Mommy's unlocking the door. She's screaming something but her words are so slurred I can't understand anything she's saying at all. I'm scared because she sounds angry.

"Our trip has been changed to another date," she says as she climbs the stairs, tripping over one. She's carrying a skillet.

"When?" I ask. I stand from the corner of the attic where I carved the first chapter of my autobiography into the wood wall. I figure if I am to die up here, I'll leave my story here for the police to see. Then Mommy won't be able to say I fell down the stairs or I got into a fight at school (even though I'm not registered to any school) to explain my deep blue bruises and oozing scabs.

"Today."

She raises the skillet over her head and it comes down hard on my skull. I fall to the floor as thick liquid runs down my cheek and pools around my head. She stands over me, watching the opaque liquid run into my eye and on my lip.

And then.

Nothing.

Joker's PoV
I've just caused the biggest pile up in Gotham history! It's truly amazing what one can do with two toy guns and a can of black spray paint. A few blocks from here on a busy main street, I ran into the street as cars zoomed past and I simply held up the toy guns. One driver slammed on the brakes, his car turning sideways. Then he was t-boned by another car. That car was hit by another car and in the end, a total of 21 cars all driving at 45+ miles per hour came to an abrupt stop all because of me.

It was a ripple effect. One small event grew into a colossal disaster.

"Holy shit!" I yell as a green Taurus skids past me over in the empty pavement. "Watch it, dick weed!"

Screaming after the car hurts my cheeks. Like, a lot. I feel the bandage on my right cheek and look at my fingers, stained with dark red blood.

"Great," I sigh. These things will never go away if I don't stop the bullshit.

The green Taurus stops two blocks up and panic rises in my throat. Getting beat up is not on my agenda tonight.

The passanger door opens and a limp body spills out onto the sidewalk. The panic subsides and I chuckle at the body, relieved it's just a normal body drop-off. I walk in it's direction, figuring I'll spray a smile on it's face when the car speeds away. When I'm about a block from it, I see that the body is far too small to be an adult's.

"This could be more fun than I thought," I say to myself, breaking into a run.

I reach the body, finding it's a girl. Nine or ten years old at the most. She has long black hair that is matted to her scalp with dried brown blood and she's wearing a blue flannel. She has a black eye and a bruised cheek. I walk around her and my smiles fades. She isn't wearing any underwear.

The sane part of me, or what's left of it, takes over then.

My PoV
I wake up in a strange room. It's old and dirty. I'm laying on an old, yellow mattress on the floor that smells like sweat and mold and cigarettes. I sit up quickly and look around the room. The wallpaper is old and peeling. There are a few wooden crates on the floor and an armoire that seems ancient. The ceiling is spotted with dripping yellow pimples where it leaks rain water onto the ruined rug.

Is this the trip? I think, stepping out of the sheets that cover me. There is a paper crunch under my foot that startles me back under the covers, huddled into myself. I stay for a few seconds, fighting the urge to scream. I look out again, finding a little brown paper bag. Inside is a pair of panties in a plastic package from the store. I slip them on and move my hips, immediately regretting ever having put them on. They're soft, with a little ribbon bow on the front, but they're constrictive. I suppose months of being without underwear has changed my perspective on them.

I step into the dark hall and follow my ears. There is a sound of feet in a room to my right. With moonlight pouring through the partially boarded windows I have just enough light to make my way around. The door is open a crack and suddenly a light turns on inside. I recoil towards a railing to a flight of stairs that lead to a level below. The door swings open and a sillhouette stands on the other side. A watery squeak escapes my lips and I run back to the room I woke up in, slamming the door behind me. My heart is pounding so hard, I figure the person can hear it outside my door. I sit in the room for hours in fear that the door will open and the figure will hurt me. Eventually I fall asleep again without a single dream.

Sunlight flows through the cracks in the boarded windows when I wake. The door opens a crack and a small, blue plastic package falls into the room.

"I figured you might be hungry," a deep male voice says. "I got that for you."

"How long have I been here?" I ask, my voice dry and meek.

"2 days."

That's it. It's been a full week since I've eaten. I must be dying.

The door closes and I run over to the little blue package, trying with everything in me to tear the plastic and get to the marshmallow treat inside. I can't, though. It just won't open. I begin to cry and growl in frustration. The tears are hot against my cheeks as they roll to my chin and drop on the floor. A strange thought comes to my head then and I can't help but laugh at it.

"I haven't eaten in a full week and now that I have food, I can't even eat it!" I say to myself. The laughter grows and I fall onto the mattress. After a while, the laughter settles. The hunger pangs in my stomach come again and I roll onto my side. Soon, I'm crying again.
After 10 minutes, when I'm completely calm, I try again to open the package, my hands shaking with excitement.

Suddenly, it's open. But there is no treat inside. Not anymore. I ate it in two bites. But I'm still hungry.

I sit in the room for a few hours, the house completely silent. When there is a noise downstairs, I emerge from the room to find whomever gave me the food. I walk down the rotting steps, the third swallowing my foot. I give a yelp and force it back out, a splinter plunging into the soft flesh of my ankle. I walk carefully down the rest of the stairs and into a foyer that might've been nice thirty or so years ago.

