Three weeks passed, and I hadn't made much progress in solving my problem. I was sitting in the asylum garden on one of the benches, admiring the beauty of the plants. Poison Ivy had done a good job growing them, and despite their beauty I knew better than to touch them. They may have been harmless, but with Ivy I figured it would be prudent to just assume that they were all deadly.
All of a sudden, a boy ran up to me and grabbed me by the shoulders and tightly embraced me. The first thing I noticed about him was a long, diagonal white scar that ran down from the right side of his forehead down to the left side of his chin.
"Hazel, I'm so happy to see you!" he said delightedly. "Where have you been, I've been so worried!"
"I think you have me mistaken for someone else," I said gently, a bit creeped out by the way he was holding me. "My name is Rose, not Hazel."
"Don't be silly, now let's go back home, Sweetheart."
He let go of me but held my hand and tried to lead me away, and when I refused to follow him he began to grow angry.
"Hazel, I said let's go."
"I'm not Hazel!" I said as I tried to escape his grip on me.
Thankfully, some of the guards noticed this and dragged him away as he continued to yell at me.
"That's Lee Carter," said a voice from behind me. I turned and nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw it was the Joker. He sat down on the bench I had been sitting on and motioned for me to join him. He was holding a small plastic bag of jellybeans, he popped one in his mouth and offered me one.
"These are to reward my recent good behavior," he explained.
"Good behavior?" I asked, wondering what exactly the asylum considered to be "good behavior."
"In here, for me at least, good behavior means not hurting any of the patients, guards, or doctors, and not causing any property damage. I haven't done any of that in a while, so I get a reward. Therapy doesn't work, so they're resorting to training me like a dog," he said with a laugh. I cracked a smile at that and accepted the jellybean he had offered.
"So why did Lee think I was Hazel? Who is Hazel, anyway?" I asked him.
He tossed a jellybean into the air and caught it in his mouth, then answered, "Hazel was his girlfriend, before he killed her. After he killed her he apparently forgot he had killed her and kidnapped another woman he thought was Hazel, the woman he loved but murdered for some reason. That's how he got that scar on his face, she got him good with a butcher knife when he tried to keep her from escaping." He paused for a moment, then, as if to be polite, asked, "So how are you enjoying the asylum?"
"Is that a trick question?"
"Not really. I find that the asylum is a good place to go when you want to clear your head or just relax for a while."
"Usually when people want to clear their head and relax they go to a beach or something," I pointed out. I was beginning to feel more and more comfortable around the Joker, and even though I knew that was a bad thing, I didn't care.
"Well, it is my only legal place of residence, after all. Three hots and a cot, as they say. The only place I can truly call home. Sure it's annoying, it's like a big family reunion where you just want to strangle all your annoying relatives. Do you feel the same, or is that just me?"
"Not really, I don't think of any of these people in a familial way."
"That's because it's your first time. But after your second or third time you'll come to think of this place as one big dysfunctional family that you are now a part of."
"I only plan on one stay," I told him, appalled by the very thought of spending that much time here.
"We'll see," he said as he popped another jellybean in his mouth. "By the way, I was wondering if you'd be interested in accompanying me on a trip to the record room."
"You want me to break into the record room with you?" I asked, surprised. "Why would you want me to come with you?"
"I figured you'd like to read your file, I assume your doctor refuses to tell you what they think is wrong with you on the grounds that they think it would be detrimental to your recovery."
"How did you know?"
"You forget, I've been where you are. Sort of. My point is, I know you want to read that file, and I'm giving you a golden opportunity. You won't get caught when you're with me," he said as he gave me a naughty grin.
"What would I have to do? And when would we do it?" I asked. I had yet to learn how to open my cell door from the inside, much less get around without attracting the attention of the guards.
"Follow my lead, right now." Without explaining himself, he stood and motioned for me to follow him. As I stood to follow him, three guards silently joined us like an entourage into the long, dark hallway. Each of the three men carried guns, and although they were letting Joker lead the way they were ready and on guard for anything. The Joker turned into another hallway and as he did he spun around and grabbed two of the men and banged their heads together, knocking them out. As the third drew his gun the Joker took the gun from him and smacked him in the head and knocked him out, too.
"Feel free to jump in and help anytime, Snow," he said as he began dragging two of them away, leaving me with the third. We locked the men away in a utility closet and then continued on toward the record room. Once we reached it the Joker produced a set of keys he must have picked off one of the guards and opened the door. Inside were at least a dozen rows of files.
