Hey guys!
This is the sequel to my first Joker/OC story, You Can't Spell Slaughter Without Laughter. If you haven't read that, definitely don't expect to understand any of this. If you have read it, yay! Welcome back. I missed you.
Wow it's been a really long time. Sorry to keep you waiting. I'd like to say that I have more than just this first chapter written, but that would be a lie. I just had to get it up, now that my creative juices seem to finally be flowing again. Reviews would probably help speed it along… : )
I'm not going to lie: This is gonna be darker that YCS. A lot darker. It's rated M for language, drug use, sexual situations, adulty-type angsty things, and hopefully quite a bit of blood.
If you need a YCS refresher, just remember that Jess has been transported back to our universe after being utterly altered by her time with the Joker. She's deeply obsessed, deeply in love, and also happens to believe her clown is dead. The only others of the Twenty to escape Gotham with her were Jackson, Billy, Keith and Seth. The rest are still in Gotham. And that's pretty much it.
Thanks for reading! Enjoy Caligula in Red.
The dress was still there, hanging in the closet. Deep red cloth clung feebly to the wire hanger on the bare wooden rack, stained with red even deeper. It looked sad. Tired. Holes gaped at the shoulder, where she'd never bothered to fix it, and at the hemline, where she'd never had the chance to. The long sleeves were stained with grime, pocked by gravel. It smelled faintly of gasoline and strongly of smoke. And it was still there.
It hadn't moved - hadn't disappeared or altered in any way. She'd expected it to. Really, she had. But there it hung at the back of the tiny closet, marred by its experiences, by the knives and the guns and the blood. Absolute.
If it had been gone, Jess would have known it was a dream. It might have been a relief, she thought, to understand finally that none of it was real. She might have embraced insanity. It seemed easier. But there it was, a tangible reminder, whispering I'm here. I'm just as real as you. It was a product of that place—it had been created there, its elements were the elements of another universe. Yet it was here in this one.
There were no universal paradoxes created by their re-entry into their home-world, or by the dress's presence. At least not from what Jess had seen. The past two nights spent in a little motel in Chicago had been strikingly average. The plane beyond Gotham was ticking on, unaltered by the disappearance of twenty of its citizens or the return of five of them, a slightly depressing verity.
Their brief stay in that other universe had beget a snowball of change. They had been agents of transformation. They had been transformed. Yet here, it seemed, their impact was miniscule.
Just another in the long chain of reasons that Jess hated to be back.
She hadn't left her hotel room that first day. Bruised bones and aching depression were enough to keep her bedridden, with Keith and Jackson checking in briefly at different points. When, on the second day, her shoulder seemed more swollen than it had previously, and her hip was so stiff she could no longer bend her knee, Keith had insisted she visit the hospital.
Dressed in cheap sweat pants and a t-shirt of Billy's, armed with a wad of bills—was it legal to use currency from another world?—she'd gone to the ER. The nurse's green eyes had gone huge after examining her body.
"You've been walking around like this for a couple of days?"
Now she was patched up, but still feeling terrible. The bruise on her cheekbone had gone a mottled yellow, her ankle was in a splint, and her entire right shoulder was black and blue from the dislocation (and subsequent painful resetting). Not to mention the horrible scar left by the messy stitches which were slowly falling out of her other shoulder. She ached all the time, and she couldn't shake a sensation of deep exhaustion, no matter how much she slept. She was self-medicating too, probably far too often—her favorite was a wonderful cocktail of pot, red wine, and Vicodin, which couldn't have been helping her energy levels.
But it was so much better, so much easier, to drown in the oblivion medication offered. She'd avoided opening the little hotel closet to see her costume for a full seventy- two hours, wanting it to become some kind of shared hallucination between her and the four men.
But the dress was still there. Which meant Gotham had been there, too. Now that fact was inescapable. And Jess just kept asking herself the same question, over and over and over.
So… now what?
She was lost here. What the fuck would she possibly do? Though she couldn't have been in Gotham even half a year—Jess hadn't paid an ounce of attention to the days, but she felt like around three or four months must have passed—this place felt so foreign, so off. She'd abandoned all the drive she had here, all her plans for the future. The Joker had been her future. She'd planned to live fast and die young, and that would've been perfectly fine at his side. But her plan had fallen out from under her, as perhaps she should have expected it to. She was back in an unwanted world that didn't want her, either.
Jess stayed in Chicago for five days after the hospital, most of which she spent alone wallowing in the slow haze of pot and alcohol, topped with the newfound wonder of codeine, which Seth had mysteriously found and gifted to her. She discovered that she had, by some strange warp of time, been absent from her world for seven months. She knew it hadn't been that long in Gotham—at least, Jesus, she hoped not—but she wasn't letting herself think much about it. And she avoided going outside to experience the hostile February weather.
