Disclaimer: Batman © DC comics
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The Heart
Part II —
love and what I'd do for you
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Arkham Asylum.
Madness in its bricks, in its mortar. It is caged in the spaces between its walls, trapped, and if you listen closely enough—with the right ears and the right mind; the unstable mind—it goes scratch scratch scratch at night. The patients and orderlies and doctors all hear it, in time, often resulting in a prolonged pill use and a wavering paranoia. Arkham loves them so dearly, you see.
("Don't let them take me!")
It eats itself, gobbling up inhabitants, insanity drooling past its mouth and onto the sewer streets of Gotham. Arkham's madness soaks them with tar tread. A tread can be stretched, bound or laid in a circle.
They always come back home.
It has been like that long before you were born, sonny.
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"Better."
"Yes, better. They said he waltzed right into here. Scared the hell out of Margaret, he did." Nurse June covers her pretty little mouth with her hands. In Arkham, you never know who is listening. "Said he'd do anything to get healthy. Anything."
"And they believed him?" Nurse Agnes is older; hair ratty, skin liver spotted, fingers embrowned from too much tobacco. It was ages ago she'd given up leaving for school because her husband's illness.
(Never leave, never leave, Arkham whispers, Never never never!)
"I don't think so. They made him sign a contract, though. God knows what kind of experiments they'll try out." June, in contrast, is 25, redheaded and pretty. But her stay is wearing on her. Arkham destroys beauty. She runs a hand through her tangled curls and sighs. "Jesus, I hate this place; these people. But I only have a year left and then I've saved up all I need to get out of here."
Agnes smiles, and cannot bring herself to break the girl's dreams. She knows it will never happen. June has been here too long.
Agnes feels Arkham's laugh in her bones.
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When a new orderly first arrives, the rest of them will offer no advice until the week is over. 75% of everyone is gone by that period—but the rest never leaves. He'll eventually either 1) crack and spoil or 2) harden and stay. The inmates and the orderlies obtain a civil relationship.
Carlos strolls down the long hall. The light bulb has finally stopped flickering, making him avoid the cliché. A patient or two occasionally screams. Ignoring things like that is a skill that can't be taught. You keep your lives separate. You go out of Arkham and act like yourself, until you go back in again.
He opens the door to cell 139. Loren Emerson. Alias, the Rat Man. Fan of Freud. Believes everything's about sex, including power. That was the root for his grotesque crimes. He's leaning to the wall as if sleeping, or seeking invisible sunlight. One eye opens.
"C," he purrs. "Did ya buy me a present?" A small sack is thrown over to him; dark at the bottom, fluid soaking through. "Lovely! But you must tell me, is it true? Is J back?" News spread fast here, seeping through the old stones. Arkham whispers secrets in their dreams. "They gonna sew his face back on?"
"Fuck if I know. Just pay me like usual, ok?"
The Rat Man smirks and nods. He unpacks his little present up, breathes in the stink of its filthy fur, and takes a bite out of the dead rat, moaning in ecstasy. Carlos is gone before he reaches his orgasm. 'Fucking freak.'
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Dr. Gideon is the voice of moral. Dr. Adams is the voice of reason.
And Jeremiah?
(With ancient blood running through his veins, blood that has been spilled upon asylum grounds along with the fingernails of his ancestors, Arkham howling in laughter)
"Stop fighting," he demands in a hiss. He is a serious and devoted young man, and controls Arkham with an iron grip. Or so he believes. Arkham giggles underneath his expensive shoes. "You may let Dr. Gideon argue without interrupting him, Dr. Ruth. That, however, does not mean your prayers will be answers, Gideon. Be reasonable. We have support from the government and the people. And Adams, who is his doctor, agr—" a scrutinizing stare, "tolerates our efforts. We also have his signature."
"He's insane. This is wrong! How do you even know that it'll work?"
"He can give consent. And would you rather that we attempt more therapy? Use thousands of tax dollars only to have him break out again and wreak havoc?" Jeremiah is very harsh when he needs to be, eyes narrowed behind his glasses. The only person with a matching intensity is Jonathan Crane. Look where that got him. "Do you want to be his new doctor, perhaps?"
Gideon pales. The threat of contacting the media or suing Arkham rots and dies on his tongue.
"A year." Time limits. Basic manipulation. The idiot has a doctorate in psychology and fails to see that. "Your concern is misplaced. We will do anything to help him. And he is willing. Do you understand this opportunity? Just give us a year. Please."
Gideon reluctantly agrees. He excuses himself and leaves. Adams grimaces, eager to smoke two cigarettes to get rid off the moral bullshit that cascades out of Gideon.
