Chemical Lingo
All day long you are in limbo
Somewhere else out of your mind
Do you understand my lingo?
Changing meanings all the time
Do you speak my chemical lingo?
Trains and cars and chemicals exploding at night
Time to be more radical when they all collide
Looking for a new attraction
Fatal roller coaster ride
Gravitational reaction
Every time when we collide
Do you speak my chemical Lingo?
Trains and cars and chemicals exploding at night
Time to be more cynical if you don't feel right
Do you speak my chemical lingo?
Do you speak my chemical lingo?
Trains and cars and chemicals exploding at night
Time to be more radical when they all collide
Trains and cars and chemicals exploding at night
Time to be more cynical if you don't…
If you don't....
If you don't feel right.
Chemical Lingo by Lunascape
*****
Observation is the key. It is the cornerstone of scientific progress.
The doctor shifted in his chair, crossing his legs as he adjusted the notebook in his lap. He steepled his fingers under his chin and regarded his subject with clinical detachment. The young blonde woman he had taken into his care sat in silence watching the evening news. Even in this brightly lit room, the flickering light from the television gave her skin a bluish tint. Her mouth was slightly agape and drool hung from her lower lip as she stared in near catatonic awe while Mike Engel droned on in his perfect non-regional dialect.
Crane was starting to feel bored. He chided himself mentally, reminding himself that indifference would cause him to miss something. It was important to have patience.
Something was funny about that: a doctor needing patience. Oh, he had patients, all right, a whole hospital full held up in an abandoned building on the island known as the narrows. Crane stifled a chuckle, even as he felt the corner of his lips, twist into a smirk.
He brought his attention back to his subject. She looked unreceptive, lulled into a near absolute state of sedation… and yet, Crane observed the subtle way her white knuckled hands clutched desperately at the arms of the lawn chain to which she was strapped.
"You see him again, don't you?" Crane ventured, keeping his tone neutral.
A slight tremor through her slender frame was all that gave away the fact that she had stiffened at the sound of his voice. That response was answer enough and Crane jotted it down, continuing.
"I can't help you if you don't speak with me. If one were to take your silence as passive-aggressive behavior then one would also have to conclude that you lay some sort of blame on the person you exhibit this behavior against. Are you upset with me?"
She did not answer.
"What you have to understand," he started, removing his glasses. People seemed more at ease when he wasn't wearing them. Perhaps it made him seem less professional and more casual. He stored the thought for later scrutiny, continuing with his explanation, "is that this is not something being done to you. I'm right here by your side going through the same experiment that you are."
She turned her head to face him. Her eyes were wide and glassy with unshed tears. Her lips quivered as she struggled to speak without crying. Crane made sure that the spike of ecstatic joy he felt was well hidden behind his professional mask. She was afraid.
"…you drugged me," came her slurred whisper.
Uncrossing his legs, Crane slowly leaned forward even as she tried in vain to flinch away. He gently laid his hand over hers, "I already explained this. I've administered a psychopharmacological treatment. I have mixed a compound of my own creation, a fear toxin if you will, with Lysergic Acid Diethylamide. Experimental, I know, but if this has the appropriate effects on the 5-HT2A receptors in your brain you could be cured."
She stared at him, mutely though her lips moved almost imperceptibly in some sort of mantra. Crane smiled in what he considered a comforting way and replaced his glasses. Observation is the key. A lesser doctor would have missed that.
"The theory is that this treatment will open up the pathways to your subconscious and all the psycho-emotional monsters that are hiding there so that we can confront them." He closed his fingers around her wrist, staring at his wristwatch as he measured her rapid heart rate.
"And, as I have said," he continued, pulling a pen light from his pocket and shining it into her dilated pupils, "I am going through this with you. It's not many doctors that would use themselves as a control group for their treatments."
He purposely neglected to mention that the Batman had forced a concentrated dose of the fear toxin upon him and that event is what made him the perfect subject for a control group. He could observe the long term effects of the toxin upon himself versus how his toxin affected someone when mixed with the LSD-25.
Crane gave a slight shake to his head, ignoring the dark wings he was convinced fluttered on the peripherals of his vision. The fear toxin had him hallucinating, he rationed to himself, steeling his resolve with the knowledge that it wasn't real. Still, it didn't make the experience any less uncomfortable. Gathering his notebook, he began jotting down her physical reactions along with his own. Data is gathered from measurement and observation. It is the first step in making any sort of progress. Humans lie or forget or repress but there is a voice of truth that they can't deny. The physical reactions that they can't control, those speak to him more clearly than any patient could dare to verbalize.
