Hero

He sits in a chair, alone semi-darkness, and pretends to be a hero. He has to pretend—he has to—because in this room, there is only one hero, and it isn’t him. The hero is something else, something undefined: a thing or a concept, something—but not him. He is the guardian, and the hero is compassionless, emotionless; so he sits and reads.
Every once in awhile a voice cries out: “No, No, Please!” He ignores it, because there is nothing else to do. He turns a page in his magazine and stares at an advertisement for Vegas, Sin City, Paradise. Heaven and Hell wrapped up into one, represented on a glossy page by a smiling woman in a bikini that is barely there. He imagines what it would feel like to be on a beach somewhere, sweating in the sun with a cold beer in hand. Listening to the crashing of the waves and watching the clouds roll by. There is no one else on the beach, not in his fantasy—not even the smiling woman. He tries to place her there and fails: she is as out of place in his fantasy as he would be on a beach. She is probably called Trixie, though never by her parents. Oh, no. And she probably has brown hair.
“No, No, Please!” He sighs, turning the page. They are louder today, moaning and roaring over the waves in his head, drowning them out just as they are drowning. The pain will overwhelm them, or insanity will, but there are no heroes here. Just him in his chair, in the darkness, with a magazine. They cry out to him, and he knows that they are pretending that he is a hero, too. How can they think that, when day after day he doesn’t save them? And yet they cling to frail hope, to the miserable idea of salvation—and he turns a page and clings to the waves, to the beach in his head. But it is only ever in his head. And they cry.
“Please, Please No!”
“Shut up!” He cries, throwing the magazine resolutely to the floor. “Shut up!” He moves to the doorway and leans in, standing his ground and refusing to succumb to the darkness of the Other Room.
“No one can hear you!” The cries fall away into whispers and moans. He leans away and they seem to grow louder: they are meant for his ears alone.
“Please, please. You have to save us.”
“Do you know who I am?” He shouts, his voice conquering the others. “Do you know? Do you know?” He breathes deeply and leans away again, afraid of the darkness. He thinks of the beach, the sunlight and the beads of sweat that are rolling down his neck, his back, the palms of his hands. “I’m not a hero,” he tells them, breaking the fantasy, the pretend.
“But you could be.” They whisper back, and before he realizes it, he is walking forward, wading into the darkness and reaching out with his hands.
“You don’t understand. Please, you don’t understand,” he begs them, as his hands grasp at the air, searching for something—someone—to hold. “There is only one hero here, and it isn’t me.”
His fingers graze the cold stone of a wall and he panics, withdrawing his hands. He turns in a circle but the darkness is overwhelming, and he can no longer see the door. Lost it, he has lost the door.
“Please,” he whispers, “please, no.” But there is no one to answer him, now. He is alone in the darkness, searching for a hero. But there is only one hero here, and the hero is Death. And he cries, his voice undulating like the waves at high tide, and he is drowning, pain and desperation breaking over him in waves.
“Please, please no.”

Lost in an old blog...

Standing still on silver shores

Watching daylight fade to gray

Hurrying into evermore

Ne'er to return again

Sorrows still are soaring closer

Black and darkness now revealed

Night is dawning faster, faster

Light and life and love in vain

Forward into dooms unknown

Toward a place by candle shown

Where new seed must ere be sown

Down new, darkened country lanes.

Pennies to the wishing well

Make one request, but who can tell

If good or evil now befall

Young lovers in a fresh-dug grave

Dancing now in moonlit beams

Wondering what the world intends

Time endures beyond life's seams

Never to return again.

Holding out

I’m holding out for –
What, I don’t know, I’m
Holding out for something, anything
For a better today
I guess lately, these things
Haven’t been going my way, so
I’m holding out for –
I’m holding out for –
Tea and crumpets and all
The lovely things girls like to see
I’m holding out, I’m
Hanging on to thoughts of you
Beneath my window sill, a perfect
Romeo, calling out to the wrong
Girl, a poor Juliet, I can’t
Always make you happy, I can’t
And I’m holding out –
I’m holding on to you and your love
Will you love me tomorrow,
I could never say but
I’m holding out, hanging on to
A better today.

