"Have you ever considered," the Joker continues in a tone of immense scholarly concern, "that you're processed." A sharp finger with chipped green nail polish jabs Ronald in the chest. "Meat?" The hand turns, rubs the garish red and yellow fabric between its fingers in a form of brief sartorial horror, then releases.

It's an interesting point, if perhaps Ronald won't find it particularly comforting at this precise moment.

McDonald's all is about falseness, really. The food is fake, the bonhomie of the staff is fake, the pictures of the burgers displayed above the counter are never truly anything like the slightly flattened reality of what's in your processed polystyrene clamshell. The only thing that's real is the advertising, and anyone who's ever worked in advertising will tell you that it's a very flimsy sort of reality indeed.

Like generic fast food burgers everywhere, Ronald is a processed sandwich: built up from layers of flimflam, the shadows of food wrapped in the shroud of marketing. And even these words really make the thing sound a whole lot more glamorous than it is. But the Joker (who is standing right there, if you look, his grin a gash of carmine in his bleached face, his green eyes oddly focussed) is a prime cut of beef on stoneground sesame home-baked. Or possibly half-baked.

Either way, he's the real McCoy, no fancy words or clever photography required. If he was ever a tissue paper man, built of layers, those layers have long ago become more real than the reality they conceal. The Joker's the real serious big onion.

"Don't answer," the Joker admonishes, not that Ronald has actually tried, but that finger is wagging in his face now. "You'd just disappoint me. Let's get on with the game. Come on, giggles. How's it played?"

"You're not supposed to be here," says Ronald, returning to the stock defence of the terminally unlucky. Then, almost immediately, he says "Ow!" because the Joker has tapped him hard on the side of his head, three times, long finger beating a vicious, rapid tattoo.

"Testing, testing…jeez, is this thing on? Hello, hello HEL-lo, are you getting this on tape, Mike?" The madman's cheery voice abruptly drops half an octave. "I'm not here to debate the finer points of trespass law with you, chum, I'm here to play the game and you're the guy with the knowledge, right?"

Ronald nods, dumbly, red curls bobbing.

"Right. So don't disgrace the clown white. I mean really," says the Joker, swinging around on his heels with a moue of pique, "if you're not going to be serious about this, what can you be serious about?" He spreads his arms, indicating his own custom purple pinstripe, orange waistcoat, green tie. A negligent flick of fingers takes in Ronald's nylon splendour into the bargain, and then he laughs - tips back his head and the sound bubbles right up out of him like water bubbling out of the ground.

Oddly Ronald finds time in his unease for a pang of jealousy at that moment. The Joker's laughter is so goddamn infectiously jolly and utterly uninhibited. He laughs like a small child, caught in the throes of his hilarity, doubling at the waist. As we grow, we learn to control our laughter. The Joker hasn't learnt to control it one whit. Used to dealing with the laughter of children, Ronald begins to relax.

He relaxes all the way up to the moment when the Joker rises from his creased-up state, grinning like a death's head, and the muzzle of the gun looks oh-so-large in his hand.

"Hnh-hnh-hnh," sniggers the Joker, tilting back so he can look down the length of his sharp nose at Ronald. The black hole of the gun barrel fills the world. The big black zero that marks the end. Zip. Nada. Nothing. Come in Ronald's Numbers, your time is up.

"Hey," says Ronald, very softly, afraid. "Hey. Hey."

"Hay," says the Joker gently, "is for horses. Oh, you. You donkey."

He shoves the gun casually into Ronald's chin, bringing a smear of the white makeup onto the dark gunmetal, then whirls and clips away on his Cuban heels.

"So ante up, buttercup. Don't break my heart."

And the remaining lights go out: in the kitchen, in the backlit menus above the counter, only the glow of the emergency exit signs remaining, lurid and green and casting the figures of the two clowns into a sickly acidic glimmer in the dark.

The Joker's eyes seem to reflect, like a cat's.

"Two is two and one is one," he prompts, in a charming sing-song baritone, perching on the part of the service counter that flips up and during opening hours allows the kitchen staff in and out. The flickering smear of clown white on the gun's surface draws Ronald's eye, green-white like ultraviolet in a club. The Joker's waving the piece around like it's a kiddie flag. A soft mechanical click sounds as loud as a church bell.

Ronald's mind takes that click and uses it as a focus for his terror. Suddenly he is cripplingly frightened. An idiotic chorus of no-safety-no-safety-nosafety starts up, jangling across from his animal hindbrain to what remains of his cognitive forebrain that hasn't been poisoned by years of theatrical slap.

"Mommy," whines the Joker's voice, "why's the clown not funny, Mommy?"

He can't speak.

"Mommy."

He can't. The words. He can't. The smear of paint, flickering like strobe -

"Chrissakes, Mommy, and we paid twenty bucks for this crap, Mommy?"

Ronald's gut jumps up his throat and tries to throttle his vocal chords. Bile floods his mouth. Saliva bursts.

"Two is two and one is one and this is how the game's begun -" he blurts, a thin silvery thread of drool falling from his lips.

The Joker groans, not in dread, but in a horrible sort of ecstasy.

" - my name is Ronald and we'regonnahavesomefun -"

"Oh, are we," purrs the Joker, sprawling on the counter, the hand holding the gun dangling across his lap. "Are we ever."