I finally graduated! Yay! Now I have time to continue my stories, so please read and review. (It makes every writer's day)
The Joker, Jason surmised, would have made an exceptional psychiatrist.
The delinquent sat in his "Thinker" pose as the TV screen flickered, casting odd shadows over his pale face; his blank features belying the hurricane in his mind.
"-did you al-ways have a fetish fo-or little boys, Doc?"
"Th-that's—"
It had been about two hours since his movie night started, and so far he had watched the master criminal taunt, break, and maim every doctor that dared set foot into the interview room. Cash twitched as another video portrayed the Joker repeatedly slamming a female doctor's head onto the steel table, blood splattering the pure whiteness of the room in a manner worthy of a Jackson Pollock.
While the guard's eyes were fixed upon the violence, Jason's eyes were on the assailant's face. His eyes. The manic fury and glee that burned in those twin chasms were chilling in an almost mesmerizing manner.
He could almost hear the thoughts in the madman's head.
Crack, crack, crack! Let's see those brains that you're so proud of. That PHD worthy grey matter all mulched up on the floor. Let's see it! I'll crack you open like a coconut! Crack, crack, cra-
Jason actually felt a little disappointed when the guards pulled him off, leaving the doctors to drag her prone form off to intensive care. He decided that it was beginning to get a little boring, as he stretched out as far as his restraints would allow, obscenely popping the bones in his shoulders and back. It was all pretty much the same thing: The Joker would poke and prod and jab, until he found a niche in your psyche (unless it was already obvious). Then, he would dig in with his nails and rip, with all the decorum of a butcher.
However, the most interesting thing, he mused as Cash popped in the next tape, was how the Joker did it. Jason prided himself on his ability to read people, being able to observe every single quirk in character and deduce the reason and reasoning behind it. It took a little time to grasp all of the details when meeting new prey, but the Joker didn't seem to need any time at all.
In fact, they didn't even need to speak to him. Jason watched as another witless doctor strode into the room. The Harlequin's black hole eyes lit with a devilish gleam the moment they fixed upon his person. He knew everything, the moment he laid eyes on you.
It was something feral, primal. An instinctive awareness of shifts in energy. It was how dogs sensed insecurity, fear, and unbalance; how seasoned interrogators and fake psychics picked up on unconscious body language. The Joker sniffed it out, latched on, and tore you open. No secrets could leave that interview room.
You had to be prepared to bare all and not care about it. You could not have any problems that you hadn't already admitted to yourself. No insecurities. No doubts. Nothing.
You didn't have to be a saint or a clean slate; you just had to have accepted what you were and what you were not. You had to be aware. You had to know everything about yourself. You had to know just how truly twisted you were on the inside (and how twisted you were capable of being); and you had to accept that. If you weren't already comfortable with who and what you are, then the Joker would just rip you to shreds, laughing all the way through.
This was one of the main problems concerning the clown menace: there were no doctors in Arkham who met the requirements stated above. In fact, few humans on earth could face the Joker and return with their mental stability intact. Not even he, as Jason was well acquainted with his shortcomings and defects, would be able to survive for long. Only someone on the same level of madness could possibly handle the clown. And it was not even probable that Sharpie would allow another freak of that caliber within ten-miles of Joker.
Jason had already completed his diagnosis from the first tape. It was not a scientific one though, and would not impress the dimwits upstairs. However, it was probably the most accurate diagnosis that he could give without falling back onto the psycho-dribble that those doctors on the telly were spouting.
If there was one thing that the Joker had right, it was that you couldn't put people into nice, little, organized boxes and not expect any anomalies.
Humans were complexly simple. He would leave it at that.
"You cling so-o uh…desperately to the or-der of society. To your ruu-les…that you can't even…function without them. You fall apa-rt. But deep deep down, you. Crave. Chaos. I'm just, uh step a-head of the crowd. You're…the one who's in-saane."
If only the doctors would look outside of science once in a while, they would find the answer right there in front of them. The Joker had been throwing his problem right in their faces, but only Jason had figured it out.
Cash ejected the tape. "Time's up."
Jason gazed blankly at the black and white zigzags racing up and down the screen, the buzzing filling his ears. Yes, he had his diagnosis and the treatment options, but unless Sharpie-pen was hit with a lightning bolt of sense, they weren't going to happen.
In other words: this was a complete waste of time.
It didn't bother Jason though. After all, he had been privy to some quality television, but…
Clank
He couldn't help but feel a little disappointed.
How boring.
/
"Dr. Morgan?"
The weary man turned to answer the petite woman hurrying up to him.
"Yes, Valerie. What is it now?" How could this day possibly get any worse?
"It's Berkley." His features stilled.
"What has he done now?"
Valerie sighed in exasperation. "He's writing again."
"Blast it! How does he keep doing this!" Morgan snapped, his nerves in a fray. "What was that idiot, Cash, doing? He'll ruin everything!"
The younger doctor seemed taken back by his outrage. "Doctor?"
"Is something the matter, Morgan?" came the most unwelcome drawl. "You seem upset."
Morgan clenched his teeth in frustration as he stiffly jerked his head to look at Goff.
"No. Everything is fine. I'm just going to see a patient right now."
"Then I shall come with you. It will be safer that way." Goff said, smiling in what he probably thought was a fatherly manner. Morgan's knuckles whitened.
"Fine. Valerie. I'll see to him. Run along." He growled tersely. She nodded uncomfortably and hurried away, grateful for her escape. The two men stood in silence, the tension thick in the air like a humid day in summer.
"Shall we." It wasn't a question.
"Lead the way."
/
"Why all the uh, special tre-atment, Sharpie? It's not…like you."
The portly warden just fixed him with an intimidating glare (not that it worked) as he watched the guards steer the Joker into the hallway. They had fixed him in a tight straightjacket and summoned nearly a platoon of armed guards as escorts.
"Be quiet. You're going to an experimental interview."
The clown straightened up, leering at Sharp, his makeup less face somehow more haunting than usual.
"Oh? Is that so-o?"
The scars on his cheeks pulled taut widening his macabre grin.
"Sounds like fu-un, Sharpie."
The fluorescent light above them flickered.
/
We've got to have rules and obey them. After all we're not savages.
He wrote in precise, straight print. The words flowed from his mind like the water from the moss-covered fountain that he knew stood proudly in front of the asylum's main office.
Jason had covered the left wall in the first chapter and a half of another book he remembered reading once, although he could not remember the title. It hadn't been important at the time. The Joker's words had stirred up the memory of the book. The book about civilization vs. savagery, order vs. chaos, reason vs. impulse, law vs. anarchy, or the broader heading of good vs. evil. The end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart.
It had simply come to him and had channeled through his fingers through the ball-point pen he had filched from a passing doctor and onto his walls. With a few more hours he could probably finish the whole book and give the janitor another reason to slip bleach into his water.
He paused in his writing to admire his work. The black ink contrasted nicely against the boring starch white.
If only he had some red.
The steel door behind him swung open for the second time that day to reveal Dr. Goff and Dr. Morgan.
Jason stilled as the two strode in.
"Good evening, Burkely." Goff drawled coldly. He turned his head just enough to study him with one dark eye.
"What happened to your face? It looks so much better now."
Goff smiled cruelly but said nothing which alarmed Jason. Morgan snatched the pen from his hand and threw it outside. He stared down at his charge, his lips pulled taut.
"You're going to an interview."
After all we aren't savages really
Jason had no time to reply as he was grasped by two armed guards and pulled out of his cell again.
Clank