[Zhongyingmei] The clown is actually me

The Joker's true identity is a mystery.

Maybe all of Gotham is guessing, who the hell was the Joker before he was the Joker?A bereaved father, an unpopular comedian,? A hapless guy who accidentally fell into a chemical pool?

However, this question has never been answered,? The origin of the clown is like a mystery that can never be solved, wrapped in a dense fog that cannot be seen clearly,? No matter how many hands try to clear this layer of fog,? All they see is a deeper, deeper fog.In a way, the origin of the Joker is a metaphor for himself,? When Batman thought he knew enough about this crazy man,? He would always laugh at Batman loudly while giving him to Batman All impressions left are overturned.There seems to be no shadow of order and humanity in him,? It's like the person under that layer of skin is not a living person, he is more like a concept of extreme chaos,? A kind of... pure disorder and madness .

Batman is staring at the photo on the computer,? Jack—or the Joker, looking straight ahead, his eyes are wet and cold,? With a lizard-like smile.When he is not smiling, he looks polite and gentle, like a gentle, pious, young and promising scholar, but his hollow pupils turn like two slowly rotating deep vortexes.Or the sparkling will-o'-the-wisp, swaying coldly in the wind.

Eyes are the most expressive thing,? Love, anger, sadness, pain... Different emotions make their pupils dilate and shrink,? Even professionally trained agents,? Or the toughest criminals,? Take control of this instinctive physiological response.But he didn't, whether it was Jack or the clown, their eyes were damn similar, the pupil size never changed, like two bright spots fixed deep in the eyeball.He sat there, not like a real person, but more like a cold-blooded snake. When Batman looked at other people, even if there was an abyss in their eyes, the remaining humanity would always catch him, but the clown ——Unlike Jack, they just let Batman fall in his eyes, and the abyss never ends.Batman can't see tenderness, coldness, hatred and deep love, the only thing he sees is...empty ridicule.

He is not like other criminals.

Batman is never afraid of crazy criminals, they commit crimes because of cowardice, because of anger.But the clown is different. Every time he faces him, Batman has to say to himself in his heart: The guy in front of you is made of flesh and blood.He is not an immortal monster, not some kind of devil, let alone an invincible concept.He is not invisible, nor does he have special powers. He will not know your secret, because he is an ordinary man who has just soaked in the waste liquid bucket.He hurts, he jumps, he gasps, he bleeds, he dies...he's just a human.

"I'm not sure, Ah Fu. I have to do a DNA test on the baby in Jenny's womb." He lowered his head, cut open Jenny's clothes, and then his movements stopped suddenly, as if he was being watched by Medusa alive turned into a statue.

Alfred stepped forward, only to see that Batman cut off Jenny's long skirt, exposing the abdomen of the female corpse, a long suture line.The suture was twisted and crooked, and the stitches were thick and big. From a distance, it looked like a thick centipede hugging the waist and abdomen of the female corpse.There was no sign of healing at all on the skin flap. It could be seen that after Jenny died, someone cut open her belly and sewed it back hastily with thread. The technique was more clumsy than the apprentice who had just entered the door.

Batman cut the suture, and the woman's belly opened like a flower, revealing what was hidden inside the body.A bulging plastic bag, only the size of a fist, black and opaque, tied with a fancy bow.

Batman first scanned it with a bat computer to confirm that there were no bombs or laughing gas in it, no poison was applied on the edges, the quality and feel of the plastic bag were fine, Joker didn’t tamper with the raw materials, and then he picked up the bag. It was slowly disassembled under Alfred's gaze.

"This is... a letter?"

Yes, there was only one thing in the plastic bag, a letter sealed in a plastic sleeve, very thin, only two pages to the touch.

Batman took out two things and put them on the table.The old curled edges of the letter were yellowed, he turned it over, and on the blank envelope, there was a line of English writing:

"To my masterpiece - or a bat"

The envelope was snow-white, with only a single line of English in it.

Batman opened the letter, and as he expected, there was only one piece of letter paper, the size of a palm, but it was pitch black, with a mutilated short poem written on it with a silver signature pen:

"You come to the world, you want to see the sun.*"

(*Speaking from Haizi's "Summer Sun")

Sandwiched between the letter papers was a specially made playing card. On the card, a man wearing a clown hat sneered at Batman.This is the business card of the clown.

Batman didn't find any other mystery on this letter paper, the Joker didn't even play his favorite word game, there were no intentionally misspelled written words in the lines of poetry, no deliberately drawn traces with hints, this was just a letter. An ordinary letter with a few poems written on it.There's nothing amiss except that the mail box is a dead body.

Alfred raised his eyebrows: "Is he determined to be a poet?"

As he spoke, his heart sank heavily.The clown didn't want to face his real name, and he wouldn't let anyone know his past. But now, he deliberately left clues on the female corpse, and even stuffed the business card directly in the corpse's stomach, obviously not Afraid that others would discover the connection between the dead body and him.Then this corpse probably has nothing to do with the Joker's origin, otherwise he wouldn't be so fearless.

