A/N: WARNING! This chapter is where the "RATED M" theme would begin to come in. Sexual and Violent Themes; read at your own risk! Thank you.
|| Three Months Later: July 15, 2008 ||
Electricity. My body was on fire. The lights of the room in Arkham's Intensive Treatment were beating straight down onto my face. I had lost track of the days that had passed since I had been admitted into Arkham Asylum. I was breathing heavily in order to try to stay awake, to remember things that had begun to start missing from my mind. Hours were beginning to pass that I didn't even remember sleeping through. Sometimes, I would go through full days without even moving from the corner of my cell, and only remember to move to the bed when my body began to ache from sitting in the same place all day. I could feel the bones of my hips and ribs through my skin now, having not had a full stomach in months. It was as if my skin was starting to shrink. Whenever I saw my reflection, I appeared to be a shell of myself. My face had grown pale and shrunk so that my eyes appeared swollen. My lips were thin and pale almost all of the time. My hair had gotten long and began to go without proper care after a week. I was a complete skeleton, nearly dead already.
Lacerations had formed along my wrists over the old ones several times already after trying to escape the constant handcuffs that were placed on me whenever I was transferred to Intensive Treatment. This was two to three times a week, sometimes even four. After the first day, I learned that the man who had come into my room would be my psychologist, responsible for all of my treatment at Arkham Asylum. He had submitted me to electroshock therapy treatments, which gave permission for the visits to Intensive Treatment. Each time, I would be rendered unconscious with an anesthetic. Electricity would shock my brain several times until I began to seize. After this, I would sleep for hours on end, sometimes even a whole day. When I finally woke up, a different reaction would occur each time. Sometimes I vomited, other times I cried, and other times I had fits of anger that would not stop until I was bleeding somewhere from throwing things around the room in rage.
However, after I began to calm down following the treatments was when the personal visits from the psychologist began to occur. They were unscheduled, undocumented, and happened late at night when no one else was around except for the guards, who were ordered not to do anything unless necessary. Each time, the routine was the same. The door to my dark room would open, and I would see the light appear and disappear in a matter of seconds before the door closed again. Seconds would pass before I could feel the man pick me up off of the ground, or wherever I was, and threaten me before he would handcuff my hands to my bed. The first time I realized his intentions. I tried to fight back, to keep him from removing the pathetic excuse for clothing that I had been given. I screamed, louder than I thought I could, and nearly sliced my wrists open trying to get out of the chains that kept me still.
My body was not shown any mercy. I was beaten into complying with anything he wanted. The first time, he hurled me into unconsciousness before doing anything to me, because I will strong, still unbroken. But the more the weeks followed, the more I began to obey everything he said, do what he wanted, even remove the clothing myself. But I still screamed. It was the one thing he didn't mind, simply because he knew the guards would never come to my rescue. No one would, which made me begin to understand what he had told me the first day. And I hated him for it, for being right.
But over the past few weeks, I had begun to think about the Joker, how he had simply left me in the courtroom to be captured and taken to this place. Why hadn't he taken me with him to escape? I could have gone with him and made it out in time. The more I thought about it that way, the more I began to think about what I would be doing with him at different times of the day. And I realized I would rather have been chained to the table in the abandoned apartment, while he watched me, than anywhere near Arkham ever again. I even imagined different ways he could kill me. Guns, knives, poison, I was desperate for any of it whenever I heard the door to my cell open.
And today, I had gotten too desperate. When the door opened once more, I knew I was going to be taken again to Intensive Treatment. I was forced to walk (with my hands bound) the entire way, as the only form of exercise I got during the week. I could barely stand, and needed to be helped by guards in order to do so before I could be taken there. There was no use resisting; I had no way of doing so. I couldn't run, couldn't hide anywhere. There was too much security in the asylum. I was hopeless, but not hopeless enough to remember the medical tools that were kept in the rooms in Intensive Treatment: gloves, needles, anesthetics… and scalpels. I kept my head down the entire way there, until the door to the room was finally opened to reveal a metal table that I would lay on for the procedure. "Leave us," the psychologist ordered the guards, who left me standing to support my own weight and walked out of the room. The door was sealed behind them.
