Lucid Dreamer

[jill]

No it's not! I'm excited too!!

But holy sh*t...you do an amazing job of really showing us HOW crazy Crane is making this poor girl. Amazing job. Can't wait for more!

ps. I love how Angie calls her "honey". SO CUTE.

[azina]

Fantastic job as always. A chilling description of insanity creeping in on Jane. I wonder what's going to happen when Scarecrow comes to call and where Angie is being taken?

[seonedevinian]

gettin closer. i am excited, i'm glad you are too! and i'm glad you guys are still reading - i love writing this, and it's so encouraging just to think that someone else may see a bit of what i want to show them. i started writing this at a time when i was seriously doubting myself as a writer, and no one seemed to be at all interested in what i was doing. i was near to giving up, but sharing this here, having you guys give all your positive comments and take your time to read this, it sooo pulled me back from the edge. for being here, and open, when no one else was, thankyou all so much!

so here's chapter 14. cut inspirational music...now.

~rain on the wind~

Time passed at an unsettlingly slow pace. Shivering on the floor, constantly twisting to escape the pinching confinement of the straightjacket, Jane felt years pass. The cobwebs gathered in her blond hair, dust settled on her sallow skin; the more she moved, the less she felt Death’s approach. She tried to hang on to the present; deny the past, forestall the future. It most likely held more suffering. Life was but a dream, a memory, a possible lie.

In the aching of her muscles she felt certain that hours, at least, had gone by. It must be night by now; the same night, though? How many days had she been in this hell? Rationality came and went; when it was there, she tried to imagine what the real world looked like, so she could eventually figure out a way to get back there. In her sparse moments of clarity, even she marveled at her reluctance to give up the hope of eventual freedom. She couldn’t accept defeat; while she had sanity, she had something to defend, and this hope was the only weapon she had left.

Humans can adapt to anything, Jane.

How true; in fact, she would hazard to say that she was getting just a bit better at handling this insanity thing. If Arkham was her home now, then madness was her new bedfellow. This realization stunned her out of her unconscious ramblings – she hadn’t noticed that she’d been mumbling words like the ever-repetitive scarecrow, and new favorites like stitch and bugs. The dawn of courage stopped this, though; in adaptation she was silenced.

If she grew brave, she could move around the tremors, translate the moving walls and lurching sky into a new version of a familiar reality. The world may be nothing more than perception, she thought feverishly, and if that was so, than lucid dreaming was her shelter, and her escape.

Once again, Jane hauled herself awkwardly to her feet. The walls continued to shudder; but that was okay, once one got used to it, wasn’t it? These were the new walls, the turning ground under her feet was the new floor, the shimmering air was the new oxygen. It was a new world, and she could learn to live in it, for as long as it took to get out.

Angel

Angie! She had to tell Angie that she would be okay…if she could find their conduit in the haze, of course. Her room now looked a lot like a foggy moor, with transparent walls and other illusionary trappings. No, no, the room was reality; the sense of the outdoors was the illusion, she hastily corrected herself. She focused, and brought the walls back to solidity. Better; there, near the ceiling, was the vent.

“Angie?” she called. She was met by the ominous rumble of thunder; real, or imaginary? Had she ever heard the weather down there before?

She tried again. “Angel!”

After a moment, during which Jane considered the possibility that all of this was a dream and she was still huddled and twitching on the floor, Angel replied.

“Jane! What the hell is going on?”

“I’m…I lost control for a while, but I’m better now”, Jane offered. “I’m a little… mixed up? But, I can work around it. I’m not sure exactly what to do, but I think if we don’t get out of here, like now, there won’t be another chance for me, get it? I’m almost dead. I’m almost…totally dead.”

Silence. Perhaps she had frightened the poor girl. If that was the case, the news only got worse for her.

“Angie?”

“I’m here”, she answered. “What happened to you? Something’s going off tonight, something huge. Crane disappeared for a while right after you got back, I heard them drop you in your room. You sounded…well, nevermind that now. But Crane, when he was gone upstairs I heard them talking about some place called Corridor F and how some kind of…like, bat-guy is trying to break into the asylum?” She gave a nervous titter. “If I didn’t know any better, I might think I was surrounded by crazy people. Anyway…Crane is back…ah, you don’t know what I had to do to get all this, girl..”

