October 2018. I woke up from a pretty interesting dream about Batman. All innocent, I promise. First thing you have to know about how I dream is that my dreams are often very long and thorough. I have written books based on single complete dreams. This is my dream story/fan fiction:
Let’s begin with: Bruce Wayne is really the criminal and all of the villains are people he blamed for his parents' deaths --or at least were involved in the aftermath in some way. I know there is a popular “what if” theory of Batman being a patient in Arkham. That may be where my dream got the idea, but my subconscious fleshed it out even further ....
When Bruce was a little kid, he witnessed his dad kill his mom and then commit suicide in front of him. He was taken to Arkham Memorial Hospital (not asylum for the criminally insane).
His doctor when he arrived dressed as a clown to entertain the children in the children's ward. Bruce had a fear of clowns and this only traumatized him more. Everything this doctor did looked like something out of a horror movie: Checking a child's tonsils looked like he was ripping out his throat, examining a broken arm looked like he was torturing the child, listening to a heartbeat looked like he was burning the child with a weird branding tool, etc ...
Bruce was placed in a wing for children that had experienced traumas, and his therapist was Dr. Harleen Quinzel. He learned she was married to the clown doctor when he would meet her for lunch. They always fought about something, but she would kiss him before he left to go back to work. Bruce felt betrayed that the doctor who was supposed to be helping him was in league with the “evil clown.”
Bruce was placed in foster care. His foster father was the police commissioner and was a very loving man. He had another adopted son and a biological daughter, who both loved playing detective. As a family, they would read Sherlock Holmes and watch crime shows on TV. At night, Bruce would lay in bed and try to understand why his dad had killed himself and Bruce's mom.
Bruce began to piece together his memories, which would naturally be chaotic since he was a child and still really messed up after seeing the murder-suicide.
He remembered the man who started coming to the house when his dad wasn't there. He had met the man before at his dad's birthday party. He was a lawyer and his dad's best friend. Ultimately, he would end up being his mom's divorce lawyer after he and his mom started getting really close while his dad was away.
Bruce started keeping a journal in a secret place behind the big clock in their room. The only way to get to it was to move the clock and lift up a floorboard. There was a big space under the clock that was large enough for Bruce to keep things like a toy car he didn't want his new siblings to take from him and items he would steal from his foster father's office (mostly odds and ends that wouldn't be missed: a penny, a dinosaur statue, a wind up penguin...).
In this journal, he started to keep notes on all of the people he blamed for causing his parents' deaths, as well as other people he felt he couldn't trust. As the years went by, that list began to grow and Bruce became more alienated.
His foster father eventually adopted him. His new sister mostly hung out with her female friends, leaving him like his parents did. She was annoying, anyway, and doted on him too much like he was a doll. His new little brother followed him around everywhere, and Bruce felt purpose in life by looking after this kid who lost his parents at a young age like Bruce. His little brother was the only other human he loved like he loved his parents. He cared deeply for his adopted father, but Bruce had lost so much faith in people, he couldn't bring himself to love him, too.
The Gordon's had a cat Bruce would start to confide in when he felt his doctors were his enemies and didn't feel he could trust anyone else. She was a sleek black cat he would follow around and watch closely to learn how she lived her feline life. He would watch her meander all around the gardens until she would spot him, then she would make him chase her until she decided to let him catch her. He would scoop her up in his arms and hold her in his lap while he talked to her the way he couldn't talk to that evil clown doctor's goofy wife.
He came out to the garden once to find the commissioner's neighbor lady shooing the little cat over the fence between their property. She started yelling something about the cat ruining her roses, and Bruce threw a frisbee at her to shut her up. She came over to his house and told his dad what he had done. Commissioner Gordon told her Bruce was a damaged child and to leave him alone, but she yelled at him about her prize winning roses and respecting her flowers. She was still covered in the clippings from her work in her flower beds, and Bruce listed her in his journal as "Poison Ivy" for being such a toxic person.
Bruce never went to school. He had become so withdrawn that being around a lot of people made his PTSD worse. Instead, his father hired an English tutor that taught him a lot better than any Gotham school. Mr. Pennyworth grew very fond of Bruce and would always bring him a hot meal to eat during their lessons. Bruce joked that it was like he was a rich kid with a butler. Mr. Pennyworth didn't mind being called a butler and continued teaching Bruce not only school work but philosophy and morals, as well. Bruce started to see him as the second father figure to replace his real dad.
Bruce went with his adoptive father to work on a few occasions. While there, he would sneak into the police files and read up on criminals. He would pretend he would help his dad catch them all. He even stole some police equipment to add to his secret "cave" beneath the clock: handcuffs, a taser, some knives, throwing stars, and a black ski mask from a robbery suspect. When he was alone in his room or out in the garden with the cat, he would put on the ski mask, put all the stuff he stole from the precinct in his pockets and waist band, and pretend he was on a case with his dad as an unstoppable hero from one of his little brother’s cartoons.
As he got older, the make-believe started to become an obsession, and everyone he wrote about in his journal became a very real threat in his unstable mind.
At Halloween one year, his dad bought him a bat costume and his little brother a bird costume from a popular kid's show. His sister took them both trick-or-treating, which Bruce at first protested since it meant being outside with a lot of people. She dressed like a bat, though, just like Bruce to convince him it was okay to go out in public like a normal kid. She went out with her friends later that night and was in an accident that put her in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Bruce overheard the policeman tell his dad that it was a car jacking gone wrong, another criminal they had tried to put away countless times before but had been betrayed by the very system they worked for.
Bruce made a vow that night as he stared angrily at his untouched candy that he would make everyone who ever hurt him pay, especially people like the one who hurt his sister.
When Bruce became 18, he inherited everything his parents had left him. He had enough money to entertain the dark fantasies his damaged mind had conjured about his "enemies."
Bruce started terrorizing the clown doctor and his wife. They took out restraining orders, but nothing worked. They were on his hit list. The same went for the two-faced lawyer and the snobby plant lady that lived next door and the dozens of other names in his journal.
His father tried to get Bruce help, but when he showed up in his office dressed in the bat costume he wore when he was 11, Commissioner Gordon knew the only way to help him was to arrest him and have him sent to the psychiatric ward of Arkham Memorial.
There, Bruce took up art to help him with his PTSD. Since he couldn't do the things he wished in real life, he began drawing pictures of the alter-ego he created to administer his revenge. He wrote stories to go with the drawings.
His fellow patients all had their own favorite character. Some liked the plant lady stories, some liked his sister -- a champion for victims, and some liked how the two-faced lawyer was met with karma when half of his face was burned off -- exposing his two-faced personality. Others enjoyed his stories of the penguin monster that was based on the judge who sent him to the mental institution, and some were intrigued mostly by the mysterious character in the dark alley that killed the hero’s parents and changed his life forever. The more romantic driven patients loved the mysterious cat lady, who was cunning and did bad things but was always loyal to the hero’s alter ego.
His father found a publisher who helped him print and sell his stories, and people read them and fantasized about being the hero in the cape and cowl. Over time, people forgot the villains were real people tormented by the psychiatric patient who watched his parents die so long ago.
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