Sometimes, in sudden manic bursts, Jess started trying to convince herself that everything was fine. Telling herself she was home, by God, something she'd wanted so badly at first. There was no danger here, no blood, no bullets or men who wanted her dead. She was safe here!
That should have been so wonderful. Not long ago, it would have been the greatest thing she could imagine.
Problem was, Jess no longer valued safety the way she once had. Safe meant a quiet life. A normal life.
Good Christ.
That was nothing. Nothing she wanted, anyway.
The idea of her world progressing in the way she'd planned before Gotham – attend college, then a master's program in psychology (ironic), get married, have kids, live in a house on a block in a suburb… It was laughable now. She couldn't do it if she tried. Such a life, even a perfect model of it, would always be tainted by the lingering memory of gunshots, booming explosions, and fiery brown eyes.
But she couldn't think of those eyes. Block out that thought. Because thoughts of his eyes led to thoughts of his mouth, his smile, his hands, his smell, and she couldn't deal with that yet. Or ever.
She wished she didn't know she'd never see him again - hope would have been enough to get by. But there was none. She knew the fact of his death with painful certainty. He was dead, and anyway he was gone. A universe away, at least.
He'd ruined this world for her. He'd ruined other men, too. Nothing and no one would ever be enough again. He'd blown everything she'd ever known out of the water. And now he was gone.
She got angry about it, more and more frequently as the days passed. It felt better than that aching sadness. She could hold onto fury and resentment. Often, it was directed at the Joker himself—he'd asked for it, he'd left her—but Jess was also furious with the cruelty of the world, with fate if such a thing existed. And, of course, with the Batman.
The worst thing was, she'd never have a chance at any kind of revenge, or to even make her fury known. Neither the bat nor the clown existed anymore – they could never hear her screams or feel her pain. Her anger was useless and empty, a discarded beer bottle in the gutter. She'd never felt frustration this overwhelming. She'd never felt so totally impotent.
So keep drinking, Jessica. Keep smoking and popping pills and keep sleeping. Because nothing else was ever going to help that.
Jess woke abruptly from a nightmare with her head and shoulders hanging off the bed, sheets twisted ruthlessly around her lower half. Discombobulated, she jerked, upsetting her precarious balance and bumping to the floor. A mostly empty wine bottle next to her tipped and dripped its dark red contents over the comforter, but she really could not have given less of a shit. She laid for a moment on the ground, hand to her forehead, and tried to stop the spins. She was still quite drunk.
Another knock at the door reminded her why she'd woken in such a hurry. Sluggishly rising, too tired to feel anything other than confused and loopy, Jess crossed to the door and opened it. That just seemed like the thing to do.
She was greeted with the sight of an irritable Jackson—one of the Twenty who'd come back from Gotham with her—who's instantly raised eyebrows told her she was not dressed appropriately. She looked down at herself. Apparently she'd fallen asleep in cotton underwear and a black men's blazer (having somehow gotten mixed up in her laundry at the theater), which hid her otherwise naked chest, but perhaps not as modestly as it should have. She tugged the jacket tightly around herself and squinted at Jackson.
"Good morning," he said, tone dripping in irony.
"What time is it?" How difficult it was to talk… Her throat felt acidic.
"Five – pm." Jackson started pushing past her to enter the room, only thinking to say "Can I come in?" once he'd crossed the threshold. Jess shrugged, but he hadn't been waiting for an answer anyway. In his characteristically systematic way, he made a slow, appraising sweep of the room – the disheveled bed, the jar of weed on the chaotic little table, the bottles of pills and alcohol lining the TV cabinet (perhaps the only neat display in the room), the open closet with her filthy red dress within. Clothes piled in the corner, where she'd thrown them after undressing night after night, and fast food and candy wrappers lay balled on the floor around the garbage bin. Jess hadn't allowed the housekeepers to clean since she'd checked in a week ago – the thought of a stranger from this world invading her space made her vaguely angry. She found it hard to be embarrassed about the state of her hotel room. She found it hard to be embarrassed about much anymore – whose business was it if she didn't give a shit?
"So…" Jackson paused, sighed, and took a seat on the edge of her bed. "We have to talk about where you're going." Jess pushed a hand through her hair and groaned.
"Not now, Jackson," she said. "I'm not in the mood."
"You're never in the mood," he replied, a little hardness in his eyes. "I get how tough this has been. It's been tough on all of us. But we can't just stay here. Keith has a kid, Jess – he needs to get back to him."
