Method Madness

It wasn't violence, not at first. Just a gesture, a slow reach for the second glass, a pour from the bottle that looked more like blood than whiskey.

He slid the glass down the bar, never breaking eye contact with the boss. The boss hesitated, then drank, because not drinking would be the same as running. Everyone in the theater saw it.

Anne caught herself holding her own breath.

The violence, when it came, was almost gentle. The Joker didn't raise his voice, didn't bare his teeth. He simply stood, turned, and walked toward the door.

The goons moved to block him, and in less than a heartbeat, both were on the floor. It was beautiful, in the way that a landslide is beautiful—terrifying, inexorable, and utterly final.

The Joker paused at the door, looked back, and for the first time, smiled.

Not a wide smile. Just a bare curl at the edge of the mouth, a preview of something that would get worse, much worse, before it ever got better.

Anne felt the audience behind her—hundreds of people, suddenly afraid to look away, as if missing the next frame might mean missing the answer to a question they hadn't realized they'd been asking all their lives.

A critic, somewhere, scribbled a note, the pen scratching loud as a gunshot.

In the darkness, Anne felt her own hands tremble, just a little. She glanced again at Marcus.

He hadn't moved.

On screen, the Joker stepped into the night, the door closing behind him with a soft, inevitable click.

The scene held.

The audience held.

Then, only then, did the movie let anyone breathe.

Anne exhaled, slow.

The first ten minutes were over.

The crowd was already changed.

.....

As the reel spooled on, the crowd's attention didn't flag; it sharpened, whetted by every minute that passed. Anne could feel the collective heart rate of the theater tick up with each scene, the tension so thick it seemed to metabolize the oxygen in the air, leaving the rest of them to draw shallow, needy breaths.

The film accelerated, but in the way a glacier accelerates—a thousand tons of frozen time, moving just enough to crush everything in its path. The Joker's face was everywhere.

Sometimes front and center, sometimes lurking in mirrors or shadows, sometimes just a reflection in someone else's terror. It didn't matter. Every frame belonged to him.

Anne tracked the audience as much as the screen. She saw heads tilt forward, then back, then forward again. She saw shoulders hunch, then shudder, then collapse in relief at the rare moments of comic relief. But most of all, she saw the way nobody, not a single soul, left their seat. Not even for the bathroom.

On screen, the Joker stalked a party—one of those society galas shot in a faux-Victorian ballroom, all marble and dust and the ghosts of money long spent. He moved through the crowd like a rumor, never bumping into anyone, never drawing a single eye, until he stood in the exact center of the floor, hands folded, head bowed. The extras ringed him like cattle, talking, laughing, unaware of the engine of violence at their core.

The critics in the row ahead started to scribble again, notes laid out on their laps in tiny, neurotic handwriting. Anne caught a snatch of whisper: "—predator, not clown—" and, later, "—not acting, just being—" but the rest was lost under the throb of the score, which had started to pulse with a dissonant, almost obscene beauty.

She heard, somewhere behind her, the faint click of a phone camera—then the immediate, brutal shush from the ushers. No one dared a second try.

Anne's own pulse was a staccato drum, fast enough to make her fingertips tingle. The next sequence was her own, or rather, Selina's: the first true encounter between Catwoman and the Joker, staged in a high window over a rain-wet city, the glass spattered with the reflections of police cruisers below.

She knew every line, every gesture. She'd shot it for days, living the tension, the scripted flirtation, the cat-and-mouse that was supposed to end in stalemate but, on set, always felt like a surrender.

But here, in the dark, the edit had changed everything.

The Joker stood at the window, looking down. Catwoman slunk in from the shadows behind him, every step calculated to be silent. The audience waited for the standoff, the banter, the exchange of threats.

Instead, the Joker spoke first.

"I used to dream about falling," he said, the words low, almost tender.

"It's not the fear. It's the part where you realize you're not waking up."

Catwoman said nothing. On screen, Anne watched herself cross the room, watched the wary, predatory way she eyed his back. She remembered what it felt like—the heat of the lights, the pressure of his attention, the way Marcus never, ever broke the spell between takes.

The Joker turned, slow. The movement was so deliberate it became its own form of violence.

"I know why you're here," he said.

"You're like me. You wear the skin, and wait for it to fit."

Catwoman bared her teeth, but the Joker only smiled, wide and patient.

The entire theater was silent. Anne could feel the restlessness—hundreds of people, desperate to move, to laugh, to cut the tension, but unable.

On screen, the Joker and Catwoman circled each other. He never raised his voice, never used a threat. He just let the words do the work.

