(A/N):Inspired by a passage in the Crime Noir novel, In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes and supported by the prompt "Fear", #38 on the fourth prompt table of Livejournal's 50scenes community. Every passage in here describes a separate person. Jonathan Crane, Joker, Commissioner Gordon, Bruce Wayne, Pamela, and Harley are the people I chose to write about. Can you guess what person each paragraph corresponds to?
bête noire literally means "black beast" and has come to stand for "a person or thing especially disliked or dreaded; bane; bugbear."
Disclaimer: I don't own anything recognizable to Warner Bros, DC, or Christopher Nolan's Batman franchise. I bet the characters therein are relieved of that.
Fear wasn't a trepidation of steel as eyes watched the setting sun; fear wasn't the technical click of numbers winding down on the surface of a group of barrels all sitting together and the numbers read that escape was attainable if you could get out in three minutes. Fear was the moment when your eyes met, a cruel, clawed hand that pierced your abdomen bypassing organs, leaving an icy reminder all the while, to your heart; it gripped that organ painfully without a sign of ever letting go and it was there even after your eyes left one another because you never knew if you'd see them again, and three minutes suddenly felt like an eternity. Fear was a coarse strip of nails that first wound around your feet, tying them painfully together and then, like a snake swung up and bound your arms in the same fashion. Its last target was the skin of your neck and you'd give little more than a gasp. Sometimes you felt them upon you, eyes dark as a tree's bark at midnight. The nails would tease your lips, threaten to silence and mar you. You wanted to stop breathing, wanted to cry because every second was too long and like a gnarled, rotted rose it invaded your brain: doubt that perhaps they never cared, and you'd just die, little more than a memory to them. They wouldn't even notice and your final moments would a desperate but silent cry...What have I done?! What have I done...Then silence, forever, ceaseless...