i Jobbery

He walked into the apartment building fully aware of what he had to do. The plan had been set in motion just by opening the door. The details were still up in the air, just the way he liked them. Finding the most excitement on the edge of his seat, waiting to see where all of the chips would fall. It was something he decided on as he took the train home. Spontaneous. The thought had been just a blip in his mind a few days ago. But like most blips in this mind, they festered, feeding off of his curiosity and paranoia, until they become more than thoughts, but plans and actions. Once he decided to do something, his mind would not rest until the task had been fulfilled. Never once sitting down to think about consequences, because what was life without a little spontaneity? Where's the fun in knowing what will happen? A thought like this could one day get him into trouble, he was aware. Tragically, he could never have known that moment was only a few minutes away.

The man behind the counter, a security guard in his early 50's, told him that he couldn't come in here, no one would want company, not this late at night.

A smile played on his face. A 'normal' person would have been annoyed with a stranger assuming things about him, and who he was coming to pay a visit to. Maybe the outside stranger was annoyed, he just had a different way of showing it than most, a different way of showing every emotion, really. And that made it difficult for anyone to know what he was feeling, even harder to figure out what he was thinking. Some people found him tiresome, others found him fascinating. The truth was not a single 'normal' person really understood him, and they would drive themselves mad trying, they had. Because who can make sense of insanity but the insane? He began to speak, with a voice that one would find hard to forget, if able to at all, "Oh... I don't know, I'm a very popular guy,"

"Sir-" The guard tried hard to form a coherent sentence, really he couldn't force the man to leave, but it had been really late, and he wasn't supposed to let anyone in unless specifically told by the tenant. No one had informed the desk of a visitor, so he was inclined to convince the man to leave. Security was a temporary job for him, just until his wife had finalized her job at the library so they could retire somewhere far away from Gotham. Temporary meaning he had only been working there a few weeks. What was he supposed to do in this situation? He didn't have to think about it long before being cut off, staring down the end of the reason he wished to leave.

On the opposite side of the counter, the man who was almost always quick to draw a knife decided on a gun instead. Knives show you the beautiful art of dying, but guns are quicker. And tonight, he had a feeling, he would need even just an extra few seconds. Never shy of talking, his words leaving imprints like memories, "Y'know I wouldn't tell a guy like me..." he paused momentarily, thinking to himself, "a guy like me... well I wouldn't tell a guy like me what to do. See, you never know what people are capable of." Adding a grunt on the end, raising his eyebrows and smiling wider, as if to say 'You see?'

Although the guard was staring down the end of a gun, he wasn't all that scared. He'd seen his share of criminals, and this guy just didn't peg him for one, despite the repeated phrase 'a guy like him'. He really wasn't sure what to make of the term, he seemed normal. Ordinary if not just a little off the rocker. Maybe just drunk. Really, that was the guard ultimately decided on, just drunk. Wandering into this building after a cast party. It was then that it all began to click in place, the showy outfit, the gimmick-like pistol one could've easily mistaken for a prop in a play. Everything pointed to this man being an actor, drinking to his glory, good fortune, and sorrows away after a show. He finally understood and began smiling.

Upon seeing this, the outside stranger's body began to convulse and shake with laughter. Stomping his foot, and holding his gut with his free hand. The guard seeing this joined him. What a very strange sight. A random man walking into a random building on a random night, he continued to laugh, completely unaware.

Though, there really was nothing random about this. As soon as security started to laugh, pistol-wielding stopped dead and stared at him. No one had ever understood his jokes, they all just laughed at him. And he hated it, perhaps more than he hated anything else.

In seconds there was blood against the far wall, and the old gun smoked. The scene grotesque and gruesome, laughter arose from the back of his throat again. What a punchline! he thought.

A joker walks into an apartment building...

Whooping with laughter, only broken up by bouts of breathing and smaller giggles, he made his way over toward the elevator, mumbling to himself, "…who wouldn't want to see me? Ha!" Not even he was sure if he was making a sarcastic joke or he simply just enjoyed talking to himself, and that thought brought him even closer to hysterics.

When the door to the elevator opened, Joker tried, but couldn't recollect pushing the button. Quick thinking was something he had always been blessed with, especially when it had to do with illegal tendencies,a feild which he reveled in. Quick thinking meant that the officer never even had a chance to think about grabbing his gun, not when one was already pointed in his face. Not when the bullet pierced his sternum. Especially not when his insides fell along the back wall and slid down just a fraction of a second slower than the rest of him.

