* J *

Part Ten: Chapter 56: Laughter

The Joker laughed nervously as the staff of Arkham ripped his expensive suit off him. If there's one thing the Joker has an unforgivable hatred of, it's humility. The Joker didn't like being naked in front of people because they made fun of his chalky endowments. He didn't take kindly to the cruel and slanderous remarks. He wasn't someone you wanted to make fun of or bully. He would teach them that lesson just as soon as possible.

And lets not forget about the sexual remarks, or perhaps they should be called threats. The Joker already knows that Arkham Asylum employs perverts and sexual predators, and they had the power to do whatever they wanted to him. They already had. The Joker doesn't like how weak and powerless that makes him feel. Weakness was unacceptable.

The Joker fought them when he could, with everything he had to give, but there were just too many of them. And every last one of them held a grudge for all their comrades that were killed when he escaped. Just like the cops had done, they beat him, really bad and really hard. But every kick, every punch, every word, only makes the Joker's anger grow. His strength with it, as more and more adrenaline was released into his body. And when that much adrenaline courses through your veins, you get the power and strength of a super hero. Or, in the Joker's case, a super villian. To a degree, the pain in his body was being trumped by the adrenaline.

They could have tazed him, but that would have been far too easy. They were in no way going to give him any mercy. No. They wanted his blood. They wanted to laugh at the bruises that he would carry for weeks to come. The Joker might have been a pasty freak, but he still bled, bruised, and scarred like everyone else.

The Joker should have considered himself lucky that there were cameras filming everything, because what the guards really wanted to do was kill him. They wanted to bash in his head and break every bone in his body. If only they knew where the Joker weighed in on his own self preservation. They might have obliged him. But, because there were cameras, they would just have to settle for beating him within an inch of his life.

With every blow to his body, the Joker laughs. He laughs to piss them off, to rile them, to make them hit him more and more. Harder and harder. You're probably thinking, what the fuck J? Stop laughing and cooperate. Why would you want them to beat you more? Easy, for the same reason that some of his tougher victims do the same thing. He wanted to make them so mad that they would wear themselves out, or get bored, and stop. Or he would push them so far that they would lose all control. At this point he didn't care if they killed him. At the very least, he wished to be unconscious. This place would be a lot easier to accept if he wasn't awake.

The Joker laughs to hide how weak and unimpowered he knows he is. However, he makes sure no one else would ever know. The Joker laughed to mask the pain he felt all over. He would surely piss or cough up blood for a week. His nose was broken and so were a few ribs. Maybe even a few teeth had been knocked loose. The Joker laughs just so he doesn't scream out in agony and defeat. He laughs to cover every silly, sad, tortured expression that his face dared to make. It's pretty remarkable when you think about how perfect a laugh is at camouflageing your real emotions. And a laugh was all they were ever going to get out of him.

The Joker laughs at his blood in small puddles on the floor. It was smeared with boot heels. It looked like the inkblot bat the shrink had shown him on his last visit here. The Joker laughs at how badly he was going to hurt that fucking bat. Somehow he would find a way to cause Bruce the pain that he's caused him, both mentally and physically. The Joker wanted to break the bat until Bruce feels just as broken and damaged as he does. The Joker wanted to hurt him until he knocked some sense into his little bat brains. He wanted to laugh at him with all his heart, and not as a way to hide, but out of pure joy and true bliss.

Then, as they all pile on top of the Joker and pin him to the floor, a doctor comes with a syringe. The Joker's anything but stupid. He knows that the intent of the drug inside of it is to subdue him. He assumes it's Thorazine. The Joker already knows that it doesn't work on him because those guards had tried that before they fucked him. But no one else at the Asylum should know that. No one else had given him any medication. His psychiatrist hadn't been able to prescribe him anything because he couldn't diagnose him. So the Joker sees an opportunity.