Villain Arkham Escape
Once upon a time, high on a foggy hill just outside Gotham City, there stood a tall stone building called Arkham Asylum, where the strangest, most troublesome characters of the city were kept safe, and kept from causing any more mischief. And there, in a small cell with a single barred window, the Joker had already made himself quite at home.
He decorated the gray stone walls with paper streamers he had folded himself, bright purple and green, the only colors of comfort he had in that quiet, gray place. He taught the guards knock-knock jokes through the bars every evening before lights-out, and more often than not, at least one of them laughed despite themselves. And every single day, from breakfast until the moon rose over Gotham City, he spent his quiet hours dreaming up the silliest escape plan Arkham Asylum had ever seen.
Then, one perfectly ordinary Tuesday, laundry day finally arrived. And the Joker saw his chance.
Folded carefully inside a stack of clean prison uniforms, he had managed to smuggle in dozens of deflated whoopee cushions, a long coil of rope disguised as ordinary shoelaces, and a small can of paint mixed to match the exact gray of the asylum's stone walls. He worked quietly and carefully all afternoon, waiting for the night to come.
When the halls grew dark and quiet, and the guards began their slow, familiar rounds, the Joker got to work. He inflated every single whoopee cushion, one by one, and lined them carefully along the hallway floor just outside his cell door. Then he reached into his sleeve for a small key he had carved from a bar of soap over many patient weeks, shaped — of course — like a tiny rubber chicken, and used it to unlock his own cell.
Step by step, the guards walked their rounds down the corridor. And with each step, the whoopee cushions did their job perfectly. PHHHBBBT! PHHHBBBT! The silly, squeaking sound covered every single one of the Joker's sneaking footsteps, all the way to the end of the hall.
He found the courtyard door, slipped outside into the cool night fog, and climbed the tall outer wall using his rope of shoelaces, hand over hand, all the way to the top. And because he simply could not resist one last joke, he pulled out his little can of paint and carefully painted a fake door onto the real stone, right at the very top of the wall, just for the fun of it.
Then he dropped down into the misty courtyard below, chuckling softly to himself. "HA HA HA," he laughed, brushing gray paint from the sleeves of his purple jacket. He was halfway across the courtyard, nearly to the front gate, when a familiar shape stepped out from behind a hedge, arms crossed, cape barely stirring in the night wind.
Batman.
He had been waiting there for nearly an hour, ever since he'd noticed the whoopee cushions missing from the supply closet earlier that evening and guessed, correctly, exactly what the Joker had been planning all along, right down to the fake door painted on the wall.
The Joker skidded to a stop in the wet grass. He glanced back at his still-drying painted door on the wall behind him. He looked at Batman, standing calm and unmoving in the moonlight. And then, with a small shrug and his enormous red grin, he said simply, "Worth a shot."
The guards of Arkham Asylum came and escorted him quietly back inside before the sun rose over Gotham City, whoopee cushions and all, tucked gently under one guard's arm like a very strange souvenir.
But the Joker did not seem upset. Not even a little bit. By the time he reached his cell again, he was already humming a cheerful little tune and sketching his very next escape plan on the back of a folded cafeteria napkin, absolutely certain — as he always was, every single time — that next time, the joke would finally, finally be on Batman.
It never, ever was. But somehow, that never once stopped him from smiling anyway, chalk-white face pressed against the cool bars, dreaming up tomorrow's silliness.
Goodnight, Arkham Asylum. Goodnight, Gotham City, quiet and misty under its watchful moon. There is always, always a next time.