The Skin That Crawls From You [A Jonathan Crane Fan-fiction]

"Are you afraid?"

A large woman walks in, her scrubs tinted blue, like a robin's egg, her face a sour looking wrinkled thing. She works quietly beside my cot, fiddling with a syringe on a shiny metal fold-up table.

"Hey what is this place?"
My voice is so sleep soaked, I barely recognize it to be my own. I'm barely my own anymore.

Quite honestly, I had expected an answer from the woman, despite my worst thoughts of this place, I assumed a simple question could be asked.
But she doesn't acknowledge my existence.

"Lady, what is this place?"

No answer.

"I asked you a question. Where the hell am I?"

My words bubble over and sizzle with my heat, and I tug on the leather restraints; making as much noise as I can muster. Panic burrows into my lungs and they begin to stutter; short gasps barely filling my body's need for oxygen.

"Miss Selleck, let me deal with this,"
A familiar voice oozed.
The voice from the ambulance, the one with the needle, the one who knocked me out so I could end up here.
The woman places the syringe on the wobbly cart and walks out without a word.

I can't help it, as soon as I turn to face him, my blood runs cold.

He's a dark man, somehow beautiful and terrifying; with ice in his eyes and inky black  hair. His face is  chiseled stone, emotionless except for a single brow raised in pensive inclination.

"Are you frightened, Miss. Alcott?"

I swallow the gob in my throat and look into those eyes; immediately regretting it, my breath refusing to come back to me.

I shake my head, stunned.

He squints his eyes for a moment, cocking his head slightly before walking towards me with a rush of cold air.

"My name is Doctor Crane, I'm the head of the psychopharmacology department at Arkham."
He picks up the syringe and taps it with his outstretched finger. He looks up from behind his glasses and rakes his eyes over my hospital gown and bruise clad body.

Arkham? They didn't bus me out of the city? My mother sent me to Arkham, as if I were truly a criminal. She sent me here to rot.

"Are you afraid?"
He asks again, his eyes latching to mine.

To avoid a violating session of intellectual prodding and an inevitable dose of some sleep inducing tincture; I shake my head again, convincingly this time.

The corners of Dr. Crane's mouth curl upwards into a devilishly handsome smirk.

"Your eyes betray you,"
He glides to the other side of my cot, pulling a noisy metal cart from the corner of the dark room and lining it up just beside my head.

"You see Ms. Alcott , you don't need to be ashamed of your fear when you're with me. We are all just products of our fear."
He says all too convincingly; his jaw tensing as he picks up a clipboard from his cart.

"Raven Alcott, eighteen years old, on trial for the murder of Ryan Alcott,"
He reads from his clipboard.

"Sibling?"
He raises his brow once more, as if to ask, as if he hadn't heard this all before.

"You've only lived here a year, Miss Alcott, how are you adjusting?"

I could almost laugh.

Dr. Crane senses my taunting amusement and glares at me, oh if looks could kill.

"Welcome to Gotham then, The City of Fear."
He says venomously.