One Bad Day...

The deck shuffled and made soft FNAP! Sounds as he set them out in his patterns again; A straight flush, a full house, jokers to the sides, and finally an ace of spades royal flush. Twilight jotted this down on her notes, repeating behavioral patterns. He meanwhile kept looking right at her, eyes just focused and equally intent on her as she was him. "Hello Jack, how have the years been to you? He chuckled softly and his scarred lips spread wide.

"Oh you know; making an example out of a forty year old pedophile my first day in the pen, staying quiet and being nice to the guards afterwards to earn their trust, how have you been? Getting a load of degrees and succeeding while others plunge into student debts and failure again and again by the biggest scam since snake oil?" He laughed that haunting choking laughter as he shuffled his cards again, then threw them. The guards raised their guns but Twilight only stopped them. They had done nothing but be a nuisance.

"Jack...tell me about yourself." She started, only for him to chuckle as he picked the deck up.

"Why Twily I'm flattered, I didn't know you cared that way." He said as he held his name sake jokers in his hand, Twilight scoffed and groaned at his remark.

"No Jack, tell me your first memory. Like was your father inattentive? Did you have frequent problems with your social development?" He'd known this was coming, he knew just what Twilight most likely use as a springboard to see if she could get to him. Much like the one who, "inspired" him, he was more than ready.

"My dad was cruel, I never told anyone about this for so long because...well I was afraid he'd beat me with a metal spoon if I did. Twilight noticed how his attitude changed drastically when he started his recollection, he dropped the jester like facade and his lips; even his scars, seemed to droop into a frown. "Not to mention all those times he told children in foster care in america are miserable and have no future because couples in america don't want them. They want trendy African orphans because celebrities are doing that, or they want perfect babies that are practically farm raised like puppies...Sometimes I wonder if he was right."

"That day, The day you....did what got you sent here, You showed everyone a piece from Mad magazine that was a deconstruction of the speeches often held at graduations, did you then or even know believe in what you cited?" She asked as she began "dealing" her a hand.

"every word of it, the older generations feel only contempt for the younger one, they refuse to accept any responsibility for how fucked up everything ended up under their watch, and I only wanted to show that their words can't hurt me.

"by carving smiles into our faces while our parents watched from minor cyanide poisoning?" Twilight said with grimace as she looked at the hand she had been dealt.

"I raise." He said placing a few apple seeds and peach pits on the table in lieu of poker chips.

"Answer the question Jack." She said as she looked at the first few cards he'd dealt her, A pair of black aces; the queen of hearts, and the eight of hearts and clubs, the dead man's hand.

"I had my reasons for what I do, there is no set method to one's madness, all you need to understand is." He was cut off by the egg timer going off, their session as ended. "Oh Darn, sorry Clarice, but it seems your session with me has ended...too bad, so sad...Ah I remember the day sweet Sonata said that, course you hadn't joined our ranks yet at that time...my how time flies. Twilight laid her hand of cards on the table a dead man's hand. "A royal flush." He says with a smug smirk, and an ear to ear grin.

Twilight left and took most of the papers she used with her, they checked her bag to make sure she wasn't taking any messages to the outside. And the guards sat at their positions opposite sides of the door. Jack sat and watched them as he shuffled his deck again, they took sips of coffee, just as they had been doing for the past several months. In those months, they'd had peach and apple seeds added after grinding them up into dust, and a quick stir with a matchstick stolen from the nurses. The seeds of apples and peaches contain trace amounts of cyanide, and after all these months, the fifteen or so milligrams of cyanide had added up to three hundred.

"We're watching you Moore, we used to be the armed uniformed cops that watched your principal at your old school."

"And now your babysitting an overgrown man child that's too big a fan of the jolly Joker. HA HA HA HA HA HA!" He let out his signature laugh, like a dark and twisted amalgamation of every Joker laugh under the sun and they both shook their heads in shame, before their lips pursed back into grins of their own and the color began to flush from their faces. It began to get harder to breathe for them and eventually they could feel the pulse in their veins slow and it got cold and dark, leaving only those big grins on their faces. "I'm sorry both of you had to go this way, but if you gotta go, go out smiling." He said as he fished for their keys, their guns and even their uniforms. "Look out Canterlot City, the high school is having a reunion!"