As it turned out, Jackson had caught her at an opportune time for him. She was too tired and too inebriated to articulate an argument against something she thought probably had a lot of rational merit. She shrugged, wanting to go back to sleep.
"So where are you going?" she asked.
"See, that's what we're trying to figure out. Seth wants to go home – some place in Louisiana – but Billy said the idea of going back to Maine made him want to kill himself. And the thing is, I own this shitty little house in Seattle. So, while you guys are trying to find your own places, you could stay with me. If that sounds good."
Jess hadn't even thought about where she'd be living now that she was back. She couldn't return to her hometown, to her parents and the old high school crowd she'd already outgrown when she'd left for Gotham. And she'd always wanted to live in an apartment in the big city, on her own…
Truthfully, the idea was a little exciting. And money wouldn't be a problem for a very long time…
"Would that really be okay?"
"Sure, Jess," Jackson said with a shrug as he pushed aside the curtain and glanced out the window. "Get packed." He started for the door, patting her on the shoulder as he passed by. "Seth should have cars for us by tomorrow – day after at the latest. I'll be down the hall." The door closed behind him. Jess, a little befuddled by the short conversation, sank back into bed.
As soon as city lights appeared at the end of the bridge, fat drops of rain began to hit the windshield. Jackson snorted and flicked on the wipers, muttering "Classic Seattle" to Billy, who sat in the front seat with him. Both of them were under the impression that Jess, curled up under coats and blankets in the back, was asleep. In actuality, she'd been staring up at the darkness outside the window for the past two hours after having slipped some codeine, not wanting to talk.
"Hey Jess," Billy called in a flippantly soft voice, not enough to wake her, "get your shoes on, buddy, we're home." Jackson chuckled. There was a moment of silence.
"You think we need to be worried about her?" Jackson asked. Billy shifted in his seat, and Jess watched his reflection in the front window as he turned to peer out of it. He took a moment to answer.
"Yeah," he said finally. "But… I'm my number one priority."
"Me too," Jackson agreed. "I guess some things never change." Billy nodded. Neither man spoke again until they reached the house.
Jackson scooted them in and out of sparse traffic, the rain streaked lights a blur against the grey and green of Seattle at midnight. Jess caught sight of the illuminated Space Needle across the water, and a vague memory popped into her mind of a family trip there when she was eight—laughter, the smell of caramel corn and car exhaust, a street performer with long-nosed marionettes. She'd been thinking lately how she'd probably never see her family again, and what bothered her about it was the fact that she couldn't seem to care. Everything was so surreal, somehow—distant reflections, like the distorted lights of the Needle on the black lake. She only really felt when she felt something about the Joker.
Jackson's house was a weathered two-story affair with three tiny bedrooms deep in the heart of a district called Lake City.
"We call it Lake Shitty for a reason," Jackson had said. It felt damp inside, as though the walls were saturated in rainwater. Her room, which Jackson showed her as she swayed and rubbed her sandy eyes, was in the corner of the house on the second floor. It had one tiny window above a double mattress bed, the metal frame of which rattled and squeaked with the slightest movement. Jackson had provided a musty woolen blanket he'd drug from his linen closet. The whole house smelled old, like a tomb. Seven months. Seven months gone.
Despite the damp and the smell, Jess fell asleep as soon as her head hit the lumpy, case-less pillow.
The courtyard is wet and gray today, clouds hanging low over the vast concrete barrier, stretching to the sky. Jess's heels sink into muddy grass as she picks her way carefully towards the firing wall, eyes fixed on the black stains spattering it. It had been clean the first time she'd come here, but she's done more than enough to change that.
There is one other person here, groping desperately at the faultless concrete for an exit – an exit Jess is acutely aware does not exist. She grips the handle of the gun in her holster and watches him, watches him slip and slide in the mud as he systematically searches every inch of that impenetrable wall. Frantic for escape. Perhaps he hasn't caught something; perhaps there is a hidden switch he missed.
He won't find an exit. He never finds an exit.
If Jess knows anything in this place, she knows that there is no escape until one of them is dead. That knowledge is absolute, an ingrained fact, and as the one with the gun, Jess is responsible for the perpetuation of this little drama. It is her duty. The guilt associated with that is dull, a steady yet despondent drawl. There is no way out of this otherwise—she has to do it—but that doesn't make it easy to swallow.
Alex lets out a little moan as he slips again in the mud, his leather jacket completely drenched in brown grime. He isn't always this pathetic in their recreations of her first murder – sometimes he scares her, sometimes he has weapons of his own. But this time he invokes such pity in her, an emotion she tries utterly to suppress. He looks so human, so scared…
Finally, he notices her, and he turns in her direction desperately.
