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.

Story Four: Silence

In the early hours of the morning, while the sun had yet to rise, Jeremiah had already been awake for hours. He liked the quietness, the white emptiness of the Home when everything was dark; it was the noise, the spurious activity of the daily hours which frightened him. There were words, sounds, colors which Jeremiah did not understand, and he avoided them through solitude, through the sanctuary of this place. It was why he stayed in his room.

The pointer finger and middle finger on his left hand curled, and released. Curled, and released. It was how the nurse would know he was awake. She would come on tip-toe into the room, holding her breath and watching for the smallest sign that Jeremiah was awake. He knew this routine well, and he knew that if he did not move his fingers – curl, and release – she would leave the room again, completely unscathed, as if her coming had been only a dream.

Curled, and released. Curled, and released. There were times when Jeremiah pretended sleep, just to make the nurse go away. He saw no purpose in human company, interaction; he was perfectly happy alone. The doctor did not understand this, and he hated it about Jeremiah: the boy could tell. But it was not so difficult to understand, really, and if Jeremiah chose to, he could easily explain it. When you were alone, no one would die; no one would leave you sitting along on the living room floor, crying and drenched in blood that was not yours, helpless and terrified of every sight, every smell, every sound. It was a strange thing for so young a person to think, but that didn’t make it any less true.

Jeremiah’s parents had been killed when he was five. A group of men had broken into their apartment one night; Jeremiah didn’t remember any of the details except the blood. This was the night that Jeremiah stopped talking.

He could talk, of course, when he had the mind. On very rare occasions, he would talk constantly, all day, to himself or to anyone who happened to come into the room. He spoke in stories, real or imagined, a third person narrative that the doctor found often revealed something about Jeremiah’s own life, whether he claimed to remember it about himself or not. Jeremiah was a charming boy, still young enough to have the naïveté that adults so earnestly adored, and on the days he chose to talk, Jeremiah could attract quite the audience.
Curled, and released. But Jeremiah preferred the silence.

The nurse entered the room like clockwork; he could hear her soft footprints glide hesitantly across the floor, despite her every attempt to be silent. He had become especially attuned to the sounds throughout the Home, and though it had never been officially tested, he believed that he could hear people moving through the halls no matter what floor they were on. This also made the daytime difficult: with so many people running, talking, laughing, screaming, crying, all of the sounds jumbled together in his mind, until nothing was coherent. On particularly nice days, when the residents were kept inside for one reason or another, the noise would drive Jeremiah insane; he would crawl under his bed and curl into a ball, humming to himself and covering his ears. And he would fight if you tried to move him – the nurses had learned this all too well, and they knew now to leave him alone.

The nurse gently nudged his shoulder, and he obediently sat up in the bed. She had two pills in her hand today, and a glass of water that Jeremiah would completely drain, as if he had been dying of thirst until she saved him. There was never any trouble when Jeremiah took his medicine; he found that the more quickly he could take the medicine, and eat his breakfast, the more quickly he would be left alone.

“Doctor Marshall is coming to see you today,” the nurse told him quietly.

His fingers curled, and released. Then they stiffened. Jeremiah didn’t speak much when the doctor came in, but he knew that the doctor wanted him to. The doctor’s questions were normally endless, and unlike the nurses, who would leave if you ignored them, the doctor could sit and wait, sometimes for hours. And what Jeremiah considered to be much worse, the doctor would breathe heavily, the way he always did, as if he had just run up a long flight of stairs. The doctor was not even that big of a man, but he tired very easily, and breathed heavily, a sound which punctured Jeremiah’s silent room with thousands of tiny holes that could never be repaired.

On very rare occasions, the doctor would come up just to sit, would hold his breath in as long as possible and would try to make himself as unobtrusive as the white in the walls. His breathing was still louder than Jeremiah would have liked, on these days, but his willing silence made such visits easy to get through. As much as Jeremiah spurned human contact, these visits were almost comforting, in a way. Sometimes, he would sit on the bed next to the doctor and slide close to him, until their shoulders were touching. He would pretend it was his father, sitting there next to him, and it was the only time Jeremiah ever felt loved.