I immediately had to brace myself on the counter against the wall in order to stand upright. At least, that was the doctor's impression. He did nothing but push me down onto the table as my fingers wrapped around the surgical knife. I could feel it cutting into them as I tried to keep it hidden, but I ignored it. "How about a change of pace?" he suddenly asked me, tangling his fingers in my hair. I was forced up off of the table again, to stand up straight. "We could see how you react before your therapy treatment, rather than after."
His hand wrapped around my neck then, and he squeezed gently. He turned me to face him, and undid several of the buttons on the orange 'Arkham' top. I suddenly had an incredible urge to use the blade in my hand, and not on myself. I hated him. I wanted him to suffer, fear me like he had made me fear him. I wanted him to die. I wanted to feel his blood run all over my fingers, rather than my own. So I let him continue, just until the buttons were undone and he was distracted by my destroyed figure.
And then I plunged it into his chest.
Initially, I thought it would have felt horrible to ever harm someone else. But after months of torture, after everything he had done to me, there was a release that I experienced. It was better than any feeling I had had inside the asylum, a feeling of true elation that pulsed through me as I did it again, in a separate spot. Blood began to pour, and he began to fall to the floor, silent until he did so. And even then, I didn't stop. I did it again, and again, and again. Crimson covered my face, my arms, my exposed torso, and my hair. My breathing became heavier as I controlled any energy that I had into the overkill, until there was nothing but the color of blood in his originally white lab coat.
The last time I did it, I stuck the scalpel in the original wound, so that it stuck still and protruded from his chest. After that, I rested against the wall. That was when the guards finally came in. They looked down at the scene I had created, seeing the floor painted with blood, the wide, shocked eyes that underestimated how much power I had left. I licked my dry lips as they looked back at me again; doing the only thing I could after committing my first murder.
I laughed.
It was hot; the middle of summer was dragging into the apartment he sat inside. Joker twirled a knife in between his fingertips as he sat in front of a blaring television. He was tired, for once, unwilling to execute some plan that the police would never be able to follow. Earlier in the morning, he had already decided to save it for another day. Today, he was alone, and was allowing his mind to wander. To his left, there was an empty room that was unfinished. For a moment, he imagined the girl sitting there, chained to the leg of a table that had been drilled into the cement. And then the image switched to when she was in front of him on the bus from Gotham General Hospital. He could practically feel the fabric of the nurse's outfit between his fingers. The Joker could vaguely remember what her skin felt like as his hands suddenly curved to fit the shape of her legs, and he lifted her up to kiss her full lips while she wrapped herself around him. That was all he recalled before he switched to when she was shot. Her body was suddenly lying on the floor, facing away from him, with blood pouring out into a puddle. The only death the Joker had witnessed that he did not cause himself.
"…murder committed at the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum just south of Gotham." He heard the woman's voice on the television and realized he was sick of hearing it. The Joker reached for the gun that sat on the couch next to him. Picking it up between his bare fingers, he aimed it right at the virtual woman's forehead, just as she continued again. "Rosaline Carter Jacoby, heir to Gotham's second-largest inheritance next to Bruce Wayne, has been charged with a count of first-degree murder."
He put down the gun immediately. He knew that name, repeated it in his head all the time, trying to remember why it was he had kept killing anyone and everyone that stood in his way. Because they had all turned against her, an innocent woman, and they deserved whatever he gave them. But not Rose. Not Princess.
"Further investigation now leads the Gotham Police Department to think that it was in self-defense," the woman continued. The Joker watched her intently, his eyes narrowing. "Finding several pieces of evidence that conclude that Ms. Jacoby was continuously raped and issued Electroshock Therapy treatments on false accounts of insanity claims. Her condition also concludes that she was severely malnourished and without proper hygiene. Ms. Jacoby continues to serve her sentence at Arkham Asylum, now under close watch by the GPD."
A blast sounded throughout the apartment. The television suddenly sparked as a bullet penetrated the screen. Shards of glass flew out onto the floor, and the Joker didn't even flinch as he stood up, tucking the gun back into a holster attached to his belt. It was hot, but he still grabbed the plum purple jacket that rested on the table and an old cell phone that sat next to it. He dialed several numbers before actually getting to the first floor of the apartment complex, saying the same thing to each person that picked up. "Bring who and what you can. We're taking a little trip to Arkham." He had been coming up with a plan for months on how to take control of the ultimate haven of villains that had ever terrorized, in honor of Rose. But now that she was alive, he had forgotten completely about using the other criminals there. He had one intention, and one only.