Rain

The leaves were so still that even Bibi thought it was going to rain. She was usually wrong about these things- things like the weather, or what time it was, or how long it would take to make dinner. The whole town knew not to trust her with any answer. At first it had shamed her, to have such a reputation, but after so many long years, she had learned to adapt. She even took to purposefully telling people the wrong answer, or saying the wrong things, so that it was impossible to tell what she made into a joke and what she truly didn’t know. Her husband hated this about her – so much so that he often refused to talk to her seriously – but when she was alone, she would think of things she could say and laugh.
Lightning cracked soundlessly through the dim evening sky, throwing strange shadows across the field beside her home. Shuddering at how big the storm was bound to be, Bibi hurried outside to the clothesline and began tearing things out of the air, throwing them helter-skelter into her old wooden basket. The exertion made her hot, but she didn’t stop to wipe the sweat from her forehead; she didn’t know how much time she might have.
“Waddaya doin’?” Bibi looked up to see her husband pushing his way between two corn stalks. He approached her slowly, walking with the sort of limp that is brought on only by long years in the sun.
“Bringin’ the laundry in. It’s about t’ rain, can’t ya see?”
He laughed loudly, his voice booming as lightning lit the sky again. “You crazy, woman? It’s too hot t’ rain!” She narrowed her eyes at him and looked pointedly at the sky, which only made her husband laugh harder. “Tha’s a heat storm, you crazy old woman!” And he kissed her cheek firmly, as if to lighten the blow.
Bibi continued to gather the laundry, though she moved more slowly now. She was trying to be good-natured, but things just seemed different today. She wasn’t sure how.
When she got inside, her husband had already pulled off his boots and climbed child-like into his armchair in front of the T.V. Setting the laundry on the kitchen table, she took a package of chicken out of the freezer and set it on the table to defrost.
“Dinner’ll be ‘bout another hour, Henry,” she said, and he waved his hand vaguely through the air to show that he had heard. She looked at the back of his head for a minute, lost in those pleasant thoughts of nothing that one sometimes gets, and then coming back to herself, she went upstairs.
Two hours later, they were just sitting down for dinner when another bolt of lightning shocked the sky. Bibi jumped up from the table, shrieking “See! See!” while her husband watched her in bemusement.
“Bibi, set yourself down so’s we can eat. It ain’t going t’ rain.”
“Look how dark the sky is, though! It ain’t like that every night! You can barely see the barn!” The statement was hardly true at all – in fact, the sky was a strange purple color that neither Bibi nor her husband had ever seen before. The color wasn’t the friendly, cheery color that Bibi worked into her quilts, but the color of breathlessness, or of death.
Bibi sat down resignedly at the table once more, but she couldn’t do more than pick at her food. When her husband had finished his meal, she cleared her own plate as well, throwing a few scraps out the door for the wild animals to eat. She didn’t put out as much as she normally would; convinced as she still was that it was going to rain, she didn’t figure that many animals would be venturing around.
That night, Bibi couldn’t sleep; everything was too still to her well-tuned ears. How her husband could fail to miss the chirping of crickets from the field, or the rustling of leaves in the tree outside their bedroom she couldn’t say, but finally it became too much for her to take. Quietly, she climbed out of her bed – her husband grumbling in his sleep – and grabbing her night robe, Bibi made her way out of the house.
Outside, she let her slipper-clad feet stomp loudly against the ground as she marched toward the fields. “It should have rained today, it should have!” Her muttering was the only sound to be heard for miles around.

“My God!” She screeched, once she had reached the center of the field, a place she knew because the ground sloped up just slightly, not more than few small feet, to form a point. “My God, but I thought it was going to rain!” Lightning cracked the midnight air, cracked Bibi’s scull like the striking of a gong, except that no once was there to hear or see. Bibi fell silently to the hard, dry ground, and the sky opened up, and it poured.



**Author's Note: This story was borne of an assignment for my fiction writing class. The first line is actually the first from the story "The Storm" by Kate Chopin.