Jeremiah nods to her. "Tell my secretary to get in here on your way out, Ruth. I'll have her make a note to move Gideon to the maximum security wing." They share a small smirk.
'One year. That is all.'
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SPRING
Gone were the happy papers on the walls—little pictures of kittens and children and mutilated female genitalia if you squinted really, really hard—replaced by ashen walls and bad lightning. Straps and chains around his body. God, always the goddamn couch. Hell. Wait. God? Where?
"God has abandoned me."
"Imaginative as usual." The toneless voice belongs to a female, accent a bit plummy. She keeps a distance because he smells like rotten meat and curdled milk.
("You'd have a good impression on how he looks if you put a steak in the oven, pumped it full of drugs and cooked it 360oC for two hours," Carlos had said, "That's how much his face has swollen up. And don't get me started on his body. Fucking sick, what he is." Most of the orderlies don't mind but one of 'em saw a doctor eating a can of chilli after a night of nutsitting and retched all over the carpet.)
The Joker's imagination swells into black holes and intricate little whorls and loops that stretch on and on and on like the ropes of the nuthouse, pulling—
"Doc. I'd like to start the process now, if ya don't mind."
The Joker hasn't smiled yet. It's if he's hollowed out with turkey carver, face covered in bandages. They have dressed him in what looks like a nightgown, matching his pasty skin. His looks anorexic, hands like white spiders, joints cracking irritably.
"Alright. Firstly, how do you feel?"
"That's nothing we haven't discussed before."
"Why are you here, then?" She digs her long nails into the notebook. His are longer. Paler, sicklier and shrewd. He wonders if they stick into the notebook. Arkham takes small prices, especially from its fleeing tenants.
"I want to become better... Become someone new. Mental evaluations are bo—ring. Therapy, too. Clawing into my past will not help me if you're gonna start fresh. Rightie?"
"Why are you doing this?"
"Reasons are mine, but not reason itself. Fill in whatever you want in those files. Disease. Death. Religion. A new, loving relationship with Christ. Hah!" He smiles, face(less) stretching and contorting in a horrible way. The smile—if you could call it that—was bitter, bitter.
Son of God. Offspring of Gotham. And what is Gotham but a bat? Arkham is a little Gotham as well. But these thoughts are evanescent. The Joker had, for a very long time, been slipping. He's a dangling over a black gap, one spindly hand clutching awareness. Batman had abandoned him. Had he had a heart, it'd oozed pus. Little shameless bitch!
Oh god.
The Joker's eyes twitch beneath red eyelids.
"You gotta start soon," he says.
The doctor frowns. "We need to evaluate your condition."
"Fuck my condition. Can't feel my left foot."
The frown deepens. "You are... losing the feeling in various limbs? When did this start?" She leans forward in her seat. Had she come closer to cracking the enigma that was the Joker?
"Dunno. Always been like this. He leaves, I wither."
"Who?" 'Remember the first rule the staff gave you,' one half of her mind says warningly. 'Knoweldge!' the other half screams. "The, ah, Bat Man?"
There is a barely audible crack.
She hears it.
The Joker has leant his head backwards. "Darling." Then he cracks his head to both sides and stares directly at her, eyes and mouth inhumanly wide, and his previously dead foot start tramping at the floor like a hare's. "You're Sallie Myrtle, yeah? England? Mother to Thomas? Angelic. Little. Thomas. Blonde curls, fair skin, big baby blues..." She nearly falls backwards as he yanks his head forward, biting and barking, foam at the ends of his mouth. "If you don't get this over with soon I will hunt him down, lie underneath his bed, and eat him when he sleeps."
The thought is comical—had this not been the Joker.
The door slams shut after her. The Joker relaxes again, all signs of hysteria wearing off. He's blank again.
On Myrtle's way out, Ruth Adams delivers a tight little smile. Jeremiah had informed her of this, too. With acceptance from a foreign source, they can begin stage two.
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SUMMER
The intense city heat does not reach inside Arkham walls. Especially not in the deepest, darkest place of them all; an operating room, specially made to serve a single purpose.
The Joker thinks of boiling concrete and oil slips and tar.
He reaches up with a hand supposed to be bound and scratches his chin, eyes half-lidded. His legs stopped functioning eight weeks ago. His left arm, too. They still insist on binding him though, and making him eat and shit through tubes. If he moves, they'll go snap! snap! snap! like delicious spines breaking or an umbilical cord being torn. 'Mother,' he thinks hazily. Arkham moves through his body like a cold gush. He shudders.