Curled, and released. He wondered what kind of day it would be.

“How are you feeling today, Jeremiah?” The doctor spoke softly, as if goading Jeremiah to sleep. He wheezed particularly loudly today, a sound compounded by someone running heavily down the hallway on the floor below. Jeremiah placed a hand gently against the wall, studying the low vibration of the running, and then wrenching his hand away, he drew his knees to his chest on the best. He had to fight the urge to cover his ears, which he knew the doctor would not allow.

“Would it be alright if we talked for awhile?” The doctor asked; Jeremiah still said nothing. “Is there anything you would like to talk to me about today?”

Is this a game? Jeremiah wondered. It was not he who wanted to talk, and he wished regretfully that the doctor would say what he wanted to say and then move on. It was cruel of the doctor to force Jeremiah to speak, but he had the feeling that it might be the only way.

“Once upon a time there was a boy, and the boy had a dog, and the dog chewed a shoe. And then the boy’s mother got mad because it was her shoe, and she made the dog go outside.” His voice cracked from neglect; he tried halfheartedly to remember the last time he had spoken to anyone. It had been a week ago, at least.

“Well, that’s a very nice story.” The doctor smiled encouragingly at him, as if wanting him to go on. Jeremiah fought the urge to sigh – an action which he knew the doctor would read into – and tried to think of something else. Sometimes, it seemed as though the doctor wanted to make sure that he could still speak, and after one or two stories he would declare himself satisfied and move on. Jeremiah tried again.

“Once there was a boy, and there was a police man, and the police man brought the boy to a big, white building. And the boy called the building home, and he lived there everyday, and he ate the food.”

The doctor nodded vigorously. “That’s right, Jeremiah,” he said softly. “Do you remember why the police man brought you here?”

Jeremiah said nothing, but his finger curled, and released. Jeremiah hated this question; he remembered nothing – it was just a story.

The doctor’s heavy breathing was the only thing which periodically punctured the silence between him and Jeremiah as the morning dragged on. Seconds, minutes, hours; Jeremiah didn’t keep track of time very well. The only thing he could distinguish was between day and night, and he knew that night was still a very long way off.

Finally, the doctor sighed and ran a hand through his silvery-black hair. “Jeremiah, did you know that today is the anniversary of your parents’ deaths?” Jeremiah sat motionless, except for his fingers which curled, and released. Curled, and released. The doctor cocked his head.

“Jeremiah, how does that make you feel?” This was another question which Jeremiah hated, and one which, in all of Jeremiah’s time at Lakeview Home, he had never answered. He wondered why the doctor bothered to ask it anymore.

“Jeremiah, thirteen years ago today, your parents were both shot and killed in your apartment building. Do you remember that this happened?” Nothing.

“Your parents were shot, Jeremiah. Three men broke through the window of your apartment, and they shot your parents. Do you remember that this happened?” Nothing.

“Jeremiah, you used to live with your parents. You had a mother, and a father. Do you remember them?”

“Nothing to remember,” Jeremiah finally stuttered. His fingers were frozen against his knee. “It’s just a story,” he said sternly to the doctor.

“No Jeremiah, it’s not a story. This is your life. This is what happened, why you’re here. Do you remember what happened to your parents?”

“It’s just a story!” Jeremiah screamed, and he felt all the movements in the Home come to a grinding halt. Though his voice was far from loud, and his shout no more obtrusive than the normal voice of the doctor, it had echoed through the room, down the hallway, spreading like some sort of infectious disease. He hated this about sound, normally – the way it spread through everything, contaminating everything, making nothing safe. But his voice had also incurred silence: he didn’t think such a thing was possible.

The doctor was shocked. His jaw hung slightly open, and his eyes were bulging noisily from their sockets; his whole face was awake, alive with emotion, and Jeremiah couldn’t take it anymore.

“Jeremiah –”

Jeremiah placed his hands over his ears, closed his eyes tightly against the world, and began to hum loudly to himself. It’s just a story, just a story, he reassured himself. Things like that don’t really happen. It was just a story that you heard one time. It’s just a story, and I’m insane.

