Damaged.

A drop of sweat rolls down from his forehead down to his cheek. His face is already moist, mostly from the tears. Thomas tries screaming again but the duct-tape and the gag within muffles the sound to an inaudible shriek. His limbs are tied to the cold metal chair, allowing no movement. The large hall is empty except for a couple of chairs to the side and a wooden table behind him. He does not see the steel instruments kept on the table, but knows it to be vicious. The single light bulb hangs above his where he sits, shedding grave light across the room, fading as it reaches the ends, where the darkness engulfs it once more. Distant laughter echoes through the walls, and his eyes widen. He knows who's coming. The maniac. The psycho. The clown.

The door at the end of the room opens slowly and the room fills up with a bright light from beyond the doorway. A tall lean silhouette of a man steps through. Thomas can't make out the features, but he feels the figure's eyes bore into his soul. The man shuts the door with a bang, the room returning to its former gloom. The man walks towards Thomas now, filling him with an increasing sense of dread. Slowly he walks into the light, visible in Thomas' eyes. The feeling of dread within him reaches its peak as he beholds the Clown Prince Of Crime in all his glory.

He wears nothing but a purple canvas trousers. His skin is bleached pale white and his hair a bright green. He grins with to reveal the horrible metal teeth he had fit in. His chest is a cesspool of tattoos depicting the sick depravity of his mind. A disgustingly wicked smile is tattooed on his lower right arm. A death's head with a clown's cap on his upper right chest. The words of the horrible laughter, that is his anthem, is imprinted on his left chest. Numerous other psychopathic words and depictions can be seen all over his back. On his forehead is tattooed the one word all the shrinks had described him with. DAMAGED. All those shrinks were now mysteriously missing. He stopped visiting them a very long time ago. An eternity has passed since then. They couldn't help him. Nobody could help him. Not anymore. He helped himself nowadays. Helped himself to whatever he saw fit. Everything was his for the taking and the whole world was his stage. But the time for that came later. Right now he had more important matters at hand.

Thomas starts whimpering with fear as he beholds the face of his captor. The Joker bends down to look into Thomas' eyes. His stare burns down on him like hot coals. The Joker's face is inches away from his when he bursts into maniacal laughter. The sound reverberates around the room, echoing off the walls. The intensity of laughter increases into horrid cackles and finally into a loud raspy shriek, during which the expression on the Joker's face changes to one of rage. His hand curls up into a fist and smashes into Thomas' face, cracking his cheekbones. Thomas screams out in pain, but his cries and drowned out by the fading laughter of the clown. The Joker pulls up a chair from the side and sit down right in front of the terrified Thomas, in a sangfroid manner. A grin is still on his face as he watches Thomas, intensely.

"Why, Thomas, why? I liked you, I really did. You were a good kid.....Its a damn shame." He says, with a mock tone of sadness in his voice. "Tell me, how long were you working for the Gotham P.D.?"

Thomas stares into the Joker's eyes, not daring to move a muscle.

"ANSWER ME! HOW LONG?!"

Thomas mutters something unable to be made out.

"Oh, for God's sake!" He cries in exasperation.The Joker rips the tape off and removes the gag without grace.

"I swear, Mr J, I swear to God, they forced me to do it, please, please, please, you have to believe me, please...." Thomas stammers.

"Hush now, child. This is not the time to ask for forgiveness." The clown deepens his voice and speaks out in a mock pastor's voice. He gets up from the chair and walks to the table behind Thomas. He picks up something shiny, glinting off the light from the lamp. And then with a voice to be feared of, he says "This is the time for punishment."

With the scalpel in hand, he walks around to face Thomas again. "You know, I'm not a crazy person. No, sir, I am not. I might be a lunatic, but not crazy. Never crazy."

"Oh, god, please, no no no"

"Sanity is not the purist regime everyone makes it out to be. It's chaos. It's disorder. It is anarchy. But you people hide it. Deep down within yourselves. Controlling everything in the world is not order. Its criminal. Look at me. Why am I so happy?" He brings the scalpel to Thomas' forehead.

"Please, Mr J, please...please..."

"I am happy because I embrace the chaos. I am alive because disorder is what I preach. Why should we stop what is to be? So, imagine how I feel when control freaks like you mess with me. It hurts me. It really hurts me, Thomas. And I don't like being hurt. Therefore, in return, allow me to make you feel the pain." And with that, the Joker brought the scalpel down on Thomas' face, mutilating it, disfiguring it. His screams ring through the night, all the while. By the time the Joker was done, his face was such a mess of blood and tears, that his own mother would have hardly recognized him.

"I hope you've learnt your lesson, Thomas." And with one swift move, he plunges the knife into Thomas' heart. Blood spurts onto the Joker's chest and face, but he does not blink, not even once.
He twists the scalpel, painfully ending Thomas' life, and with a long horrible blood-curdling shriek, the light goes out from his eyes.

The Joker paces back a few feet and stops to admire his work.

"What a horrible mess. I love it." He grins a grin of malice and mirth and turns his back on the corpse, just as one of his goons enter from the door.

"What is it?" The Joker asks dismissively.

"I'm sorry, boss, but we got news from the eastern bank. Somebody messed with our boys. The shipment was destroyed."

It was all he could do not to choke the life out of him. The Joker takes in a long shaky breath, and as calm and composed as he could be, asks "Who. Were. They?"

"Uhh, our guys are saying it was one guy."

"One man?"

"Yeah, some nut dressed as a giant bat, apparently."

The Joker lifts up his head. He's heard of this guy before, but never working so close. He senses a nemesis here. The perfect enemy. The good to his evil. The Batman.

A smirk appears on his face.