I think I'm going to have to change the genre to humor/horror.
Thanks to everyone for the reviews. To all those who feared for Joe's safety, I'm sorry to say your fears are about to be realized. And to those of you who were eager, you guys are evil! But I love you anyway. And to Tapidum Lucidum, there will not be now, nor will there ever be, romance in this story. Ever. I'd randomly introduce a Russian dancing bear before I'd introduce romance. I mean no offense, it simply will never happen.
Much to Joe's surprise, the tape was roughly removed from his mouth. It felt like it took a few layers of skin and half a lip with it, but at least he could talk. He doubted if he'd have more than a minute before whatever shit he'd been injected with started to take effect, but that might be just enough time for some choice words with a certain car-jacking scum bag.
"Whatever you're planning to tell me, you won't have time," Crane said.
"Your mother-"
He was consumed by white light. Damn it, the bastard had been right. There wasn't enough time.
It was so bright and intense Joe felt like he was staring into the heart of a nuclear blast without so much as a pair of sunglasses to shade his vision. The walls, already a harsh white, became painfully effulgent. The light grew so bright it swallowed the floor and the ceiling, the table, and lastly, Danielle. He was alone in this almost unbearable brilliance.
Alone, that was, except for the Scarecrow. Of course the light hadn't been able to banish him as it had all other things.
"Where am I?" Joe asked. His voice echoed, as though he had spoken in the middle of a monstrous cavern.
Crane loved it when his fear toxin took people places. Never nice places they wanted to go—not Disneyworld or the Oscars, for instance—but still psychologically interesting places. His inability to look directly into his victims' disturbed minds and see what realm they had hallucinated was sometimes frustrating, but the thrill of trying to decipher their garbled words was worth the ignorance.
"What makes you think you've gone anywhere? Maybe you're still where you were," Crane replied.
"You're a goddamn idiot! This is not where I was! Where's the floor then, huh? Where's that woman? Where's anything?"
"I'm right here, Joe! You're seeing things…or not seeing things. The Scarecrow poisoned you, remember? I'm here and you're right next to me," Danielle shouted.
"I hear her, so where the hell is she?" Joe demanded.
Forgetting about the cabbie for a second, Scarecrow bore down on Danielle. And he was definitely Scarecrow now, Crane pushed rudely to the side. He hated being interrupted, especially while he was doing research and on the very few occasions he managed to have fun.
With strength a man his height and build shouldn't have possessed, the Scarecrow wrenched Danielle from her chair. She was lifted off her feet and roughly shaken. She wasn't exactly a small woman, and she'd never been literally swept off her feet before. It was just a shame that the first man to do it looked like he'd rip her throat out if he had the claws and canines for the job.
"You will have your turn soon enough. Until then, be still and keep your mouth shut!" The Scarecrow said.
"But Joe-"
The Scarecrow brought her close and forced her eyes to meet his. Danielle was like a bird hypnotized by a snake; the danger was obvious, it was slithering straight for her, yet she couldn't so much as twitch a wing. She couldn't move, couldn't look away no matter how lethal his gaze felt. He had her truly transfixed.
"You're concerned for him?"
Danielle forced her mouth to open and produce a single word, "Yes."
"Are you frightened for him?"
"Yes."
"He's going to die, you know, insane and in more fear than you can comprehend. And I'm going to watch and laugh. Then I'm going to start on you. Enjoy the show until it's your turn on the chopping block."
With that, the Scarecrow let go of her shirt and she fell. Unprepared for the sudden drop, Danielle failed to lock her legs in time and landed on her butt. She grunted in pain as her tailbone was knocked up into her thoracic vertebrae.
Her back was never going to forgive her. Even if her masseuse with the magic fingers was Johnny Depp, that wouldn't be enough.
The one good thing about the ache she was quite sure had taken up permanent residence in her spine was that it loosened the hold of fear over her. She wasn't going to get up and engage the Scarecrow in hand to hand combat—especially since she was at a definite disadvantage because of the cuffs—but she wasn't going to be scared silent yet. Joe had saved her skin, and she hadn't done anything of use to him. Besides, if she was damned, didn't it make sense to do something heroic with her remaining time?
