Oh what fun it is to ride on a one horse open sleigh, hey!

Say what now?

And then you drive that sleigh over the mountain into an orphanage with bombs ablazing and children crying and the sweet sound of laughter in the air.

Um... okay then.

I should be paid to write children’s novels.

You’re like a more demented version of Dr. Seuss.

Pfft, as if. He isn’t even a doctor. While I am.

When did you become a doctor?

Ever since I got this doctor’s coat and started performing open heart surgery.

The name tag on that coat isn’t even yours. And it’s covered in blood...

Hey, you know how much dry cleaning costs nowadays? Besides, blood stains makes it more authentic.

Fine, whatever you like. Just don’t be bringing organs over to my place.

Okay then, spoil sport. Also, do you have any mayonnaise and pickle jars currently not in use?

Um... yes.

Excellent! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some harvesting, collecting and organizing to do! To the kitchen!

I don’t want to see any stains on my carpet!

“Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey,” the Joker whispered in Luna’s ear. Her eyes shot open instantly, the darkness of the void she descended into earlier her only sight.

“Oh wait; you ponies are vegetarians or vegans, aren’t you?” he chuckled, his voice unseen in the dreaded blackness. “I’ll just have to make a fried asparagus salad with roasted goat cheese instead. That sound good, Lunypoo?”

“Wh-where am I?” Luna asked, the claustrophobia of her new surroundings causing her breathing to fluxuate.

“What, did the past five minutes just leave your mind?” the Joker said, the click-clack of her heels against a hard surface echoing around the neverending room. “Memory problems are a nasty thing to have. But, seeing as how you’re over a thousand years old, it’s no surprise. Alzheimer’s gets the best of us eventually.”

Luna gulped, though the body movement meant nothing, seeing how she had no body she could control at the moment. Not even a twist of the neck to stare at the approaching figure behind her. “P-please... let me g-go. Please...”

“Let you go?” Luna felt a gloved hand grasp her shoulder, a feeling in her body at last. She was suddenly twisted around, the grinning whiter than white face of the Joker filling her field of vision. “But you wanted to be here in the first place. And it’d be rude for a guest to just run out after just arriving, isn’t it?”

“I’m not a guest!” Luna shouted in his face, trying with all her might to get more of her body working. “I’m not here to have fun or talk or anything! I just want to go back home!”

“But my dear Luna,” he began, snapping his fingers, “you are home.”

The blackness began to melt away, like ink swirling down a drain. In its place an explosion of color exploded on the once dark canvas. Playing cards with creepily grinning visages that resembled a particular clown. Spades and heart and clubs and diamonds rained from the sky in a distorting storm of a black and red nightmare. The jacks stabbed the kings, the queens ate the jacks, and the kings decapitated the both of them in such a bloody infusion of unrealism and gore that Luna couldn’t keep her eyes away.

“Welcome to the asylum!” the Joker shouted, holding his hands out wide in the utter chaos of his dreams, his mind, his very soul and existence. “A feast of the damned! A home for the un-bland! And a derelict boardinghouse of the the dementedly screwed in the head band!”

Reaching into his coat pocket, the Joker withdrew a napkin and wiped his forehead. “Man, rhyming takes a lot outta you.” What could only be described as a demonic baby midget dressed in drag with teeth covered in blood floated to the ground on wings of an angel and presented the Joker with a glass of water.

“Thanks, hon,” the Joker said, accepting the glass and draining it in one gulp. Throwing it over his shoulder to exploded in a shower of glass that quickly tore the midget to shreds, the Joker slapped his hands together and rubbed them in eager glee. “Now, back to the fun with you, Lunypoo.”

“What type of hell is this place?” Luna asked, the lights and sickening sights more psychotic than any nightmare she has ever witnessed before. She had no control or influence over this place. Anything she could attempt would be like trying to build a sandcastle in the middle of a dust storm. There was no support or anything resembling balance to build any type of control over. She was defenseless here.

And she already knew the Joker was going to take advantage of that fact at every opportunity.

The Joker waggled a finger in front of her face. “Ah, ah, ah, no type of language like that here. Pottymouths are not tolerated, Luny, not at all. Now you’re gonna have to be punished.”

“What punishment can be worse than this torture?” Luna declared, the dazzling colors and mad sights collectively throwing her sanity out of the window of a skyscraper. Her mind couldn’t take much more of this insanity without breaking down. It was like madness itself had invaded her thoughts as was ripping her brain to shreds.

The Joker’s smile just widened further. “Now you’re just tempting me further. Know just the right way to turn me on, don’t you? Naughty girl.”

