She hated writing stories about damsels in distress. The helpless damsels always reminded her of herself and her mother, and the striking prince that never came to help them. In her story, the evil holding the damsel always won.

Her life didn't start out bad. She lived in Buffalo, New York with her father, an intelligent and handsome professor of literature, and her mother, a successful children's book writer. In the happier days of her childhood, her mother would take her along to her book signings and promotions. Her mother's most famous character was Little Elizabeth, who she named after her. Sometimes her father, much to her mother's dismay, would read her some of the literature he assigned for his classes. Her favorite story was Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. Sometimes if she tried, Elizabeth could still picture what they all used to look like. Her dark skinned and curly haired mother with the most glowing and beautiful smile in the world, and her fair father with the classy smirk, dark hair and green eyes. She could picture a smaller version of herself standing between the two of them sometimes as well. She looked like the happiest kid in the world. Her complexion a mixture between the two of them, a smile that couldn't hold a candle to her mothers, wavy brown hair, and her father's eyes. In this image, they all looked happy, and for the first few years of her life they were. It was not until she reached the age of eight when things started to change.

Her father had been working his hardest to earn tenure status, but when he failed her mother noticed some changes in his behavior. He began to manage his stress through alcohol, and he began to come home from work later and later leaving both her and Elizabeth worried. One day she made the mistake of questioning his whereabouts and scolding him for making his family feel anxious. He responded to her violently by smacking her across the face and shoving her into the wall. Elizabeth would never forget this image of her mother's nose broken, bloody, and disfigured. She would never forget her mother's soft and helpless weeps. She would never forget her father apologizing over and over again for what he did. Lastly, no matter how much she tried, she would never forget about how scared she was of her own father when he turned his attention to her to embrace her and apologize to her as well. As soon as he stretched his arms towards her, she turned and ran to her room to shut the door and hide. She would never look at him the same ever again.

For the next two years she would watch helplessly as her father continued to physically and psychologically harm her mother. Sometimes she ran out of the house when it happened, not really knowing where she was going. She just needed to get away. Sometimes she couldn't even run. There were times when it got so bad that she would just freeze. It was like she was not even there when he did it most of the time. He acted like she didn't even exist when he cursed, kicked, shouted, and hit her mother. Afterwards he would always apologize to both of them, but after the first few times Elizabeth stopped believing him.

One day while her father was at work, she and her mother were visited by one of her father's young students. Elizabeth would never forget exactly what she looked like, but she remembered thinking she was very pretty. She looked like the kind of girl she hoped to be when she got older; smart, pretty, and approachable. The young woman looked taken aback when she answered the door, but she gave her a smile that almost seemed forced. Elizabeth could tell that she didn't mean the smile, and there was something not right about it. It was the kind of smile she would make when she knew she had done something wrong. When she told her mother that there was a young woman who said she was one of "daddy's kids" she was told to go to her room and read until she and the young woman were finished talking. Elizabeth went to her room only long enough to know the coast was clear, and she stood outside of the room the two women occupied and listened in on the conversation. This is how she found out that her father had been unfaithful to her mother for at least a year.

Her mother had gathered up a little courage as she waited for her father to come home. Once he did, she confronted him about the affair and said that he could hit her if he wanted and that it wouldn't change her decision to leave and take Elizabeth with her. He didn't hit her, but he pleaded for her to changer her mind. He told her he loved her, and that he would never be unfaithful or touch her violently ever again. When her mother stood her ground, her father went from a weak apologetic man to a vile and manipulative man who threatened to kill himself if she left and took his only daughter with him. This was enough to scare her mother into staying with him and continue to be abused.

By the time Elizabeth reached the age of fifteen reading and writing became a way for her to escape her life. She joined numerous clubs and participated in many after school activities not only because she enjoyed them, but because it prolonged her having to go home. When there was absolutely nothing else she can do to keep herself away from home she spent her time at the library gathering books hoping to escape or gain inspiration to create her own escapes.

When she was eighteen she entered a story she wrote in a creative writing contest and won first place along with the reward of a full ride scholarship to Gotham University, one of the top schools in the country. Her mother was pleased and proud and wanted to plan a night in which the three of them would go out to dinner. Elizabeth, however, insisted that it just be the two of them and that she would pay with the money she earned from working at the library. Her mother felt uneasy about this, but Elizabeth assured her that her father would never find out about it unless the told him because he would probably be too busy at work anyway. Even though she hated him, she did not want to speak negatively about him to her mother. Their nice dinner at her favorite restaurant would be her fondest and one of her final memories of her mother.

About a month before she left for school, her father did the unspeakable and hit her. This was after a late night out with her friends as a 'last good bye.' The moment she walked into the door of their house he was in her face shouting at her and questioning where she had been so long. When she tried to stand up for herself by shouting back he smacked her so hard across the face that she fell backwards and into a wall. That was enough for her mother. Her mother faced her father and shouted at him. She could not remember much of what her mother said besides, "That's it! That's the final straw! I let you put your hands on me for ten years, but I will be damned if I let you do the same to her!" Her father stood their silently with an unreadable expression on his face that chilled her. Her mother told her to leave the house and sleep over with one of her friends, and she did as her mother said.

When Elizabeth woke the next morning she walked into her friend's living room to see her parents speaking to a police officer. Her friend's mother was sobbing. Before asking, Elizabeth somehow knew it was about her parents. The cop had her sit down and revealed to her that her father had finally snapped and stabbed her mother several times before turning the knife on himself. While he managed to brutally murder her mother, his suicide attempt failed and he was taken into to custody. Elizabeth had never cried so much in her life, and she knew that she would never forgive herself for leaving the house when she did.

When she left for college she never returned to Buffalo; not even to visit her cold hearted father in prison who continued to write her letters that would remain unanswered. She continued to write throughout college, but her work was only published by independent companies that did not pay well. After graduating, she continued school to work to get her masters degree in creative writing while working as a librarian assistant. Although she had failed so far, she continued to dream about becoming a children's writer like her mother.

Things were slowly starting to become somewhat normal for her.

That is, until she was asked to volunteer reading at Gotham Children's Hospital and Arkham Asylum.