"She won't be bothering us again. Now, where were we?"
"You're still in your chair, Joe. I can see you sitting there. Don't listen to him, he's full of-"
The foot that caught her in the chest knocked her flat on her back and bounced her head off the uncarpeted floor. She saw stars and felt immense pain explode throughout her skull. It was as if someone had set a pipe bomb off in there.
"And here I took you for a sensible coward; no, like him, you're an idiot. That's fine, I know how to deal with idiots," the Scarecrow said.
Leaving Danielle dazed on the floor and Joe awash in the white nowhere, the Scarecrow returned to his case of horrors. He had been planning on verbally torturing the cabbie—getting him to believe he truly was alone and he'd die that way—but it looked like the irritating woman needed a lesson. Actions spoke louder than words, so the axiom went, and the Scarecrow knew actions that would make anyone howl.
"No!" Joe suddenly exclaimed. Though he couldn't see the table or the open case that sat upon, he caught the sharp glint of the object the Scarecrow now held.
He was afraid. Her protector, the man who'd allowed himself to be poisoned so she wouldn't be, was truly frightened. That had to be a bad sign.
It was. The Scarecrow was holding a scalpel and smiling affectionately at the blade. Danielle's stomach contracted to roughly the size of a pea. Scalpels were used for only one thing: cutting. Cutting inevitably led to bleeding, and bleeding would lead to her turning into a weak-kneed, pathetic mess.
"For you, or for him?" the Scarecrow asked.
"What?" Danielle didn't understand what he was even asking about.
"Your incessant mouth has gotten you into trouble, and now you have a choice to make. Who takes the punishment, you or him?"
"Oh my God, you can't."
"I most certainly can. Now, who pays the price?"
Danielle looked from the horrific blade to Joe. She couldn't even consider letting him suffer for her again. This was her fault, she'd voluntarily opened her mouth, she had to take it. Her squeamishness was not in any way a viable excuse; it just made speaking very difficult.
"Me." That wasn't her voice.
The Scarecrow's hand drifted in the cabbie's direction slowly, almost like a dowsing rod seeking out water. He was smiling with keen and cruel anticipation. He hadn't expected the cabbie to speak up, honestly doubted he'd have the courage, but it was a pleasant surprise. Coupling pain with fear would crush him much quicker.
"Him, I see," the Scarecrow said.
"That's not fair, it isn't even his choice," Danielle protested.
"I like this arrangement. Guilt can be your punishment, and physical suffering can be his."
Leaving Danielle to wallow in the guilt that would consume her like the maw of a predator, the Scarecrow turned back to Joe. The cabbie's heart, already beating well above average, took a dangerous lurch he didn't like at all. That would be just too jolly if he had a heart attack.
"You don't like scalpels either. I'm not surprised. In many cases, trypanophobia can grow to encompass a fear of all medical procedures. You probably haven't had regular checkups in years, have you?"
Joe was silent. He was afraid of what words might come out of his mouth. He didn't think he was quite at the stage where'd he offer the Scarecrow sexual favors (and he was sure he'd die long before he ever got there) in exchange for mercy but the idea of the lunatic stabbing him made his blood run cold.
Grinning at the cabbie's suddenly taciturn attitude, the Scarecrow mentally considered where to begin. He could nurse a grudge, even over the pettiest thing, and he wanted to just start hacking things off. Crane restrained him due to the fear that he'd never get bloodstains out of the suit. It was dry clean only and there wasn't an establishment in all of Gotham that wouldn't phone the cops if clothing that looked like it had been worn during the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was dropped off. Crane was not going to be plowed over by a SWAT team when he tried to pick up his laundry.
So he couldn't chop of any ears, fingers, or noses and he couldn't sever any major arteries. That was alright, Scarecrow supposed. There was more than one way to make a man bleed.
"Let's start with making you symmetrical," the Scarecrow said.
What the hell did that mean? The cabbie understood the idea of symmetry—both sides the same—but how did you make a person symmetrical? Weren't they already that way?
In response to the questions Joe had only asked in his head, the Scarecrow cut him across the left arm, at the exact latitude of the gunshot wound on his right. He now had twin injuries. Proper symmetry was restored.
