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Plenty of things looked cute when they were asleep: babies, puppies, bunnies, old people, cats and ferrets, just for starters. Sadly, Jonathan Crane was not anywhere on that list; he wasn't even allowed within 100 yards of it, under a court order.
Harley, her hands occupied by a bucket and the various other items the Joker needed for his nefarious crime, couldn't help but feel bad for the fallen professor. She felt even worse for any woman he might have shared a bed with. There was no way it could have been comfortable, not with Johnny's stick-figure arms and legs poking out in all directions. If the Scarecrow had ever talked, connived, or paid a lady to sleep with him, the stand couldn't have lasted all night.
The Joker, probably thinking far more devious thoughts, took the aerosol can of shaving cream from Harley. It was her shaving cream, and raspberry-scented. If her Puddin' used it all torturing Professor Crane, she was going to rub her frizzy legs all over him until he begged her to stop or threatened to put her in a box and mail that box to Sudan.
The Scarecrow slept like a starfish or Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, with his legs and arms outstretched. His right hand dangled off the side of the bed, making it the perfect target for the Joker. Suppressing his laughter as much as possible, the Clown Prince pressed the nozzle of the can against the unsuspecting hand. A second later, Crane was left holding a mound of white foam. The whoosh of the shaving cream being dispensed didn't wake him, nor did the feel of the raspberry bubbles.
Grinning like a Cheshire cat, the Joker handed Harley back the can. He then took the magic marker. The Joker uncapped the Sharpie and gave his blank canvas a once-over. The possibilities were nearly limitless for a skilled artist, as long as his canvas didn't wake up in the middle of the project and start yowling.
As a test, to see just how deeply asleep Johnny really was, the Joker drew two quick raccoon-mask circles around his eyes. The Scarecrow's foam-filled hand twitched, but didn't get slappy. Satisfied, the Joker got down to serious sketching.
Something smelled bad. Chemical, astringent, and poisonous. Oh hell. He had actually fallen asleep in his lab and he was now going to asphyxiate on his own chemical cocktail. He supposed it was fitting, maybe even poetic justice. All those people he'd terrified over the years with his fear toxin, and now it was going to do him in.
Wait a moment. That smell, he knew it. Of course he did, most people did. It wasn't the smell of a lab experiment gone south; it was just the odor of permanent markers. The question was, why on Earth did he smell markers? Crane was far from desperate enough to sniff Sharpies in an attempt to get high. So why was that smell bothering him while he was trying to get his damned beauty rest.
The smell was beginning to tickle his nose. He raised a hand to scratch his nose, only to splatter his face with shaving cream. That woke him straight up.
To add to Crane's chagrin, the Joker burst out laughing. That meant the purple-suited, utterly brain dead maniac was in his room! That meant his lock had failed and all his privacy was now null and void. If Crane could have gotten a hold of whoever manufactured the lock, the entire company, down to the office plants, would be wishing it had never been incorporated.
With obvious disgust, the Scarecrow wiped the foam off his nose. Raspberry shaving cream, eh? If that was the best the ridiculous freak could come up with, he was losing his touch. Crane needed both hands to count the times his college room-mates, who had a habit of not lasting through the semester, played that trick on him.
"Juvenile, clichéd, and worse than a skit on Jackass." The Scarecrow said with contempt. He flicked some of the airy foam at the Joker. Having next to no mass, the shaving cream landed on the carpet.
"What? It's classic, not clichéd! You obviously have no appreciation for true art." The Joker said.
"It pisses on Michelangelo, aborts Leonardo, and vomits on the shoes of Gauguin. Making someone slap himself with shaving cream is as far from art as it is humanly possible to be." Crane said.
"Take it back." The Joker demanded.
"No. You utterly deserve it. You have absolutely no taste whatsoever. Furthermore, you have no grasp or what science, art, or personal space is. If presented with the Mona Lisa, I'm sure you'd take a marker and give her a moustache and mismatched eyes." The Scarecrow said.
Unbeknownst to him, Crane had accurately described what the Joker had drawn on him. The Clown Prince found this, like most things, unbearably funny. He laughed so hard Harley was forced to drop the bucket so she could support him.
Jonathan Crane was, by nearly any standard, a mentally gifted man. He quickly put freaky eyes, the unpleasant smell of a marker, and the Joker's uncontrollable fit together. He wiped at his face and was far from amused when his fingers bore black smudges.
Anger felt absolutely wonderful. Yes, being logical and analytical was certainly the best way to live, but sometimes letting primitive emotions lead you felt so much better. This was just the case for Crane right now. His logical brain was reminding him very loudly how bad it hurt to be shocked. His emotional side, which he envisioned as being shrunken and rather raison-like, demanded he knock the Joker's teeth out.
The Scarecrow stood up on his bed. His unusual height was expounded by his position on the bed. The Joker tilted his head in confusion, then burst out laughing again. Someone as tall as Crane, especially someone clinically insane and generally regarded as evil, should have been able to intimidate with his height. Unfortunately, being so sadly skinny reduced the Scarecrow to more of a joke.
