Jonathan took a step back from me and ran a nervous hand through his hair. Walking to the fireplace he stood in front of it with his hands at his side and for a moment was quiet. Then he said, "I was born out of wedlock to a mother who didn't want me. I was given to a grandmother who was a devout Christian woman who saw my very existence as a sin and who spent every day of my life making me to repent for it. We lived in a very humble one story home with hardly any material things. Every day we read passages from the Bible, and every day I was beaten with a belt while I recited the Lord's Prayer. I was kept inside for most of my childhood and did not have any friends. The first child I ever met my age was on my first day of grade school."
He stopped talking for a moment. I stood still my heart broken at the beginning of this story, having no idea what he's been through. I held back the prickling tears in my eyes and I waited for him to continue.
Jonathan took a deep breath, then continued, "I was bullied in school. I had no social skills at all and couldn't connect to any of the other kids who were all into their pop culture and I just into the Bible. One day I asked my grandmother for a pair of Converse so I could fit in like the rest of the children at school. She instead brought me a new suit for me to wear for church. That following Sunday, she forced the suit onto me, and shoved me in the back seat of the car and drove out of town. When I noticed we weren't heading in the direction of the church I had asked where we were going… all I got back was 'We're going to a place where little boys learn to appreciate what they have.' After an hour of driving, she stopped at an old abandoned church in the middle of nowhere, pulled me out of the car, brought me to the door, and from her purse took out a bag of some kind of dust. She poured the bag over my head and pushed me through the door and shut it closed behind me. I beat on that door to open it, but it wouldn't budge. Inside the church…." His voice caught in his throat, but he pressed on, "Inside the church were… crows. What looked like hundreds of them. They had claimed the building as their own, and now here was this little boy covered in… something… and they were not happy."
Turning to look at me, his face was emotionless as he said, "They all lifted from their perches and dove right at me. They pecked at me, tore at my clothes and hair and skin, cawed in my ears. I ran around the dark room frantically to get away from them, all the while praying and calling out to my grandmother for help, but she never came. I spent all day in that building, until finally the crows gave up and flew away. I was found huddled in a corner, bloodied and crying. My grandmother picked me up by my arm, led me out of the church, to the car, and took me home. She skipped the Lord's Prayer that day and sent me straight to a bath and bed. That… was the first time I had ever experienced fear."
I watched as Jonathan stood looking at me, watching me with his cold eyes. He straightened up and seemed to take pride in the next part of the story he was going to tell me. "When I entered high school, they called me Ichabod. This was before my lanky frame had grown out to what it is now, so through puberty I was quite odd and very jumpy being a weak kid. The jocks and stronger boys took their turns chasing me through the hallways or around the school grounds threatening to beat me up. I kept to myself in high school, made excellent grades, and tried to remain as invisible to everyone as I could. But… there was one girl who saw me. Her name was Sarah… she was the head cheerleader. She was dating the quarterback of the football team, but she always managed to say hi to me whenever she walked passed me in the hallway. During our senior year, she asked me to be her date to the homecoming dance, saying that her boyfriend had dumped her and she wanted to still go and knew I wouldn't have a date. I was elated. I picked her up at her house, drove her to the dance in my grandmother's car, and when we were there we walked in together. It was the most exciting night of my life. Then, as the first song came on the speakers, a crashing sound came from one end of the auditorium and we all turned to see a man with no head riding a horse with a glowing pumpkin. The pumpkin was aimed for me, and the horse started to gallop towards me. I panicked and ran out of the gym with the horse following me. I made it to my car and peeled out of the parking lot and drove all the way home, the man on the horse riding behind me the whole way. When I got home, the horse stopped at the end of my driveway and the quarterback popped his head out of the costume and laughed saying, 'What's the matter, Ichabod… can't take a joke?' I was set up, and I was humiliated.
"All school year long people left pumpkins for me on my desk, in my bookbag, in my locker…. It was never ending. The anger of being terrified swelled inside me, that when prom came around, I finally snapped. I dressed myself up to look like a scarecrow and hid in the bushes near the road he and Sarah would have to take to get to prom. When I saw his car, I shot out into the middle of the road, and he swerved to not hit me, his car flipping into a ditch. I ran away from the aftermath, but I got what I wanted, the look of sheer terror in their eyes right before they crashed….. Sarah died that night and he was paralyzed from the waist down, never to play football again… he lost all of his sports scholarships."
