Nightmares Of The Bat

A tale from inside Bruce's head written through the mind-reading explorations of the green that is Swamp Thing

Do you remember that Beatles song, Mr. Mxyzptlk? "Strawberry Fields Forever?" Nothing is real, and nothing to get hung about. If nothing is real…and I suppose they say these are all imaginary stories. Where do we live, Mr. Mxyzptlk? Gotham City? The fifth dimension? I hardly know anymore. Not after…not after my death. Death. No, just a vacation. From myself, as the self-help performers say. But it wasn't. It wasn't at all. It was a vacation into myself. I'd been taking a vacation from myself, up until the Crisis. Diana…she had her crisis. But not Clark. Never Clark. I wonder, as these mornings pass, if my head is real, or a dream. A dream like Strawberry Fields. After my adventures, as I lay down in my mansion surrounded by paintings and statues of my father, I see him. I've seen all manner of beasts when I leave the manor. Criminals, yes, but also those you rarely see outside of science fiction or fantasy stories. Real aliens. Real monsters. Some benign, yes, several true allies. But I've never seen anything like him. His powers seem limitless. He seems like a man. Like he was once a man. Not…not like a Green Lantern, not one of a group, not someone who has been selected for a specific purpose. Just a man, alone in my head, out to kill me. He chest bursts with the souls of children and he mocks me saying my soul remains that of a child, has been that of a child since that night outside the Monarch…that he wants to add my childish soul to his collection. That he and I are both creatures of the night, that we are Halloween costumes in living form. But he…he isn't in living form. I don't mean… I don't mean like Boston, but this is a dead man. But he lives again. Whenever I fall asleep…he lives again.

Jason never understood. Jason never understood there is a mission outside of himself. Some nights I become unsure if whether Jason knew there was a place called Outside Of Himself. But when the days come and I disappear to that dark place called Inside Of Myself, Jason haunts me. Jason…did I ever truly wish to control him? Could I? Could he be controlled? The need…that need for the maternal. That's what drove Jason.

Your Jason?

My Jason.

Mine too.

Yes?

The need for the maternal.

What of it?

It drove both our Jasons, it would seem.

And neither of them understood. It isn't just about wanting a hug from Mommy. This is bigger than us. Bigger than Mommy. Bigger than you, Bruce.

I'm not Bruce.

I know. I know, Bruce is dead. So am I. But…something else lives, Bruce. Fear.

I became a hero. I became a hero to avenge my parents.

Avenge? You don't know vengeance, Bruce. Vengeance comes of taking back what you lost. Can you bring your parents back?

No. But I can bring justice to an unjust world.

Hahahahahahahahahaha. That isn't vengeance. That's a child's game. You are a child, Bruce. You are among my children now. Come to Freddy.

Part 2: The nightmare grows outside the head of Bruce, within the shared head of those who have read comic books and viewed films, and those who live them in their own dreams.

At the beginning of the true beginning of our tale, true believer, we stand next to the beautiful and misleadingly peaceful Crystal Lake. In our immediate line of vision stands a man in a red suit and a red domino mask. He smiles the smile of the vindicated. The world has wronged him for far too long and tonight he shall make it right despite his relative lack of might when compared to those whom he must smite. He is Jason. The seeker of maternal love. The seeker of peace and fulfillment at any cost. The one he is here to meet is also Jason. Unlike the Jason standing in front of us, though, he once knew his mother. He once shared his mother with other children. She cooked for them. Like a mother does. He shared his mother's food with the children whose negligence killed him. Their negligence grew from the seed of their pubescent need to fornicate, which they placed above their need to care for Jason. The Jason we've not seen yet. He's under the lake. The Jason we do see, you see, he was neglected as well. But not for fornication. For another strange mission, one intended to preserve life rather than run the risk of creating it. But, all the same, both our Jasons have felt abandoned and neglected. And they will not be ignored. Not any longer.

In our next scene, we find our other Jason rising from the lake and standing before our first Jason. They shall, for a time, for the time of our story, at the very least, shall serve as each other's mothers. Feeding, caring for and, more than any of this, protecting each other from an unjust world.

As Bruce sleeps and sees the visions in his head of a burned man's prune like face (quite the opposite of a sugar plum, a dried, bland plum. Scary, too, so, like a prune, it makes you shit yourself) the face spits forward a voice much like the grinding glass of his own voice and the one taken, in some way, by his Martian companion, one day a bartender, one day an example of a villain's might. Green too, so…hopeful in his way, as hopeful as the one from a green planet whose name is built from the symbol on his chest, which in his culture means hope but to us is merely the eighteenth letter of our alphabet and the beginning of the most obvious and positive superlative. But superlatives aside, this once human superlative laxative now stands before Bruce, a living prune that signals his doom. It's his doomsday as well as his Doomsday, both the end of his time and the end of his heroism. But the end of his time, following this line, exists only in his mind. He must have might, the might of a Bat-Mite. Control. Change. This is his dream, not the streets. He can controls this. Bruce…what Bruce has become is Fear. A stronger, more honorable Fear. Not an evil Fear, as what stands before him. Fear fears not fear. And so the evil disappears as a single tear.