He quickly turned away from her, the randomness and chaotic nature of his dreams parting like a river before him. Luna felt herself move behind him without her own consent. The terrifying playing cards and midgets of horrifyingly disgusting nature just stared and laughed at her, their teeth glistening in saliva as they hungered for her flesh.

“Where are you taking me?” Luna shouted, trying to be heard over the laughter of the grisly figures around her. “Stop! I command you to stop now!”

“Oh, so before you were begging, and now you’re ordering?” The Joker tutted, shaking his head sadly as he continued on his way, deeper into his own mind. “You obviously don’t know the true meaning of good foreplay. You got the orders switched, deary. No wonder you can’t get a guy.”

“What are you talking about?” Luna asked, the bright colors now shifting to darker shades as the hue intensity dropped dramatically. The creatures around them grew more frightening and twisted, growing claws and jaws ready to rip her apart.

The Joker abruptly turned back to her, twirling a finger around his temple in a coo coo motion. “Sorry deary, have to talk louder! The madness is making me deaf! Or is it the other way around? Ha ha ha ha ha!”

“No sense... you’re not making any sense!”

“And that’s the answer to your question!” the Joker said, clapping his hands together and giving her a round of applause. His nightmare minions did the same, the sounds of clapping hands mixing with their never ending laughter. “Get the girl a prize, because she just figured it out!”

Luna screwed her eyes shut, overwhelmed with all the noise and sights and everything else in this living hell she was going through. “I d-don’t... understand. I don’t...”

“And you never do want to,” the Joker cut in, walking over to her and leaning down so they were face to face. “Because when you understand, when things make sense, when everything aligns perfectly in a proper order is the point that you finally go crazy. Just like me.”

“I’m... not crazy.”

“Oh really? Then who’s that over there?” he asked, pointing a skeletal finger over Luna’s shoulder. The princess was promptly turned around, facing what was behind her to see... herself?

Well, not exactly. It was only Nightmare Moon, the corrupted version of what she had been in the past. Her darker alter ego was still, not even her mane flapping in a nonexistent breeze like it usually did.

Luna could feel the Joker’s hot breath appear on the side of her cheek as his fingers wrapped around her shoulder. “This is you when things finally made sense. When you finally had an understanding of the world you lived in.”

“Y-you’re wrong... w-wrong,” Luna muttered, shaking her head repeatedly as the living statue of herself just stood frozen still as usual. “I was corrupted by my envy. That’s it.”

“Ah, but where did that envy come from?” the Joker asked, squeezing her shoulders tighter. “Was it from the fact you’ll never be as popular as your sister? Never her equal? Always a second rate princess that you quickly forget the name of?”

“I...”

“So, what happened when you finally realized that, Luny? Did you act rational and try to talk to your sister?” The Nightmare Moon statue slowly began to melt, turning to a black pool that sunk in the floor. “Or did you break down and go slightly... insane?”

“I’m not like you,” Luna hissed, trying all her might to escape his grasp. “I’ll never be a sick sociopath like you.”

“Oh really? Then what do you call a jealous sister that causes a master civil war, hostile political coup and trying to make the night eternal? An adolescent phase?”

“Just shut up, you sick freak!” Luna yelled, trying to escape his words, escape his mind, escape her own bitter reality from what he said.

Luna felt her throat constrict as his fingers began the process of crushing her windpipe. “Now, you should know I just hate name calling.”

Her vision blurred and shifted to greater levels of darkness clouded her mind. How could her oxygen be cut off in a dream? Really, how was anything the Joker doing possible? She was supposed to be in control. Yet here she was, being choked to death in the dream of a psychotic clown.

Of course, it wouldn’t end that simply.

His fingers loosened their strangling grip, give her time to breath for a few seconds. “You know, I’ve been completely selfish here. I know so much about yourself, yet you know nothing of me.”

He turned her around so his terrifying tooth filled smile was the only thing she saw. “Would you care to take a trip down memory lane?”

“N–”

“Well, too bad!” the Joker laughed, shoving his pointed toe shoe in her face and pushing with his leg forward. Luna fell with a loud thud on the ground, her back and neck in pain from the hard collision. Struggling to get up, she felt a hard object slam against her leg, crippling her to fall back down again.

Luna’s first cry of pain was muffled by another impact of the object along her jawline. Whipping her head back from the force of the hit, Luna could barely make her mouth open to protest a scream.

