Many apologies about how long this has taken to get up – but I have been going through writing waves, and each wave seems to have me produce not one, but multiple chapters, with me going back to previous ones to be sure of continuity as well as make occasional touch-ups and revisions. It's a strange process.
But yes, I hope you all enjoy.
. . .
CHAPTER 7: STORIES AND SENSATIONS
In the beginning, there is no Batman.
She remembers this. She can see it clearly, like a waking dream.
She recalls how, even as an innocent adolescent she could still see it in the headlines of the papers and on the Gotham City news every night at six.
Fourth victim found this month, police dragged the river for the missing man, woman found raped and stabbed in alleyway, student sent to Arkham after several pistols were found in locker, Thomas and Martha Wayne murdered in front of son's eyes. The statistics of it were even more frightening; sixty precent of Gotham youths addicted to some form of narcotic, forty precent of Gotham police force corrupt, crime in Gotham up eighty precent in last decade.
In the beginning, there was no Batman, and Martha knew well enough not to play outside at night, or outside at all for that matter. She knew not to talk to strangers, not to get in cars with strangers, and she knew what areas of the city to avoid when she went exploring with her friends from school. She knew how to stay safe. Her parents reminded her consistently, and maybe that was because they cared about her. Or, maybe it was because, by then, the city has already gotten to her older brother, Matthew. Maybe it was because, by then, he had already been claimed by the corruption that seemed to touch every house on every road, despite the wealth of the collective community, or location of the neighborhood.
Sitting here now, in the dilapidated delicatessen, reliving her painful history with a madman, Martha remembers how it began simply enough.
She tells The Joker about how Matthew was sixteen by the time she was twelve, and how her parents had already started getting calls from the principal regarding Matthew's repeated absences from class. It takes Martha some time before she can finally blurt out that her brother's playing hookie was the least of it.
He had been a good kid up until then. She does her best to stick up for him. Even now, as an adult, she stills paints the prettiest, most forgiving picture she can. He was smart, kind, as polite as any young boy could allow himself to be without meriting the torment of his peers. He had been a good kid up until he'd changed, a transformation so abrupt and so extreme in it's lack of logic that nobody could wager a sane guess as to what exactly had happened. This lack of explanation had made it all the more painful to accept.
Whereas, in the beginning Matthew had been energetic and extroverted, after the change he became withdrawn, quiet, easily agitated.
Slowly, Martha tells the Joker about how she lost her brother.
Things around the house started to go missing. Little things at first, things nobody would easily notice like the bigger bills out of various wallets, or the blender that nobody ever used. Then the more noticeable kitchen appliances, like that toaster and waffle-maker. And at last, the big electronics, like dad's VCR and surround-sound speakers, and mom's hairdryer and portable walkman. Finally, Martha's toy oven that would occasionally provide her with a distraction from boredom followed by a miniature cupcake or brownie.
Matthew was not brought to specialists, that option was unaffordable. He was given speech after speech, warning after warning, chance after chance. No ultimatum or offering would suffice. Instead, things came to a head when he managed to get arrested after trying, and failing, to extract a stereo system from a locked car approximately two blocks down from the local pharmacy where their father worked.
This first incident was heart breaking, and nearly tore the family apart. But the ones that followed weren't any less unsettling.
Juvenile hall became Matthew's home away from home for the next few years. His life followed a routine that exceeded predictability. Matthew would be released to a wary father and forgiving mother, and not less than a week or two later he would break their hearts and fragile hopes with yet another failed attempt at second-rate theft, which would always result in another round at juvi. The cycle was stuck on repeat. Nevertheless, Martha took to writing her brother religiously during his bouts of imprisonment. She never received a response.
At the age of eighteen Matthew ran away.
Martha caught him that night on his way out, and was bright enough to see the packed duffle bag slung mysteriously over his shoulder and suspect that something was not right. But no reply was given to her pained inquiry. She did not try to stop him, and when she woke the next morning to the hysterics of her mother and fury of her father, she feigned curiosity and kept her mouth more or less shut. She was fourteen when he left.
Six years later saw her as an early graduate, youngest in her class at Gotham Community College, a small, underfunded university on the edge of the narrows. Scholarships had seen her through to receiving a diploma in maths and business, and it took her less than a year following her graduation to secure a part-time position as a bank teller at Gotham 1st National.