Everything to Change

“What are you doing here?” She asked loudly, blushing as her words drew the attention of the others in the room.
He shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t know. I thought you could use some company.” The boy ran his fingers through his hair nervously and held out a small stack of magazines, the covers of which naturally caught her eye. He was always so scrupulous when it came to detail- it was what made him an enviable boyfriend. He had brought all of her favorites.
“I told you, you don’t need to be here. I’m fine on my own.” She had to look away as she said it; in fact, she crossed her legs and turned her whole body away from him, even if it did open her to the rest of the room. The black woman sitting across from her caught her eye for a moment and then abruptly looked away. She was tapping her long nails against a book in her lap, had been doing it for at least twenty minutes. All of the appointments were running behind, and the woman was starting to get anxious.
The boy sat down anyway. “I have candy, too,” he offered. When the girl didn’t say anything, he sat back in his chair and took a deep breath.
“Do you ever think about dying?” She wished she hadn’t asked it even before her tongue had rolled over the last word. Dying. She was too young to be thinking about things like that, but she thought about them anyway. She thought she had better start sometime, and it almost seemed like the least that she could do.
“Don’t say that,” he commanded her quietly, looking around the room to see if anyone else had heard. The girl had actually spoken very softly, but in such a small space it seemed like the sound might carry. “It’s not like that. You don’t need to think about that.”
She turned her head back to look at him; her blue eyes looked gray and gloomy in the florescent light. “It was just a question. Do you really never think about it?” She noticed that the boy’s cheeks were flushed. It could have been because the room wasn’t air conditioned, and the ceiling fan didn’t seem to be doing much work; but she thought he might be embarrassed, which made her mad. She didn’t know what he would have to be embarrassed about: he could leave, if he wanted to. She wished he would.
“Well, no, I don’t. Are you happy?”
“Did you really just ask me if I was happy?”
He sighed. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Of course I’m not happy!” She was being loud again, but this time she didn’t care who heard her. She looked indignantly across the room to see if anyone was watching them and was pleasantly surprised to see that everyone else in the waiting room was dutifully pretending that they hadn’t heard anything.
“I don’t know why you would ask that. What about this would make me happy?”
“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean it like that.”
She looked away from him again, this time deciding to stare at one of the informational posters on the wall. The girl had already read it several times since she’d arrived, about an hour before, but it seemed like a good place to focus her gaze, and her anger. She could feel him watching her still, probably waiting for her to speak.
“Well, I think about it.” Finally, she looked at him again. “And it scares me. I never used to be scared when I thought about it, but I’m scared now.” On an impulse, she reached out and took the magazines out of his hand. “I don’t want these,” she said, and threw them casually in a pile on the floor.
“You don’t need to be scared. Everything’s going to be fine.” His voice shook just the tiniest bit when he said fine, and he hoped she wouldn’t notice. He didn’t care at all about the magazines; he had just brought them so that he would have something to do with his hands. “You have nothing to worry about.”
She sighed. “Everything is going to be different now.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” he said quietly, and took her hand. The boy half expected her to pull her hand away and was happy that she didn’t. He wrapped his fingers around hers protectively and squeezed. “This doesn’t change the way I feel about you. You know that, right?”
“Mary?” A nurse plaintively interrupted the near-silence of the room.
“It’s Marie,” the black woman with the long nails corrected loudly. “MAH-REE.”
The nurse showed her through a small door at the back of the room, and the boy and girl watched her leave.
“I’m after her, I think,” said the girl. Her voice was thick, the tears plain as daylight on her face. The boy reached up with his empty hand to wipe her face, but she turned away from him again. He waited again for her to speak, but ten minutes passed with nothing but a few quiet sniffles passing between them. The door to the parking lot opened and another couple walked in, both looking like they might at any moment kill the other. The boy watched them for awhile, but then the man saw him looking and he had to look away.
The girl was still ignoring him; he thought she had stopped crying, though, and that was a good sign.
“Hey,” he said tentatively, and waited for her to turn.
“What?” She didn’t move. He squeezed her hand and whispered her name just loud enough so she would be the only one to hear. She sniffed again but still wouldn’t move.
“Why won’t you look at me?” He didn’t want to be insensitive; he wanted to be there for her. He wanted her, even if she only wanted him to leave.
She sighed again. “Everything’s going to be different now. I don’t want it to be, but when I look at you, that’s all I think.” She turned, finally, her eyes puffy and her face still tear-stained. “I don’t want to do this.”
It was his turn now to look away. He even dropped her hand, which hurt but didn’t surprise her at all.
“What else are you gonna do?”
She sniffed and folded her hands in her lap. “I don’t know.”
Another nurse came in, wearing scrubs with smiling yellow suns all over them. The nurse called the girl’s name, and she stood up, walked over to the little door at the back of the room. The nurse smiled at her, and then looked over her shoulder to where the boy was still sitting, as if frozen in another time.
“Will you be driving her home?” The boy’s eyes darted questioningly to the girl, who half-turned to look at him.
“No, my friend Jenny is coming to pick me up. She said she’d be here around four.” The boy nodded, not at all surprised. The nurse nodded too, and turned away from the room again, motioning for the girl to follow.
“Oh, wait,” the girl said, one foot already out into the hallway beyond. “Just a second,” she said, and then turned back to the waiting room, back to the boy. She walked quickly, and as he opened his arms, she threw her own quickly around his neck and pulled herself close to him.
He wrapped her tenderly against himself, their bodies touching at so many points, and in an instant they both saw everything that they would never have, because today would change everything, and they both had to admit it. She pulled herself back slightly, just enough to see the side of his face, and when she looked at him she saw a whole other life spreading out before her, a difficult and beautiful life that only he could give her. As his hands squeezed her lightly, she tilted her head and kissed his cheek, right in the corner of his mouth.
“Goodbye.”