"Are you cold, Mr. Joker?" an anaesthetist asks. She holds up a shot, thin and long, and squirts twice. An assistant inserts it into the Joker's arm. The guards around them watch carefully. "We'll have to administer a few more doses, and then you'll feel nothing at all."
The cosmetic surgeons await orders. It is two different areas, cosmetics and anaesthesia. But to get this correct, they have to work together under these circumstances. They have all written contracts that this will never leave the room. The head of Arkham Asylum—Jeremiah Arkham—has gotten all the things they need. Yet the unruly stonewalls, the constant dripping and the symbols scratched into walls all unnerve them greatly. The place looks like a catacomb. "Don't worry," Dr. Arkham had drawls, standing behind a glass wall, "they haven't been used as cells since... I don't know, actually. Heh. Maybe they forgot that there was someone down here." No one laughs. The roof continues to drip.
Madness, pouring.
"Out. Out out out," the Joker mumbles lazily. "I want it out."
The assistant cannot stand to look at the bestial creature on the operating table. He thinks of the kindergarten incident where his niece had gone, and how she'd looked like when they found what remained of her.
He doesn't dispense another dose, even if it appears so.
"Should we start, then?"
They strap gauze masks on, nearing the patient. To their surprise, he jumps up, yelling, "Whahahahahy are the rats sad today?"
"Did you not give him enough sedation?"
The main anaesthetist turns to her assistant, sighing. Her colleagues scowl as well. The assistant grits his teeth. He's bitten his lip so much he's bleeding. "He deserves pain."
"AGONY and luv—e—li mmmadNES!"
"I told you to lay away your person attachments, Gautier. I'm sorry, Dr. Arkham."
"It's quite alright." He shrugs. "I don't mind. I only want you to complete the task."
"I won't work on a patient that's still conscious," another surgeon says.
"Do whatever you feel like." Dr. Arkham is short, bespectacled and gaunt, but very dangerous. "But I am not paying you to argue amongst each other."
When the Joker finally does become unconscious, he takes enough to take out a small elephant. "Is it the madness?" wonder those with an interest in neuroscience, but remembers that they are not here to learn. They are here to fix, fix, fix. Patch him up. And patch it, they do. They even whiten his fucking teeth.
He receives a new face. A new life. Rebirth.
And under their knives, the Joker disappears.
(This is what they forget: The heart—core, centre, soul—remains.
Arkham knows, and smiles.)
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AUTUMN
He sits very, very still. His back is straight. Hands in his lap. He's memorized all of this and knows each answer on the sheet. If you repeat it enough, it becomes truth.
"Now then... Tell us about yourself," the loudspeakers demand.
It's weird, talking to a wall—but he's gotten used to it through lots and lots and training sessions. Tests. Questions.
"My name is Jack. Jack Napier, or Anderson, or Earle, or Lachlan, depending who is asking. Uh, nice to meet ya— I mean you, nice to meet you. I'm in my mid thirties. Grew up at an orphanage, so I'm not sure about my birthday. I could be anywhere from my mid twenties and up. Don't ask me about my past, please. The bullying has caused my social awkwardness. My main interests are gardening, cooking and... reality shows. I work at Darling Buds, a flower boutique. I rent one of the apartments above it. Had a girlfriend for a couple of years, but we, um, grew apart. I guess I'm just an average guy."
"Very good Jack. You've nearly managed to destroy your street accent. Remember to start sentences with pronouns and not verbs. Don't pause; don't say uh or um. Except that, you've made great progress."
"Thanks. Thank you. Really." He runs his hand through his hair. It's a bit dry after his last dye job. And the bleaching before that. They've finally removed all the bandages though. He's still thin, but they've increased his BMI up from underweight.
"Are there any questions?"
"I got one." He chews on the inside of his cheek, but stops himself because he knows he's not supposed to. "I'm... I'm getting better, am I not? You said that was the purpose of all this. To get better."
"Certainly. Why, I think you're almost complete."
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WINTER
You'd imagine something more clichéd:
Doctors smiling and waving him off. He would carry two suitcases and a sheet detailing his new part time job. In his jeans pocket there'd be an apartment key and public transport card. Little things that'd help him start anew. He'd waved back at them as he left.
That's... not how it goes.
Instead, six trained men escort him in the prisoner transport vehicle disguised as an ice truck. It is bulletproof, has wire mesh over the windows, and additional seating for the accompanying officers. The man—prisoner, as of yet—they watch intently sits huddled in a corner. He does not speak. He wonders what he did to make these men look at him with such hatred. His new things await him in the apartment.
The doctors still smile though.
'Finally,' Ruth thinks, and smokes a cigarette. 'No longer our problem.'
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Batman shows up about a week later.