"Hey," he says, his voice shaking. "Hey do you know the way out of here?" Jess nods, her fingers curling around the gun handle, her pointer testing the trigger. It is so easy to raise the weapon, to aim with absolute assurance at his forehead, to watch his face contort into sadness and horror.
"Hey," he says again, desperately throwing up a hand to shield his face from the barrel. It doesn't matter. The bullet rips through fingers and forehead in half a second, sending a spray of blood at her face, sending gray brain matter against the brick wall. Jess's tongue darts out to dab at a scarlet droplet on her lips.
She wakes up with the taste of blood in her mouth.
After three successive tooth-brushing sessions, all the time avoiding eye contact with the mirror, Jess had forced the dream from her mind. It wasn't hard to interpret it, anyway. That dull pit of guilt in her chest seemed bottomless, but the only thing she could do was ignore it. There was no taking back her actions, after all. What was done, was done.
Jess had hoped that, perhaps, the dreams would stop when she came to Seattle. She didn't know why she'd thought that – a change of scenery was supposed to be refreshing, right? But she'd been in his gray-green city for two weeks now, and was still nightmare plagued almost every night. Not all of them were set at the firing wall, but enough of them involved her stabbing or shooting or strangling someone to invoke frustration.
I get it, subconscious. I killed someone.
The stab of pain at those words, which she'd thought would grow duller, still wasn't going away.
He wasn't real, anyway. Not really.
Jess padded downstairs after smoking some weed in her room, leaving her thoughts unfocused and her mood tranquil. She greatly preferred it like that. This had become her ritual over the past thirteen days; she hadn't really been sober since arriving at the house in Lake City. This place had become quite comfortable—small and damp, but comfortable. It was a haven, one she rarely left, save to run out for food and liquor, having just gotten a fake ID (a remarkably easy feat if one has the right connections).
Billy, sitting at the small round kitchen table, looked up from the pile of bills he was counting. He had a large Tupperware container open at his left elbow, too, spilling pills and piles of coke. Apparently Jackson had already had a number of "clients" in Seattle when he'd left, who bought his seemingly endless supply of pills and powders and plants and guns. According to him, he was "just a little outlet for the big guys," who he visited weekly to pick up stock. He never allowed Billy or Jess to accompany him.
Now that a number of Jackson's old regulars had caught on to his reappearance, people were dropping by the house pretty regularly, all of them dopey eyed and relieved by his return. Some were their own stereotypes—true crack-heads and upper-addicts, with missing teeth and needle wounds (Jackson didn't sell heroin however—didn't believe in it, or PCP or meth). But, from what Jess had seen, most seemed like pretty regular people.
There was a group of four frat boys, for instance, who dropped by weekly for weed and Adderall. A gorgeous blue-eyed businessman came over nearly every other day to pick up his eight-balls of coke. Two hipster-type college kids kept popping in for their newfound favorite—the white pill from Gotham, of which there was a decidedly limited supply—what they called "Molly to the max." (Jackson, not wanting to explain the drug's origin, had told them it was a rare form of MDMA. He called the pills White Poppers). A heavy set biologist and father of four had come in just the other day to buy three guns. While waiting for Jackson to retrieve them, he sat on the couch with Jess and held what turned out to be quite an interesting conversation about seahorses.
All walks of life wander through the drug dealer's abode. Jackson liked calling it his "public service." Billy liked calling Jackson a "piece of shit dealer" but it was said with a smile, as he happily counted bills and wrote down the numbers. Jess didn't take much part in the dealing, except for the fact that she was always around to do the drugs with whoever decided to sink into that worn old couch in the living room. She did, however, clean and cook, which all of them liked to call her "woman duties."
Some kind of balance was being restored, in this hazy humble house, the likes of which she hadn't known since leaving the theater. She found herself, if not content, at least satisfied with the pot and the wine and the cigarettes and the interesting people trickling in. As long as she staved off thoughts of the Joker and her dreams. But, of course, she still cried at night.
No clients were here at the moment, so she sank into the kitchen chair across from Billy, careless of her ragged sweats and ripped t-shirt. He glanced up at her with a little smile. The strain in his eyes was still evident, but the tension between them had subdued with her weed-suppressed mood. He didn't adore her as he once had, but at least he no longer hated her.
"When's our first customer?" she asked him, running a hand through her disheveled hair and yawning. He shrugged, setting aside a stack of money and jotting down the four digit number. He then began loading everything into a small duffel bag at his feet, which would be placed in a safe in Jackson's bedroom. The door to this room was then locked. The key Jackson wore around his neck, like he was Xaro Xhoan Daxos or something. No one was fucking around here. Serious work, serious crime. It felt normal. It felt better.
