Hush (A Joker Story)

9: Who I Am

The night before made me realize who I was, and accept it. Jack and I really hit it off and while he was out on a job, I decided to make my day off fun.

Rain slipped down the windows in a gentle fashion, creating a beautiful rhythm outside my window. It calmed me, and I was happy to sit by the window and read a book. I decided to read "To Kill a Mockingbird". It was a great book. 

Sometimes I felt like Tom Robinson, who was prosecuted for the color of his skin, even though he was an innocent man. Though I am not racially discriminated against, I am discriminated against for my gender, especially in a business like this. Discrimination of gender is as serious as racism even though racism was more prominent; racism was a stupid barrier America should be happy to be over. But we are still all discriminated against for something we cannot help.

The first time I decided to join the line of crime, I was only wearing a wig to mask my identity. No use of a literal mask, and when I was finished with my job, the wealthy con artists I was working for, who didn't want to get their hands dirty, merely laughed at me. 

"You're a woman,' they spoke. "You have no place in this world besides in the kitchen!"

It infuriated me. The women criminals who had made such a bad name for themselves were women like Harley Quinn.

Harley Quinn is well known for being Joker's "pet". She's known for being shoved around, and known for her insane relationship with the Joker. Everyone knows the abuse she goes through, except for her. She is clueless to the truth. He does not love her. He loves what she represents:

Control.

To get a professional shrink, someone who went through countless years of school to get to where they are and reverse their education and make them the insane people they study in school. To influence the people we knew as the only cure, our only hope to cure the Joker, shows that no one is safe anymore. No one is untouchable. Joker can reach any of them.

To be taken by the Joker not physically, but emotionally, is crazy enough. No one would be willing to go to the Clown Prince of Crime, let alone a psychologist. 

When news got out that Joker had influenced a psychologist from Arkham, the place known for its extremities in the field of criminals, most of the citizens of Gotham lost hope. 

The only hope they have left is focused on the man in the bat suit.

Now, after bashing Harley Quinn, let me tell you how I would hit Gotham.

My name is Blaise. And I am not some love struck fool, I am not someone who slept their way through college like Harley Quinn (which is probably why she was so easy to influence, now that I ponder upon why she was so stupid in the first place). I am stupid, I am crazy. I never wished to help the very people I work with today. 

I am stupid because I know I am doing wrong. But answer me this: how do you expect to survive in a place like Gotham city?

No other place in the world would I have the same opportunity. Not LA, not New York, not Houston, not Compton. No where. Gotham is the only place where crime like this would work.

Gotham: The homeland of failure, poverty being the biggest problem, and the only thing preventing us from being the worst city is Bruce Wayne, whose fortune makes the scale level out on the list of richest cities. We are considered a wealthy city only because of this one man. Gotham was never meant to make it though. Gotham was to be a place where failures like us will reside.

I am crazy because I do not fear. To not fear is to not mind. We fearless folk aren't just dismissive of our emotions; we honestly just do not mind. We can die from this? Well, okay. We die once in our lives. We just have to make sure we have a pretty good life. I know my life doesn't seem so glamorous to most, but it is glamorous to me. I was born for this job.

Unlike Tom Robinson, I am guilty for my actions. I am not the innocent person that was walking by, not harming a soul, and in a way, Tom and I could be completely different. What do I mean by this?

He was judged for being African American, he was accused of being a rapist. 

I am judged for being a woman, but I get judged for being the typical damsel in distress. No one would suspect a girl like me to get blood on my hands. If they were to accuse me, well....They'd probably be right.