Alice was greeted by the sight of the Joker standing triumphantly over what seemed to be an older man lying on his stomach. He was covered in blood, bruises, and torn flesh making his skin color unrecognizable. She just stared at the limp body on the floor then back to the Joker who was now admiring his own handy work as well.
"I present to you Chet Sefton, father of a 14 year old girl and 11 year old boy." He motioned dramatically at the man on the floor who groaned out in response. "Now before you go asking silly questions, no I did not kill him, not yet. That's going to be your job. It's quite simple Alice, kill this man and I won't, but if you don't kill him then I will, either way he'll end up dead. But hey that's life!"
Alice struggled to find any clear reasoning behind the Jokers commands other than pure insanity; after all he had presented her with the task of killing a random man, who had a family, for no given reason. If this was his idea of a surprise it was surely sick and demented.
On the other hand the Joker knew precisely why he had presented Alice with such a task, he knew that she would refuse to kill an innocent man especially with a family. This meant that he was going to kill Chet, which also meant Alice was going to witness it. And that's exactly what the Joker wanted to happen.
He had this way about knowing what made people break, he just knew exactly what buttons to push. Back in Arkham he would have to get a new therapist every week because each doctor he came in contact with would end up being the ones who needed therapy more. He would just strip them so emotionally and unnerve them so much they would often quit on the spot. This manipulation came so easy to him and he used it as a weapon, a weapon against all the doctors at Arkham and now against Alice. The Joker knew that the moment Alice saw this "family man" die right in front of her eyes it would trigger the disturbing memories of her own parents death. This resulting in a very unstable Alice, which is right where the Joker wanted her.
At first Alice didn't know how to respond to his outrageous request but seeing that her previous sardonic responses had gotten her this far, a new outfit and hot shower far, she took her chances and blurted out blandly, "why?"
The Joker ran his tongue over his scars and cocked his head while squinting his eyes, "Whyyy? Well for starters because I can and because youuu can. I know you can do it, I have faith in you", he laughed at himself, "if I recall murder runs in the family?" He broke into a raspy rumble of giggles and waited for her response.
His words hit Alice hard. How could he talk to her and just spit out personal information about her when they had only met in an ally way two days prior. He addressed her as if the two had known each other for their whole lives, this unnerved Alice and made her stomach churn with fear. On top of his demeaning way of words, it also struck her as odd that he would give her a change of clothes and a hot shower, she had only been captive for at least five hours and he was already favoring her? He could kill her at any moment and she didn't doubt that at all, but she was just so perplexed as to why he didn't.
She was smart enough to know that she played a part in a grander scheme and she would only understand it if she played along, and if playing along meant saving her life then she would risk it. Even though Alice's life was not ideal and she thought that she had nothing, her survival instinct was a strong force to be reckoned with and no amount of self debate could stop it from doing its job. It had always been like that, if it had not Alice would have probably offed herself the night her parents died, in fact she would have done it several times after that as well. But something always tugged at her to push a little further and keep going when everything around her told her to stop.
"So you want me to kill this innocent man, who has kids, just because I have the ability to?!" Alice said with a hint of fear and exasperation in her voice.
"Yeah." The clown said casually.
"You're crazy! I am not going to kill him!"
"I'm not crazy. No I'm no." His tone darkened which made Alice's heart sink to the bottom of her stomach.
"You know you gotta do everything yourself these days, don't you, but good thing I came prepared*."
Before Alice could blink the Joker retrieved a silver revolver from his coat and pressed it to the back of the bloody man's head. He looked up at Alice catching her gaze and as he stared straight into her eyes and pulled the trigger.
A pool of warm crimson liquid slowly seeped onto the floor as the Joker put the gun back in his pocket and looked at Alice who was frozen in shock. Her brown doe eyes were wide and her mouth hung open as if she was punched in the stomach. Her knees buckled beneath her and she fell to all fours. Before she could stop herself she vomited the little liquid she had in her stomach onto the floor in front of the now dead man. The last time Alice had witnessed something this horrendous was her parent's murder, ever since then she had grown weak to violence, always connecting death and blood to the horrible memories.
All of a sudden a sharp pain shot through her head and she sat back on her knees gripping her head. The memories came flooding back all in one second like a damn bursting and breaking. "NO NO NO" she screamed and reached her arm behind her back digging her nails in deep at the semi fresh scratches. Though no amount of self inflicted pain could stop her from remembering. The Joker just watched her, pleased with the reaction he was getting, as she fell into her own pit of despair.
With rage in her eyes she unleashed a scream that rang though the night causing Peter to drop the blood covered gun. For Alice everything was in slow motion, the gun fell to her brothers feet slowly like gravity didn't exist, it landed with a dull thud. She just sat there and stared at the atrocity before her, not blinking or even breathing.
