Joker's Vindication

Joker's Vindication

Felix crossed his arms and stared indignantly at the advertisement posted on the brick wall in front of him. It was an elegantly designed poster; this much was certain. Black lettering stood on a faded yellow background and read "LINNIWIG PRESS: Serving all your publishing needs for over a century." On the poster was a picture of an older man, smiling and overlooking an incredible number of printing presses. This man bore an air of dignity about him, even in a photograph. His name, as was printed in a smaller font on the poster, was John Linniwig.

"John Linniwig," muttered Felix, twitching with fury. "I utterly hate this guy."

Needless to say, Felix was the sort of fellow who made no effort to hide his emotions. He was, however, very good at hiding other things: presents, easter eggs, and dead bodies, for instance.

"He's just so... perfect! With his state-sponsored education and his rich family and his deceptive smile..." Felix pressed his hands against the poster and began yelling at it more closely. "Who do you think you are, sporting that handle bar mustache? You aren't a bicycle!"

Grumbling to himself, Felix tore the poster off the wall, crumpled it up, and shoved it in his pocket. "One day, that dirty little good-for-nothing is going to get what he deserves." Felix fully intended to burn the poster later, but it was much more likely that he'd forget about the paper and simply discard it. Whatever the outcome, Felix needed something to ease the tension in his shoulders at that particular moment. He walked down the street towards a quaint little coffee shop at which he would stock up on the most powerful cappuccino known to man.

"I want this so black you need a flashlight just to look at it," he explained to the coffee shop employee. "It should be no less bitter than an old man on a rocking chair two blocks away from a rock concert. Do you understand?"

The woman behind the counter smiled her helpless, polite smile. "Would you like any cream or sugar with that, sir?"

"No," he replied bluntly.

The cashier continued going over her employee protocols in the controlled, almost robotic fashion desired by the average coffee shop manager. As Felix pulled a pair of folded bills out of his wallet, he overheard a pair of satisfied customers, both women, conversing at the corner table. Although he had paid for his deathly bitter coffee already, Felix's mind was elsewhere.

"Oh, why don't you come?" one lady asked the other. "It's bound to be a riotously entertaining dance."

"I know, Claudia... and that Linniwig fellow is a fantastic host, but the only dress I own that isn't being serviced at the dry cleaner's is that hideous blue one."

Felix's blond hair rumbled with fervor. He twisted his neck to the corner and growled to himself, "Linniwig."

"but the blue dress accents your eyes!" protested the lady who spoke first.

"My eyes? My revolting eyes? If they drew Linniwig's attention tonight, it would not be in a good way."

After a close examination of their facial expressions and banter, Felix understood exactly what these ugly old women were worried about.

"I'll tell you what, Sabrina," said Claudia, "I'll wear the blue dress and you can borrow one of mine."

"Ooooh!" shouted Sabrina, leaning across the table. "Even the one with the glitter?"

"...No, not the one with the glitter. It's too dear to my heart. But any other! Then, when we show up at the Linniwig Estate at nine..."

"Excuse me, sir?"

Felix flipped around in bewilderment. The young girl at the register was staring at him expectantly, coffee steam rising beside her face. On the counter was an unmarked styrofoam cup. "...Oh," said Felix, grabbing his drink. "Sorry." After the cashier's customary "Thank you, come again," he sped out on a course for his home. He needed all the time he could find to prepare for his rendezvous with Mister Linniwig later that night.

* * *


Felix examined himself in the mirror. Hair locked into a combed-back position with a gallon of discount hair gel? Check. Formal green and red outfit "borrowed" from a wealthy lawyer? Check. Exhaustive set of pointless knick-knacks needed to construct a convincing illusion of social status? Check. Now, all he needed was an articulate reason to murder John Linniwig.

"Geez," he thought to himself. "This is harder than I thought."

He began pacing around the room, his hands either behind his back or scratching his chin. "Okay, okay... The biased newspapers that Linniwig Press publishes are the reason I have turned to a life of petty crime. Wait, no. The allure of power, fame, and money are what did that." He wondered briefly whatever happened to those, as he was not particularly powerful, absolutely unknown, and broke as a beehive, but he dismissed these thoughts with the assertion that he'd figure out how it all worked one day.

Felix began heading towards the party on foot. He was sure he'd have enough time to justify his actions by the time he arrived. He continued: "Let's try again. John Linniwig has personally caused me to undergo some intense and traumatizing family hardships. Right? He must have. He's rich." Felix abandoned this possible explanation once he realized that it was only good enough to hurt Linniwig very badly, not actually kill him.

As he continued to brainstorm, Felix drew very close to the Linniwig Estate. "Linniwig... stands for everything I despise. He represents the cyclical nature of the upper class, and how children born with rich parents have an unfair advantage over children born with poor parents. He is a symbol of corporate dominance over the masses, and his death will cause society to rethink the prestige they place on their country's nobility." Felix paused for a moment, blinking in silence. "Does this mean I'm a political revolutionary now?"

