I used to talk to the drawing she gave me. I shouldn’t have

She knew how obsessed I was with Batman. Comics, movies, posters. My whole room already looked like a shrine. So when she said she had a parting gift for me before leaving the city, I knew it had to be special.

She drew it herself.

The Batman Who Laughs.

You could see the hours in it. The heavy black strokes, the careful scratches of the pen, jagged teeth stretched into a grin too wide for a human face, eyes hidden behind a twisted metal visor. It wasn’t just a drawing. It had weight. Personality. Presence.

It was her art and so I framed it. Hung it up right across my bed.

After she left, the picture became the only familiar face I saw every day. I started talking to it as a joke.”Guard the room while I’m gone,” I’d say while leaving for work. Little rituals lonely people create without realizing.One night, a few months later, I was watching The Killing Joke. Lights off. Curtains drawn. Just me and my laptop whose EMI I was still paying.There’s a scene where the Joker laughs. Long, sharp, completely unhinged. I remember pausing it and replaying it because it sounded so perfectly insane.That’s when I noticed it.The laugh didn’t feel like it was only coming from the speakers.It felt… closer.

I the dim light, the drawing looked different. The grin seemed deeper than usual. The eyes under the metal visor felt darker, heavier. Almost wet. I told myself I was being ridiculous. But after that night, I couldn’t un-feel it.Sometimes, when the room went silent, I thought I heard tiny sounds near the wall. A soft scratch. A gentle tap.Once, something that almost sounded like breathing.The frame began tilting on its own.I’d straighten it before sleeping. By morning, it would be crooked again.I blamed the nail. The wall. The humidity.Anything but the obvious thought trying to crawl into my head.

Soon the dreams began. I was trapped in a small dark space, pressed against glass, watching someone who looked exactly like me move around freely in my room.I would scream and bang on the glass. And no sound would ever come out. Then one night, at 3:17 a.m. I heard it again.That same laugh from the movie.Rapsy. Chilling. Close.I turned on the light so fast my head hurt. The picture was perfectly straight.But the glass had fingerprints on the inside. Pressing outward. I don’t remember falling asleep.I only remember the feeling of being pulled. Slowly, gently. Like sinking into cold water.

Now I spend my days standing in a narrow, silent darkness. Behind glass. Watching someone who looks like me live my life.He answers my phone. Uses my voice. Laughs my laugh.Sometimes he stands right in front of me and studies my face the way I used to study the drawing. With that same terrible grin.Yesterday there was a knock on the door. He opened it. She was there, visiting after all this time. She looked at him carefully and smiled.”You seem different,” she said. “Lighter. Happier.”He tilted his head and let out a small, familiar laugh.”Your gift really changed me,” he replied.