One Bad Day

“I never really knew how to build up a past.” His tongue licked the corner of his lips, his slick, oily voice took a somber tone. “You see, a past defines your present and it builds up your future, but what-what happens when you lack the bases, the foundations for such actions you take in your present, hm?”

There were nights like this one in which he felt the constant urge to talk, to explain unexplainable things, to ponder about circumstances, pasts, choices. There were also nights in which he just wanted his mind to shut up, so he would quiet it down by having fun, by playing games. Those nights he would blow up buildings just for the fun of seeing the inhabitants flying and lighting up the sky alongside with the scrap materials. Oh, how amazing those colors and shrieks sounded together. Then he could, perhaps kidnap the Mayor's wife, or a high class gentleman's daughter, leave someone paraplegic, or his all time favorite, he would simply taunt his other half into madness, because, honestly, the Bat needed a slight push to get him there.

This night, however, he simply wanted to look for answers to unasked questions. “I've been told thousands of times about why I am who I am. Every time it differs slightly,” he laughed, as if remembering such reasons brought happiness to him. “You know, same old same old Freudian reasons: abusive family, mix in alcohol and drugs, add in poverty, diagnose antisocial personality disorder, and back it all up with some brain malfunction!” His laughter increased with each explanation, as if embracing each one of them, as if each one of them could possibly explain his madness. “Hell! They've even come up with how I could have possibly ended up like this.” He pointed at himself, at his abnormally wider smile, his ruby-red lips, his paper-white skin. “My favorite one, ha! My favorite one has to be the self-mutilation one. Imagine, Babs! Good ol' me, good ol' Jay, throwing himself to these awful, awful chemicals all by himself!” Then a somber tone, such a smile like she had never seen before, it had faltered. His eyes were vacant for a moment and then it vanished, that glimpse she had caught of him gone.

“Take Jim here for a ride, boys.” He paused, quickly recovering himself before anyone else would notice. “Word says, Jimmy-boy loves carnivals.” He winked at them as they reached down to pick up Jim's unconscious body. The blow he had taken to the head earlier had knocked him down completely.

“Where was I? Oh, yes, to be fair, that one has been my favorite since I can remember. You see, in a culture like this, self-mutilation shows weakness, yes? In other cultures, self-mutilation represents strength, god-like will. Are you listening, Babs? Your whimpering is getting on my nerves, you know? Anyways, as I was saying, nobody has quite got it right, though.”

Nights like this, he just needed someone to listen to his ramblings, someone to stay quiet and listen without cowering or begging for dear life. Of course, nights like this were scarce, for most of his ramblings were always shared in the thick of battle with his soul mate, the Batman. However, for the lack of inspiration, this night he had decided for a different listener, someone who could possibly sympathize with him, because, in all honesty, he feared his loathed companion, that flying rat, had already lost any empathy left in him.

The redhead listened attentively, or so he liked to think, because there was no other reason why she would have those wide eyes looking at him if; she had to be interested, so she was immobilized by the content of the conversation, literally speaking. She couldn't do anything else but listen, except, of course, for the occasional whimper. As quiet as she had reminded herself to be before him and as attentive she was most of the time, this time her mind had decided to wondered about possible escapes, possible ways to get out of her current situation and feel freedom once again. The problem here was that she was completely helpless.

“You see, it's not about the hows; it's not about those annoying little explanations that everybody tries to come up with.” He gave her a lopsided smile and adverted his gaze to the redhead, his smile stretching furthermore as he saw how she wasn't even listening. “It's about just one day.” He approached her, grabbing her by the hair and forcing her to look at him. “And you should be paying attention to that, toots. The more you know, the funnier it gets.”

The redhead's head was spinning, her vision blurry, blood pouring from her lower abdomen. The pain was unbearable, to say the least; any sort of movement would just bring another wave of it, so, escaping was out of question, but what worried her most was that numbness. She couldn't feel anything from the waist down. Her legs wouldn't respond, she couldn't move anything at all.

The gag was eventually removed, of course. It had to be; with it on the way, his fun wouldn't be as much as he wanted it to be.“Help!” The smiling man tossed her head to the side, ignoring the pleads that the woman kept shouting.

“Shout as hard as you want, toots. Nothing's gonna save you from this.” With a small hand signal, the smiling man's henchmen mobilized, reaching in for her and carelessly ripping her clothes off of her skin. The woman's yelps of pain were fully ignored, only managing to stretch that already abnormally wide smile of the mastermind. “You see, miss Gordon, I've come to realize that, as much as society likes you to think otherwise, you all, you little moral people, are just one day away from where I am. One bad day.”

The redhead kept protesting, not really listening to the smiling man, for his cronies where undressing her and placing her back down to the floor, not even bothering to stop the bleeding.

“Problem is, you know the problem, toots. You know him very well. That flying rat and his morals. He had his bad day and that made him, well, who he is right now: a little psychopath, like me.” He wasn't really listening to her pleas now; he was lost in his own mind, in his own battle against his past, the memories. “Yet, he still wants to see the bright in the world, protect a city that's full of pests. He thinks, ha, he thinks that he might be able to save them, because, you know, he was “saved””.

His giggles erupted into a maddening laughter, the echo lingering longer than the redhead could have wanted. Sure, her pain was too unbearable to make out every single word he had said, but she got everything. She understood. She was the bait; somebody else was going to have one bad day and the Joker was going to prove the Batman that he was right. He was no monster, he was just ahead of the curve.

“And, oh, his incorruptible sense of morals, his self-righteous mind, the justice he pursues, all of that, he hides behind it, because deep down inside he knows. He just knows that we're pretty much the same. Two sides of the same coin.”

She was completely naked by now. Her red hair matching the red sprawled all over her body. Her legs were gone. She couldn't feel anything else but numbness. She felt dead.

“Now, that'd make a gorgeous picture to place on dad's desk.” He smiled wickedly at her as he reached down to grab something that was hanging from his neck. “I bet your daddy would be so proud of you, huh? I bet he already is; that smile said it all. But, you see, good ol' Jim needs to see reality.” A camera pointed at her, taunting her. “Let's make your daddy proud, mkay?” Smiling widely, he moved to the right side of the redhead, the camera held firmly to his eye as he tried to find the perfect angle for this tragedy. “Smile for the camera, toots.”

Hundreds of flashes were displayed on the background. Tears fell down her cheeks, moans escaped her mouth. She needed to leave, to escape, yet, her unresponsive legs kept her sprawled across the floor, slowly dying out of the pain that the wound inflicted on the rest of her body.

“Dad,” she yelped as she felt the hot bright light of the camera's flash once again. “What a-re you gonna do with 'im?”

The clown smiled widely, carelessly throwing aside the camera. “Average Jim.” He kneeled down next to her, picking up the debris from the coffee table she had broken and tossing it to the side, “will help me prove the world that one bad day.” His eyes settled on the redhead, focusing mainly on her facial expressions, enjoying the sight of pain, “one single bad day is what separates them from me.”

“Wh-why are you doing this?” She was slowly fading, her eyes struggling to keep themselves open; she had to fight, but she knew this was a fight she could not win.

“To prove a point. Here’s to crime.”

And everything went black. The redhead's eyes shut down and her yelps stopped. The smiling man scanned the room, his smile widening as soon as his eyes rested on a small book with newspaper clips featuring the flying rat. “Just one bad day and their morals drop down. At the first sign of danger their rules, their whole civilization-” He stood up, his eyes lingering on the redhead and then back to the book. “Everything burns down to ashes. People will do anything to survive." He approached the book, smiling fondly at it, at the man who had made him who he was. "One bad day, that's all it takes to push the world to the brink of madness.”