A Guy Walks Into A Bar...

Fears

I couldn't believe what that Asylum had done to my father. He had been in perfect health when I saw him last. But after a month of Arkham, he literally looked like they had sucked the life right out of him. I guess when you consider that the purpose of the shocks and drugs was to make the Joker go away, sucking the life out of him was exactly what they had done.

But you see, the Joker is pretty much my father's dominant personality. Jack Napier was still in there, but it took a lot to reach him. So when they try to suppress the Joker, it obviously does more harm to him than good. However, I'm sure they never once think about his welfare, they just feel less threatened by him if he's drooling.

But the real question here is, why would my father choose this? Why would he turn himself in, knowing exactly what they would do to him? And why would he stay so long when breaking him out was possible from day one? It was more than just to avoid me. But what?

I look over at my father in the back seat next to me. Every so often, I can see him twitching somewhere. He's sweating like we were sitting in a sauna. I reach over and touch his arm to see if he has a fever or something. He jerks and shrinks away at first, but calms down once he realizes that it's only me.

"You're burning up," I say, wondering how long he's had a fever. Was the Asylum even aware? Did they do anything to try to break it? Or had they simply thrown him in a cell and not cared?

He dismissively holds up his hand, "I'll be fine," he dryly says. "Think of the brain as...a really old outdated computer... It takes a long time to reboot it..." he explains.

"How long?" I ask, quite concerned about his welfare.

His puffy half lidded eyes look out the window, but I could tell he wasn't actually looking at anything. "A few weeks usually," he says softly.

"Why did you do this? Why'd you kill a bunch of people, surrender to Batman, and decide to stay in Arkham all this time? What were you running away from?" I ask him, watching him closely.

He closes his eyes and leans his head against the window. After a moment I can hear him speak, "People like to take time from work for vacations. Just a brief little get away to forget about all their stress and responsibilities. Well Arkham is my way of forgetting. And sometimes, if I'm lucky, things get erased forever..."

"Erased?" I say more to myself. But now I understood why so little of Jack Napier remained. He had literally been erased. And apparently not entirely by accident. Then I suddenly felt a clench in my chest. "You were trying to erase me, weren't you?" I swallow.

My father weakly rolls his eyes at me, "Don't be so dramatic."

"The flamboyant Clown is calling me dramatic?" I cock an eyebrow at him.

My father stares at me blankly, "Do you have any idea how much I hate being called clown? In fact, people tend to die for calling me that. But since you're my son, I'm willing to overlook it just this once." He points his index finger at me, "You can refer to me by many names, but if you ever fucking call me clown again...just don't, alright?"

"S-sorry..." Was all I could seem to say.

"You'll be happy to know, that instead of forgetting...I only remember more..." He says and looks back out the window into darkness.

"What do you remember?" I ask.

My father is quite for a long while. So long that I assume he's not going to answer me. But he replies with a single word. "Jeannie."

Mom... I wanted to press him for details, but as I turned to ask him I could see the wet trail left behind a tear as it caught the passing city lights. I knew from the tear that he still loved her. "You know she never remarried, never even dated?" I ask him.