Hush Little Baby

Baby Boy

"How old did you say she was?" Dr Harley Franklin Quinzel quickened his pace to match the stride of his mentor. He was of average height and build, standing at about 5'11 and 165 pounds of lean muscle.

Dr Strange sighed as he glanced over his file once again. "I didn't." He replied. "Because we don't know. We don't even know her real name. No matches on DNA or dental, her appearance doesn't match with any missing persons records. Absolutely nothing. The GCPD brought her again just a few days ago, and in that time she's managed to bite off Doctor Greys' ear and escape her cell twice. No idea how she even did it." Doctor Strange chuckled quietly. However, Harley noted that there was no humor in his voice. He almost seemed nervous. Harley couldn't blame him. He hadn't been working at Arkham Asylum long, barley 6 months in fact, but he had heard the stories of the woman that had been brought in. She robbed banks and murdered families. Shot men whilst theirs wives watched and begged for mercy. And it was all done 'for fun', as he had heard.

Harley sighed as they continued walking down between the cells. Some patients glared at the two of them, some shouted abuse and explicit insults, others simply lay on their beds and stared at the walls or ceiling, whilst the rest sat huddled in the corner, muttering in response to only voices they could hear.

The two were on their way to solitary confinement where the newest addition to Arkham resided. Harley chewed his lip. Newest? Hardly. From what he'd heard from the other doctors and seen on the news, this patient was in and out of the asylum so many times that they'd all lost count. She always found a way out. Most times the place was broken into by her goons, coming to spring her loose. But other times she had managed to get out on her own. Vanishing from her cell without a trace and without a single sighting. Not one person saw her escape her cell and nothing was caught on security footage. However, the tape recordings showed that the live feed was shut down on all the cameras for approximately twenty minutes, by that time, the patient had vanished. Back onto the streets of Gotham and causing chaos and mass murder.

The door to the solitary unit loomed before them, and Harley found he had never been so nervous and excited at the same time. He knew who he was about to meet, and yet there was a strange thrill to the thought of meeting the patient. She truly was a rare case. A megalomaniac, sociopath, and psychopath rolled into one. The psychiatrist in him couldn't help be excited at the prospect of meeting such a patient.

He was pulled from his thoughts when the buzzing of the door signaled their authorization into the solitary confinement section of the building. The patient had been sent down here on her second day after she, as Doctor Strange stated, had bitten off Doctor Grey's ear, but not before stabbing a guard in the jugular with a pen she had somehow managed to swipe from Grey's clipboard.

Harley watched as his mentor pulled the door open, the chilled air brushing over his face as he stared down the dark aisle.
As the door had swung open, a haunting voice echoed from the far end of the aisle. The voice was female, singing a child's nursery rhyme to the voices owner.

"Hush little baby, don't say a word. Momma's gonna buy you a mockingbird. And if that mockingbird don't sing, Momma's gonna buy you a diamond ring. And if that diamond ring turns brass, Momma's gonna buy you a looking glass..."

Dr Harley shivered as the cold tone of the voice sent an icy tingle down his spine. Dr Strange mimicked his uneasy expression, the pair of them jumping suddenly, when the voice trailed of and called out to the two of them.

"Come in. I won't bite..." The childlike giggle that followed caused Harley to shudder more violently than before.

Dr Strange turned to him with a determined expression. "You ready?" He asked.