In her life, all the things Martha had ever strived for were redundantly bland. But there was a purpose to this. She can not begin to explain it to The Joker because, even now, she has great difficulty in analyzing a quarter of a lifetime of personal decisions. All she can say is that she wanted predictability, and stability. She omits the part about wanting control. The Joker already knows this. She knows he already knows this, and by now it's irrelevant.
But what she does say in the end is that she only ever wanted to avoid ending up like Matthew.
At first she ignored the whispers. Other employees liked to talk. Some of them had actual information to back up their stories. Gotham 1st National was a haven for criminals. She wasn't blind to the fact, but at first she chose to ignore it. Until her third year promotion, when they put her in charge of the Falconi account. She was reluctant, at first, but succeeding a short meeting with Mr. Dominick (who calmly told her to act like a professional), she decided to take the promotion and do her best, despite her nagging conscience. After a while, she got used to it.
She sits back a moment and wonders.
If something bad happens to a person, and if that badness lasts, like cancer or addiction, does that person learn to live with it? Does that person adapt? She thinks about the dreams she's been having, the dreams that have been keeping her wide awake at night, and compares them to that first promotion. How similar. She shivers and tells The Joker about how the telephone call came on a Tuesday night. She has no explanation as to why or how she can remember the day. It isn't significant and she supposes she only really remembers the minute detail of the day because of the importance of the call that occurred on it.
Matthew had spoken in hasty, shaky breaths, puffing out words that Martha could not comprehend.
She sums it up bluntly.
He had gotten in with the Falconi family. Somehow. And something had gone wrong. Somehow.
He had needed a place to sleep. A place to hide. She hadn't had a choice. When he came to her she had asked not a single question – she didn't want to know, and he had no words for her. Too much of a gap in both age and time had left them both hesitant to talk. She thinks back on it. Even if she had proposed a dialogue, there would never have been enough time to complete it to a satisfying degree.
It had happened a matter of days following his initial arrival. A pair of men in well tailored suits had come to her house at two in the morning (the day escapes her) and politely asked to see Matthew. She had known right away who they were, and could sense instantly that they would not believe any lie she could try to tell about the supposed whereabouts of her brother. So she had let them come in, and she had let them have Matthew. The ruckus had been almost cartoonish in it's volume and physicality. Dishes and pans had been throne, the table had been knocked over, a window had been broken. She wonders even now why her neighbors had never bothered to call the police about the disturbance.
She tells The Joker about how she had watched the men drag her brother out of her home, kicking and screaming and hoarsely cursing her name with each violent yank. She considers it her one other whiteness of death, besides the quick ends seen by The Joker's men. And far more disturbing as well.
"I'll try harder." says The Joker.
At any rate, she never saw her brother again.
Three days later she had come into work to see a vase of long, red roses sitting on her desk. There had been no card. She had known right away what message the sympathy flowers represented, and left work soon after, complaining of stomach pains. She had taken the flowers with her to be safe. She did not take the bus home but she walked in a haze of numbness, not unlike what has overcome her now. It is partially comforting, as it had been then. She could recall how all other noises, the commotion of cars and passersby alike, had been drowned out by the thoughts in her head, and how her guilt had been so overwhelming that, eventually, her mind had just shut down. Some sort of self defense mechanism, pathetic in it's simplicity. But the main thoughts, the truly important ones, still remained, haunting her with each heavy footstep back to her home.
She could have – should have done more for her brother. She should have lied, tried to lie, to Falconi's men when they were at her door. She should have never accepted that promotion at the bank (that was likely how they found her, how they drew the conclusion that she was hiding him). She should have called out for her father when she saw her brother trying to leave all those years ago. She should have called for her neighbors when they started to drag him away.
That night she had unplugged the phone and drawn the curtains, but neglected to lock her doors. An hour later found her in the bathroom, crumpled on the tile floor with her wrists cut, the apple peeler lying a few feet away from her as the blood began to pool.
She does not go in to detail. It is painful enough to recite in the briefest of summaries. The things she saw as the life drained slowly out of her were so intense they defied description. Like some deranged drug trip, she was whiteness to all manner of fault in the universe, and the peak of corruption and violence were represented by a shower of deep red rose petals, a magnificent hallucination which gave her no want to continue living. Needless to say, she tells him about how her neighbor, Andrew, wanting to barrow some god forsaken item (a pot or pan or probably sugar, she couldn't be sure) had wandered in and eventually found her there, at her worst and almost dead.
