Author's Note - Sorry this update was a little while in coming. The internet wasn't as great as I'd hoped while I was away on vacation. Anyhow, here's chapter 4, and chapter 5 should be up later this week.
Thanks again for all the interest and feedback for my story. It means a lot!
A Darker Shade of Love
Chapter 4
"Good morning, Mister J. And how are we this morning?" Officer Frank, balding, and approaching fifty, called, while banging on the glass barrier with his baton.
"We're good," Joker drawled. Why the assumption that all crazy people heard voices? There was no one else in his head. Just me, myself, and I, Frankie Boy. He chuckled in spite of himself.
He detested Frank; Frank was an impotent little troll on a power trip. Frank, always accompanied by the same two Neanderthals, would give at least half of Joker's food ration to the fat, wailing cannibal next-door, and then tell him so with great delight.
"Time for your session with Leland."
"Oh goody!" A session with Leland meant a second meeting with that drab intern she led around by the collar. Dr. Jackson Phelps, the pimply faced, former frat boy who'd attended Princeton, chomped at the high heels of greatness.
"You don't have to sound so happy about it." Frank typed in a random series of numbers at the door's keypad. The door bleeped, allowing them access.
"Okay," Frank continued on his monotone voice. His two lapdogs brought up the rear. "You know the drill, face up against the far wall. Hands at the back of your head."
Joker had gone through the routine more times than he could count. Prancing to the back of the cell, making an exaggerated show of being compliant. He waited, nose pressed against the plaster, while the guards exercised all due caution, before creeping in. and roughly securing his hands together.
It amused him. The guards believed he'd strike now? Why? They carried Tasers set to the max. They were armed with guns, batons, and outnumbered him three to one. There was no point unless he had a full-proof, guaranteed way of escape.
In the beginning, he'd been uncooperative; he'd put up a fight and land a few good shots, before being beaten down to the ground by several brutes. He'd learned the fun of insubordination was short lived. The real fun and satisfaction came from playing these control freaks at their own games.
"Oh that tickles," Joker said to the young man, Officer Dennings, at his right. Dennings hesitated in his task of securing Joker's hands in cuffs. The young, inexperienced officers were fun. They were easy to make nervous. Without Frank beside him, Joker bet he could have a whole lot of fun with Dennings.
Joker's favorite thing about therapy sessions was being let out of the tiny cell. He may be strapped and fully-restrained to a wheelchair, but he was out. Being chauffeured along the corridors wasn't so bad. The change of scenery was refreshing; rejuvenating to someone bidding his time.
Along the journey to the therapy suites, the guards would stop, chatting to colleagues, while passing through each barricaded section.
Joker peered through the windows at every opportunity. He missed the outside. Missed freedom. Missed free-roaming chaos. Sure, Arkham was full of crazed lunatics, and contained chaos, but he wanted the kind of chaos that burned and blazed out of control.
They'd stopped again. Frank was babbling on about his plans for the weekend. That's when he saw her out of a window overlooking the car park. He cocked his head to the side, studying her through the glass.
Dr. Harleen Quinzel was talking with Big Rigg. She looked different to how she had on that first day. Today, she was dressed in a leather biker jacket, dark jeans, and knee-high boots. Her hair was free its tight bun, left to flow in silky blonde waves. Free and wild; he liked it that way. It suited her. He liked her in leather and jeans a whole lot more than he'd liked that stiff suit she'd arrived in last week.
Dr. Quinzel, you are quite the surprise.
He uttered an involuntary chuckle; he still slipped sometimes. He couldn't help himself. Frank eyeballed him, and he threw a killer stare back at the pompous little troll. If he wasn't chained to this wheelchair, old Officer Frank wouldn't be so cocky.
Frank went on chattering, and Joker steered his mind back to Dr. Quinzel.
The pretty and proper lady doctor had a wild side. An interesting development.
He liked wild. He liked wild a whole lot.
Inconveniently, Frank began steering him through another set of corridors, but Joker's head stayed with Quinzel.
He remembered a man he'd known a long time ago; a man who now rotted in the black depths of the Hudson. He didn't recall the man's name but it didn't matter. The man had shared a nugget of wisdom about women and motorbikes. He'd said that a little girl whose daddy didn't buy her that pony she always wanted, ended up wanting a motorbike instead when she got older.
Harley; he nicknamed her Harley. So fitting now he knew she rode a motorcycle.
Princess Harley didn't get that pony. She had daddy issues.
Joker could relate.
Officer Frank and his cronies left him strapped to a plastic chair in therapy room 3B. 3B was as bland and boring as all the other rooms, but some of those rooms had windows. This one didn't. Dr. Leland knew he liked to watch people, knew how it amused him, so she frequently took that enjoyment away. To punish him.
Joker stared around at the bare, off-white walls, listening to the ticking clock fixed to the wall opposite him.
The hands ticked past nine o'clock. Leland was late. Leland, who held punctuality in such high regard, yelling at interns and guards alike for their tardiness, was making him wait. Deliberately.
Joke's on you, Leland. I'm just gonna take a nap.
Before he could even close his eyes, the door opened with a bang. Dr. Leland waltzed in, with Dr. Jackson Phelps following closely at her heels. Leland pulled up a chair with a confident flourish. This was her room, her domain, even if the incompetent intern was supposedly running the show.
