Halloween special

Doctor Harleen Quinnzel was top of her class. She had cured the toughest of patients, the craziest of prisoners. But she’d never been faced with anyone like Jack Napier.

“He hasn’t stopped laughing since we got him.” Clap told her, holding open yet another door for her.

She nodded quickly. “Yes, I understand. Have we removed the shock bracket?”

“We decided it was best to keep it on. He’s dangerous, Harleen. We wouldn’t want another… accident.”

“You know they mess with the brainwaves-“

“It’s either that, or you’re not allowed inside the cell.”

“You know that’s not an option-“

“I know.”

She sighed. She knew he was going to be a hard one- but she wasn’t going to let him blotch her record either.

“Alright, I need to get off here.” He said, looking up at her. “Hey, are you free tonight?”

“Sure: and I haven’t been to Twine and dine forever.”

“Sounds like a deal. I pick you up at eight.”

She pushed open the big metal door and walked through it, her heels clicking on the tile floor. They were her favorite heels: simple, comfortable, and fashionable. They went with everything. Her black clipboard tapped against her leg as she made her way through the barren halls. They were white, without any decorations or anything that might provoke the patients. It was quiet, except for her clicking heels and the occasionally guarded whisper. Harleen loved the silence. But then she pushed through the third door, and the silence was broken. High, almost musical laughter rang through the air like water, flowing into every corner, leaving no space for sanity.

He was sitting on a stool in the corner, leaning back into the wall and laughing his head off. He had tangled green hair, clown makeup, and a purple and gray suit that was bloody and torn.

The guards gave me a look and handed me the key to his cell.

“Be careful in there, miss.” One of them told her, pointing to the blood that had stained the floor from his last visitor.

“And just remember.” Said the other. “If anyone can close this box a’ wires, it’d be you, miss.” I smiled at them. They were my favorite guards. I took the key and opened the door to the white room inside, bringing in the separate stool that had been left for me.

“Jack Napier, correct?” I asked him, staring him straight in the eye. He kept laughing. She tried a few other tricks: Shaking her head, clapping in his face, those optical illusions you draw on paper, but nothing worked, so she had to fall back on her last resort: touching. She motioned to the guards through the cameras mounted on the walls to be prepared: she hated using the shock bracelets on patients, but what she was about to try was very dangerous. She grabbed his wrist. He went completely still and looked her in the eye.

“Is your name Jack Napier?”

His mouth erupted into a fanged smile that split his face. “My name is The Joker! Jack Napier is dead!”

“Why do you think that?” She asked.

“I don’t. I know that.” He leaned into her face. “Because I-“ He paused and looked at her, and for a minute she thought she might see some sanity. “KILLED HIM!” He screamed, spittle and blood flying into her face. Then he started laughing again.

Harleen was distracted on her date with Cut. He could tell. Her pen never stopped tapping on the table, that purple magic ink one that she carried everywhere with her from the day she arrived. Sometimes she would stop and scribble something down on a napkin, then stuff it in her pocket and look around nervously.

“Is everything okay?” He asked her.

She nodded quickly with a fake smile. “You know, I’m just worried about the patients.”

He knew. He knew she was always worried about new patients, but this one had her particularly worried.

“It’ll be fine.” He told her, knowing that this had never helped before and it wasn’t going to help now. “What do you want to eat?”

“I’ll just have a glass of wine.” She told him, still nodding distractedly.

“Are you sure? The Carmon Dá is known for its steak.”

She gave him a weak smile. “I’m allergic to lemon, remember?”

Oh. No. She had never told him that. “I’m sorry.” He said. “White or red?”

“Red, thank you.”

He gave an awkward nod and called the waiter over.

“I’m sorry, could I just get it to go?” She asked suddenly.

He looked at her in surprise. “Um, yeah, of course. You can go. I don’t mind.”

She gave him an apologetic smile and nodded. “I’m so sorry. I just don’t think that this is going to be very enjoyable.”

She grabbed her purse and threw some money on the table before sprinting outside. Cut sighed.

