Proceeding from the nine-sonnet dream cycle of Part 4, The True Story of The Batman Bruce Wayne’s illegitimate and tragically reptilian older half-brother, The Bastard Wallace Wayne, The Pale Dragon, The Dark Lord and Counselor over Antipolex, Sentinel of the Fortress Towers, wherein his history to the age of 18 is recounted, is continued and concluded practically in toto
As told by The Damned Fool to curvaceous jester chicks Toma Bed Lamb and Tamo Shatterd
Being the part of Batman that DC Comics of Burbank, California, didn’t get, but that DC Commix, being none other than Dysfunctional Commix, the by-now famous imprint of Kyiv Commix, did…
“Harpies and hags:
“And thus, we return to and arrive at our pastoral’s next turning, for I, The Damned Fool, know of no incidents, but only of coincidence, being incidents that happen together, making them similar in their meeting. Well, and therefore, you may ask, how makes this the poem just read the presumed foundation for Wallace Wayne?; and I have just given you the answer.”
“Which is no answer at all, Fool!”
“Therefore, to benefit your doubt, listen…”
And so The Damned Fool turns yet another page of the comic book, and continues the story of Wallace Wayne, say to you I, John Smith.
“Now, when Thomas Wayne was still a very young man in Gotham (which we believe is actually New York City, based on the evidence available in Washington Irving, as we know there actually is no such place as Gotham), not unlike many of the wealthy and privileged young men of the time, he made frequenting a brothel, disguised as a high-class hotel in a ritzy part of town, something of a habit. Naturally, this establishment enjoyed the protection not so much of the law as of those officers and officials who were charged with the highest duty of upholding the law and carrying out its letter.
“This behavior of Thomas’s, being known to the Wayne family, caused it no small embarrassment and distress, especially to Thomas’s mother, Ann, nee Walker. It was she who made sure a great deal of effort and money were spent to keep word of it from the public. Nevertheless, Thomas’s father, Patrick Wayne, while footing the bill upon his wife’s pleas to cover up their son’s philandering and transgressions, was actually secretly pleased with the behavior, seeing it not only as the mark of a truly robust young man, of which he had been one in his day, but also as the carrying on of an unspoken but proud playboy tradition running down the Wayne male line.
“Now, even while the young Thomas unselfconsciously raked it about, seeing himself as merely engaging in a carefree pastime with no deeper attachments, consequences, or responsibilities, he did not feel himself going for the fall, understanding that he was deeply and madly in love when it was already, in a very large sense, too late. And for Thomas, this changed everything, although even he did not know to what profound extent.
“For in the high-class house of ill repute in Gotham he kept a strikingly beautiful courtesan, which, due to a passion he could neither explain nor abate, he ended up reserving for himself – Fay Fells.
“All of this took place around a decade or so before Thomas’s marriage to wealthy socialite Martha, nee Kane.
“Thanks to one particular night of passionate abandon, Fay Fells was gotten with child from Wayne, the condition neither purposely conceived by Fells to attempt an advantage into the Wayne household, nor perceived by Thomas Wayne in that light.
“However, refusing to lose the child due to her love for Wayne, as her belly grew, she indeed pressed him on marriage, which he, in fact, was for. With his young man’s promises, pledges, and exhortations, hope grew for Fells, and she quite naturally began seeing herself rise out of the life of a courtesan and, with the ties to her sordid past severed, starting her new and beautiful life together with Thomas Wayne.
“But we all know how these things go, as Thomas Wayne’s parents, and especially his mother, took the news of the courtesan’s pregnancy by their son and his plans to marry her, with mortification. Ann Wayne was ready to do anything, go to any length, make any payoff, to keep the Wayne family’s good name and reputation from ruin.
“Well, Fay Fells had the baby – a healthy boy. And it is true, there was one flash of thought to use the boy as a way of extorting and blackmailing herself into the Wayne family, but recognizing the great and invulnerable powers of the Waynes, Fells quickly understood it would be fairly easy for them to turn the entire affair against her, even finding a way to destroy her, if they had to.
“Losing hope, and finding disillusion, Fay Fells told Thomas Wayne she did not want the boy, who remained unnamed.
“At this, the family, including the mother – and perhaps even especially the mother – showed some pity, decency, and mercy, and, also taking Thomas’s feelings into account, took the child in, naming the boy Wallace Wayne. They tried offering Fay Fells a generous severance package, but tearing up the check, Fells did not take it.
“To people the Waynes said they had taken in a bundled baby orphan left on their doorstep, parents and origins unknown, even though society properly guessed and understood the boy was the result of a moment of Thomas Wayne’s indiscretion. As the boy grew, this fact became increasingly apparent, as his resemblance to his father became more striking. People, however, generally maintained the good sense and decency to let things go at that. They did not air the Wayne dirt in public, partly because they feared the Waynes, and partly because much in their own lives was better kept under wraps or in the closet.
“And so, Wallace Wayne grew in the benefit of the Wayne household, wealth, and estate, and in the best qualities of Thomas Wayne, his father, who paid a great deal of attention to his son.
“Wallace Wayne had always been told his mother was dead.
“When the boy was 9, his father Thomas married Martha, whom the boy immediately began treating as his adoptive mother, and indeed was very happy to finally have one, growing to love her, accordingly. She, too, would develop a reciprocal and motherly love for the boy, even with the birth of her own child from Thomas – a boy they named Bruce – now Wallace Wayne’s younger half-brother.
“Nevertheless, while Martha had been forced to swallow her pride and accept the news, which came as a shock, of Thomas’s illegitimate child – from an expensive whore – largely because she truly loved Thomas and very much wanted to be with him, she could never entirely forgive him for the child, even though Wallace had been the result of sins sinned by Thomas well before he’d ever known Martha. And since then, Thomas Wayne had grown: he’d matured, and changed, and that was in no small part due to his being a father, one without the benefit of his son’s mother, a wife for himself, and to his taking full responsibility for raising the boy.
