Bellylaughs
TMF Poster
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2013
- Messages
- 146
- Points
- 16
He was a miserable wreck and he knew it. Everybody was either dead or permanently absent in some other way. Either they quit, or got jailed, or they somehow “turned their life around” whatever that meant. He hated admitting he was lonely, but then he could put some effort into finding his next little project to work on.
Putting on his favorite suit, he looked at himself in the mirror and gave his best crazed, maniacal evil laugh as he made the last adjustments to his suit. It was more difficult than he remembered to make his can of laughing gas sit right in the inner pocket of his deep metallic purple pants. When finally he could walk without it bumping into some rather sensitive equipment, he climbed up the ladder and out of the fake dumpster that camouflaged his underground hideout.
Immediately, he saw a potential target. The man turned, and the Joker thought better of it. His victim could NOT be that ugly. He refused! He found a bench nearby, about a block away from his hideout. He was lucky, as that bench was close to a proper bus shelter. He knew he wouldn’t have to wait long, and sure enough somebody more suitable walked right into his trap.
The fair-skinned teenager sat in the bus shelter with his head in his hands. He may have been crying, but he will deny it if you ask. The Joker sat in his ridiculous suit, ready to mentally reject this one too, except to his dismay, the teen noticed him, got up from his bench at the bus shelter, and approached the now thoroughly annoyed Joker.
“Who--…….. Are you--….?” The boy stuttered, unsure of how to word his question.
“Spit it out, boy.” The Joker didn’t feel very patient this evening, but the poor teen might have to do.
“My parents hate me….” Surprised and ashamed of vocalizing what’s been rattling around his head all day long, he hung his head and started to go towards the newly arrived bus.
“Wait.” The Joker got an idea. “What’s your name?”
“Martin.”
“In case you were trying to ask earlier, yes, I am the Joker.” Embarrassed, Martin hung his head again. This time, the Joker saw an opportunity. “Looks like you need some cheering up, kid.” The Joker reached up to his lapel and pressed the bottom petal of his flower pin. Out came a visible purple vapor. Martin saw it, and in an automatic act of self-preservation, he tried to hold his breath. He was too late.
“Hee hee….. NO! Heh!”
Martin fought the Joker’s signature laughing gas so hard that he passed out cold on the ground. The Joker knew he would not have a difficult time at all in moving Martin to his hideout where he could entrap him and convince him to do his bidding. Martin was quite thin, and looked like a nerd.
“Okie dokie, Martin!” The Joker carelessly threw Martin over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “Let’s go home.” He said, as he started back to his hideout, walking the now slightly more familiar block back to his fake dumpster. He dropped Martin down the ladder chute and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make a crude ‘white trash’ joke.
After standing at the entrance of his hideout for a while and contemplating the events leading up to his gain, he wondered if his hideout made him white trash too, cracking up at his own silliness while he jumped into the dumpster and climbed down the ladder.
“Wakey wakey, Martin!” The Joker glanced over to where Martin still lay unconscious on the floor. “Out cold still huh?” He made a face and waved his hand trying to look like an aristocrat, but failing. ”No matter.”
The Joker did not really intend to have Martin wake up yet. He had to be sure Martin would be loyal to the cause. He picked Martin up and set him awkwardly on a ratty red chaise lounge that was modified to vaguely resemble a psychologists couch. After satisfied with his guess that Martin would be still unconscious when he returned, he went to go brew some strong coffee. His night wore him out, which he found hilarious. He was finding everything hilarious today. He had a new minion!
Martin meanwhile, was dreaming. There was a gaudy purple comedian perched on a stool in a very dark room with the spotlight on him. The comedian seemed to at times be the only one laughing, and at times to be the one laughing the hardest. The odd disjointed dream also included strange whiffs of coffee. He could go for some coffee. He gradually woke up with a glorious rested feeling, still wanting coffee, but he immediately regretted it when he finally did open his eyes.
