◊◊ The Killing Joke ◊◊ (R)

[Craze]

http://i.imgur.com/8acZSgp.jpg

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"All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy."

[Craze]

I remember it so well.
That day - October 25th - that day, it's... it's imprinted in my mind.
Like a dreaded nightmare.
The weather on that day was just perfect, too.
Rainy and cold. Miserable.

I was so certain it was going to be a day like any other.
Just an ordinary,
simple
day at work.

But it certainly wasn't.


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Chapter I
"Red Lipstick & Orange Jumpers"
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"But Jon, my shift's over." she said with a sigh, her head falling into the soft brown cushions of the leather couch. She rolled to her side and cocked her head so she could hold the phone between her shoulder and her ear. Her eyes rolled as she listened to the reply she received. "Yes, I know you're busy with whatever mumbo-jumbo you're doing-" she stared at her shiny, red nails as she was interrupted by the other end of the call, "fine - experiments. You're doing experiments. Have it your way, darlin'. Look, I'll come to your damn asylum, alright? Just make sure I get paid for it this time. Alright, see you there. Bye, Jonathan."
She let out an even bigger sigh than before and threw the phone onto the couch. She pinched the area between her eyebrows, staring out of the window. "Great. Harleen gets called to work and of course it's rainin' cats 'n dogs. this damn city..." her high heels clacked as she moved towards the door, snatching her jacket off the wall and lifting up her purse from the floor. She slammed the door shut behind her, leaving the apartment after the keyhole clicked.

She had been the only one on the bus that night - not that that was all that strange. It was the middle of the night and in a city like Gotham no one dared to roam the streets at night. However, with pepper spray in her pocket and a reasonable knowledge of the psychopath's mind, doctor Harleen Quinzel wasn't afraid of anyone. The bus stopped in the middle of the woods, rain trickling down on the windows as the wipers swayed from side to side in rhythm. "Uh... this isn't my stop..." Harleen said as the middle doors opened. The bus driver shook his head and growled. "I ain't going any further than this. Not at night, I ain't."
Harleen grit her teeth and blew a strand of hair out of her face in anger. "Pussy." she scoffed as she left the bus and stepped straight into the mud, her heels sinking deep into the brown and gooey puddles beneath her. "Great." she growled. Harleen took the umbrella from her purse and attempted to open it, only to have it snap open and contort in all kinds of ways it was not meant to bend in. Furiously she closed it and tried opening it again, ravaging the umbrella completely. "GREAT." she repeated, letting out an annoyed growl. She pulled her leg out of the mud and strode to the edge of the small forest, where a large looming black gate was waiting for her.

Before heading in, doctor Quinzel stared up at the iron gates and the brick wall that surrounded the building she would soon enter - for the third time today. However, it was always a less pleasant view when it was dark and rainy. A strike of lightning lit up the sky, the gates casting terrifying shadows over the forest. Beyond the gates was an enormous mansion, it seemed withered-looking, affected by time and lack of maintenance. A shiver ran down the good doctor's spine and she quickly paced towards the metal door built into the brick wall. She took her wallet and slid a keycard through a small slot in the door. It made a loud noise that sounded like a foghorn and a whale had a lovechild. The door swung open slowly, a red light above the door spinning around like a police siren. A camera followed Harleen's every single move, tracing her all the way into the mansion. As the metal door sealed itself, lightning struck once more to reveal the letters that decorated the large iron gates at the entrance.

