Damnit, she thought. This was the last time. The last fucking time.
She'd just walked in on Jeff with another girl. Third time this month, for Christ's sake. He said he'd stop, he'd said he was sorry. She didn't know why believed him. He never told the truth. Fucking Geoffrey. Those goddamn eyes, she thought. They're what always did it, his goddamn eyes. She was a sucker for a guy with blue eyes, and he had some of the prettiest she'd ever laid eyes on.
Shut up, she told herself. Shut up! You can't start thinking about the bastard's eyes again. The inconsiderate scumbag of a bastard. Third girl in four weeks. She was not going to crawl back to him this time, oh no, she was going to put her foot down. Geoffrey Edwards would never see her again after tomorrow.
Her horrible little black shoes, high-heels, tapped annoyingly on the ground each quick step she took. She hated them. The way they made her feel, the way they sounded. But she wore them just for Jeff. They were going to go somewhere nice that night, he promised. But something more important must have come up, huh?
"Bastard," she muttered to herself, arms crossed against her chest, eyes looking at the cold, wet asphalt below her.
She was walking hurriedly, angrily, down a dark alleyway in Gotham City, just trying to clear her head. Get things straightened out in her mind, figure out how to tell Jeff it was over without tearing his pretty little throat out.
"But why?" She asked herself. "Why not rip it right out? Little fucker deserves it for what he did. What he's doing. I bet you he's still in there with the girl. If he's not here looking for me he's still enjoying himself with that fucking slut…" He'd seen her walk in on him, of course. He panicked and started pleading for her to forgive him, and she just walked out. "He's still with her."
She could hear the faint sound of a police siren as she walked down the alley. Hell, you could always hear the faint sound of a police siren, any night in Gotham City. The place was so riddled, so infested with crime that she'd rather live anywhere than here. Out in fucking Bumpkin Town, Alabama. She couldn't care less, as long as it wasn't Gotham.
But Jeff had a good job in Gotham. They were gonna get married next month, he'd get a promotion real soon, and everything would be fine. Soon she'd stop worrying about all the crime going around and start to realize Gotham wasn't so bad after all. Or, that's what he told her. That's what that little dipshit had told her. But why should she ever listen to him? One good reason, one fucking good reason and she'd do it. But there was none. No reason at all.
She and Geoffrey were over, and there was nothing he could do about it.
"What now?" She asked the night sky, looking up to stare at its darkness, its emptiness. Not a star to be seen up there, but dark clouds aplenty and, as usual, the Bat Signal. The Bat Signal was always up there, every night. That Batman never got a rest, there was always crime to be stopped. Every goddamned night.
"God, what am I going to do?" She asked. "I can't live on my own. Not in Gotham, not with my dead-end job. What am I going to do? God, why can't you just make it stop?"
Ear-splitting laughter shot out from… From somewhere. High-pitched, shrieking laughter. More of a cackle, really. Maniacal laughter. Supervillain sort of laughter.
"W-who is it?" She cried out, startled and horrified. All kinds of freaks in Gotham City, and she has to hear the one that laughs like that? Can't be just a murderer with a laugh like that. Rapist? "Come out, y-you prick! S-show yourself!" She couldn't keep her cool under pressure, she never could.
"You make me laugh, little girl! You make me la-aaugh!" called a voice. A high-pitched, terrible voice. Eerie as all hell.
"Laugh? I'll give you a reason to laugh, you m-motherfu-"
"You! You of all people are trying to scare me? Trying to scare ME?" came the response. "Oh, little girl, you're too much. You think that you, with your pathetic big-city 'problems', your worthless little life and your silver, silver tongue can scare me?"
She didn't know what to say. Words started to come out, but they stopped and she just hopped in a sort of assertive way.
"Of course, you don't know who I AM! You don't know this voice! You haven't heard recordings. Nobody's been ALIVE enough to record my melodious voice. Nobody's been SANE enough. No pathetic, insolent, dim-wittedworm has been able to stop screaming for five seconds, wipe away the tears and push the RECORD button.
And do you know WHY, little girl? That's because when you meet the Master of Fear, the LORD of Anguish, you very own deepest, darkest fear… When you meet him, you finally realize that your 'problems' are nothing. You finally-"
It took her long enough, but the girl finally got enough sense in her to turn tail and flee. And so she did. Arms crossed still, she turned around and she ran and she ran back the way she came from.
Unfortunately, she never bothered to find out where the voice was coming from and, as she ran, she bumped straight into him. Straight into IT.
Pretty well over six feet tall, she figured (or would have figured, if she could form a coherent thought at the time), long arms and longer lands, gangly as gangly can be and wearing, as it turns out, a Halloween costume. Or, it must've been a Halloween costume.
This straight-backed, tall, thin figure was dressed head-to-toe in tight, tattered rags, all in autumn colors. A brownish green sort of tunic, topped with a big, patched-up brown shawl, and slightly tight green raggedy pants with curly-toed brown boots below them. For a belt it wore a large rope that was just tied around its waist, and its hands were covered by tight green gloves with pointed fingertips.
Its face was obscured by a tight mask the color of straw, with holes the shape of angry eyes, and another hole, covered in random stitches, for a mouth. To top it all off, a huge, wide-brimmed brown hat sat on its head. The hat had to be at least a foot tall, its tip reminiscent of a sagged witch's hat.
It might have seemed funny if it wasn't laughing uncontrollably and keeping a tight hold on the sleeve of her left arm, keeping her from running away, despite her best efforts.
"I'm sorry, where was I? Master of Fear, Lord of Anguish… Hmm… Ah yes, yes. THE SCARECROW."
The woman gasped, and a smile crossed The Scarecrow's masked face. It was him! The one from the papers. The serial murderer and robber, who was said to always leave his victims completely terrified before they died. He'd been caught by Batman once or twice, only to escape out of sheer luck.
"Heard of me? I'd hope so. I'm really trying to uphold a sort of reputation, you know. It's not easy to keep invoking fear in the hearts of every person I keep coming across and stay in character." He let the girl's sleeve go and she pulled away angrily, but then didn't move an inch. He slipped one of his gloved hands up the sleeve of his other arm and pulled out a little vial, which he held up proudly before his eyes.
"Do you see this? This tiny little glass container? It's quite brilliant, if I do say so myself. All this gas confined into such a tiny little space. Very convenient." He crushed the vial in his hand and let the remaining shards of glass fall to the ground. Almost immediately, a large, thin cloud of green gas started floating up from the ground, and the woman yelped.
She turned to run, not sure of what was going on and not ready to find out, but stopped. The Scarecrow's hands. They were starting to grow, ever so slowly. She took two steps backwards but couldn't keep her eyes off of his growing hands. The gloves soon ripped and long, scaly green fingers were formed right in front of her eyes, tipped with horrible black claws.
"G-get away from me, you freak!" She cried, but she still didn't move. "Get away! Leave me alone, you mutant, or I'll…" All of a sudden, the huge lizard hands clamped onto her cheeks and the slimy crocodile's snout moved in closer. She started screaming the classic young woman's scream. She had nothing else to do.
The terrible hands tightened their grip, the huge maw moved in to an inch away from her face.
And then there was no more face, and no more worries. No more Geoffrey sleeping around, no more crime-ridden Gotham City with its black, black nights and its wet streets filled with potholes. No more sitting on the fence between poverty and financial security.
No more anything, except for a very faint sliver of a voice which said, ever so calmly, "You're welcome."
Or, she swore it did.