Harleen hailed a taxi and took it back to the asylum. The driver tried making small talk, but she just nodded at everything until he gave up. She sprang out of the taxi, overpaid and ran up the steps into the asylum. She nodded to the guards and walked back through the halls. She was about halfway to The Jokers cell before wondering why she was doing this. Surely her unscathed record wasn’t this important to her. Or was it? Had she become so obsessed with looking good that her patients had become a second priority? She shook her head. That was crazy. But there was something about him…

Maybe tonight would be a break through. A lot of the patients were calmer at night. She pushed through the doors. Her favorite guards were standing there, looking surprised to see her.

“Out this late? Surely you don’t want to see him again?”

She gave a weak laugh. “I just want to check.” In truth, she had no idea what she was doing here. She pushed through the last set of door, bracing herself for the eerie laughing that was sure to meet her ears. But there was complete silence, which was somehow even eerier.

She pulled up her stool in front of the cell and looked inside.

She couldn’t see much. He didn’t say anything for a while. Was he dead? She doubted it. She sat still for a while, and sure enough, after a few minutes she heard him move and felt his eyes on her.

“Harleen is such a pretty name.” He said after a few minutes.

“It is. So is Jack.”

He sighed. “The Joker is so much better. It’s got a bit of a ring to it, doesn’t it?”

Something about the way he talked unnerved her. He was having a completely normal conversation. He sounded sane.

“I’m going to turn on the lights, alright?” She asked.

“Yes, that’s fine.”

She reached over and flicked on the light switch. He had his head between his knees and she couldn’t see his face. That would make reading him much harder.

“Did you finally wash off that silly makeup?” She asked, hoping he would lift his head. Instead he mumbled,

“It wasn’t makeup.” He finally lifted his head and looked at her. She jumped backwards, biting down a squeal. His makeup was gone: but it would have been better if he had kept it on. His mouth had been split up his face: scars running up and down and meeting at the corner of his lips. He had scars around his eyes as well, making them seem much bigger than they were. He grinned at her and turned his head from side to side as if displaying it.

“Do you like it, Harleen? I did it myself.”

She put her back against the wall and tried to stop shaking. She’d seen plenty of horrific things during her time at Coatzac Mental hospital, but this was by far the worse. She wanted to throw up, or turn around and run, but she knew she would never be able to make a connection with him again. Could he be saved? She wondered. Did she even want to save him?

“I look much better this way, believe me.” He said, still smiling.

Did he really think like this? Could he really believe it? Even she couldn’t understand this patients mind. But she was now throughly intrigued, even though she hated it. She forced herself to sit back on the stool, making sure to look in his face.

“Why is it better?”

“Because I wasn’t handsome before.”

“But you are now?”

He shrugged and leaned against the wall again. “I know you don’t like it. I scare you.” He gave a rueful smile, the scars on his lips working with it as if it was part of his mouth. “I scare everyone. Turn off the lights again. I liked it better that way.”

She flicked them off. “You don’t scare me.”

“Then why do you want to run?”

“I don’t want to run. I feel bad for you, actually.” She said, not sure if this technique would work. “You’re destined to live out the rest of your days here, trapped in your own mind.” Why was she doing this? True, it was how she felt about most of the patients, but this was very provoking. “Even now, we’re fighting the court to keep you out of the death penalty. But we might not even win. You’ve killed to many people.” She wasn’t supposed to tell patients what was going on outside of their cells. What was wrong with her? Surely this would make him mad. But part of her wanted to see it.

Instead of getting angry, he laughed again. “Lets not talk about me, Harleen.” She could feel his eyes on her. “Let’s talk about you.”

“What about me?”

“All this time in this place- surely some of its madness rubbed off on you.”

“It didn’t. Nothing rubs off on me.”

“Not even love?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do. Your date with that man. You left early. You left to come see me.”

How could he have known about her date with Cut? How could he have known she left him? She didn’t let that show.

“Your point?”

“My point? You’re just as interested in me as I am in you.”

“Im not interested in you.”