After a few more weeks, I was starting to feel a bit more like myself. At first, I was submitted to many psychological and physical tests within Arkham's medical facility. The doctors there put me on a strict diet in order to bring up my health, and I was escorted to and from every room by two armed police officers. I was still handcuffed, but not nearly as bad as I had been before. I received a physical therapy plan and was allowed to bathe semi-regularly, at least. However, after all the doctor visits, I spent most of my days asleep. There were no more electric shocks while unconscious, no more visits in the middle of the night, and I felt as secure as was possible in a place like Arkham. However, I was still suffering inside. I didn't like the fact that my ever move was monitored. The food I was given barely was enough to satisfy me. I still felt cold and hungry all the time. Because I spent so much of the days sleeping, I could never get the rest I needed at night. So dark circles followed the sunken look of my eyes. I looked much older than I was whenever I looked in a mirror. It came to the point where I was so disgusted with how I looked that I smashed the glass with my bare hands. After I was subdued yet again by the guards, I was given a prescription for medication that was supposed to keep me calm during the day and allow me to sleep at night. A special formula was also given to me to use on my face to fix the problems that had appeared over the length of my stay there.
Several times, I wondered why I wasn't just transferred to a normal hospital. The response was always the same. "You killed someone."
"If you knew the things that were being done to me, you would have killed him too," was what I always argued back. And I was right. They would have. Anyone would have. Batman would have. The Joker would have. Often, I thought about and dreamt of the face that used to haunt me. Now I wanted to see it again. Despite how insane everyone thought he was, he had a rational answer for everything. And I had so many things on my mind that needed rationalizing. Did killing a rapist who was slowly murdering me make me a murderer?
It was a question that had again come through my mind as I was trying to sleep one night. I had already taken the medication that had been issued to me, but I was still finding it difficult to relax. It was hot inside my room, and that bothered me. I spent what felt like an hour tossing and turning in the heat before I finally gave up and lay on my back, waiting for sleep to come.
But then, just as I could feel my eyes closing on their own, an alarm began to sound outside the door. A blinking red light shined through it, and the intercom voice began to repeat the words 'security breach on level A'. I had no idea what that meant, except that something was going on within the asylum. Maybe one of the patients had escaped? I didn't know, and the guards that had been assigned to me had locked the door with the security lock before leaving their posts. So I wouldn't be able to figure it out. I was slightly worried. What if it was someone who was after me? Even though it was highly unlikely, there were still a lot of villains I had helped lock in here. If they caught word that I was somewhere in Arkham, who knew what would happen?
I was helpless inside a locked cell, and I could feel the medication finally starting to kick in. In the darkness, I couldn't see where I was going as I tried to head back to my bed. But my dizziness had me walking in circles, and I was on the floor before I knew what was happening. My head snapped up again as I heard gunshots in the distance, followed by what sounded like hurried footsteps. After that, the sound of the door to my cell unlocking. I could feel my heart rate beginning to speed up, and I tried to stand again, not knowing if there was a guard or someone else at the door. Again, the room began to spin. I didn't know which direction was where, until I saw the red light from outside. Even then, it was still dim, and I couldn't make my way around the room very well. I thought about trying to grab a weapon, but there was nothing that would suffice. I heard the door open and began to panic; finally letting my body hit the floor again. I backed up along the ground until my back touched the wall. "Who's there?" I cried, unable to see anything but a silhouette through the doorway.
The main switch to control the lights inside the cell was suddenly hit. The fluorescent bulbs turned on then, and I hissed and shut my eyes immediately. They had not been turned on that day, since I had not spent the day in my cell. For hours, I had been left in the darkness trying to sleep. And now I was facing them full on, without any warning. When I opened my eyes again, the room was extremely blurry for several seconds. Though the silhouette finally became clear.
I felt my heart skip a beat. My lips parted in a gasp, and I felt like backing up even further into the wall, though I did not know why. It was just a natural reaction. I suddenly felt dizzy again, though not from the medication. This was a whole new feeling, one that was quickly made worse as strong arms pulled me up off of the ground. I was pulled toward him, with his arm snaked around my waist. My hands fell onto his shoulders as I looked into the white face and red lips. My fingertips just barely touched the scars that formed a smile along his face. I felt the greasy, green hair and looked into the eyes that held the same shade in them, which were outlined in black.
"Hello, Princess," greeted the Joker, and he pressed his red lips hard against my own.