"I don't think that's quite deep enough; it hardly looks worse than a cat scratch."
It sure as hell didn't feel like a cat scratch, unless the cat in question was a lion or a tiger. The cut on his arm reminded Joe of one of the stupidest moments of his life. Once, while in a drunken stupor, he'd fallen down and somehow managed to open his palm up from thumb to pinky. In a show of sheer brilliance, he poured not hydrogen peroxide or iodine on the cut, but the whiskey responsible for the whole mess. That pain and continued burn was quite similar to what he was experiencing now.
To create a more perfect match, the Scarecrow plied his scalpel again. This time, the cabbie had to make a valiant effort not to thrash. He could feel blood begin to soak into his sleeve.
"That's unfortunate, I seem to have overdone it. I suppose I'll have to even things out on the other side."
Danielle had always been more of a Boy Scout than a Brownie, and she knew how to tie a knot. The Scarecrow found this out when he tried to pull the makeshift bandage from Joe's arm, only to find it had no intention of letting go. He wasn't in the mood to untangle it, so he tried cutting it with the scalpel. That was slow going: unlike knives, scalpels were designed to make precision cuts during surgery. They weren't meant to saw through cotton tee shirts.
The yanking and then the random slashing accomplished one thing; they reopened the injury beneath the shirt. Soon enough, the Scarecrow's fingers were bloody and his temper was getting the better of him. Crane had nearly all the patience in their relationship. Scarecrow considered ten seconds too long to wait for a cup of coffee.
Before Scarecrow could cut his—their—fingers off, Crane stepped back in. With his wretchedly impatient half out of the way, Crane carefully undid the shirt and tossed it aside. Scarecrow was right; the left side had been carved deeper than the right. Repairing that unfortunate error just seemed like the proper thing to do.
Wielding the scalpel with more precision and equal sadism, Crane evened out both sides. Satisfied at the bright red spots blooming among the silver duct tape, he decided to see what effect his work was having on the cabbie. Crane studied Joe's face and wasn't quite satisfied with what he saw. There was still too much determination and not enough fear. Nowhere near enough fear, actually. He'd have to remedy that.
Crane brought the keen scalpel to Joe's eye level and held it a few inches from his face. He let the cabbie get a good look at the blade. Joe stared at the scalpel with intensity. He wasn't going to blink, sure as hell wasn't going to look away, no matter how much that thing scared him.
"I could blind you with this. Two quick jabs and you wouldn't have to worry about where you were. You'd be nowhere," Crane said.
"I'm already nowhere," Joe replied with a voice that was almost but not quite steady.
"But you can see me, can't you? I could fix that. You'd be nowhere and you'd be alone."
"Better than being with you."
With his empty hand, Crane covered Joe's eyes. The cabbie jerked violently at the touch and the sudden plunge into darkness. Alright, turning out the lights was not better.
"Darkness is one of Man's most primitive fears, an ancestral fear that helped keep our primitive forebears alive. To them, darkness was where the predators lived. They could emerge from that darkness at any time to sink their claws into unsuspecting hominids."
In demonstration of the unpleasant fate that awaited many an early human, Crane stabbed the scalpel into Joe's hand. Not deep enough to impale the hand, just deep enough to wrench a surprised cry of pain and then a storm of swears from the cabbie. When Joe damned Crane's mother to hell and back, the doctor smiled and kindly removed the scalpel. He felt the same way about the woman who had given birth to him.
"If you can't see your attacker, you have no defense. I suppose being bound with tape doesn't help much either," Crane said.
"Goddamn it! That hurts, damn, you are a bastard," Joe said.
"Of course it hurts, you were stabbed in the hand. I suppose now might also be a good time to tell you that fear toxin, in many cases, makes the subject more susceptible to pain. So, we're going to have some good times ahead of us."
Joe groaned. He doubted if the lunatic's idea of a good time even had beer or pizza. Or if anyone else on the whole planet would consider it fun.
There was, unfortunately, no beer or pizza for Joe in the near future. There was plenty of blood, loads of despair, an excess of horror, and some pitiful animal-like sounds, but there was nothing alcoholic or Italian. Such was his luck.