Down darkened corridors, up steep winding stairways, through dimly lit halls. Voices can be heard through a half-open doorway. A step closer and a pair of bat-ears can be seen through the crack. A gravelly voice claims to be the night. Two knocks and the visitor enters.

"Good morning, Mr. Batman..."

But there is no Batman here. Only the late Martha Wayne, wearing an extravagant dress.

"I'm sorry for the intrusion, ma'am. I've got a summons for a Mr. Batman. You don't happen to know where he is?"

Martha shakes her head.

"No, I haven't a clue."

The summoner adjusts his glasses.

"Very well." He hesitates. "Forgive me, but somehow I was under the impression you were no longer with us."

Martha blinks, fidgets.

"You're quite right. Allow me to rectify this mistake."

At the end her voice cracks and becomes very deep indeed. She clambers through a window and swings out into the night, her dress flapping in the wind. The clever summoner narrows his eyes. He knows when something's up.

"We now go live to the White House, where president Zsasz is preparing to enter the time machine."

There is a moment of tense silence.

"And it seems the president is stepping in now."

With a science-y zap the president disappears. There is a moment of tense silence. Then the president reappears.

"And he's back! My fellow Zsaszlanders, this is an historic day. And it seems the president is already starting the press conference."

The reporter shuts up. Zsasz smiles down at the people gathered on his mighty lawn. A hand rises timidly.

"Mr. President, how did you like the past? What were you doing?"

The president still smiles.

"It was charming, and I verified the fact that the founding father of this great country, Victor Zsasz, was in fact just as great as rumored."

Applause.

In the street stands a Batman, chatting up a lady.

"Ah, finally! Mr. Batman! Mr. Batman?"

At the sound of his voice, the Batman flicks up the lady's dress and disappears mysteriously.

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but did you see where Batman went? You see, I have a summons for him."

She seems very frightened by this, as her eyes bulge and her breath comes out in quick gasps.

"No, I'm afraid he left quite suddenly."

She fidgets as the summoner puzzles over the situation. Then she moans, and he narrows his eyes.

"Excuse me, ma'am, have you become pregnant?"

She nods curtly.

"A-ah-y-ye-es, I h-h-have."

Her belly adjusts, then, the figure within spreading so that her whole body expands just a little bit. She bids him good day and sets off at a clumsy walk. The summoner stares after her, his trained eyes taking little more than a minute to notice the two little skin-covered horns that seem to have grown out of her head. Shivering with revelation he runs after her.

"Mr. Batman! I must insist you speak with me!"

The woman's mouth yawns open and a masked face protrudes from it, snarling with rage.

"God damn it, man! Why won't you leave me alone?"

"Mr. Batman, I have a summons for you, which you simply must receive."

The Batman removes his mask.

"But I'm not Batman. I'm Bruce Wayne in a Halloween costume."

"Oh. And who is this lady?"

"She's a good friend. We're very close."

"I see."

"And now I reiterate: Good day to you!"

Once more they stumble along. Before long, however, they turn around. Bruce Wayne's face once more emerges.

"Say, what is this summons about?"

"Child endangerment."

"Oh, that is just bullshit! The world's a dangerous place, you can get killed just crossing the street!"

"Studies indicate that the chance of death is increased dramatically during attacks on armed criminals."

"And just how many 'children' has the Batman supposedly 'gotten killed'?"

"Well, the evidence is vague, but somewhere between one and three."

Bruce Wayne harrumphs and retreats back into his friend. They set off at a leisurely pace. The clever summoner stares after them with narrowed eyes, scratching his chin.

1749

A portly man stands in a storm with an excited look on his face. He is flying a kite. But his look of excited curiosity soon retreats in favor of utter amazement. Something gigantic swoops down from the clouds, brandishing a sharp knife and sharper eyebrows.

9th of July, 1755

The shouts of men and beasts were irritatingly loud, the trees offered but little cover.

"Hello, George."

Much French was spoken and many men died. Yet there was one casualty that greatly puzzled those that surveyed the field once the battle was over: A man with a single stab wound sat before a piano, surrounded by fallen soldiers. Someone had taken the time to prop him up so that it looked as if he were playing. The French puzzled over this a while, but eventually decided it was fashionable but nothing more.