The doctor wanted him to remember, but there was nothing to remember. There were no parents to mourn, no masked men to fear. There was nothing terrible, evil about the world and Jeremiah was safe, safe in his sanctuary. Jeremiah lived in an all-white room with all-white walls and all-white sheets. This is what Jeremiah remembered. Everything else was make-believe, pretend.

“Once upon a time, I stood in a room full of windows, and God wasn’t there.”

Story Three: Sleep

His hands were warm and soft against her skin. He cupped her face, tilting her chin gently up so that she was looking directly into his eyes. “I can’t even begin to tell you how much I love you,” he whispered softly. His thumb traced her cheek bones and the ridge of her smile as she stood on her tip-toes and leaned in to kiss him. And just as his lips touched hers, he disappeared…

Becky awoke suddenly with tears sliding down her thin cheeks as quickly as the dream slid from her mind. The effect was the same each morning: she was left with the almost overwhelming pain of searing loss which she could not explain, not to the doctors and not to herself. She was depressed, the doctors said, and they assigned her medication. The medication stimulated her mind, exciting her, and she laughingly told the nurses that she wanted to die. They took her off that medication, after that, but there was always something else. Her parents thought she was crazy.

Crazy. That was why she had agreed to come to this deserted coffin of an institution- it seemed like only yesterday. Her parents had assured her that it wasn’t necessary, that she was welcome at home, that they loved her and wanted to be there for her though whatever she was going though- lies. Becky had seen the relief in their eyes when she told them she wanted to go away. And it was free, too- her doctor was interested in her case, he said, he wanted to include her in his research; her parents didn’t have to pay a cent, and she could stay as long as she was willing.

A win for everyone really: Becky’s parents were such nice people, and however much they loved her, they would never understand the passionate emotions which ripped mercilessly through her body, threatening to pull her apart. She remembered the terror in their eyes when she had her first “episode”- a seizure, the paramedics had initially said as they rushed her to the ER. Maybe she had developed epilepsy? Had she suffered any recent head trauma? Maybe, her parents had said. Maybe. They didn’t know.

What happened in the woods, Becky? Why did you go in there; was someone with you? Did you get lost, Becky? Did you get hurt- did someone hurt you? Why can’t you remember Becky? What are you hiding? Becky, WHAT HAPPENED? Everyone kept asking her about the woods near her house, but she didn’t remember anything special about them. Had she gotten lost there as a child? No answers, not from doctor or mother or father. Had Becky been lost? She didn’t know.

“I had a dream last night, but I don’t remember what happened.” The doctor’s disappointment was fresh in his eyes as Becky spoke, as if he had met her only yesterday and hadn’t heard the same thing a hundred times. “I was sad when I woke up- like someone had died.” Becky had never known anyone who had died, but she thought about it sometimes and she thought she knew how it would feel. Like nothing would ever be the same.

“I was in control this time, though,” She reported dutifully. “I didn’t feel hopeless this time. I didn’t feel lost.” That was all true, but it was not all; she said it because she needed to see the faint glimmer of hope that she knew would appear in the doctor’s eyes. She said it because she needed to believe that someone was holding onto her. Because when she dreamed, she didn’t feel lost- to be lost was to be misplaced, to have someone looking for you, to rescue you. When she woke from a dream, it was as if she had been abandoned, as if someone had stolen all of the color out of the world and left her alone in a cold, white room. She felt like everything was terribly wrong, out of order, missing, but she said nothing because she could not explain why.

It was Rose’s turn to take care of her today. She knew because of the day: Becky knew all of the nurses because of the day. She thought they all looked, talked, smelled, acted alike, but the days were different. Rose was a Thursday; she came in after Becky had seen the doctor.

“Why is everything white?” Becky asked Rose this every time they met, because she knew Rose didn’t mind. And she said something different each time, which was interesting. Today, Rose told Becky that they were in Heaven, like angels among the white clouds, and that things had to be white because it was the way God wanted. Becky said nothing; every time she heard an answer she said nothing. She might not have known what to believe; perhaps, she believed it all.