I looked to him and said, "We're going to get caught."
He shrugged and said, "If you're worried about getting in trouble you might as well leave now and tell on me. But if you don't care about getting busted then start searching through the Q's."
I did as he said and began searching for my file. After a lot of digging I finally found it. I opened it up slowly, a bit apprehensive as to what I would find. The first thing I noticed was a picture of myself. I generally didn't spend too much time staring at myself in mirrors, and I did the same with the photo. I skipped through my general info and finally found my diagnosis.
The patient does not display any remorse for her crime, and does not believe she needs treatment. She is aware that what she did was wrong but doesn't seem to care very much. She does not show any signs of psychosis, other than her lack of empathy for her victims. Her actions and behavior suggest an anti-social personality disorder, or to be more specific, Psychopathy. However, more information will be needed to make a solid diagnosis.
Psychopathy? As in psychopath? When I found my file, I had expected it to say something like, well, I don't know what I expected, but it certainly wasn't psychopath. Of course, it did say that more information was needed to make a solid diagnosis, but the fact that they suspected that I was a psychopath was enough. Strangely, it didn't bother me very much. It was a surprise, but I was okay with it. I put the file back and went to find the Joker, who was flipping through a file of his own. He had a few more files stacked beside him, and he seemed to be searching for something in particular in all of them, because once he was satisfied with one he would toss it over his shoulder and start digging through another.
"I found my file," I told him.
Without looking up he said, "And?"
"And apparently, I'm a psychopath." It felt weird to say it out loud.
"Join the club," he said, still without looking up but with a smile. "Why don't you take a peek at your friend's files. You could even read mine if you want, but it would take a few days to read through the whole thing," he chuckled.
"I'm not sure I should violate their privacy like that."
"Trust me, given the chance any of them would do the same to you. Besides, it doesn't matter what you do in here, because you're insane! The asylum is responsible for your actions, not you."
"You're a bad influence, you know that?"
He finally looked at me and said with a smirk, "Like you need me to influence you to do bad things. Now run along, I'm very busy. This isn't playtime, this is serious business."
I did as he said and searched through the files. I decided to respect the privacy of my new friends despite what the Joker had said, mostly because Zelda, Johnny, Bree, Kira and Gwen were the only friends I'd ever had. I instead flipped through files at random. I read one about a med student who had gone whacko named Sam Beckett, a chainsaw killer named Nigel Oliver, and I even accidentally stumbled across Jess-Belle's file. I read it and saw that Zelda had been telling the truth. She apparently had talked some of her fans into going on a shooting-spree that ended in over two dozen people dead, and they believed she had talked her male-model boyfriend into killing himself. I couldn't believe she had done those things. It wasn't the acts themselves, but the fact that in doing those things she had given up everything she had. Fame, fortune, all gone. I had never had anything close to those things, and though I didn't care for either, I couldn't believe she would sacrifice so much for a cell at Arkham.
I had just been about to violate someone else's privacy by reading another file, when the Joker called to me from his side of the room. "Time to go, kiddo. I'm done here, and they're probably already looking for us."
"Whose files were you looking through, and why?" I asked him before we left the room.
"Just checking a few things, making sure everything's in order for my next plan. It'll be a doozy, you wait and see."
I wanted to ask him about his plan, but we had to be quiet while we snuck down the halls. The Joker was a master at stealth, successfully getting us past every guard we came to without getting caught. If I had been by myself I probably would've been busted by the first guard I came to. As soon as we could, we separated and I returned to my cell. Luckily no one seemed to realize I had been missing.
I flopped down on my cot and felt something in my pocket. Curious, I reached in and found a little slip of paper tucked inside. When I unfolded it, I saw that it was a message from the Joker.
Had fun kiddo, we'll have to do that again sometime. By the way, don't tell Harley about this, she'd wring my neck if she found out I broke the rules with someone else instead of her haha! See you around, Snow. -J
I had a feeling when the Joker said that Harley would wring his neck, that he actually meant she would wring my neck, and the fact that I wasn't an actual threat wouldn't matter to her. Still, I had to admit I had enjoyed my time with the Joker as well. As I spent more and more time with him I came to view him as less than a threat and more as a friend. Ironically, I trusted him more than I did anyone else in here, although I maintained a healthy amount of fear, as well. After all, trusting the Joker completely was like signing your own death certificate.
