"Evil is exciting and evil is interesting, and plenty of people have a fascination for it."
- Thomas Foran
| The Joker |
"Running out of time here, Doc," he warned the nervous Gotham General surgeon, who was busy tending to the scars. It had been a month. The sutures had been sewn and dissolved to form a swollen, pink track that extended her lips.
That night had been quite a blur, an irrational blur that would never have happened had it not been for Rose. It was always Rose. That night, when the doctor had been brought to the van, only to say that he couldn't do anything without the proper tools of a surgical ward, Joker nearly lost it, taking an entire hospital hostage within a couple of minutes. The deal was that as long as things went on normally and the police were not given any hints while Rose was being taken care of, nobody would get shot.
It started out smoothly. Rose was placed under a medical coma while the sides of her lips were sewn shut and bandaged. While she stayed there, the Joker would be in and out of the hospital, using several disguises. The room was shut off in a quieter part of the building, where no one normally would have gone had there not been a patient staying there. At least two men were always on guard outside of the room, with strict orders to not go near Rose and also not look suspicious. So they would be dressed in street clothes and would often be sitting on a bench next to the door. The only ones allowed in the room were the Joker and the doctors.
It was a good deal, until someone let the cat out of the bag.
"I-I can't control when she wakes up," stuttered the doctor after just finishing with a medicine for the scars. The bandages had been removed for the last time, and the sutures had finally dissolved.
Joker pointed the gun closer to the man's chin. "Then you better help us get her out of here."
The Gotham City Police Department was now focused entirely on surrounding the hospital in order to capture the Joker and Rose. Apparently, someone had let slip of the fact that the two of them were there. An anonymous tip to the GCPD had sent them and the SWAT team flying toward the medical building. The Joker had a plan-B in case this occurred, but it was only a matter of time before that route closed up. The only thing holding him back now was the fact that Rose was still far away in her sleep.
"It's not safe to take her off of these machines yet!" the surgeon argued as Joker began ripping cords from Rose's body. Though he didn't dare interfere. He still had a pistol to his face.
"See, Doc, here's the thing," Joker paused, walking over to kick the door of the room open to usher the two men he had with him into the room. "I don't really care." He turned to one of the men, who swiftly picked up Rose into his arms. "Time to go!"
He led the way out of the room, leaving the surgeon behind, to follow the preplanned exit path. After going down the rest of the hallway, he took a right and headed out of a gray door that held an emergency staircase behind it. The stairs led to each floor, but also to below the hospital to a garage that went uphill to emerge behind the building. Staff clearance was normally needed to use it for parking, but no one felt the need to question a war-painted madman with a gun when he wanted to go in and out. This time, the security guard wasn't even standing at the exit gate when the Joker's van drove through it. Just as the van drove off, police cars began to swarm around the garage entrance, coming from all around the building. The discrete getaway suddenly reminded the Joker of the bank robbery, where he had first laid eyes on Rose.
Brown, sleek hair that curled and frizzed from being shaken from a tight bun made its way into his mind. A black dress shirt formed below it, followed by a skirt, tights, and heels. Then there was a tan complexion and a made-up face that still remained a blur to him. Looking at her now, with black hair and lighter skin, she almost seemed incomplete without the scars. Now it was perfect. Now she was always smiling.
Over the past month, the Joker had moved his hideout to yet another different building. This one was still in the city, but was further away from the center of it than the last. Again, he found that a hiding place other people already inhabited made for a great opportunity to avoid the police and the Bat. Once there, he quietly had Rose brought to the apartment and put in the bedroom. There, he sat, and waited in the corner of the room for her to wake up.
| Rose |
How long had it been? Where was I? Was everything a dream, a horrible nightmare? There was no sunlight shining through my eyelids. It was just dark. Everything was black, even when I actually opened my eyes. They had to adjust to the dim light of what appeared to be a bedroom. My bedroom? Wait. No. Not my bedroom; a completely different bedroom. What was going on? Jack. Where was Jack? Where was the Joker?
He turned the light on when I sat up. The two of us just looked at each other for a moment, at first. Seeing him standing there, I could tell that something was wrong. He looked different; he looked at me differently.
