Midnight Mayhem

Screenplay draft

In the rain-slick alleys behind the Golden Arches on 47th, Harley Quinn swung her mallet through a rack of drive-thru headsets, sending ketchup packets skittering across the asphalt like wet red coins. The night shift had already locked the grills, leaving only the flicker of the marquee and the stink of old fryer oil. She had come for the safe in the manager’s office, the one rumored to hold the week’s take plus a stack of untraceable gift cards, but the clown in the red jumpsuit was already there, twisting balloon dachshunds under the sodium lights.

Ronald watched her approach without hurry, his gloved fingers tying off a final knot. The dachshund floated between them, ears twitching in the humid breeze. Harley’s first swing missed; the mallet cracked the order speaker instead, and a burst of static mixed with the clown’s soft laugh. Ronald answered by snapping the balloon string. The dachshund’s rubber skin split. What came out had teeth.

They traded blows between the dumpsters and the idling fryers. Harley’s crowbar rang against Ronald’s steel spatula; ketchup packets burst across her jacket, the smell thick and metallic. Every time she shattered one of his creations, the fragments twitched and reassembled into smaller, meaner shapes—poodles with needle teeth, giraffes whose long necks ended in hooked valves. The Princess’s own backup arrived late: two hyenas she had liberated from a shuttered roadside zoo, collars still bearing faded “Adopt Me” tags. They circled the spill of Filet-O-Fish wrappers Ronald had dumped as distraction, nostrils flaring at the unfamiliar salt and tartar sauce.

Midnight traffic thinned. A lone Uber driver slowed, filmed thirty seconds on his phone, then gunned away when a feral balloon poodle landed on his hood and chewed through the wiper blade. Harley drove Ronald back toward the play-place tunnel, now dark and full of folded cardboard crowns. He countered by releasing the last balloon—a life-size Ronald figure whose feet never quite touched the ground. It drifted into the hyenas’ path. The animals tore it open and found the scent of fish inside the latex. Their eyes changed.

By 1:17 the parking lot belonged to the animals. The poodles herded the hyenas into tighter circles while Ronald climbed the roof of the drive-thru booth, spatula dripping grease. Harley fought from the bed of a stranded delivery truck, swinging the crowbar one-handed while she fished fresh mallet cartridges from her coat. Every time a hyena snapped at a Filet-O-Fish wrapper, another balloon animal appeared, smaller and faster, until the air looked like a child’s birthday party filmed through shattered glass. One hyena swallowed a whole wrapper and began to cough blood-tinted foam; its packmate turned on it without hesitation.

Ronald dropped from the roof with a bundle of unused straws sharpened at both ends. Harley met him on the yellow line that once guided cars to the window. The fight narrowed to inches—mallet against spatula, then bare fists, then teeth. A pack of balloon poodles swarmed her legs; she crushed three before the fourth punctured her boot and kept blowing itself larger inside the leather. Ronald’s makeup had run into pink rivulets along his jaw. He looked almost sorry when he offered her the last intact balloon animal, a small red bird whose wings beat once before it flew straight at her throat.

She caught it, squeezed until the latex screamed, and flung the shredded wings into Ronald’s face. The hyenas, bellies full of Filet-O-Fish and latex, turned at the sound. They did not distinguish between the two clowns anymore. Ronald went down first, red suit vanishing under spotted fur. Harley backed against the truck, mallet raised, and watched the animals finish what the street brawl had started. When the last hyena lifted its head, its muzzle was streaked with both ketchup and greasepaint. It padded away toward the open drive-thru, pausing only to nose a single unbroken balloon dachshund that still floated, ears twitching, above the empty lot.