The sound was…grating. Painful. Blaring throughout ever corridor of the Asylum. Loud enough to wake the dead, the Joker thought to himself. Or me, the second best thing. I feel like shit. I could really go for an ice-cream. With chocolate syrup and nuts. Lots of nuts. Or hell, I could just get a handful of inmates. He chortled under his breath at the thought of Bane, Poison Ivy, the Riddler, and the Clock King drowning in a bowl of mint chip ice-cream. And then to top it all off…a Bat-cherry. And then I could pop Bat's cherry….
The door opened, the emergency sirens suddenly got louder, and Joe entered the room. The Joker grinned at the huge feet coming at him from his upside-down position from the ceiling.
"Hello, darling. Come back for more, or did you just want to see me?" One of the huge feet impacted with his face. He laughed uproariously. "Always so violent! If your into all that S&M stuff, you should just tell me, 'cuz to tell you the truth…"
"Shut up, fucker!" Joe released the clown's ankles from the ceiling and threw him onto the floor. "Hurry up, we're moving you. NOW!"
The Joker frowned. "Now why is that, dearest? I just got this one all comfy. I almost finished decorating the wall with my spit…"
"Shut up, shut up! We gotta get you outta here, now!" The burly guardsman pushed the man in the straight-jacket forcefully into the corridor. "Someone tipped off the Bat-freak and he's on his way down here!"
The harlequin of hate froze. His eyes widened as he stood there, motionless. Then a grin spread ever so slowly across his face until it spanned from ear-to-ear. He snorted and then started howling with laughter until tears were streaming down his cheeks. The guard stared at him, unsure of how to react to this sudden outburst. Suddenly the laughter stopped and the Joker cocked his head to one side, the insane grin still present on his face.
"I wonder if he heard that…heh," he whispered.
Joe grabbed the Joker's arm. "Come on, we haven't got all day." The Joker gave him a coy look.
"Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no…you see…" He turned away from the confused guard as they started walking down the corridor. "I do have all day. I always have all day. I always will have all day. You, my dear Joe, do not have all day. Not today." The clown spun around abruptly and stuck his tongue out at the guard.
Joe raised an eyebrow. "What?" He stopped in his tracks with a choking gasp. He started shaking violently and an ooze of blood spurted from his mouth. He looked down at his chest slowly and groaned. "How…how did you…when…" The Joker's face was frozen in a perpetual grin. He didn't move.
Joe stumbled backwards and fell heavily onto the hard unpolished floor with a thud. Protruding out of his chest was a silver nametag reading "Joe" with its long needle-like pin imbedded deep into his flesh. The Joker walked over to the corpse, kneeled next to it, and, with his teeth, dragged a ring of keys out of its inner pocket.
"Thanks, Santa…this is what I've always wanted. Well, actually you still owe me a box of crayons from last year…" He chuckled. "But I guess I can overlook that."