That was when I noticed the mirror behind him, standing tall above the dresser in front of me. The face that stared back at me was a fair-skinned woman with sleek black hair. As I got up and went closer, I could see the red in her eyes: wide and bloodshot. She looked as shocked to see me as I was to see her. But the worst part was the scars. They were fresh, puffy, pink tracks that carved her smile into a crescent moon shape. I lifted my fingers to my lips and felt the same scars she possessed: my lips, my face, my scars. The pain I had felt when I received them suddenly returned. My own screams echoed in my ears, and I could recall the taste of my own blood, flowing into the back of my throat.
"You want to know how you got those scars?" I turned to the clown who stood next to me, twirling a knife through his fingers. He looked at me too, and he nodded when I didn't respond. "You got into a losing battle, Princess. You got sliced up. That's all."
My voice cracked when I spoke as I turned away from the mirror. I didn't want to see the psychopath staring back at me. "And then what? Tell me what happened next."
He held his arms splayed out and gave me a proud grin. "Put two bullets in the bitch's head and got you stitched up."
"Why?"
The grin faded, and his arms fell. I knew he had not wanted me to ask. He opened his mouth and simply retorted with, "Not sure."
I could feel my body start to quiver, and I wondered if this was what the Joker truly felt whenever he looked in the mirror. I wondered if he hated himself so much that he wanted to see it reflected on anyone else, just to get the relief. I felt like a drug addict who needed a fix. I wanted, needed, to see someone else suffer for once. I wanted to watch them writhe in the center of a ring of flames that steadily closed in, just to ignore my own pain. I wanted to get high off of the scent of somebody else's blood to avoid the withdrawal I experienced when imagining my own. I needed some release, some fix.
"Hit me," I burst out, turning toward Jack. His dark expression had not changed, but I could see his hesitation. Unwilling to be patient, I grabbed the knife from his hand and shoved the blade into the wood of the dresser. "Hit me," I repeated, louder. Again he did nothing, and I could feel my anger increasing, my withdrawal getting worse. I whirled around, aiming for his jaw with a wild swing of a punch. If he wouldn't hit me, then I would hit him. But he caught my arm in mid-air. He was stronger than me, and he forced my hand down, gripping my wrist so hard that I cringed. "Come on!" I shouted, gritting my teeth.
"Why?" he inquired. His expression turned from stone cold to sudden amusement. "You like being treated like an animal that much?" I tried to wrench my arm free, but he only twisted it tighter until I was brought to my knees with pain. "You think you'll get a release, don't you? You're upset because you look like me now, because you look like a freak, and you think getting treated like one will keep you sane."
He laughed as he pulled me to him, letting go of my arm and snaking his own around my waist. His free hand came up to my neck so fast that I didn't have a chance to stop it. His fingers pressed against my skin, and I could feel the ability to breathe slipping away. The Joker turned me around and shoved me head first into the plaster wall. "You want to be treated like a freak?" His voice grew into a menacing growl, and I fought to see him through the dark spots that clouded my vision from the blow to my forehead. "You got it, Princess!"
I lost my balance trying to stand, and he grabbed me again, this time by my left shoulder, and pulled. His fingers clenched and clawed at me until he had a grip on my shirt. Reaching for the knife from the dresser, he used it to tear the white top when he threw me once more. I fell to the floor with the pieces of fabric landing beside me. When I sat up again, he did hit me. The saliva flew from my lips as the back of his palm crossed my cheek. He used the knife to cut away the rest of my clothes, threatening that the blade slice every inch of me. I fought him through all of it, until one of his blows to my face nearly knocked me straight into unconsciousness. The streams of black came from the corners of my eyes, and my head rushed with dizziness. I swayed in place, and he picked up my naked body and held me bent over the dresser by my hair, placing the knife at my throat so I would no longer resist.
My nails dug into the wood when I finally felt a sort of relief. Spit and blood dripped from my lips onto the dresser while we had sex. The Joker shouted at me: insults and curses and disgusting fascinations with my body. He told me I drove him crazy, that he had imagined both killing and fucking me over a thousand times, just to hear the different ways I would scream for him.
The high I got was incredible.
I responded to his questions. Yes, I love it. Yes, fuck me harder. No, I haven't had enough. More, Jack; please, more! I took his insults and perverted comments with moaned responses. And when he took the knife from my throat, I let him pull my head up by my hair so he could see my face in the mirror.
