Theme 69: Spirit
Title: The Soundtrack of Arkham
Universe: DCAU-kinda
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama/Horror
Characters: OC, Scarecrow
Word Count: 1,226
Summary: The inmates of Arkham provide their own tunes, and not everyone would pick Lady Gaga
Warning: For some gore and mentions of suicide
***
The Soundtrack of Arkham
Joe rested his head against the springy synthetic padding that covered the walls of the six-by-four room that was to be his home for the immediate future, sighing with contentment. At last the endless line of police officers and doctors had disappeared, taking their incessant questions with them. Now he would finally have the time and the peace and quiet to just think.
Had it really been days, if not weeks, since he had been able to sit in the darkness alone with his thoughts? It was definitely before that unfortunate incident with the Philips family next door; before the officers came and asked for his assistance in figuring out what exactly happened to prompt a seemingly mild-mannered accountant into decapitating a husband, wife and their three children then stacking their heads up by their mailbox.
What did they expect him to say? It wasn’t as though he did it because their dog barked all night or because Sheila always made the same boring tuna casserole for the church pot-luck dinner - it was just something that happened. He couldn’t have prevented himself from doing it anymore than he could stop the sun from rising. For some reason the officers and doctors didn’t seem to think that was the whole story, but there it was and that was all he could tell them.
That whole mess had ended up with him being given a one-way ticket to Arkham Asylum, home of the largest concentration of nutcases this side of the House of Representatives. There were people in this building who talked through puppets, thought they could control plants or gassed people to death for a joke.
Fine he’d obviously had a bit of a funny turn, but privately he thought it would all be sorted out and he’d be back home by Christmas.
Joe yawned and stretched out on the thin mattress, letting his mind wander in the darkness. He supposed that at least this indefinite period of incarceration would give him plenty of time for quiet contemplation.
But as the thought drifted slowly through his mind the dark stillness was pierced by an ear-splitting shriek from an adjacent cell, and the cry was soon taken up by a dozen others across the corridor or further down the hall.
As it turned out, Arkham Asylum was not the best environment for peace and quiet solitude. The dark halls frequently echoed with screams, incoherent wailing and off-key renditions of whatever had been played on the nurses’ station radio that morning. The old hands on the security teams would joke with new guys that they hadn’t lived until they’d heard an all-lunatic version of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance.
The night staff generally ignored the racket, turning up the volume on their miniature TV sets or iPods. After all, a bit of noise was to be expected from a warehouse full of crazies, and the darkness and being shut up in the confines of their cells seemed to set them off more than usual.
But if anyone on the medical staff had bothered to collate the figures, they would have found here were higher numbers of patients with hallucinatory symptoms than would usually be expected for a secure hospital of a similar size. More than average numbers of inmates reported hearing voices - mocking, berating, belittling them. And many apparently saw visions of people from their pasts - an abusive father, the unfaithful lover, a long-dead child wearing the christening gown they were buried in.
The more coherent patients whispered of the building being haunted by the souls of long-dead inmates from the asylum’s past; the very bricks and mortar infected by their misery and despair. The doctors tutted at such claims and upped their anti-psychotics and anti-anxiety dosages.
A new arrival wasn’t to know such things, and Joe merely pulled the thin blanket up over his head against the noise and waited for it to subside.
Another thing that a new arrival wasn’t to know was that the fifth cell on the left of the secure unit had developed a sinister reputation after three patients managed to kill themselves there in the space of six months, despite the usual anti-suicide precautions being taken. One cut open their wrist on a sharpened toothbrush handle, while another somehow managed to swallow enough of their blanket to choke themselves. The most recent case had been labelled “unknown natural causes” after the patient was found at breakfast tucked up in bed without a scratch on them but unquestionably stone dead. This did nothing to prevent rumour spreading amongst the junior medical staff and security teams that the unfortunate occupant of the cursed room had somehow willed their own heart to stop beating.
The cell’s current oblivious occupant yawned again and rolled over to try to find a more comfortable position on the narrow shelf-like bed.
