Arkham was a neat, tidy place, recently refurbished. My clothes were replaced with a light blue jump suit. People in their rooms stared at me as I walked by. Rex and I were separated, of course, couldn't have the crazy siblings together in the nuthouse. I was given a physical by a Doctor Gretchen Whistler. She was an older woman who was very kind, even though I was giving her all the death stares I could. Her hair was grey, but might have been black at one point. She tried to make me feel comfortable.
I felt uncomfortable being naked in front of her. It was unnecessary. I didn't need a physical. They could have gotten all my medical records from the hospital.
"So, where did you go to school?" She asked me while scribbling down my weight. Huh, 115. I had dropped about ten points in a few weeks. Probably bad, considering I was tall.
I didn't answer her. I simply continued to stare at her.
"You may put your clothes back on." She said after waiting for almost two minutes, I counted.
"Is Scarecrow here?" I demanded.
"I don't know." She replied honestly. "If he is, he is with another doctor."
"Who is Rex's doctor?" I asked.
"I don't know. Arkham is a big place." She answered again.
I didn't say anything more, I just pulled my clothes on.
I began to get into a routine at Arkham. Every day I had breakfast, then a therapy session with Dr. Whistler. I was after Victor Zsasz and before Roman Sionis. Neither were characters I wanted to have any kind of conversation with. The Doctor was a brave woman. All the sessions were taped, of course.
After my therapy session I went to lunch in the nuthouse café, where I would be fed something like jail food. It was better than high school cafeteria food, anyway. I would sit in a corner by myself. It was the only time out of the day when the nuts were allowed to socialize.
When lunch ended, we were taken back to our rooms. Our prisons.
Then I sat there until the next meal. After that, I slept.
It was prison. Prison for freaks. Robin was right, it was all political. We weren't being kept there because we were mentally ill, although some of the prisoners were. We were kept at Arkham because where the fuck else were they gonna put us? These people couldn't be kept at a normal jail.
Dinner was probably the most entertaining part of the day. All the crazies in one place. Congregating. Talking. All the doctors were on hand. They were trying out new policies or something. All the guards were there too. Well, I guess not all of them because there had to be some elsewhere, but it seemed like there was a shit ton of them all in the cafeteria. They never ate with us, of course.
Today, a guy with white hair and an eyepatch sat across from me. I ignored him and continued to watch Rex talk at Solomon Grundy. They seemed to be close friends, or maybe that was just my humanity deceiving me again. People weren't really friends. There was family, then there was everyone else.
"You don't act like them." The man said.
"Like who?" I asked, already bored with the conversation.
"The rest of them. You act sane. Which means you are here because you are dangerous." He smiled yellowed teeth at me.
"Lift up that patch?" I stared at it curiously.
He obliged. His right eye was totally destroyed. Only scar tissue remained.
"Huh. Neat. How'd you get that?" I asked.
"My wife." He grinned.
"Nifty." I yawned.
"So why are you in here?"
We were approached by a large, green and purple hulking thing.
"Where is she?" Killer Croc weakly demanded. He was bandaged from head to claw, and I was surprised he could walk.
"Who, me?" I pointed at myself.
"No, Mary!" He shook his head and then winced.
"I dunno." I shrugged. "Haven't seen her. Maybe she's dead?"
He screamed and slammed his fists down on the table, effectively breaking it in half. My food slid down the table to the floor.
"Nice going." I muttered.
The eyepatch guy was calmly eating his soup.
"You want me to hurt you again?" I asked Killer Croc, standing up. "Because I will. There was a cookie on that plate and it just dropped onto the floor."
Killer Croc didn't move, didn't say anything. Then he handed me a cookie from someone else's plate and walked away.
"Hey!" Zsasz complained.
I threw the cookie at his head. He complained about that too, until I gave him a glower so fierce I saw gooseflesh raise up on his arm.
"You did that to Croc?" The man laughed.
"Mm." I began picking my plate and the spilled food up off the floor. Rude. He didn't even offer to help clean up the mess he made.
"Where can I get teeth like that?"
"If you wanna lose your other eye, keep talking." I threatened.
"Relax, kid."
I took the plate to the garbage can and dumped it. I apologized to the guard standing there for the broken table and the mess. He looked like his eyes were going to bug out of his sockets.
I smirked. People were so simple. So easy to scare. Probably easier to break.