© Ellie Goodson 2016

Chapter Twenty Two-Truth be told

~Arabella Jones~

I felt myself drifting further and further into the hungry hands of insanity each and every day that I was with the clown. I didn't care, if I was completely and utterly honest I quite enjoyed the fact that I was becoming more and more like the crazy clown every day. It gave life a trill that, once you had tasted it, you couldn't live without. Nothing was ever different with him, and yet nothing was ever the same. Every day, the emotions that I felt when I was around him, when we touched or spoke, they never changed. And yet the daily routine was never the same, it would always keep you on your toes.

My legs rested upwards against the wall in the Joker's bedroom while my head pressed against the floor. My body rested upside down on the bed, and it occurred to me then that I had found myself in the same position a lot. The Joker himself was in the room-for once. He sat crossed legged on the floor, facing me, staring right at me. "Tell me something true, something I don't know about you."

"Like what, doll?" I watched in pure fascination as the Joker leaned forward, just a little bit, head tilted to the side.

"Like...like something no one else knows. Something you trust me with." The clown in the purple suit now leaned fully forward, so that his elbows rested on the ground with his head resting on his knuckles.

I climbed down from the bed, feeling pressure reduce from my reddened face. I crawled over to where the Joker sat, feeling his eyes bore into me the whole time. Mirroring his position, I licked over my bottom lip and raised my eyebrows. "Well?"

"Tell you what, Bella. You tell me something deep and dark about you, and I'll return the favour afterwards."

"But that's not fair, I asked first." My lips pouted, mockingly. "But, okay." I didn't exactly know what to say, there were a lot of dark things about me but did I want the Joker to know? And then I realised what this had become. It had become a loyalty trial, a trust test. Without even thinking about it, I had given the Joker the option of testing me, and for me to test him.

I removed my head from my knuckles, and sat up straight. "You want something dark; I'm going to give you something very dark indeed." I focused on my clenched hands, which were intertwined with each other. "When I was younger...about fourteen shall we say, I came very, very close to killing someone. You see, I have this thing. I have to have control, I have to be right and superior and bigger and better than other people. I can't let anyone get to me or hurt me, and so when people do, it affects me hugely. It can go two ways. I either get extremely upset or extraordinarily angry.

With you, I got upset and had a panic attack, that day in the cell you scared me so much it sent me over the edge. With this boy, it was anger. Pure anger, something that rarely shows with me. You see, this boy tried to outsmart me. He tried to make himself look all big and bad against me. One very important thing about me, you shouldn't pick a fight with me when you can't win it. It's like with my sister, but that's another story.

Anyway, this boy tried to make me feel small. Tried to make me feel like I was nothing compared to him, a mere bug of which he could crush easily. So, instead of standing there and letting him do this to me, I reacted. Badly. There was this fight, because hell did the boy know how to fight back. But I won. Fractured bones, broken nose, collapsed lung, broken ribs and a concussion. The hospital said that they nearly lost him. And then there was me, sat at the hospital with a bloodied nose and a sprained wrist and ankle, a couple bruises but nothing compared to him.

I guess that the darkest part of this little story is that I nearly killed a boy with my bare hands, and I felt nothing. No regret, no sorrow or sadness for him and his family. I still don't. He asked for it, and the more he hurt me, the more he tried to outdo me, and so the more I hurt him. He shouldn't have picked a fight with someone he couldn't win against."

My story was finished, and so I simply closed my mouth and kept my eyes on my knuckles. I knew that it wasn't the darkest tale, I had far darker, but it was enough for now. There were a couple moments of silence before the clown spoke, and his words shocked me to say the least. "You know, every time I think I know you, you go and make me feel like I know nothing at all, all over again."

"Is that a bad thing?"

"No, no that's quite the good thing. Very good indeed. No one has that ability against me, that effect on me. It's quite interesting to feel and witness." The Joker's words were calm and kind, reassuring me that I hadn't scared him.

"So, I haven't scared you away or anything like that, have I?"

"It's amazing what you told me, I didn't think you would've had that in you but now I know you do, and I'm quite impressed indeed. So no, you haven't scared me away at all. All you've done is simply pulled me in more." My body warmed at his words, my heart accelerated to an unbelievable speeding rate.

