Post by seonedevinian on Aug 9, 2005 4:05:00 GMT -5
hi, i'm new to sharing my stuff with a big group of people. i hope this is okay. i'm strangely nervous...
anyway, this isn't going to be very long, and i think it's all going to be Dr. Crane, as observed by a helpless outsider. i've been thinking about it for a while, and i don't know psychology as well many of you seem to, but i do know madness. i just wrote it tonight. feedback appreciated, but please be gentle! it's my first time.
well. i hope someone reads this.
anyway, this isn't going to be very long, and i think it's all going to be Dr. Crane, as observed by a helpless outsider. i've been thinking about it for a while, and i don't know psychology as well many of you seem to, but i do know madness. i just wrote it tonight. feedback appreciated, but please be gentle! it's my first time.
Lucid Dreamer
Welcome to my nightmare.
The sounds of her new world filled her white room. Squealing trolley wheels, uncontrolled shouting…and the occasional scream with a controlled quality as well. These screams were most familiar; they belied a fear that was in fact becoming so familiar it was in danger of being labeled a comfort. Arkham’s music; in this chaos, Jane was now home.
The hour was early. She would figure she had at least fifteen minutes before the burly nurses came to harass her out of sleep, prod her and ask her ridiculous questions to see if they should sedate her again. Fifteen minutes of relative privacy; her room was what could be considered private, if one had forgotten what the outside world was like. A bedroom without a camera mounted in the ceiling, and maybe a door that locked from the inside instead of out. Jane, at seventeen, had only spent a week in this confinement. Humans, though, can adapt to anything, and already Arkham had become home.
Jane rose, mindful of the camera but knowing she was unable to do anything about it. She’d been up early before; once or twice they’d come in to take her out of her room then, but for the most part it seemed that the staff couldn’t be bothered to go on duty before the morning shift started. Hopefully they’d let her have time to herself this morning.
Quietly, she padded over in slipper-clad feet to the door. Her room had no windows; this, she’d reckon, was what she got for biting. Her faint reflection in the wire-protected glass of the door showed the effects of imprisonment over time; a sallow quality to her once tanned skin, dark circles under her gray eyes. Her dark blond hair matted, for lack of good shampoo. She chuckled to herself dryly. No day spa, this.
There was, truly, not much to occupy a teenager here. For the last seven days (or eight? She feared she’d lost track of time for lack of a watch), she’d spent her hours wandering around the common room, always moving to avoid being harassed by one of those ‘crazies’. She’d happened to catch her doctor, of all people, calling her new peers by that title. At her hearing, she’d hoped she’d be ruled too young to be committed into the general population of a maximum-security asylum, but apparently the law carries a different meaning in Gotham City than it does in the rest of the country. So now she found herself among the criminally insane, treated by a man whose own sanity seemed to be in question.
Dr. Crane, Jonathan Crane. He’d seemed only a few years older than herself, until he’d opened his mouth and all those coldly regulated words had come out. He’d met her before her trial, for a psychological evaluation. Her court-appointed lawyer had been confident of a temporary insanity plea, with some kind of self-defense bell tacked on for good measure. Jane didn’t see what the big deal was; to her, the self-defense quotient was obvious. She’d never had a penchant for biting into people who were not attacking her in a darkened park; honestly, her lawyer must have been some kind of charlatan. How else could a case of a teenaged girl biting the big guy who jumped her on her way home from work have even made it to trial? Why had she even been arrested, for that matter?
Gotham logic, that’s how. Dr. Crane had apparently made a few cool observations during their time together, and as she recalled he’d asked her some inappropriate and downright weird questions. What kinds of things do you fear, Jane? Does this fear ever excite you? How often? At the time, Jane had wondered if he’d been hitting on her, in his own strange ways. Further encounters had proven him rather a cold fish.
Soon after the gavel had fallen, Jane had been given to the Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane. It had been a whirlwind; one day she’d been attacked, nearly strangled by a stranger in the night. Only a few days later she found herself incarcerated, desperate and infuriated at Gotham’s justice system. She’d bitten him, and she’d taken a few bloody pieces away with her. He had deserved every bleeding chunk he lost.
She closed her light eyes to those thoughts; the tears tried to burn their way out, but Jane managed to stop them. Crying will do you no good now, girl. You know once you start, you won’t be able to stop.
What would they have planned for today? She’d had one useless session of group therapy, where she’d seemed to be surrounded by garden variety thug types. She was no doctor, but to her uneducated eyes, she’d guess that less than a third of Arkham’s population was actually insane. Many of them were jerks, yes, but few of them suffered, it seemed, in any way. In fact, they proudly walked around, smug, like schoolyard bullies immune to punishment. Arkham was like some kind of resort for petty criminals. Home, bitter home, for an undetermined amount of time. Jane wondered if she’d survive.
