Author's Note: Yes, I know that Heath Ledger didn't really abuse drugs or take narcotics because portraying you-know-who made him have trouble sleeping at night (that was all just hype for The Dark Knight) - but I stuck those little details back in there to help make things interesting. Even though I revised and re-edited this thing like crazy, my little perfectionist mind is still not completely satisfied with it - but I hope it's good enough that it does Heath Ledger's memory justice.

While looking down on the city from above, the thought occurs to you that Gotham seems to be an almost peaceful place, the yellow-white lights of its imposing skyscrapers scattered like a blanket of stars, mirroring the nearly cloudless night sky around you.

But amid the shining beacons, shadowy blues and blacks and grays dull the city like a blurred watercolor painting, hinting craftily at the dark secrets hidden within its depths. The crime, the corruption, the despair - eventually, even with the heroics of that mysterious winged creature known as the Batman, nothing is safe here. Nothing.

Not even you.

- - -

You were once called Heath Ledger - though in death, the name does not matter to you anymore. None of that matters now - not the roles you assumed, the characters you portrayed, not even the prescription overdose that took your life.

What matters is you. Here. In this moment.

Not thinking, just. . .doing.

Going with the flow.

That had been your problem, they said - "they" being the director and screenwriters of your last film. You had never planned what this unpredictable character you portrayed might do, how exactly he might react to various stimulants; you just. . .did it. Naturally, that similarity between you and he was what had landed you with the challenging role in the first place.

Admittedly, you had locked yourself up in a motel room for six weeks; not to plan, however, but to transform. In your seclusion, you had dissected and then reshaped a familiar icon into a presence so chilling, so disturbing, that not one person could see it without immediately recognizing it for what it was .

You studied and then redeveloped him: his high, whiney voice, his unnatural, sadistic laugh, the peculiar lip-smacking-tongue-swiping-twitch that would become one of his most prominent tics - you even designed the creepy makeup scheme sported by the fearsome psychopath himself.

But you took it too far, they said. Certainly, when acting, you became the character, just like you were supposed to - it was your job. The problem was that when you stepped out, away from the camera lens and your profession, you never stopped being him.

You'd catch yourself muttering quietly to thin air, catch yourself licking your lips reflexively even when your prosthetic makeup was removed, catch yourself walking with his unsteady, off-kilter gait - you'd even sometimes catch yourself speaking in his unique voice without ever having made the conscious decision to do so.

You even began to have dreams about him, horrific nightmares in which he took his knife and gave you ragged lesions to match his scarred lips, bright crimson blood flowing relentlessly down your cheeks as he told you that you and he were one and the same. After all, you had recreated him, hadn't you?

After a while, all these unnerving habits and sleep disturbances began to affect you, and you got scared.

You began to take prescription medications to help you sleep at night, to take away all the pain and stress bearing down on you through this new and incredibly important role.

And one day, either by accident or by some twisted sense of destiny, you took too many.

And that is what has led you to your current "pre-dicament," as he would have said.

Things didn't go according to plan, and your weak, ever-so-mortal body reacted badly to it.

But - enough of your past.

More important is what's happening in the present.

- - -

You stand nonchalantly in a long cream-colored robe on this little fluffy white cloud, the same little fluffy white cloud you've been standing on for hours now, your lithe weight shifted ever-so-slightly to the right, your deep brown eyes appraising the city below you as you suck at the insides of your cheeks absentmindedly - another one of his tics.

You had discovered Gotham early this morning, the tragic metropolis blanketed by a heavy fog, yet still you found it. Stumbled upon it by accident, really, while moseying along as you were, going nowhere in particular.

As far as you know, no one in the "real" world knows that Gotham exists. Perhaps outsiders aren't allowed to know it exists, for security purposes.

Except you.

But then again, you're dead - who would you be able to tell about you discovery, honestly?

You give yourself a little shake - your thoughts had been wandering again - and you slowly twist your head from the left to the right, from one side to the other, cracking your neck harshly. The sharp reports echo like gunshots in the stillness.

It happens suddenly, without warning.

You begin to giggle uncontrollably, finding nothing at all to be, inexplicably. . .funny.

And you can't stop.

The laughter is sick, twisted, echoing maddeningly inside you head as it reverberates through the air around you, finding the occasional cloud to bounce off of - only to scream back into your ears like a piercing train whistle and pulsate within your brain. The sound is demonic, unimaginably cruel. Terrifying.

It is the crazed laughter of the severely insane.

And, if but dimly at times, this will remain to be the only sound that you will ever truly hear, looping through a never-ending cycle inside you mind.

Forever.

You're still laughing when the pain hits.

At first, it is only a small, flickering candle flame, deep inside you. But then the fire begins to spread quickly to your extremities, burning and destroying everything in its path. It consumes you, just as the laughter had.

You double over, arms wrapped about yourself in a futile attempt to shield your body from its invisible attacker (at this point, your mind and very sanity have already abandoned you).

The agony is terrible. Your muscles writhe and crawl beneath your skin, spasming involuntarily as they are seared, the heat of the flames growing with each passing moment. It is worse than someone abruptly snatching up a rusty pair of pliers and using them to remove all of your strong, tightly-rooted adult teeth, ripping them viciously from your mutilated gums one by one - without anything to dull your nerves. Worse than stepping into a shower where the water is much too hot - and, in your panic, forgetting how to shut off the tap as you are frozen in place by your scalding pain. Worse than slicing your skin open while shaving - only this is like shoving the entire razor beneath your skin and continuing to roughly tear yourself apart. Worse than dying alone on the pavement after falling from the top of a ten-story building, all the bones in your mangled body broken and twisted. Worse than being electrocuted with seventy-thousand volts, worse than being slowly submerged in the most corrosive acid, worse than being hit with a migraine with the mind-crushing force of a trillion hurricanes - and all at the same time.

