In the Mind of Madness

Darla heard the door slam and her heart skipped a beat.

Her instincts told her to run, but her hands kept doing what they had been doing all morning: cleaning guns. She sat on the old sofa that smelled like mildew with her lap full of numerous black pieces, her hands and the rag she was using were dirty. Rapid footsteps were coming towards her. She swallowed.

His mumbling was heard before he was seen. Almost inaudible mumbling, but the warehouse was so silent Darla could make it out. It didn’t really sound like words, just mindless rambling, but it announced his anger. He was upset, furious even. Darla had watched the painful death and maiming of the two of her fellow cronies stupid enough to get in his way, but she was smart. Smart enough to be completely silent and take up as little space as possible.

Her boss entered the room haphazardly, carrying a newspaper in one hand and a knife in the other. Darla eyed the knife warily, continuing what she was doing with minimal movements. The Joker prowled behind her somewhere, a loud crash almost causing Darla to jump and give away her presence. She was sure he hadn’t noticed her yet, not in his state of fury. He was very focused when he was angry. Darla knew that well enough.

She drew in a steadying breath and dared to turn just a little in her seat, enough so she could look at The Joker with one eye. He was at the rickety table against the wall, the newspaper spread out before him, determined brown eyes roving over the small black print. Darla was more concerned with the knife his purple-gloved hand was twirling between his nimble fingers. It wasn’t the normal silver color, more brownish. She couldn’t tell if that was from rust or blood, but it made her spine tingle nervously anyway.

His back was curved over the table with his usual bad posture, leg bouncing up and down, shiny violet shoe tapping on the dusty cement floor. As Darla watched him his mouth twitched unhappily, causing the smears of red makeup from his lips to his cheek to create the illusion of a manic smile. The makeup was days old now, cracked on the laugh lines on his forehead, black from his eyes smudged a bit on his nose on one side.

“What?”

Darla did jump this time when he snapped at her, his eyes never moving from the paper but aware she was watching him. She swallowed the lump in her throat to stammer out a ‘nothing, boss’. She put her eyes back on the guns, but she could feel the anger coming from him. All she could do was pray it wasn’t directed fully at her.

The Joker glared at the newspaper, forgetting Darla’s presence just as quickly as he acknowledged it. No headlines. No god-damned headlines.

The warehouse was dead silent. No one was daring to move, barely even breathed. The Joker liked it that way, relished their fear. They should tiptoe around him. They should cringe when he glanced their way. One wrong move and he had multiple instruments of torture on his person, and he was eager to use them.

As he watched Kenna shoot up the side of that building clinging to the Bat, The Joker had felt oddly numb for a few moments. Then he laughed. Then came the blistering rage. It had stuck.

Darla reassembled the last gun, adding it to the pile on the cushion beside her. She stood up quietly, gathering them into her arms and carrying them down the hall to the room filled with weapons as such. They’d been stockpiling them for weeks, though some had been left behind in the old house when it burned down. Darla wanted to know what they were for, but she knew better than to ask.

There were many things she wanted to know about. Like why The Joker seemed to like abandoned buildings so much, or why his hair was green, or how he got those scars, why he wore the makeup, why the suit, why the vendetta against humanity. Just why he was who he was. Darla could still remember meeting him, being instantly captivated, knowing that somehow this man would tie into her future. She’d been in the right place at the right time, or the wrong place at the wrong time, depending on how you looked at it.

Darla’s life was far from easy. A family that disowned her the second she told them she was a lesbian, living in the Narrows, fighting for her life almost every night, having to scratch and claw to survive. When she saw him she was dirty and hungry, and he had a rich purple suit. It was before he’d become the symbol of evil that he was now in Gotham. Then he was just a weird guy with makeup and green hair prowling the Narrows, eyes darting for something. Something.

Darla fell into step behind him, practiced at this by now. Her trembling fingers clutching a simple steak knife she’d found in the garbage. Trembling not out of fear, but because she was cold. It was easily thirty degrees outside, maybe less, and she was in a torn hoodie with cargo shorts, sneakers full of holes and mud. She could still remember what she was thinking as she watched him.

‘Don’t speed up. Turn down that alley. Yes, down that alley. Turn, turn, turn. NOW.’

Her legs pushed off the pavement, arms out and preparing to tackle. He was ready for her, grabbing her by the neck and slamming her body into the brick wall. Darla was smart enough to lean her head forward, her back taking most of the collision. Experience told her not to stay against the wall to recover, ducking down so the punch he was aiming for her face missed. She swept her leg behind his, locking behind his knees and pulling him to the ground. He landed with an ‘oomph’, then a giggle that nearly caused Darla to become motionless in surprise. But instead she was ready, jumping back from her crouched position just in time to avoid the kick he tried to land on her shoulder.

She had the knife out as he tried to stand, holding the jagged tip to his nose. The Joker paused, one knee still on the ground and the other halfway up, gloved hand braced on it. Darla held the knife steady, staring down at him for a few seconds before remembering she had a purpose here.