"Not before noon, I assume," Billy said. "I think Hipster One and Hipster Two wanted to come get a sack."
"Weed?" Jess said. "I thought they liked the uppers."
"Jack's already cut them off from the Poppers," he replied. "They're trying real hard to blow through our supply. He thinks they're, like, hoarding them. I mean, who rages every night?"
"It's hell dealing drugs, isn't it?" Jess asked with a smile, leaning on the table only to let out a yelp of pain as her shoulder twisted in a weird way. Billy, concernedly chewing the corner of his cheek, eyed her as her stood to put the drugs and cash away.
"How's your… body?"
"Slammin'," Jess replied ironically. "Absolutely rockin'. I mean, shit, have you seen these curves?" She arched her back to show off her breasts, at which Billy scoffed and looked away.
"You know what I mean."
"I know. I'm fine. A twinge here, an ache there. Better by the day."
"Good-"
"Hey, fuckers!" This was how Jackson liked to greet them now. Away from Gotham, back in his element, Jess was privy to parts of his personality she hadn't known before. It was probably sheer relief to be home. He wasn't always so tense anymore, not so serious or quiet. He didn't always wear black pants and a leather jacket. Today he was simply dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, out of which he withdrew two large Ziploc bags—one filled with green, one with white.
"All stocked up for the night," Jackson said, also pulling a bottle of rum from the paper bag at his elbow. Jess furrowed her eyebrows.
"Are you planning a rager?" she asked. He grinned, a little sheepish.
"Not exactly," he said. He came forward and placed the drugs and alcohol next to Jess, then reached back into the paper bag he still held. From it, he withdrew a black and blue DVD case. He placed it flat on the table.
"I think it's time. I think we need this."
Jess felt a horrible shudder rush though her as she stared at the title of the movie, at the explosive cover art – the bike, the fire, the figure in black…
"The Dark Knight," Billy said. In the ensuing silence, Jess felt bizarrely as though she was going to vomit and laugh hysterically at the same time. Just looking at the cover filled her with terrible anxiety, but also gnawing curiosity. She sat back in her chair, ghostly white.
"I forgot that existed," was all she came up with in response. She had. Jesus. Of course it existed.
She felt cold around the neck and shoulders, almost nauseous, and a weird pressure was building between her temples. Her world felt once more as though it had been flipped on its head—in her gut was a writhing mass of confusion, heartache, fear and horror. What was on that disc? Would it show her things she shouldn't see? Would it steady her hold on this reality or simply drive her insane? How would she feel, watching a world that seemed more visceral than this one, reduced to little more than a picture on a screen?
"I wonder if we're in it," Billy said, his voice flat. They all stared at the case in silence for a long moment.
Quite abruptly, the doorbell rang. The three of them jumped, the spell broke, and Jackson headed to peer out the peephole. After a moment, he unlatched the chain, unbolted the deadlock, and opened the door to Brian, the aforementioned gorgeous blue eyed businessman. He looked shoddier than Jess had ever seen him—black hair (grey at the temples) disheveled, pale faced, his tie undone and his white shirt unbuttoned to the chest. Okay, it was a sexy shoddy.
"Hey man, did you get my text?" he asked Jackson, who felt for his phone in his pocket, retrieved it and looked at the screen.
"Just did," Jackson said, smiling and opening the door wider. Brian stepped inside, wringing his hands.
"Sorry for coming by so suddenly," he said. "And so early. Just got fired. Real kick in the nuts, with this divorce shit…"
Jess, her adrenaline high, jumped up and ran to her room, coming back with a pipe and a bag of weed. Amidst Jackson's assurance that it was fine, and his condolences about the job, Brian allowed Jess to steer him to the couch and place the pipe in his hand. It helped her get through the rough spots, why not him? If she could make this beautiful man's day a little better, maybe she'd forget how her own life suddenly seemed like it was in a tail spin again. The appearance of one little movie did that.
Brian smoked, eying her appreciatively for what was probably the first time. He usually didn't pay much attention to her—he was one of those who just popped in and out quickly.
"Thanks," he said. "Sorry, what was your name?"
"That's Jess," Jackson announced, striding back in with his scale and his stash of coke. He knelt at the coffee table and said, "How much?"
