#|| ᴜᴘꜱᴇᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴇꜱᴛᴀʙʟɪꜱʜᴇᴅ ᴏʀᴅᴇʀ

[nightmarefuele]

you are an extremely difficult person to get along with (90%).

tagging: @laebyrinths, @chaoticjoke, @kylo-wrecked, @malka-lisitsa, @rosefromdeath, @arkhampsych, @inkstainmuses, @clownzcl, @woednesdayaddams, @sleuthwitch, @apphrodite, @oculusxcaro, @freak1ish, @traumapyre, @edxmunson, @loneheir ; feel free to ignore if already done ; multi-muses, choose whichever muse(s) suit your fancy.

[nightmarefuele]

❝ I sure hope there’re no new patients. No, no, surely not today, see this. . . . ❞

❝ Bad impression, this makes. Worse yet, could encourage them. . . . ❞

❝ And so young. Oh, we the people, we sweet, innocent civilians of Gotham, how we want to see our youth rehabilitated. ❞

(Right. Suuurrrre. Well, maybe they’d say a thing or two the like, if any a’them ever looked up (or is it down?) at the place.)

Red and black and red and black. And white alight everywhere, looping tedium, all brash but it’s got no flare, and they say he’s the one with the complex? Boring hallways boring rooms boring courtyards boring everywhere so let’s see who’s laughing now

Red and black and red again. What’s black and white and read and red all over? Mouths on the walls, dripping. And this time it isn’t even pigs blood.

Just scissor papercuts, really, not a one-single plastic knife involved. (Because they got rid of those, first time having him around. Haven’t been back since. Suit themselves; just means he’s had to get more creative.) Anyway, some sorry shmo down in “Docile” ward’s gonna have their hands full’a red lines when they wake up.

Oh, and-uuhhh . . . Scaredy-Crow isn’t gonna be too happy about his missing mask.

❝ How many times are we going to run circles around the blocks before we sound the alarm! ❞ That’s Mr. Fitts, a slightly raggedy (and very old school) TA—teacher’s assistant, which he insists Is far more respectable than it sounds!—with these mayonnaise-colored slacks pressed to a firm crisp that he always manages to rumple. He’s shouting, across one of the sterile antehalls that loops toward the entrance of the so-called 𝒜𝒸𝒶𝒹𝑒𝓂𝓎, at one of four search parties. One of four inside.

❝ I will remind you to keep your voice down, Fitts, ❞ and that’s one of the female nurses, except she’s also called a ward, because here they’ve started doubling up on se-cu-ri-ty, ❝ or do you want to contract the principal’s wrath on a day like this one? ❞

He’s not so very far off. In fact, he’s underneath (but certainly not below) this particular stampede of reunifying jailors; he moseys along between the balustrades, these heavy pillars like pedestals for a far greater place than that which they actually uphold, except little peps bump his steps and so he’s bobbing with the rhythm of their fraying frenzy. Ducking—spontaneous, but fluidly, like the fizzing of his form is only another silly part of the whole silly play—straight out into the open entrance hall (where he’s blocked from sight by the floor under their feet, over his head). And it’s very open, with a grey sun slinging bolts into a murky puddle at one side by his shoes. The double doors to Arkhamore are open.

He’s borrowed one of the rEguLar-old pajama suits from faculty, the ones specially enforced on all “Isolation” inmates, although he’s what he likes to call a Solitaire. Anyway, black-and-white stripes, imperfectly fitted, sorta-rumpled ‘cause it ain’t easy getting out that box’a padded pillows then squeezing through the vents made for shoulders a lot smaller then slinging blood all over the portraits of the Arkhamore Founding Families and pledgers without getting a little messy about it.

Joker stands there looking lazy as a laid-back lynx. Murky, not-quite-black eyes peering up through the slits and stitches of a scarecrow sack.

Up; sideways, down; face slanting on a shoulder line, peering out those double doors. Open. Wouldn’tcha know it, suddenly that funny little ward’s warning—the principal’s wrath on a day like this one—makes a whole lot more senssse.

He turns. Arkhamore Academy repeated up in big, 𝒻𝒶𝓃𝒸𝓎 letters at the hall’s total opposite end. Check-in lobby. Sees a bit of motion and starts to slink back into hiding—then does a double take.