She was in a warehouse of sort sort, boxes and brick walls surrounding her. And there was the Joker, laughing maliciously, his previous outfit of his usual suit replaced with a purple jumpsuit along with a crowbar he raised above his head, already covered in her blood. But that smile stilled stayed the same, perverted in pleasure at her agony as he hit her again and again and again.

“Oh come now, Lunypoo, the Boy Blunder didn’t cry nearly as bad as you are now!” he chortled, changing his barrage of strikes to a front and back hand style. “Why, it took him at least two minutes before he started begging for death. And only three before he pissed his pants! Though I always thought of them as speedos myself. Maybe trunks can work too. Heck, why not play with the trope of calling them underwear instead? Bahahahahahahahaha!”

Luna whimpered, too weak to even cough out the blood that had collected in her mouth. Her entire body was beaten and bruised, and for some odd reason she could hear the voice of a child crying for his mother.

“You like this particular memory of mine, Luny?” the Joker asked, flicking the crowbar to splatter droplets of her blood all over herself. Leaning down, he lifted up her head with the crowbar’s end. “Real nice time the kid and I had. It was a short play date, but boy did we ever make good use of the time. Just a shame the big boy couldn’t be here to play. But at least I left him a parting gift to enjoy one last time. Hehehehe.”

The Joker got back up, twirling the crowbar in his hand like a cane as he skipped around her prone body. “Oh, what a marvelous day that was. Nothing like taking out generic sidekick number twelve and causing the guy dressed as a rodent to take the blame for it all! Oh the humanity, the disregard for life, the sublime feel of pissing off the fans in the most spectacular way possible!”

The Joker abruptly stopped, turning back to her with a smile that bordered on inhuman. But at this point, the Joker already gave up his humanity long ago. “All of what you just went through could have been averted, you know. It was left to the decision 50-cent hotline vote. Whether a little boy would be killed or not was left to be decided upon by the fanboys! And you know what happened?”

The Joker couldn’t help but giggle. Giggle like a little schoolgirl. Giggle until his sides were in a tizzle. “They voted for him to... die! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! The kid was so unpopular, everyone wanted him dead, dead, dead!” the Joker cackled, returning back in front of Luna so she could get a good look on the youthful glee on his face. “Over ten thousand votes were cast, with the final vote being 5,343 votes for the birdie to die over the 5,271 for him to live.”

The Joker was nearly on the breakdown of tears he was laughing so hard. He crawled across the floor to Luna, holding her head in his hands as spittle flew from his mouth from the repressed giggles. “So by that account, 72 people were the deciding factor for his death. Isn’t that something? Isn’t it? Because of those 72 people, I got to kill him! Me, and only me! I finally got to stick it to the Bat right where it hurts, and all it took was 72 people to make it happen.” The Joker pushed in her cheeks so that her lips were scrunched up together in an adorable manner, if you didn’t stare too close at the blood or the black eye on her face. “Isn’t that just grand?”

Luna spit on his face, the spotless white skin now freckled with blood. Giving her a rare frown, her got up and retrieved his napkin to wipe the blood away. “Tisk, tisk, tisk. Spitting now? Bird Boy had much better manners than you, my dear. Such a shame, since I thought we were making such wonderful progress here.”

“Go to... h-hell... you b-bastard,” Luna muttered weakly.

“And there we go with that potty mouth again,” the Joker sighed, a look of utter disappointment on his clownish features. “I’m gonna have to teach you another lesson again, aren’t I?”

“N-no...”

“Yes indeedy!” the Joker replied with gusto, throwing the crowbar over his shoulder. Now the settings around them changed to what appeared to be a condo or apartment building of some sort. A door was the first thing she noted, just as her hoof reached out to open it against her will. She no longer had the injuries inflicted to her from before, though she still remembered the horrible pain.

The door opened, revealing the Joker, dressed in his Florida vacation best of a flora shirt and shorts. Along with a pointed gun right at her. Then, without a word, narrative caption or even sound effect, he shot her through the midsection.

As Luna fell to the ground, screaming as her spine was destroyed from the bulletwound, the Joker leaned down to her, the grin of his just as wide as ever. “The path down memory lane can be a long one, filled with trials and tribulations. Well, not for me particularly, since I can’t even remember my past well enough to know the face of the pedestrian I ran over while going out of my way to grab a burger. But you get the point.”

The Joker lifted up a glass of brandy, as if he was toasting with her as she flailed desperately with her front legs on the ground from the pain, her back legs paralyzed from her spine injury. “And you’re going to help me prove a point. So here’s to crime! Bahahahahahahahaha!”