"Eight-ball," Brian replied. "Soon I can buy bigger amounts – once the ex-wife stops watching my accounts like a hawk. And maybe throw in an eighth of the green, this shit is nice." This last was exhaled in a trail of smoke, in a high-pitched squeak more at place in stoner comedies. He passed the pipe to Jess, his eyes twinkling as she giggled. The look Jackson threw her was a little hard.
"Jess," said Brian. "Pretty name. How do you know Jackson? I never saw you around before he went MIA. Were you the cause of that?" His tweaked black eyebrow was more than charming. Jess sat beside him.
"We met on our travels," she said with an air of mystery. "But I definitely wasn't the cause of them."
"That is for fucking sure," said Billy, striding over and reaching down for the pipe.
"Where'd you travel to?" Brian asked.
The three members of the Lucky Twenty glanced at each other, and then Jess said, "New York. Well, Billy was already living there. I moved over for a job and Jackson has a friend there. A mutual friend, actually. He introduced us." How easy it was for the lies to slither from her lips, with not even an ounce of anxiety or regret. Jess's attitude towards people in general had been, obviously, quite altered by her time with the Joker. She found she still felt the way she had in Gotham, even though they were back in her first "reality." People were sheep, blind and unthinking, the nameless masses, the walking dead. They believed what you told them. False people, really—illusions, background noise. If everything was subjective, then the people in this universe were exactly as real as those in Gotham. And that wasn't very real at all, was it?
So what did she owe any of them? The truest man she'd ever known had been killed in another universe. What did that say about the citizens of this one? Hardly people. She could lie to them without guilt. She could take from them and hate them and even play with them, if she wanted to. Because there were only two things that Jess knew without a doubt were really real: Herself and the Joker. And since one of them was gone, she was left alone. And she was at liberty to do whatever it took, for herself.
Yeah. She had to remind herself of that whenever she remembered killing Alex.
The conversation had moved on by the time Jess resurfaced from her thoughts, but no one was looking at her oddly. She hadn't blanked out for too long, then. Brian, now red eyed and squinty, was asking Jackson what he had planned for tonight, as he knelt down at the coffee table to take a big snort of white powder. Jess noticed Jackson had made lines for all them. How nice.
"Watching a movie," Jackson said as Brian handed Jess the rolled up hundred dollar bill (he was classy like that) and she took her place in front of her coke. The tiny white granules burned their way up her nose in two long sniffs, and a yellow tint seemed to envelope the world.
"Which?" asked Brian. Jess sat back next to him, feeling rather sexy as their knees brushed and rested together solidly. It was nice to feel suddenly so confident, so alert and interesting.
None of them seemed to want to say it. Finally, Jackson muttered, "Dark Knight."
Brian's response was instant and enthusiastic. "Oh shit! Fan-fucking-tastic. Best movie of the year, right? Have any of you seen it?"
"No, none of us," Jess replied. "Is it really that good?"
"You'll love it," Brian said, placing a hand on her knee and squeezing. "Fantastic production value, fantastic acting. The Joker is, like, wow."
"Yeah, we've heard," Billy replied dryly, glancing at Jess. She wasn't sure whether she wanted to laugh or cry. And Brian's hand stayed on her knee. Maybe the coke was a bad idea. This was turning into a sensory overload.
"Well shit, pop it in," Brian said. "I need to get fucked up today and watch a good movie." He didn't seem to catch Jackson and Billy's skeptical, irritated looks. They clearly wanted roommate-time. Jess, however, was juggling multiple feelings-anxiety, irritation with Brian's forwardness, comfort by his hand on her knee-but mostly she just wanted to jump in and get this started. No thinking. Thinking was no good.
"Let's just do it, you guys," she said, looking at Billy and Jackson. "Now or I'll lose my nerve." Jackson headed to the table to get the movie (and the drugs and the alcohol, which were immediately passed around).
"Oh, you get scared easily or something?" Brian asked her gently, leaning back and slinging an arm around her shoulder. Jess leaned into him, her heart pounding as Jackson began to queue up the Blu-Ray. She didn't even know how to fucking answer that one. Her lies and sarcasms were gone. She couldn't quit staring at the screen as everything else seemed to fade into background static. Jackson came to her rescue, snorting with derisive laughter.
"We just really care about Batman," he said. Billy and Jess burst into laughter at this. Brian shrugged uncomprehendingly beside her as Jackson scooted back, sat down, and poured himself a drink.
Then, hands shaking so hard he almost dropped the remote, he pressed "Play."
It was remarkable how the smells lingered, in a place with walls so white. They permeated your nose, festered there, eeked their way into your head and ripped apart your neurons. Smells like this wouldn't fade, not even with their fancy power washes or scrubbing until the plaster flaked off in grainy chunks and their fingers bled. They wouldn't be covered by cheap air fresheners, or perfume, or patchouli incense and matches. They stuck. The way blood dries against brick. Because the fact was, no matter what they wanted, no matter how hard they resisted the truth, this place was horribly, gloriously stained.