“And yet you cut off a date with a man that would take good care of you to come see an patient you met three hours ago.” She could feel him grinning. “You wasted a good dinner. The Carmon Dá is famous for its steak, isn’t it?”

She kept silent, her heart beating hard, unsure of what to say.

“Go ahead, I know you want to ask.”

“Ask what?”

“Ask how I know. Go ahead.”

She shook her head, even though she knew he couldn’t see her.

“You want to know, why don’t you ask?” She could hear his voice getting frustrated. “I don’t understand.” There was a sudden screech of chair and she turned the light on again as fast as she could. He had only stood up and was now pacing with his back to her. “Why don’t you tell me how you feel? Why do people hide their feelings? For fear of rejection?! But that doesn’t make sense, if you would be rejected now, why won’t you be rejected later when you tell people? I don’t understand. I don’t understand them. But look at me, I showed my true feelings and here I am. Why do people think they can contain me? Why do they want to? Don’t they understand this is just who I am?!”

He grabbed the bars and pressed his scarred face against them, staring at her with a rapidly fading energy. Something odd poked through her rock hard wall of protection that kept her from falling to the insanity of the patients she worked with daily. She could understand that. She could understand the feeling that people judged her on the way she acted, sometimes worried about her unfeeling demeanor, when she couldn’t help it. Why did they judge her on her choices? He was right to a degree.

He fell back into his seat again and sighed.

“How?” She asked.

“What?”

“How did you know?”

He gave her a wondering look, one of amazement and interest at the same time. “Why did you change your mind?”

“I will answer that on one condition.”

“I’m listening.”

“You tell me why you’re here.”

“You know why I’m here.”

“Why are you still here?”

“Ah.” He understood her question immediately. She felt an odd sense of happiness, one she wasn’t supposed to be feeling. There was some joy to be found in the way he could understand her without a second glance, a way that no one else could. “Are you sure you want me to tell you? It ruins the surprise.”

She gave a suspicious nod.

“Guess.”

She bit back a sigh. “No.”

He laughed. “One guess and I’ll tell you.”

She shouldn’t give in this easily, but it was killing her to know. She knew he could get out anytime he wanted. He had someone disabled the camera’s and distracted the guards long enough to follow her, and then got back into his cell without anyone noticing. It wouldn’t take him two seconds to break out and be gone before anyone knew it.

She thought for a while. “You think its funny.”

He laughed again, but it was getting less irritating. “I can see why you would think that. Close, but no.”

“You said you’d tell me.”

“I don’t like it.”

“You don’t like what?”

“Your name. I lied earlier. It’s too professional sounded. Do you have a nickname?”

“No. But that doesn’t have anything to do with-“

“Hm. You need a nickname. I can’t keep calling you Harleen.”

She kept silent, unsure of where he was going with this. They sat in silence for a moment before his eyes opened again.

“Ah ha. I’m going to call you Harley.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Why? Harleen is ugly. It makes me think of black.”

“You don’t like black?”

“No.” He shuddered. “It’s such a boring color. But Harley makes me think of red. Red is my favorite color.”

“Why- I see.” She realized why he’d said all that. “You’re trying to avoid answering me. I played your game. Now answer my question.”

“You’re a smart one.”

“Tell me. What’s keeping you here?”

He tilted his head up at her in a teasing way, his eyes bright. “You, Harley. You.”

She walked home. It was almost midnight by the time she had left, but she wasn’t afraid. There was a sort of steel feeling that he had given her, a sort of protective energy. As if she was scarier than any monster out in the dark. It was something she hadn’t felt in a long time. Something she wasn’t supposed be feeling. She should be sharp and straight like she normally was. Why did her make her so happy?

She knew why. Before she had become what she was now…

“We’re going to take her back.” Harleen heard her mother say. “I can’t handle this anymore. She is nothing like her sister. We shouldn’t adopted her.”

