Death's a Joke.

His tongue dragged itself across his chapped top lip; the salvia stinging a fresh made wound caused by skin that had broken with movement. The Joker thumbed the hole in his leather gloves before stroking his unshaven jaw line with the exposed flesh. The Joker had been perched here for several hours which were filled with dry laughs, mumbles of insanity and the sound of a blade caressing several objects. Batman was nowhere; the city was empty from heroes yet brimming with criminals – pathetic, wishful attempts of crime that in the Joker’s opinion were pitiful and the perpetrators not worth the title of villains.

“I wonder if the Bat has had them big ol’ wings clipped, hmm? Or perhaps the Wayne character has bribed him in money to find out ‘bout the death of that butler? Could it be that the hero has been bribed, corrupted with money?” The Joker mumbled to himself in thought.

After a few minutes, or it could have been hours, the Joker clicked his knuckles, a single crack echoing down the alleyway, the brick walls bouncing the sound. The streetlamps eerie glow shone behind the Joker’s head in the muddy puddles as if depicting a halo, a crown almost when he past them on his march. His smirk stretching the scars at the puddle until the wind flung paper and his reflection was covered by a waterlogged ‘Ace of Diamonds’ card.

The bodies of authority, the police, were lying helplessly down the corridor of the police station. The Joker shone a flickering torch in the darkness of the criminal record library. Thousands of files and book spines adorned endless rows of bookshelves – the paper files for petty, innocent criminals and book spines for notorious villains; the ones to go down in Gotham history…an honour given to only few of the greats.

“Now let’s see, I’m sure you’re hiding around here somewhere, surely you can’t keep everything hidden, hmm?” The Joker whispered under his breath, his pupils dilated and breath letting out gasping laughs of anger.

The torch poured light onto the hardback books until an engraved gold title flashed the light back causing the Joker’s hand to reach out and snatch the book so violently that a book close was flung from its location – torn pages floating to the floor.

“Oh you precious, you beautiful little book,” Cackled the Joker as he stomped his feet in excited, he had it, he had the book containing every piece of information known on that goddamn ‘Ace of Diamonds’ – he would know everything about her, age, blood type, even real name.

He licked the corners of his lips so that he could feel his scars, mumbling ‘why so serious?’ to himself before ripping the front cover open. Looking back at him was a hollow rectangle, the pages ripped so that the first and last letters of each line were visible throughout the entire book. Within the hollowed out section lay a hip flask which the Joker picked up, too utterly shocked to feel the anger surging through his veins. With a loud snapping noise he closed the book, hiding it under his coat to bring back to his, and his fellow goons most recent location choice for their hide-out – far away from human eyes.