The manager of Gotham Bank moaned in terror as the Joker's men pulled his family out of the house – his wife, his pale teenage son, his pink-clad twins…
"You wanna know how I got these scars?" the clown said conversationally.
His kids were staring. The girls were crying – including his wife – and his son was silent, shocked – and as pale as death. He sobbed and tried to writhe away, but a knife suddenly bit softly, almost caressingly, into his face. Just enough to keep him still. The Joker began to talk.
"So my father is a fisherman, and he's always to persuade his dearest sonny boy to come on a lit-tle trip with him. What he doesn't know is that sonny boy is scared of the water, that deep, cold, darkness, only feet away…
But, much as I try, one day the excuses run out and he gets me into that boat. The weather's rough, and a frightened kid doesn't sit still. The next thing, I've fallen out. And...down.
Now, my father panics. He reaches over and scrabbles for me, pulling me onto the boat – straight on top of the bucket where he keeps the fish hooks. The bucket tips, and suddenly we're sitting in a boat just full of knives and wire…and these hooks. I sit up, and he takes hold of the one hook he sees, stuck in the corner of my mouth. He takes hold and tries to yank it out – and…"
The pale teenage son was the only one who didn't scream as his father fell to the floor. Lifeless.
