All things considered, it was a beautiful morning.
At the Loeb & Sale Funeral Home, just outside Gotham Heights, things would appear calm and peaceful to the casual onlooker. It was certainly a world away from the violence and horror that ran rampant through the less affluent areas of the city on the previous night. But amidst the decorum and sombre ceremony of the occasion, the viewing room of the funeral home was filled with unthinkable levels of pain, sorrow, and heartbreak.
The funeral directors had never seen the room so full. Morbidly, in more ways than one. The audience of mourners – a grim word to describe them, but this was a kind of show, wasn’t it? – were crammed in tightly, to the point where there was standing room only. And at the other side of the room, two parallel rows of small, child-sized caskets.
Closed caskets, of course.
They had to be, after what The Joker had done to them. He’d commandeered their school bus, kidnapped them, terrorised them. And finally, the ghoul that plagued Gotham City had killed them all with his deadly laughing gas, and left that monstrous, inhuman grin seared permanently into their faces. The restorative artists working at the funeral home could do nothing to get rid of those nightmarish, disfiguring smiles, and so closed caskets were the only merciful choice, each one accompanied with a photo of the lost child inside, so the parents could remember them for what they had been in life, rather than what The Joker had turned them into.
Parents, siblings, teachers, schoolmates, family friends, they all listened intently to the minister’s words of comfort. Some listened in pained silence, while others sobbed openly. But throughout it all, there was a sense of quiet dignity, a valiant struggle to piece together the shattered fragments of their lives, for everyone in attendance to unite in their grief, and find a way to somehow move forward.
“Their lives…were far, far too short,” the minister said, “But we must all be thankful for the time their lights graced our lives. We must find solace in the fact that their souls are now at peace, and their souls now await eternal life in a world safe from the evil and corruption of our own…”
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
The minister’s words caught in his throat, as if The Devil himself had appeared to challenge his doctrine. An eerie silence filled the room. They all knew that laugh. It was the laugh of the monster who had cruelly snatched away the lives of their cherished, beloved children. And he was here. Or was he? They heard the laugh, but there was no sign of The Joker himself.
“Tonight…
I’m gonna have myseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelf, a real gooooooooood time,
I feel aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-HA-HA-hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive!”
With terror gripping them all now, the assembled mourners began frantically looking around, trying to figure out where The Joker’s singing was coming from.
Then, to their utter horror, they realised where…
“So don’t….stop….me nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow!”
The coffins…
“Don’t…stop…me cause I’m having a good time, HAVING A GOOD TIME!”
It was coming from the coffins!
And just as the tune of the song kicked in, one of them sprung upwards, launching the dead child it contained into the air.
“I’m a shooting star leaping through the skyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy,
Like a tiger, defying the laws of…gravityyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!”
The child landed with a sickening crunch on top of one of the other caskets, before sliding limply to the floor. A collective gasp filled the viewing room, followed by screams.
But this was only the beginning.
See, The Joker hadn’t been happy just killing the kids. Killing them was all he really needed to, all he needed to advance this little mission he was on. But this? This was fun. He’d set aside a little free time on rainy days long past to create a batch of juiced-up coffins for such an occasion. And he’d arranged for all the funeral home’s coffins for this particular viewing to be replaced with his own, Joker-brand coffins. He needed a patent for these babies. “Jack-In-The-Box Caskets” was a catchy name, and appropriate too. As all these caskets were set to timers – all set slightly differently, of course – and when each counter reached zero, the kiddies inside would be flipped out like pancakes!
Another casket flipped open, and the child inside flew up into the air, before smacking against the ceiling, and landing facedown on the ground with a wet "PHAP".
“I’m burning through the skyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, yeah!
Two hundred degrees,
That’s why they call me Mister Farenheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit!
I’m travelling at the speed of liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight,
I wanna make a supersonic man out of yooooooooooou!”
A screaming middle-aged woman staggered out of seat, running towards the fallen body and cradling it in her arms. Others ran towards her, while many ran for the doors, and still more sat frozen in blind horror in their seats.
“Don’t…stop…me…NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!
I’m having such a good time,
I’m having a baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall!”
Another child launched out of her coffin, but this one flew forward instead of upward, landing in the middle row, right in her father’s lap. The smell of formaldehyde and death caught in his throat like poison. And the face! Lips pulled back into an impossible grin, greying gums exposed, and yellowing eyes bulging out of their sockets. The father couldn’t help but instantly vomit all over his daughter’s corpse.
“Yeah I’m a rocket-ship on my way to Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaars,
On a collision course…”
The whole thing was like a psychotic display of sickening slapstick. One little boy was fired right out of the stained-glass window, landing in the shrubs outside. Another got caught in the modest chandelier that hung overhead, and stayed dangling there, like a cackling trapeze artist in a circus of the macabre. Wailing schoolkids were being trampled to death by their teachers in the frenzied rush to escape from this Hell on earth. It was like a stampede, with the frightened witnesses of this tableau of horror running in both directions. Some parents had by this stage rushed towards the caskets of their precious children, the caskets that were still closed. They tried holding the lids shut, in a vain attempt to preserve the sanctity of their child’s passing. One mother was unwise enough to actually lie on top of her daughter’s casket. And when it launched open, mother and daughter were both fired into the air together. Dead, decaying children were strewn all over the place!
“Don’t stop me, don’t stop me, don’t stop me,
HEY HEY HEY!
Don’t stop me, don’t stop me,
OOOH-OOOH-OOOOOOOOOOOH!
I LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIKE IT!”
Bodies flew through the air like confetti, as one by one, the dead were all tossed spitefully back into the world of the living, forever scarring their loved ones. There would be no peace for any of them, ever again. What had been a sorrowful, but respectful occasion, a chance for these people to make sense of this world-shaking loss, come to terms with it and say goodbye, had turned into a surreal, nightmarish farce, a chaotic, tangled mass of bodies (living and dead) utterly dominated by the overriding power of madness.
“La-Da-Da-Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
Da-Da-Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
Ha-Da-Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-HA! HA! HA!
HA! Da-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
And somewhere, The Joker was laughing his ass off…
