Batman lay still and tried to piece together what had happened. They'd been fighting, in the mud. All of a sudden something hit him from behind, he was pinned facedown and he couldn't get up. Couldn't free himself, couldn't breathe, and the next thing he knew he'd woken up here.

He was tied down. The bright light in his eyes meant he couldn't see the bindings, but it felt like duct tape on bare skin. Ankles, knees, hips, stomach, shoulders, neck... and arms taped up with his hands folded behind his head, as if he were just reclining on a beach somewhere.

Quite a whimsical arrangement... no prizes for guessing who'd done it.

When he cleared his throat to talk, he heard a deep rasp and realized he still had the mask on. Naked... except for the mask. And alive. This wasn't going to be fun at all. "Hello?" he said.

"Done yet?"

Batman blinked. "Done?"

"Thinking." The light was moved, and eventually his eyes focused on the Joker standing over him. "It's rude to spring things on people the minute they come out of a near-death experience. So you just tell me when you're ready, and then we'll proceed."

Proceed? Best put that off as long as possible. "What happened?" he said. "And did you take my mask off?"

"Oh, where would be the fun in that?" the Joker tsked at him. "You should know me better. Want to see what happened? I've got video. It's pretty funny."

Probably the best way to frustrate the Joker was to not play along, so Batman only closed his eyes.

There was a sigh, and then a sharp pricking pain in his leg. He injected me. Oh God, with what?... But when he looked he found that the Joker had only stuck a thumbtack into him, and was now sticking more, making some kind of design. Annoying, but he willed himself to stop tensing and just lie still.

Eventually the Joker was finished. He clicked a picture of what he had done, and held his phone up for Batman to see. The tacks spelled out "LES," and while he tried to make sense of that the Joker fussed with them, wiggling them and re-sticking a few until he was satisfied with the straightness of the lines.

"It's going to say: Lesson One: Choose Your Battles," he explained helpfully.

Batman got the message. "All right: I'll watch."

Looking almost disappointed, the Joker cut the neck tape off and turned Batman's head to the side so that he could see the TV.

It was grainy security-camera footage of the fight, and Batman watched himself get run over by a car and pinned beneath it in the muck as he struggled and flailed and eventually ran out of air. Oh - pinned by a car. No wonder it had felt so heavy.

And then the tape jumped to some of the Joker's own strange and shoddy camera work. "Uh-oh, he's not breathing," the Joker chuckled in the video. "Oh, lifeguard? Lifeguard, quick, this man needs mouth-to-mouth! Hello? Nobody?" More giggles. The camera was set down on the ground. "Well, if you want something done..."

Choosing his battles, Batman didn't look away. He watched himself breathed into, feeling extremely filthy all of a sudden and wondering about the strange taste in his mouth. He watched himself stripped down and tied up, and blasted with a hose for no apparent reason.

When the tape was done the Joker watched the static for a while, with great interest. Finally he tore his attention away and asked, "So, what do you think I'm going to do to you?"

His eyes were on the knife twirling between the madman's fingers. "I don't know, but whatever it is, it won't make me into a… you."

The knife stopped twirling. "There's a lot of psychology in that that I'm not even going to try to analyze. Close your eyes." Long pause. "Okay, don't close your eyes, but, heh-heh, I warn you, if you flinch you're going to be sorry. Turn your head."

Again Batman wouldn't, until the knife was dug into his jaw hard enough to turn his head by force. He tried to tense and shift, to find a weakness in the tape, but found he could hardly move.

"Muscle relaxant," the Joker volunteered. He fished around in his pocket and came up with a fresh syringe, filled with something clear. "So that means this one must be the acid; I wasn't one hundred percent sure which was which, you know, but it was close enough for government work and you're pretty much an agent of the government, so..." he shrugged, then squirted the syringe slowly into the air.

They both watched the spray, and then the Joker shook his head to snap himself out of it. "Sorry, sorry. Where was I? Oh: right."

