Those Who Fall Down the Rabbit Hole | Batjokes |

Part 8

I like the night. Without the dark, we'd never see the stars

Bruce has had his fair share of girlfriends, if you could even call them that. They were more of an annoying necessity to keep up appearances than anything else. Sure, Bruce likes a good fuck from time to time, but everything that comes with that is just —an annoyance.

Most of them were models, plastic chicks with a good pair of tits and a whole bunch of air in their heads. And when Bruce tries to think back to them, their faces just blur together, in a smudge of identical idiocy and irrelevancy. He can't remember one of their faces clearly.

Having said that, he doesn't know why those words keep coming to mind now.

I like the night

It's annoying.

A rat squeaks as it passes by, and Harvey's attention is momentarily taken away from looking inside the duffel bag in favor of looking at the rodent. His hands are shaking, Bruce notices. And the warehouse smells putrid.

How long has he been here?

Perhaps two hours.

Maybe four.

Bruce knows he should be trying to untie his hands. Harvey's distracted, and the blood does serve as good moisturizer. He could slip his hands out of the ropes easily...

But Bruce doesn't.

Instead he just looks as Harvey searches through a duffel bag. Harvey's still wearing a hospital gown, and the pliers he was using earlier lay bloodied on the floor. Next to Bruces nails.

I like the night

It occurs to Bruce, that his mind's sort of detached. That he should be alarmed, or trying to escape. Or at least he should be paying attention to the overwhelming pain in his hands and feet.

But he just wants to see where this goes.

Without the night...

Harvey makes a humming noise, it seems he's found what he was looking for. From the bag he takes out a scalpel. And Bruce gives himself a second to wonder on how he got kidnapped by someone who can't even hold a scalpel steadily.

Oh, right. He was thinking about tiaras.

"I couldn't get my hands on a nightstick at the hospital. But this will have to do," Harvey closes the bag before approaching Bruce, who is tied to a chair. His hands are restrained behind his back, and his feet are tied together. Bruce shifts his hands experimentally, the blood soaked skin easily moves against the rope.

But not yet.

The night and stars

That's so annoying.

Maybe he just wants to see.

"I see you looking. Don't," Harvey states, he lifts the hand he's holding the scalpel with and points at Bruce with it. He's still shaking. And Bruce realizes he's been looking at Harvey's burned face. He can see his teeth through it.

"It had to be done, just like your nails." Harvey nods to himself. "It had to be done."

When Bruce had woken up and realized he had been taken to an abandoned warehouse, Harvey had welcomed him with an entire monologue about the injustice of justice or some bullshit. Bruce hadn't caught half of it. After that, Harvey had shut up. And he'd proceeded to slowly rip off Bruce's nails one by one. Quietly. Only Bruce's screams resonated in the space.