Bart didn’t scare easily. Horror movies usually bored him to death and he could laugh his way right through a haunted house. Aside from the one time that Batman had snuck up behind him during one of his visits to Gotham, Bart couldn’t even remember the last time he’d screamed out of fear. Except for right now, that was, because Bart was certain that right now he was more terrified than he’d ever been in his entire life.
He’d awoken with a start to the sound of voices in his head - some that he recognized and most that he didn’t, but all of them were talking at once and he felt as if his brain were about to explode. “Wha-? AHHH! AAAUUUGGH!!” Bart cried, sitting bolt upright in bed and clutching his head with his hands and squeezing his eyes shut. “What’s going on?!” He panicked, opening his eyes and looking around wildly as if expecting to suddenly find his room filled with people. But he saw nothing. He blinked in confusion in the pitch-black darkness. Had the power gone out? Was he still dreaming? “Ciryke! Ciryke, wake up!” Bart stammered anxiously, groping blindly in the dark for the person he knew for a fact had fallen asleep right next to him, the voices in his head still yammering on and on. Even in the middle of the night he’d always been able to see at least the shapes of things in his bedroom. It was never so dark that he couldn’t see anything at all. What the hell was going on? “Ciryke!” He cried when he finally felt a person-sized lump buried in the blankets next to him. “Ciryke, wake up! Something’s wrong! I can’t-” He stopped mid-sentence as he was interrupted by the sound of laughter. It filled his ears and drowned the other voices in an instant, like candles being snuffed out by a gust of wind. It was the thick, oily kind of rusty-nails-on-crumbling-chalkboard laughter that lacked any sort of joy or happiness and it chilled Bart right to his core. “Oh, this is too good to be true! I never imagined that we’d meet like this.” The voice purred. Bart scrambled out of bed, his first instinct automatically instructing him to flee. But he couldn’t! He couldn’t run! The shock of the realization sent him stumbling backwards into a wall, where he smacked his head with a sharp yelp of pain and slid to the floor. “Who are you?!” He shrieked, kicking his legs out and pressing his palms to the back of the wall in hopes of locating/hurting the unknown source of the voice. “I’m someone who already knows you quite well, Kid. Although, I gotta say I always kinda hoped that the ‘carefree idiot’ thing you had goin’ on was just an act.” The voice mocked snidely. “It’s so disappointing to find out that you actually are just an idiot - inside and out.”
“Shut up! Shut up SHUT UP!!” Bart screamed, covering his ears again and pulling his knees up to his chest. “GET OUT OF MY HEAD!! HELP! CIRYKE, PLEASE! WAKE UP!!”