Harley, unlike the Joker, realized why Crane was standing at the edge of his bed. She had seen enough Wrestle Mania in her life to know. The professor was about to take a daring leap off the ropes and tomb-stone her Puddin'. Normally, whenever some thug or freak dressed as a bat tried to get the jump on Mister J, she'd just take her mallet to them. However, this seemed a little too much fun to interfere with. Harley backed up a few steps, so she wouldn't be struck by any flailing limbs.
Like the Jersey Devil, minus the horse-like head and cloven hooves, Crane swooped down at the Joker. He was oddly graceful for the second he was airborne, looking a bit like the long-legged bird that shared his name.
Understandably, the Joker was shocked to see the Scarecrow flying at him. It was odd enough for the professor to willingly engage in a physical fight. It was even stranger for him to instigate the conflict. From what the Joker understood, the Scarecrow was much better at sprinting from the scene of the crime like an elongated bunny, as opposed to standing his ground. Flight, not fight, was his dominant instinct.
Though the Scarecrow was thin enough to be labeled malnourished, he had more than enough weight to knock the Joker on his ass. Crane punched the clown, shouting out a new transgression against him or his house with each blow.
"That's for clogging up the toilet and ruining the rug"
"That's for eating all my damn food!"
"That's for harassing my lab animals and traumatizing my mice!"
The Joker wasn't concerned by the Scarecrow's shouting or his beating. Crane could probably whale on him for half an hour, and not do a quarter of the damage Batman could inflict with one well-placed punch. It was so painfully obvious that Johnny, without his toxin and his goofy mask, was the same scrawny nerd he'd been all his life.
"Couldn't beat up a crippled poodle. There's strike six, Spooky."The Joker said between ineffective punches.
"Bugger." Crane muttered. It wasn't the fact he was half-way to being scientifically classified as a geek that bothered him. He could live with that. It was how unfazed the Joker sounded. The bloody clown shrugged off a dozen punches with all the ease of a man shrugging off a rain coat.
The Joker pushed Crane off him with one arm. The Scarecrow, sure his sole option of survival was to jump out the window and into the shrubs below, was on his feet in a second. He crossed the room and began fighting with the window latch.
Instead of jumping on Crane's back, knocking him flat, and slamming his head against the floor until his face resembled a hyena's, the Clown Prince grabbed Harley's forgotten bucket. He took note that she had retreated out of the room entirely. Maybe she was worried he'd do something too violent for her precious Babies to watch and had gone to shelter their innocent eyes.
Damn it! The window was utterly and immovably stuck. Some dolt had painted all around the frame, sealing it shut. Crane would need a crowbar or a stick of dynamite to open it.
"Hey, Johnny!" The Joker shouted.
Crane whirled around just in time to get soaked. The water was so cold it could have come straight from a melting glacier on the coast of Greenland. He gasped in shock at the sudden freeze and forgot all about escaping like a bandit.
The psychotic clown came at the Scarecrow, laughing like a loon the whole time. Soaking wet, the Scarecrow appeared even scrawnier than usual. He looked like drowned Chihuahua.
Before Crane could overcome the shock of being doused in ice-water, the Joker was on him. The clown hit him on the head with the empty bucket. Luckily, the bucket was made of light plastic and about as effective of a bludgeon as a couch cushion would have been.
The bucket didn't do any damage, but what the Joker did next had the potential to be lethal. There was a reason, based on simple scientific principle, why it was unsafe to go swimming during a thunderstorm. Water was an excellent conductor of electricity. Crane was soaked to the skin, and the clown had his evil little toy.
The Scarecrow knew exactly what the Joker had planned. He'd been zapped twice all ready today, and had no desire to try it again. Especially not right now, while was dripping all over the carpet. The old saying went 'the third time's the charm', though in this case the charm would be his untimely demise.
"Joker, no!" Crane exclaimed. He held out his hands, intending to intercept the joy buzzer and break the demented clown's wrists if he could.
Instead of bothering to avoid the Scarecrow's defense, the Joker just latched onto his hands like a barnacle. Crane's hands and arms were just as wet as the rest of him, so it wouldn't be any problem.
There was one brief second for him to realize he was holding hands with the Joker before the giggling maniac fried him. Crane was quite sure he screamed, and probably sounded so feminine the Joker would tally it against him. Asides from that, he didn't know anything else for quite some while.
Harley had reappeared, Bud and Lou flanking her. They all stood in the doorway, peering in cautiously. Without warning, Harley burst into noisy tears.
"Mister J, you killed him! He was so nice to us, and you killed him! Poor Professor Crane. Who's gonna give us Halloween candy this year?" Harley sobbed.
The Joker dug a foot into Crane's ribs. The Scarecrow moaned, but showed no signs of recovering. He was out, and staying that way.
"Stop crying, Harley-pooh. Johnny's not dead. Look, he's breathing just fine." The Joker said.
"But you hurt him. I heard him from all the way down the hall." Harley said.
The clown chuckled. "It was pretty funny, like one of those taser videos from YouTube. If only I had a camera handy."
"That's mean, Puddin'. It isn't nice to film people's pain and then exploit it. Bad, Mister J! Bad!" Harley scolded.
