Boom. Boom. Boom.

The noise echoed through the dank, ominous hallway. I was completely lost. The place vaguely reminded me of the video I had seen of the Eastern State Penitentiary. I sprinted down a short corridor and I was suddenly in a square room.

The room had a single light hanging from the ceiling. There was a table in the center, and on that table was an undersized knife.

I heard a deafening chuckle. I couldn't tell if it was coming from somewhere close or from a distance, because of the echoes.

"You've fallen into my trap, huh, Meggie?"

The loud booming noise continued. I turned in circles, attempting to figure out where the voice was coming from. "Where the hell are you?" I screamed into the abyss that was the darkness ahead. Another noise caught my attention. Ping.

The pocket knife flicked off the table and spun into the shadows. I heard a footstep as someone picked it up. I finally realized that the booming noise was my own heart.

The person who had picked up the knife started towards me. His face was suddenly illuminated in the light of the almost-out lamp. My heart felt like it had completely stopped out of fear.

A bone-chilling laugh filled the room. The knife was suddenly against my left cheek, the sharp, cold metal cutting into my skin.

"Why so serious, Meggie?"

* * *

11:15. Only fifteen minutes until the end of my practice.

I had done endless sprints, with a short break in between sets, and I was exhausted. It was an unseasonably hot April Saturday, with the temperatures peaking in the mid 80s. The trees had returned to their rich emerald color and the grass on the hills was no longer a sickly, muddy brown. I was really happy that my dad had left me at the track. Enjoying these more frequent spring days was one of the things I enjoyed on my own, and I needed to think some things through without distractions. Since there were a lot of people at the track, and my friend Sheridan was there, my dad had simply dropped me off and went to a nearby Subway for lunch.

I slowed down after a short 100 meter sprint. Pain shot up my head. I was getting sick, there was no denying it. Strep was making its rounds again and I had already caught a cold from the frigid weather that took place the previous few days. I was dead tired already, and even just another lap would make me feel even worse. Screw the fifteen minutes, I thought miserably. I'm going home.

I packed up my track bag, its only contents being my water bottle, some sweats, and my iPod. I had figured I would just sit in the bleachers until my dad arrived from lunch, but I started to get bored and wandered into the parking lot.

As I traversed the sidewalk, I looked up and gave a little flinch. A black car was idling in the parking space closest to the track entrance, and ever since my Joker dreams had started up, I couldn't even look at black cars. The dreams didn't occur frequently, but when they did, they were nightmarish and I often found myself dreading bedtime for the next few nights. Most of them involved the Joker threatening my family at gunpoint, with me begging for mercy. The dream that I had last night had scared me so badly that I had just given up on trying to fall asleep. I hadn't even told Sam, who was the sole friend I confided in whenever the nightmares came up. She lived in the Chicago suburbs, which were over 800 miles from Connecticut, but we were still best friends.

I tried to ignore my memories and stared up at the clear sapphire sky.

I quickly decided to change into my normal clothes, which happened to be a pair of jean shorts, beaded flip-flops, and a University of Illinois tank top. My hair was actually straight today, and although it was a bit unkempt from my running, it looked fine for the time being. I sprinted over to the high school (despite the comatose state of my legs, it was so warm outside that I was desperate to get out of the heat) and came out fully dressed. I took my post again behind the bleachers.

A few minutes later, I took a glance at the parking lot and the black car was still idling. The windows were dramatically tinted, so I couldn't tell if someone was inside or not, but I had that funny feeling that was similar to the feeling I got right before I failed my 7th grade midterm: total dread. I only had ten minutes until I was to be picked up, but I felt like I couldn't wait that long without becoming absolutely terrified. It was a bit of an irrational fear, but it was still heart-pounding.

I was thinking about this when the car stopped stalling and began to drive slowly towards the spot where I was standing. It braked jerkily, stopping a few inches from my feet. A dark, chilling voice sounded. "Get in."

Suddenly it hit me. The Joker and Scarecrow were the most vile people in Gotham, and lately they had taken to abducting people from public places and holding them for ransom. They had ended up swindling families out of millions of dollars this way, and most of the time, they ended up killing the victim anyway. They also tended to "recruit" people to help them with their dirty work. It was all over the news, which was pretty frightening since Gotham was about an hour from where I lived. You would think they would have been captured by now, but most of their actions were untraceable. Whoever was in that car had to be one of them, I was sure of it.

Weird things had been happening to me lately, besides the dreams, that is. I had been seeing playing cards everywhere, and there seemed to be someone following me or watching me wherever I went. The most recent event was a noose found in my bedroom, but I didn't dare tell anyone that, not even Sam. I had stashed it in the forest behind my backyard as quickly as possible.

I snapped back to reality and remembered the fact that I had been spoken to. There was no way I was getting in that car. "No,"I mumbled in reply, and then realized that my voice was inaudible. Normally I was loud enough, but under the circumstances, my voice refused to cooperate with me. "What do you want?!"

A gun was suddenly in my face. "Get in and no one gets hurt."

A bit cliché, don't you think? I thought to myself. I remained rigid.

"I said get in!" A gloved hand pulled me by the neck of my shirt into the car, and I landed in a seat. The car's interior was leather, and it was dark enough inside so that I couldn't see the driver.

"Let me out!" I screamed. The same gloved hand clamped over my mouth, and suddenly there was a spraying noise. Shit, it's the Scarecrow! I thought frantically. The spraying had to be the trademark toxin. It was odorless, but it had devastating effects. I had seen it several times on the nightly news. I tried not to breathe in, but eventually I had to take a breath, and I unintentionally inhaled a huge whiff of the toxin. A masked face appeared over my head. My suspicions were confirmed, and just as I figured this out, huge spiders began pouring out of the eye holes in the mask, their fangs inches from my face. I began to hyperventilate. My breathing was coming in short, erratic gasps now. I could just barely make out what the Scarecrow was saying to the driver.

"It was a small dosage. She'll come out of it by the time we get to the headquarters."

I was trying not to scream, but I couldn't help it. "Holy SHIT!" I shrieked repeatedly. The furry black spiders were everywhere now. I could practically feel them crawling up my arm. I knew it was all in my head, but that wasn't much of a comfort.

Scarecrow sighed. "Would you shut up?!" he said, exasperated. "If I had known she was going to squeal like this, I wouldn't have selected her."

While he continued to complain to the driver, I was slowly losing my grip on reality. I felt like I was watching a movie, but unlike horror movies I had seen in the past, this was real and happening to me. My hands curled into fists and I clung to the sanity that was left in me. The car was moving, but I was too far gone to guess where we were headed. Everything was fuzzy around the edges, and right before I passed out, I heard the dark voice of Jonathan Crane.

He chuckled. "Sleep..."