The girl had resumed staring straight ahead of her, uncooperative. If she wouldn't discuss her experience on this medication then they would proceed to stage two. Crane couldn't deny that he was actually quite looking forward to it. The fear was a rush, a tool that his mind had granted him the power to use at his will. It showed you what a person was beneath the superficial.
He stood, moving toward the light switch on the far wall and the small table there. He girl began to whimper in a Pavlovian response. She knew what would happen before he even pulled the mask out of his pocket. He flipped the switch and the darkness blanketed everything that wasn't in the shelter of the television's protective light.
"No, no, no…" She chanted, shaking her head as he pulled the mask over his. He opened a case that lay on the table and gathered the needles and tubes he would need to collect a blood sample, ignoring the quiet sobs from behind him. She may not have wanted to talk to the doctor but her blood would converse with the Scarecrow in a chemical lingo.
He turned, not at all startled by the shriek of terror that issued forth from the girl. She struggled with the straps that bound her, making him grateful that he'd had the foresight to have the chair bolted down.
"Now," Scarecrow growled menacingly as he approached her, needle in hand, "tell me what you see."
She sobbed louder, closing her eyes tightly, "Mama, mama please… I'm so sorry…"
Scarecrow grabbed her chin in one hand, forcing her to face her fear, "What do you see?"
"Mama, please… The Scarecrow is going to get me! The Scarecrow!"
*****
Crane exited the room, closing the door gently so as not to further disturb the patient within. One of his assistants hand him a towel and, nodding in thanks, Crane began to wipe the blood from his hands. He sighed as he noticed the blood which had splattered his suit.
This session had been rough for him, rough but productive. He now knew approximately how his compound reacted with several recreational drugs and could proceed confidently with the next stage of his operation: procurement of funds. Still, the girl had managed to stir up memories in him that he would rather have stayed repressed.
Crane reasoned that the toxin is what brought these thoughts to the forefront and not the girl's screaming hysterical pleas.
Pacing in the great expanse of the greenhouse, Jonathan waited. They would come soon.
"You wicked, evil boy!" She had shouted, her arthritic finger pointing at him accusingly "Change into your suit and wait for me in the chapel."
He had done as his great-grandmother asked. Not having any other choice. If he refused or rebelled further she might throw him out on the streets. He lived in Gotham after all and he saw on a daily basis what became of the poor destitute souls that called the streets and back alleys home, begging or whoring for money or food. No, he had nowhere else, no one else, to go to.
So he continued pacing, his eyes occasionally glancing towards the gaping hole in the roof for a flicker of black wings.
He didn't beg; screaming for her to unlock the door in abject terror of the inevitable. No longer did he indulge in his pathetic pleading with the insane old witch as he had in the beginning because he knew it was pointless. She would not release him until the crows had dealt her punishment.
The old woman spent hours locked away in the mansions dilapidated library studying the hunger pheromones of wild fowl. Jonathan had spied her one night as she mixed a batch of herbs and chemicals into a pot with some dead rats and poured the disgusting mixture on the very suit he wore now.
A faint fluttering overhead caught Jonathan's attention and he froze, his eyes wide as the murder approached. The flock of black birds came into view and began to circle. Soon escape would give way to panic, sensation to sharp pecking, and reason to total and absolute fear.
Crane shook the vestiges of memory from his mind, now was not the time to indulge in unpleasant recollections. Later perhaps, when he was more collected and could analyze the experiences as they surfaced from his unconscious he would let them come unbidden. Until then, he would avoid his texts on Freud.
"Everything okay, doc?"
Crane took a breath to collect himself before focusing his attention on the speaker. It was Arik, a 35 year old schizophrenic. The man's disease was controllable with medication and he was ever present by Crane's side, mostly because on the night that they escaped from Arkham he had believed Crane to be one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Crane failed to dissuade him no matter what arguments he used but Arik had full use of his faculties and was invariably useful.
His patients had begun to see him in these terms, or maybe they always had but the doctor/patient relationship was so broken down that he could see it more clearly, from within as opposed to the other side of a cell.
There was Virginia who was convinced that he was the ghost of her dead son sent to guide her, Lexi the sex addict who screeched horribly if he was alone in a room with her because she reminded him of her abusive father, not to mention the group of criminals that had been hiding in Arkham to escape a jail sentence and now looked to Crane to protect them from the lunatics.
Crane fulfilled all these archetypes and more besides. The toxin had created a strange bond that made the scarecrow whatever these people needed him to be. They feared. Some couldn't leave because they feared the unknown world outside his presence. Some stayed because they thought the scarecrow would destroy them if they didn't. But this was a lesson taught to him long ago by his great grandmother: Fear and Control go hand in hand.
Crane could hear a television still playing the evening news. Mike Engel's voice was the only one to be heard in the stillness as he reported, "But there have been several sightings of a man who fits Crane's description leading an army of what is described as truly disturbed people."