Joker preferred to think of Phelps as a puppet, with Leland pulling at his apron strings.
"Mr. Phelps! You came back!" Joker flashed a smile of red content. He'd really hoped he'd seen the last of the Bore of Princeton. Phelps, who according to the other interns, possessed a ridiculously high IQ. The young doctor, whose test scores were apparently off the charts, was duller than the walls surrounding them. No personality or sense of humor.
"Dr. Phelps!" the intern corrected him and took a seat beside Leland.
Humans liked to define themselves, and one another. Like giving someone a name, or a label, helped understand them a little better. Or giving them a new, pristine title could make them stand out above the rest. Make this pimply little boy seem more like a man.
"Dr. Phelps then!" Joker leaned back in his seat as much as his restraints allowed. This was going to be a long forty-five minutes. They brought in such academic bores to try and cure him. He almost preferred ECT, at least it stimulated something, and left him feeling like he'd been beaten in the fight of his life.
"How are you finding the new medication?" Dr. Phelps began.
"Tough to swallow." The image of doctors holding him down on the dirty tiled floor, and shoving little white pills into his mouth, sprang to mind.
"And how have you been sleeping?"
"I try not to."
"Why's that?"
"I have these dreams."
Joker knew where this was going. Head doctors loved dreams. They loved to talk about dreams. Analyze dreams. They were obsessed. One of his earlier shrinks had insisted he keep a dream journal. He'd a blast coming up with the bloodiest, most elaborate ways of killing and maiming people. It took the doctor weeks, if not months, to realize he was making it all up.
Dream analysis was pointless. He wanted a new topic.
"What kinds of dreams?"
"Ones where I kill people and get away with it."
"Who do you kill?"
"Whoever makes me mad." Phelps was making him mad. He glowered at him hoping he'd get the message.
"Do you remember who, or why?"
"I remember the blood. Lots and lots of blood. And the eyes." Joker leaned forward just an inch. The chains rattled with the motion. He strained closer. "They say the eyes are the window to the soul."
Phelps swallowed. For a split second he was at a loss of how to continue. He was weakening, a little more hesitant. His eyes fell and scanned his notebook for answers.
Joker could get this little amateur psychology session all wrapped up right now. He glanced over to Leland, to see if she'd reel her intern back in, or leave him to sink a little deeper. Leland didn't budge. Very well. He'd go in for the kill.
Phelps' mouth moved, his brain was a little slower in forming the words. The kid with the genius IQ had reached an impasse. He looked like a golden fish who'd just be taken out of the water bowl.
Leland sat so very still, merely watching.
Oh what the heck, Joker was bored. He leaned forward, straining so hard against his restraints that they groaned under the pressure. He closed the gap between him and Phelps by an inch, the metal pinching at his flesh, but it was worth the response.
Phelps' face was a picture. All the pink drained from his cheeks.
"What do you see when you look into my eyes?" Joker hissed. "A black soul? A soul of a psychopath?"
"I…." All of his training apparently forgotten, Phelps had given up even trying to find answers on the legal pad. Phelps was wriggling on that hook. His eyes dashed to Leland. He wanted out.
"Dr. Quinzel has pretty eyes." Joker threw in a wild card. His wild card. Why not throw a little color into this boring, neutral room?
"I hadn't noticed." Finally, Phelps formed a sentence.
"You're a man aren't you?"
"Mr. J! Enough!" Leland finally stepped in. Her brown eyes firm, her jaw set.
Joker relaxed back in his chair. Game, set, and match, Mr. Princeton.
"Phelps take a break!" Leland ordered.
"But…," Phelps protested weakly.
"Go!" She didn't even look at him. He'd failed in his task. Without another word the intern practically sprang from his chair and scuttled away.
"Why do you insist on bringing these clowns to see me, Dr. Leland?" Joker posed the question before Phelps had chance to exit. He smiled when the door slammed louder than it needed to. He shouldn't be hearing from Phelps again.
"Really? Clowns? Says the Clown Prince of Crime."
"Touche," Joker grinned, on occasion Leland amused him. "How's Dr. Quinzel settling in?"
"Excuse me?"
"Dr. Quinzel." The Joker's turned his full attention to Leland. "The new intern."
"She's settling in just fine. Why are you interested in Dr. Quinzel?"
"Just making small talk."
"Really?"
Joker shrugged at the question. "I thought you liked it when I talked. Opened up. Isn't that what therapy is all about. What makes me work. Tick…."
Leland sat silently observing him.
"Why don't you bring Dr. Quinzel down here?" Harley was the one person in this drab place, where all the inmates were dressed to look the same, and where one pimply intern blended into the next, who truly engaged him.
"You're in no position to make demands, Mr. J."
"No, but I've scared all your other interns away."
He wanted to see Harley again. Leland, and her damned politics, would keep her away. She, and the medical board, would justify their blatant sexism; Quinzel was an intern, they'd say, and interns had to prove themselves.
"We're done here. Take him back to his cell." Leland exited as Frank and the cronies returned, working to unchain him from one chair and into another.
No matter, Joker would just have to set the cogs in motion to get what he wanted.
Joker always got what he wanted.
To be continued…