ARKHAM ASYLUM

As soon as she entered the asylum, she was greeted by a young man dressed in a tailored grey suit sporting a brown tie. His shoes were black and polished, clearly not tainted by the mud or rain outside. His hair was black and slicked back, a single strand sticking out at the front. His face clean shaven, perfumed with a fancy cologne that smelled of cough syrup and dark chocolate. With his hands behind his back he glared at doctor Quinzel with his cold, grey eyes. A smirk appeared on his face. "So nice of you to come." he said with a sadistic undertone.
"Didn't even bother to pick a lady up, Jonathan? Instead of letting her ride a rickety bus and step knee-deep into the mud?" Harleen snarled, throwing her purse onto the floor and hanging her coat to switch it with a white one, like that of a surgeon.
"I see no lady." the young man replied, the smirk still permanently glued to his face. "Besides, I was busy mumbo-jumboing, remember?"
Harleen sighed. "Just tell me where to go. I wanna get this over with pronto."
"Right down the hall, interrogation chamber 17." he replied, gesturing with one hand towards the long hallway. "Have fun." he grinned.
"Bite me."

Before entering said interrogation chamber, a security guard addressed her while he opened the door for her. "We brought him in the room before you got here. Thought it would... calm him down a bit." the guard mumbled. He nudged towards the room. "It's kinda dark in there - there's only one lamp in there that's not faulty. We tried looking for another room, but they're all occupied."
"'course they are." Harleen sighed for the trillionth time that evening. "Just lemme in, I can handle a little darkness. It's not like I even want to see his face. Probably something horrible if I have to deal with it."
"I guess you could say that." the guard laughed, though it was a nervous one.

Harleen sat down in one of the two chairs that were available - though the other one was occupied by the inmate sitting across from her. The room was indeed dark; Harleen was only capable of seeing his orange prison jumpsuit and straitjacket. Harleen crossed her legs, put on her glasses, took her notebook and readied her pen. "Welcome to Arkham, we're gonna do a quick psychiatric..."
"...evaluation." the inmate filled in. His voice was raspy and yet sophisticated, in a way. "That's the third time this month." he let out an unexpected high-pitched giggle. "I do wonder what differs this asylum from the others. I blew up Blackgate and poisoned Bludhaven... Arkham sounds like the perfect place for me to spread mirth and whimsy." his voice got stranger the longer she listened to him - his way of speaking was unexpected and he alternated between a high and low pitch frequently.
"Go ahead." Harleen replied, not paying any attention to him. She kept her eyes sternly focused on the notebook as she wrote things down. "I'm sick and tired of working here anyway."
"Keep at it and you might just turn into a loony yourself!" the inmate laughed - a high-pitched, raspy laugh and he apparently found it necessary to kick with his feet and make his chains rattle. Harleen let out a small chuckle, but then restored herself. "Anyway, I don't wanna make any assumptions, but..." Harleen looked up from her notebook, attempting to see the face of her counterpart, "...you're probably one of the many freaks that want Batman dead, am I right?"

"DEAD?!" the inmate exclaimed, his knees knocking into the downside of the iron table as he let out a hideous and exaggerated cackle. Harleen flinched, restored her glasses and wanted to say something, but he interrupted her. His laughter faded just as quickly as it came. "That's the least thing I would want to do to Batsy. No, y'see, I want to prove a point."
"Which is?"
"That Batman is just as crazy as all the nutties in this asylum!" he growled, slamming his elbows onto the table - very briefly revealing a glimpse of his face in the light. Harleen was too busy writing it down, so she didn't notice. "I mean, let's be real here." the inmate lowered his voice. "What rational being dresses like him?!" he laughed again, only this time a playful giggle.
"I ain't that fond of him either." Harleen shrugged. "He's the one responsible for all these crazies. Gives me a shit ton of work and late night shifts."
"Well, doc... I think we'll get along just fine." now his voice turned flirty, sultry.
"We'll see." she scoffed, adjusting her glasses. She looked up from her notebook. Maybe she'd catch a glimpse of him now. "Now, tell me about you. What's your story? Dead parents? Broken heart? Gambled away your fortune? Bad day?"
"Oh..." he laughed slowly and menacingly, in a low pitch for the first time. It seemed as if the room had gone dead silent, even though it was just as quiet as before. Her focus was now entirely on her counterpart, who hunched and leaned forwards slowly. He brought his face into the light, revealing skin pale as snow. A bony and streamlined face it was, somehow handsome if it hadn't been so hideously tainted.
"I had a really..."
His lips were thin and chapped, covered in red lipstick that extended even beyond the corners of his mouth, drawing a blood red permanent grin on his face from ear to ear. His angular nose wrinkled as he grinned widely, revealing a set of sickeningly yellow teeth and brown gums. His eyes were green, though not ordinary green - toxic, acid-like green. His eyeballs were large, bulgy, yet pressed far into their grey sockets. Harleen wasn't sure whether it was black makeup or just the enormous bags around his eyes. His thin and devilish eyebrows were just as green as his eyes, one of them arched upwards as he grinned. And to top it all off, he sported a messy haircut that seemed like he had just been electrocuted. His hair colour was also green, yet a darker green than his eyes.
"...really bad day."