By the time he was finished, my eyes were watering, and I was muttering incoherent words. The orgasm was better than witnessing my victim engulfed in flames or with blood pooling around them. I felt relief, a better pleasure than I had ever felt before. I was left alone in this ecstasy too, trying to breathe normally and avoid passing out onto the floor. I stared at my reflection in the mirror long after the Joker left, marveling in this release. And then I smiled as it replayed over and over in my mind. The scars spread and turned the grin into an eerie sneer. I realized that I didn't mind. I didn't care about what the city of Gotham and the Batman and Harvey and Amy had done to me.
But I wanted them all dead anyway.
| The Joker |
He continued to watch her after he had left the room. She didn't know it, but he observed while she stared in the mirror for close to an hour. He scoped her entire body up and down. Why couldn't he just kill her? At this point, he would have probably been doing her a favor. She wanted to die, and he knew it. On good days, she would pretend that she had been turned into something brilliant. But the Joker knew better. He debated tossing the knife straight into her back as she finally crawled into the bed. One jerk of his arm, and his one big distraction would disappear. He could have her body dumped at the top of the GCPD building, right in the middle of the spotlight that signaled to the Bat. That way, the cops themselves would find her. It would be a message to Gotham that good ol' Joker was still around, and he wasn't afraid to kill whomever he wanted.
He had raised his hand, his fingers itching to let the blade sink into her skin. He imagined it ripping through her spine as blood poured from the wound and through her scarred lips. Her eyes would be wide, shocked that he would do such a thing to her. They were always shocked. Why? That's what they would all ask, in between the screams to stop. But not Rose. She took the beatings. She liked them, even taking rape with gladness and satisfaction. And that was why he could not kill her. For once, the Joker thought that he had found someone crazier than him. Rose was his princess, his project, his proof that the best, most sane, generous, inside-and-out-beautiful person could turn into a freak. And what a freak she was: a lustful, dangerous, bloodthirsty, vengeful freak. He loved it, so much so that it made him put the knife down and continue to watch her. When she was asleep, he fully entered the room, beginning to toy with an idea in his mind. He decided he was going to bring Rose out into the open, but as a test. If she passed, she would get to go out again, and he would continue to keep her around. If she failed, then the cops would gun her down, and he would move on without her.
The Joker dialed a number on the disposable cell he only used for important calls. Rose was going to need some clothes, and they needed to be some that he didn't want to just tear off of her at any given moment. And they had to match his own. After all, he wasn't going to let her get all the credit. They were going to be working together, and he was going to make sure that Gotham knew it.
When he hung up the phone, he went over to the bed where she lay. His fingertips grazed the bare skin of her calf, all the way up to her hip. He could feel the bumps rise as her flesh must have tingled. "Back so soon?" her voice croaked groggily in the dark. She didn't move or refuse his touch.
"Think I'd just leave you like a buffet platter with my boys around?" He lied. They were alone, but she didn't know that. She didn't answer him. "I've got a job for you, Princess," he offered, continuing to touch her sin wherever he could. "I'll be proud if you do it right, but you have to promise to share the spotlight with me this time."
In the darkness, he saw her silhouette sit up. Her hands reached out to him and draped around his shoulders. "What is it?" she breathed, purposely pressing her bare body against his covered chest.
"A simple robbery," he chuckled. "Well, not entirely. You're just taking your own little fortune from the bank's greedy clutches." As he explained, the Joker couldn't help but press his hand against her lower back, pushing her closer to him. He held back a groan as their waists touched.
"Why?" she finally wondered, toying with the buttons on his shirt.
He smirked. "You know how much cash it will take to empty all your funds out of that bank? Ha!" He felt her jump against him as he let out a harsh laugh, using his free hand to take a fistful of her thick, black hair. He pressed her forehead against his own. "I want to see how you do out there, Princess. If you fail, you die, and I move on without you. I'd be quite disappointed. You wouldn't to disappoint me, would you?"
She shook her head slightly. "I won't disappoint you, J."
The nickname caught him by surprise, and the Joker shoved her back because of it, away from him. "Good." He heard her body hit the mattress, and he began to undress when she moved toward the edge of it once more. He sat down on the opposite side of the bed with his knife in his hands, toying with it a little before finally laying down. He reached over Rose's body, hooking his arm around her waist and pulling her to him. Throughout the night, he kept touching her. It was almost as good as cutting her, sensing the jerks and tingles and other ways her body reacted to his fingers. She never rejected him, even when awoken by his fingers inside of her. She would simply enjoy it and fall back asleep.
Killing was fun, but so was sex. And while Rose was good for both, she could be used so much more for one than the other. "It will be a shame if you fail."