This rapid confession was a bit much for Jane to take at the moment, but she tried her best to assimilate the news. “Did you break out of your room?” she asked, grasping at the most familiar assumptions associated with Angie.

Angie laughed; it was a heavenly sound. “Uh, yes. Maybe you know me after all. I’ve been working on the hinges for months now, y’know, because patience is a virtue and all. So I finally pushed and got the damn thing unstuck, and then I find that the lock on my freaking door is like one-tenth as complicated as removing it from the hinge-side would have been. Basically, I found that my electro-lock is easily shorted with my CD player…luckily, we’re not in Maximum security. So I got out, and no one was around, and I went back to the place where I’d heard about the real Max ward before. Crane was up there, some guards were saying, he got cornered by some freak in a rubber suit in this Corridor F and he had to be put into a Max room! But, they had to move him down here…somewhere. They said the police wanted to talk to him, and he’d given some kind of orders to be taken into our secret hideout level if anything should happen to his decision-making abilities. So…”

“Cops?” Jane spat suddenly. She couldn’t help the voracity of her response. “Cops, here? Talking to Crane?” After the shortest second, she added, “Bat-guy?”

“Yeah…” Angie said, startled. “Cops, here. Well, they were here, I think they’re gone now. What have they done for us lately, anyhow? So they talked to Crane already, but I guess he didn’t tell them anything about us…then he came back down here, somewhere. There’s something wrong with him, Jane. I mean, something more wrong than before. Oh, and this Bat guy, the Bat-man…” she said in a tone that openly admitted to sounding ridiculous. “He did something to Jonnie. The guards who brought him down said something about Crane’s own medicine. And now they say that this room in Corridor F, wherever that is, is still crawling with police. I don’t know what the hell all this means, Jane, and now there’s something happening to you too…the end is nigh, I think, isn’t it?”

Jane’s eyes had been opened unnaturally wide for most of Angie’s testimony, taking in all the light they could, freezing time for as long as it took to accept this. What was going on, indeed. Angie spoke of this Bat-man with the tone reserved for religious fanatics and other dubious heroes. Bat-man? Was he like some radio personality here to do an exposé or something? Did he end up attacking the doctor physically thus earning him cult-figure status? And cops…finally, were they here to help the victims of Arkham, or were they only the nails in their coffins?

“Jane?”

“Yes…”

“Hon, I think something’s happening right now. I hear something from down my section here…oh, my God. Get ready, girl. If I can, I’ll come for you…”

Jane wanted to protest, but what would she be protesting? Already she heard the commotion herself; a sudden shuffling of feet somewhere at the end of her hall, the muffled shouting of men’s voices…the cascading clack of the doors in her wing unlocking. The walls still shuddered, and the stiff arms of the straightjacket still embraced her harshly. But Angie would come for her, soon, if she could. Jane fervently hoped so; despite her new courage, this new world may prove too wild and wide to survive on her own. Especially if the wild and weird Crane still walked the underground with her, in a room recently unlocked, and his most basic sanity apparently in question.

Crane’s own medicine

She steeled herself. All that had come before was merely a rain-shower; the true storm lay directly ahead. Inside, she was changed, she felt it. She didn’t know what she would do when the time came, but it would be an attack from deep inside her, a place she would not have been forced into were it not for Crane. And if his medicine did this to a normal teenaged girl, what would it do to its own mad creator?

Thunder rolled darkly again; he was coming, that Scarecrow, coming for her. Like smelling rain on the cold wind, she could feel it.

so, yeah. making new friends is fun. hope you like it!

[jill]

ahh! wow, great chapter. I love how you're connecting it to the movie, tieing things in.

I hope she's okay with Crane soon.. ahh I'm worried, haha. Post more soon!

[aurora10]

YAY! The BAT-man...lol AWesome chapter!!!!!

