Staring at her, that's all he ever did. A little smile on his face.
He watched her walk down the hallways of the high-school, those clear blue eyes, that lush brown hair, the ruddy cheeks, the long legs. Hannah Dawes. She wasn't the most popular girl, but she was the most beautiful, to him at least. He didn't duck behind trash-cans, he just stood by his locker and took in each of her features, sometimes hoping she would look back, and sometimes fearing that she would look back at him. People knew about him, yeah. Jack Napier, class clown. Everyone knew he loved Hannah, except Hannah herself.
They especially knew about him when he turned sixteen and was assaulted by a madman and kept in a dark basement for a year. When he was found, he had two long slices at the corners of his lips. Nobody could look at him anymore.
Hannah had stared at him, for once, grabbed her little freshman sister's hand and whispered
"That's the boy on the news. He's gross. Isn't that nasty, that he was locked up for a year? Well, I'm like...terrified of him."
The younger girl looked back.
"Hannah, he's right there."
Hannah looked over her shoulder and saw him. Her expression contorted for a second into disgust.
"Rachel! Let's go, okay?"
Jack had stared, the girl he had loved since seventh grade.
Walking away.
She was disgusted by him.
She was terrified of him.
He would give her a reason.
Walking home in the rain, he contemplated what to do.
Walking into his bathroom, he pulled out the old halloween makeup he used in seventh grade. He generously squeezed the white paste all over his face, slimed the greasy black paint over his eyes, and scraped off the scab on his scar. It started to ooze blood. He grabbed red lipstick, the slimy lipstick combining with the blood, as he drew another demented smile on to go with his real one.
That night, he killed two people.
The blood on his hands excited him, his acts on the front page of the newspaper. He looked nothing like himself with that clown makeup on.
Nobody suspected that it was poor little Jack Napier, class clown.
So, those many years later, his crimes were normal. They happened all the time. They had even given him a name. The Joker. So, one day, crashing a party in hopes of a nice little murder, he saw Hannah.
It wasn't her. It was...Rachel? Her little sister. The rounder face, the longer eyelashes, the fuller lips, the smaller forehead.
"Hello, beautiful." He had said. He meant it. She stared at him like he was scum.
He was, he was. From the gutter, the sewer. Hahh-ha.
Rachel stared at him like Hannah stared at him.
Oh, he would change that look.
He would make her his, his plaything. He would make it so that he could hurt her as much as Hannah hurt him with those words, and she would come running back.
He would drag her down so deep into madness that she couldn't even think to try and regain her sanity.
She would be his. He had loved Hannah, and that hadn't worked out, now had it?
He could not love again.
But he could control, and he could lust, and most of all, he could lie.
The last was the most important of all.