[ Starter for @dividedbybinaries ]
Gotham City always maintained a peculiar ecosystem for its monsters. They were trapped, tagged, and displayed behind reinforced glass and concrete, only to slip through their enclosures and return to the streets once more. Like an endless exhibition cycling through the same familiar, infamous pieces, the city dusted them off and rotated the display: a fresh cell, a fresh escape, a fresh body count. The audience never seemed to tire of the performance.
And like any gallery worth visiting, Gotham attracted artists from abroad.
Bodies appeared across the city, transformed into installations. Some were arranged in grotesque tableaus, their limbs articulated with the intent of a sculptor moulding clay, frozen in moments that suggested narratives long after life had abandoned them. Others were absorbed into sprawling murals painted across concrete and brick, their blood woven through colour and form until victim and artwork became indistinguishable from one another. Every line, every placement, every wound served a purpose. Every crime scene was another canvas. Every investigation, an audience.
It had happened in New York before. The collection grew as all worthwhile collections did.
Dozens. And dozens. And dozens.
Pieces scattered throughout Hell’s Kitchen’s forgotten corners and crowded streets, each one contributing to an ever-expanding gallery. Now, Gotham would inherit the exhibition. The newspapers called them murders. The police called them atrocities. Profilers chased explanations through endless reports and crime-scene photographs, convinced that somewhere beneath the carnage lay a reason they could understand.
Muse called them what they were. Art. And Gotham, for all its celebrated madness, had not seen an original work in years.
They never figured out who he was. Not in New York. Not in Gotham. The investigators exchanged reports, photographs, theories, and profiles. Gotham's detectives consulted Hell's Kitchen's. Hell's Kitchen's consulted Gotham's. Entire departments dedicated themselves to answering the same questions.
The answers remained indistinct, obscured beneath the layers of red. And the most paramount question of all—how to stop him—remained indomitably unanswered. At least for a time.
There were similarities between Gotham and New York beyond their skylines and crime rates. Every city seemed to produce its own self-appointed critic. Back home, it had been a vigilante with a talent for martial arts and an unfortunate habit of interrupting exhibitions before they were finished.
Even that proved to be a recurring motif. As though following the same exhausted composition, Gotham also produced its own variation of the theme. Different city. Different mask. Same criticism. Eventually, Muse found himself incarcerated at Arkham Asylum. Or rather, residing there for a brief intermission between projects.
It was difficult to remain inspired in a place so committed to stifling creativity. They confiscated his supplies. Restricted his materials. Revoked his art therapy privileges after deciding his work was "disturbing" and "counterproductive" to the recovery of the other patients. There had also been complaints regarding the murders. A surprisingly contentious issue. After a while, the walls became repetitive. The patients became repetitive. Muse found himself facing the most dreadful affliction imaginable. An artist's block. And if inspiration could no longer be found inside Arkham's walls, then it was only natural that he would seek it elsewhere.
So here he was. Returned, once more, to the city's restless pulse. The transition had been easier than expected. He even enjoyed biweekly sessions with his favourite psychiatrist. Following Doctor Crane's advice, inspiration had begun to return. At last. He could feel it stirring again, coursing through him like fresh paint seeping into the fibres of a blank canvas. Ideas took shape faster than he could contain them. Colours. Composition. Possibility. Creation.
This time, he had selected a man.
Not a particularly remarkable specimen. Certainly not as aesthetically pleasing as his favourite psychiatrist. But artistic merit had never depended upon the quality of the raw material. Any amateur could make something beautiful from something beautiful.
True artistry lies in transformation. In revealing value where none had been recognised before.
The man had been forgettable in every conceivable way. The sort of person one passed a hundred times without a second glance. A face lost among thousands. A life destined to dissolve quietly into obscurity. Computer analysts. Receptionists. Servers. Accountants. Middle managers. Entire lives spent generating nothing memorable. And yet, in the proper hands, even the mundane could become extraordinary. That was his greatest gift. Elevation. Taking lives otherwise destined for anonymity and preserving them forever as something larger than themselves. An immortal representation. A masterpiece.
No doubt, if he could speak right now, he would be resisting the inevitable. They always did. It was a shame, really. People rarely understood what was being offered to them. But that was part of the process. Part of the responsibility. An artist could not simply present a finished work; he had to be his audience’s guide.
Muse eased him onto the workbench at the centre of the abandoned warehouse, adjusting his position before returning his attention to the task at hand. His fingers curled around the large syringe lodged into the man’s thigh, guiding the mechanism as the dark crimson river threaded through the length of transparent tubing. It flowed steadily toward the waiting vessel nearby, each passing second drawing another measure in a slow, uninterrupted current. Muse watched the movement with satisfaction of an artist mixing pigment, observing raw material gathered for the work yet to come.
The warehouse had become a studio of sorts. Hooks dangled from the overhead lamp, like the framework of an unfinished mobile, each supporting a fragment awaiting its place in the final composition. Their slow, pendulous sway cast shadows across the warehouse walls, transforming discarded remains into shifting silhouettes. Above, a body had been mounted against the ceiling. The hollow cavity, slightly left off its centre, drew the eye upward, where its missing heart had been suspended from the fixture overhead like the final ornament of an elaborate chandelier. Nearby, a solitary leg rested upon a wooden chair. It had been positioned elegantly, carrying an absurd dignity that clashed violently with its isolation. Across the walls stretched page after page of sketches and notes: violent strokes of charcoal and paint, fragmented faces, disconnected forms, observations scrawled in hurried script. Some ideas had already been abandoned. Others waited patiently to evolve into something greater.
Creation was never a single moment. It lived in the experimentation. The revisions. The mistakes. The discoveries. The process, Muse often felt, was every bit as beautiful as the finished piece.