"He was lovely." She explains, words sounding empty. "He stayed remarkably calm. I could never have been so calm like that."
She takes a moment to reflect on it, and then continues.
The time spent at the hospital psychiatric ward had been embarrassing. They had set a nurse to watch her like a hawk, scanning for repeated attempts. She had found it ludicrous at the time, but she had been thankful for two things. Firstly, they did not call her mother (her father was dead by this point, heart attack in his sleep), and Andrew was not one for gossip, especially concerning such personal matters. And second, they did not send her to Arkham for evaluation. The horror stories she had heard about Arkham were far more frightening than anything she could fathom.
"You've got no idea, kid-o." The Joker pipes in, scowling.
After about a month under surveillance she was released. Mr. Dominick was very understanding, although, as far as he knew she had been stricken with a severe case of bronchitis which had called for her to be hospitalized. Nobody asked her about her sudden change of outfits, though. Long sleeves that reached down to the knuckles, even in summer.
She stops again, realizing that, all things considered, The Joker has been the first one to hear the whole story apart from Andrew, who was more of a whiteness than an audience. She thinks about what this means, how it alters their relationship. They're finally on level playing ground. As level as it can get, in this sort of situation.
After the episode she had thrown herself into her job, and understandably so. She had focused on the routine, on the continuity, the monotony of her every day life until a year and a half had passed and she had pleasantly covered up her little indiscretion in her head. It never bothered her after that, tending to the accounts of crooks and thieves, of the men who took her brother early in life, and the ones who were most likely responsible for his childhood corruption. And she had found it all delightfully fitting that, a year from her supposed self recovery, such a guilty soul as herself should wind up the captive of a truly sadistic individual like The Joker.
"And that's all." She finishes coldly, wrapping her sleeves down around her wrists as best she can.
"And that's all." He repeats, a hint of mimic in his otherwise deep tone of voice.
She eyes him for a time, studying him. She is so tired. Finally, she says "Go away now. I want to sleep."
His expression is one of total indignation mingled with shocked delight. He quickly stands, bows, and leaves the room. She does not stop to evaluate his reaction to her command – was it a command, or a request? She doesn't stop to review this either. She simply lays down, finding the couch an incomparable comfort, and passes out.
The lack of dreams is both relieving as well as unexpected. If Martha had allowed time to become relevant again she would be able to take comfort in the fact that she's slept for a day and a half. Miraculously, The Joker does not disturb her. Not that it would have registered, but still, he decides, for once, to be kind.
When she wakes she feels refreshed, both mentally and physically. She pulls the blankets slowly off and stands, observing her surroundings clearly for the first time in what feels like centuries. It's as though a weight has been lifted. She walks around, feeling the dirty floor under her feet, sniffing at the dusty air, grimacing at the stench of something rotten and decaying, most likely a rat caracas nailed to the wall (or the food The Joker had previously sent sailing across the room). She does a few paces around the cellar, stretches, coughs to clear her throat. She feels strangely empowered, like she could run a marathon or punch a champion boxer and escape the ring unscathed.
She drops to her haunches and surveys the room from a new angle, eventually peeking under the couch until her eyes fall on the old place-mats and crayons. She crawls over and withdraws them, staring blankly from one item to the next until, suddenly, something clicks. Eureka. It's a phenomenal sensation, the epiphany that spontaneously lights up her brain like a Christmas tree, pure beauty and inspiring. She can see it now, more clearly than in the beginning, when it was fear and lack of control that occupied her nervous mind. She can see it like a puzzle, but as if from the prospective of one of the many, many pieces. She can see how it all fits together, how she fits within the picture.
She goes swiftly to the door and starts to bang with her firsts until, at last, somebody comes. When she hears the footsteps she slides her key under and listens for the unlocking noises. The door swings open to reveal a goon, common place with a sloping brown and a scab over his left cheek. He hands her back the key, looking impatient.
"I want to see him." She demands.
The goon scoffs, says nothing, goes to close the door. She's at the edge and pushing to keep it open. She makes the demand again, this time loudly, and for a moment the goon simply looks at her. Eventually, he nods, once, and she backs away. With that the goon is gone and the door is shut again.