[Craze]

His hands trembled as the cold edge of the glass touched his lips, the brown-tinted liquor seeping into his mouth and down his throat. He coughed, put the glass back down again and nervously stuffed his hands between his legs. His eyes carefully darted across the three men before him. The first, a tall, unintelligent looking fellow with a bald shaven head and a jawline the size and shape of a bucket. A bucket covered in stubble and dirt. His bushy eyebrows overshadowed his eyes, making them appear even smaller than they already were. In his hands, a grey and brown assault rifle. The second of the three men was a lot shorter and thinner. The first guy reminded him of a gorilla, and this one definitively resembled a rat. He had to repress a chuckle. Instead of an assault rifle, the rat had chosen to carry a knife that he continuously attempted to sharpen with a rock. His face was thin and his nose pointy, his eyes looking in a different direction each, giving him a somewhat retarded expression.

The man in the middle, however, was what this whole evening revolved around. He was short, a lot shorter than the rat guy. About 5 feet tall, he guessed. He couldn't tell, for the short man was sitting down in a fancy armchair. He was unnaturally short and chubby - as if someone had compressed him into a short, human package. And what a hideous package he was. He had the typical haircut of any stereotypical old guy - short, black hair everywhere except for the very top of his head. He sported a monocle on his left eye, and had laid his black top hat to rest on top of the armchair. He was wearing a white shirt and a grey vest - and to top it off, a large black coat with a thick fur collar. He had noticed something strange about his hands; he had only three fingers, yet the two fingers besides the thumb seemed more like he had glued his fingers to each other. And maybe that was something along the lines of what was going on, for it seemed as if the fingers were kind of webbed to each other like the feet of a duck. It sent shivers down his spine, so he averted his eyes.

The short, chubby mongrel was occasionally given his cigar by the rat boy, who simply inserted it in his mouth and took it out again as soon as the man had taken a few puffs. He would then continue to blow them straight into his face, laughing sadistically as the cloud slowly expanded and brushed up against the ceiling. The piercing scent of smoke would intrude his nostrils, wetting his eyes and making him cough. It brought a grin to the midget's face.

As if he wasn't despicable enough already, the thing - he could only assume he was human - had one of his 'claws' dive underneath the table to rattle around in a bucket and snatch a dead fish from it. He clutched onto it firmly, squeezing it to make a filthy squishy noise as the fish's body fluids seeped through his fingers and down his arm. With one rapid, unexpected move he penetrated the fish with his sharp fangs and bit its head straight off, chewing on it vigorously and despicably as saliva and fish parts were flung out of his mouth. His breath reeked of dead meat and the scent of cigars. "You know, I see your lips flappin', boy..." he smacked his lips and burped, "but the only things I wants to see flappin' around here is either the tender, fleshy lips of a woman..." he gritted his teeth and grinned despicably, letting out a disturbingly perverted chuckle, "...or money. And I don't see either."