[azina]

The suspense is killing me ... Scarecrow is coming for Jane and he's even madder on his own fear toxin? *shudder* I wonder how terrifying that will be like? I hope you almost have the next part written because I seriously want to know what happens next and soon!

As for the first part about you giving up as a writer, I'm amazed you thought of giving up because you are very talented and although I haven't read any of your other work, you have a real flair for the dark tales. lol Excellent job.

[Gobby]

it is vunderful truly vunderful....
WRITE WRITE WRITE! yay!
seriously really nice...i only wish i could write like this...descriptive nd original branch off

[Neun]

It's a brilliant piece of work. The storyline draws you in, and you definitely feel like jumping out of your seat to yell "What's going to happen next?! Come on, post a new chapter already!"

Keep up the awesomeness.

[seonedevinian]

hey, thanks guys! yeah, i couldn't imagine not writing, but it became a fleeting notion after i looked around and realized that it seemed like the people around me viewed reading my stuff the same way the viewed having a tooth pulled, haha. then a musician friend - ironically, one of those who says he'll read and never does - told me that he feels the same way sometimes, and that we just have to keep doing what we do for no other reason than that we love it. that was really helpful. actually, i'm also lucky in the way that my bf supports my writing, although he may not have much time to read what i give him, haha. but he believes in me, which is so fortunate for me.
anyway, here's what may turn out to be Part One of Chapter Fifteen, just because i've written this monster chapter and i thought i should break it up. but maybe there's enough of a transition to warrant two chapters. here it is.

~the sounds of disaster~

In the seconds that passed between her door unlocking and someone stepping inside, Jane nearly forgot that there was something fairly large going on. Such was the extent of her brain-damage, she sadly assumed. The heavy steel creaked open, and a small dark shape poked in. Jane stood aghast for a moment, unable to relate the foggy image to reality.

“Jane?” Angie said, tentatively.

There; it made a little more sense now. Angie had said she’d come for her, and here she was. The doorway around her still twitched and jumped, but happily, Angie’s face remained clear.

“H-hey”, Jane answered. She didn’t move from her spot, despite her relief to see the girl. Angie entered the room cautiously, realizing now the extremity of the trauma Jane had suffered.

“Hi, there”, she said soothingly. “Let’s get you out of that thing.” She gestured to the straightjacket.

Jane nodded her assent, hesitantly turning to allow Angie access to the straps at the back. She waited with a sort of patience while Angie fiddled around behind her; after a few minutes of tugging and unraveling, Jane felt her bonds loosen. Her rough canvas shell fell away, leaving the blood to flow back into her arms and fingers. Angie carefully placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Hon, I think we should get out of here while we can. I don’t know if we can get upstairs at all, but I don’t think the bottom of the building is the safest place to be right now.”

Jane pondered for a moment. “We can leave”, she said, a tad breathless. Breathing had become more difficult of late, since she’d been dosed by Crane’s white powder. She always felt like she was hyperventilating, the fight-or-flight response to such constant fear. “We can just leave here.”

“Leave…the building?” Angie asked. She clearly hadn’t thought of this. Jane watched her, wondering what the big question regarding escape could be. Wasn’t this what they’d both wished for since they’d arrived? Perhaps Angie’s infatuation with Crane was leading her astray. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea…”

“Why not?” Jane fairly spat.

“Okay, relax. I just meant that it might not be safe outside, either. We’re in the Narrows, you know. Bad things happen here all the time, and if things are as haywire as they seem, it’s like the end of the world out there or something…”

Jane shook her head adamantly. “No, it’s the end of the world in here. Outside is home, outside bad things happen, believe me I know but it’s home and I don’t belong here-”

“I know!” Angie assured her. “I know, you don’t belong here, I don’t belong here. Most the people around don’t belong here. But if there’s like a riot going on in this whole neighbourhood, it might be best to just lie low in a Max room or something, barricade ourselves in…”

Jane nodded slowly, not completely agreeing.

“Okay…maybe.”

Angie nodded too, seeming a bit relieved. “Okay”, she said. “We’ll go and check it out together. Watch each other’s backs, right?”

