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"You won’t get it..."
The jerky laughter ceased. The forty-year-old psychiatrist slowly raised her gaze. My soft yet piercing eyes stared at her ironically.
Her heartbeat quickened, as if it had been able to compensate for several decades of life gone up in smoke in an instant - an instant that was enough for the monster to thrust a sharpened piece of iron into her jugular, severing her vocal cords in the process.
She collapsed in a pool of blood, reduced to a rag, an inert toy, for the criminal, towering over her, who would only have to rip off her limbs one by one if the urge arose.
Although, on second thought, she couldn't even claim to be a toy anymore: she had already fulfilled that role, during all our sessions, when she had impassively listened to my tearful testimonies.
"You won’t get it !..."
She did now. I had played her so easily... Silly and pitiful, that's what the toy she had been must have been like. Silly and pitiful, that is what the clown's disguise had been.
I was now striding away, my shoes sticky with her blood. I wanted to dance.
***
"Sir, would you be so kind as to be quiet, please?"
The man with the moustache had finally decided to interrupt me. I had been waiting for this. What fun would it be to be awkward if everyone pretended not to care?
Nonchalantly, I took out a small piece of paper from my jacket and handed it to the moustached man.
The man quickly scanned the three lines written on the note. I could enjoy his sudden change of expression.
His face was now one-third pitying, one-third embarrassed and one-third horrified. His black moustache made it all look so exquisitely comic! If only the psychiatrist had shown a similar expression, she might still be alive. I don't like people who don't make me laugh, and she was in that loathsome category.
With his moustache twitching uncontrollably, Mr. Mustache-With-Three-Expressions stammered a few unintelligible words and turned back to the movie screen, pretending not to notice.
He was quite amusing, Mr. Impassible-Mustache-Who-Watches-A-Film. We were the only two spectators in this screening room. I had come to sit right next to him, because there was no room left elsewhere: all the other seats were occupied by a frightening void.
Anyway, I had not come to see the film. It was a flop, according to the press review. Mr. Mustache-Starting-To-Be-Shit-Over looked much more interesting to me. I gently put my arm around his broad, quivering shoulders. I stroked his cheek, carelessly. I put my head close to his head, and our two heads seemed to belong to the same body. I whispered in his ear.
The funny thing is the power of a few words written on a small paper note. The whole room is silent, breathless, eyes riveted on the drama taking place in front of them. No one but Mr. Mustache-Shitting-In-His-Trousers has read my note, but I think they all get it. The Star Wars movie on the screen, far behind the two of us, no longer manages to capture our attention. The eyes no longer follow one of the most iconic films of the next two centuries, but stare at me, and my laughter, and my Mr. Ripped-Mustache. I love that moustache, I won't leave it to a corpse. I stop laughing, abruptly. The emptiness of the seats, all those dull, dreary people, who give an even greater impression of emptiness than if they hadn't been there, turn eyes bulging with terror in their sockets, and watch the spurt of blood that now stains the remains of Mr. Death-Without-A-Mustache's face.
***
Funny: an orphan, a widow. No more moustache to look after them. I've sent them the scalp of the funny man from the cinema, the father of one, the husband of the other. They will receive the rest in a sort of bulky coffin-like package.
But enough of moustaches, now ; I have to act, I had almost been forgotten. People now only see me as a monster and criminal in a clown costume, when in reality I am nothing more than a clown in a monster and criminal costume. The monster and the criminal only kill at my command; I, even if I wanted to, could never stop laughing.
***
"Jonathan... Crane. So even the little shits in lab coats who spend their time wiping freaks' asses can have a name..."
He was a little shorter than me, his face lean and self-effacing, a discreet pair of square glasses on his nose. He was nervously wriggling a flap of his blouse, and his faded grey-green eyes fled my soft, warm gaze.
"I have no intention of killing you, Jonathan. I'm here to talk, that's all."
In reality, I didn't give a damn about him, his gown and his glasses. Those who treat the insane are perhaps the blandest of people: how can one be so narrow-minded as to consider other men as sick, without even trying to think like them, to understand them? It's always baffled me...
"Arthur Fleck," he pointed to me with a trembling voice. « You are a sick man, a madman, a criminal in spite of himself. You killed your mother without knowing your father, you were mocked and rejected for your nervous laughter, you are a failed artist, a humorless comedian, you created chaos and punished those who didn't want to understand your morality and your turn of mind, live on TV" he continued. "So you deserve to be hospitalized, medicated, monitored, ostracized, because you are dangerous and evil.
"In that case, why don't you kill me instead?"
I spread my arms wide, my chest puffed out, a bright smile on my face, and glared at the cops in the corner of my eye, all around the post office where I was standing, ready to shoot. They had prevented me from sending the scalp of the moustache. A pity for the widow and fatherless...
Jonathan nervously fiddled with the name tag on his lab coat and mentally made some notes: Athur Fleck did not fear death. He loved chaos and did not fear death. A nihilist, an anarchist, a madman, that was Athur Fleck.
"Don't you get it yet?..."
I felt desperate in the face of such stupidity. I am not Arthur Fleck.