“Martha, however, refused to officially and formally adopt the child as their son. Thus, Wallace Wayne lived as an illegitimate bastard seed of Thomas Wayne thinking he was legitimate, one way or another, all along.
“Years pass. Little Bruce Wayne is 7, and then 8, years old. Wallace Wayne is now an exemplary young man in every way. He is naturally well-built, tall, and strong. Academically, he is nothing short of brilliant, and would be graduating high school valedictorian of his class, with a full scholarship to Harvard.
“But the night before Wallace’s graduation, the Waynes receive a guest at their door – a woman, whose face is concealed in a scarf; indeed, whose entire body, with the exception of her eyes, is hid from view.
“It is Fay Fells, and Thomas Wayne recognizes her. Thomas and Martha bring her into the study, where little Bruce Wayne is playing with his toys on the Persian rug, while Wallace Wayne is in the next room, well within earshot, making graduation party plans with his friends on the phone.
“Fay Fells does not only sound unwell, she sounds somewhat insane. She has no money, she is destitute, rejected by society and cast out. With a gloved finger, she pulls down one side of the scarf around her face to reveal an entire cheek – covered in lizard-like scales! As is her entire body, she says. For she suffers from an extremely rare and thus far incurable genetic disease – reptilitis – which gradually turns the human skin into a gruesome and impenetrable armor of scales. In the process, unlike, say, elephantiasis, the body is not bent, twisted, misshapen, or deformed in any way… it is only the skin. But this is enough.
“‘It’s not going to be like the first time, Tom,’ she says. ‘I’m not afraid – and why should I be… look at me. I said – look at me!!! This time, I’m going to expose you for what you and your family did. And I’m going to tell the world – tell it… that… Wallace is my son!!!’”
“This, Wallace heard, and came to stand at the doorway into the room where the strange, diseased woman sat, behind a large table, opposite his parents, Thomas and Martha Wayne. On the carpet, little Bruce had stopped playing, and also looked in their direction, but as these things often are with little children, he did not understand the meaning of this woman’s words.
“After certain unheard promises were made in half-whispers and low tones and the woman left, a new drama immediately unfolded, as, of necessity, it must.
“For Wallace Wayne asked his parents, and particularly asked his father, what the whole thing meant, and what had the woman meant by him, Wallace, being her – her what? – son?
“The conversation was long; many explanations were made, and eventually, eventually, the truth was told. But not just the truth, but the entire truth. Through all this, for some reason, no one had asked little Bruce to leave, or asked any of the help to take the boy out of the room and to occupy him with his young boy’s affairs elsewhere in the house.
“It’s almost as if they wanted him there; as if they all wanted him there: wanted him there to hear… to hear and know and understand – everything…
“The highly emotional and stressful discussion eventually came down to matters of estate, and the Wayne wealth, and inheritance. Wallace Wayne, having never been adopted by the Waynes, was a bastard, and thus was not, nor would he be in the will. He was entitled to no part of the estate, and therefore would not be receiving any inheritance.
“Nevertheless, his father, Thomas Wayne, opened an account for Wallace Wayne, in which he deposited 10 million dollars.
“Thomas Wayne takes out a key and opens the drawer of a nearby cabinet, from which he pulls out a black banking book and a portfolio of documents, and hands them to Wallace, his illegitimate son.
“Wallace Wayne takes these things, walks out of the room, and walks up the stairs.
“It is only now that Thomas and Martha Wayne turn to look down at their legitimate son, Bruce.
“Upstairs, in his room, as he gets ready for bed, Wallace Wayne looks at his naked body in a full-length mirror. He turns around. Then he lifts up his arms. What’s that – there – under the left arm? He approaches the mirror, nearly pressing the upraised arm against it. What is that; what is that? He touches the small, raised patch of skin, which is divided into contiguous parallelograms, there larger, there smaller. The patch is hard, like scales, except even more so – like armored plates. Unlike the rest of his skin, the patch, he is certain, is impenetrable.
“The next day Thomas and Martha Wayne sit in the audience of folding chairs in their son’s large high school gym. A space of perhaps 10 yards separates the seating of the proud, happy parents, relatives and friends from the graduates, who now begin to take their seats to marching band music in alphabetical order, many turning around as they sit, waving back laughing and smiling to the cheering seated crowd.
“The seats are now all filled, and Thomas and Martha Wayne know that because of their name, Wayne, their son would be in one of the last seats in the last row on the right-hand side.
“But that seat remains empty, and they look elsewhere for their son, but he is not there. The young men and women on either side of the empty seat appear to fidget uncomfortably around, not knowing what to make of it. After all, Thomas Wayne was supposed to deliver the valedictory address, but he is not there. One of the faculty takes notice, as the ceremony moves on. He walks over to the empty seat and asks the other graduates around it what’s going on. They shrug their shoulders and shake their heads – they don’t know. They themselves are greatly distraught by Wallace Wayne’s absence and dismayed. The teacher rushes back to the row of faculty in their gowns and whispers this out to them. Something must be improvised. Instead of Wallace Wayne, one of them would give some kind of impromptu address in his place, as if there was nothing wrong, and none of this – Wallace Wayne’s absence, etc. – would go mentioned. Soon, the salutatorian would give her opening speech, which had been planned anyway, and, well, life went on. Everything would be just fine.
“If, at this point, one were to look through the audience, no matter how hard they tried, they would not find Thomas and Martha Wayne there.”
Filed by John Smith, October 28, 2015