Rose went on about the angels as they walked down to the cafeteria and kept on about them while Becky ate, while she stood in line to get her pills, while they went back up the stairs. She was Becky’s favorite nurse, because after they arrived at Becky’s room, Rose would pretend not to notice while Becky slipped down the hall and into Nathan’s room. Becky was not stealthy by any means; Rose simply believed that they two did each other some good, and even though the other nurses didn’t like the idea of a boy and a girl closed up in that room together, Rose thought Becky should go.

Just as Rose was Becky’s favorite nurse, so was Nathan’s room her favorite in the Home. He had colored the walls once, big bright pictures that had pushed the white away; Becky had asked him why everything was white, and he didn’t know. She knew it made him angry- that was why he colored on the walls. The janitor, Mr. Smelting was mad, and the colors didn’t go away. Nathan’s mother had to pay extra that month, he had told her privately, for the damage he had done. But Nathan didn’t care, and he told Becky not to care either.

He was standing at the window when she came in; he didn’t turn to look at her as she entered, and she said nothing to him. She lay down on the floor and looked at the pictures on the wall, thinking about the dream from the night before. She wished desperately that she could force her mind to open like flood gates, so that the memories that she so badly needed could come crashing out- but she was afraid to try. The constant grief, the loneliness and heartache that followed her like a shadow were barely tolerable on her best day, and she was afraid of what it would feel like to understand.

The doctor tried to hypnotize her, sometimes. He thought she was repressing memories; he thought she was intentionally holding things back, holding them inside. He said those memories were like poison, that they were tainting her body and that she wouldn’t be able to survive and live a “normal” life if she kept them inside. His favorite time to do it was right after she had an “episode”; instead of being rushed to the ER, she was rushed to the doctor’s big white office and quickly put under. She couldn’t remember anything that happened when she went into her trance, but she didn’t mind doing it because she couldn’t feel anything while she was in a hypnotic state: there was no pain there.

“It’s not like I have a choice here, you know.” His voice was bitter and broken, and even though she was angry, she pulled herself near to him, doing her best to comfort him. They laid on the grass together for a long, long time, just holding each other in silence. The sky was gloomy and dark- she could see it faintly through the tops of the trees- when he kissed her forehead softly. “I’ll try… I’ll come back for you. I will.” She could hear in his voice what he couldn’t say with words: he was afraid. “I have to go home now,” he whispered; she tightened her hold, willing him not to go. “Don’t come for a few days, okay? I’ll be there at least three days, mom said. So wait awhile. A week, maybe. And then I’ll come back for you.” She wanted to be strong, to be brave for him, but she couldn’t anymore: she started to cry…

The sobs piercing the air wretched her into full consciousness; she didn’t have time to notice that she must have dozed off before her body, her mind, her soul were overwhelmed. She was convulsing violently on the floor, her head crashing dangerously against the hard floor. Her throat was tight: she was choking on nothing, choking on the pain, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe.

Nathan’s arms were around her in a second, cradling her head. He didn’t call for help; he knew what would happen when the nurses came, knew that Becky hated it, and he tried to protect her. “I’m here,” he whispered softly, gently. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m here.” He repeated the words again and again and she hated that she couldn’t stop for him, but she had lost all control. A violent shriek pierced the quiet of the hospital- it came from her mouth, she thought, but couldn’t be sure. The door to the room opened, Rose and Marcy and the Doctor rushing in, other patients crowding the door with sad half-interest. When the General had lived here, he had stormed in among them, shouting instructions for battle formations that the nurses never followed. But he didn’t live there anymore; he had escaped, he had gone to where they couldn’t hurt him.

There was a sharp prick in Becky’s arm; a nurse was injecting her with something; Becky had had it before. It had a paralyzing effect on her, this new medicine. When they gave it to her, her entire body went numb and she couldn’t move; she would spend the rest of the day being pushed around in a wheelchair. If she had been able to control her body at all, Becky would have resisted; she hated taking this medicine and she hated its numbing effect. She hated not being able to feel her own body, and she hated that she could still feel the pain.

“Oh God… Oh my God…” Becky’s words were slurred and slow from the medicine. “Help me…. Please, help me….”