My hands covered my mouth in shock. Jonathan watched my reaction for a moment, then he continued, "In school, I studied psychology, specifically the phenomenon of fear. What caused it, what did it produce in the body, what could it do? As a graduate student, I taught entry level psychology classes, which is when I shot the flower pot and nearly blinded one of my students. I was fired and refused the chance to obtain my degree. I switched instead to a different school and pursued psychopharmacology. There… they laughed at me. They thought my attention on fear was unimportant and a waste of time…. They were the first subjects of my real experiments."
Jonathan locked me with a steel cool gaze and said, "I had developed a serum that induced terror in the victim's mind, giving them hallucinations so vivid they went insane. Given a strong enough dose, some would never recover. I used this drug and my new title as Scarecrow to terrorize those who had laughed at me, to show them that they were wrong to count me out. I am the Scarecrow of their nightmares, and their nightmares are real. I killed the directors of the psychology department for firing me and denying me my degree, and I killed my classmates in the chemistry labs who laughed at my obsession. I made sure everyone in Gotham knew what fear could do to them… how they could grovel at the feet of the very being that was terrorizing them, how pitiful it made them. I felt powerful…. Then I was jailed.
"Batman caught me. I was locked away in Arkham Asylum with the rest of his trophies to be forgotten. Then came the change for redemption, a new leaf, a new chance, and I took it. I've been to thousands of hours of therapy. I've looked deep into myself, and I've made several steps in the right direction that have allowed me to leave Arkham and to have a small job in a setting that I was familiar with. I've changed…."
I watched him stand in front of me, and I wa reminded of the emotionless quizzical Jonathan that I clung to at the top of the building as the Joker set up bombs. I backed away from him, moving to the door, the backs of my legs hitting the armrest of the couch as I went. My heartbeat in my chest like a drum and all I wanted was to get out of there. Jonathan took a step forward, "Bethany."
I shook my head, and jumped backwards, turning for the door.
"Bethany, please," Jonathan grabbed ahold of my wrist, and I panicked. Spinning around I smacked him, the shock enough to get him to let go, and I left the room. "Bethany, please! You promised."
Bruce was standing outside the door and turned when it opened. I took one look at him and smacked him too. I went to the stairs and ran to my room, gathering up Jonathan's clothing into my arms and I threw them over the railing and down to the floor below. Jonathan and Bruce looked up at me, and I said nothing as I went back for the rest of his things. Throwing down his suitcase, I took my time throwing the shoes, aiming them at both men. When I was finished, I said, "I never want to see you again… either of you."
Turning from the railing, I went back into my room, closed the door and locked it, then entered the bathroom where I started the shower. I wanted to get Jonathan off of me. I wanted all of his touches, his kisses, his glances gone from my skin. Stepping into the hot shower I scrubbed at my skin with a pedicure brush until my skin stung. When it became too much to bear, I threw the brush against the wall and fell to the floor. Tucking my knees against my chest, I sat in the stream of water willing it to dissolve me as I sat there and replayed the time I spent falling in love with a murderer, and the time I spent with a friend who knew all along.
When I got out, I was red all over, the sting of the cool air felt good on my skin as I made my way back into my room. Grabbing a robe, I tied it around me and peeked through the keyhole into the hallway. I could just make out Bruce sitting off to the side waiting for me to come out. He must have banged on the door while I was in the shower. Turning, I grabbed a book and went out to the private balcony where I saw down in one of the chairs and began reading in the dimming light. As I sat down, I noticed Jonathan's car was missing from the garage, and I was surprised at the twinge of guilt I had. Pushing it aside, I opened my book and settled in to reading it as long as it took Bruce to get the hint and leave me alone. My plan was to pack up everything I had here tonight, finish up packing the penthouse tomorrow, and then head out on the next flight to England, my mother, Bruce, and Jonathan be damned.
