sometimes I act like this to hear your shrieking prove that you exist

[phobic]

WHO: Katurian Katurian (goryteller) and Jonathan Crane (phobic)
WHERE: A derelict farmhouse on the rural outskirts of the City.
WHEN: Late night Wednesday March 14th, early morning Thursday March 15th.
WARNINGS: Drugs. Mental anguish. Look who's involved!
SUMMARY: Katurian tells Jon he's not afraid of him. Jon sends out a formal invitation to prove it.
FORMAT: I'm doing pretentious prose I'm not sure about you



Abandoned places had a certain ambiance near and dear to the Scarecrow's bitter old black heart.

They were forsaken, like him, ramshackle, like him, dangerous, like him, ignored, like him.

Creepy. Like him.

He was upstairs, in the master bedroom, perched at the windowsill looking out. Part of him wasn't discounting the possibility that the red and blue sirens would be showing up here, any minute--that the breath of the Bat might find itself a welcome prickle at the back of his neck.

But most of him knew that whatever was twisted in Katurian would bid him come. That was Crane's livelihood, and he prided himself on those predictive skills.

The night air was cool - brisk. Nothing like Gotham's biting, vindictive temperatures. Jonathan wondered what Katurian's world had been like, why the curious little stutterer and author seemed almost... empty. As though there was something vital he was missing, and looking everywhere outwardly for it, failed to find it.

Perhaps he'd learn more.

If the man showed.

Comments

[goryteller]

Katurian had eight murders bubbling under his skin. Only three of them were recent, but all of them bounced around inside his skull, echoing half-finished breaths and gasps and wheezes as though they were happening right in front of him. They were ever-present. They belonged to him. That fear he felt, that sickening disgust, it was invigorating. It was filling his hollow bones with energy, it was thrusting him forward like a man with mechanical legs. Katurian Katurian was unstoppable.

The invitation he received from Scarecrow was obviously a trap.

But unstoppable Katurian Katurian, oh no, he didn't care. His memories and moods were a mess, he was waking up in the middle of the night tangled up in his bed sheets, suffocating bodies were writhing around on the floor of his mind, but he didn't care. He took a knife he barely knew how to use, he took his communicator in case he needed to call for help, and he took a small first aid kit that he kept snug in the pocket of his jacket. In that first aid kit was a tiny, tiny bottle of ether.

In that cool night, he approached the house, aware of the sound of each step he took on the gravel. He climbed up that creaking porch and he knocked.

[phobic]

"Come iiin," The Scarecrow sing-songed from the window above, pulling away from the sill and practically skipping over to the landing, humming Moonlight Becomes You.

That the other had answered his summons really thrilled him. Intrigued him. He stopped at the top of the stairs, cut the skinniest figure alive as he leaned on peeling floral print.

"Mind the floor, there are a few holes. And the basement's my lab, so unless you want an impromptu tour... stick to the right hand wall."

[goryteller]

"You're in a good mood," he breathed. His hands fumbled automatically to feel that right hand wall, to place himself there, and then he recognized how desperate that made him look and pulled back. He reached for the door instead, closing it shut behind him. Look at this, the movement said. Look at how I close myself in here with you. Look at how I'm willing.

If Crane were worth avoiding, Katurian would have received a warning from the future. This was how it worked, these days. His head spun with discarded memories. Time paradox.

He stepped forward along that wall, his eyes darting between the floor (holes?) and the man at the railing.

"Are you always so cheerful, Dr. Crane?"

[phobic]

No, Jon's mind wasn't on filleting Katurian from neck to groin, he had no immediate inclinations to dispatch by decapitation--any thug could kill. It took an artist to reach into the mind and change it, to alter and skew the very fabric of one's personal reality.

"I don't know. On occasion. I'm a man of whims. You're not suicidal--I hope you're not stupid--and you're certainly acting brave."

A beat.

"An old friend once told me it was rude not to offer tea to guests, so I'll ask. Would you like some?"

[goryteller]

"Who was the old friend?" he asked, continuing his movements, step by step, inch by inch. Katurian also preferred to bury into the mind, to unleash subtle fears and insecurities. With his weak arms and poor stature (and the ether, oh the ether), it was one of his few weapons against his enemies, the people that would live to see him fail. He thought about slipping into Jon's past, but his mind was still swimming from all the time manipulation and he was afraid he would get lost in it, those walls and walls of (obvious) trauma, those screams that don't belong to him.

So he walked. And he spoke.

"Normally, it's the parents that say things like that."

[phobic]

"Jervis Tetch."

He turned away from the top of the stairs, heading back into the bedroom, just a shade less amiably, "There was only one lesson my parents could teach me, and though they taught it well... It necessitated no others."

He hung onto the doorframe with one thin hand, adding, "You didn't actually answer."

[goryteller]

"No," he said. He put one foot on the stairs, bracing himself at the threshold. His hands felt for the railing, those rotting bars of wood. "No thank you."

He went up step by step. He was shaking, just slightly, but he only noticed when he needed to hold the railing again, when his hands clattered and fumbled for the grip. Eventually, he stopped trying to hold it and stepped up with only his own balance at work. He felt that ether snug against his side.

"What did they teach you?"

[phobic]

It was a beautiful agony watching him ascend from the landing, step by brave, shaking step.

"Self-sufficiency."

He turned into the room, plucked a pipe from a stack of boxes and lit it idly.

"...I was not a wanted baby. My father had a heart of stone, and my mother--my mother was a fearful woman indeed. She preferred altered states of consciousness to the brutal hand reality had dealt her. So they left me, sickly little thing that I was, to sink or swim."

He watched the match flame dance before pinching it out and looking over his shoulder towards the doorway, still talking to Katurian--who was out of sight, but he was confident was listening. Jonathan inhaled.

Nothing.

"People don't care who they hurt in the pursuit of personal safety, Katurian. You know people are ill. You're a writer. A good one. It hasn't escaped you."

[goryteller]

He made it up the stairs. Solid ground. He was listening, all right, his mind soaking in those words, those images from a past he had yet to visit. (Yet, he told himself, because he was certain that one day he would need to look.) He turned into the bedroom with wide eyes, his lips tracing the other man's speech.

A writer. A good one.

Those words were like a kiss on the top of his head.

"You like my writing?"

As though none of the other words mattered.

[phobic]

"You sad little man, that really is all you care about."

He moved over, leaned in close, smoke venting from his lips, "Do you always leave your weaknesses in plain view?"

And blew, softly. A potent, concentrated dose.