She waits. Pacing back and forth in the office, she waits for what feels like hours. After some time she hears more footsteps. She is astonished to realize that she is able to recognize them as his. How much time must she have spent with this man to know him by the sound of heel and toe alone?
In an instant none of that matters, and he's in the room with her, arms crossed tightly over his chest and a stern, angry-teacher look on his freshly painted face. Moments pass as he eyes her up, with her simply standing there, suddenly aware of the imposition she must have caused him. She wonders if he was sleeping, if the goon woke him. She wonders what he will do to her now that sense has returned to her.
"Well . . . " He begins crisply, "We're waiting."
She takes a cautious step forward and a deep breath in. She exhales, pale faced and straightaway on her guard.
"Colmany on the corner of 22nd Street and Persian." She says frankly. He simply stares. "You'll need men on the roof, won't you? It would take too long to have them come in from the ground floor and try to climb up. You'll want them there right away to cut the main power to the vault and alarms. You'll want them on the roof to begin with. That way your ground team can manage things on the office floor without difficulty. Colmany is the closest building there, and you're lucky because it's full of apartments. There's got to be an empty one."
His head dips slightly, and she can tell he's mulling it over.
"So what, then? Are my men supposed to fly from one rooftop to another? Leap out of some apartment window and swoosh over like the Batman?" He asks her, tone dripping with derision.
"I don't know. I don't know." She admits, faltering. "Ropes, maybe. Like a swing cable. I don't know, maybe that's how the Batman does it." She shakes her head, frowning.
He grins, eyes narrowing, and approaches her. He puts his hand on her shoulder and she bristles when he leans in close, preparing to whisper something in to her ear.
"What could you possibly know about the Batman?" He sneers giddily.
She shakes her head again, saying nothing. He leans back and looks at her, searching.
"Say, I got a question for you, girly-girl. What about me? How do you know I'm not the Batman?"
She blinks at him, and his grin widens.
"You can't be." She says plainly. "You're on the opposite end of the spectrum."
It is a bold thing to say, and he takes it well.
"Oh?"
"You're a different planet in the same solar system." She explains, and he chuckles, impressed.
"And what does that make you, Martha? Some poor astronaut who got sucked into the black hole?"
She doesn't answer.
He slaps her, hard. She falls away from him, face stinging, but he lurches out and grabs her like a kind of praying mantis, violently dragging her back to him.
"I love it, Martha! Your little plan! I just L-O-V-E love it with a million tiny throbbing hearts! But don't you dare – Don't you DARE try and presume to tell me that I haven't already thought of that. Don't you dare, Martha." He warns, deadly and vicious.
"But you hadn't!" She argues shakily, beyond the point of caring. He's just a man with scars, and she's already shown him hers. "You hadn't thought of it, had you! I know you hadn't because I read it in your face!"
"Oh? Did you really? You read me like a good old text book, did you? Yeah, I'll bet you did. Well, that's a shame, Martha. That means I'm becoming predictable. I'll just have to change that, now won't I."
She doesn't see him remove the knife from his trouser pocket.
"You can let me go now." She reasons, "What I said about Colmany – that solves you're problem. That and the god damned school buses. You can rob the bank and get away with it. How can I predict you if I'm not around? You can just let me go!"
He brings the knife up quickly, like a snake bite. She screeches as it nicks her cheek, but he doesn't let her back away.
"You won't tell a soul? You won't go back to the bank? You'll leave town, Martha? Will you leave town?" He asks her, screaming hysterically in to her ear. Before she can answer he slams his face against her cheek and suddenly she can feel his tongue darting out, hot and slick against her skin, lapping away the small trickle of blood the cut has provided.
She jerks away, eyes wide, face burning. She sees the blood on the tip of his tongue as it recedes back in to his mouth, and she is more angry than afraid now. She is angry and, what is that? Aroused? Did she feel – no, it couldn't be. She shakes her head, focusing on the anger. How dare he damage her face, how dare he humiliate her this way. She's seconds away from disregarding the knife entirely, and kicking at his shins as hard as she can but then she's on the floor, he's pushed her away and she's stumbled back and tripped over herself. She looks up at him, one last hateful glance, as he backs away toward the door. She gawks. Impossible. Is he shaking? Is that disgust on his face? It can't be. It must be the adrenaline. It has to be.