It came back to him like a horrible train wreck that he couldn’t turn away from. His parents had thrown him out of their house, calling him a lazy freak for not wanting the career they picked for him, telling him not to come back at all unless he came to his senses and was successful and would apologize. He wanted to be a model in movies, maybe with lines but he wanted to be seen. The more he was seen the better, he reckoned. His parents only would be satisfied with a son that was a successful lawyer, or doctor perhaps. Prestige was their game, being a top of the line lawyer/real estate professional mix. Alas, he could not find an interest in those things. The joy of art was the only thing he could see himself doing, even though he tried his hardest to find a way to enjoy his parents’ wishes. They arrived at the conclusion that Martin was disrespectful, which had dire consequences as he had found out.
He also saw the permanent creepy maniacal grin that was plastered on the Joker’s face. The clown, dressed in a different suit than the night before, was sitting backwards on a chair, straddling the seat and resting his arms on its back with his head on top like the deranged cherry on an insane sundae. And he was looking straight at Martin.
“Have a nice nap, Marty-boy?”
All Martin could think to do to show his displeasure at his current situation was to scowl as hard as he could at the Joker, which made the Joker chuckle.
“My my my….. what an angry little fella you are.” The Joker shrugged. “Gives me an excuse to adjust your attitude! Hee hee ha ha! See who’s laughing in a minute! Ha!”
With a flick of a switch, the same purple gas leaked its way out of the chaise lounge, which again Martin didn’t see until it was too late. He didn’t think he had a reason to get up before the gas, but after trying to fight and failing to keep himself together, he couldn’t even though he was free to do so.
“What the hell!? Hahah….. I’m not the cranky one! Hahahaha!”
Martin squeezed his eyes shut and tried—failed, but tried—to control his breathing as he laughed his way through explaining to the Joker what he already knew. That would soon change. Yes, it would, if the Joker had anything to do with it.
Only giving the impression of listening but relishing the laughter of his catch, the Joker poured the coffee he brewed only a small while earlier into two mugs, slipping the gas antidote into the one for Martin. They both drank greedily, each being accustomed to a jolt of caffeine in the morning. Martin had a difficult time, having to pause between sips as laughing fits overtook him. It was incredibly annoying to laugh without a real reason to. Why did his head have to hurt so much? His laughter didn’t help. Maybe it was a side effect from the damn gas. He assumed as much anyway. It made him hate the Joker even more, who he was already plenty mad with.
Soon, Martin calmed and could go a while without laughing. Coffee was the antidote, or it seemed that way to him. He did not believe that the Joker would just randomly give him the antidote so it was very likely to him that the Joker was not aware that coffee destroyed the gas. Little known to Martin, the Joker was not willing to exhaust his little minion in training yet. Instead, the Joker decided to observe him.
As the Joker watched, Martin stood from the chaise lounge which was haphazardly turned into a psychologists’ couch and saw that its resemblance was no accident; he turned and faced the Joker.
“Really?” Martin asked quite flatly, his nigh permanent scowl resting easily upon his features as if he was born with it. It was odd that he even thought that the Joker cared for him, so he put the thought out of his head.
“Well, you did look a little….. shall we say, depressed? Ha. Haha.” The Joker circled Martin like a hungry shark waiting for the opportunity to kill. “I honestly haven’t heard anyone laugh as loud as you have. It makes me excited.”
“Disgusting! You’re a perverted clown!” Martin spat. He wanted to run, but he knew that would do him no good. His family would sooner spit in his general direction than look at him. He looked around the room, moving only his eyeballs, and hoped that the Joker didn’t notice him trying to find a way out.
“That won’t do you any good, I’m afraid.” The Joker noticed Martin’s surreptitious glances for a door, a window, a hole in the wall; anything to get him out of this mess.
Martin deflated. That was his only hope of getting out. To make it out of this damn damaged city and away from the drugs, murder, kooks like the Joker. Martin again started crying the lonesome wail of a man who lost everything including all of his hope.
“Why do they always do that?” The Joker wondered aloud. He pressed his flower pin again but his leg canister was empty. With a not so quiet annoyed sound, which Martin could not hear over his wailing, he turned and strode away to find another. He couldn’t STAND crying, and especially not like that!
After a short time and Martin came once more to his senses, he noticed that the Joker had left him alone. He wasn’t aware of the reason, but nobody ever just walked away from him, seemingly respectfully as he cried. They always seemed to make fun of him. They laughed at his pain. Maybe he could stay here, he thought, just until he knew another out of town bus would be coming.
