But I must be insane
To go skating on your name
And by tracing it twice
I fell through the ice Of Alice
Tom Waits, "Alice"
It was the screaming that woke her, working its way slowly into her ears until she could no longer ignore it. She sat up, looked around, and released a long, long sigh.
The room was ugly in its bareness, lacking any sort of personality or decoration that could have made it more homely. The walls were grey, the floor was grey, and there was no window. The room's only opening was an imposing metal door, tightly sealed and showing no obvious signs of weakness.
As for furniture, there was her sorry excuse for a bed and a single naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Spartan and unwelcoming, she knew exactly where she was.
This was Arkham Asylum, Gotham's haven for the criminally insane, and it was a place she certainly did not belong in. Feelings of injustice dragged another prolonged sigh from her as she collapsed onto the cot where she'd been unconscious moments before.
Where the hell had everything gone so wrong?
The job had gone just like normal, a quiet little robbery and then a quick dash to the getaway car. Their little crew had nearly made it outside Gotham when an explosion racked the van, flipping it upside down and throwing the driver sailing through the windshield.
She'd had barely enough time to escape the van alive before it caught fire, let alone grab the money they'd stolen. Her gut wrenched a little as she imagined the money shriveling into useless ash. What a waste.
And then, the bat had just happened to be in the neighborhood...
The door creaked open ominously, and three people entered her bleak little cell. The smallest of the three, a petite brunette woman, dragged a chair and clipboard behind her. She was flanked by two burly Arkham guards, both heavily armed. The woman managed to drag the chair a few feet away from the cot and sit on it, clipboard and pen poised at the perfect angle to begin writing. A guard hovered menacingly on either side of her, neither of their eyes moving from her.
"Hello, Miss Meer. I'm Dr. Young. May I talk to you for a few minutes?"
By the look on the guards' faces, she sure didn't have much of a choice.
"Of course, Dr. Young. Also, call me Starr. Miss Meer's a bit... formal."
As the doctor began furiously scribbling on her clipboard, Starr was reminded of why she never made a habit of visiting doctors.
"Nice to meet you, Starr. I'm sure you have some questions for me."
"Yeah, doc, you see, the thing is, I think there's been some sort of mistake. I don't exactly belong at Arkham. All I did was get caught robbing a bank. Don't see why I'm not in Blackgate right now. " The penitentiary was much better suited for her, seeing that she wasn't bug-fuck crazy.
The doctor flipped quickly through her clipboard before writing again, pausing every now and then to glance at Starr.
"Yes, Mr. Rowles thought you might say that."
Starr felt an involuntary snarl curl her lip at the mention of her incompetent, drunkard of a lawyer.
"Did he now? How much bourbon bought that little statement from him?"
Dr. Young blinked, once. "While he was helping you prepare for your case, Mr. Rowles noted several warning signs of mental illness. Among them, he noted that, 'while Miss Meer has the appearance of a twenty two year old woman, she has the emotional maturity and range of a small child.' He asked the judge to send you to Arkham Asylum for an evaluation. We're just going to do a few tests, and then we'll decide what to do from there."
Starr sat back against the cold grey wall and pondered the legality of the entire situation. It was definitely leaning towards infringing on her civil rights, but how was she going to get out of this when the entire legal system of Gotham was corrupt? For sure, Rowles had said something to the judge, probably as revenge for the rejection of his advances. If she protested, either the doctors wouldn't let her out of Arkham, or the judge would send her right back. So why not serve out whatever exile she had been sentenced to in Arkham, where she could get three square meals a day with no fuss?
She gave Young the best smile she could before agreeing to the tests. One of the guards cuffed her hands behind her back, perhaps a little more tightly than was necessary. He seemed very careful standing next to her, and she wondered just how badly she'd hurt Rowles. Maybe he couldn't walk.
The thought brought a real smile to her face as she was led down the hall, past door after identical metal door, until Dr. Young opened one and beckoned her inside. The same guard shackled her hands to the smooth steel table within, while the other made sure her legs were tightly secured to the chair. Dr. Young sat down opposite of her, motioning the two guards to leave the room.
They were alone then, in the stiffening silence that was punctuated only by the screams and moans of Arkham's many inmates.
"Tell me a little about yourself, Starr."
Aaaahh, there it was, the question they always, always asked. What makes you twinkle, little Starr? What's going on inside? It always progressed to What's wrong with you? from there, and onto her release, if she was lucky. It annoyed her with its simplicity, and she couldn't help but bait the no nonsense doctor.
"Well, I'm a natural red-head."
"I see," nodded Dr. Young. "Is this something you're proud of?"
"Not particularly. Makes for a lot of rather unfunny jokes."
"Do you know why you're here, Starr?"
"I robbed a bank. Or failed to, at least."
"You also assaulted your lawyer in front of a whole courtroom of witnesses."
"He had it coming."
Dr. Young looked unimpressed. "So, is Starr your real name? It seems a bit..."
"Starr is my given name, no alias or anything. It was my mother's idea."
"Tell me about your mother, Starr."
"Wellll," she let the word roll of her tongue, trying to figure out exactly what tale she would tell this time. "She was a real nice woman, pretty too. Guys just fell all over her."
"What did she do for a living?"
"Oh, she stripped, of course. That's what most of the women in our apartment complex did. They used to leave all us kids together, so we wouldn't get lonely or anything. Sometimes she took me along to dance with her."
Dr. Young was scribbling furiously, and it took everything Starr had not to just laugh in her face. Did she really believe all this garbage? Even the slowest therapists she'd had raised their eyebrows at the stripping part.
"Did your mother ever hit or abuse you? Where was your father?"
"Father? Never heard of him. Mom was real nice, but sometimes she got drunk and started hitting. Nothing out of the ordinary, and she was always real sorry when she'd done it."
"I'm so sorry, that's awful. How about your school life, though? What was that like? Were you bullied?"
It hit Starr then; Dr. Young hadn't even bothered to read her file! That was why she was believing this so readily. This doctor deserved whatever lies Starr was going to feed her.
"Oh, it was just awful, doctor. None of the kids liked me at all, and one of the teachers.." She dropped the volume of her voice to a near whisper, as though she were ashamed. ".. well, he, you know."
"Did he molest you, Starr?" The look in Dr. Young's eyes was earnest and pleading, pen poised over her clipboard; it bored Starr to death.
She dropped the hush in her voice and adopted a bored tone as she addressed the doctor. "No, and if you'd read my file, I think you'll find that everything I've just said was a lie."
Young just gave her a long, long look before writing on her clipboard; Starr was more than willing to bet it said something along the lines of 'pathological liar.'
"Well, I'm sorry you didn't feel as though you could be honest with me. We'll have plenty of time to work on building an honest relationship during your stay at the asylum, however."
Dr. Young called for the guards then, leaving Starr to ponder exactly how long she'd be staying at Arkham. Not too long, she reassured herself as she was led back to her cell, number 239. The guards closed the door behind her as she walked to her cot and buried her face in the grey pillow. Not too long, surely.