"Arthur Fleck is nothing more than a joke - a black humour joke, I grant you, a humourless joke because he is a failed artist. But a joke nonetheless. A fib. A lie. A story we tell children before they go to sleep - a legend, perhaps, for you, from the fascination I see in your eyes."
Jonathan thought: but who could the man in front of me be, then? If he is not Arthur Fleck, if he is not simply that living joke of the laughing fool, the killer orphan, the monster in spite of himself, the outcast we follow, the humourless comedian... who can he be?
"I was bitten by my wife, then abandoned by my dog, who cheated on me with an alley cat. I worked in a circus where a parrot drove me crazy. I couldn't laugh because of face cramps, so I painted a wide smile on my face to finally be accepted. I had a twin brother who died one day, committed suicide: I decided to be happy for two for the rest of my life."
Incomprehension. Glassy eyes of a dead fish.
I leaned more towards this idiot, who thought he was smart because of all his shitty psychoanalysis degrees.
"You get it? I am who I want to be, I just have to cry for a while in front of a shrink like you, and bam! Magic! I change my story and my identity!"
Jonhatan seemed even more outdated than Freud's theories...
The post office building exploded. The post office building exploded and we were both thrown a few metres away. The policemen were dead, most of them.
I took a stunned Jonathan Crane on my shoulders. He was light, probably because of all the fascinated emptiness I had read in his eyes. I fled in a shower of embers, in the dark, carried by the chaos, which also made me invisible.
***
Under the bridge we were safe. I slept there sometimes when it rained. I laid Jonathan gently on the cold concrete floor.
Neither the monster nor the criminal wanted to kill this bland, orderly little man, this police officer, this insignificant creature. The enemies must always be powerful, and the killing unpredictable, for the cause to be glorious. There, I would have needed only a flick of the wrist to finish off this unconscious bespectacled grub.
I picked up a passing rat and stuffed it behind the psychiatrist's collar. It wiggled under his shirt, and it made him wiggle back when the rodent bit him. The rat ran away from the sleeve of the gown.
Jonathan opened his eyes and focused them on me. No expression. The other psychiatrist had at least felt terror when I had slit his throat. Perhaps he had finally figured it out?
He asked me how, first of all. I told him that I always left some dynamite behind, just in case. This post office had a pretty good alarm system, so I might as well not take any unnecessary risks. Besides, it's always more fun to make the places I pass disappear: a detective with time on his hands could have fun tracing my route on a map of the city by connecting the dots of the blown-up buildings.
In fact, if he did, he would see that I was having fun drawing a huge clown face. This post marks the left corner of the mouth, and I still have one eye, the chin and the hair to do...
To my astonishment, Jonathan smiled. I kicked him in the ribs and he let out a hoarse chuckle. He asked me where my chemistry equipment was - I must have had some, since I was making dynamite. I crouched down, my face beaming: I'll have to find the real Jonathan Crane one of these days, he looks like a man of interesting potential.
I dropped heavily to the spot where the Jonathan I had imagined had stood. My subconscious was right: I had to go to the biological chemistry warehouse, because I had a potion to prepare. Maybe it would help him to understand, if he couldn't do it on his own.
The rat was watching me from his hole. I blew him a kiss with my hand, then a stone, and laughed as he scurried away.
***
"As a result of the violent murders committed during this month, clown costumes will be banned in Gotham City as of today. Violation of this law can result in up to two years in prison and a ten thousand dollar fine. »
If this keeps up, next time it'll be an official ban on laughter...
The cops are hoping to nail me, just like that; they think I'm a fool incapable of being anything other than a clown and a monster, Crane told them so. I'll have to put on a man's make-up from now on: it's been a long time since I've adopted this disguise...
***
"Jonathan Crane... every time we meet, I say your name. Still, it sounds pretty good for a shrink's name!"
I burst out laughing. For nothing, just like that. Crane is convinced that I have no sense of humour, so I might as well leave him in doubt.
It is often said that laughter is infectious. I've never found that to be the case: as soon as I laugh, those around me freeze with terror. Maybe it's because men lack the stamina to laugh, compared to clowns who laugh all day and all night.
Why, in the face of absurdity, am I the only one laughing, not moping in boredom?
Jonathan looks at me. His eyes no longer flee. He is now a worthy enemy.
"I'm going to kill you, Jonathan. But maybe not in the way you think..."
My hand goes slack. The bottle breaks. The gas spills. I laugh, and he now laughs with me. There are many ways to slay an enemy, for there are many forms of glory. But I am not glorious. I just want to laugh.
As Jonathan gradually loses his mind, to the rhythm of his breathing, I answer the question he had asked me by thinking: Arthur Fleck is nothing more than a joke?
"I am not a joke. I don't have enough seriousness for that. A joke doesn't kill you, because it wouldn't be a joke anymore. I am an allegory. I am a metaphor. I am an oxymoron. I am the killing joke."
He almost choked with laughter. He wanted to know my name, my real name, not a joke or a fib or a children's story.
"I'm the Joker!" I bowed, taking a few steps in reverence.
"Let's dance now!"
Jonathan was now a rag, a form of Scarecrow. He would be my Scarecrow now, to scare the birds by day and the bats by night. I took him by the arms and led him into a frantic waltz. He only had the strength to lean his head against my shoulder before his legs gave out, and whispered in my ear:
"Joker..."