Footsteps dragged reality back; as real as the inside was, anyway. She stepped quickly back to her bed, slipping in just as the many keys clacked against her lock. She tried to regulate her breathing, calm her racing heart. Turned away from the door, hopefully they wouldn’t see that she was already awake.
“Rise and shine, sweetheart”, a woman’s voice said. Jane unconsciously exhaled in relief; Maggie, a genuinely nice person. The only nurse or orderly who’d ever tried to make her comfortable in this place; she was an older woman, matronly, and seemed to actually care about those here who were truly sick. The gangster look-alikes she avoided like the plague; but the mentally ill, they were lucky to have someone like her. Jane was glad (as glad as one could be) that she was on duty this morning.
She almost stirred, almost gave herself away, before the next voice chimed in.
“Thank-you, Margaret. That will be fine, I’ll take her from here.”
Jane’s heart sank at this; Crane. If she didn’t know him personally, she knew she’d have been excited by him, his shocking blue eyes and the glossy, controlled mess of his black hair. He was handsome, beautiful, even; but, only outwardly. In the handful of times she’d been alone with him, Jane had learned, felt, that inside he was cold and twisted and unreachable by human means. She’d tried, time and time again, to explain her actions. At first she’d thought he’d been concerned for her state of mind, as a psychiatric doctor should be; he’d asked her in a hundred different ways about her fear, the panic that had driven her on the night that had ruined her life. In a hundred different ways she’d told him; the horror that had hit her as the monster’s hands had closed around her throat, her air supply diminishing, the lights in her head going black…and the terrible feeling of this stranger’s hands leaving her neck for the rest of her body. She’d lost consciousness in the Narrows then, and this was her night terror.
“You sure, Doctor?” Maggie asked. Her tone was guarded; Jane had the idea that, absurd as it was, the nurse may find trouble if the doctor thought her unduly concerned.
“Yes”, Dr. Crane answered, in that clipped, condescending way he had. “You continue with your rounds, and I will deal with my patients. Understood?”
“Yes, Doctor.” Maggie’s displeasure was palpable; God bless an angel like her, Jane prayed as the door swung shut behind the woman; keep her on my side.
If she wasn’t insane before – and she doubted she had been – Jane feared that madness was the only thing left for her; here, in the madhouse.
Softly, she heard him approach. “Jane”, he said down to her, with no trace of compassion. “I know you’re awake. Don’t make me force you out of bed.”
Private therapy; ah, yes. Another fine day in Arkham Asylum was about to begin.
Welcome to my nightmare.
The sounds of her new world filled her white room. Squealing trolley wheels, uncontrolled shouting…and the occasional scream with a controlled quality as well. These screams were most familiar; they belied a fear that was in fact becoming so familiar it was in danger of being labeled a comfort. Arkham’s music; in this chaos, Jane was now home.
The hour was early. She would figure she had at least fifteen minutes before the burly nurses came to harass her out of sleep, prod her and ask her ridiculous questions to see if they should sedate her again. Fifteen minutes of relative privacy; her room was what could be considered private, if one had forgotten what the outside world was like. A bedroom without a camera mounted in the ceiling, and maybe a door that locked from the inside instead of out. Jane, at seventeen, had only spent a week in this confinement. Humans, though, can adapt to anything, and already Arkham had become home.
Jane rose, mindful of the camera but knowing she was unable to do anything about it. She’d been up early before; once or twice they’d come in to take her out of her room then, but for the most part it seemed that the staff couldn’t be bothered to go on duty before the morning shift started. Hopefully they’d let her have time to herself this morning.
Quietly, she padded over in slipper-clad feet to the door. Her room had no windows; this, she’d reckon, was what she got for biting. Her faint reflection in the wire-protected glass of the door showed the effects of imprisonment over time; a sallow quality to her once tanned skin, dark circles under her gray eyes. Her dark blond hair matted, for lack of good shampoo. She chuckled to herself dryly. No day spa, this.
There was, truly, not much to occupy a teenager here. For the last seven days (or eight? She feared she’d lost track of time for lack of a watch), she’d spent her hours wandering around the common room, always moving to avoid being harassed by one of those ‘crazies’. She’d happened to catch her doctor, of all people, calling her new peers by that title. At her hearing, she’d hoped she’d be ruled too young to be committed into the general population of a maximum-security asylum, but apparently the law carries a different meaning in Gotham City than it does in the rest of the country. So now she found herself among the criminally insane, treated by a man whose own sanity seemed to be in question.