Harleen stood outside the kitchen door, her brain hurting. She just didn’t see the world the way everyone else seemed to see it. She was a pretty normal girl outside her family. She loved to play baseball, she was getting good grades. But at home, she broke windows and hid in closets to jump out at her sister and spilled dye in the bathtub to make it look like blood. It wasn’t all her fault. She remembered hiding under her bed when she was young, her parents kicking the bed and screaming that she would never amount to anything before this new family adopted her. She just wanted to show this new family how successful she was going to be. But just like her first family, the Andersons favored her sister Marlene. Marlene was prettier, sure, with her thick blond hair and blue eyes, but that shouldn’t mean anything. Even her new parents would look at her and say, You should get contacts, Harleen, and dye your hair. White blond just isn’t in style. Or, Grey eyes are just so bland, darling, it good you have those glasses to cover them.

Her perfect act broke only three months after they had got her, and she was almost put back in the orphanage. Now her family was thinking about it again. She had only broke someones arm.

Baseball was her favorite part of the week. She loved to learn. So when her new parents threatened to take her out of baseball as a last resort, she knew she had to change. So instead of proving to her new family that she would be successful, she decided to keep her head down until she was free. Her favorite bat, a solid wooden deMARINI was hidden in the garage. But somewhere along the line she harnessed her inner demon and something changed. She graduated with top scores in psychology, and now here she was. No one ever asked how could so skillfully reach into the insane minds of those in the asylum and pick out what she need. How she could find her way there their maze and get into the cages of their insanity.

Only Harleen knew how.

Because she used to be trapped in one.

But somehow, that man had reached into her mind and saw what she was hiding, and he had pulled it out. Somehow harnessed that demon again and set it free. And all the joys of madness were creeping back into her. But in pulling out that demon, her demon looked on him as a hero. Or maybe even the sane part of Harleen knew she had found something special.

Harleen jolted awake the next morning. She didn’t know what had scared her. But she did know something was wrong. Her alarm. It wasn’t going off. Because she hadn’t set it…

Ugh. She leaned her head against the pillow and sighed. She hadn’t missed a day of work for years, but she figured she would just call in sick.

She could visit him later that night, maybe, when she wasn’t so tired. She hadn’t fallen asleep until two, her mind serenaded by painful memories. But she still wanted to see him again. She knew she needed to face that pain, maybe even relish it. She shook the thoughts away as she sat up in bed. She had withstood years of the craziest patients, why was this one man making her finally crack?

He’s not making you crack, said the demon inside of her. He’s making you to be who you really are. Who you deserve to be.

She quieted it. She would stay Harleen, at least for now, until she couldn’t hold her demon back any longer.

She called Cut and told him she was sick. She was sure he didn’t believe her, because he said in a skeptical voice,

“I hope you feel better.” Or maybe he was just angry about their date. She found herself caring less and less as the minutes went by. The day that followed was the best one she had had in months. She ate out at a cheap fast food restaurant(Something she never did), and took an hour long bath(something else she never did. She blow dried her hair and stood in front of the mirror, disgusted. Her white blond hair was scrabbled up into her normal hasty bun, her oversized glasses sliding down her nose. Her old asylum uniform was worn and loose. She hated wearing oversized clothing. She watched herself reach up and pat her face. She wasn’t wearing much makeup- the same do up she did every day, a loose application of mascara and lipstick, just enough to look professional. She needed to go shopping.

She had forgotten how fun shopping was. She forced herself not to care about how much money she was spending, she had plenty enough. She was a doctor, after all. She bought a barrage of new clothes, makeup, and even a bottle of hair dye. She had no idea what she was doing. But that demon part of her led her through the steps once she got home. She came out of the shower(for the second time that day), blow dried her hair again, and started. She first did her make up in the mirror, deep red lipstick, a quiet voice in her mind telling her it was someones favorite color. But black was also her favorite color, so she did a little bit of eyeshadow, a darker tone to make her eyes look bigger. Mascara and blush and all of that was next. She then brushed her hair, unsure of what to do with it. Anything but that boring, stupid bun. She changed into one of her new outfits, a tight light blue suit that felt much better than her old uniform. She stuffed her feet into new snakeskin heels, and looked in the mirror, still unsure of what to do with her hair. She finally decided on a high pony tail, even pulling down some bangs in the front. She high lighted her hair with red.

