Soap (tag: Crowley)
Generally, Harley Quinn was not found in the sort of store that was frequented by the average soccer mom or blue collar dad. If she wanted something that they might carry, she could probably find a better, more expensive version of it to steal from some other store. It was the difference between Target and Barney’s New York. Not that she went to Barney’s either, her sights were usually aimed a lot higher.
So what she was doing in this big box store today was a mystery. Something had wriggled into her brain and made her think this was a good idea, Harley just couldn’t remember what it was. It must have been something fun, because she was dressed down today; white shorts with knee socks and roller skates topped with a striped knit top and finished off with the pigtails that sprouted from either side of her head. No hyenas today because her Puddin’ had “borrowed” them.
Oh yes! That’s what she’d come for! Chew toys to treat Bud and Lou because whatever the Joker did with her babies, he wore them out. They always came back from his ventures tired and sometimes hurt. He better not have hurt them this time, though, or he was getting a rawhide bone upside the head. He said he’d bring them back as intact as possible, but he knew that if he hurt them it was going to take more than flowers and diamonds to make it up to her. It was one of the few lines she drew in the sand and she always stood firm by it. Nobody hurt her babies. Nobody.
But on her way to the pet supply section of the store, something caught her attention. On the big LCD screens, on the plasma screens, on the smaller flat screens, on the little square box screens, on every screen along the television wall was a blonde woman in a straight-jacket. It arrested her momentum, and Harley instead drifted towards the flickering images being shown. The woman, almond-eyed and puffy-lipped, was talking to herself. Literally. There were two of her there on the screen, one loose and wild, the other uptight and neat and tidy.
It took several minutes for Harley to grasp that they were playing out two of her multiple personalities having a conversation. As the show continued, she got caught up in a plot about a stolen baby, a question of paternity, and spies who had been hidden away for years while somebody else took their place. In the commercial break between One Life To Live and General Hospital, Harley went over to the furniture section, grabbed one of the chairs they’d built for display, and dragged it back to her spot in front of the biggest screen.
By the time the assistant manager of electronics came over to tell her she couldn’t sit there, Harley had already come to the conclusion that the mobsters on General Hospital sucked. Really, really sucked. They were too soft, and if the local yokel at the roadside hotdog stand ran his business the way these so-called criminals ran theirs, he’d be homeless in a matter of days.
So she ignored the nervous and slightly balding man that was standing to her left, clearing his throat to hint that she really needed to go now. Instead, she yelled at the screen, “Nooooo! You don’t work with the fuzz! Why is he even a cop anyway? This is so stupid!”