"Please," Edward whimpered. "Please don't hurt me, daddy!" he called out childishly. He was a little kid again: weak, defenseless, scared. He pushed back as hard as he could into the corner of the black room, where there was a small puddle of bright, yet somehow shadowy, light. Edward's father slowly advanced, his impossibly large and looming body and shabby, tattered clothing visible in the oddly shadowy light, his face shrouded in nearly tangible darkness. "NO!" he shrieked as his father raised his hand. Edward covered his head with his arms and closed his eyes, wrenching them shut tight in anticipation for the impact. When no blow came, he opened his eyes and looked through the gap in between his arms timidly. Edward's father had raised his hand to remove something from his head: a burlap sack, which he tossed on the ground. Edward -ever curious- inched forward and snatched it up. Not a sack, he realized as he turned it over in his hands. A mask. Uneven eye holes with stitches sewing them mostly shut, a lopsided mouth with what appeared to be a filter, like for a gas mask. Edward looked back at his father questioningly, and his father leaned down so Edward could at last see his face. But it wasn't the face of his father, it was the face of Dr. Jonathan Crane. He was grinning toothily, his normally blank eyes alight with joy and excitement.
"Poor little Eddie," Scarecrow crooned. His usually creepy and toneless voice was replaced by one even more eerie with emotion and a faint echo. "Scared of your daddy?" he cackled. Crane circled around the young Eddie like an emaciated shark.
Edward whimpered. Under normal circumstances, Crane would be no more intimidating than a baby rabbit. He was creepy, yes, but intimidating, no. Panic crowded Edward's normally collected and focused thoughts. He hated the feeling. Scarecrow must have drugged him. He began to hyperventilate, thinking of everything that could go wrong. What if he had an allergic reaction to the toxin? Or what if he was actually dead and this was someone's idea of hell? Each thought was more irrational and less sane than the last. The tiny amounts of logic left in his head attempted to tell the rest of his panicked brain that this was an illusion, it wasn't real, he was making it up himself as he went along, but the majority ruled and his mind refused to listen; the puny and shriveling logic and reasoning curled up into a ball in the inaccessible regions of his brain. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a shaky and quiet squeak, and this caused Scarecrow to roar with laughter again.
"Looks like little Eddie is scared!" he exclaimed. "Good." Crane's face briefly flashed to that of Edward's father and then back. Edward felt himself grow older, but the age did not make him wise. He still had the shattered mind of a child going through intense emotional trauma. The room brightened, elongated, changed. It had too-white, too-clean walls with an irritatingly harsh fluorescent glow and dirty windows. After a moment, he realized where he was.
"No! Not back here! Never again!" he cried out, his voice high and tense with terror. It was as if his mind was the high 'E' string on a guitar that was tuned too tight and too hard of a strum would snap it in half and render it useless. He was on the verge of tears as the walls tightened around him like a cell. And that's where he was; His cell in Arkham Asylum. He pounded his fists on the walls. The walls had been repainted, but the faint outlines of riddles and question marks were still there. You couldn't wash out blood that easily. He noticed the faint stains were fading before his eyes. He was fading and being forgotten. "Let me out!" he yelled, his tears of terror breaching the brims of his eyelids. "Let me out! Please! I don't belong here!" he screamed. He was openly sobbing now.
Scarecrow clicked his tongue as he appeared on the other side of the door. His mask was back on and that sent a jolt through Eddie. Crane's arms were crossed over his chest, as if he were impatient. No, Edward realized. He's taunting me. He grew angry for a moment before Scarecrow said, "Eddie, you know if you yell, they will come and make you be quiet." Edward's eyes widened as he saw two guards form on either side of Scarecrow. One was holding a billy-club and the other was cracking his knuckles. Edward covered his mouth and backed up, tripping over the cot he slept on as a patient here. He hit the back of his head against the wall and his eyes closed.
When he opened his eyes, he was in a room reminiscent of Arkham. The room was white, the windows weren't clean, the fluorescent lights hurt his eyes, but he realized it was a hospital, not Arkham. He was looking at himself. Edward believed it to be a mirror until he realized that the body below him wasn't moving like he himself was. He watched himself lying on a hospital bed, hooked up to all sorts of machines. Heart monitor, IV, a device that forced him to breathe, a device that fed him intravenously, others of that nature. Like he was struck by lightning, it hit him how much he looked like his father. He never noticed it when he was looking at himself in the mirror. Maybe it was there before and he just didn't notice it, or maybe it was the drugs playing tricks on him. A shudder went down his back that he couldn't quite explain. "Why am I scared of this?" he asked in a small voice, knowing he would dread the answer.
"Exhibit A," Scarecrow chimed as he materialized next to the bed ridden Edward. "One brain-dead, comatose, useless and alone Edward Nygma." He said, poking the lifeless but living man's cheek with each word. Even though Crane had touched to other Edward's face, the "real" Eddie felt the roughness of the fabric and the coolness of Crane's fingers beneath the gloves he was wearing on his own. Edward winced as he felt his already elevated heart rate skip a beat.
"Brain-dead?" he repeated in the form of a question, and then answering himself, "Brain-dead." He said flatly. His intelligence was the only this he had, the only thing he truly held dear.
"Oh, and this," Scarecrow said as an afterthought. He snapped his fingers and Edward was looking at himself again, this time actually into a mirror. A frightened but still handsome young man with red hair and green-grey eyes looked back at him fearfully with tear streaks on his cheeks and red, worried, distrustful eyes. Then, the image began to warp and contort violently. Edward closed his eyes, not wanting to see, but in the end he opened them anyway and he immediately wished he hadn't. The nose was a pig's snout, the teeth were largely overgrown and razor sharp, slicing up Edward's lips, cheeks, and gums every time he opened and closed his mouth. The cheekbones were sharply and unevenly jutting, rather than rounding attractively. The only things that were the same were the eyes, distinctive and horrified. He tasted blood in his mouth from his razor blade teeth and realized he had become the monster in the mirror. The monster shed a tear, and it burned his skin like acid.
"Such a shame," Crane's disembodied voice echoed and floated around him like a schizophrenic's nightmare. "You had such a pretty face." He cackled and the voice faded away to nothing, leaving Edward, the Monster, alone with the mirror, which he futilely attempted to smash. He sunk to the floor. All the terror from this ordeal slammed into him all at once like a tidal wave and he began screaming. He pushed his fists against both of his temples, and tears ran down his face, melting and burning the flesh. His terrified screams mingled dissonantly with Scarecrow's hysterical shrieking laughter. Edward felt that the fatal strum on the over tuned guitar that was his mind was coming. Edward uttered one final wail of despair before everything began to fade, and in the last instant before he blacked out, he hoped he was dying.