“Your wallet.” she rasped.

His eyes flitted over her face, down her filthy clothing. “How about I give you something more valuable?”

“Like what?” Darla snapped, shifting her weight, looking around, nervous.

The Joker stood up, the knife following his movement. He straightened his jacket, brushed off any dirt the scuffle had gathered. “A long-term position with an aggressively expanding organization.”

“Just give me your wallet.” she was desperate, hand starting to shake. So hungry. Getting colder by the second.

He snatched her wrist in a movement she didn’t even see, wrestling the knife away a split second later. Darla yanked back, but she was too weak, his hand an iron trap. Undoubtedly bruising her pallid flesh. She glared at him, but she couldn’t hold his gaze, her eyes dropping down.

“I like you, kid. Ya got spunk.” he smiled, but it seemed like a threat, sneering at her with two rows of yellow teeth. “But’cha need a bath! You come with me, you can eat to your black little heart’s content, and wash off whatever garbage you’ve been rolling in.”

Darla considered, her stomach giving a howl that she knew he heard. She glanced over her shoulder, at where she’d been living for months now. The steam rising from the sewer, dim street lamps casting haunting shadows on the cracked pavement, a bum sleeping in his own vomit by a rusty barrel containing a waning fire. She couldn’t live there forever.

She nodded, still not looking into those bottomless eyes. “Yeah. Okay.”

Now she stood in the room set aside the warehouse for weapons and explosives, rolling a pistol in her hands and debating. She missed Kenna. Her departure made Darla the only woman in The Joker’s…’organization’. The rest of the goons were useless brawn, mindless but obedient. Well, besides Doc, but he was an alarm specialist that didn’t talk to anybody but The Joker. Darla hadn’t noticed she was lonely before Kenna, but now she did. With a tight stomach she set down the gun, knowing what she was going to do.

“Boss?”

His hand tightened on the red permanent marker that had replaced the knife, suspended over the newspaper. “What, Darla?”

The way he said her name made her flinch. Everything he did was a promise of pain if the wrong thing was said or done. Darla shook herself. Over a year she’d been with him now, loyal and unquestioning, admiring even. She clasped her hands and swallowed the lump in her throat to speak.

“What are you gonna do about…Kenna?” her voice was soft, unsure. She said the name like it was forbidden, a curse word in front of a stern parent.

The Joker didn’t react right away, tapping the marker on the table with a loud click. Darla tried not to jump each time, waiting, sweat forming under her arms and on her forehead. Her eyes strayed to the newspaper, accustomed to not looking at his face too long. He’d been circling the titles of articles, but Darla couldn’t ready any of them before he was pelting the marker at the wall. It bounced off with a crack, landing a foot away from Darla’s boots. She’d been too terrified when he did it to even move, but she felt like she was going to be sick.

“NOTHING!”

His voice was an atomic bomb in the room, but Darla still refused to move, muscles tensed as if ready to run. She might have to at any moment. When she didn’t respond he went on, one hand coming up to run through his greasy hair.

“Two weeks now and nothing. Nothing in the papers, nothing in the streets. Nothing ANYWHERE!” it was mumbled except for the last word, another gunshot in the silence of the warehouse. “Damn martyr she is, I expected a title right away. ‘Joker’s Hostage Tells All: The Heartbreaking Story of Dr. Kenna Archer’. Where is it, Darla?”

Her name being said again made Darla look up, finding his eyes on her. She immediately dropped her own back to the floor. “I dunno, boss. I haven’t heard anything, either. I’ve been looking.”

The Joker stood, hand sweeping the paper off the table along with him. The thin pages separated and flew out like a blizzard, one hitting Darla in the face, which she reflexively caught. It was the classifieds, a wanted ad for a live-in nurse landing on Darla’s left eye. She pulled the paper down slowly, wondering if he would attack her.

He was breathing heavily amid the settling papers, face contorted into anger that seemed to make the room a few degrees cooler. Darla wanted to turn and run, while she still had a chance. Instead she gulped and continued to stand there, clutching the newspaper, knowing her fingers would be black when she released it.

“It’s not good enough.” he said in a remarkably calm voice, staring at a paper that had landed near his foot. Darla followed his gaze to a picture of Bruce Wayne, an unmistakable figure in Gotham, rich and generous and untouchable.

Darla watched him bend and retrieve the paper, then the marker, setting them both on the bare table. He uncapped the marker, scribbled on the paper. Darla winced when he spun around, holding it up so she could see. He’d circled Wayne’s eyes until the ink turned them black, also adding a big red smile to his otherwise grave face.

“You wanna know something a good friend of mine named Harvey taught me?”

Darla watched The Joker reach into his pocket, remove a scratched-up lighter. “What is it, boss?”

“That even the best of us…” he paused to flip open the lighter, holding the flame to the newspaper. It curled at the corner, the flame slowly eating its way to Wayne’s vandalized photography. “Will fall.”

With that he dropped the paper, cackling wildly, fire reflecting orange in his manic brown eyes.