NewnewnewnewNEW

The stampede splits up overhead, one half clobbering down the stairs. He’s gone before they even hit the second level. He’s a shadow person, hanging around, pressed right back up against a leftern ventricle of this hollowed-heart cavity that calls itself an ❝entrance❞ when it’s really more like a gate to Hell.

Ahh, but O where be the demon who guards it?  No nurse there at the desk, and yet this creature writ in sepia overtones has got this little piece of paper. . . . Curious.

Make it quick? Well, if that isn’t an invitation to just hang there, slouching sort of elegantly so, shadowed between folding walls, staring. Watching. Seeing What’ll she doDoes she bite? out his ugly mask’s stolen eyes.

@miercolaes :// here.

[nightmarefuele]

@inkstainmuses || { cont'd from here }

─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────

A puppe-teeeer. This one had a thing for poetics, clearly. And where was there a line between the poetry and theatre? (Smirking semi-absently from a stool where he was, quite literally, looking down on the man.)

"Y'know," Joker pulled up both knees and sat his elbows across them, this little knife coming out with a soft shink while he leaned, pointing with it, "I can, uh, empathize," (ha-ha,) "with your strength of vision. Mm? Oh, and, you know your way around a metaphor. I'll give you that: you see things. 'Hum-an-ity,' " waving the knife to demonstrably expand the subject of its pointing, "as you'd like it to be. Hm? You think it should be.

"See . . ." And he shrugged, so wholehearted his resignation it went from shoulders to brows, knees, hands. ". . . I don't blame you. It's a funny world we live in. Bu-tuhh. . . . I mean. Look outside, hm? Me, I see things, too. Mhm. But what I see - they're not visions. These pretty, happy little pictures people all paint for themselves." There was something deeper in his register, there; in Joker's smile. When he waggled his fingers, he did it softly. Spreading pixie dust. "You talk about sculpting, yet, what have I done but turn the ma-ter-i-al back on its basic form?"

Had him essentially chained to a pipe through the floor, this guy. Whose floor? Whose house? Where house? Well, that was anybody's guess. (An argument against the idea of its being a house at all may too be viable, but whatever it was, certainly, it was dilapidated as The Joker's apparent state. And barren.) Joker, chin cut low, had his eyes tilted in their highest corners to watch him. Pointier than that knife.

"It's the people who pretend," he said, "who'd like to keep their lives hidden out of sight from the rubble of the masses, who're destructive. They want the state of things to, uhhh, atroph-y. So as not to disturb their pretty pictures - like yours." He cocked his brows, like, Sounds like some-bo-dy you and I both know, hm? like, somehow, he really did know him all too well. Despite only being face-to-face here and now. Because of it.

But something unexpected played between Joker's incalculable features. Subtle movements disrupting day-old grease paint whilst it slips. He came up off his stool - the motion of limber legs spanning floor perhaps surprisingly fluent, if not exactly fluid - then crouched, shoulders settling, leaning low. No more than a foot's distance between two faces.

Joker hummed, eventually, "Does it discomfort you?" Referring to the chain? His eyes were steady as pins. Anybody's guess. "You-sually-y, in my experience, physical discomfort isn't on peoples' heads."

[nightmarefuele]

you will bring death to all who follow you. | from Sigyn to Joker?

"Follow me?"

The Joker turns his chin, or it turns of its own accord, like a spasming tendon. Regardless: the slight motion is a point made.

"What, you think I ask these people to abandon their lives, their careers, their ideologies? Hm? Do you think these . . . innocent, modest people hear a few disorganized statements from a guy like me, a few little jokes, and decide overnight to turn to the dark side?" Wiggling fingers lined in purple leather. Spookyyy, says his wide, bottomless stare, but his voice doesn't.

"You got any idea what happens to the dreamers when their dreams die, Goldilocks? They corrode. And the thing about corrosion is it bleeds - keeps on going, spreading everywhere. Which is the point. See - me, I'm just a . . . messenger. Or a little footsoldier." Nods. Joker's eyes even glow, with the formulation of his rebuttal as it comes together. His very especial symphony. "I just spread what's already plain for everybody to see. If anything, you know . . . these people, yeah, these so-called innocents. . . . Well they were never really all that pure to begin with. Me; I just set them free."

Hear the music? the onyx eyes dare.