Would you like to know how I got these scars?

Hehe. Yeah, I know. I've told you before, several times. And each of those stories were quite, uh, different from one another. Honestly, I have so many stories that I can't quite remember them all—half the poor rotting stiffs in the cemetery in the Narrows went into that eternal night with some variation ringing in their ears, thinking that I'd shared some great personal confidence with them just before I severed their jugular or blew them up.

Little, uh, lawyer girl, the esteemed Miss Dawes—now she got to mull over my story for a while, before her unfortunate . . . hehe . . . kaboom. What was it I told her? I can't exactly remember. Something about a wife, I think, who got carved up. And then I did this to myself, to try to make her smile again.

Oh, no no no no, Batsy. Don't be jealous. I've never had a wife. You're my one and only.

That's why I'm telling you this. Or maybe there's a new chemical imbalance in my brain that's just decided to present itself. I'm not sure. Or maybe, since I've heard all about that tragic, ahem, incident in the alley from your childhood, I've been moved to share.

Remember the first time I tried to tell you about my scars? You didn't want to listen, then. Maybe 'cause I'd set those Rottweilers on you, or maybe you were just pissed about my little game with the ferries.

Hehe. Haha. You're listening now though, aren't you? Eager to find out if there was any truth to some of the stories I've told you? I've talked about tragic childhood accidents and self-mutilation and sadistic mobsters and abusive asylum orderlies and really, really incompetent hairdressers—honestly, anything I could think up and get from my head to my mouth.

Of course, so many stories and so much insanity means the true past is really nothing more than a blur. Your mommy and daddy lying dead in the alley filth is still as clear to you as if you were seeing it right now, but the day I got these scars, and how it happened? It's so faded that sometimes it's not even there. Some days, my past is what I want it to be, and that's my truth. Options are always the best! Hahaha.

But today, you've won the lottery, Batsy. I remember. And the cat has, hehe, finally decided to let go of my tongue.

So, are you ready? Braced for the conclusion of the mystery?

Just, ah, sit back and relax and make sure to listen! There will be a quiz afterward.

So.

I don't remember where I'm from. I know it wasn't good old Gotham, but other than that? Nothing. It was, uh, a small town, though. Cold all the time. Miserable. One of those places where everybody thinks they know everybody else's business but—no. No, they don't.

My mother was . . . a monster, and a fiend, and, oh, oh haha, yes, a hyp-o-crite. Because, you see, despite everything she did, she was also a religious fanatic.

Nonono. Don't look at me that way. She was. One of those ranting, pathological freaks who's so obsessed with their pathetic little deity and its rules that it dictates every single thing they do!

Mommy, you see, thought kiddies were the product of sin, and that to make up for that, they had to be good little boys and devote themselves to the church for every hour of every day. And if they didn't, and sometimes even when they did, a beating was always, hehe, cleansing for the soul.

My father, or, uh, the man my mother said was my father, believed the same thing. His daughter, my half-sister, oh what was her name . . .? Claudia, was a goooood girl. She spent all her time studying her prayer books and her bible like a perfect little future fanatic, but she could never make Daddy happy. She was black and blue and broken all the time, no matter what she did.

Me, on the other hand—I never tried to please Mommy-dearest. I found church and scriptures so . . . boring. I just wanted to have fun. I wanted to go outside and play, even if she beat me when I got home. The pain—hehe. You get used to it. Learn to love it.

So, one day, when I was like, five or six, after she's done slapping me for, ah, whatever reason, she sits me down by the window with a bible and tells me that I have to study it all afternoon, until she gets back from work.

But I was really—uh huh—pissed, for some reason. I hated her, so much that I just . . . couldn't take it.

In my, my rage, I tore out every page of that bible and shredded them into tiny little pieces, and then I left them on the floor and went outside and walked to this, uh, this amusement park. Our town was so shitty, but it had a great amusement park. I rode the rides and walked through the funhouse, with all the, the clowns, and I got some candy, and played with some other boys, ones a little older than me. Some heathen boys, some nonbelieving children of whores! And I was so happy! Like I was free! Like, like everything I was so upset about earlier had gone away!

But, uh . . . not for long. Not. For. Long.

When Mother found me, she was so angry she was shaking. She could barely resist hitting me right there in front of everybody. But she still broke my arm dragging me back to the house. Squeezed so hard she just . . . snapped it.

Once we were away from, ha, prying eyes, she threw all the ripped up pages at me and started hitting and kicking, throwing me around the room, ranting as she did it. She told me that I was filth, that I was unworthy of salvation and that I was going to rot in the flames of hell because of how horrible I was. She asked me why I couldn't be more like Claudia, why god had cursed her with a child as blasphemous as me.

Of course, I couldn't answer. I was a little bit busy, ahem, bleeding to death on the kitchen floor. I didn't even notice what she was doing, when she went to one of the cabinets and got this, this little perry knife.

"Did playing with those heathens make you smile, boy?" she asked me. "Is that why you spat in the face of God, because they could make you smile where She could not?"

She picked me up by my hair and threw me over the kitchen table. And that—that's when I got, hahahahahaha, scared. When she held me down and put the knife in my mouth, that's when I started to cry.

"Oh, why so serious?" she asked. "This way, you'll always be smiling, no matter what you do! Isn't that what you want? Why. So. Serious?"

And.

So, Batsy. There you have it. The story that every psychiatrist at Arkham has been chomping at the bit to be told. That so many people have gone to their graves thinking they've heard.

Was it everything you'd imagined?

Other than me, you're the only living person who knows the truth behind the scars. Sometimes, hehe, you might be the only person, period. You know, when I decide to pick and choose. And, uh, let's keep it just between you and me, yeah?

But don't go feeling sorry for me. I'm still the same homicidal maniac you know and love, just like you're the same inexplicably bat themed vigilante you've always been, despite the dead parents.

Maybe experiences do . . . define us, in a way. If Mommy and Daddy hadn't been shot dead right in front of your eyes, would you have decided to dress up like a giant rodent and hunt criminals? If Mommy hadn't decided to give me my permanent smile, would I have decided that blowing up buildings with innocent citizens inside is immensely humorous?

Hehe. Maybe not.

But I can't help but thinking that, somehow, even if things had been completely different, we still would've been. Even with all our traumas stripped away, with our personalities and motives boiled down to bare bones, we still would've completed each other.

Though, it's more interesting this way, isn't it?

Hahahahahahahahaha.

.

.

Author's Note: So . . . I wrote this ages ago. And honestly . . . I don't even know. But what the hell, Silent Hill's certainly fucked up enough to produce the Joker, and Dahlia was definitely a shitty enough mother.

-Anna