The next take started with the sound of a match, not a clap or a call. The Joker sat alone at the bar, his hands folded, a strip of smoke rising from the tip of a wooden matchstick.
He let it burn down, eyes fixed on the shrinking red head. He waited until the flame licked at the glove, then pinched it out, holding the smoldering stub to his nose and inhaling.
In the script, this moment was nothing—a directionless insert shot, meant to establish mood. But on the set, the simple act became a ritual. The Joker let the sulfur burn in his nostrils for a long time, the eyes unblinking, the mouth set in a faint crescent of contempt. He watched the flame die and then, with infinite delicacy, placed the spent match in the shot glass in front of him.
He pushed the glass to the edge of the bar, then flicked it gently with one finger so it spun, wobbling, threatening to fall but never quite committing. He followed the arc with his eyes, head tilted, every movement measured in negative space. The camera, on a slow, creeping dolly, tracked in. The operator found the focus point and held it, breathless.
The extras to the left of the Joker were meant to banter, to simulate a low-key argument about territory. The lines were throwaway: a snarl, a sneer, an offhanded threat.
But as soon as the camera rolled, both men went silent. One shot a glance at Marcus, then quickly away, as if the painted stare might freeze him solid. The other fumbled his line, missed the cue entirely, and sat staring at the Joker with a mounting terror that had nothing to do with acting.
The Joker noticed.
He slid his hand along the bar, wrist arched, fingers splayed just so.
He tapped the countertop, once for each of the extras, as if taking inventory. He cocked his head, the green-streaked hair falling perfectly out of place, and waited.
The extras felt the attention like a slow current. The first one—blond, younger, with the carved cheekbones of a leading man who'd failed upward into the chorus—swallowed hard. The second, older, with pocked skin and a day-old beard, seemed to shrink, his shoulders folding in until the lapels of his jacket met at the chin.
Without a word, the Joker leaned forward, drawing both men closer with nothing but the force of gravity and threat. He placed his mouth a half-inch from the blonde's ear and whispered:
"You ever count the number of bones in a human hand?"
It was not in the script. The line was nowhere in the rehearsal, nowhere in any prior version of the scene. But the moment it landed, the blond flinched, eyes flickering to the Joker's face, then the gloves, then back to the camera as if seeking help.
The Joker reached up, still not looking away, and began to flex the fingers of his right hand, counting in silence.
"Twenty-seven," he said, voice so soft the sound guy in the corner had to crank his levels to catch it.
"But some people think it's twenty-eight."
He smiled, small and private, then pressed his thumb to the blonde's jaw, tracing the line of bone just beneath the ear.
"You know which one breaks first?" the Joker asked.
The extra tried to answer, but the words curdled in his mouth.
The Joker didn't need a response. He straightened, pulling the glove away, then snapped his fingers so loud the entire bar went silent.
"That's the one," he said, and let the moment bleed.
The camera caught every micro-expression: the widening of the eyes, the flare of the nostrils, the faint shimmer of sweat along the hairline. The operator tracked Marcus, not with the detached efficiency of a technician, but with the fixation of a man trying to document a haunting.
He moved with the Joker, every sudden gesture, every reversal, every freeze. At one point, Marcus went so still that the operator thought the feed had dropped frames.
The Joker turned his attention to the next mark, the older extra. This time, he did not speak. He just stared, the green in his eyes sharp and unblinking, the smile so small it barely registered.
The older man wilted under the gaze, lips trembling. He tried to improvise a line—anything to break the spell—but the words came out as a stutter.
The Joker did not react. He just held the stare, and in the silence, the entire set began to contract. Even the crew, watching from the perimeter, found themselves huddling closer, as if the chill in the air might be physical.
At the monitor, Nolan sat hunched, elbows on his knees, eyes never leaving the display. He scratched notes in the margin of the script, then crossed them out before the ink had dried. He watched the Joker move, and each time Marcus went off-book, Nolan made a mark on the page. After two minutes, the script was almost entirely blacked out.
The Joker returned to the center of the bar. He spun on his stool, coat flaring, and let his gaze settle on the barkeep. He waited until the silence felt radioactive, then said,
"Pour me a double."
The barkeep moved, hands shaking so bad the first glass hit the bottle at the wrong angle and shattered in his grip. The prop liquor—tea and food coloring—puddled instantly on the mahogany.
The Joker did not react, not at first. He just watched, head tilted, and let the moment hang.