Satisfied with his explanation, Felix ushered himself into the party through an unlocked second-story window. He found himself in a laundry room, filled with baskets of dirty clothes and washing machines. From a simple glimpse in this room, the difference in lifestyle between himself and Linniwig was readily apparent. Even the detergent was worth more than everything he owned, or at least everything he paid for. Then again, it was the luxurious, foreign, Air du Printemps brand. A slight price discrepancy between that and the no-name Suburb-Mart brand was to be expected.

Unlikely to nurse his patience, Felix headed across the fine, green, linoleum flooring to the door. There was a show he needed to get on the road. Symbols of the archaic caste system weren't just going to kill themselves. He was delayed by voices he overheard, however.

"Ladies, gentlemen, kind members of our community, and people who are dear to me," began a booming voice, "I apologize to those who earnestly believed this is a party. That was a communication error on the part of my associate. The man responsible for this misunderstanding has been sacked."

Felix's eyebrows narrowed. "Linniwig," he growled.

"It is a joyous occasion for which I have brought you here this evening, but one with much less revelry than a dance. There is a message which I feel is of great importance to everyone here. As you may already know, my wife and only son were lost to tragedy during our luxury cruise liner vacation to the Bahamas twenty years ago."

The muffled noises of the crowd were silenced. In the far distance, Felix could hear the sound of two old ladies, one of which was most likely wearing a hideous blue dress, walking out of the building. He perked up his ears and gave his thanks that, not only was he blessed with good hearing, but also that none of the noisy appliances in the laundry room were running.

"Yes, I know. It's still a solemn occasion, even after two decades. However, I firmly believe that every dark cloud has a silver lining, and I have finally found that silver in this event. My son is still alive."

The crowd, and Felix, gasped. For an unknown reason, this simple fact—that Linniwig had a living son that nobody knew about—made gears hidden deep within his mind start turning. He couldn't yet explain why, but he was not surprised.

"Apparently," continued Linniwig, "his ingenuity prompted him to kindly hitchhike on another boat headed home. He soon found himself living with an adoptive family, under the loving care of Mr. and Mrs. Ledbetter. Mr. and Mrs. Ledbetter, if you would please rise?"

Following this was a round of applause. Felix was becoming a bit stunned himself. A young child like that, heading across the ocean on his own! It was particularly remarkable compared to what Felix was doing at that age. Now that he thought about it, he could not exactly remember what it was he did back then. Could that mean...

"I cannot express my gratitude for the Ledbetters enough. Now, as they raised my son, they found that he could remember nothing of his old family or life. It was only by the sheer luck of a DNA test on the subject of eligibility for a minority scholarship that we rediscovered him."

Felix's gears clicked. He was hot on the trail of an epiphany, but still needed a little more time...

"So, without further ado, I present to you all: Felipe Linniwig!" A brief pause. "Felipe? ...What do you mean he isn't here?"

Felix's heart stopped. "I know that name. I know it all too well. This explains everything!" In a single, fluid motion, he burst out of the laundry room and ran into the main chamber, where Linniwig's meeting was being held. The crowd gasped and stared at him in shock as he walked confidently up to the man at the podium.

"Hello, Dad," said Felix. There was no response other than stunned silence.

He continued. "Surprised to see me like this? You shouldn't be. Apparently, you've forgotten every last detail it would be inconvenient for you to remember. I had forgotten myself—the pain must've gotten to me. But now, I know what happened, and I'm going to make sure you know too."

John Linniwig's expression shifted, as he appeared to be deep in thought. Felix continued. "It's true that we went to the Bahamas when I was six; yes. Mom and I thought it was going to be another nice vacation, but you had other machinations in your head. You knew about the stormy weather, the poor ship we were on, and you left us there to die. You just weren't happy with your family. I'm surprised you haven't tried to start a new one yet.

"But that didn't happen. I survived. I tried to block out all memories of the event, but I couldn't. Even when I was living with the Ledbetters, my thirst for vengeance drove me crazy and eventually lured me into a life of crime. I saw your face on an advertisement one day and, although I couldn't explain why, I knew I was destined to involve it in the fatal conclusion of my hatred. And now..."

Felix reached his hand into his jacket. "...It's time for that finale." He rummaged around in his jacket. "Uh. Hold on a sec. I know it's got to be here somewhere." He continued fumbling around. "Where the heck did I put my knife?"

"Hey, Dad?" asked a twenty-something man Felix couldn't see, "Sorry I'm late, I... Wait, who is this guy?"

A man named Samuel Ledbetter said, "Excuse me, Mr. Linniwig, but I've never seen this blond-haired man before in my life."

"Hey!" shouted a bald-headed lawyer in an uncharacteristically tacky suit, "That's the guy who broke into my house earlier! Arrest him!"

Felix grinned nervously as his eyes shifted from side to side. It was only after this, the arduous court process, and the subsequent imprisonment, that he realized that it is probably not a very good idea to make decisions based on a whim that there's an unexplainable reason he needed to do something, especially when that something involved a sharp object implanted in someone's back.