The nurses were pulling her into a chair; there were more nurses in the hall, pushing the other residents gently back to their rooms. And Nathan was still there with her, right beside her head, ignoring Marcy’s instructions to leave, to go somewhere, anywhere but that room. Becky pushed past the pain, through the numbness, and thrust her hand to him; he took it in an instant and gave a squeeze that she could barely feel.

“I’m here, I won’t leave you,” he whispered, reminding her. The doctor nodded to the nurses, and together they made a slow progress down to the doctor’s office.

Becky found it hard to focus; it happened this way every time, but now it was especially strong. She had to fight to stay conscious, to stay coherent; she had to fight to keep from sinking into despair. Nathan’s hand was what she focused on, what she held to even when she could no longer feel. Tears poured silently down her face as the doctor talked to her, saying words that Becky couldn’t understand. Nothing made sense, and she was hurting all over. She wanted to throw up, but the medicine wouldn’t even let her do that.

And then the doctor had stopped talking and was looking at her expectantly, as if waiting for her to answer. Becky didn’t know what to say. She stood on the brink of total insanity, and she wanted to let go.

She was waiting impatiently, counting the hours and the days. Time seemed to move more slowly than usual. And then it was finally time to go back, back to that secret place in the woods…

“Sleep, Becky, it’s okay, I’ll be here.” She was in her room, and Nathan was there. She didn’t know how she had gotten there. She didn’t know what day it was anymore, and she couldn’t move. She wanted to scream but she couldn’t speak, so she fell back into herself.

She was running through the woods, the clearing ahead, and a lone person sitting there on the log they had always shared. She slowed to a walk, fresh tears forming in her eyes. He had seen her coming, he had stood up- no, not him. His brother, and she couldn’t believe she made that mistake, even though they looked so much alike. His mouth was moving, but it was like the volume in her ears had been turned down; she couldn’t hear him, couldn’t hear the birds or the wind through the trees. She couldn’t breathe. She hugged herself tightly. The sobs cascaded out of her mouth and she couldn’t hear them; her head was banging the forest floor softly and uselessly. She stared as his lips soundlessly whispered “I’m so sorry,” and she fell apart. She lost herself, lost everything, she didn’t understand. She didn’t want to accept it and she didn’t have a choice. He had abandoned her, he was gone forever, the doctors couldn’t save him like he said. The pain of searing loss swept over her body like a fresh breeze…

Becky woke up, she understood, she remembered. Becky cried.

Story Two: Smile

Nathan woke up in a bed with all-white sheets, in a room with all white walls. The walls had no posters, the bed had no pillows, and Nathan had no idea where he was.

High on the wall, across from the bed was a single, small window the size of Nathan's head and little tiny bars the size of his fingers. He couldn't see out the window from the bed, so Nathan stood up and leaned his head against the cold bars. His shorts were blue like the sky; his t-shirt, a little too small. He didn't recognize those, either.

Outside the window, Nathan could see two things under a boundless sky: a parking lot and a corn field. The corn field was massive, terrifyingly unquestionable, as open as the sky itself. The parking lot was small and gray, ugly and empty, half-darkened by the shadow of the building. The white lines on the pavement were faded from many long hours under a blistering sun. He didn't know why the lines were there, or why the parking lot was there at all. It didn't connect to any roads.

Sighing, Nathan returned to sit on his bed. Every morning was the same: he awoke confused, and then he went to the window. And then he remembered where he was and where he had been for these last two years- or was it three? He sighed again, tucking at the neckline of his too-small white shirt. Sometimes, he remembered blandly, sometimes it really hurt.

The nurse came into the room then, spouting a rush of empty words and ready to rush Nathan down to breakfast. Nathan didn't turn to look at her short, plump frame or her dyed red hair. Nathan never looked at her, not even when he knew she wasn't looking. He had nothing against the nurse. Marcy, her name might have been- he just didn't see any point in looking at her.

"You know, your mother's coming today."

Nathan's eyes widened. No, he hadn't known that she was coming today. And it was not a major holiday, nor his birthday. Something must be wrong.

"Aren't you excited?"

