AN: The unfortunate Bolton is from the cartoon. I never liked him. On a side note...don't fuck with the Scarecrow. He will find you. You will be sad. And insane. Or dead. I'm not adverse to killing. Fine. That, too.
SwordStitcher-You all laugh at my misery. Be grateful for the fourth wall. You could be my friend in this story.
Just-Me-and-My-Brain-Something tells me I shouldn't believe you. I never can trust anyone anymore...
Jasmine Scarthing-...Pretty. Sometimes I wonder about self-mutilations...but then I remember the Joker.
He was happy to wait. He'd always been patient. He had to be, waiting for hours in that crumbling chapel, knowing that the slightest move would bring Hell and damnation down upon his head.
They'd brought him back, locked him up with the very inmates he'd tormented. They'd quietly drawn straws-well, pieces of plastic fork, really-to see who got him first. He'd technically drawn the longest, but with Harley in the cell next door…he could almost feel bad for him. Almost.
He'd a while to think about this, about how it would go. They wouldn't let them in the same room together-had some ideas of him 'talking the patient to death'. To be fair, they weren't unfounded. He'd done it before, twice. That had been an interesting mental exercise…
But no. It was time to go back to basics. He'd been wearing his needle glove when they brought him in this time. It was so much fun, that needle glove. The mere sight of it set his victims to quaking. (Granted, Kitty thought it was a little over-the-top, but…)
The lights go out. It's showtime.
The Riddler had hacked the system and set it to shut down at midnight, right before the guard's coffee break. Since the Joker wasn't in at the moment, they could rely on Batman being busy this evening. (That damned clown, maybe tonight would be his last laugh!)
He slipped out of his cell, taking care to be quiet. He'd just take a shortcut to the lockers…turn left, left, right…ah. Here they were. And there was his faithful glove, just the way he'd left it. They'd even been too scared to empty it! He couldn't blame them. There'd been an accident the first time they tried-he could hear the screaming for hours Lovely, lovely shrieks, they'd been. All about angels. How interesting. But he wasn't interested in a lowly guard, not tonight. He had plans for tonight, thank you very much.
Once he'd gotten out of the itchy jumpsuit, he strolled back down the hall, grateful for the darkness. Funny thing, darkness. One could never pinpoint a sound's origin in the dark.
"Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye…" Was that a whimper from the cell at the end? Surely not, not from big, bad, Lyle Bolton! "Four-and-twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie." Oh, it was a whimper! How marvelous. "When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing…" And here was the door handle. He slid it open and locked it behind him, listening to the faint sounds of the ruckus behind him. "No one is going to help you, Mr. Bolton. There's no one to hear you scream."
Well, maybe not no one. He was here, wasn't he? And he did so love the sound of screams.
It was very sudden-a quick lunge from the darkness, a small prick, and a flood of toxin entered the idiot's arm. He got out of the cell before Bolton could grab him, but he stayed there, by the glass, watching. And waiting. He could practically taste the hopeless terror.
The screams began-short, sharp shrieks of earsplitting terror. He grinned behind his mask and leaned against the window, drinking it all in.
When no words came, he turned away and disappeared down the corridor. The guards would be coming soon and he wanted to go home and take a real shower.
"Wasn't that a pretty dish to set before the king?"
THE END