Crane smiled, "That reminds me. We have business to attend to…"
*****
The night was quiet, eerily quiet considering the part of town. This was The Narrows, after all. Children in this part of town went to sleep with the lullaby of police or fire sirens accompanied by shouts and gunfire from random gangs. That is, if they could get to sleep at all knowing that a bunch of escaped Arkham inmates haunted the streets adding to the cacophony of violence.
It was the kind of place that even hardened criminals and made men would give pause before entering, unless they had a good reason and tonight business was the only good reason. That was why Rossi and a select few of Sal Maroni's trusted men were here to strike a bargain with a devil.
"I don't like this, boss."
Rossi didn't face the man who spoke, instead taking a long drag on his cigarette. "You don't have to like it. You have to do what you're paid to do."
"I know, but are we really doing business with this guy? Can we even trust him?"
Rossi turned and grabbed the man by his coat. "You don't like the way Sal does business then you can take it up with him. But right now you keep your mouth shut or I'll shut it for you."
Rossi shoved the man and turned back to facing the alleyway's wide entrance. "He ain't turning us over to the Bat, if that's what you think. The Bat's the reason we have to stay together." Rossi's emphasis on a word as simple as 'we' let all of them know what he really meant: family, made-men, criminals. "So we get the stuff and the Chechen will distribute. Then everybody gets a little less poor."
A sudden sound had all of Rossi's men reaching for their guns. It was a slow grating sound, steadily getting louder. The noise was like metal being dragged across pavement and it was coming towards them. A long shadow appeared cast by the streetlight, skeletal and haunting. The shadow shortened as its owner approached.
A figure stood at the entrance to the alley, dragging behind him a pitchfork which had heralded his arrival with that horrible sound. The creature's head swiveled towards the alley, head lolling sideways as it did, like a grotesque marionette. The movement cast the burlap mask that covered its head into the meager streetlight, making a startling and disturbing contrast with the business suit it wore. It began to slowly turn and approach them.
The realization that this was their contact didn't reassure the men enough to drop their weapons, especially when the sounds of shuffling feet, moans, and random cries came ever closer. A small crowd trailed the lanky figure following at a respectful distance and gazing at him in rapture and awe. Some cowered as they followed as though in fear of some terrible reproach should they stay behind.
"Gentlemen," the figure spoke, his voice low. "I'm sorry to keep you waiting but let me assure you that what I have to offer is worth the wait."
Rossi stepped forward, "It's not my time but Mr. Maroni's that you need to worry about wasting. What is it that you're offering, Crane?"
"It's a special compound of my own design that can be combined with other substances. It increases heart-rate and releases hormones and adrenaline in a heady rush." His voice started to take on a slightly manic tone "Think of it! Combined with something like Ex it would be euphoric and the comedown would feel like exiting a roller-coaster ride."
Rossi tried not to let the excitement show on his face about having what might be the next big thing "What's in it?"
There was an eerily long pause before Crane responded "The biochemical breakdown would be to complex and time consuming to explain. Let me just put it this way: fear. Fear in chemical form. People are always looking for the next big thrill: Base jumping, sky diving, haunted houses…They seek it out because fear is an addictive drug."
"Any side effects we should know about?"
Crane sighed, "Physically; increased heart rate, sweating, minor stomach pains. Nothing too serious, nothing that would kill your clientele anyway."
Rossi tossed his cigarette to the ground and snuffed it out with his Italian leather shoes. "There is one little concern in this venture of ours. A flying, pain-in-the-ass, rodent shaped concern."
Crane visibly stiffened, his hands twisting as they tightened around the handle of the pitchfork. "Chiroptophobia," he answered in hiss.
"What'd you say?" Rossi said, stepping forward but not quite sure if he should take offense.
"It's the clinical term for the fear of bats. I believe that is what you're driving at? If we're discreet this will never trace back to your boss. At worst, a few peddlers get pinched and if they know what's good for their well-being, they won't say a word. We have nothing to fear from the Batman."
At the sound of that last word, a chorus of shrieks arose from the Crane's followers. Some began to tear at their hair or arms, or at each other. Crane turned around with every bit of the speed his lithe form suggested, swinging the pitchfork in a great arc behind him as he did. By the time he was again facing Rossi, the pitchfork had connected with the head of one of his fanatics with a sickening thud and she went down silently. Crane now leaned regally on his pitchfork as if it were a cane. A hush settled over the crowd and a few sobbed quietly but said nothing further.
"Well?"
"We're in." Rossi said. "Someone will contact you about transporting arrangements. "
"Excellent." Crane responded. "Trust me, this compound will take you places."