Then, suddenly, he slammed his palm down on the bar, the sound sharp and violent.
The entire set jolted.
The barkeep jumped, nearly falling backward.
The Joker smiled, showing just a sliver of tooth.
"You know what I love about good help?" he said, voice dipped in acid and honey.
"They always bleed on the job."
He gestured for the barkeep to try again, never moving his eyes from the man's face.
The second pour went better. The barkeep managed to fill the glass without incident, though the liquid sloshed over the rim and left a trail down the side. The Joker watched the hand, the tremor, the way the fingers splayed on the bottle.
He took the glass, inspected it, then tossed the contents back in one smooth motion. The tea ran down the paint, dripping crimson and brown down the edge of his mouth. He licked the residue, slow and obscene, then set the glass on the bar with a deliberate click.
He turned to face the camera, eyes wide, and held the silence.
From his vantage, Marcus could see the HUD flicker in the periphery. IMMERSION: 92%. The numbers ticked up with each unscripted move, each stolen breath of fear from the actors around him. TRAIT INTEGRATION: LAUGHTER, PREDATORY STILLNESS, INHUMAN FOCUS.
He felt the words as a pulse behind the eyes, a cold clarity that told him exactly what to do and when to do it.
He let the silence last as long as he dared, then, at the precise moment the tension began to waver, he exploded. He shot off the stool, body arching backward, then forward, so fast the camera nearly lost him.
He landed with both hands on the bar, leaned into the lens, and let out a laugh that started at the bottom of the lungs and rose to a needle point. It cut through the set, splitting the air, then vanished, leaving only an afterimage of noise.
He stared at the lens, unblinking, and let the corners of his mouth curl up until the red paint almost reached his ears.
"Cut," Nolan said, but the Joker did not stop. He held the pose, eyes wide, breath coming in shallow, wet gasps.
Nobody else moved. The entire set, down to the riggers on the second level, was locked in tableau.
Marcus, from inside the character, could feel the HUD shift again. IMMERSION: 96%. The boundary between self and role was a rumor, not a fact. He waited, hands braced on the bar, until the second AD mustered the courage to say,
"Cut! Please—reset, everybody."
The set exhaled, a single, ragged breath.
Marcus stepped back, flexed his fingers, and let the Joker's smile fade to a more human geometry. He blinked twice, slow, as if learning the rhythm again.
At the monitor, Nolan sat unmoving. He watched the playback in slow motion, tracing every movement, every deviation, every micro-expression that Marcus had conjured from the air.
The first AD turned, voice still a shade too high:
"Should we do it again?"
Nolan did not answer. He just watched the screen, eyes narrowed, until the frame went black.
The crew reset the bar, sweeping up glass and mopping spilled tea from the lacquered wood. The extras returned to their marks, though both looked like they'd seen the devil.
Marcus wiped his mouth with the back of the glove, then set his hands on the bar, ready.
At the sound of the slate, he let the Joker take over.
This time, the match burned down to the skin, and he did not flinch.
...
From the viewing bay behind the main set, Anne watched the screen with a dread that grew in her gut like a sickness. She had not moved in twenty minutes. The script, damp at the creases from her grip, was folded so tight it threatened to tear.
Her left thumb worried a corner of the page, rubbing it raw; the right hand, white-knuckled, trembled just enough that the motion was visible if you looked for it.
She told herself she wasn't looking for it. But she was.
The Joker on screen was a different animal than the one she'd met at the table read. This was not a man performing; it was something in the process of shedding a man's shape. The stillness, the reptilian tracking of the eyes, the voice that whispered instead of shouted—each detail made her skin crawl and flush at the same time.
She leaned forward unconsciously, her jaw locked so tight it ached. Her breath came shallow, hitching at every unexpected movement. She tried to take notes, to mark up the script with her usual ruthlessness, but the pen hovered useless above the page, as if afraid to make a sound.
She watched as Marcus, with a single word or a shift of posture, unraveled the men around him. The extras—she could not remember their names, they seemed so much like wallpaper—became victims in real time.
When the Joker leaned in to whisper to the blond, Anne felt a surge of panic in her own chest, as if she were the one with the gloved hand at her jaw.
"You ever count the number of bones in a human hand?"
The words reached her before the audio did. For a moment, she stopped breathing. She saw the extra flinch, the ripple of gooseflesh up his arm, and Anne nearly stood. She could feel her own line—her own line, from a different scene—rising up in her throat, a reflex to fill the void, to break the tension with performance.