"Hello?" I call. My brother, Robby, used to listen to a song by Pink Floyd called Comfortably Numb. This is how it went: "Hello? Is anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me?" I shout into the house.

"Is there anyone home?" says the voice from before, finishing my quote. I turn around quickly, almost making myself dizzy, to see a boy. The boy. From the other day. The one with the patches on his face. The one I'd admired so much before.

"What's your name?" he says, smiling like a pack of dogs before raw meat.
I begin to wonder if I should tell a complete stranger my name. That is what grown-ups usually tell kids, right? Not to tell strangers your name? I'll give him a fake one, I think, Like a nickname.

One time, Mommy and Daddy took me to an arcade. It was supposed to be really fun; a day just for us. But Mommy and Daddy ended up fighting the whole time. Mommy told me to stay while she talked to Daddy in the car.

"Stay right here and I'll be back in just a few minutes, I promise. Don't talk to anyone you don't know," she had said.

I stayed where she left me for three hours, wondering when she was going to come back. A man with a teddy bear came to me and asked me if I wanted it. I didn't answer him. Mommy told me not to talk to people I didn't know, and I was sure this man was a stranger.

"Don't be afraid," the man said. "Your mom told me to take you home. She and your daddy got into an accident and they sent me to pick you up."

"Are they okay?" I asked, oblivious to his lie.

"They're fine, but you have to come with me."

I began walking with the man. He took me outside and we were heading to his car when I heard my name. I looked around.

It was mommy, perfectly fine. Her head poking out of the window of her car.

"What are you doing?" she screamed, opening her door and running to us.

The man grabbed my arm and began tugging me. I was scared, so I shrieked and pulled away from him. He opened the back door to his car and tried pulling me in, but I bit his arm, locking my jaws as hard as I could. He yelled and threw me on the ground.

My mom was there then. She picked me up and told me to go to the car. I ran, but I heard my mommy punching the man, and the man shouting at her to stop.

She came to the car and sat in the driver's seat. Daddy was gone.

"He took the bus home," she said, as if she could read my mind.

She lit a cigarette.

"I won't let anyone else hurt you," she said. "I promise."

A week later Daddy left us and Mommy started drinking alcohol everyday and hitting me.

"Promise," I say. "My name is Promise."

For all the promises my mother never kept.

The boy's grin fades after a second, as though he was thinking very hard. "You can call me... Joker," he says, and I get a sense that he just made the name up now like I did.

"Why do you want me to call you Joker?" I say, scrunching my nose as though the name stinks.

"Why do you want me call you Promise?" he asks, backing me into a mental wall.

Touché.

I shake my head.

"So then, I take it you'll be staying?" he sits on the steps, propping himself up on his elbows.

"So long as you're here," I say. His face contorts in confusion. "I like your patches," I say, touching my cheeks, "I'm not the only one with problems, you know?"

He raises his hand to his cheek and stares at the floor. He stands suddenly and starts towards me, his hand in his pocket. He gets a little too close for comfort and I begin backing away from him. Pretty soon, I'm pressed into a corner. His hand emerges from his pocket holding a blue boxcutter. "You wanna know how I got these patches?" he says, brushing a strand of blood-stained hair from my face with the razor.

My heart is pounding and dispite it, I can utter one small word. "Yes."

"Good," he says, his left hand holding the back of my neck firmly. His tongue flicks out over his bottom lip.

"I haven't slept for 3 months because of horrific nightmares. Cannibals with big frowning faces, full of sharp teeth. They'd chase me at top speed but my legs wouldn't work. I'd watch as they picked my flesh from my bones piece by piece. I stopped sleeping entirely after the doctor wouldn't give me meds. So I figured, so long as I'm happy, the frowning faces will go away. I'll be free.

"I put this razor in my mouth," he slips the razor between my lips and touches it to my left cheek, making me gasp, "and I ripped it through my skin. Now, as you can see, I have a permanent smile. But the fucking faces don't go away," he says through gritted teeth. After a moment, his face relaxes and he slips the razor out of my mouth. He sits on the steps again and drops his head in his hands. I sit next to him and fold my arms.

"That's it?" I ask.

"What?" he looks at me through narrowed eyes.

"If I hadn't met you today would've been a full week that I haven't eaten anything. The only thing I've been drinking is toilet water and my own blood. I've broken both my arms, my right leg, three fingers on my left hand, and all but 2 of my ribs. I have been abused, neglected, and abandoned and the only thing I've ever done to myself is bitten through the skin of my cheek."

He was staring at me with a grin again.

"You have a few bad dreams and suddenly, your life is shit?"

"What are you getting at, toots?" he says, his grin becoming wider. I stare straight in his eyes. They're chocolate brown.

"There's still plenty of sanity left in you."

A/N: Honestly, I hate revising old stories. It hurts to see how poorly I used to write! And I see how many people have read the first chapter, yet mysteriously, there are no reviews... Odd! please review!