The young man sitting across from the midget shuffled his feet and desperately stared him in the eyes, the sheer sense of shame and helplessness in his eyes. "I just need more time, mister Cobblepot. Please, sir, I have a family to support and I-"
"I don't give a rat's arse about your fam, Napier." the midget snarled, sinking his teeth into the remains of his dead fish yet again. He smacked and chewed as he talked, saliva running from his mouth and fat dripping down his chin. "We's made a deal and so far I kept my end o' the bargain. You ain't done such a good job. But I is a generous one, so I's gonna make you another offer. A final offer."
"Thank you, mister Co-"
Cobblepot slammed his stubby fist onto the table, growling angrily and yet his grin seemed sinister. "Final as in, you take it - you live. You don't - you die. It all comes down to this now, boy. Either you walk out of my lounge to carry out my plans, or you don't walk out again. Ever. Capisce?"
"Y-Yes, mister Cobblepot. I'm listening." Napier replied, his eyes now diverted towards the ground out of fear for the man before him. Even though he was so small, such a puny excuse for a man, he was powerful. Very powerful.

Cobblepot snapped his chubby fingers, one of his henchmen bringing in a sleek black box. He placed it on the table, opening the lock and opening the box slowly to reveal its contents. Jack Napier, the man sitting across from Cobblepot, cautiously stood up a bit, hoping to catch a glimpse. Inside was barely anything that interesting - a black suit and a blood red helmet that reminded Napier of a fish bowl. "Ever heard of the Red Hood, Napier?" Cobblepot asked, the corners of his despicable mouth curling up as the cigar entered his mouth. He let out a menacing chuckle.

[Craze]

"You knew Penguin?" Harleen asked, switching around the positions of her crossed legs. Her clown-faced companion shrugged. "Well, I knew him before he became the Penguin. Back then, he was just a mob dealer. Bigger dealer than Falcone or Maroni, even. Of course, all that changed when the Batman came into play, hm?" he grinned, restlessly wriggling around in his straitjacket.
Harleen nodded, placing her notebook on the table. She folded her hands over her knees and shoved her chair forwards. "And then what happened?"
He laughed, a devious grin on his face. "Wouldn't you like to know."
Harleen raised an eyebrow. "Playing games with me?"
"I can do this all night."
"So can I." Harleen took back her notebook and sighed. "But while I'm here, I'd rather you tell me your story than waste my time."
"Well, bully for you." the inmate snarled, triumphantly grinning.

Harleen stared into his eyes. The two sat in utter silence for a few seconds, deeply intrigued with each other's eyes. She was stern, focused. Annoyed, even. Her eyebrows frowned and her lips formed a straight line, a curly tuft of blonde hair had fallen loosely over her forehead. He, on the other hand, had the ever-so-present grin stuck to his face. What was going on within his mind? What is he trying to shield away with all the laughs, the chuckles, the grins? Though his expression showed sadistic joy and pleasure, his eyes were hiding deeper emotions. Harleen saw a broken man, a man torn to shreds by everything around him. It was just like he had said... this man had a very bad day. And it ruined everything.

But what could it be?

"Fine," Harleen turned the page of her notebook and clicked her pen. "Tell me about your childhood."
The inmate looked up at the ceiling, pouting his lip in a way that suggested he was looking for the right words to explain it. He inhaled and said; "Traumatizing, cruel and pathetic." he looked back down at doctor Quinzel. Of course, he was grinning again.
"Interesting." she noted the words on her papers. "Tell me more. How was your relationship with your parents?"
"My father was an alcoholic and my mother a slut." he blurted out, though he seemed not to regret it. Instead, he seemed careless about it. Bitter. Cold. "Best parents a young boy could ever wish for."
"And... how did that make you feel?"

"Well, I guess in some way there's a positive twist to it. I mean, let's be honest - if your father spends half the day fucking your mother and the other half beating her up, the least you have to worry about is your parents telling you to stop playing video games or go outside. But that doesn't mean I lived a relaxing life. Quite the contrary - I spent every waking hour in terror, feared of the one day where shit would hit the fan. You see, all this beating, all this anger my 'daddy' vented towards the two of us... instead of decreasing, it built up. My mom and I just cashed in and cashed in and cashed in, 'til the point where our pockets were too filled with coins to stuff them any further! My entire childhood, my life had just been building towards this one moment. This key moment that may have defined who I am today."