It's amazing, what you come up with when you're not trying....

Pale skin blushes whitely
Under moonlight painted red
Soft hands touch – then
Fade silently, slowly away
Memory grasps tightly
Unwanted visions creeping home
Sing yourself to sleep, sing
Sad songs remember all
No good words, passing rightly
The chance untouched
The choice untouched, and I
Stand still, standing alone.

Story Five: Safe

From the moment he opened his eyes every morning, his muttering began. Each day was the same: Billy would swing his legs over the bed, examining the scars that his scratchy cotton pajamas did not conceal and curling his toes against the new day.
“What is this place? Damn jail cell. The enemy must have caught me again! Scoundrels- I’ll never give up my secrets! They’ll torture me, and I’ll die a silent man. A hero’s death! Be a good solider, boy.”
The mutterings were always the same, as was the room itself, though it was all but invisible under Billy’s inscrutable gaze. The white-washed walls had long ago become the sooty walls of some god-forsaken dungeon; his soft white sheets, no more than a pile of filthy rags. The window on the wall fit his vision just right: it was small, and barred. There would be no escape that way. He had to consider other options. Billy wished he had more time!
“Tie up the bed sheets to make a rope. Can’t get out the window- fool! The troops will be waiting for my signal. Thieves!”
The door opened precisely at 8:15, the way it did every morning. A nurse stepped in, though whether it was the same nurse or a different one Billy couldn’t say, because he thought they all looked the same. This one had brown hair and eyes, and she was soft and quiet like a mouse. Billy didn’t trust her- he didn’t trust anyone. Surging to his feet, he pointed his right hand at her, pointer finger extended to make a gun, which he steadied with his left hand.
“Woman! Give the signal! You’ve got to help me escape!” She rolled her eyes and stepping toward him, thrust a handful of oddly shaped pills into his outstretched hand. She then stood there, watching as he put the pills to his mouth, watching as each little pod entered his lips, watching as he gulped down water. He showed her an empty hand, but she wasn’t appeased.
“Come on then, open your mouth,” she said sternly. Billy swallowed hard, adjusted his tongue, his teeth, and then opened his mouth a crack. The nurse sighed and folded her arms across her chest. “Oh Billy, not today.” She closed her eyes as the pills flew deftly from his mouth like bullets from a machine gun. They hit her face, bounced off her arms, or flew past her, scattering across the floor.
“You can’t fool me, I’m Julius Caesar!” He screamed into her face and then collapsed back onto his bed, shaking from the exertion of the early morning battle. The nurse said nothing; she turned and fled quickly from the room. “Retreat! The enemy retreats! After them, lads! Give no quarter!” He didn’t move from the bed, and within minutes the nurse had returned, the doctor and a large male nurse in tow. They said little to him while they forced pill after pill down his stubborn throat, and they did not stick around to hear Billy’s stories about the Great War, which seemed to grow Greater and More Terrible with every telling. None of the institution’s staff had yet been able to determine whether Billy had ever actually fought in a war; one of the nurses swore that he had been in World War II, but no one in Lakeview Home, including Billy himself, would corroborate these facts.
When Billy had taken all of his medicine, the doctor and both nurses left the room again. “Fool! Coward! Come back and fight like a man!” The door remained closed, however, which suited Billy just fine. Edging himself carefully out of the bed, Billy hobbled to the window and threw his breakfast to the birds. He wasn’t going to let any old nurse poison him- the medicine had been bad enough. He didn’t like the food anyway; it was always the same, even after one-hundred years. He had once suggested to the cook a serious revision of the menu, but he was a swarthy man with a reputation for blood, and Billy had vowed never to test him. As a younger man, Billy might have jumped into action, but he knew enough now to choose his battles.
“Nothing as noble as defending one’s honor and the honor of one’s kin,” he reminded himself diligently. “A bloody death in the service of the Greater Good- that’s a man’s real work. That’s his real service. I remember the Battle on the Hill, the stench of sweat and the stains of blood. We fought the Good Fight, and not in vain. Surrounded on all sides, we rallied to our courageous captain, and fought the bloody battle for Survival. Men, ready your arms!”
