One Night
In the week after his fiery escape from Arkham, the Joker had decided to lay low. Well, the lowest someone as conspicuous as him can lay. Though the alleged murderer Batman was after him, he still needed his fun, and an impossible to ignore boredom had taken over him. So, that night, he had chosen to lean up against the entrance to an alley next to the train station. His tongue darted out to lick his scars he waited. It wasn't his first time there; in moments of boredom such as the one he was currently suffering from, he often came there to wait for his newest toys to come along. It was far enough into Gotham's underbelly for people to know better than to call the police, but still far enough from the real scum that innocents would, every now and then, come wandering past. When they did, Joker would drag them kicking and screaming into the alley, toy with them until they weren't so innocent, then leave them clinging to life until he returned, often less than a month later to examine the empty hunk of flesh they had left behind when they passed on. Often hours passed while he examined the broken and decaying skin. When it happened, it angered him; he didn't like losing time.
Neither, he suspected, did the woman who was advancing quickly towards his hiding place. She was tugging a small child along behind her. For a moment, Joker pondered at start of mind of a woman walking around at night with a child in Gotham City, of all places. Nevertheless, beggars can't be choosers, and he snatched both the woman and the little girl into the alleyway. Most definitely kicking and screaming. A few people in the street turned their heads to the source of the cries, but quickly hurried on without even seeing the purple suited clown. In a place like Gotham, that was wise. Joker grinned and threw the little girl against the wall, hard. The woman screamed, but was cut off when a purple gloved hand clamped down over her mouth. "Oh, shh, shh, shh, shh," he cooed, in his pitchy, uneven voice. "We wouldn't want there to be any, uh, accidents, now would we?" As if performing a magic trick, he produced a switchblade from the sleeve of his jacket. The woman shook her head desperately. "No? No?" She screamed and moaned under the hand still pressed hard over her mouth. As Joker waved the blade dangerously close to her throat, a few muffled words escaped her. "Sorry, I didn't quite, uh, catch that." He was laughing, his body shaking with the force of the insane giggles ripping through him. The woman screamed the same words again, as loud as she could past the Joker's hand. "Oh, you want me to start with her?" said the clown, gesturing towards the still body of the child. "See, I like a girl with manners. People these days, they're so...self obsessed. They think whatever happens in their own little worlds is more important than anything else." As he spoke, he removed his hand from the woman's mouth and crawled over to the little girl. The woman cried out, pleading.
"Don't, please! I'll do anything!"
"They all say the same things," he murmured, as if to himself, while he turned the girl's face towards him. She was a pretty little thing, wispy blonde hair and pale skin. Her eyes were closed, her breathing laboured; possibly a rib had broken when her tiny body had hit the thick brick wall.
The woman, behind him, was still crying, still pleading. Joker exhaled sharply through his rotten, yellowed teeth and continued to ignore her, lifting his hand high and bringing it down, with as much force he had in his arm, on her cheek. Then he did it again. The girl's eyes opened; she gave a low moan of pain and then her eyes locked with his. Giggles at her expression escaped him. She looked like a deer caught in the headlights, big baby blues staring unblinkingly at his scars in absolute horror.
As she opened her mouth to scream, he slipped the switchblade in between her lips, letting it tug on the edge of her mouth. Blood beaded on the blade and ran down her cheek in a thin red line. "You wanna know how I got these scars?" She tried to shake her head no, but he had his hand fisted in her hair. He nodded his own head yes; she didn't have a choice in the matter. Her eyes darted to her mother, who had fallen silent, sitting quietly sobbing and clutching her hands to her chest.
"My father... He had a wife. Beautiful. She was, uh, she was a drinker. And one night, she goes off crazier than usual. Father watching, she gets the kitchen knife. She sticks the blade in my mouth while he says, 'Why so serious?'" His voice lowered to a growl. "Then, she pulls it up, like this." He pulled the knife up, dragging it through the girl's cheek to form half of the Glasgow smile he himself wore. She screamed. Her mother screamed. Joker laughed. "Shh, shh, shh... Don't ever interrupt me. Where was I? Ah, he says it again. 'Why so serious?' Then, she brings the blade across, and pulls it up again. 'Now we've put a smile on that face.'" Just as he said in his story, he brought the knife across to the other side of the girl's mouth and pulled it up through her left cheek. Blood no longer ran in a trickle down her chin; no, it ran in rivers, in a flood, forming a pool under her head, a blood red halo.
Joker stepped back, letting the girl's head fall limply onto the ground. Her mother dove forward and leant, sobbing in earnest now, over her daughter's body. "Why?" she screamed, not at Joker or to herself, but to whatever god she happened to believe in.
"Just look how, uh, happy she is," cooed he clown, grabbing a fistful of the woman's hair from behind and yanking her head back. "See? Now she's always smiling."
And with that, he drew the blade in a straight line over the woman's throat. As he released her, she fell lifelessly forward over her not-quite-dead daughter. Joker disappeared into the maze of alleyways that made up Gotham's underbelly, his boredom eradicated.
For now.