"You fucking slut!"
And there went another slap, reverberating off the walls of the Napier household. A cry followed, the desperate howl of a woman in outrageous pain - perhaps more on an emotional level than actual physical pain. "What, is Frank Napier not enough for you? You'd rather just go off SCREWING his fucking NEIGHBOR?!" and there goes another. The sneering noise of a flat hand coming down onto flesh with devastating strength. It was a haunting noise that the little Jack Napier had grown unfortunately familiar with.
"It's not like that!" the hoarse voice of his mother cried out, a mixture between desperation and anger. "We need the money, Frank, you know we do. He promised to give us money if I did it!"
"Yeah? Did he give you money for screwing him the day after, too?" his father screamed, followed by a crash - beer bottle falling onto the kitchen floor, Jack guessed. "And how about the rest of the week? PAID YOU FOR THAT, TOO?" and there went another slap.

"Ah, and then comes the moment where you're blinded by rage and desperation. The moment where you stand up and clench your fist, hoping to change something. The foolish moment where your childish mind thinks you, a ten-year old, can change the mind of a grown man for even a SECOND. And yet you do it anyway."

So little Jack Napier stood up, pressing the button that made the pixelated figures on the TV screen vanish in a split second. The room he was in turned dead silent - no longer could he cover up the fight in the kitchen with the 8-bit tunes emerging from his video game. With the sound of horrifying screams and a clenched fist piercing into skin time after time, Jack slowly moved through the corridor leading up to the kitchen. "Dad.." he mumbled as he stood by and watched his mother in the corner being beat to a pulp by the man he called 'daddy'. "Dad, please stop."
It was then that his father indeed stopped. But Jack knew that what came next wouldn't be any more pleasant.
"Stop?" his dad said, slowly turning around with blood seeping through his fingers. "Do you know what this is, Jackie? This... this is justice." his father pointed towards Jack's mother in the corner. "While your dad was out of town trying to earn our coin, your mother thought it'd be a good idea to get it on with our pal Henry from the house next door. Your mom's been bad, Jack. I'm just teaching her a lesson. Now go to your room and play nicely, okay?"

"Oh, how often I had heard that last sentence. It was like a command, a simple line my father told me when he didn't want me interfering with whatever nasty business he was getting in to. And like a puppy, I'd obey. I'd nod like the ignorant child I was, move up to my room and seal myself away from all the nasty stuff that was happening in the real world. This time, however, I thought it wise to not obey for once... hoping it would have a better outcome. I had never been more wrong."

"No." Jack said, shaking his head once. "No, I wont. Stop beating mom up. She's had enough."
"You're right. Maybe she's had enough." his father said, drunkenly clutching onto the kitchen counter. He placed his booted foot in front of him, mud splashing up from beneath it. With a firm grasp he placed a hand on his belt, ripping it loose with a rapid jerk. "Maybe it's about time you get your turn."

[Craze]

"Doesn't sound like a very pleasant childhood." Harleen mumbled, writing down the obscure events the inmate described. "Thanks for the deduction, Sherlock!" the inmate snarled, baring his teeth with a wide and sarcastic grin towards the doctor. She looked up, cocked her head and squinted her eyes at the clown. "That reminds me..." she said, raising an eyebrow. "I don't think I managed to catch your name."
"That's because I haven't given you one." he raised an eyebrow as well, grinning provocatively.
Harleen rolled her eyes and placed her notebook to the side, turning her attention to the thin stack of papers lying on the right side of the table. She took out the middle one and scanned it quickly, putting it back down and shifting into her original position again. "The Joker, then."
"I'd clap for you if my hands were free." the clown replied.
"But how about your real identity?"
"You just said it."
Harleen bit her lip. She had dealt with laborious patients before, but this was a whole new level. It didn't exactly take very long to get any information out of him, but Harleen had no idea if he was actually telling the truth. The strange thing was that he narrated his story as if he had been a bystander, as if he was telling a story about... someone else. Could this man have fallen so deep into insanity that he accepted his new identity as a true identity? Or was he simply making up stories, with her writing down every single word while he grinned of malicious pleasure?