It was his turn now to share, and we both knew it. I waited in silence, my eyes resting on him instead of my knuckles. The tail of his long purple coat was fanned out on the floor, and he was without shoes but with multi-coloured socks instead. I crawled closer to the Joker, taking his large hands in my own petite ones. "I trusted you, so trust me. Believe me, there's nothing that you can say that can push me away." I watched as even more vulnerability flooded the Joker's eyes, and felt my heart break.

"I'll tell you about the first time I killed. To be perfectly honest it's not much of a different story than yours. I won't mention names; it doesn't matter since he's dead now anyway. But I killed him, simply because he annoyed me. And I killed him brutally; beat him to death with a wooden stick. And, like you, I felt nothing. No regret, no wish to change what I'd done, nothing. I was just glad that he was dead, one less annoying person in the world. That was like the start, the start of all this. Once I got a taste of it, I wanted more. I wanted to do it again and I wanted to try it in an all manner of different ways. So, here I am. Still devising new ways to kill the decreasing population of people who annoy me and are no use to me whatsoever."

I had found myself gradually feeling more and more like I knew the psychopath before me. The clown was truly and utterly crazy, and it was oh so perfect. He was a monster, and so was I. "You know what, that was one of the most perfect things you've ever told me." I reached out and twirled a strand of the Joker's green hair around my finger. A small sigh of relief escaped his scarred, red lips. There was no need to say anything else. The conversation between us both was intense, and a challenge for both of us indeed. A test to see if we really were willing to stay with each other no matter what and neither of us had failed.

I allowed my fingers to trail from the Joker's hair, over his scars and then backwards to cup his cheek. "Do you want to know what else I fear?" I asked lowly, making eye contact with the Joker for a second before returning to focusing on stroking his cheek with my thumb.

"Tell me." He replied, just as lowly.

"There are many things I fear, like clowns and scarecrows and the dark. But there is other stuff, stuff that's different to that. Like death, I fear death. Like losing someone I love. In my mind, there are two types of fear. The things that everyone fears, clowns and scarecrows. Not everyone fears the dark at my age; in fact I'm yet to meet someone who does. And then there is the fear of death, just death in general. It scares me."

"Tell me why."

The Joker had his eyes closed now, his head rested against my palm and stroking thumb. "Tell me why you fear these things."

"I fear clowns because I've always had to question them, like I've explained before. I fear scarecrows because, when I was younger, I had this terrifying nightmare that a clown came to life and brutally killed me. It scarred me, and I couldn't sleep properly for years because of it. I fear the dark because; in the dark I see the monsters I fear. In the dark I see my father, in the dark I see clowns and scarecrows, in the dark I see the boy I nearly killed, in the dark I see all of the monsters I don't want to see. I fear death because death is another one of those monsters, those monsters cause death, and I don't want to witness my own death or the death of anyone I love." With the images of all of these wicked beasts playing in my mind, I was now witnessing a familiar pain splinter through my chest, feeling the same sensation of panic overwhelm me again.

My hand dropped from the Joker's face, causing him to open his eyes. I saw my own reflection in his dark eyes; I saw exactly what he saw. A wide eyed girl with obvious panic running through her. I saw a girl who had gone as pale as snow, with sunken eyes and trembling hands. I saw a girl with a heaving chest and a shattered body. I saw a girl that needed to be held, needed someone to make the pain go away. And that was exactly what the Joker saw. "Hold me." I said in a breathy voice, unable to make it louder than a mere whisper. "Please."

The Joker wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me onto his lap. I rested my head against his chest, hearing his heart race. He rubbed a hand up and down my back, while the other simply held me. I kept myself in a tight ball, simply breathing in the intoxicating scent of the Joker. "Don't you worry, doll. You don't need to be in fear when I'm here, I'll make the fear go away."

It took me a while to respond, for the words to slowly process through my brain and for my brain to slowly think of a reply for his kind words. But when I did, the words were simple and short, but they said everything they needed to. There was no more need for explanation, and the four words said more than they seemed. They said other words of reassurance and belief, trust and loyalty, a never ending love. "I know you will."