Prolog

"Aren't these conditions a bit… inhuman?" Thomas looked around at the cages. The people inside of them had little-to-no clothing and many writhed against the bars. "They are people after all."

"They are not. They are animals that have been infected by Satan himself."

"Then call in a priest! These conditions are deplorable!"

"Please Baron, we appreciate the private funding you provide, but leave the medicine to those who are qualified!"

"Of course Doctor Crane." Thomas looked sadly at the poor souls trapped in the asylum. He widened his eyes. Right at the end of the row was a boy no older than his own son. The boy wasn't like the others; he didn't pull at the bars or scream. Instead he sat, half naked, in the center of the cage, arranging pebbles. "What is that boy doing in here?"

Crane looked over his shoulder to where Thomas was pointing. "Ah yes, Edward. He has a very strange illness. He can't handle grime or imperfections. He just sits there cleaning his own cage."

"If he can't stand dirt than surly this is the worst place to put him Doctor."

"He is as mad as any of the others."

"He is a boy. He is the same age as Bruce!"

"And my own son Lord Wayne, surely you see why he can't interact with normal children like our own."

"He should be in an orphanage. Not a lunatic asylum!"

"BARON, perhaps it is time you leave." Crane was getting angry now, why should some nobleman tell him how to run his own madhouse?

Wayne ignored the doctor and walked straight up to the boy. "Hello there young man. Are you okay in there? "The boy looked up at Wayne through the bars. He coughed and began to speak in the softest, sweetest voice Thomas had ever heard.

"Would you like to hear a riddle?"

"Not this again!" Crane cried, "This boy has a fascination with double meanings and trickery through words, traits possessed by any demon worth his sulfur! If any boy holds a candle to the devil it's this one."

Thomas glared at the doctor. "I'd love to hear a riddle young man."

The boy gazed gleefully up at Thomas. "He who makes it, has no need of it. He who buys it, has no use for it. He who uses it can neither see nor feel it. What is it?"

Thomas looked down at the child as the child stared up hopefully. Thomas laughed. "I give up, what is it?"

The boy suddenly got very serious and looked the Baron in the eyes. "It's a coffin." Wayne's smile faded and he left the sanitarium. Some things shouldn't see the light of day.

That night, to get his mind off the horrible place he had spent the day Lord Wayne took his wife and son to the theater. As they left a man in very thin clothing approached them. "Are you the Baron Wayne?" The man asked.

"Yes…" Thomas gestured to Martha to take Bruce out of there. He had spent enough time with lunatics that day to recognize the way the man shook. The man looked pitifully at Thomas. "Who are you?"

"My name… Joseph… Joseph Chill." The man looked at Thomas. The stared at him with his little beady black eyes and whispered, "I'm sorry, I have to." Then the dagger went through Thomas' coat and into his chest. Martha ran to help her husband. "NO!" yelled Chill, and he pulled the dagger from Thomas and plunged it into Martha. He looked at poor Bruce, who had witnessed the whole thing. "I'm sorry kid, Scarecrow… to much interference. So much fear." With those last words Chill rammed the dagger into his own chest and fell atop the Waynes.

Bruce looked at the scene with horror for a half hour before the police arrived on the scene. A young police officer pulled Bruce aside and draped a blanket around his shoulders. "I know this doesn't mean much coming from a random Blue Bottle kid, but everything is going to be okay. You're plenty old to keep your estate and I'm going to make sure nothing happens to you. Got that kid? You just rely on old Left Tennant Gordan."