Some things just can't be explained. The broken mirrors, the loud screams, the awful nightmares… all of this wasn't uncommon to her. She would toss and turn vigorously all night long until she woke up in a panic frenzy; palms sweating and chest tight from the absolute terror that was clearly etched into her pained features. Bolting straight up in her plush, twin size bed, Paige would gasp heavily as if she hadn't taken a breath in years; hands fumbling to pull the blankets off her cold, damp body.

This was the fourth time in the last two days that she had been in such a state. Every nightmare she had was vividly painted with her own crimson blood and high pitched screams. It all felt so real, as if she had actually had her face smashed into a mirror by some man she did not remember or know. Or that she had been attacked by a woman in white that sliced at her until there was nothing left but bone.

Each one yielded the same result: Wake up screaming in a cold sweat, sit up, breath for 10 minutes, and go back to sleep. She knew not the cause, but what she did know was that she couldn't handle it much longer. With school rapidly approaching, and her major already causing her enough stress as it is, she would get no sleep whatsoever if it kept up like this.

She'd tried therapy, psychoactive drugs, and every relaxation technique there was known to man, and yet the nightmares persist. With a groan and a rub of her eyes, Paige swung her pale legs off the side of the bed and reached for the little bedside table lamp. Having illuminated enough of the small room for her to walk in, she drug herself over to the oakwood desk across the room where her laptop sat. Paige pulled the sleek top up and started it up with little effort despite her groggy state. Once the computer's desktop loaded, she peered to the lower right to check the time. 6:42 AM.

"Great.." she mumbled groggily as she rubbed her eyes. "No point in going back to sleep. Stupid insomnia, stupid fucking nightmares.."

She then clicked on Google Chrome and pulled up the bookmark for the Gotham newspaper mediocre website. Though she could barely call it news, the paper typically kept their site updated with what was going on around Gotham; most of it of course having to deal with one of it's many rogues. Riddler, Joker, Two-Face, Clayface, Killer Croc, Mad Hatter… You name it, they had been a headline at one point or another.

As the page loaded, her soft green eyes fluttered across the brightly lit screen to scan for anything that might catch her eye and be worth reading. Maybe it would calm her down. Bruce Wayne donated a lump sum of money to some misbegotten charity for the second time this month, boring. Commissioner Gordon announced as Gotham's outstanding citizen of the year, uninspiring. She scrolled and scrolled until the term "scarecrow" appeared in a breaking news tagline.

With a blank, yet somewhat questioning stare, she clicked the link and began to read the breaking news article

SCARECROW ESCAPES ARKHAM FOR THE SECOND TIME

By: Lauren Highcroft

DOWNTOWN GOTHAM- It appears that Jonathan Crane, also known as the Scarecrow, has escaped from Arkham Asylum for the second time after being sentenced to 10 years last month on 2 counts of attempted murder by inhumane methods. Not much is known how or why he has chosen now to escape, but Commissioner Gordon has this to say for the citizens of Gotham: "Don't take the law into your own hands. If you see any sign of Jonathan Crane, please contact the GCPD and we will dispatch immediately. Stay safe and be cautious." We will have more on the story as the information is given.

For a moment, all she did was blink and stare at the name Jonathan Crane.

Jonathan Crane… Why is that so familiar to me?

She'd heard the name before of that she was certain, but couldn't remember exactly where. It seems like someone recently was talking about him outside of his recent criminal allegations. What were they talking about? After a few moments of scathing her brain for an answer, she pulled up another tab and put his name to the Google test.

The first to pop up was a profile of the Scarecrow, provided by tabloid sources that fed off the notion that Batman actually gave two shits about what they had to say about the lunatics they seemingly had information on. Not surprising.

The second was an article about Jonathan Crane, ex-professor of Gotham University. Her university.

Skimming through the article, she learned that Jonathan Crane had been a prominent professor of psychology at one point in his life and taught numerous courses on the subject for years at Gotham University. He was, however, terminated when he took his lessons on perception of fear a little too far by firing a gun in the lecture hall, scaring most of his students shitless. Or at least she assumed that's what happened. Scared them enough to complain, that's for sure. Dr. Crane was terminated the next day and rumor has it that he was so angry that he moved to exact his revenge on the university itself as the Scarecrow.

So he had some sort of temper tantrum? Is that it?

"What else have ya got Johnny-boy…" she said as she continued to scroll through the expansive article curiously.

Towards the end it linked to various other stories on the Gotham's newspaper archives that told of numerous accounts of him robbing places, killing civilians, and all while using what we've come to understand as "fear toxin." One particular piece read that "people who survived a Scarecrow attack were known to develop severe signs of paranoia, anxiety, and PTSD that were often caused by the hallucinogenic state they were put in thanks to the fear toxin's compound."

So he's a chemist too? Man, he's just all over the place isn't he?

This fear toxin caused those who came in contact with it to experience high levels of stress and terror that could never be replicated in real world situations. It's often thought that hallucinations produced by the compound vary from person to person, depending on what they fear most such as snakes, spiders, bats, or even death. It, quite bluntly, could "scare someone to death" if they were exposed for too long, and many had found that out the hard way.

But how?

After what seemed like hours of reading and scrolling, Paige glanced down at the clock once more. 9:35 AM. She had spent the last 3 hours gathering an information she could about the infamous Scarecrow and the good Dr. Crane and jotted down some notes on a spare pad of paper she had kept in the desk drawer to the right. If this man could manipulate fear in such a way that it gave people heart attacks, perhaps he knew a thing or two about what was causing her stream of night terrors? It was a long shot, but what did she have to lose in all honesty? Plus, it would make for a good story later for her journalism class to have a go at.

She was going to find Jonathan Crane. She had to. It was the only option she had left.