"Your childhood doesn't seem to bother you very much. Most people would describe it as the period of their lives with the most impact." Deep down, Harleen knew it could have impacted him a lot, maybe even scarred him permanently, but she attempted to pry more information loose out of this mystery box locked with smiles and grins.
"Well, I just find my childhood utterly boring. I don't remember even half of it!" he giggled. "No, if anything, my story really kicked off when I reached adulthood. You see, I've always had a hard time... fitting in."

[Craze]

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Chapter II
"The Ordinary Man"
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Jack Napier was the ordinary man - the stereotypical American office worker who worked long shifts for disappointing paychecks. An ordinary man, who, dressed in an ordinary suit with an ordinary tie and ordinary shoes would come back to his ordinary home and his ordinary wife on a daily basis. Every day was the same for Napier, and the city he lived in could never brighten his day - Gotham was dark, damp and rainy. A criminal cesspool filled with thugs on the streets and mobsters in the underworld.

"Back then, I was just one of the many ants in the anthill. A loyal citizen following the same dull routine every single day, contributing to society while maintaining a mediocre life. Sure, there are people who find such a lifestyle satisfying enough... but not me. Deep down, I just wanted to make people smile..."

The door swung open and fell back into the lock. And there he stood - the ordinary man. The rain dripped down from his trenchcoat as he let out a sigh that said a thousand words. Removing his hat from his head, he revealed his curly head of hair. Shaved on the sides, and an explosion of curly brown hair saddled atop his long head. Across from him sat an ordinary woman, dressed in a night gown. She held a cup of tea in her hand. Her belly created an enormous bulge underneath the gown, and she tended to rub it tenderly. "How did it go? Did they like your act?" she asked.

He hung his hat on the wall and wandered towards the coffee maker in a dispirited fashion. "Well, they, uh..." he frowned at the pure thick, black liquid he poured from the machine. Like syrup it drooled into his mug. "They said they might call me. I don't know, I... I got nervous and messed up a punchline." he let out another sigh and pressed the mug against his lips.

"Oh." she murmured.

He turned around abruptly, slamming the mug onto the table. The thick substance gushed upwards, leaving a pattern of syrup-like droplets on the table. He stared furiously into her eyes. His teeth were gritted, his forehead wrinkled with frustration. "What do you mean, oh?!" he growled, his left eye twitching. She gasped, her hands convulsively constricting as her eyes widened. "I... I didn't mean anything-" she stuttered.

"Yes you did." he snarled, interrupting her. "The way you said it! 'Oh.'"

Now it was she who wrinkled her forehead. "Jesus, Jack. All I said was..."

"YOU SAID 'OH'." he repeated, bringing his face closer to hers. "As in, 'Oh, so you didn't get a job?' as in, 'Oh, so how are we feeding the baby?'. You think I'M not worried about that?!"

He pulled away from her, putting a hand against his head in desperation. He let out a gloomy grunt, running his fingers through his curly burst of hair. He turned around and clenched both of his fists, pearls of sweat gathering on his forehead as he squinted desperately. "You think... you think I don't care. That it's all a big joke to me or something." he whined breathlessly. "Jeez, I have to go, I have to go and... stand up there, and nobody laughs, and you think, you think I..." he panted, his voice cracking with nigh every word.

With a inconsolable howl he collapsed on the woman's lap. His shoulders trembled with every sob, his hands clutching onto her legs for comfort. "Oh god." he cried. "Oh god, I'm so sorry..."
She stared at him, her lip beginning to tremble as well. Her pupils darted around, tenderly running her fingers through his hair. "Oh baby..." she whispered, hugging him tightly and pressing her lips on the top of his head.