Just as Martin was comfortably asleep again, as crying had worn him out, blissfully unaware of the world, the Joker had completed his quest for another can of gas to hook up to his flower pin and was making his way back to where Martin slept on the couch.
“Damn gas can….” The Joker adjusted the can once again in its inner pocket hiding place. “Ha HA! ….gas can. Ha! Oh! That’s funny.” The Joker was cracked up, ho ho-ing and ha ha-ing all the way into the entry room where the both of them landed, one of them quite literally, the night prior.
“Zzzzzzzz…..” Martin was snoring.
“Oh, how cute!” The Joker said in a fake gushy tone when he heard Martin’s chainsaw-like snorage. ‘NOT!” He directed his yell right into Martin’s ear. He slept away. The Joker, being who he was, wanted to wake Martin up spectacularly and with gusto! He wanted Martin to remember this moment so he wouldn’t fall asleep and fail lookout duty or something horrid like that. Egads! No, that wouldn’t do. The Joker screwed his face up in a fake horrified expression, and laughed at himself. He was ridiculous, he knew it, and he found that hilarious. A lot was hilarious today. That was it! He knew what he wanted to do, and he hoped that Martin would cooperate. He probably wouldn’t have a choice in the matter. Poor Martin… ha ha!
“Oooohhhhh Mar-tin!” The Joker half sang at the boy, as he started poking his shoulders, then what was exposed of his ribs, and just as he reached the bottom of those he heard a giggle. “Ooh!” The Joker was delighted. “Ticklish, Martin?” He continued poking, lower and lower, over Martin’s sides and onto his hips, which caused Martin to violently convulse, screw his eyes shut and laugh in quite a different way than the Joker heard from the laughing gas.
“BAHAHAHA!” Martin sat bolt upright and was halfway off the couch as quick as a ninja. “WHY! WHY DID YOU DO THAT!” Martin was suddenly and extremely high strung. He felt very strange, and he was demanding of the Joker an answer pertaining to why he did.
“If you’re going to live here you’re going to have to learn the rules. I guess you don’t really have a choice since you’re really not here because it was your idea.”
“What?” Martin remembered only part of that night. His memory was half shot from fighting the gas so hard the first time.
“Oh, nothing.” The Joker played innocent. He was bad at it, but Martin wasn’t really paying attention. He was still trying to process his awakening. “Just make sure you don’t fall asleep when you should be awake.” The end of the sentence sounded like the Joker was trying to sound threatening. Near the end of it though, he remembered Martin’s reaction to the hip poking and let out a small but perceivable laugh. After all, he didn’t want to be TOO hard on the kid, as his master plan was to gain his trust and loyalty enough to brainwash the heck out of him so he’d be a mindless Joker Drone til the end of his days. …..End of his days. Ha! Ha-ha! Wait, end of whose days? It didn’t matter, he figured. No Martin, no Joker Drone. No Joker, no…… Joker, for the Joker Drone to exist, so Martin would just be a Drone.
“Well I guess that’s figured out.” The Joker said aloud after having his philosophical moment. Martin looked at him strangely, but thought better of commenting. He didn’t know what to make of what The Joker did to him, but he wasn’t sure he wanted it to happen again quite yet. In the next moment, the Joker realized he was starving. He had only had coffee that morning when he would normally have had a couple eggs or a waffle. He looked at Martin thoughtfully, possibly still in a philosophical mood, but you could never really tell with him.
“So!” He addressed Martin abruptly, which caused the boy to jump slightly. “I’m quite hungry. Hun…. Gahry…. Like the country! But not the country.” There was a pause, after which the Joker practically screamed, “I NEED FOOD!”
Martin fell back into his chair. The Joker was scaring him, and he’d already had plenty enough of that to last a lifetime. Luckily, all that came of the outburst was the Joker sitting on a chair, straddling it backwards and resting his elbows on the back of it, with his chin in his hands. The Joker sighed, and Martin found himself with a twinge of guilt in his chest.
Just as Martin thought he’d stand up and see if he could help this weird perverted son of a gun out, the Joker burst upwards out of his chair, with a crazed look in his eyes.