"Why?" Nathan asked, staring out the window. His thoughts were racing circles around his room. He wondered which shirt he should wear.

"Well, because she's your mo-"

"Why is she coming? That's what I meant to say." Nathan thought his blue, button-down shirt was in his laundry basket. He wondered if it was too dirty to wear.

"Well, because she's your mother. She loves you, Nathan. Of course."

Of course, Nathan thought to himself. Of course, Nathan sneered. She said it with such conviction, without question or doubt. Of course.

But it was his mother who had woken him up on his birthday three years ago- or was it four? She brought him here and left him here. She slapped him, and he had cried, and she had turned away. He had watched her leave from a big, wide window on the first floor; he had pounded on the glass and she had never looked back. She would visit him sometimes, and he would ask to go home. The answer was always no, and after awhile, he didn't ask anymore.

Nathan was silent, thinking, as he ate his breakfast at a small white table in the white-walled cafeteria. When he finished, he set the white cereal bowl on top of the white plate and returned to his room to get dressed. The blue shirt was too dirty to wear, he decided. He wore a white shirt instead.

While he was finishing his buttons, his door flew open and a girl ran in. She had wild brown hair and wore a long white night gown that hung past her knees. And her eyes were big, much too big for her head. Her eyes were blue like the sky and big like the sky; her eyes were like the sky and they were so, so beautiful....

"Why is everything so white?"

Nathan shrugged and smiled. He knew many things but he didn't know this. He hated the white. He knew how she felt. But he didn't say any of this, because a nurse ran in- not his nurse, a different one- and took the girl by the hand.

"Now Becky, you can't just do things like that." The nurse was leading Becky back through the door. Becky smiled at Nathan, and Nathan smiled back.

You can't do things like that, the nurse had said. But she did do it, didn't she? She could. Words didn't stop her. She could.

"You look very handsome today." Becky stood in his doorway for a last, significant moment before she was led away.

.....


Nathan sat stiffly with his mother while she sipped a dull tea. She wore jeans and a gray sweatshirt with a scarf hiding her messy blond hair. She was incognito, his mother; he knew she didn’t like to be seen here, even by people she didn’t know. She seemed to have aged a great deal since he had last seen her: only her eyes were the same. It was like she hadn’t aged at all when you looked at her eyes. But then she smiled sadly, her face creasing with thousands of tiny wrinkles, and she was a total stranger to him. It had been a long time since he had seen her smile.

"It's time for you to come home, Nate."

Nathan stared at her, nonplused. The words meant nothing to him- come home? It was gibberish, falling out of her mouth like shards of broken glass. It wasn't possible. She was saying it- saying it now, sure, and making it sound so easy. She was deluded, even after all this time! He wanted to laugh, because he knew the truth, and he recognized how completely backwards his life had become. Nathan knew the truth; there was no going home.

Nathan remembered the first Christmas he had spent in this place, in this prison, in this sanctuary, in this hell. The nurses hung holly from the walls and put up a giant Christmas tree with white lights in the middle of the dining hall. All of the people that lived there sat down and wrote letters to Santa Claus, even the man at the end of the hall who looked old enough to be Santa himself. Nathan didn't believe in Santa Claus, but he wrote a letter anyway, and sent it to his mother. He hadn't asked for toys or candy- he just wanted to go home. His mother didn't visit him on Christmas that year.

He had considered government conspiracies, alien take-over, and the mafia, but as Nathan grew up, he had learned the simple truth of his new existence. There was no going home. Not just because she had said so. He hadn't been home in four, or maybe five years, anyway. He didn't really know what home was, or where, and he certainly didn't want to go there. Nathan didn't say this to his mother, knowing the words meant nothing. Just like the nurses' words earlier, Nathan thought rationally. It was just like the nurse who had pulled Becky from his room. Becky. Becky made him smile.

"I don't think I should go home with you," Nathan said quietly. "My doctor still thinks I have a lot of work to do.”

Nathan's mother stared at him blankly. He could see in her face that she didn't understand, that maybe she wasn't capable of understanding. And Nathan didn't know what to say.

"But, sweetheart- my little baby- you're all better now, aren't you? I mean, well... Aren't you?"