Joe was pleased to find that his neighbour’s shrieking had subsided, and the other rooms soon fell silent in turn. But his peace was now disturbed by a more subtle sound - a faint hissing, seemingly coming from a recessed vent in the ceiling. He stood up and moved closer to investigate the sound, wondering why someone would turn the air conditioning up in the middle of the night, and whether he could possibly muffle the noise with a pillow case. As he moved closer the dim light revealed a vapour cloud emerging from the vent and he felt the moistness of the cloud settle against his face. He swayed, struck by a sudden wave of dizziness.
An image flashed before his eyes - a woman’s face contorted into a silent scream. That was joined by blood stained-little bodies, piled up on a kitchen floor. A man stared lifelessly up at him from a bed, its sheets stained red. He saw himself constructing a grisly monument on the front lawn, waving at a terrified looking mail carrier across the street, and was suddenly struck by the horror of his own actions. Distantly he realised that the shrieking and wailing had begun again but this time it was echoing around his own cell, and showed no signs of abating.
The next morning orderlies discovered body number four in the unlucky cell, with the new patient showing evidence of having broken a plastic air vent and used the shards to cut his own throat. The asylum administrator bowed to pressure from the security staff and agreed to have the room turned over to storage of janitorial supplies in order to end the rumours that circulated about the “cursed cell”.
Down in the basement-level extreme security section of the asylum, the Scarecrow gazed up at an identical recessed air vent and pondered the potential result of combining more perfectly innocuous ingredients such as toothpaste, drain clear and just a drop or two of his secret supply of concentrated fear toxin.
Days in Arkham might be long and boring, but he had several little projects to keep his mind ticking over. So he lay back and waited for the next opportunity to gather supplies, and for another chance to secrete the vials amongst the air conditioning vents. Then the delightful screams would echo through the halls once more and for a brief while he would forget his humiliating incarceration; drinking in the fear that carried on the voices of the unfortunate occupants of the cells above.
Fin
***
End note: I do sometimes slightly worry about what's going on in my head. I mean, writing a bit where they're singing along to Bad Romance? *shudder*
Universe: DCAU-kinda
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama/Horror
Characters: OC, Scarecrow
Word Count: 1,226
Summary: The inmates of Arkham provide their own tunes, and not everyone would pick Lady Gaga
Warning: For some gore and mentions of suicide
***
The Soundtrack of Arkham
Joe rested his head against the springy synthetic padding that covered the walls of the six-by-four room that was to be his home for the immediate future, sighing with contentment. At last the endless line of police officers and doctors had disappeared, taking their incessant questions with them. Now he would finally have the time and the peace and quiet to just think.
Had it really been days, if not weeks, since he had been able to sit in the darkness alone with his thoughts? It was definitely before that unfortunate incident with the Philips family next door; before the officers came and asked for his assistance in figuring out what exactly happened to prompt a seemingly mild-mannered accountant into decapitating a husband, wife and their three children then stacking their heads up by their mailbox.
What did they expect him to say? It wasn’t as though he did it because their dog barked all night or because Sheila always made the same boring tuna casserole for the church pot-luck dinner - it was just something that happened. He couldn’t have prevented himself from doing it anymore than he could stop the sun from rising. For some reason the officers and doctors didn’t seem to think that was the whole story, but there it was and that was all he could tell them.
That whole mess had ended up with him being given a one-way ticket to Arkham Asylum, home of the largest concentration of nutcases this side of the House of Representatives. There were people in this building who talked through puppets, thought they could control plants or gassed people to death for a joke.
Fine he’d obviously had a bit of a funny turn, but privately he thought it would all be sorted out and he’d be back home by Christmas.
Joe yawned and stretched out on the thin mattress, letting his mind wander in the darkness. He supposed that at least this indefinite period of incarceration would give him plenty of time for quiet contemplation.
But as the thought drifted slowly through his mind the dark stillness was pierced by an ear-splitting shriek from an adjacent cell, and the cry was soon taken up by a dozen others across the corridor or further down the hall.