“I’ve got an idea!” The Joker shouted, with an emphatic point of his finger into the sky. “We can go to my favorite breakfast nook, where they have any combination of anything you could ever want for breakfast!” The Joker was drooling by now, and he could see Martin had a hungry look about him too. “WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR… LET’S GOOOO!” The Joker shouted.
Putting on his favorite suit, he looked at himself in the mirror and gave his best crazed, maniacal evil laugh as he made the last adjustments to his suit. It was more difficult than he remembered to make his can of laughing gas sit right in the inner pocket of his deep metallic purple pants. When finally he could walk without it bumping into some rather sensitive equipment, he climbed up the ladder and out of the fake dumpster that camouflaged his underground hideout.
Immediately, he saw a potential target. The man turned, and the Joker thought better of it. His victim could NOT be that ugly. He refused! He found a bench nearby, about a block away from his hideout. He was lucky, as that bench was close to a proper bus shelter. He knew he wouldn’t have to wait long, and sure enough somebody more suitable walked right into his trap.
The fair-skinned teenager sat in the bus shelter with his head in his hands. He may have been crying, but he will deny it if you ask. The Joker sat in his ridiculous suit, ready to mentally reject this one too, except to his dismay, the teen noticed him, got up from his bench at the bus shelter, and approached the now thoroughly annoyed Joker.
“Who--…….. Are you--….?” The boy stuttered, unsure of how to word his question.
“Spit it out, boy.” The Joker didn’t feel very patient this evening, but the poor teen might have to do.
“My parents hate me….” Surprised and ashamed of vocalizing what’s been rattling around his head all day long, he hung his head and started to go towards the newly arrived bus.
“Wait.” The Joker got an idea. “What’s your name?”
“Martin.”
“In case you were trying to ask earlier, yes, I am the Joker.” Embarrassed, Martin hung his head again. This time, the Joker saw an opportunity. “Looks like you need some cheering up, kid.” The Joker reached up to his lapel and pressed the bottom petal of his flower pin. Out came a visible purple vapor. Martin saw it, and in an automatic act of self-preservation, he tried to hold his breath. He was too late.
“Hee hee….. NO! Heh!”
Martin fought the Joker’s signature laughing gas so hard that he passed out cold on the ground. The Joker knew he would not have a difficult time at all in moving Martin to his hideout where he could entrap him and convince him to do his bidding. Martin was quite thin, and looked like a nerd.
“Okie dokie, Martin!” The Joker carelessly threw Martin over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “Let’s go home.” He said, as he started back to his hideout, walking the now slightly more familiar block back to his fake dumpster. He dropped Martin down the ladder chute and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make a crude ‘white trash’ joke.
After standing at the entrance of his hideout for a while and contemplating the events leading up to his gain, he wondered if his hideout made him white trash too, cracking up at his own silliness while he jumped into the dumpster and climbed down the ladder.
“Wakey wakey, Martin!” The Joker glanced over to where Martin still lay unconscious on the floor. “Out cold still huh?” He made a face and waved his hand trying to look like an aristocrat, but failing. ”No matter.”
The Joker did not really intend to have Martin wake up yet. He had to be sure Martin would be loyal to the cause. He picked Martin up and set him awkwardly on a ratty red chaise lounge that was modified to vaguely resemble a psychologists couch. After satisfied with his guess that Martin would be still unconscious when he returned, he went to go brew some strong coffee. His night wore him out, which he found hilarious. He was finding everything hilarious today. He had a new minion!
Martin meanwhile, was dreaming. There was a gaudy purple comedian perched on a stool in a very dark room with the spotlight on him. The comedian seemed to at times be the only one laughing, and at times to be the one laughing the hardest. The odd disjointed dream also included strange whiffs of coffee. He could go for some coffee. He gradually woke up with a glorious rested feeling, still wanting coffee, but he immediately regretted it when he finally did open his eyes.
It came back to him like a horrible train wreck that he couldn’t turn away from. His parents had thrown him out of their house, calling him a lazy freak for not wanting the career they picked for him, telling him not to come back at all unless he came to his senses and was successful and would apologize. He wanted to be a model in movies, maybe with lines but he wanted to be seen. The more he was seen the better, he reckoned. His parents only would be satisfied with a son that was a successful lawyer, or doctor perhaps. Prestige was their game, being a top of the line lawyer/real estate professional mix. Alas, he could not find an interest in those things. The joy of art was the only thing he could see himself doing, even though he tried his hardest to find a way to enjoy his parents’ wishes. They arrived at the conclusion that Martin was disrespectful, which had dire consequences as he had found out.
