Arthur took the bus down to the mental healthy facility known as Arkham State Hospital. He had been committed there once before, but that was a long time ago and he couldn't remember why. There was something he needed to find out before he went on the Murray Franklin Show. He got off at the bus stop and walked across the street up to the hospital. He walked into the building and went down the corridor and went over to the elevator and stepped inside. Before he could push the button to close the doors, two police men came in with a man who was covered by a white sheet and handcuffed to a stretcher. He was screaming his head off, but Arthur just ignored him.
When he came to the top floor, Arthur stepped out of the elevator and found an orderly and asked him where he could find out some information about a patient. The orderly gave him instructions and told him to go down the hall and make a right. Arthur followed the directions and found the administration office at the end of the hallway. He walked up to the service window, surrounded by a metal screen. A black man was sitting in the office, reading a magazine. He looked up from his page and looked at Arthur.
"Excuse me. Do you happen to remember a woman named Penny Fleck?" Arthur asked him.
"Is she a patient here?" The clerk asked him.
"She was a patient here", Arthur told him. "She was admitted here over thirty years ago. I'm her son. Do you have any information on her at all?"
"I'm not sure", said the clerk. He closed the magazine and stood up and said, "I'll have to check the records. Can you wait a minute?"
"Sure."
While Arthur waited for the clerk to return, he turned around and checked out some of the people committed who were sitting in chairs along the hallway. One of them was a pale, innocent-looking young man with black hair and sad blue eyes. There was a brunette, green-eyed woman sitting next to him, muttering to herself. She was obviously a schizo. Arthur looked over at a tall, handsome black man sitting across from the two patients. He was staring off into space, a lobotomy scar on the side of his head. There was also a little dark-haired girl sitting on the floor, holding a doll. She looked over at Arthur, who smiled and waved at her. The little girl smiled and waved back to him. He wondered why she was there. He didn't even know the hospital took in children. He was sad to think about it, but knew there must have been a good reason why she was there.
Two orderlies, a man and a woman, came up to Arthur and asked him "Hey, weren't you that guy on the Murray Franklin Show the other night? The man who laughs a lot?"
"No, I'm sorry. That wasn't me", said Arthur.
"Yeah, you're that guy from Pogo's Comedy Club, aren't you?" The woman asked.
"No", Arthur insisted. "That wasn't me."
The man nodded and said in a sarcastic tone of voice, "Right." He and the woman turned and walked away. Arthur was pretty sure he heard the man say to the woman that he was a freak, but he didn't linger on it for very long.
The clerk came back, carrying a storage box. "Sorry about the wait. All records ten years and older are stored in the basement. You're talking about something from over thirty years ago. I had to do some serious digging."
"That's all right", said Arthur. He rested his arms on the counter and asked him, "Can I ask you a question?"
"Sure", the clerk answered, looking through the box of case files.
"How does someone wind up in here? Have all these people committed crimes?"
"Some have. Some are just crazy and pose as a threat to themselves or to others. Some just have nowhere else to go."
"Yeah, I hear ya, brother", said Arthur, trying to sound hip. "Sometimes, I don't even know what to do."
The clerk blinked and looked at him. "Excuse me?"
Arthur smiled and whispered, "I've fucked up. I mean, I've done some bad shit. Last time I ended up taking it out on some people, I thought it was going to bother me, but it really hasn't."
The clerk nodded his head, feeling uneasy. "Well, listen, I'm just an administrative assistant. I file paperwork and fill out forms. Maybe you should talk to someone, like, social services or something."
"Yeah, I'd like to, but-" Arthur made a talking motion with his hand and spoke in a high-pitched voice, "They cut all those."
The clerk nodded and continued to look through the storage box. "Ah, here it is", he said. "Fleck. Penny Fleck..." The clerk pulled out an old red file and opened it, reading from a faded yellow page. Arthur leaned over and tried to get a look at the file, but couldn't make out what it said and had to rely on what the clerk told him. "Uh-huh. Diagnosed by Dr. Benjamin Stoner. The patient suffers from delusional psychosis and narcissistic personality disorder. Was first committed at the age of fifteen. Single white female was last administrated on November 2, 1952 at the age of twenty-five, found guilty of endangering the welfare of..."
The clerk stopped reading out loud and scanned the rest of the file. Then he looked at Arthur, both worried and concern.
Arthur lost his smile immediately, knowing the clerk was hiding something. "What?"
"You said she's your mother?" The clerk asked him.
Arthur slowly nodded, waiting patiently.
The clerk closed the file and said, "Look, um...I'm sorry, but...I can't release this. Not without a proper form. I could get in trouble and-"
Arthur didn't have the time nor the patience to argue with the clerk. Reaching through the slot under the metal screen, he grabbed hold of the file from the clerk, who tugged on it as Arthur tried to ring it out from his hands.
"No, man!" The clerk shouted. "Let go!"