The lights went out. Batman heard muttering. A click, and a narrow beam of light: the Joker had put on a miner's hat. He started playing with the thumbtacks again, and rubbing alcohol, but Batman didn't disturb him. Once the muscle relaxant wears off we can get somewhere, he told himself. Til then, just stay alive. Let him take his time.

The first ray of hope came when his jaw started to hurt, from clenching his teeth so hard against all the sting. That was a good sign. He tested his legs next to see what kind of strength he had - the Joker was playing light over his arms and torso too often for him to feel safe testing anything else. Almost, he thought.

But before he was ready, the Joker turned his hat off so that the room was in total darkness. Batman felt hands at his neck, touching his mask. "No-" he gasped as the mask came away. He still had the presence of mind to use the opportunity to start working at the tape on his hands, but he was panicking.

He felt something cold against his cheek. "Sh-sh, that's a knife," the Joker warned.

Something cold on his chest, too. Round. For a minute he thought it was the barrel of a gun, but then it shifted an inch or so to the left as though searching for...

"Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bumpbabumpbabump!" The Joker giggled. "Your heart is just so cute when you're afraid!"

After a moment the stethoscope was removed, and a firm hand went to his forehead. "Hold still. I'm going to give you the closest shave you've ever had." The blade moved over his cheek, changed angles, moved again. Batman couldn't breathe, waiting for the slashing to begin...

The Joker was humming while he worked. "Okay, that's enough," he said after a bit, and rolled the mask back down. No slashing at all? Batman's head spun. He heard a chair move, heard the Joker cross the room, and suddenly a digital clock with three minutes on it lit up and started to count down. "This will be really funny," the Joker promised. "At least for me. Bye!"

He heard a door open and close, and then he was alone, in the dark, with less than three minutes to live.

Don't panic. His hands were going to be the biggest problem; they were stuck to the metal table with not just duct tape, but also something that felt suspiciously like a zip tie. He freed up his fingers quickly and started to pick at the tape over his wrists. At the same time he was working his legs, sawing methodically up and down to create some slack so that he could tear free.

Two and a half minutes left. No change.

Two minutes. The tape around his knees was giving first, ripping his hair out as he twisted free of it. His hands were trickier, but it helped that the plastic zip ties were cutting into him, bloodying the duct tape so that he was able to pull it off.

One and a half minutes. Halfway out of time, and all he had managed to do was loosen - but not remove - the tape holding his legs together. His hands were free of tape but still not moving far, not with half a dozen of those nasty plastic bands holding them tight. Still, he could arch forward and reach the tape on his shoulders, yanking and ripping, getting a little room to wriggle his torso around as his legs still pistoned hard against the ruined, twisted tape bands that held them to the table.

One minute. He wasn't going anywhere with his hips still tied down, but without his hands there wasn't yet anything to-

There - legs finally got the best of the duct tape, and with thirty seconds to go he bent his knees, braced on the table and tried to arch his hips free. He tried again.

Fifteen seconds. Blood was pouring from his wrists, and he knew now that the only way to free his hands would be to free the rest of his body and somersault backwards over his head, probably popping his shoulders in the process, and from there bite through the plastic and pull away.

He strained again, veins popping out all over the place as he arched, bridged...

Ten seconds. Five.

At three seconds he realized he wouldn't make it. He stopped, went limp, and watched the clock tick down. This was it.

When it reached zero, the lights came on. "Bang," said the Joker from the corner. He took off a pair of infrared goggles and tossed them carelessly onto the floor.

He sauntered over and put his hand against Batman's chest. "Ba-bump, ba-bump babump..."

"Go. To. Hell."

The Joker sighed. "I suppose you're entitled to be upset; it was unkind of me to rush you. And unrealistic, too. That'll probably take quite a while to get out of. Even for you." He shot a glance to the tape that wrapped Batman's hips. "And it's probably really going to hurt when it comes off. Sorry. Well, bye." This time he left the lights on, and Batman saw for a fact that he was really gone.

He wanted to start trying again to figure out what went on in that twisted head, but he decided that that would have to wait, and he got busy.

The End.

EDIT: Okay people, over the course of the last day almost 50 people have read this story and nobody has commented. Bums, bums, the lot of you!