"Peter how could you." She managed to mutter with sorrow tugging at every word. Peter just looked at his sister and backed away slowly shaking his head.
All of a sudden the sharp pain became worse and Alice felt as though someone was driving an ice pick straight into her brain. The Joker just watched her as she fell under panic stricken state knowing all too well that she was remembering.
The pain reverberated throughout her whole body and with that she started to remember something that she had never remembered before.
A man was standing in the corner leaning casually on the wall, he appeared to be wearing a top hat of sorts, and a long tuxedo penguin coat. Alice looked up at the man straining hard to see his face but it was covered in shadows. Peter was walking backwards straight into him, before Alice could stop her brother from colliding with this man, he took Peter into a choke hold squeezing hard rendering him breathless. All of a sudden Peter went limp in the man's arms and he slid down to the floor lifeless. Alice started to breathe heavily and tears started to well up in her eyes once more. This was all too much for her she had just witnessed her parents and now her brother die right in front of her!
The man started to walk towards Alice slowly and she did the best she could to back away from her position on the floor, fearing for her life. The man was close to her now and she could see his face, it was oddly familiar but equally as disturbing, his teeth stuck out of his mouth and they were yellow and huge. His top hat was tattered with a blue sash tied around it; a queen of hearts card was carefully imbedded between the sash and the hat.
The man was now so close to Alice that she could smell his vile breath, he crouched down in front of her smiling widely,
"Oh my sweet Alice," he reached out touched her amber hair. "You've seemed to have lost your muchness."
Out of pure fear Alice shut her eyes tightly hoping that this was all some kind of a dream but her vision started to go red and she couldn't feel, see or hear. She was numb.
She was knocked back into reality by the sound of familiar deranged laughter. She opened her tear soaked eyes and removed her hands that were so viciously ripping her back into shreds; she didn't dare look at the body on the floor fearing that it might trigger the memories again. Instead she looked up to the purple clad clown who was giving her a mocked look of pity. He moved toward the distressed girl on the floor pushing back his grungy green hair and licking his lips preparing to speak,
*"Remembering's dangerous. I find the past such a worrying, anxious place. Ehh "The Past Tense," I suppose you'd call it." Alice sat back on her knees and looked at the approaching clown with defeat in her eyes. He stood in front of her and continued to speak,
"Memory's so treacherous. One moment you're lost in a carnival of delights, with poignant childhood aromas, the flashing neon of puberty, all that sentimental ah candy-flossss…" He gestured all around with his hands, "the next, it leads you somewhere you don't want to go. Somewhere dark and cold, filled with the damp ambiguous shapes of things you'd hoped were forgotten." The girl on the floor continued to look at the clown with defeat but what he was saying intrigued her, it was if he knew exactly how she felt. "Memories can be vile, repulsive little brutes. Like children I suppose." He dramatically wiped a fake tear from his eye,
"But can we live without them? Memories are what our reason is based upon. If we can't face them, we deny reason itself! Although, why not? We aren't contractually tied down to rationality! There is no sanity clause!" The Joker was now crouching down right in front of Alice, not caring that he was stepping in vomit, he reached forward and grabbed her chin gently, tilting her head up to his, forcing her to look at him,
"So Alice, when you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable," His tone of voice dropped low and he spoke with a husky inflection, "remember there's always madness. Madness is the emergency exit… you can just step outside, and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened. You can lock them away… forever." He raised his eyebrow and let an enticing grin slid onto his lips. Alice just stared blankly into his dark eyes taking in all that he said.
What he was saying made sense but Alice refused to just simply slip into madness to escape her past, that wasn't how the world worked. Maybe for him, but not for normal people. But then again Alice wasn't normal and that was made very clear to her at young age, so would she allow herself to plunge into madness or keep fighting and repressing like she had for so many years. After all if she succumbed to this so called madness, which ironically she didn't even know what it meant, she would have wasted the last six years on nothing. The new person she made herself to be after her parents death wouldn't allow her to just break that easily.
Alice continued to look into the Joker's eyes with no sign of emotion, she just stared into his dark inhuman eyes. He stared back ignoring her lack of facial expression and stood up quickly brushing his pants and readjusting his green vest,
"Well why don't you ah think that over mm?" He moved behind her, grabbing her under the arms and dragged her out of the 'living room'. She didn't fight him, she just went limp. He dragged her back into the furnace room and let her go roughly.
Alice allowed herself to sink to the cold ground as the clown walked out of the room not looking back and slammed the door shut. She just lied on her back staring at the ceiling and let the hot tears stream down her face, the coolness of the cement floor felt good on her bleeding back and she continued to cry silently.
Once again Alice was left alone with only her dark thoughts and memories to keep her company, each one slowly pushing her towards the edge of a cliff, slowly pushing her towards the edge of madness.