Lena's eyes opened suddenly accompanied by a gasp. She sat up so fast that she got dizzy and had to lie back down. "A dream, it was only a dream," she whispered to herself. For a while now, she had been having nightmares and every time she would wake abruptly in a cold sweat. The only problem was she never remembered the dream that scared her so. She had been told by Mallory several times that she talked in her sleep (Mallory used more violent, descriptive words then that, but you get the idea), and Lena didn't doubt it. But Mallory never really understood what Lena said in her sleep. "Most of the time you are just mumbling incoherently," Lena was surprised that Mallory even knew that incoherently was a real word. "But your mumbling is too loud! You keep me and Bob up all night long! We raised you and the thanks we get are being kept up all night by you mumbling incoherently all night!" And then Lena's notion that Mallory had never picked up a dictionary in her life was confirmed. She probably heard it off of TV. Which reminds me I wonder when they need me at the studio today? Wait…
"Shit!" She jumped off of the bed and looked at the clock; 12:05 PM. "Shit!" she repeated. She ran to the call button on the wall and pressed it. She screamed into the receiver, "JONATHAN!"
On the other side of the mirror Jonathan had came back to the mirror at around one in the morning after checking to make sure the toxins were ready for use; when he was going to use them, he still didn't know. He sat down on the chair in front of the mirror and turned the recorder on. "It is 1300 hours (1:00 AM) and Subject S is sleeping." He was about to finish his thoughts when something caught his attention. It sounded like a small child whimpering, but he knew that there wasn't anyone in the building, let alone small children. So that left himself and, "Lena?" he whispered. He went up to the mirror and pressed the sound button. The whimpering got louder and soon turned into full blown words.
"Don't! Stop! Get away from me! Mom, dad help me!" She was thrashing around on the bed, threatening to fall off. Jonathan hurriedly turned the sensitivity on the recorder to as high as it would go so it would catch all of this. It might be useful sometime soon. "Mom, dad! Help me! Stop him! Get him away from me!" She is far too fluid with her thrashing movements. If tonight had been the first night that she was flailing in her sleep, it would have been erratic and jerky. She is fluid with the movements; that shows that tonight isn't the first restless night she has had.
She carried on with the floundering about the bed for a good hour or so. When 4 AM rolled around, her thrashing died down and there was no movement, save for the occasional twitch, and she was dead to the world once more.
Jonathan kept his recorder on, just incase, but slowly felt his head drooping on to his chest. He shook his head to get rid of the sleep, and focused on the movements of Lena.
At precisely 9 AM, his head fell back on the chair and he was, finally, asleep. He had fallen asleep with his feet up on the other chair in the room. He hardly ever slept anymore; he had nightmares to. But he always remembered his, and they were always the same.
It was basically a summary of his school life. The teasing, the taunts, the names. It wasn't that bad in the first few years of primary school, people were afraid of him, but they didn't understand, yet, just how much the taunts that would come later would hurt him. Middle school was cruel to Jonathan. That was where most of the juvenile pranks happened, such as a straw hat infested with bugs in his locker; jocks coming up behind him, yelling 'SCARECROW!' in his ear, picking him up, and stuffing straw in his clothes; just stupid stuff like that. High school is when things started to get violent. They would corner him in a dark alley and beat him until there was no hardly any feeling in his body. Even in bright day light at school with adults watching, they would hit him or push him; yet no one did anything about it.
Tonight he was reliving one of the lighter days of his tenth grade year. He had asked a girl, who had just moved to Gotham from New Orleans, out to homecoming, and she looked like she really wanted to go with him, but she was already going with the captain of the football team. Then his brain had to betray him and remind him of the next day where the boyfriend hunted him down. The fist was halfway to his face when a loud "JONATHAN!" shook him out of his dream, but also shook him to the floor.
"JONATHAN!" It was Lena. He looked at his watch and saw that it was 12:05 PM. She was sleeping; so I probably didn't miss anything really important. At least I got some sleep.
He picked himself off the floor and tried his best to sound as if he hadn't just woken up. "What?"
"My job! I need to go to my job! I can't afford to miss today! I need to…"
"Calm down Lena, your job situation is taken care of. The head psychiatrist…"
"Oh crap! They told my bosses that I am on suicide watch, didn't they! Now they will fire me for sure! No one wants a crazy person working for them," she said in distress.
"No, they didn't say anything of the sort. The head psychiatrist told your bosses that you were under to much stress with work, the up coming school year, and your family. They told your bosses that you were taking a few days off to recollect yourself so you don't have a mental breakdown while helping a customer. They all agreed to give you four days paid vacation," he said calmly.
"Oh," Lena said quietly. There were a few minutes of silence then she said, "Sorry. I was just worried I'd lose the jobs."
"Why though? You are going to get your parent's fortune in a month, why are you keeping these jobs?"
"It gives me time away from Mallory and the circus of freaks that live in the house." Then she was silent once more. Jonathan could see her, but she couldn't see him. She walked over to the food and started to eat, while the pencil she had just picked up was hovering over the paper. She didn't turn the call button off, so Jonathan asked,
"Why did you dye your hair black?"
Lena looked up at where she thought Jonathan would be behind the glass (her gaze missed by about a foot) and said, "People treat you differently when you are a blonde. They expect you to be happy and have a good attitude all the time. They gravitate towards you. When you have black hair and pale skin," she smiled to herself "people tend to stay away. They think you are a 'goth' and I prefer it that way. I like to be alone. I even got called a vampire, once."
"What did you do?"
"Went up to the girl and bared the fake vampire teeth I had borrowed from the TV station." She laughed and Jonathan smiled in spite of himself. He turned the call button off and said into the recorder he had picked up from the floor, "Subject S likes being alone and stays with jobs to get away from family." He didn't know if that would be helpful in his research of her fears, but, better safe then sorry.
So, this is chapter three. This isn't the best or longest one, but I wanted to post a chapter this weekend for all my wonderful readers! Thank you! I love you all! I think the next one will please all of you, hopefully. The real fun starts in the next chapter!
Some of you think that this is story is only going to be for the three days of suicide watch; sorry to disappoint you, but it isn't. If I was only going to base on the suicide watch I wouldn't get the point across I want to.
Olympia-mg: You are totally right! Thanks for pointing out the mary-sue thing for me. I didn't know that that was a mary-sue sentence. And all I was trying to do was get across the idea that Crane thinks this girl is beautiful, but his oh-so-lovely alter ego Scarecrow wants to hear her scream more then Jonathan wants to date her, because that internal fight comes into play later on. Does that make sense? I guess I didn't really make that clear enough, huh? And she gets darker, don't worry. Like I said earlier, I didn't want to give away the major plot points in the first few chapters.
Blodeuedd: I don't blame you at all for not reviewing because of school. I had four tests this week and just threw together this chapter tonight! And take your time reviewing! I'm not going to hunt you down or anything… or am I? (creepy music and thunder in the background) Nah, just so long you don't forget about me!
Thanks to everyone who read, I would be nothing without you! Oh, and I just enabled my fanfiction thingy so I can accept anonymous reviews, so don't be shy, please! I welcome constructive criticism! Even if you just want to say one word, just let me know you are out there so I can recognize you in my authors note!
Love,
Celia
