Suicide Squad Read Free Page B

madman.
    The Joker fell back. His eyes rolled into his head as if he simply couldn’t believe what he had just heard. He shook his head to clear away his confusion, then stuck his face inches from Quinzel’s own.
    “You helped me?” he repeated. “You helped me? By scorching what few dead, faded memories I had into a sizzling knot?”
    “That was prescribed,” she pleaded. “Everything said it was the best possible cure for you.”
    “For my what, girl? A cure for my genius? My insanity? My ability to do bird calls? Or maybe you mean it was to help cure my bad back? You know I got that digging graves for that basketball team I kidnapped, way back when.”
    She stared at him, obviously confused. He leaned closer to her.
    “Doctor Quinzel, do you know that for years and years they kept playing against this one other team. Only this one other team, and guess what? They lost every single game. Every. Single. Game.”
    The Joker sighed at the thought.
    “Anyway, where was I? Oh. Right. At some point don’t you think even a total idiot would say, ‘Maybe we should play a different team,’ or better, that ‘God’s telling us we should quit basketball and go into business selling, I don’t know, aluminum siding, maybe?’ What do you think?”
    “I don’t know what to say,” she responded. “Please don’t make me. Please let me go.”
    “Let you go?” Joker said. He scratched his chin as if he was thinking deeply, then he gave her a huge smile. “Let you go? That is an idea, but when it was my turn to get my brains scrambled, you didn’t let me go, did you?”
    “I’m sorry. I was only trying to help.”
    Joker understood. “I know. I’m sure you thought electrifying my brains was the best way to fix all my many problems. But I’ve got to ask you a question, Doctor. Did it ever cross your itty-bitty brain that maybe you could spend just a little extra time and come up with a better solution than churning my gray matter into instant pudding? What do you think, dearie? Would taking a little more time have proven a better way to go?”
    “Maybe. Sure. Why not?” Quinzel stammered, more than willing to agree with anything he said. “I mean, if that’s what you think. I was just trying to do the right thing.”
    He flailed his arms, his hands waving back and forth, puppet-like, uncontrolled, as if the hinges that held them to his wrists had broken.
    “Doing the right thing, huh? You tossed me into a black hole of rage and confusion. Is that the medicine you practice, Dr. Quinzel? Is that ‘doing the right thing’ for all your special patients?”
    He held a leather strap in one hand, and with the other traced a long, sharp pinky nail along her lips.
    “Now I’m throwing you into the same black hole,” he said as he stroked her face with the leather strap then rested it over her closed mouth. “Open up, doll,” Joker said as he pushed the strap between her lips. “And bite hard. This is so you don’t break those perfect porcelain-capped teeth when the juice hits your brain. You’ll thank me later.”
    “You say you didn’t want to hurt me,” he continued as she complied, “yet you did. And I insist I don’t intend to hurt you, but you know what? Sometimes hurt happens.” He stepped back, then gave a wide smile and laughed his approval. “You are so going to be my Mona Lisa, and I, for one, could not be more proud.”
    * * *
    Frost handed him the two paddles that had been sitting on the small steel instrument table. He made a show of smearing them with conductive jelly then placed them on her temples.
    Quinzel knew what was coming, and his slow, deliberate moves only prolonged her horror. When he smiled at her… with that awful, gleaming, murdering smile… she screamed through the ball and leather strap.
    “Forget you ever met me,” he giggled, but she knew she never could.
    Harleen Quinzel was in love with the man.
    She convulsed as 450 volts seared through her brain. Her face