The Joker saw this. He'd seen this as soon as he'd stepped into the building, with its grand old hall and sterile wings. He'd smelled it—the blood, shit and tears of a thousand fruitless lives, holed up in straitjackets and padded cells. The excrement of the ages. Society's detritus. Here they were clustered like swine, watched like amoeba. And Gotham bred them, the dregs of the dregs.
Madness was an epidemic in this city - and there was only so much room in Arkham Asylum.
That was why men like him so often went free.
But not always. Not when you had a psychopathic bat after you. The Joker's scarred mouth curled into a sneer as he looked down at the heavy shackles around his wrists, waist and ankles. This was a bit of an overkill, if you thought about it. Like he would choose now to run, exactly when they expected it. Who ran when they were already being transported?
The man to his left was named Winslow. The man to his right was Rory. The Joker had noted their names carefully. They were both orderlies. Winslow was small and spry, the kind of little that was obnoxious in men, like he could launch onto your back and pull your hair. He was having problems with his wife, evidenced by the pale ring of flesh around the third finger of his left hand which, just two days ago, had been covered in gold. He'd started smoking, too. That was something else the Joker could smell.
Rory was going to be a tougher nut to crack. No wife, no kids, a quality that remained easily impersonal, and a smile that wouldn't quit. Yesterday, some patient in the rec room had seizured, convulsed and fallen into a pool of her own bile. Rory had helped her to the infirmary, smiling all the time, while yellow stains dirtied his smock and her fingers left red marks on his arm. Chained to his hospital bed, the Joker had watched him with interest, laughing and flirting with Caroline-the-Replacement-Nurse. Rory was one of those nice guys. The Joker thought he could probably help cure him of that.
Gotham's Clown Prince of Crime had been brought in from his final fight against the Batman with a broken ankle – go figure – a few cracked ribs, a fractured hip, a dog bite on his arm and too many bruises to count. That first night, he'd lain there humming, poking his yellow and purple stomach until grey dawn crept through the windows. Then he'd pretended to be asleep, until his original nurse, Emily, came in to check, bravely approaching the bed and leaning right over him. You should have seen the look on her stupid little face when his eyes popped open and he shouted "Boo!"
He'd had a scalpel. It hadn't been hard to procure, in all the hustle and bustle around his arrival. An unnecessary amount of excitement, actually. You'd think professionals would act like it.
When he'd finished, her face was still stupid, but you almost couldn't tell through all that blood.
The Joker chuckled at the memory, wiping tears from his eyes and not missing the wary look Winslow threw him. Now that everyone thought he was crazy, they paid close attention to everything he did. Funny, how he could run around blowing up buildings and killing people, without anyone but the Bat taking him seriously. But as soon as they got him in custody, a mere chuckle made their hackles rise. God might be dead, but irony was still alive and kicking and tearing down hospitals.
"I was just thinking about Emily," the Joker explained to the orderly, who looked quickly away.
"Don't talk to me," Winslow said, the gruff tone out of place in such a little body. Shouldn't a guy his size be, like, squeaking or something?
"How's she doing?" the Joker asked, ignoring the command. He wasn't answered, so he went on. "I don't see why everyone's so upset, boys. In my opinion, her little face lift was an improvement."
Rory took that moment to quit smiling. His hand flew into the Joker's bruised back with a rough push that sent the clown sprawling to the dirty linoleum. It hurt. The chains twisted around his ankles and wrists, making it difficult to brace himself, so he landed hard on his shoulder. After catching his breath, he turned around slowly and sat in the hallway to stare up at the two orderlies. A long moment passed before he pointed at Rory, feeling bubbly and triumphant.
"Hit a nerve, did I?" he asked, beginning to laugh.
He thought of all the nerves he'd hit in Emily's face and laughed harder. Winslow was looking uneasy, and Rory the smiler looked mad, which really only added to the hilarity. By the time the orderlies agreed to call for reinforcements, he was rolling on the hallway floor, clutching his sides.
Two other men, big burly assholes the Joker hadn't yet had the pleasure of meeting, came blundering down the hall after only a few minutes. Rory and Winslow helped them grimly hoist the clown up by the arms and legs, and carry him forcibly in their previous direction of travel. The Joker didn't kick them or anything – though the idea certainly crossed his mind – but he was writhing in his hilarity, unable and unwilling to stop. To laugh, especially when no one else saw the humor, was so freeing. The sense of exhilaration was familiar-he felt it every time he hung out of a car window, or ran from a job.