And, even through all this, you're still laughing. Still laughing because, strangely enough, you like the pain sending ripples of pleasure down your spine. It excites you, gives you strength.

And then the terrifying creature causing these alarming reactions within you forces its way to the surface from your very core.

Coarse thread materializes to twist and bind itself around you, morphing into a ghastly, modern punk-era purple suit with matching leather gloves and dress shoes, the vest and oddly-patterned tie a deep green. A putrid lime dye snakes through your scraggly hair, untidily staining what were once dirty-blond locks. Chalky white paint smears unevenly as it drips sweatily down your face. Midnight blotches of charcoal blossom from each depthless pupil, casting those chocolate-brown windows to your soul in deep shadows. Bright crimson bleeds over your lips, racing outward to cover the jagged smile-scars now stitched into your gaunt and sunken cheeks.

You straighten up as both the laughter and the pain subside, your transformation complete - although it takes a few minutes more for your thoughts to be organized enough to be deemed "coherent."

They carved my face. . .purple and green look simply fetching on me. . .ha ha ha. . .little emotions. . .flip of a two-headed coin. . .scars. . .(s)laughter is the best medicine. . .why I use a knife. . .playing cards. . .chaos!

- - -

Once your thoughts have settled, you survey Gotham once again, scowling slightly with distaste. The city is too quiet, too tranquil for your liking - because everything is going according to plan. Gotham is an anthill, filled with little ant people who trudge monotonously through their same routines, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. What everyone takes for granted now suddenly strikes you as utterly boring.

Why can't they see that their little habits, so easily disrupted, can be just as easily destroyed - obliterated altogether? Why can't they see that these little cycles don't matter at all?

Because nothing matters - which is precisely why anarchy needs to be introduced to Gotham City, to create disorganization and nothing.

All it takes is a little. . .push.

You smile, baring your yellow-toothed leer, and spontaneously throw yourself forward off of your little white cloud. Your long purple trench coat billows and ripples around you as you tumble head-over-heels through the crisp night air, his maddened laughter echoing in your ears and shrieking from your mouth all the way down.

No - not his laughter.

Yours.

"Oooo-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!"

- - -

You had always wondered where the directors of the various Batman films had gotten their inspiration for Gotham City.

You had never dreamed that those same directors would get to spend as much time as they needed actually wandering about Gotham's streets, learning and observing the culture of the city, with a room in one of Gotham's finest hotels reserved for their own personal use.

Dismemberment is such sweet bribery.

You try not to giggle in your hiding place as you lie in wait for your victim.

It had been all too easy - all you'd had to do was disguise yourself as a custodian and slip discreetly into the director's room, on the pretense of "cleaning" it. Once inside, you had removed the janitor's uniform from overtop your somewhat outlandish purple suit, shoved the garments under the bed, and assumed your post. Unfortunately for the custodian, you'd had to kill him in order to borrow his clothes - but sometimes bad things just happen.

Such as what is going to happen next.

The doorknob turns with a light snick as the catch is released from the lock.

You watch Christopher Nolan - director of your very last film - enter the bathroom in checkered flannel pajamas, a deep blue bathrobe, and fuzzy black slippers. You watch him as he flicks on the light, shutting the door after himself as he reaches for his toothbrush.

"Evening, Dir-ec-tor."

You watch him freeze as he catches sight of you in the mirror above the sink, watch his face go white as a sheet as he turns around slowly, fearfully, to face you; for there must be no doubt in his mind that it is indeed you - your oily voice is unmistakable. "Heath. . .?"

Without warning, you slam Nolan back up against the wall, one of your many switchblades suddenly quivering dangerously close to his mouth.

"How about a little bedtime story, hmm?"

Apparently having gone into shock, Nolan does not respond.

"Do you wanna know how I got these scars?" You nod quickly to simulate Nolan's response following your rhetorical question - you're going to tell him whether he wants to know or not.

"There was an. . .actor I once lived with, who was. . .a drug abuser" - your tongue flips out to lick your lips reflexively - "and a fiend." Lick. "And one night, while he was sleeping through a narcotic high, the maid decides to come in and clean house, banging around so much that she wakes him up." Lick. "He doesn't like that. Not. One. Bit." Lick. "So - me watching - he takes the kitchen knife, and he literally feeds it to her" - you rotate the blade in your hand as you say this so that now the serrated edge is pressed against the inside of Nolan's cheek - "laughing while he does it. He turns to me" - you make an affronted noise then, as if appalled that the man would dare to do such a thing - "and he says, "Why so serious-suh?" " Lick. "Comes at me with the knife - "Why so serious-suh?" Sticks the blade in my mouth" - your face contorts into an expression somewhere between a grimace of pain and a smiling leer as you imitate who you once were - ""Let's put a smile on that face!" Aaaaaaannnnnndddd. . ." You glance at your reflection in the mirror behind Nolan. "Why so serious?"

Your wrist is flexed, the hand with the switchblade twitches - and what was once a life becomes nothing more than a memory.

- - -

Before you flee the scene of the crime, you write a little note to your city on the bathroom mirror, in Nolan's blood.

After all, it's all about sending a message. . .

HAHAHA HAHAHA

WHY SO SERIOUS?

NOTHING MATTERS

HAHAHA HAHAHA

END

Notice that I didn't mention the Joker's name once in this dark tale.

I thought it would be interesting to do this in the second-person (or "you") point-of-view. I wrote it in the present tense because that's how I imagine the Joker would think - because he never plans anything. He just. . .acts. Please review!

Also, happy birthday to Heath Ledger. You would have been 30 today. We all miss you terribly. RIP