Digging through the Ashes
Darkness. A hand moved fluidly, a shining blade glinting in the dim light.
He sat on the edge of an old mattress. He turned an old joker card over and over in his hands, ran his tongue across his lips, along the stitches on the inside of his mouth. The television in the corner was on, playing some kind of newscast. He watched it carefully; he remembered what the woman was talking about, he was there when it happened, at least, he thought he was.
Two cops found dead, a smile carved into their cheeks… Just like him. He ran a finger along the stitches on his cheek, turned the card over in the other hand. He looked down at it, wiped at a spot of blood on it. He knew he did it. 'The Joker killings'.
"Police have no leads on the murderer who committed this vicious crime and left only a joker card." He looked back at the television. He, the Joker, the names were synonymous. They had to be. He let the card fall to the floor. There was no one else left inside him. There was only the Joker. He couldn't be anyone else.
Standing up, he, the Joker, walked over to a mirror and looked at his stitches, hidden underneath the greasepaint. He tried to remember why they were there, who did it to him. The Joker rubbed at the greasepaint, removing a little. Did he do it to himself?
Screaming. Manic laughter, the warmth of the blood flowing down his face.
He smiled and noted the way the stitches and greasepaint changed his face. He remembered the schemers. He remembered, he knew it was their fault. They, they tried to… control him… somehow. They planned, they changed everything, protected the status quo, threatened the anarchy that made life fair.
The Joker turned and saw the knife on the floor. The blade was covered in blood; someone else's blood. He was pleased. He hated them, their plans, the way they tried to control everything.
He remembered a Bat. No; a Batman… He was another one of those schemers. The Bat stopped the anarchy in the Narrows; the city was calling him a hero. The city didn't realise that the anarchy was fair.
A reflection in a window. Blood on his hands, a crumpled newspaper.
The Joker ignored the images. Grimacing, he picked up the knife and flung it at the bed, the handle, slippery with blood, sticking out of his old mattress. He would do something; fight the Bat. He was his opposite, an agent of chaos verses the scheming Bat.
He, the Joker, laughed. A hollow, coarse sound echoing through the room, drowning out the television. It sounded strange, but at the same time, it was liberating to the Joker.
Blood. Blood on his pants, blood on his attacker…or was the blood just on him?
It didn't matter. The images, the memories? They didn't matter. Where he came from, it wasn't important. Turning back to the mirror, the Joker smiled. "Do you wanna know," he began, watching his tongue flick to the sides of his mouth, irritating the stitches. "How I got these scars?"