Jokers Angel

Chapter 1

The steady tick, tick of the clock behind me began to feel deafeningly loud. The loathsome, over-inflated man sitting opposite leered at the opening of my red silk blouse as a few slimy, yellow bubbles of drool escaped the corner of his flaccid mouth. I pulled my crisp, long, white doctor's coat across my chest and glanced down at my notes trying to control the roiling tempest threatening to empty the contents of my stomach. I was no longer confident I could peer into those bulbous bloodshot eyes without this morning's breakfast making a surprise appearance all over the regulation institution-issue desk that was the only barrier between me and what could only be described as pure evil. I desperately tried to cling to my professional air; doctor/patient, psychiatrist/psychopath, broken woman/depraved child killer. Grow a fucking back-bone Dr Angelina Mort. I had worked too damn hard, clawing my way from a deep, dark hole on the wrong side of the tracks all the way up to the title of Dr. I wasn't about to let this sorry excuse for a man get his kicks by feeding off my reaction to the horrific titbit he had just disclosed to me.

She had begged for her mother the whole time he had her, but when he choked the last breath out of her frail, broken, tortured little body it was her father she had called out for. The father she never knew, she perhaps thought he might swoop down and save her from the clutches of this greasy, flabby, enormous man with his sweaty, bitter smelling body and sour rancid breath. But her absent daddy never came and she died knowing she left this world all alone with only the devil himself for company.

This wasn't therapy, he was reliving the thrill he derived from his crimes and in the process sought to exert some form of control over me.

My eyes clouded over and I gripped the edges of the desk for dear life as my traitor mind transported me back to a time locked away in a dark, ugly box inside my troubled brain labelled 'no go'.

We were lying on our stomachs in my pretty back yard. It was a balmy summer afternoon, and my beautiful, angelic niece giggled as we watched bugs drunkenly stumbling over the bright green blades of grass. I leaned over and tickled her through her thin pale yellow cotton sun dress sprinkled with white daisies, she chuckled as tears of joy and laughter shone like precious jewels in her big, cornflower blue eyes and she gazed lovingly into my storm grey ones. Her sooty lashes swept over her flushed pink round cheeks and she wound her chubby baby fingers into the tousled waves of my long light brown hair as she bubbled with innocent childish laughter. I swung her up into a warm embrace pressing my face into her soft sweet smelling neck as her silky blonde baby curls tickled my nose. "Again, Again Aunty Lina" she squealed with delight. The phone rang out through the open back doors and broke our magical spell, I set her back down in the warm, sunny sandbox and ran to answer the call. I caught sight of the sun glinting off her pale golden curls like a tiny little halo, I turned to the pad on my dark mahogany desk to write down the directions to Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the criminally insane. The location of my new job.

I crashed back into the room as I slammed the heavy door to my dreaded mind-box firmly shut and mentally scrambled to twist the rusty key in the heavy lock. Godammit that box had come open with alarming frequency lately but never before at work. I couldn't let it, I wouldn't let it and most definitely not in front of this sick fuck sitting before me.

I slammed my hand down on the panic button as a revolting smirk spread across the inmates face. I tore my eyes away disgusted as the guard slammed into the room and dragged him out. I rose from my chair, gathered up my files and followed quickly behind them.

"Cancel my appointments for the rest of the day I'm leaving now" I barked.

"But Dr Mort you got Joker next, it's your first meet with him, he ain't gonna be happy you cancelling on him at the last minute" the guard mumbled.

"I don't give a damn what he thinks, I'll see him in the morning" I spat out exasperated. Who the hell was running this place anyway?

My heels clicked down the wide echoing corridor as I stalked towards the exit my sun tinted hair swaying behind me having somehow freed itself from the constraints of its severe tightly pinned bun.

As I struggled to regain my composure and calm my flushed cheeks I caught sight of the man himself leaning against the paint peeled grubby Asylum wall, a guard whispering something discreetly into his ear. It was The clown prince of crime himself and lucky me, my next case study. His piercing icy blue eyes alighted on me and travelled slowly up from my nude stilettos over my toned calves and across my tightly fitted neutral pencil skirt. His eyes carried on the journey at his leisure taking in the swell of my breast against the red silk of my shirt and the fall of my now loose tousled hair that was draped like a shiny curtain against my jaw and then onwards over my full lips, where he met my angry, stormy grey stare. First surprise and then Something fleetingly imperceptible flickered in the corner of his eyes and pulled up one edge of the perfectly white skin around his dark red mouth. Amusement? It was hard to tell because in an instant the expression was gone replaced with a terrifying furious glare. He raked his fingers through his bright, grass green hair and down the side of his tattoo covered neck and bared his silver grill tipped teeth at me. No doubt he had been informed by the guard that I had broken our appointment. Well tough! I stormed past him without a backward glance. He would just have to wait I wanted out of here and fast before the sight of the grass like colour of his hair morphed into the grass of my back yard and broke open that fucking hated box again.