He also saw the permanent creepy maniacal grin that was plastered on the Joker’s face. The clown, dressed in a different suit than the night before, was sitting backwards on a chair, straddling the seat and resting his arms on its back with his head on top like the deranged cherry on an insane sundae. And he was looking straight at Martin.
“Have a nice nap, Marty-boy?”
All Martin could think to do to show his displeasure at his current situation was to scowl as hard as he could at the Joker, which made the Joker chuckle.
“My my my….. what an angry little fella you are.” The Joker shrugged. “Gives me an excuse to adjust your attitude! Hee hee ha ha! See who’s laughing in a minute! Ha!”
With a flick of a switch, the same purple gas leaked its way out of the chaise lounge, which again Martin didn’t see until it was too late. He didn’t think he had a reason to get up before the gas, but after trying to fight and failing to keep himself together, he couldn’t even though he was free to do so.
“What the hell!? Hahah….. I’m not the cranky one! Hahahaha!”
Martin squeezed his eyes shut and tried—failed, but tried—to control his breathing as he laughed his way through explaining to the Joker what he already knew. That would soon change. Yes, it would, if the Joker had anything to do with it.
Only giving the impression of listening but relishing the laughter of his catch, the Joker poured the coffee he brewed only a small while earlier into two mugs, slipping the gas antidote into the one for Martin. They both drank greedily, each being accustomed to a jolt of caffeine in the morning. Martin had a difficult time, having to pause between sips as laughing fits overtook him. It was incredibly annoying to laugh without a real reason to. Why did his head have to hurt so much? His laughter didn’t help. Maybe it was a side effect from the damn gas. He assumed as much anyway. It made him hate the Joker even more, who he was already plenty mad with.
Soon, Martin calmed and could go a while without laughing. Coffee was the antidote, or it seemed that way to him. He did not believe that the Joker would just randomly give him the antidote so it was very likely to him that the Joker was not aware that coffee destroyed the gas. Little known to Martin, the Joker was not willing to exhaust his little minion in training yet. Instead, the Joker decided to observe him.
As the Joker watched, Martin stood from the chaise lounge which was haphazardly turned into a psychologists’ couch and saw that its resemblance was no accident; he turned and faced the Joker.
“Really?” Martin asked quite flatly, his nigh permanent scowl resting easily upon his features as if he was born with it. It was odd that he even thought that the Joker cared for him, so he put the thought out of his head.
“Well, you did look a little….. shall we say, depressed? Ha. Haha.” The Joker circled Martin like a hungry shark waiting for the opportunity to kill. “I honestly haven’t heard anyone laugh as loud as you have. It makes me excited.”
“Disgusting! You’re a perverted clown!” Martin spat. He wanted to run, but he knew that would do him no good. His family would sooner spit in his general direction than look at him. He looked around the room, moving only his eyeballs, and hoped that the Joker didn’t notice him trying to find a way out.
“That won’t do you any good, I’m afraid.” The Joker noticed Martin’s surreptitious glances for a door, a window, a hole in the wall; anything to get him out of this mess.
Martin deflated. That was his only hope of getting out. To make it out of this damn damaged city and away from the drugs, murder, kooks like the Joker. Martin again started crying the lonesome wail of a man who lost everything including all of his hope.
“Why do they always do that?” The Joker wondered aloud. He pressed his flower pin again but his leg canister was empty. With a not so quiet annoyed sound, which Martin could not hear over his wailing, he turned and strode away to find another. He couldn’t STAND crying, and especially not like that!
After a short time and Martin came once more to his senses, he noticed that the Joker had left him alone. He wasn’t aware of the reason, but nobody ever just walked away from him, seemingly respectfully as he cried. They always seemed to make fun of him. They laughed at his pain. Maybe he could stay here, he thought, just until he knew another out of town bus would be coming.
Just as Martin was comfortably asleep again, as crying had worn him out, blissfully unaware of the world, the Joker had completed his quest for another can of gas to hook up to his flower pin and was making his way back to where Martin slept on the couch.