Then she looked in the mirror again. She smiled at herself. She looked good, and felt good.

And he was going to like it.

It was just past nine o clock when she arrived. Her favorite guards looked up in surprise as she entered. They stared at her for a solid minute before one stuttered,

“I heard you were sick, Miss.”

She gave them a fake smile. “I’m feeling much better. I figure I can finish something today.” They both gave awkward nods and let her in. Normally she would stay and have conversations with them, but she had been becoming more and more distant lately.

She hurriedly entered the cell, trying to keep her excitement to a minimum. She wasn’t even sure why she felt so excited, but that demon(she had started to call it Harley), knew exactly why.

He was lying on his back, talking to some unseen group around him. It seemed a discussion, so she sat back and waited for it to finish.

“It’s a hybrid.” He was saying proudly. “Anti acid gives the strangest reactions when put with chlorine. Deadly.” He turned his head to look at someone else, waited a moment or too, then nodded. “The water systems, perhaps.” Then he laughed. Suddenly he sat upright and turned to look at her, a slow smile spreading over his scarred face.

“Good afternoon, Harely.”

“Don’t call me that.” She said, even though she relished the nickname. Maybe the demon part of her was looser than she thought. She sat in her normal stool and looked at him. He gave a malicious smile and reached a hand through the bars as if to stroke her hair, but then drew back.

“Red is my favorite color.” He said, sighing. She smiled.

“I know.”

“Odd what sticks in the mind, isn’t it?”

“Not really.”

He gave her another one of his gaping smiles. The scars were starting to bother her less. They’d even become endearing.

“You came to see me again.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“Why did you kill all those people?” She asked. She knew the question would shock him. She had been trying to get the courage to spring it for days.

He just looked disappointed, like he had expected it but was still sad it had come.

“For the dark knight.”

Her eyebrows touched her hairline. “Do you work for him?”

He laughed. “No, no. It was to draw him out.”

“Why are you so obsessed with him?”

He thought about this for a moment. “Because he’s good. As a matter of fact, as much as I hate to admit it, he is the only thing that could ever stop me. I didn’t want someone with that kind of power to be lounging around the city.”

She supposed that made sense. But she suspected something deeper. So she stayed silent to see if he would continue. He did.

“Well, he’s just so much fun!” He said finally, looking up at her with a crazy look in his eyes. “I-I need him, I need him to play with. He’s so good at it. He’s a match, don’t you see?! We’re a lot alike, actually. I need a competitor. Everyone else is- they’re too easy to kill. They’re to easy to ruin. It’s so easy to hurt someone, that it stops being fun. It’s a challenge…” He trailed off, his eyes glittering. “Harley?” He said.

“Yes?”

“Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded.

“Do you understand it for me or do you understand it for you as well?”

She wasn’t sure what to say. She could understand his motives: as Joker. She could even justify them: as Joker. But could she understand them for herself? Could she justify her actions if she had done such a thing? Her hand went up to her hair, and thought about the power she had felt this morning, standing in front of the mirror. To the old Harleen, that would have seemed the same as murdering ten people. But to Harley, they were the same too. The difference was, Harleen would be horrified at both, and Harley would be horrified at neither. So in that way, as Harley, she did understand: completely.

“Yes. I understand for me.”

He smiled at her. “You must feel trapped here.”

She nodded.

“In a way, you are just as trapped as me. Able to leave at any time, and yet there is a magnetic draw to here, a place you cannot escape, even though you can.”

It was terrifying, the way he could just reach into her mind and take everything he needed. But it was terrifying like a roller coster, fun at the same time.

She was glad there was someone who could understand her, whether they were taking that information by force or not.