"I want to see what happens when you break," he said.

The critics' pens scratched faster. Someone behind Anne gasped, soft and involuntary.

The rest of the scene played out in almost complete silence. The two of them, circling, testing, the lines between enemy and accomplice blurring until the final moment, when the Joker leaned in—too close, far closer than the script ever called for—and whispered something lost in the mix.

On the screen, Anne saw herself react, saw the mask slip for a second, saw a flash of naked panic and then, worse, the way it turned into something like hunger.

She flinched, real and physical, in her seat.

She felt her hand tighten on the armrest.

No, not the armrest. Marcus's hand. She'd grabbed it again without thinking, nails digging into the back of his hand.

He didn't respond. Didn't even seem to notice.

Anne looked at his face, expecting a smile, or at least a glimmer of pride.

Nothing. He was watching the screen as if it were someone else's life, someone else's story.

In the audience, the tension began to crack. A woman in the back row covered her mouth, eyes wide, as if she'd just seen a ghost. A man in the center section rocked back and forth, both hands clenched so tight the skin had gone mottled.

The critics, the industry veterans, even the hardened studio execs—none of them had words. They passed looks back and forth, as if to confirm they were seeing the same thing, as if to say: Yes, it's real. Yes, it's happening.

The movie did not relent. The Joker, now alone, sat in a chair and stared at the ceiling. He didn't move for a full minute of screen time. The theater endured it, then, one by one, the crowd shifted in their seats, unable to take the silence, the stillness.

Anne remembered shooting that scene. Nolan had called for a lunch break, but Marcus refused to move. He'd sat for three hours, unmoving, until the crew, unnerved, started to avoid even looking in his direction. When she'd tried to talk to him, he hadn't answered—not as Marcus, not as anyone. He'd just sat, waiting for the next cue, the next reason to exist.

On screen, the Joker blinked once. Then the smile returned, slow as a sunrise.

The crowd shivered as one.

After that, the violence began in earnest.

Anne stopped watching the film and started watching the audience.

She saw industry titans—people who'd survived wars, scandals, the collapse and rebirth of Hollywood three times—reduced to statues in their seats. She saw one critic, a legend, hand pressed to chest, eyes glued to the screen as if afraid to look away.

She saw the young influencers in the balcony, faces lit by the projected light, expressions gone slack and unselfconscious.

In her own row, a woman started to cry. Not sobbing, not loud, just tears streaming down her face, mascara tracking in perfect lines.

Anne found herself shaking. Not visible, not enough for anyone else to notice, but inside, the tremor was absolute.

Marcus didn't move.

The Joker-Catwoman sequence returned—another, even darker confrontation. Anne watched herself on screen, watched the way her body betrayed her. She could see now what she hadn't seen on set: the fear, the fascination, the line that blurred between the two until it was gone altogether.

Next to her, Marcus's breathing was steady, slow. He might as well have been asleep.

The scene built to a crescendo. The Joker, alone in a warehouse, waiting. Catwoman, breaking in, her silhouette sharp and perfect in the moonlight. The lines between them had vanished; now it was just two animals, circling, neither willing to leave without drawing blood.

They fought. Not with words, not with the pageant of villain and hero, but with bare hands, with hunger, with a desperation that made Anne want to look away but couldn't.

On screen, the Joker pinned Catwoman to the wall. He didn't hurt her. He didn't even threaten her. He just leaned in, close, so close, and whispered again.

This time, the microphone caught it.

"You want it as bad as I do."

Anne felt her heart stop.

On screen, Catwoman's mask slipped—her own face, raw, exposed.

In the theater, every audience member flinched as if they'd been slapped.

The scene ended with the two of them, breathless, still locked together, neither breaking the stare.

The crowd didn't move. Not for seconds. Not for a minute.

Anne let go of Marcus's hand. She realized she was sweating, her dress glued to her back.

She looked at the audience again.

They were all changed.

No one in the room could look at anyone else. Not yet.

The film rolled on, but Anne barely registered the rest. Her mind was still caught in that scene, that line, the way Marcus—no, the Joker—had looked at her, at everyone, at the whole goddamn world.

.......

Well you guys just hit 25 reviews. After you hit 30 reviews will go up to 10 per chapter so get the last one while you can hahaha

[If you want more keep dropping reviews and power stones!

5 reviews = 1 extra chapter

100 power stones = 1 extra chapter

For Extra Chapters Visit the Patreon and Subscribe!

Currently on chapter 53 over there will be posting 10 new chapters tomorrow on patreon also.

patreon.com/BS_Entertainment98]