Dr. Crane, Jonathan Crane. He’d seemed only a few years older than herself, until he’d opened his mouth and all those coldly regulated words had come out. He’d met her before her trial, for a psychological evaluation. Her court-appointed lawyer had been confident of a temporary insanity plea, with some kind of self-defense bell tacked on for good measure. Jane didn’t see what the big deal was; to her, the self-defense quotient was obvious. She’d never had a penchant for biting into people who were not attacking her in a darkened park; honestly, her lawyer must have been some kind of charlatan. How else could a case of a teenaged girl biting the big guy who jumped her on her way home from work have even made it to trial? Why had she even been arrested, for that matter?
Gotham logic, that’s how. Dr. Crane had apparently made a few cool observations during their time together, and as she recalled he’d asked her some inappropriate and downright weird questions. What kinds of things do you fear, Jane? Does this fear ever excite you? How often? At the time, Jane had wondered if he’d been hitting on her, in his own strange ways. Further encounters had proven him rather a cold fish.
Soon after the gavel had fallen, Jane had been given to the Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane. It had been a whirlwind; one day she’d been attacked, nearly strangled by a stranger in the night. Only a few days later she found herself incarcerated, desperate and infuriated at Gotham’s justice system. She’d bitten him, and she’d taken a few bloody pieces away with her. He had deserved every bleeding chunk he lost.
She closed her light eyes to those thoughts; the tears tried to burn their way out, but Jane managed to stop them. Crying will do you no good now, girl. You know once you start, you won’t be able to stop.
What would they have planned for today? She’d had one useless session of group therapy, where she’d seemed to be surrounded by garden variety thug types. She was no doctor, but to her uneducated eyes, she’d guess that less than a third of Arkham’s population was actually insane. Many of them were jerks, yes, but few of them suffered, it seemed, in any way. In fact, they proudly walked around, smug, like schoolyard bullies immune to punishment. Arkham was like some kind of resort for petty criminals. Home, bitter home, for an undetermined amount of time. Jane wondered if she’d survive.
Footsteps dragged reality back; as real as the inside was, anyway. She stepped quickly back to her bed, slipping in just as the many keys clacked against her lock. She tried to regulate her breathing, calm her racing heart. Turned away from the door, hopefully they wouldn’t see that she was already awake.
“Rise and shine, sweetheart”, a woman’s voice said. Jane unconsciously exhaled in relief; Maggie, a genuinely nice person. The only nurse or orderly who’d ever tried to make her comfortable in this place; she was an older woman, matronly, and seemed to actually care about those here who were truly sick. The gangster look-alikes she avoided like the plague; but the mentally ill, they were lucky to have someone like her. Jane was glad (as glad as one could be) that she was on duty this morning.
She almost stirred, almost gave herself away, before the next voice chimed in.
“Thank-you, Margaret. That will be fine, I’ll take her from here.”
Jane’s heart sank at this; Crane. If she didn’t know him personally, she knew she’d have been excited by him, his shocking blue eyes and the glossy, controlled mess of his black hair. He was handsome, beautiful, even; but, only outwardly. In the handful of times she’d been alone with him, Jane had learned, felt, that inside he was cold and twisted and unreachable by human means. She’d tried, time and time again, to explain her actions. At first she’d thought he’d been concerned for her state of mind, as a psychiatric doctor should be; he’d asked her in a hundred different ways about her fear, the panic that had driven her on the night that had ruined her life. In a hundred different ways she’d told him; the horror that had hit her as the monster’s hands had closed around her throat, her air supply diminishing, the lights in her head going black…and the terrible feeling of this stranger’s hands leaving her neck for the rest of her body. She’d lost consciousness in the Narrows then, and this was her night terror.
“You sure, Doctor?” Maggie asked. Her tone was guarded; Jane had the idea that, absurd as it was, the nurse may find trouble if the doctor thought her unduly concerned.
“Yes”, Dr. Crane answered, in that clipped, condescending way he had. “You continue with your rounds, and I will deal with my patients. Understood?”
“Yes, Doctor.” Maggie’s displeasure was palpable; God bless an angel like her, Jane prayed as the door swung shut behind the woman; keep her on my side.
If she wasn’t insane before – and she doubted she had been – Jane feared that madness was the only thing left for her; here, in the madhouse.
Softly, she heard him approach. “Jane”, he said down to her, with no trace of compassion. “I know you’re awake. Don’t make me force you out of bed.”
Private therapy; ah, yes. Another fine day in Arkham Asylum was about to begin.
well. i hope someone reads this.
