TITLE: Owning Arkham Asylum
Although the Joker has been diagnosed with antisocial behavior, maybe, just maybe he could be taught to love.
Chapter 1
Free him
It seemed impossible trying to teach someone an emotion. All we can do is explain it and even then the words don't come easy. There's not much else. We cannot force someone to feel something. And when you're neglected and beaten most of your life well, it's hard to love. Or even understand what love is.
I am a doctor serving at Gotham State Hospital five blocks away from Arkham Asylum. I decided when I was a child I wanted to one day work at Arkham. My father was abusive when I was little and it was after he died and I was placed with my mother that I had learned what love was. I felt free and light and my entire outlook on life had changed. And in that same moment that my mother had set me free, I knew that I wanted to share this feeling with others. I wanted everyone to feel it.
At the age of five my mother and father had gotten a divorce. My mother had received no custody and no visits. My father had filed a false claim that she was a drinker and it just so happened that social services walked in at the same time she had an afternoon drink. One drink every week was not an alcohol abuser. Anyway, my father got full custody and my mother had AA meetings every week trying to prove she was not an alcoholic.
During that time I was currently getting nice long beatings every night. Sometimes it was for things I did and other times it was because he was upset or tired from that day's work.
Years passed like this. My teachers every now and then would notice but said nothing after the first call to social services. My father after being questioned gave me the worst beating ever. Then everyone was silent, no one said a word.
A few years after that most horrible night, my father died after drinking four bottles of wine. The police came in, investigated and then checked up on my mother who came up clean for the last three years and they placed me in her care.
She was wonderful. She never hit me or beat me and when I brought it up she listened and smiled with understanding and love. Telling me it was all over and nothing like that would ever happen to me as long as she was there. She made me feel happy and free and showed me a whole new world that had been passing by without me in it.
My name is Elizabeth and I am 23 years old. I started work at the age of 20 and I helped determine peoples' mental health. A psychologist if you will. But not a therapist. I can't stand listening to everyone's sob story; I've been there, done that. If I had to hear my story from coming from another person, I'd risk losing the happiness I worked so hard to gain. I want to help people, not drown in their misery.
Schooling was fun as a child once I had gotten away from my father. Once I was ten years old and had a better grasp of the world I asked my mother why my father had beaten me. She told me that he was sick and couldn't help it. From that point forward all I did was study psychology. I wanted to know what was wrong with my father. To try and understand him better. After all, he was still my father.
After high school I enter the field of psychology and after being the smartest in my class got a job at the Gotham General Hospital.
I first met the Joker late one evening, when Commissioner Gordon brought him in after Batman became wanted for killing Gotham's best DA, Harvey Dent. Batman had beaten him up quite a bit. With cuts and scrapes all over his face and chest. And horrifying bruises on his chest, sides, and legs.
The Joker was pretty torn up. Well, beaten up to me since I knew the marks, but I said nothing as the doctors wrote their reports, labeling the wounds as self inflicted. Afterwards, it was my turn to speak with him. Of course it wasn't just any pleasant conversation. I had to check his mental health. And let me tell you it was way out of whack. Finally after hours of trying to get him to speak I found the perfect thing to diagnose him with. I had written in the file that he suffered from a manic state of depression with delusions of grandeur. And likely an antisocial personality disorder as well.
Although the Joker had done several terrible things throughout his life my mind cold only see the poor man on the outside. And even though I felt sorry for him there was nothing I could do. They sent him to Arkham in the same hour as our meeting.
Weeks passed and all I could think of was how I had failed in giving him any happy thoughts or even simple advice. I could picture him in his cell, the poor lonely soul, just sitting in a padded room with nothing other than his thoughts and his straightjacket. It must be horrible in there: nothing to do, no one to talk to, no comfort, no love, no hope.
Nightmares soon followed, pictures of my father beating me again filled my mind and I soon knew that the Joker was caught in the same world as I was. A room filled with horrid thoughts and no happiness. Trapped as I had been. He needed to be shown happiness and love like I had been given to set him free. To help him escape the trapped world like I had been in. But first he needed to learn.
All I could think about, all I could see, hear, smell, feel, was his lonely horrid world. My lunch became the bland, cold meal he ate. My clothing felt constrictive, like the straightjacket he wore. My neighbors' constant bickering became the shrieks and howls of the inmates he was confined with.
A few words filled my head at work, at home, while I was struck in traffic. They were soon overshadowing everything else. The same phrase, over and over until I knew I had no choice but to act.
Free him! Free him! Free him! Free him!