Ditto

"How do you spell 12?"

Jonathan raised an eyebrow and twirled his pencil with nimble fingers. "T-w-e-l-v-e. Should I spell your name as well?"

"Ha ha, I'm in hysterics." The Joker rolled his eyes and resumed nibbling on his already mutilated pencil. Three words later the wood snapped and the Joker faltered, leaving a long black line down the side of his paper. "Damn it!" He stood up and grabbed the paper and tore it over and over until it was nothing more than snowflake sized pieces flipping slowly to the floor.

Jonathan kept his head down to his paper but watched the clown from the corner of his eye, his gaze lazy and a little annoyed. "You could've erased it." he mumbled carelessly.

The scared man growled and fiercely yanked at his hair in frustration. "The line was too dark! You could still see it if it was erased!" he clenched his teeth and bit his lip and tongue all in an insane attempt to vent his frustration.

"You could've at least kept the paper, now how are you going to know what you wrote?" Oh he knew messing with the Joker when he was like this was as stupid as it was dangerous but riling him up was just too much fun. Besides, when had the Joker ever hurt his little crow?

"I don't even care about the stupid paper anymore! Screw it! I didn't want to do this in the first place!" He slumped down in his chair and shoved a severely scared knuckle in his mouth, gnawing on it until he tasted a familiar coppery tang.

Jonathan turned to face the blonde and grimaced at the sight of the red, fleshy knuckle. "Cut that out, it's going to get infected." He warned, slapping the Jokers hand away from his mouth.

"Like I care." The madman growled, sinking his teeth back into the bloody flesh.

Jonathan snatched the Jokers hand away and held his wrist. "Stop it! Your going to lose your finger stupid!" He hissed.

"Good! At least when it falls off I'll have something to eat!" He shouted in the direction of the therapists. They were all clustered in the far side of the room, taking notes and watching them like sheep. Some patients, or inmates depending on how you viewed it, had been chosen for a small activity held in the near empty rec-room. Among them Joker and Scarecrow.

The doctors continued jotting down notes as if there had been no outburst, only adding to the Jokers growing frustration. For the past hour or so he had been trying to finish the stupid project the psycs had given the ten of them, called the damned thing 'a simple experiment'. Well he didn't find it so simple. They had been given instructions to write 'to explain' what or how they felt about their roommates, an example they provided was: 'I think John Doe is nice and caring and is a good friend because he plays cards with me.' It had taken an unreasonably long explanation from the crow to get Joker to understand that 'John Doe' was not a real person, but that simply confused the clown further.

The Joker continued to gnaw at his knuckle, though a bit gentler this time and glared down at the space where his paper once lay. There were no more sheets left at the table since he had ripped them all to shreds and there was no way he was going to ask one of the psycs for another. Chances are they'll ignore his request anyway. He sighed, frustrated, and turned to his friend.

"Hey, Crow?"

"Hmm?" Johnny looked at him.

"What'd you write?"

Johnny's eyes widened for a split seconded. "Why?"

Joker rolled his eyes and reached for the others unguarded paper. "Cause I wanna see!"

"H-hey! Give me that!" He hissed quietly, not wanting to draw attention to them. He grabbed for the stolen paper but missed, instead grabbing the Jokers hand and as a result, his mangled finger.

"Gah-AHGG!" The Joker screamed at the unexpected pain and clenched his other hand, half crumbling the paper.

Johnny snapped his hand back as if it had been burned and winced at the glare that was shot his way. "Sorry." he mumbled quickly.

"Humph." Joker scowled and smoothed out the wrinkled paper, then read it. Johnny leaned on the table and sighed, giving up on the thing. Those words were probably more trouble than they were worth anyway.

Jonathan Crane - Scarecrow

My roommate is an insufferable, annoying, violent, homicidal jerk with no regards for personal space and constantly denies me and himself self respect.

And yet I've gone this long without stabbing him with the metal shank I keep under my bunk.

Joker glared for the longest time after he read the words on the troublesome sheet, then finally, he smiled. He snatched up Johnny's discarded pencil then, after scribbling his name, he wrote:

Ditto.

Authors Notes

Quick note: Thanks to a kind note from Night Monkey, I realized I've spelt 'ditto' as 'dido' and have corrected it. How embarrassing. ^^'

Not much to say. I found it in a virtual pile of discarded stories, finished it, and posted it.

Please Review!

Love and Straightjackets,

Miz. Jynx