"Yeah, yeah, the shrinks have been telling me that for years. Do me two favors. Shut up, and grab the duct tape." The Joker said.
Scowling, Harley grudgingly obeyed. She snatched up the duct tape, and stomped over to the Joker.
The crazy clown stripped the wrinkled sheets off Crane's bed. He laid them out flat on the floor and then dragged the water-logged Scarecrow on top of them. While Harley watched with childlike curiosity, the Joker began to wrap up the unconscious man.
"Harley, go get the shoelaces, too." The Joker said. She quickly did as she was told.
"They're from the Professor's shoes." Harley said. Her lunatic boyfriend snickered.
The Joker wrapped the shoelaces around the Scarecrow's stick-thin wrists. The duct tape would have worked just as well, but the laces would be much more uncomfortable. He made an insane number of knots in the laces. By the time the Joker was satisfied, the shoelaces resembled a bird's nest or a bowl of spaghetti.
With his hands sufficiently bound, the Joker finished wrapping Crane in the sheets. The Scarecrow resembled a caterpillar that was nearly done weaving its cocoon. To insure the Scarecrow couldn't wiggle free, the Joker began reinforcing the cotton with duct tape. He used half the roll. The only kind of bug that would ever emerge from a silver Sci-fi cocoon of that size was Mothra.
"What are you gonna do with him, Puddin? He can't get groceries if he's sleepin'." Harley pointed out.
"Oh, yeah. How about that? I suppose if we just threw his unconscious body out in front of the Quick Mart, he'd get arrested and we'd still go hungry. Carry him downstairs, Harley." The Joker said. Leaving his favorite girl with her mission, he strolled out of the room.
Her mouth agape, Harley regarded the tightly bound Scarecrow. He was nearly a foot taller than she was! How did Mister J expect her to lug Professor Crane down all those stairs? She supposed she could just drag him to the edge and give him a good shove, letting gravity do the real work. Then she figured he wouldn't be much use with his arms broken in six places and his leg on backwards.
"I love my Puddin', but sometimes he wants me to move the world." Harley muttered.
And sometimes he wanted her to move mad scientists who liked to keep poison canisters up their sleeves. That was one of those days. Harley squared her hips, grabbed hold of the bed sheets, and yanked.
Lou and Bud, clever children that they were, scampered over to help their significantly less furry mother. Lacking hands, the two hyenas had no choice but to use their teeth. Lou bit down on nothing but sheet, while Bud got a decent chunk of the Scarecrow's arm. If he had been aware enough to feel it, there would have been some frightful curses uttered.
"Spit it out, Bud! I told Mister J I ain't gonna eat Professor Crane, and neither are you. Let go, Lou and me have it." Harley said.
Bud dropped the mouthful of sheet and Scarecrow. Grinning a decidedly doggy grin, despite what Crane said about his evolutionary past, the hyena sat on his haunches and watched with great curiosity.
With Lou's assistance, Harley was able to pull Crane out of his bedroom. He knocked his head against the door frame on the way out, and Harley winced. He was going to be feeling that when he woke up.
They made fine progress until hitting the top of the stairs. Harley peered down the landing, and then looked at the Scarecrow. There was no way she could get him down there. Maybe, if Lou was a human and not a spotted hyena, but if wishes were fishes, her Puddin' would just put smiles on them. Harley didn't give a damn that it didn't make an ounce of sense. Neither Joker Fish nor smiles were going to grab Crane's feet and give her a hand, either.
"Just imagine he's your kid, and you're rescuin' him from a fire. Yeah, use the Momma instinct." Harley said.
If grades were given out for her performance, Harley would have gotten an A for effort and an F for actual results. She did manage to get Jonathan's soaking, sorry carcass onto her shoulders in the classic fireman's carry. Then, too top heavy and unbalanced, the clown and her unfortunate package rolled all the way down the stairs. Lou became entangled and tumbled with them, yipping like a stepped-on Schnauzer.
The Scarecrow landed on the bottom of the pile. Harley fell on top of him, feeling some bony joint poke her in the ribs. Lou, all 130 pounds of him, landed on top of Harley. For kicks and giggles, Bud bounded down the stairs. Not wanting to be left out, he launched himself on top of the stack.
"Mommy…can't…breathe! Ah!" Harley gasped. She had twice her body weight piled on her. Poor Jonathan, squished beneath the three of them, was going to die like Giles Corey if they didn't get off him in a hurry. Heavy with all her might, Harley managed to dislodge the two hyenas. She rolled off Crane, who appeared slightly flattened.
The Joker, perched on the back of the chair like a giant purple canary, burst into his loudest laughter of the day. He clutched himself tightly, as though to keep from laughing to death like the cartoon weasels in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
"Yeah, Mister J! You keep on laughin' and I'll tear your tongue out and wrap it around your head." Harley threatened.
The clown's only response was, "Seven strikes for Johnny, one for Harley, and one for the mutts."
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Author's Note: Mothra was a giant moth who fought Godzilla in those hokey old films.
Giles Corey was pressed to death beneath a rock during the Salem Witch Trials. His purported last words were "More weight." Wise-ass.