Author's note: Thanks for reading. This is my first fic. Actually, I wrote a couple of fics about 7 years ago and they were horrible, so they don't count. Anyways, I don't own Batman and the Joker, DC does.

Chapter 2

His me eyes bore into me as he waits for an answer.

"Well, I just meant that your costume looks so real, it's almost like you just walked off a movie screen or something. So, what's the occasion? Going to a Halloween party... in August? Or just felt like getting dressed up? And why would I be a hallucination, anyways?" This guy is making me more nervous by the second, and when I'm nervous I jabber away incessantly.

"How... cute. Babe, I hate to disappoint you, but this isn't a costume. By the way, where am I and who the fuck are you?"

"Are you pulling my legs, crazy, or just tripping your balls off? We're on the fourth floor of the Alta apartment building. Do you even remember how you got here? As for who I am - I'm a girl getting her mail, who was just trying to make some friendly conversation!" Instinct tells me to go back inside, but this is getting interesting and I'm a curious little cat.

"I'm not crazy, and I can't be on the fourth floor of any building, I was just outside," he says, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "I walked through that - " and he spins around, looking wildly for something. "The door - it's gone! Well, I walked through a door to get here. Maybe you're right, maybe I am crazy." He laughs, and I swear, he's even got the laugh down perfectly. The laugh, the voice, the outfit, the make-up. This guy must have watched the Dark Knight obsessively, maybe a hundred times over, before putting together this ridiculous get-up. Jesus Christ, the movie isn't even out of theaters yet! Who has this kind of free time?

"Yeah, all signs point to yes," I tell him. "You're wandering the halls of my apartment building dressed as the Joker, and you don't even know how you got here."

"I told you, this isn't a costume! Does this look like a costume to you? Do I look like some cheap copycat?"

"Calm down, calm down, I didn't mean anything by it!" Something in this guy's wild, unhinged look makes me thing he might be armed. "Look, it doesn't look like a costume. In fact, it looks so much NOT like a costume that it's scary. It looks like the real thing. But you know, it doesn't change the fact that you're impersonating a fictional character. I'm not trying to be offensive, just stating a fact." I take a few steps back from him, edging closer to my apartment door, and hold up my hands in a peace-making gesture. I try to look as harmless as possible, which isn't too difficult when you're five foot three.

Something changes in his look, in his entire demeanor. Now, instead of being on the defensive, he justs looks puzzled. He doesn't strike me as a person who is often puzzled, and the look doesn't suit him.

"What exactly do you mean by 'fictional character'?" His voice is slow and smooth and dangerous now, and I back up to the point where I'm against the wall.

"I just mean that you're - well - you bear a, um, striking resemblance to the Joker from the new Batman movie." I can't ever remember being this uncomfortable. Time to move out, soon. Too many crazies in downtown, and now one has wandered into my building. At the rate things are going my corpse will grace the evening news in a month or so, bloated and waterlogged and being dragged from the river.

He steps up a little bit closer to me. At this moment it occurs to me that his resemblance to the Joker is a little more than just "striking". From what I can tell, he's about the exact same height and build, and even seems to have the exact same bone structure in his face, if that's possible. If not the Joker, than the Joker's brother. Maybe even twin brother.

"The new Batman - what? Movie? People are making movies about us now? Oh, that's rich. That's woooonderful news." He giggles and claps his hands together like an excited shoolgirl.

"Well, it started out as a comic book. Don't you know all this? Batman's been around since the 1940s or something. Hell, the Joker that you're - um, that you look like, isn't even the only incarnation of the Joker on film. Only the most recent." This weirdo is obviously fucking with me, but I keep indulging him, thinking of unseen guns and knives that he may be hiding.

As if on cue, a small but lethal-looking blade flashes out of nowhere; he is grabbing my shoulder and pressing me into the wall. The tiny, dancing blade is at my neck, and he breathes into my ear, "Prove it. Prove that you're speaking the truth, or I'll cut the tongue right out of your mouth for even daring to say such things."

His grip on my shoulder tightens. It will bruise, I think to myself detachedly. It's as though I've left the real world; just stepped through a door and found myself here. Isn't that what he said happened to him? I find myself incapable of speech, but I nod, and the blade recedes a few inches. I take a breath that feels more like a death rattle to steady myself. I don't want this creep to know that we're only feet away from the door to my apartment, but he wants proof, and what better way to show him?

"Come on," I say. "Want proof? Ever heard of the Internet?"