A vivid image popped into his overactive head, of the day he'd run from Commissioner Loeb's funeral, with Jesster's heel's clacking behind him and her exhilarated laugh ringing down the alley. That was his favorite thing about the Jesster. She laughed when he did, breathless and high on adrenaline (or whatever), during chases, escapes, jobs, sex. She was laughing or growling all the time. All for him. All because she liked him, she wanted him to like her. No one laughed here. No Jesster to make or break the tension. He almost kind of missed it.
By the time they'd reached the end of the hall and stopped at a black metal door, the Joker had gone quiet. He knitted his fingers and rested his hands on his stomach, enjoying the free ride, even if tiny little Winslow was gripping his calf hard enough to leave another bruise. Orderlies around here didn't seem to mind bruising the patients.
The Joker had watched a schizo get forcibly drug from a bed in the hospital ward a couple of nights ago, when he'd refused to follow them back to his cell. "My ankle still hurts, my ankle still hurts..." He'd screamed it over and over, eyes wide and rolling, clutching the thin papery mattress as they took him by the legs and pulled. His head had hit the ground with a sickening thump, and he started yelling louder, so they pushed some kind of syringe into his upper thigh. The schizo shut up pretty quick after that.
"Where are we going, boys?" the Joker said mildly, feeling a distinct sense of moral superiority over these men. He hadn't thought to ask before.
"Therapy," grunted the huge guy who had him by the left armpit. The Joker nodded appreciatively. He hadn't met his doctor yet. This should be fun. It was, however, a pity that old Scarecrow had lost his license.
The plaque on the door said "Ruth Adams, MD." A psychiatrist, then. They were going to try to pump him full of meds, until his brain either fried or got in line. Fat chance of either. The Joker had been on meds before. At least, he was pretty sure he had. Maybe when he was a kid or something. They didn't work on a mind like his.
Ruth Adams turned out to be a tall, wiry woman of around forty, with flat red hair and teeth stained by nicotine. Upon opening the door to her office, she quietly regarded the Joker with an even expression. He felt like a pharaoh or something, lifted on the shoulders of four men, looking down at her in her white smock and frumpy glasses.
She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her pocket as she examined him clinically and lit one with a deep drag. Her head silently disappeared in a cloud of smoke. When it cleared, she was still staring. There was no fear in those eyes – something he'd gotten rather used to, and rather enjoyed – but maybe she was just good at hiding it. You probably had to be in this profession. Crazies could smell fear.
As it was, it looked like she was deciding whether or not he was worth her time. The Joker had the sudden urge to pop out her eyeballs with his thumbs.
"Want one?" she asked in a husky voice, offering the Joker her carton of smokes. Like it was a truce. Like it bonded them. The Joker got the message: she was supposed to be the cool doctor, the one who let you get away with shit. Tonguing his scars and deciding to play along, he pulled one from the pack and placed it between his lips. Make her think he trusted her… that could be worthwhile. At the least, it gave his hands something to do.
When Ruth Adams lit it for him, he eyed the lighter, then the glowing tip of the tobacco. Jam that into someone's nostril, it'd at least be a distraction...
"Try any funny stuff," the psychiatrist said mildly, as though she'd read his expression, "and you'll lose a couple privileges."
"Like, uh… what?"
"Like bathroom passes and pillows and reading material. Mind your manners, we'll see if we can't give you more. Sound good?"
The Joker considered for a long moment. He took a drag, expelled the foul smoke and smacked his lips.
"Sure, doc," he replied, matching her even tone. "I'll be a regular angel."
"Put him down, for Christ's sake," Dr. Adams told the orderlies, with a look of disgust. "I want you to let him walk here from now on. What did you do to garner such special treatment?" She met his eye, and the Joker grinned widely, ready to explain.
But Winslow beat him to the punch, telling the story like a five year old tattling on his classmate. The Joker sneered, but didn't interrupt, instead aiming a sharp kick at his chin when Winslow stopped talking. The orderly caught it before it connected, unfortunately, but the Joker had been watching his doctor. Her sneer at Winslow was, if possible, more derisive than the Joker's, like her disgust ran much deeper. And she allowed herself a little smirk at the clown's kick. The four men set him gently on his feet.
"Stop overreacting," the psychiatrist berated the orderlies. "Jesus Christ. I know he's famous, but keep your heads cool. Laughing isn't a crime. Even in Arkham."
The Joker met her eye again and smiled. He decided he liked Ruth Adams.
I hope you like it so far. I need ideas on what you'd like to see. Review please!