Their tug-of-war struggle didn't last very long, as Arthur banged his head hard on the metal screen and scared the clerk, causing him to lose his grip on the file. Quickly as he could, Arthur stole the file and began to run down the hallway, the voice of the clerk shouted for him to stop. Arthur looked back once and continued to run. He turned left, bumping into a nurse as he ran down another hallway. He turned again and found a door that led to a stairwell and ran down to about halfway at a landing below. He stopped for a minute and looked up the stairwell to make sure nobody had followed him. Breathing heavily, Arthur looked at the file in his hands and opened it, reading from the same page the clerk did. The form told that it was the third time Penny Fleck had been admitted. Why she had been committed three times, he didn't know. There was a report from the Department of Health. Permission to Search for Reports Abuse or Neglect, it read. It described her as being delusional and a narcissist, showing bizarre behavior and physical abuse, and something about her having an abusive boyfriend.
Arthur couldn't believe it at first, but then he specifically remembered Thomas Wayne saying something about his mother having a boyfriend just before he cut him off at the gala the other night. Arthur could never remember his mother ever having a boyfriend. It had always been just him and her. He heard a noise from upstairs and held his breath for a minute, but nothing happened.
Arthur returned his gaze back to the documents and turned a page in his mother's file and found the one thing he hoped he would ever find: an adoption certificate. It read that he was an unknown child, an orphan with no name and no title. No identity. He had been abandoned from the day he was born.
No, there must be a mistake, Arthur thought. His heart was in his throat and he knew he was going to go into a laughing fit if he read any further, but he needed to know the truth.
Turning over the adoption certificate, Arthur found several newspaper clippings and forensic photographs of himself as a three-year-old boy with a bruise on his cheek and a cut over his upper lip. His face looked sad and confused, like he didn't understand what was happening. There was one photo of him tied to a radiator by a rope with multiple bruises all over his naked body. He looked thin and malnourished. There showed a photo of a filthy crib in one of the newspaper clippings. The headlines read things like, 'House of Terror For Mother and Adopted Son' and 'Mother Stood By As Adopted Son Was Abused'.
All kinds of memories were suddenly coming back to him. "Mommy!" Cried the voice of a young boy. "Mommy, help me!" Arthur immediately realized it was his own voice he was hearing. "Mommy, they're hurting me!"
Arthur felt his chest tightened, his heart tearing apart as he kept reading the documents. A bit of sad laughter came out of him, as he read about the abuse his so-called "mother" allowed him to take from not just one abusive boyfriend, but several. It was worse than he thought. Not only was Arthur abused, but also Penny. There was a photograph of her when she was a young woman and had a black eye. The newspaper article read how she allowed Arthur to be raised in an unhealthy environment and did absolutely nothing to stop the torture from her boyfriends. She allowed them to abuse Arthur sexually and deprive him of food and drink for days on end.
The laughing grew stronger and Arthur could hear the awful truth ringing to life about why he was so messed up to begin with. There was a reason he could never remember his childhood. There was a reason why he laughed under stressful situations. This was why. He had repressed the horrible memories long ago because of the hurt it caused him. His life was a lie. It was all just a lie.
...
They were sitting in a white room. Dr. Benjamin Stoner was sitting across from a young patient named Penny Fleck, who had a black eye on her face. He was interviewing her about her arrest and recent admission.
"We talked about this, Penny", said Dr. Stoner. "You adopted him. We have all the paperwork right here." He indicated toward a red case file on the table and opened it to reveal the adoption certificate to her.
"That's not true", said Penny, looking off into the distance, her eyes vague and glossy. There was no expression on her face. No remorse for her actions. "Thomas had that made all up so that it stayed our secret."
"Penny, your son was found tied to a radiator in your filthy apartment, malnourished, with multiple bruises across his body and severe trauma to his head", Dr. Stoner explained to her, displaying the forensic photographs.
"That's not true", Penny repeated, shaking her head in denial and licking the corner of her mouth. "I always kept a clean house."
"You also stood by as one of your boyfriends repeatedly abused your adopted son and battered you, as well", Dr. Stoner reminded her. "What do you have to say for yourself?"
"I never heard him cry. He's always been such a happy little boy."
...
How could she do this to him? Why would she allow her own child to suffer, especially at the hands of an abuser? Did she not care? If Penny Fleck really loved Arthur, she would have stopped the abuse from ever happening in the first place. As far as Arthur was concerned, Penny Fleck was a woman who had no heart. She was never a mother to him. Just a cold, heartless bitch.
Arthur stopped reading the documents at that point. He closed the file and held it against his chest, letting out the most heartbreaking and painful laughing fit he ever had. He felt heavy tears leak out from behind his eyelids and snot running down his nose. No wonder he was locked away for such a long time. It was because of Penny Fleck and the boyfriends she cared about more than him. All his life, Arthur felt like she never really loved him or cared for him as a son. He was just another person to her. He wasn't anybody special to Penny. He meant nothing to her.
Wiping away the snot and tears from his reddening face, Arthur sniffled and cried alone on the stairs, listening to the sound of thunder gathering outside. Thomas Wayne was right. Arthur was not his son, but the unwanted bastard child of an unknown and unimportant couple. He wasn't the product of a love affair between Penny Fleck and Thomas Wayne. He was nobody. Just a man who laughed. Arthur was crushed. All he ever wanted was to belong to somebody and to have a successful life, but now, that was never going to happen. It started raining.