Joker
wakes up in his cell to a loud noise, like the sound of a set of glasses
breaking, and echoes of shouts coming in from the guards’ room. His eyes burn
as soon as he opens them. “This goddamn asylum, I’m telling you,” he mutters to
himself over a yawn. But immediately, he feels his nasal hairs tingle—they are
being assaulted by a foul smell; his instincts make him pinch his nose.
Curious, though not enough to get off the bed yet, Joker listens in on the
noise to figure out what the guards are shouting for but, as it turns out, they
aren’t shouting about anything in general. It’s as if they’re just screaming in
agony and pain. “What’s going on?” he thinks to himself and finally sits up on
the edge of his bed. Before he can turn his head and see outside, a guard’s
body comes flying in and bangs into the bars of his cell—a shiver runs down his
spine. He takes a moment to process what just happened and starts to smile, shock
turning into amusement. The guard is not dead yet, Joker realizes, as
the man slips an arm throughthe bars, trying to reach out to
him with a look of desperation in his face, and says, “Help us!”
Joker
laughs at the plea but receives his arm anyway. He reads the name on the man’s
tag. “Anthony, right?”
“Please,
I don’t want to die!” he replies. “You know, I… I’ve always been kind to the
inmates.”
“Kind
how?” Joker asks.
“Remember
the time you were complaining about how flat your pillow was? I was the one who
replaced it for you!”
“Oh,
uh…” Joker says, chuckling like he’s embarrassed. “Yeah, that was… that was
real nice of you. Fair to say I’m in your debt.”
“So
help me!”
“You
know I’d love to do that. But here’s the thing, you dumb piece of shit: I’m
locked behind bars!”
Another
guard runs in on them, pulls Anthony away from Joker, and immediately bashes
his head back into in the bars, Anthony crying and swinging his arms wildly.
“Scott, please! Why are you doing this?! I’m your friend!” he pleads. “What
gotten into everyone--” He yucks and spits as blood runs down his lips. “Snap
out of it, man!”
The
assaulter frowns like he’s annoyed, like Anthony’s words aren’t anything more
than the feral ramblings of a rabid dog who is about to be put down.
Joker
takes one look at Scott’s foggy eyes and knows that he is not in control of his
own body right now. No doubt he has either been drugged or hypnotized. He
finally looks beyond the two struggling men and what he sees makes him smile—a
smile so wide one might assume it to be artificial, drawn crudely using clown
makeup. Other guards too are fighting each other. There are corpses everywhere,
idle bodies that are being trampled over like roaches by the brawlers. “Yes,
yes, yes,” says Joker. “Let there be chaos.” Then he laughs.
Scott
grabs Anthony’s head like it’s a ball and pulls it, violently, toward the bars
again. There is an eerily loud crack. “Did his neck just break? Or was it his
skull?” Joker wonders. Scott, of course, doesn’t bother to check. He just takes
the head and smashes it into steel, like he did before. Without stopping there,
he keeps bashing it, rhythmically, even though Anthony has already stopped
struggling.
Thud! Thud! Squash!
Some
of the blood splatters onto Joker’s pale face and orange uniform, making him
laugh and applaud simultaneously—the sounds bounce off the bloodied walls of
Sector-I and echo, creating the impression of a cheerful theatre hall.
Joker
pulls his attention back to the action right in front of him. Scott seems to be
standing triumphantly over the numb and silent body of his prey. Still
laughing, Joker stares at Anthony, whose face has been disfigured to the point
a reasonable man wouldn’t even call it a face. “Go to hell, demon!” Scott yells
and then looks away as if repulsed by the mess he has created.
Seeing
this, Joker puts on a serious face. “What do you think you just killed?” he
asks, pressing his face against the bars—his face flinches in multiple places
as he toils to hold back a chuckle.
The
guard jumps back, realizing someone has been watching him the whole time. He
sizes Joker up, winces and takes a few more steps backwards.
“What
are you afraid of?” Joker continues. “My horns or my teeth?” He gestures over
his head and at the corners of his mouth, where his imaginary horns and
saber-tooth would be.
The
guard scampers, leaving Joker more amused than before. A yelp comes from the
direction he went. He must have run into another demon.
As
Joker is about to go back to bed, having filled more than his quota of madness
for the day, another figure approaches his cell but in stable and heavy steps.
It’s a tall man dressed in black formal attire with a bowler hat.
“And
who are you supposed to be?” Joker asks, annoyed.
The
man reaches into his inner pocket, pulling out a playing card. With a flick of
his wrist, he sends it dashing through the bars. Joker catches it,
effortlessly, and once he sees what card it is, he starts giggling.
“I’d like to offer
you an assignment,” says the mysterious man and everything starts to go black
for Joker, as if dark curtains are being pulled down at the end of a play,
restricting his view of the stage.
Points: 755
Reviews: 29
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