He points the knife at himself and then down at her.
"To be continued, faithful viewers. Next episode, next episode." Is all he says before leaving.
She screams, guttural, raging, and draws her sleeve over her cheek repeatedly, wiping away his saliva until her face is as dry as a bone. She flips the coffee table over, rips the place-mats, breaks the crayons. She throws old glasses of water he's left in her dungeon for her hydration, hurling them with all her strength at the door. They burst apart in fireworks of glass and liquid, one after the other until there's a small wet puddle of broken shards at the base of the door. When her anger finally subsides she finds herself spent, and feebly returns to her bed. She does not receive food until the next day, and it is not brought to her by The Joker. In fact, The Joker does not return to her room for more than a week. New clothes, like the food, are delivered by different men at different times, and she is positive that these strange new rags have been procured in the same way but not by the same man.
Time passes.
One day she receives a book. An old, torn and tattered copy of Jack London's "Call of the Wild" concealed within a bundle of dirty sweaters. The book is hardly a fitting addition to her already cluttered surroundings, but when she opens it up to the first page she finds in bold red marker the word SORRY, scribbled in perhaps the most child-like handwriting imaginable over the title.
She places the book aside for a long while, contemplating the meaning behind The Joker's hidden note. Could he have been serious? Could he have meant it? Sorry for what? The argument regarding the Colmany building? Inflicting the wound to her cheek, or licking it clean? Or could it be that he was sorry for the whole rancid affair, the entire kidnapping escapade. Was The Joker even capable of feeling remorse? It was a better bet to assume it was all just one big joke to him, her suffering and disgrace at his hands.
Finally, she decides none of it is worth the effort anymore, and proceeds to read "Call of the Wild" from back to front over the course of several days. Just as she finishes with it, a new book is brought to her, a copy of Jane Austin's "Pride and Prejudice". No note this time, but the cover has been half burnt off leaving Jane without her dashing, yet agitating mate, Mr. Darcy. Martha does not see the meaning in this, and goes on to complete it in less than a day. The third book to arrive is "A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgres. This one does contain a note – not as short as the first, but still too short to derive a plausible hidden meaning.
THIS ONE'S MY FAVORITE.
She reads it and can instantly tell why.
Time continues to pass, and she is given more books to read. She starts to keep count of the days, judging as best she can by the repeating rotation of the men who bring her food. She gathers they're set to a well organized roster, and is thankful for that fact, as the small semblance of time that she has finally allowed to return to her also brings that feel of control back with it. She keeps track by jotting small lines down at the interior back cover of "A Clockwork Orange", hiding the book under the couch cushions whenever the men are about to enter.
She begins to feel less on edge, and more secure. Not entirely safe, but secure. Old urges begin to return – her sex drive reappears, to her astonishment. She discovers herself thinking about old coworkers she thought were handsome, past men in her life. A small fire has caught in her mind and each time she notices this reality she quickly attempts to douse the flame by reminding herself of her situation.
She starts to dream again. Not about The Joker, not at first. The dreams are fairly sexual in nature, and initially this reality greatly disturbs her. She is becoming far too comfortable again, and she knows it. But what can be done to rectify the problem? While the books provide some distraction, ultimately she gives in to her more primitive urges, not wishing to deprive herself of sleep a second time. She allows the dreams to happen and she allows herself to take pleasure in them, to an extent. The men in the dreams are faceless, and the acts they preform on her tend to take place outside the delicatessen. Sometimes at Gotham 1st National, other times at her house, in her own bed. They never mean much, the acts, but there's always something at the edge of each dream, a familiarity to each man that she glimpses here and there but can never quite make out. A hint of pale skin, a dash of red on the lips. Small things enough to take the erotic and twist it into the troubling.
On one or two occasions she wakes in the middle of the night to find her hand inching down her belly to preform certain wanton acts. Sometimes she stops herself, sometimes she keeps going (but only on the occasions when she is at best half awake). She has yet to allow herself the gratification of the entire act, however. She is too afraid, too disgusted with herself. To permit her body to behave in that way, to come to that inevitable conclusion here, in the decrepit wine cellar of the delicatessen is a thought she refuses to entertain.
