Arkham Daily Life (Part 2)

As Gotham City had just entered summer, the few patches of greenery gradually began to flourish, while Arkham Asylum remained as peaceful as ever.

"Jack, I’m warning you! If you sneak into my office in the middle of the night again and paint all over the walls, I’ll cancel your outdoor time for the week, got it?!"

Jack crouched in the corner, dug at his ear, and pretended to be deaf. Schiller stood with his hands on his hips and said, "I know Batman has started school and is busy with homework, so he isn’t going out to fight criminals much anymore. That means you’re bored too, but that’s no reason for you to pull these annoying pranks around the hospital every day!"

Jack muttered, "A bat doing homework? What the hell are you people doing? Am I supposed to praise him for being a good little boy who goes back to his cave to sleep on time?"

Schiller crouched down and looked at Jack. "All right, Mr. Jack, I admit that you’re a genius. You’re naturally good at everything, but that doesn’t mean everyone else is. Batman needs to attend classes, do homework, take exams, earn a college degree, manage his company, and take part in Gotham City’s development…"

"Boring! Boring! Boring!" Jack shouted. "You’re going to kill him! You’re going to kill Batman! I’m trying to save him!"

Schiller tried to reason with him, while Jack desperately covered his ears, shook his head nonstop, and sang a jumble of nonsense songs. In short, he had the attitude of someone refusing to listen no matter what.

The two of them were more like ancient foxes testing each other; neither could fool the other. Schiller knew he could never cure the Joker, but he still dutifully played the role of a doctor. The Joker knew Schiller was not a doctor at all, that he was clearly a patient himself, so he had never intended to convince Schiller either.

At their core, the two were like mirrors facing each other. There was no need for either to persuade the other. Their deadlock was more like a game to pass the boring hours.

But it all came to an end one night, when Brand called and woke Schiller from his peaceful sleep at home.

"Get over here quickly. That lunatic with the smile painted on his face pulled off a kidnapping. He says he wants Officer Schiller to come negotiate with him…"

Lying in the soft, warm bed of his manor, Schiller took a deep breath and said into the receiver, "No need. He’s beyond saving. Let the hostage die."

With that, he viciously slammed down the receiver, pulled his arm back beneath the warm blankets, and went back to sleep.

Less than two minutes later, the phone rang again. Schiller rolled over, picked up the receiver, and put it to his ear. Before the other side could say anything, he said, "Listen, Brand. From now on, if anyone ever says any of the following things to you, I want you to turn around and leave. Don’t even give them a glance."

"For example, ‘I want to play a game with you,’ ‘Want to solve a riddle?’ or ‘Do you want to truly live?’ and so on… As soon as you hear a question like that, don’t ask anything, don’t say anything. Punch them once, then turn around and leave…"

Schiller was so sleepy that he was talking nonsense. Brand said helplessly from the other end, "Just listen to me first. Do you know who he kidnapped?"

"Definitely not you. Otherwise, you’d already be screaming your head off…"

"He kidnapped the most expensive, most advanced brainwave machine we got last week! The one worth nearly two hundred thousand dollars! The hammer in his hand is less than ten centimeters away from it…"

"Shit, I’ll be right there!"

Two minutes later, a bleary-eyed Schiller stood at the door of the equipment room. He lowered his head, closed his eyes for a moment, then took a deep breath.

Jack sat in the room, trying to put the brainwave-detecting Helmet on his head. Since he did not know how to use it, one of the adhesive pads kept snagging in his hair, and he was baring his teeth as he yanked at it.

When he saw Schiller arrive, he grabbed the hammer beside him and shouted, "Listen up, cop! I have a hostage in my hands…"

Schiller somehow produced a medical record book and began scribbling in it. As he wrote, he said, "You’re finished, Jack…"

Jack sat on the table, swaying his head as he muttered, "There’s nothing more boring than playing the most boring game in the world with the most boring person in the world…"

With a rip, Schiller tore a sheet from the medical record and said to Brand, "He’s cured. Process his discharge tomorrow morning!"

Brand glanced at the paper and sucked in a sharp breath.

Early the next morning, Jack strutted into Cobblepot and Evans’s room to say goodbye. He ruthlessly mocked Cobblepot’s Iceberg Lounge idea, then sang light opera in Evans’s ear for two hours. Just as the two were furious enough to beat him up, he smugly produced the diagnosis certificate approving his discharge.

Then, beneath their murderous stares, he swaggered out through Arkham Hospital’s front gate, waving and whistling at the two in the window under the sunlight.

However, before he had even made it down the street outside the gate, more than a dozen luxury cars surrounded him, and a group of mob bosses in suits warmly welcomed Jack.

Jack looked around, realized things were going badly, and immediately tried to flee with his head in his hands. But he was still seized, hauled up, and dragged into a car.

At the window of the attending physician’s office at Arkham Asylum, Brand watched the scene and said, "You actually gave him a bill exempting all medical fees. Now every mob boss in Gotham City will probably be asking him for connections twenty-four hours a day."