Kicking the legs of the cop out of the way so he had just enough room to step in, pressing the 10 button and waiting patiently as the doors closed, he finally looked down at what he had done. He questioned, to himself, why a cop was coming down the elevator, and had he known the situation in the lobby? Or was he simply on his way to work the night shift?

Well, he smiled, and crouched down, it didn't matter anymore, did it? Touching the blood with his bare fingers was exhilarating. He took pleasure in it, he took pleasure in everything that he did. The worse, the crazier it was, the more he enjoyed it. Some people wondered if he got off on insanity, but honestly, he never really thought about it. It was true that the things he did, he did them because nothing else made him feel quite so alive. But, it was in the way that a good joke could make a person a smile. Being with someone you love also makes a person smile, but that doesn't make the two the same. He wasn't sexually attracted to the crime, no, but perhaps when you add a woman into the mix, he'd be more inclined. Who really knows, though? Who can know anything for sure?

As he stood up, he traced his fingers against the mirrored wall, leaving three streaks of blood. They could and would find his fingerprints, but they'd run them through the system and wouldn't find him, and even if they did, what could it say?

"Name: Unknown

Alias: The Joker

Age: Late Teens

Race: Clown"

No, trying for fingerprints was pointless, but they'd do it anyway. Gotham PD wasn't the smartest bunch. Actually- Gotham PD hadn't even heard of him up to that point, even though he'd been on the scene for quite a while, as long as he can remember. He tried hard to lay as low as possible, but he'd murdered more than a few times, and he was never a suspect. He didn't want to create too much chaos, not yet. Everything had to be perfect, and he was still new to this game, he needed more years to figure out this city in order to destroy it and have it for his own. Looking at his handy-work, one wouldn't have thought he was so young, you could see his dwindling sanity even by the crime scenes No, they would think he'd been in this for years. Maybe he had been born with the knack for murder, maybe he was just brought up that way. Nature vs Nurture and that entire argument. If you thought about it you'd have to wonder who his parents where, or who raised him, and if they were the same two things. Most importantly, who were they? Any person who wanted to know anything about him would have to know where he came from, what made him become this monster. He couldn't even remember, and maybe that had something to do with just how insane he really was. Sometimes, he said, he remembered it one way, and other times he remembered it another.

Nothing specific had triggered this, which might be hard to believe. Some speculate he was involved in some type of great tragedy, that he witnessed something he shouldn't have. Many think he might have been subject to experimental drugs and mental health practices. Maybe he had a lobotomy of sorts and instead of making him a walking zombie, it turned him into a walking sociopath. Maybe it was in his blood. Or maybe, all it took was just one bad day.

People could question his origin until the day he died, and they would never get any closer to knowing what happened, what he knew, what he thought, what made him tick. What possibly could be going on or had happened to make a just human being, just a man, do the things he did. Bright eyes, glowing skin, and the most beautiful smile. Really, if you saw him in the street you might gawk and stare and even tell your friends he was handsome, like a movie star.

He looked at himself in the mirrored wall behind the streaks of blood, at his outfit. Mismatched patterns of green and purple, he had chosen those colors on a whim. Every villain should have a costume, he mused earlier this week. He wasn't a villain yet, no, just a murderer, a thief. He will be, though, one day he hopes. This city will be his no matter what it takes. Every villain he knows has a sort of theme. And he had always felt… comical in a way. Even the idea came to him in a dream. When he awoke from the dream all he could remember was flipping through a stack of cards over and over before landing on a Joker. That's it, that's all he could think of. Somehow- the thought stuck with him. This Joker card was important, even though no one really bothered to pay any mind to it. Just set it aside and go on with the game. But this Joker card was wild and had the ability to be or do anything. It just felt right, he was a man, as sick and twisted as it was he laughed all the time. He laughed at the pain in others, taunting them, egging it on. They didn't understand just how weak they really were, it was pathetic. He just wanted to end the idiocy.

The elevator doors opened, and he walked down the hallway.

No one would ever know these things, though, no one could ever guess. Even to himself, everything before this night became a blur. Because this night would decide his fate permanently. Something irreversible and irrevocably monumental lay behind the door he knocked on labeled 1014.