The door had opened again, unexpectedly this time. A pair of big blue eyes stared timidly around the edge of the door, and Billy motioned generously for the attackers to Halt! He recognized the blue eyes from a time long ago: a snowy day when one of the nurses had insisted that he go into the cafeteria with the other residents. Everyone was writing their letters to Santa Claus for Christmas, the nurse said, and he should be good and write one too. So he went.
He didn’t think that writing to Santa Claus was such a bad idea, even if he had his doubts about whether the man was real. He needed a sword, because his had grown dull and sometimes disappeared from the room altogether for days at a time. If the Old Man was real, he would know the value of a good sword, and if he was not- well, at least the nurse would be happy, anyway. Billy’s plans took an unexpected turn, however, when two small girls had run into the Cafeteria, giggling together. One had stopped by his table, looked hard into his eyes, and declared him “Santa Claus” for the entire world to hear.
“Braggart! Ruffian! Traitor! Cow! How dare you defile the name of the Greatest Fighter Who Ever Lived! I’m General Custer! Bah!” He had screamed it every day since then, in case anyone forgot. He never saw that girl again- he suspected that the Enemy had recalled her from her failed mission- but the other girl, Blue Eyes, was here with him now. He waved a hand imperiously, inviting her in.
Blue Eyes did not move from the doorway. She peered around his cell, out his window, and asked in a quiet voice why everything was white. Her eyes were bigger than he remembered: big like the sky, big enough to get lost in, even. Billy didn’t answer right away, to make sure it wasn’t a trick. He settled in for the siege, prepared to wait her out, to see what kind of trickery she would play. But she waited patiently for many long minutes, and then asked the question again. She wanted to know why everything was white, and that was all.
“The enemy!” He whispered urgently at last. “A mind trick of the enemy. Don’t be blind! Don’t let them win- you can’t! Be a good solider, boy!” He reached for the sword at his waist and, finding none, settled for pointing his finger like a gun. He aimed first at her, and then out the window, prepared for action while he moved cautiously closer to the girl.
“They’re out for me, but they’ll kill anyone that gets in the way. The secret! Yes, it’s my secrets that they want- don’t worry, yours are safe. But fight them off! Show no mercy! If they capture you, do you think they will treat you with kindness? Bah! Be a good soldier! Once they get what they came for, the Great War will be lost!”
She started to say something more, a question perhaps, but the sharp voice of a nurse drew her quickly away. He waved his hand after her, urging her on. “Away! Away! Fly away! Flee the enemy, but not in terror!”
A nurse poked her head into the room, instructing him to quiet down so he wouldn’t disturb the other residents. She didn’t want to hear that he cared nothing about that. She only cared that he not disturb the prisoner of 23B. Billy folded his withered hands uncomfortably over his thick chest, his mouth turning down at the corners. The nurse paused, waiting to see what he would say.
“Have I ever told you about the Great War?” The nurse rolled her eyes and closed the door behind her, trapping Billy once again. He shook his head sadly. “We lost a lot of good men out there.”
That night, Billy saw Blue Eyes in his dreams. “Catherine! Catherine!” He called out to her, but she remained huddled in the corner on the floor, her blue eyes wide and full of fear. “I have to rescue you!” He told her urgently, but when he tried to move toward her, his feet failed him. He watched helplessly, horrified, as the building began to crash down around her; he heard her screams and still he couldn’t move. She was being crushed right before his eyes and the world was falling down, and everything he had ever known was gone.
“Catherine!” Billy woke with a start, and his eyes swept the room like a frightened child checking for monsters. He was safe in his white cell, but he knew it would only be a matter of time before They found him. Quietly, he slithered his legs out of bed and stepped softly out the door and down the hall, stepping slowly and lightly so the nurses wouldn’t hear. He counted his steps as he walked, past 23B and around the corner, where he knew Blue Eyes would be. When he reached 100 steps, he stopped and knocked boldly on the door before him.