She clamped her mouth shut, teeth biting the tip of her tongue, and tasted iron.
The screen did not let up. The Joker counted on his fingers, each number punctuated by a flick of the wrist. When he touched the blonde's jaw, Anne felt it as a ghost pressure on her own skin, cool and electric.
She shivered, and the motion drew a glance from the continuity girl two seats down, who was herself hugging a clipboard like a life raft.
On screen, the Joker straightened and let the silence sprawl. Anne could see the panic in the extra's eyes, the moment he looked off-camera as if to beg for rescue.
None came.
She watched as Marcus destroyed the script, one line at a time. He ignored cues, bent the world to his rhythm, and seemed to know exactly when to push, when to pull back, when to let the room hang itself with its own anticipation.
When he slammed his hand on the bar, Anne jumped, physically, the motion so involuntary she almost dropped the script.
Her heart hammered, a hollow bird in her chest.
She tried to tell herself this was good, that this was the magic Nolan and every other director prayed for, but the sensation was not pleasure. It was terror, mixed with a sweetness she was too ashamed to name.
She lost track of the minutes. The scene blurred at the edges, time smearing into a loop of Joker, silence, laughter, threat. When Marcus laughed—really laughed, the sound pitched up and layered with a kind of hungry joy—Anne felt the blood drain from her face, then return hotter than before.
She caught herself, fingers pressed so hard into the script her nails left half-moons in the paper. She realized she'd stopped taking notes five pages ago.
When the take ended, it ended with a silence so deep she thought the playback had glitched. The Joker's mouth froze, painted lips parted in a smile that was at once invitation and warning. The image lingered on screen, and for a moment, no one in the viewing bay moved.
Anne swallowed. Her throat was dry as a bone.
Somewhere behind her, a production assistant exhaled, a faint, whimpery sigh. The continuity girl set her clipboard down on her lap and did not pick it up again. The lighting supervisor, seated cross-legged on the floor, stared at the monitor with an expression Anne could only describe as religious terror.
The first AD—an older man, usually gruff, sometimes a little cruel—stood just off to her left, arms folded. She watched as his jaw moved, side to side, grinding the words before he dared to speak them.
"That wasn't rehearsal, right?" he said, his voice pitched for Anne alone.
She did not answer. She couldn't. Her own voice was gone, sucked out by the Joker and left somewhere in the crawlspace above the bar set.
On the main floor, nobody spoke. The crew reset in silence, each man and woman moving as if in a trance. The extras at the bar did not look at Marcus as they resumed their marks. The barkeep, still trembling, dabbed his sleeve at the spill, eyes locked on his own reflection in the lacquer.
Anne watched as Marcus remained motionless, hands braced on the bar, the Joker's smile still alive on his face. He seemed not to breathe, not to blink, just to watch. She could see the faint tremor in his gloved hand, the only sign that the performance cost him anything at all.
Behind the monitor, Nolan was frozen. He sat with his hands on his knees, eyes locked to the playback, frame-advancing the footage a second at a time, as if searching for the secret to what had just happened. Anne could see the sweat on his brow, the way his shirt stuck to his back. He did not speak to anyone. He did not move for a long time.
The viewing bay remained silent until the second AD, a kid barely out of film school, whispered,
"I don't think that was acting."
Anne stared at the monitor, the frozen image of the Joker staring back at her, and for a moment, she could not disagree.
She stood, slow, and felt the ache in her legs, the rawness in her hands where the script had cut into the skin. She walked to the edge of the set, just close enough to see the real Marcus, still holding the pose, head tilted at an angle that looked uncomfortable but, on him, seemed inevitable.
She watched him, searching for the moment he would let go, let the mask drop, return to being just a man in makeup and velvet. She waited for a tell—an exhale, a flicker of the eyes, a slump of the shoulders.
But he stayed perfectly still, the Joker's smile holding the world at bay.
Anne felt herself smile, just a little, and the sensation was like breaking a fever. She let it fade, let the tension drain from her arms, and turned away.
On set, no one dared call "cut" again. They just watched and waited, hoping the spell would break on its own.
But it didn't.
And Anne, for the first time in her life, wasn't sure she wanted it to.
.........
[Okay, I'm thinking we could set targets going forward with power stones. I don't know much about what would be acceptable but we could figure something out. Let me know what you guy's think.
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