© Ellie Goodson 2016

Chapter Twenty Eight-Story time

~Arabella Jones~

"Me and my sister, we never really got along. As we aged, it got worse. By the time that I was thirteen, I was planning how to kill the little bitch in the most gruesome and painful ways. She made my life hell; she turned everyone against me and still managed to deceive the idiots by acting like an angel. I hated her, I still do hate her, even thinking of her makes me just want to kill someone." I swallowed the anger out of my voice, flexing my clenched fists.

"The relationship I had with my mother weakened as she saw the darkness within me take over who I used to be, used to fake being anyway. In the end, I just stopped caring. I just stopped feeling like she was a mother; I got so sick of her letting my sister and brother get away with everything, that I trained my mind into believing that my mother and father were dead. That I'd been adopted into this hell hole of a so called family.

"My brother was abusive to me; my father was abusive to my mother, karma all comes back around in the end. I'm just still waiting. As soon as I could, I left home and moved far away, you see I don't originate from Gotham. I moved into Gotham and started more education so that I could qualify as a psychiatrist. Once I qualified, I met with Doctor Black, got a job and started.

"I'd always been intrigued by...different people. I liked to see how all manner of insanity differentiated from one another. I'd discovered sad insanity, the insanity of grieving. I discovered insanity of anger, which you got from containing your temper too much. Humoured insanity, the need to have fun and laugh insanely. And many others.

"The more I discovered the more fascinated I got. The more I craved to know. So I wasn't walking into Arkham with the sanest mind anyway, but I was determined. And I would've stayed determined, if you hadn't have taken me. I'm glad you did though, Jack. Otherwise I'd still be trapped in my mind."

"I suffer from fear. I've never quite been able to explain it; I just get really scared really easily. I get panic attacks, and they can leave me completely paralysed, mentally. As I've aged, they've occurred less often and I've gained control. However, when I was ten, I had this really bad nightmare.

"At the time, I still used to fear the monster under my bed and I was so scared of getting a disease like cancer or Alzheimer's or MND. I had this nightmare, of the monster under my bed coming out to kill me. It kept shape shifting, first it'd be this killer clown that I still remember vividly, and then it shift into being this massive scarecrow with fangs and blood that dripped from its empty eyes. No matter how many times it stabbed me or bit me or clawed my eyes out, I remained alive. I was bleeding heavily, and I was in agony, but I just wouldn't die.

"I woke up eventually, and had one of the worst panic attacks in my life. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't see through the tears, I couldn't feel my body and I couldn't stop crying and screaming. No matter what my mother tried to do to shut me up, I couldn't stop panicking. I got taken to hospital in the end; I passed out from lack of oxygen.

"But even that left me with fear instilled into my bones, and that nightmare still haunts me now. Treating Scarecrow at Arkham made me scared, and I'm so glad that I only had to treat him once."

"I don't know much about my father. He left when I was two and promised to return when I was eighteen, by then I had moved out so I didn't see him. He was a horribly abusive man. He tried to kill my brother by drowning him. He tried to strangle my mother. He pushed her down the stairs. I'm surprised she even managed to bring me out alive. I hated her for staying with him so long, for letting me happen, for not being strong enough. Because now I'm part of a monster, some abusive creature has a genetic hold over me. I promised myself that I'd kill him one day. I still hold that promise."

"School wasn't the nicest place for me. I got horrifically bullied for being different. It started when I was six, and continued until I left school all together. The bullying varied, but one thing was certain. I didn't have friends, I always scared them away and then they'd join the bullies. I got paper balls thrown at me, telling me to do the world a favour and kill myself. Telling me that I was a good for nothing freak who wasn't supposed to exist.

"At this point at school, I wasn't even that crazy. I had a different look on life, different aspirations. It wasn't like I was going to hide it; really I should've and saved myself from the bullying. They had a death wish, you know. To mess with me and hurt me, God I was going to kill them all.

"And then I moved to Gotham. I promised myself a fresh start. A fresh start from all the bullies and the family, a new me. But I never forget. I still remember the names and faces of every bully. I never forget."

"I used to have this killer obsession with wings. All I ever wanted when I was younger was to sprout some wings and fly away. I always pictured them as being grand, white feathered wings that could lift me above the clouds. I knew that if I ever did grow wings, the first thing I'd do is fly away.

"The first thing I'd do is get out of the country and go to another one, one like Italy or Spain or Malta, some gorgeous place with hot weather. I even believed it at one point, that I could defy science and actually grow wings.

"I started to devise plans, to use science and force evolution on myself. I knew that there was a higher chance that I'd grow gills and fins and not wings on my body if I did manage to force evolution, but I didn't care. I could still run away through the water.

"When things get hard, I still wish for that. But it's no longer an obsession, just a distant dream."

"People think I'm crazy. But I'm not. We're not. We're different, we're unique. We have different visions; we see things in different ways. Society today doesn't like different, which is exactly why they lock us up or kill us. They're scared of us.

"It's why people force the idea that we're bad into their children's mind, to keep their child locked away in the cage of insanity. They're all trapped. Every one of them. We're free, but because they're trapped, they can't see it. It took a lot to get broken out of the cage in my mind, but I'm never going back.

"I don't need to go back there anymore. I have you, Jack. Why would I need the trap called sanity when I have you?"