1770

There came a knock at the Monticello manor. Witnesses had a hard time of explaining what exactly entered upon the opening of the door. The matter was discussed for months on end, but ultimately it fell to theologians to close the case. They ruled the lord of the manor's death the result of an infernal attack, and that was that.

A Batman stands over a mangled corpse, brooding.

"I have you now, Batman!"

Triumphantly the mangled corpse springs up, revealing itself to be none other than the summoner!

"There is no Batman here."

Batman is right. Suddenly there is only an empty cape and cowl fluttering to the floor and a snake crawling along the floor. The summoner glances this way and that. His investigation is cut short by the feeling of a snake slithering up his leg. He shakes it frantically, to no avail.

"He-help!"

He runs out onto the street, waving his arms.

"Help! Help!"

A hero dressed for the disco swings down from the rooftops. The summoner wastes no time running over to him.

"Help! There's a snake in my pants!"

The hero looks him over appraisingly, noticing the mighty bulge.

"Oh, I'll just bet there is." He turns around and does a little fist bump, whispering to himself. "Good thing I brought out the old lucky outfit."

He grabs the summoner by the waist.

"Hold on tight, I've got a place nearby!"

The summoner looks at him with hopeful eyes.

"A snake-charming place?"

The hero laughs.

"Sure, you could call it that."

Scarecrow gets into a barroom brawl and finds himself equipped with the power to tear anything he wants into pieces. He screams with utter abandon at the confused patrons, but focusing on the man he is brawling with.

"I am the scum of the earth! I am the thing you want to forget! The thing that looks back at you in the mirror! The thing you dream of! The thing you can't close your eyes to! I'm always watching, and I hate you even more than I do myself! We are one and I am hate! I am the shit-stained, sin-covered receptacle of every petty lust and every uttered curse! I am the one who reaches out a sweaty hand…"

He dips his hand deep into the man's chest.

"…and pulls you apart from the inside!"

He rips out his hand, shattering the person into fleshy bits sticking to the walls.

"I am both sadist and masochist, the mercy and the pain! I will tear everyone to shreds!"

He sways and shivers, moving as something un-belonging of this world, something best left buried and well forgotten. His bloody, bleeding hand reaches shivering into the air and distinctly, impossibly, takes hold.

"I will tear everything to shreds!"

He shivers, shakes, shudders and convulses, bloats and bulges.

"I am fear, come scream with me."

The whole is rent asunder with screaming; he rips apart reality in the culmination of every sufferer's senseless, howling truth.

"Sheesh, relax, Doctah C. It all ain't goin' nowhere."

Harley puffs on a majestic cigar, leaning back in her oversized armchair.

"Nuthin' changes nuthin'."

The whole goes chugging, chugging, chugging right along, each sentence as true as the last, truth being an ever-elusive and insincere concept.

"For what is there to do but laugh?"

She clasps her hands and looks sweetly out into the darkness. The Joker flattens and expands as his hollow voice rings out in mechanic laughter.

"Pish posh."

The Penguin swirls the red in his glass.

"The purest feeling of modern man beats in your chests, claws at your conscious, bubbles from your mouths. Moan, froth, beg; postulate yourselves before me as I show you what we are."

The dragon drags its iron scales along the cement floor and the masses follow crawling.

"To live is to eat, existence is naught but the urge, the lust, the uncontrollable desire to consume. Grow ceaselessly till the cancer eats everything up and your sense of worthlessness with it. Envy me, for I am avarice."

"It is a carefully constructed conundrum, purposefully perplex and yet utterly meaningless."

The Riddler sits calmly in a chair before a polished table in a flawless hall, every surface glinting with the image and afterimage of that one true, beautiful invariable: The divinity of his self.

"I can do anything, but as everything is meaningless, I will do nothing, resorting to idle play to escape this prison, which I will forever be returned to, by forces beyond my control, most notably myself."

Outer perfection breaks before inner imperfection, releasing broken emotion through flawless expression.

"Mine is the greatest pain, terror and despair in the universe; something every desire, fear, thought and sense of man must succumb to before the final release which is truly nothing but the culmination and the purest form of this thing called: Boredom."

The Batman stops puffing and carefully sets the hookah aside. His hands rise slowly to his temples and he feels himself sinking into the smooth pillow below his butt.

"Whoah. "

He blinks stupidly at his guests.

"Can I see the dragon penguin again?"