So earlier this afternoon I was thinking about how much I miss writing Joker-fiction, so here goes nothing. This is really just something I'm batting around and, depending on how it does, I'll continue, so reviews are really appreciated. I'm kind of digging the idea already and please, leave any suggestions you like. I'm more than excited to hear from you! Anyway, none of these are my own, except Afton.
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Arkham Asylum is not a place where you voluntarily decide to work. No one gets out of college or wherever and says 'hey, maybe I'll work in a loony bin absolutely brimming with the craziest crazies alive'. The death rate for its psychiatrists has become so alarming that the guards and security are known to make a blatant bet on how long a doctor will last. The typical running time is two months to, at the longest, two years. I like numbers because I'm best at math, really. I'm none too fantastic with words.
I suppose introductions might be good. My name's Afton Kennedy Flynn. In case you can't tell, my parents are Irish. My grandfather speaks fluent Gaelic and I picked up a little of it from him. It's a really pretty language; I wish I had kept learning about it in college. But none of this is important; the real importance is that this is my first day at Arkham as resident psychiatrist to the criminal known only as 'The Joker'.
His case file states that he's gone under several aliases (One obscure name in particular was an anagram for the words 'Clever Pun', and was also a state in Ohio. Really, how ridiculous?) and has been elusive enough to resist arrest and narrowly dodge capture for the better part of a few months. His accomplice was some strange woman who called herself Harley Quinn. She looked vaguely like someone I could remember going to college with. Rumor has it that she's shacking up with the slightly threatening Poison Ivy, now.
Very few psychiatrists brave the stormy sea known as Arkham, but if you learn to drift among the tidal waves and swim with the current you find the benefits are pretty fantastic. The health insurance is excellent and, with the scarcity of the (qualified) staff, the pay is pretty top-notch. Gotham City funds its healers well. Few are willing to stick around day after day, but I find myself optimistic, to say the least. Joker has specially assigned staff because, apparently, he's so deadly he needs almost an entire ward all by his lonesome.
The state he's in, when they lead me to his cell, is positively ungainly. His makeup is leaking, I guess you could say, since no one wants to get close enough to remove it. His eyes are practically melting into his flesh beneath the greasepaint smeared heavily across his face. That, too, is beginning to dissolve and give way to imperfect creases of honest, pale skin. His lipstick is crinkling in corners where his own lips show through. All of these things make a man I only saw on television so much less frightening. I take a moment and drink it in. Underneath all these colored streaks of clown there is man.
The other cells are empty. Warden Sharp has explained to me that this is because Joker is typically known to talk others into doing his dirty work, and feels those with a criminal record would be too susceptible and, therefore, too willing to help the Clown Prince of Crime. So he's kept in his own small corner on the lowest floor of the Asylum, in solitary confinement. He receives none of the benefits the better inmates receive: outdoor privileges and the like. Apparently, he's even denied visiting privileges. How horrid it must be, I think, to rot away all by yourself for hours and hours on a big, empty floor because you tried to blow up an entire suburb and, in a few cases, succeeded. I don't lose sight of the fact that this man is a monster, but at the same time I strive to remember that this monster is a man. There's that word again; man.
Man: An adult human male. I think of it as a definition. He can be easily lumped into the word, then. He seems to be human; in front of me I note two arms and two legs, and he seems to be of the male persuasion, as I do not note the presence of mammary glands. As far as I can see, the creature before me painted thickly in disgusting makeup is just a man.
Jeff, the old security guard who's the only one willing to put up with Joker during feeding hours, if at all, gives me a withering look. His eyes are pale blue. They're starting to wrinkle around the corners.
"Can I get you a chair, Dr. Flynn?"
'Doctor' is a title I take with great unease. It doesn't sound right or fit when you say it out loud. I have trouble believing its use at all. It's a recent development, I guess, so it's a little awkward. I reach up and push a thick strand of dark brown hair out of my eyes. It threatens to slip back in just at the corner of my vision.
"No, the floor's just fine. Thank you, Jeff. You can leave us, now." I offer him a slightly crooked smile that he accepts with a cordial tilt of his head, and as if to warn me he clicks his tongue and nods again. The security camera at the upper left hand corner of the room is what he's indicating. Apparently, should Joker scare me out of my wits and into a catatonic state, Jeff wants me to know that he'll be watching my ass with popcorn.
"Well, well, wuh-ell, lookie heyur." The face doesn't turn to me when I straighten myself enough to sit down on my knees in my skirt, not bothered by how cold the concrete floor is. I like to spend my first session with my patients sitting on the exact same level as they're sitting. Since he's on the floor against the wall, so am I. It's my own kind of attempted bonding technique. "If it ain't a purty lil tootsie roll for me to roll 'round. You're the next shrink, ain't ya?"
His tongue darts out of his mouth and, finally, his eyes flick open, spring to life. They're the darkest shade of green I think I've ever witnessed, accented by deeper, fluttering pinpoints of pale emerald. I'm impressed by the rarity of the color, but I don't say a word. I let him look me up and down, take the moment to push down a fluorescent blush when his eyes peek lecherously to the little cavern of cleavage in my blouse. I just got the once-over from a very convicted felon.
We sit in this silence for a few minutes. Neither of us move or breathe. He doesn't even get up, just twitches silently where he is, studying me with a large, cracked grin and a nervous twitch. His gaze, I think, could move mountains.
"Gotta name, Tootsie?" He finally breaks the quiet, shattering the air enough that I can come up to breathe it. I mirror his grin just a little. He's beginning to crawl in my flesh.
"Quid pro quo. I tell you something, you tell me something. So what's your name, first."
"Loki, sometimes called Pan, Puck, Yaw, Eshu, Mantis—"
He keeps going when I realize what he's doing. Disgruntled, and sort of irate, I hold up a hand and sigh. Apparently, this is going to be much more difficult than first assumed. But what makes this funny-man into such a ruthless criminal?
"Those are all tricksters, and the first one is a Norse God. Do you really fancy yourself a Norse God?"
"I dunno, Ayyyyyy-ffff-ton. Why don't you tell—uh—me?" I look around hastily, unnerved that he's known my name, until I realize with a little relief that he read it off the silver nameplate dangling from my neck. I start to massage my temples; I try to breathe in what's left of the musty air floating around me, choked with dust specks visible in the dingy, overhead lighting.
This patient is going to be no easy task.