“Catherine?” He called softly, and waited patiently until a voice told him to come in. He opened the door and stepped quickly inside, enveloping himself in darkness. She was there in the bed- Blue Eyes, not Catherine- but then weren’t they one and the same? Both innocent, both victims- but this one, he could try to save.
“This is no time to sleep! You have to fight the good fight! We’re in a war here, girl! Why let them win when you have everything to lose? Fight for your homeland, for your family. Fight for your life!” Billy was nervous, wringing his hands forcefully together and barely able to speak above a whisper. The pleading in his voice affected her eyes; he watched as they grew smaller, squinting through the darkness, confused. She wanted to know who they were fighting. She wanted to know what the Great War was, because she didn’t know that there was a war being fought right now.
“No time for questions!’ He hissed through the darkness. “No time! I have to rescue you, I have to keep you safe! Oh, Catherine….” A sob built up in his chest, making it hard to breathe.
“We’ve been fighting since before you were born. The enemy! Yes, the enemy is strong, but they haven’t defeated us yet! You aren’t one of them? You can’t be! Traitor! Fool! We must stay strong!” She assured him that she was not fighting for the enemy: she said she did not know how to fight, in fact. And there were many things that she didn’t understand, and she had many questions-
“No time for questions! Have to fly, have to fight! Never give up, never surrender! Don’t you see- don’t you see?” They’ve surrounded us on all sides, and they think they’re winning! But you have to protect yourself- it’s your soul they want! Your very soul! But you can’t give it to them, you can’t! It’s why you have to fight, everyday! You thought you were safe here . . . . We all did. But the enemy keeps coming, and they won’t stop until the lot of us are dead.” He lowered himself, quivering in the heat of the moment, to the floor and stared helplessly at her with eyes brimming with tears. He took a deep breath, and then another, and another after that before he felt he could continue.
“Everyone must fight when it is their time. I tried to protect you… I tried. I can’t fight for you much longer. My time is almost up- but I won’t stop while I’ve got breath in me yet. All this time, 100 years I’ve been fighting. And they haven’t conquered me yet!” She interrupted him now, urgently enough that he let her speak. She wanted to know who they were fighting- as if she hadn’t known all along!
“The Enemy!” He nearly shrieked. “It’s always Them!” But he could tell that she wanted to know more, and so grabbing his left hand with his right, he held himself tightly and went on.
“Evil, soldier. We fight evil. Every day! They say the Great War is over, but they don’t see that the enemy is on all sides. Cowards! They want to take your soul! They won’t stop until they’ve taken everything away. Life, meaning- color! That’s why the walls are white. But we’ve got to soldier on! They’ll take everything. And you thought you were safe here. We all did! But it’s holding cells they’ve built, until they can get your soul. And once that happens, they’ll be nothing left, and everything will turn to black!” When Billy had said all of this, he wanted very much to curl up and cry, and he was very impressed that she did not.
The light flipped on suddenly. A nurse had appeared in the room, livid at finding her charge out of bed and disturbing the sleep of someone else. Billy was horrified at his mistake.
“They’re here! They’re here! The enemy is here! Fight, run for your lives! Flee!” He shouted the warning as loudly as he could, again and again, as he struggled against the nurse. Another woman came, and soon they were able to force Billy out of the room. In the doorway, he reached out, holding desperately onto the frame.
“Catherine,” he moaned weakly. “Oh Catherine. I could never rescue you Catherine. I watched the house burn down, I watched the funeral pyre. But I could never rescue you….” He was broken then, and the nurses were able to coax him back to bed. One brought him a cold glass of water; the other, a handful of pills that she wanted him to take before he went to sleep. He took them both in hand, and they shut off the lights and shut the door, leaving Billy alone in his cell once more.
The next morning, the nurses were all in an uproar. Billy’s room was empty, his few parcels of clothing gone, and he was no where to be found. No one ever saw Billy after that, and only the Girl with the Blue Eyes knew why he had gone. She didn’t know where, although the nurses asked her many times. But she hoped he was safe.