They once thought that they were close to the origin of the clown, but at the end they realized that all this was useless. They were still spinning in the boundless fog, led by the nose by the clown.It's the Joker's trick, a cruel joke - he's hiding everything where they can find it, giving them a brief hope of jumping out of the fog, and then just when they think they're nearing the end, he pulls the rug out from under their feet Go, let them continue wandering in the maze.He stood at the finish line, grimly mocking them for having hoped.Alfred actually heard the lunatic's laugh, high-pitched, cold, and vicious, scratching the inside of the skull like metal nails, making his temples throb.

Batman pondered for a long time: "Jack Napier is not the origin of the Joker, but Jack is the personality fabricated by the Joker based on the experience of the real Jack Napier."

"But Jack believes he is Jack." Alfred sighed. "Are we going to tell him the news? His wife is dead."

"No, hide the corpse. Ah Fu, use the bat computer to erase all Jack Napier's files, so that he will never find his origin in this life." Batman said while pressing on the operating keyboard Twice, a dynamic icon of a file being shredded popped up on the flashing computer screen, and a layer of distorted light and shadow was reflected in Batman's blue eyes, as if it was a metaphor of fate, "No matter who Jack is, we all need He keeps to himself. The Joker has never been more peaceful and Jack is the best jailer."

Alfred looked at the icon and thought the moment was ridiculous.They worked hard to dig out the origin of the clown, but in the end they had to bury the secret of the reappearance back into the soil. In the end, they also became accomplices in helping the clown hide his identity.He was thinking about today as he put his card down on the body, and what he was good at was pulling heroes into the mud too, and laughing at their beliefs, their hopes, everything they believed in.

Clown joke.

Alfred rubbed his eyes, and there seemed to be a clown's laughter in his ears, cold and vicious.

After the bat computer shredded the file, it suddenly flashed, showing a new file from Arkham Asylum.Alfred put away those trivial sentiments and asked, "Master Bruce?"

"I communicated with Arkham a few days ago and asked them to send me a list of the books the clown has read every week. I need to keep track of his movements." Batman clicked down while talking.See a long list similar to "Vandermonde determinant and application of determinant calculation", "Brief description of matrix reversible 3 judgment methods", "Application of Taylor's formula and calculus definite value in mathematical analysis", "combined with practice Talking about the Analysis and Understanding of the Limit Definition of Sequences" and other academic papers, I couldn't help but feel a headache, but when the list slid to the bottom, there appeared several titles with completely different styles: "Little Princess, She is Cute and Soft", " Cinderella at Six in the Morning", "I'm the Lovely Daughter of the Big Brother".

"Uh... what... what is he looking at?" Alfred felt that his heavy heart just now had become a joke again, "Is he really the same person as the clown?"

Faced with these colorful book titles, Batman was also a little caught off guard: "Probably, maybe... I'm a little uncertain."

One month later, in the northern forest of Gotham City, on the Winding Mountain Road.

The forest in the setting sun is covered with a thick orange, as if God poured down the paint. In a misty summer mist, the blood-red sunset hangs behind the mountains, falling, bright and brilliant, like a round of melting and gradually condensing of iron slurry.The huge crimson wheel gradually dimmed, and the mist was penetrated by the twilight, gradually returning to thinness.

Sheriff James Gordon and detective Harvey Bullock parked their police car in a wooden house that had been abandoned for many years. They stood side by side, surrounded by police cars, and police officers kept rushing in and out.Not long after, several forensic doctors came out of the wooden house and carried out a decomposed corpse.Although the shroud covered most of the smell, the smell of corpses and stale blood made both of them frown.

"Take it to the police car," he said, eyeing Detective Harvey.

"Did that guy do it again?" Harvey smoked.

"It's the third time this month." Gordon clearly knew who "he" Harvey was talking about.

The two said, and followed the corpse into the police van. After the forensic doctors settled the corpse, they retreated. Harvey Bullock closed the door tightly and drew the curtains tightly to ensure that no light could leak in. The darkness Silence swept over the two of them, and for a while, there were only two burning cigarette butts left in the small space, but in this, they all heard the breathing of the third person.

Someone lit a lamp.

A teenager sat in the corner of a police van. He looked to be only fifteen or sixteen years old, wearing a red and black Robin uniform* and a pitch-black cloak.His hair was cut very short, and his neat short hair was close to his neck. His muscles were neither thin nor thick, and he was in just the right condition. He looked like a healthy and young cheetah.Gordon was not surprised by his sudden appearance, he just sighed, and handed the file he had prepared to Robin: "This is the case this time."

(*The setting of the animation "Under the Red Hood" is used here, Jason Todd's uniform is black and red, and his eyes are green)

Jason took the file: "It also appeared this time?"

"Correct."

Jason followed Gordon's gaze and saw an old man lying on a stretcher.His temples were gray, his eyes were wide open, and his exposed skin was covered with age spots. The most creepy thing was the expression of the corpse. His cheeks were raised high, showing a sneer that was extremely weird.On the chest of the corpse, he found a rectangular light-colored outline, as if something had been placed close to the body, and this thing blocked the blood pollution, so there was such a small piece of clean skin.

Gordon handed over the evidence bag, and Jason took it. It was a disturbing playing card, stained with dried blood, and rusty red and black.He turned the evidence bag over, and the familiar totem of a man wearing a clown hat appeared on the card.It looked like the green-haired lunatic was sitting right in front of him, sneering at him.