Brand looked Schiller up and down and said, "Everyone knows the attending physician of Arkham Asylum is a bloodsucker who never lets a penny slip past him. Yet you deliberately gave him special treatment. They’ll definitely think he’s some relative of yours. Those mob bosses will treat him like an honored guest…"

Three days later, Gordon knocked on Schiller’s office door. After pushing it open, he found Schiller writing at his desk. Gordon walked over, tapped on the desk, and said, "Professor, could you please get that lunatic out of here already?"

"He hijacked television stations five times in three days. He…"

Before Schiller could finish, the news anchor on the television let out another scream and hurriedly ran away. The Joker’s face appeared on the screen. He looked even crazier and more haggard as he said, "Somebody come save me! Save this poor mental patient!"

"Kind Doctor of psychiatry, are you there? Look at me. I’m insane. I should be admitted for treatment…"

Then he rummaged through his clothes and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper, holding it up to the camera. "See this? This is my health insurance payment receipt. I pay so much money every year!"

"But now, but now… boohoo, I’ve developed a serious mental illness, yet the only psychiatric hospital in the entire city refuses to admit me. Boohoo…" He began fake-crying in front of the camera again.

Suddenly, he became agitated. "Schiller Rodriguez! You’re the most irritating person in the world! You made those mobsters swarm around me like flies! You know perfectly well I think those people are the most boring people in the world…"

"There’s no hope in a life like this!" The Joker viciously flung his arms wide. "The whole world has turned black… Despair! Despair! Nothing but despair!"

He clung to the television camera and said, "Can you imagine it? Every day, they come ask me how to make money! This is torture!"

Grinding his teeth, the Joker said viciously, "They’re tormenting and abusing me with their utterly mediocre, unbearably dull brains and their identical ways of thinking!"

"I burned their money and safes in a fire, and they actually smiled and applauded for me. That isn’t a joke at all!"

"They…" A deep helplessness suddenly seeped into the Joker’s voice. "They’re so ordinary that they scare me…"

His voice began to tremble as though he were crying. "Luxury cars, Fine Wine, women, and money! And that damned money! I’m surrounded by a bunch of lunatics!"

"I ran away, but they could always find me…" The Joker truly began to cry in sorrow. "All of them kept talking about these things. They said Gotham City had gotten better and let them make even more money…"

He cried harder and harder. "Everyone is talking about this stuff. I can’t believe it. The world must have gone insane…"

"Come take me away! Take me back to the psychiatric hospital! I’d rather argue with that stupid Penguin or that tasteless, terrible opera singer than hear these disgusting topics ever again!!"

The Joker began dry-heaving at the camera, and he seemed genuinely nauseated. Yet before he could finish retching, someone who looked like a mob bodyguard rushed over and handed him a glass of water.

The Joker wore an expression that said, "See? You all saw that, right?" Then he suddenly jumped up and pointed at the glass, screaming madly, "See?! This is how they torture me! Every day, it’s like this… boohoo… They prepare gourmet food, red wine, and money for me, burying me under all this stuff…"

He gritted his teeth and shouted at the television, "Schiller Rodriguez! You damned, unscrupulous quack! A mental patient is standing right in front of you. Can’t you see that?!"

"Just let me leave! Anywhere is fine! Hurry up and lock me in a psychiatric hospital, hear me?!!"

Schiller did not even raise his head. Gordon wore an expression as if he had eaten a fly. "I said it before. Even if everyone in Gotham City is a little crazy, he’s way too crazy. Who begs to get into a psychiatric hospital…"

Just then, he slapped his forehead. "Oh, I forgot. Now every mob boss in Gotham City wants to get in here."

"All right, Professor Schiller, listen. I don’t really care if you turn this place into a private prison for the mob, especially when it does some good for public safety, but that doesn’t mean you should let a lunatic like this run around the city."

He earnestly pleaded with Schiller, "This is a psychiatric hospital, after all. Shouldn’t it admit one or two actual mental patients?"

Schiller continued writing with his head lowered. After a while, he looked up, rolled his neck, and said, "Fine. I can reluctantly save him a bed."

"However, I don’t accept insurance companies here." With that, Schiller stood up, took out the bill he had just written, and handed it to Gordon. "This is the repair cost for everything he damaged before. As long as he signs it, I’ll admit him."

Gordon took the bill and glanced at the final amount. He sucked in a sharp breath, but still said, "This… I’ll pass it on to him, but I don’t think someone whose profession is truck driver would dare sign such a huge bill."

"Tell him that if he doesn’t sign, I’ll send this bill to Batman and tell him that his friend Joker Jack owes me a huge amount of money and refuses to pay. He’s a deadbeat bastard, rotten to the core."

Gordon sighed. "Although I have no idea what the point is of you people playing this Role-playing game, whatever. Is there any shortage of things like this in Gotham City?"

"Whatever you do, don’t say that in front of that lunatic from earlier. If he finds out you think his game is ordinary in Gotham City, he’ll definitely prepare one huge surprise for you."