“Right…” it was a dubious answer at best. Some part of Jane did realize that it was likely that Angie would be doing most of the watching. Regardless, Angie seemed as pleased as one could get in such a situation.

“Alright, then. Let’s go.”

Together, the young girls ventured out past the thick door; there lay chaos. Well, quiet chaos. Many of the inmates on this lowest of the low level were docile, the zombie-esque creatures that shared group therapy with the girls. These milled about softly, wandering, touching the walls as if they may not be real. As well as these, there were a number of other patients now released from their cages. These were sharper in their movements, watchful and paranoid. Jane recognized their terrified reactions as her own, before her careful self control. Still, despite her new tightly restrained behavior, she did feel the difference. She was brittle, like thinly spun glass. She could easily become one of these frightened defensive children again; the fear lay just under the surface.

Fuel for their fear lay above them. At first Jane didn’t hear it; Angie, having grown used to listening upward over her last many months here, suddenly ground to a halt. The arm around Jane’s waist tightened, bringing them to a stop.

“Hear that?” she asked tensely.

Jane waited; she had heard things since that last fateful session, mainly vague sporadic voices she could luckily tell were in her head. In her new world, she’d tried to listen past these, with moderate success. They were like a particularly catchy song stuck on repeat. Pushing past them now, she listened, following Angie’s gaze to the ceiling, where many of the others had fastened their attention. Soon, it became clear; overhead, the sounds of disaster.

sorry for the delay. thanks for hanging around!

[jill]

Cool chapter! You made it really apparent exactly howww much she's gone off the edge.

But yeah, I'd be soo terrified if I were them. Angie seems smart, I like that. I wonder how they're going to get themselves out of this?!

Can't wait to read more!

[Neun]

Ohhhhh, so awesome! I want to know what happens next! Very suspenseful.

[§ilvercell]

this story rocks!!!!!!!!!!!!

[seonedevinian]

k, here's chapter 16, as promised. well, i kind of promised the second part of chapter 15, but this works much better, i think. here ya go. feed my back, as they say. much appreciated! thanks!

~escape, or end~

Now Jane could hear the Max ward. Shouts, crashes, stampeding feet. Even the crack of gunfire, she realized with a jump. It was catastrophe up there; surely Angie wouldn’t want to enter into that?

“Maybe no good?” Jane offered.

“Yeah”, Angie said, dismayed. “Maybe not.”

Looking around them, Jane saw that most of the others there were not moving. More accurately, they were not going anywhere. The calm ones were complacent in their relative safety, and the scared ones were too terrified to attempt escape. There was a lot of meandering accompanied by cowering, but no progress. Jane breathed an inner sigh of relief that she’d managed to dodge both those fates, however temporarily she was able to keep this denial up.

“Should we go back in?” she asked, looking back to her room. The familiarity offered some comfort, even if only in minor amounts.

“I guess…” Angie trailed off. Snapping back to herself, she said “Wait – what about the maintenance section? I remember passing by it on a few of my walks earlier this year…”

“Earlier this year?”

“Yes, well. It’s not likely that they will have moved an entire boiler-room-janitor-closet or whatever for no reason, so I expect it’ll still be there. We can hide out until help comes, or until things die down enough upstairs for us to try to get out.”

“Ah…where is it?”

Angie squeezed her eyes shut, seeming to will the memory to surface. For a moment, it looked as though there would be no luck for them at all today. Then, a jolt; Angie’s eyes opened, and there was blessed resolve in her voice.

“This way”, she said, guiding Jane past the soft statues clogging the hallway. “Past my room, down another hall, around a few corners. I remember because I followed Jonnie here one day, until I realized he was just going to get someone to mop a spill or whatever, and I gave up.”

Silently, Jane let Angie lead her. The sounds of human thunder continued to growl above them, and Jane tried to suppress the urge to duck the coming storm. The people she passed who hugged the walls, eyes darting around to catch a million different attackers, were too close to what she truly was for comfort. She averted her gaze, shuffling alongside Angie; it felt like miles, but the time spent was more likely measured in minutes. Finally, Angie slowed their walk.