“Damn gas can….” The Joker adjusted the can once again in its inner pocket hiding place. “Ha HA! ….gas can. Ha! Oh! That’s funny.” The Joker was cracked up, ho ho-ing and ha ha-ing all the way into the entry room where the both of them landed, one of them quite literally, the night prior.
“Zzzzzzzz…..” Martin was snoring.
“Oh, how cute!” The Joker said in a fake gushy tone when he heard Martin’s chainsaw-like snorage. ‘NOT!” He directed his yell right into Martin’s ear. He slept away. The Joker, being who he was, wanted to wake Martin up spectacularly and with gusto! He wanted Martin to remember this moment so he wouldn’t fall asleep and fail lookout duty or something horrid like that. Egads! No, that wouldn’t do. The Joker screwed his face up in a fake horrified expression, and laughed at himself. He was ridiculous, he knew it, and he found that hilarious. A lot was hilarious today. That was it! He knew what he wanted to do, and he hoped that Martin would cooperate. He probably wouldn’t have a choice in the matter. Poor Martin… ha ha!
“Oooohhhhh Mar-tin!” The Joker half sang at the boy, as he started poking his shoulders, then what was exposed of his ribs, and just as he reached the bottom of those he heard a giggle. “Ooh!” The Joker was delighted. “Ticklish, Martin?” He continued poking, lower and lower, over Martin’s sides and onto his hips, which caused Martin to violently convulse, screw his eyes shut and laugh in quite a different way than the Joker heard from the laughing gas.
“BAHAHAHA!” Martin sat bolt upright and was halfway off the couch as quick as a ninja. “WHY! WHY DID YOU DO THAT!” Martin was suddenly and extremely high strung. He felt very strange, and he was demanding of the Joker an answer pertaining to why he did.
“If you’re going to live here you’re going to have to learn the rules. I guess you don’t really have a choice since you’re really not here because it was your idea.”
“What?” Martin remembered only part of that night. His memory was half shot from fighting the gas so hard the first time.
“Oh, nothing.” The Joker played innocent. He was bad at it, but Martin wasn’t really paying attention. He was still trying to process his awakening. “Just make sure you don’t fall asleep when you should be awake.” The end of the sentence sounded like the Joker was trying to sound threatening. Near the end of it though, he remembered Martin’s reaction to the hip poking and let out a small but perceivable laugh. After all, he didn’t want to be TOO hard on the kid, as his master plan was to gain his trust and loyalty enough to brainwash the heck out of him so he’d be a mindless Joker Drone til the end of his days. …..End of his days. Ha! Ha-ha! Wait, end of whose days? It didn’t matter, he figured. No Martin, no Joker Drone. No Joker, no…… Joker, for the Joker Drone to exist, so Martin would just be a Drone.
“Well I guess that’s figured out.” The Joker said aloud after having his philosophical moment. Martin looked at him strangely, but thought better of commenting. He didn’t know what to make of what The Joker did to him, but he wasn’t sure he wanted it to happen again quite yet. In the next moment, the Joker realized he was starving. He had only had coffee that morning when he would normally have had a couple eggs or a waffle. He looked at Martin thoughtfully, possibly still in a philosophical mood, but you could never really tell with him.
“So!” He addressed Martin abruptly, which caused the boy to jump slightly. “I’m quite hungry. Hun…. Gahry…. Like the country! But not the country.” There was a pause, after which the Joker practically screamed, “I NEED FOOD!”
Martin fell back into his chair. The Joker was scaring him, and he’d already had plenty enough of that to last a lifetime. Luckily, all that came of the outburst was the Joker sitting on a chair, straddling it backwards and resting his elbows on the back of it, with his chin in his hands. The Joker sighed, and Martin found himself with a twinge of guilt in his chest.
Just as Martin thought he’d stand up and see if he could help this weird perverted son of a gun out, the Joker burst upwards out of his chair, with a crazed look in his eyes.
“I’ve got an idea!” The Joker shouted, with an emphatic point of his finger into the sky. “We can go to my favorite breakfast nook, where they have any combination of anything you could ever want for breakfast!” The Joker was drooling by now, and he could see Martin had a hungry look about him too. “WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR… LET’S GOOOO!” The Joker shouted.
