by this point, and the screams leaked from his throat with spine-tingling volume and intensity.

 

And then they stopped. In the same instant, his limbs ceased moving, and his body came to rest. He gasped for air, nearly hyperventilating in the process as he struggled to catch his breath. The acid taste remained in his mouth, and his vision was still clouded by agony. He smelled smoke and wondered for a moment if his flesh was on fire.

 

Perkins gave his prisoner no break. The minute he turned off the juice, he picked up a baseball bat and thrust its rounded end directly into Batman's gut.

 

"That was the warm-up," he said. "Let's try it again." Perkins pulled the switch once more and the same sensations returned: the taste the smell the numbness the screams the pain the pain the pain…

 

And then it stopped again. The merciful pause was interrupted by the crack of a whip snapping hard against Batman's back, calves, and cheeks. Next came a bucket of scalding water.

 

"Anything to say for yourself, Batfuck?" Perkins shouted into his captive's right ear.

 

Batman mumbled something incoherent. It took every last remaining iota of self-control to stop himself from breaking into sobs at this point. If he was going down now, he was determined to hold onto his dignity.

 

"Let me hear you beg," Perkins said. "Show me who's in control here. Beg me to stop, and maybe I'll reconsider what I'm about to do."

 

Batman remained silent.

 

Perkins punched him in the gut one more time. "All right then, FUCK YOU!," the man who called himself The Law shouted.

 

The Dark Knight forced something resembling a smile. For his attacker, this silent gesture of defiance was the last straw.

 

"That's it," Perkins said, walking back to the switch. "Playtime is over. This time you die."

 

 

***

8.

 

Bloody, bruised, and nearly insane from physical torture, Batman summoned every still-functioning muscle in his body as he tried one last time to free himself from The Law's torture device. But the steel mask that confined his head was escape-proof without the tools from his discarded utility belt, and the shackles around his bare wrists and ankles held him tight.

 

"That's it -- struggle with all your might," Perkins said as he watched Batman's fruitless efforts. "You're too weak to do anything. And that's your whole fucking problem, Batman: You're WEAK. You can't stop me, you can't stop the Joker, the Riddler, the Penguin, or anybody else. You can't stop crime; you can't end evil, no matter how hard you try. That's why I'VE got to stop YOU. Your brand of justice is out of date. I AM THE LAW now, and I'm placing you under arrest: cardiac arrest, that is." He twisted a knob on the device as far to the left as it would go, then prepared to pull the switch one last time.

 

Batman watched every move of Perkins' hand, unable to do a thing about it. Any second now the electricity would begin to flow, and he'd be a dead man.

 

It was all over in a single unbelievable instant: a loud pop, the smell of smoke, and a body slumping forward as every trace of life was forced out of it all at once.

 

***

9.

 

"Thank you," said one man to the other. Two simple words, when a thousand would not have been enough to convey all that had passed between them. The second man nodded, still unable to speak. He was weak, barely able to crawl, but in due time the severely injured cop managed to make his way across the room, paw through Perkins' belongings until he located the key to the face-cage and shackles which had immobilized Batman, and set him free.

 

Perkins himself lay face down in a pool of his own blood. The fluid leaked slowly out of a hole in his black costume and stained the floor. His eyes and mouth were still open in a gruesome parody of consciousness.

 

Batman wasn't moving much faster than the cop, and it felt like his hands and feet were being pricked with ten thousand needles as the numbness began to wear off. Considering the torture he had just endured, that minor pain was the least of his troubles.

 

"You're pretty good at playing dead," he told the officer as both men slowly reclaimed their boots, gloves, and belts. Batman replayed the scene in his mind: bending over to suck the cop's cock less than two hours earlier, trusting that Perkins would be paying more attention to that lurid scenario than to what else was going on, as the masked man worked to loosen his suck buddy's bonds. From there, it had been entirely a matter of trust: trust that the cop was not as far gone as he looked, trust that he'd be able to free himself and somehow put an end to Perkins' evil deeds. It was unfortunate that the officer had chosen to shoot The Law, given Batman's eternal resolve that guns create more trouble than they solve, but the damage was done now, and two heroes were still standing while their attacker was no more.

 

"What's your name?" Batman asked his compatriot, but there was no answer. In due time, the officer flashed a weak smile.

 

"Whoever you are, I owe you my life," the re-caped crusader said as he prepared to exit the room in his torn and tattered costume. "You have my word I will radio your precinct the minute I reach my vehicle. I'm sure your coworkers will be happy to learn you're still alive." Batman extended his gauntlet for a long, warm handshake. The two men's gloved hands interlocked, leather against leather, then separated, never to join again.

 

THE END