“Holy…” she breathed, now motionless. After a moment of silence, Jane looked up to follow Angie’s shocked stare.

Her vision still jumped and swam, but for a second the sign stenciled on the pale metal door remained clear as crystal. Jane read it in the blink of an eye; it took a few heartbeats for what appeared there to register. When it did, she sucked in a breath, sharing Angie’s sentiment. Surprise would be putting this lightly.

“Corridor F”, she read aloud, unnecessarily. “This is the maintenance wing? I thought it was upstairs somewhere…”

“No, I said I didn’t know where it was…” Angie corrected absently. “I had no idea…I don’t think I saw the door up close when I was here before.” She shook her head. “Corridor F. This is where Crane went crazy…”

“Crazier”, Jane said softly.

“We can’t go in there.”

Jane turned to her. “Why not?”

A pause. “I don’t know”, she admitted. “I guess I’m just not too eager to run into whatever drove Crane over the edge.”

Another moment spent staring at the door. Finally, Jane twitched violently, just once, freeing herself from Angie’s arm. She cautiously approached the door, which shifted its bearings sinisterly. It reminded her of a huge mouth, wide and toothless, gaping above a live meal. Nevertheless, she pressed forward, gingerly stretching her neck to peer into the small caged window.

“The lights flicker”, she reported. “There are tables folded up and boxes everywhere, but it’s a hallway, just a hallway.”

“But a maintenance wing?” Angie argued.

“The hallway to a maintenance wing?” Jane countered. The rooms beyond called to her voicelessly. She was drawn, irresistibly drawn in. Her decision became more obvious by the second.

“I think we should go back to your room”, Angie urged.

“Okay”, Jane relented.

She allowed Angie to lead her back, noting every turn and vandal’s marking along the way. She soon trailed behind; Angie turned often to check on her, uncomfortable without her by her side. As the patients again populated the hallway, Angie’s vigilance over Jane became necessarily weaker; finally, disappointed but not terribly surprised, she looked back and found Jane gone. Cursing under her breath, she started back after her. The vacant patients stood still as trees, a forest of lost minds. Angel wove her way through them, knowing where she was headed and resolved to see her young friend safe and sound again.

After Jane slipped out of Angie’s reach, she made her way with remarkable ease back to the nightmarishly compelling door. Corridor F. The place where Crane was cornered by the Batman, where the last of his sanity had allegedly abandoned him. Some dark, bitter part of Jane hoped he felt just as lost as she had, before she’d assimilated his drug and accepted her new compromised mind.

Are you in there?

She reached out, fingertips brushing the cold steel. She heard no answer from the other side, although the places her fingers touched did shimmer and ripple alluringly. Her gateway lay past this door, she felt it. Her escape, or her end. She moved forward, pushed the disabled lock open before her mind could change itself again. The long dark hallway stretched out before her, and she stepped inside.

The door swung shut with a click behind her. This was it; she was no longer a part of that world, the world out there. The dread she’d forced herself to grow used to increased to sickening heights. Swallowing, she moved past empty rooms and locked doors. She heard no movements inside, and saw no way to release these manual locks. No matter; what she was looking for was not so near to the waking world. She would have to descend further, dig deeper for her exit.

When the door she’d come through became a speck at the end of a dark tunnel, the air grew noticeably cooler. Or maybe that was just her new convincing imagination. Either way, she felt ill. Looking back, Jane realized she couldn’t make out her old life at all anymore. She was a nightmare creature in a nightmare world. She turned back to face her dark path, and was jolted out of her reverie.

“Jane”, the Scarecrow rasped. “How lovely to see you again…”

Jane’s heart began the mad dance to escape her body. This was it; her escape, or her end.

wow, kind of makes it seem like it's all over, doesn't it? there's a bit more to come, though. just a bit, heh.

[aurora10]

Intense stuff!!! I can't wait for more!!! ;D

[azina]

Oh no! Scarecrow has found her? How will she escape this! Ack! Get out there Jane! NOW!!