Nevertheless, after a time she finds herself falling back to that frenzied exchange with her bleeding cheek, and her thoughts often turn to him and his tongue licking away the last remnants of her blood. She doesn't know why it's suddenly peaked her interest, and she can't for the life of her explain why the memory has started to arouse her. But she's learned from that first instance of sleep deprivation, she does nothing to block the unwanted thoughts. She wishes to remain clear-minded for the most part, even though he hasn't been to her in ages for information on the bank. It's more for herself than for anything or anyone else.
Martha also finds her mind dwindling on those first dreams featuring him. As though if on cue this seems to invite them back into her head, and once again she is plagued by that same vivid reoccurring dream of them together at the bank. Only now it is complete, and for the first time in who knows how many nights she experiences the entire dream, eye-opening in it's totality.
She is at Gotham 1st National again, serving the same long line of customers. He's back where he once was, on the other side of the counter, without his makeup, dressed in the same plain black suit and tie, looking so drab and ordinary it's almost funny.
He hands her the large bag marked with the dollar sign and she nods, takes the bag, and opens it to see the hand-drawn money colored with crayons. Same as always. After being handed the money he holds up the cardboard sign, the one with a large question mark painted on to it. She points across the bank to the vault, unable to determine just how many times she's pointed in the past. It all feels so nostalgic.
He starts to walk over, stops and shakes his head.
"No." He says, clear as crystal. "Show me."
She does not hesitate. She hastily rounds the counter and takes him by the hand, leading him along like a lost child through a crowd. They arrive at the vault and he reaches out. She watches as the door slowly opens, as if it had been waiting for his silent command. It swings ajar and she sees the interior of the vault, observes it's contents and starts to laugh wildly. There is no money, no gold and silver, no treasure to claim. There is no vault interior, only a vast and empty field below a cloudy gray sky. She goes to step out into the open, wanting so badly to walk on the grass. She can only imagine how cool and gentle and perfect it will feel against the skin of her bare feet. She kicks off her work shoes, preparing for the bliss of freedom, but something is holding her back. He is, and she crumples under the added pressure of his forcefully tight grip. He rolls her in to him like she's his dance partner, and clings tightly to her with a constricting embrace.
"No." He says again.
She feels small and childlike as he holds her.
"I like you too much." She hears him say.
She is starting to come out of it.
"I like you too much." He repeats, and the world around them begins to melt away into oblivion.
Martha Aiken is rousing again. She does not want to this time.
"Don't you get it?" Her mind's worth of an imitation asks her in a weak tone of voice. "You're my pet. None of the rest of it matters. The others, they're not companions. They're slaves. But you - you're my pet. And I'm your owner."
Just before she can wake up he does something that she has only been half expecting, as well as half dreading. He locks lips with her, if only for a brief second, but it is enough to create the wildest sensation in her. The kiss is just long enough to be described as passionate. The quality is superb, a mix of all too right and horrendously wrong (on the verge of being seductive in it's inappropriateness). She wakes, fully alert, and wants nothing more than to shove her hands south and produce that delightfully sinful gratification she has been craving for ages now.
But the frantic knocking on the opposite side of the door demands her immediate attention. When she slides the key under the door the last person she is expecting to unlock it is him, but when she sees his face in the real world so soon after her dizzying dream she nearly faints.
He says nothing and points at the couch. She sits, obedient as a dog.
The milk carton is a surprise.
Not just in it's cartoon-like strangeness, and not in the way he casually flings it at her, completely out of the blue like it's a surprise birthday gift, but how it represents a tremendous shock to her system, the second one in less than a day. When he throws the carton in her lap without comment and she looks down, it at first takes her a moment or two to realize. But when at last it hits her – the fact that somebody, lord only knows who, has registered her absence from work, from home, from life in the outside world, and thought to actually do something about it – it is like an instant reboot that shakes her out of some fanciful trance.
Soap opera coma vegetable bolts upright in bed; miraculous recovery, and the audience goes mad with applause.
"You know," He remarks apathetically, "I honestly had no idea they even still put pictures of missing people on milk cartons. How about that."
She gazes down at her picture, Martha Aiken several months ago with shorter hair and a dumb smile, and frowns.
"At the very least, I thought they only did kids." He adds, and without another word he leaves, almost as abruptly as he came.
Martha shuts her eyes and draws in a heavy breath. She has a whole new set of issues to worry about.
Thank you very much, Mr. Joker.