"Batman and Robin Have an Altercation" is a short story written by Stephen King and originally published in the September 2012 issue of Harper's Magazine.
The story is also included in the short story collection The Bazaar of Bad Dreams.
Plot[]
Sanderson, a middle-aged man, visits his father, who is suffering from Alzheimer's, twice a week. One of those times they visit Applebee's for their weekly lunch, where for three years they have ordered the same food and had the same conversation. His fathers mental health keeps declining (he even mistakes Sanderson for his late brother, who died years ago in an accident). The only memory that he can recall is how, during Halloween, they once dressed up as Batman and Robin.
When driving his father home, Sanderson gets into a car accident when a pick-up truck swerves into his lane without signaling. The driver of the truck turns out to be an ex-convict with no licence, who has no intention of swapping insurance information with Sanderson. When Sanderson insists, the man looses it and violently starts beating Sanderson to a pulp, until Sanderson's father, in a rare moment of lucidity, intervenes and kills the driver with a steak knife he stole from Applebee's.