Harley visited him every day for the next week, Harleen only came twice. It was easy to get to know him. It was like she had known him forever. Their minds were the same, and in a way, their insanity. But to Harley, it felt like her life was finally free. This old shell of human persona had shed. She felt special again. She felt unique. Not just another face in the crowd, some boring asylum director, but a girl who could do what she wanted when she wanted to. Someone who was in control of their own future. As her visits rapidly grew to multiple hours a day, and her focus on the other patients dwindled, her co workers started to worry about her.

When she entered the office one early Friday morning, Cut stopped her on her way out.

“Harleen?” He asked. She didn’t pay him any attention- she didn’t even realize he was talking to her. Her only outside interaction was The Joker, and she’d become so used to the name Harley that Harleen wasn’t even a spark left inside.

He tapped her on her shoulder and she turned to look at him.

“Yes?”

“Look, I know you don’t want to hurt your record by letting this patient go, but I think you need to lay off this case for a while, alright? He seems to be rubbing off on you a little bit.”

She gave him a fake smile. “My patients don’t rub off on me, Cut. If you have a problem with my success, you can talk to him about it.” She turned on her heel and marched out of the room.

“What does he have to do with it?!” He shouted after her, but she ignored him.

That Friday was the day her life changed for real, as she stepped into his cell, his eyes lit up and she knew he had something up his sleeve.

“Harley!” He said slowly. “I have a surprise for you!”

“Alright.” She said, sitting down on her stool and leaning forward in excitement. He reached a hand through the bars and tugged her hair. He gave her another ghost smile.

“How would you like to get out of here for good?”

She grinned. “I would love to.”

“Eleven o clock. Get dressed in something nice.”

She grinned. “I have just the thing.”

She dyed her hair again that night. Blue and pink strips down the side. She decided she was going to trim her hair too. She cut jagged edges down the line, then stuffed them up into double pigtails high on her head. She went through her garage for memories sake, seeming as she wouldn’t come back here. She found her old blue and red baseball jacket, and her favorite grey shirt, the words good night, sprawled across it. She cut the shirt in half so her stomach was showing, and tugged on the old jacket, the were both incredibly tight, but also incredibly cute. She painted a tiny heart on her cheekbone, reminding herself she wanted to get a tattoo soon. She found fishnet tights in the back of her closet. Then she stopped when she realized she was going to need a weapon. She grabbed some of the extra shock bracelets in her drawer, but then saw something peeking out of the corner of her garage. Oh joy of all joys. She had completely forgotten about her baseball bat. She hadn’t seen it since the day she had moved out, taking it with her for memories sake. deMARINI was a good brand. She suddenly realized that this would be a perfectly good weapon of its own. She snatched the baseball bat and tested it out a little bit. Then she ran into the bathroom and finished her makeup. Red eyeshadow on one eye, blue on the other. They could both have their favorite colors. She grinned at herself in the mirror. She was adorable! She checked the time. Time to go.

Cut was still there. As soon as she walked in, he jumped backwards in shock.

“Harleen?! What are you doing?!”

She hit him smack in the face with her bat. He went flying into the wall. “It’s Harley.” She said, running her tongue over her teeth and grinning. “It’s Harley Quinn.”

She flicked the fuse box off on her way in. Chaos ensued. She had forgotten how fun it was to be terrifying. People scattered, screaming at the top of their lungs as she stalked through the halls. She took the bottle of gasoline she had picked up on the way and shattered it against the floor. From there, all it took was a match.

The halls were immersed with fire. She danced around the fires, laughing like a manic. She heard another laugh answer her and squealed in excitement.

“Let’s go baby!” She shouted from the end of the hall, running towards the cell. She snapped the lock like it was nothing and flung open the cell door. Joker gave me an insane smile, one of the ones I had started to fall in love with, and pulled Molotov cocktails out of his jacket.

“Let’s finish this place.”

“My motorcycle’s outside.”

He leaned forward and kissed me. It was my first kiss, but he was good.

“Let’s get out of here.” He said, pulling away and giving me another glittering look.

The asylum blew up behind them, and Harley had never felt so happy. He grinned at her as they drove away.

“Welcome to the world, Harley Quinn.”