As it turned out, Arkham Asylum was not the best environment for peace and quiet solitude. The dark halls frequently echoed with screams, incoherent wailing and off-key renditions of whatever had been played on the nurses’ station radio that morning. The old hands on the security teams would joke with new guys that they hadn’t lived until they’d heard an all-lunatic version of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance.
The night staff generally ignored the racket, turning up the volume on their miniature TV sets or iPods. After all, a bit of noise was to be expected from a warehouse full of crazies, and the darkness and being shut up in the confines of their cells seemed to set them off more than usual.
But if anyone on the medical staff had bothered to collate the figures, they would have found here were higher numbers of patients with hallucinatory symptoms than would usually be expected for a secure hospital of a similar size. More than average numbers of inmates reported hearing voices - mocking, berating, belittling them. And many apparently saw visions of people from their pasts - an abusive father, the unfaithful lover, a long-dead child wearing the christening gown they were buried in.
The more coherent patients whispered of the building being haunted by the souls of long-dead inmates from the asylum’s past; the very bricks and mortar infected by their misery and despair. The doctors tutted at such claims and upped their anti-psychotics and anti-anxiety dosages.
A new arrival wasn’t to know such things, and Joe merely pulled the thin blanket up over his head against the noise and waited for it to subside.
Another thing that a new arrival wasn’t to know was that the fifth cell on the left of the secure unit had developed a sinister reputation after three patients managed to kill themselves there in the space of six months, despite the usual anti-suicide precautions being taken. One cut open their wrist on a sharpened toothbrush handle, while another somehow managed to swallow enough of their blanket to choke themselves. The most recent case had been labelled “unknown natural causes” after the patient was found at breakfast tucked up in bed without a scratch on them but unquestionably stone dead. This did nothing to prevent rumour spreading amongst the junior medical staff and security teams that the unfortunate occupant of the cursed room had somehow willed their own heart to stop beating.
The cell’s current oblivious occupant yawned again and rolled over to try to find a more comfortable position on the narrow shelf-like bed.
Joe was pleased to find that his neighbour’s shrieking had subsided, and the other rooms soon fell silent in turn. But his peace was now disturbed by a more subtle sound - a faint hissing, seemingly coming from a recessed vent in the ceiling. He stood up and moved closer to investigate the sound, wondering why someone would turn the air conditioning up in the middle of the night, and whether he could possibly muffle the noise with a pillow case. As he moved closer the dim light revealed a vapour cloud emerging from the vent and he felt the moistness of the cloud settle against his face. He swayed, struck by a sudden wave of dizziness.
An image flashed before his eyes - a woman’s face contorted into a silent scream. That was joined by blood stained-little bodies, piled up on a kitchen floor. A man stared lifelessly up at him from a bed, its sheets stained red. He saw himself constructing a grisly monument on the front lawn, waving at a terrified looking mail carrier across the street, and was suddenly struck by the horror of his own actions. Distantly he realised that the shrieking and wailing had begun again but this time it was echoing around his own cell, and showed no signs of abating.
The next morning orderlies discovered body number four in the unlucky cell, with the new patient showing evidence of having broken a plastic air vent and used the shards to cut his own throat. The asylum administrator bowed to pressure from the security staff and agreed to have the room turned over to storage of janitorial supplies in order to end the rumours that circulated about the “cursed cell”.
Down in the basement-level extreme security section of the asylum, the Scarecrow gazed up at an identical recessed air vent and pondered the potential result of combining more perfectly innocuous ingredients such as toothpaste, drain clear and just a drop or two of his secret supply of concentrated fear toxin.
Days in Arkham might be long and boring, but he had several little projects to keep his mind ticking over. So he lay back and waited for the next opportunity to gather supplies, and for another chance to secrete the vials amongst the air conditioning vents. Then the delightful screams would echo through the halls once more and for a brief while he would forget his humiliating incarceration; drinking in the fear that carried on the voices of the unfortunate occupants of the cells above.
Fin
***
End note: I do sometimes slightly worry about what's going on in my head. I mean, writing a bit where they're singing along to Bad Romance? *shudder*