Nathan cocked his head and smiled sadly. He said nothing. He felt fine- he had always felt fine. Had he ever felt the least bit unwell? Was that why she had brought him here? He thought back, trying to remember a time when he had felt sick. Nathan thought there might have been one time....

Yes, Nathan thought. He had felt sick one time: the day she left. It wasn't like the tummy-aches that had kept him home from school or the kind that made him throw-up in the toilet. But it was like feeling sick: his stomach had sunk deeply into some unknown part of him, his throat had closed up so that he couldn't breathe, and his heart had stopped beating. He had sucked in breath, fighting to survive, pounding on the glass, pounding and pounding and pounding out what his heart couldn't beat. A woman had dragged him away, and made him take some medicine that made him feel sleepy. She had told him that when he woke up, he wouldn't remember anything- but she had been wrong. Nathan remembered everything.

Nathan hadn't felt sick since then. He was surprised that his mother knew that he had been sick that day; he had always supposed that she didn't care. And yet here she was, asking him the wrong questions and telling him lies.

"The color white is the reflection of all colors, and the white object is a void of nothingness. Whiteness is a void. A void." The words tumbled out of Nathan's mouth like the tumbleweed that blows across an empty field in the movies. There were many movies with tumbleweeds here at the home, all in black and white. Nathan didn’t care much for the movies, but sometimes the nurse made him go. It mattered very little to him anyway. His mother sat rigidly in front of him, holding him- painfully, it seemed- in her eyes.

"We could paint the walls of your room blue, baby. Wouldn't you like a blue room?"

"I would like some markers," Nathan replied carefully. He sat with his mother a while longer, but found he didn't have anything more to say. He listened as she pleaded with him, quietly, to come home, to see sense, to say yes.

"Well honestly Nathan, I just don’t understand you. All the parenting magazines say that children need to express themselves and if this is how you’re going to be, well I just don’t know. Maybe you deserve this place, Nathan. I only brought you here because they said that so many children have disorders that go undiagnosed.”

He watched her emotionlessly as she sprung from her chair and backed away from him, slowly, as if he were a monster. His mother had brought him here because of- what? Words? She could not have known, in saying that, how much she would hurt him, how much Nathan would hate her afterwards. He could see her in the next room still, standing with his doctor, gesturing wildly, checkbook in hand. She always had her checkbook in her hand, Nathan thought.

He had seen other patients in that place go after the people, the outsiders that came in, just like they were monsters. But Nathan saw no reason to run after his mother; she was out the door, her back turned to him. Nathan would only run to her if she looked back.

The next morning, Nathan woke up in a bed with all white sheets, in a room with all white walls. The walls had no posters, the bed had no pillows, and for the first time in five years (or was it six?), he knew exactly where he was. Better still, the nurse brought in a packet of markers and a big white drawing book after he had eaten his breakfast. Nathan tried very hard not to look at her, but he could see them from the corner of his eye, and he couldn’t help but smile. He waited, and waited- so long! And once she was gone, Nathan knew exactly what to do.

Grabbing the brown marker, Nathan drew a towering pirate ship with a black flag and little holes in the side for cannons. He drew the ocean deep and blue beneath the ship, and a tiny green island off to the side. Nathan drew an army of tiny men along the deck in orange and red and purple shirts, and Nathan drew a yellow sun in the sky. Next to the sun, Nathan drew a bright red hot air balloon, with a pair of tiny, waving people grinning out from the tiny floating basket. In the water of the ocean, Nathan drew a hundred fish, all different sizes and shapes and colors, and Nathan drew a pink octopus that shot through the water like air.

Next, Nathan drew a tall, tall building with a hundred windows that disappeared into a silver-gray sky. Nathan drew lightning in the clouds and people in the windows, all smiling and waving a silent “Hello!” Nathan drew a street before the building with a school bus and a shiny red car, and Nathan drew a police-car with red and blue lights and a tiny, blue-uniformed officer. On one side of the building, Nathan drew a bright orange tractor digging a dark, black hole into the city street. And above the clouds of the sky, Nathan drew a purple moon, and stars.

And Nathan also drew a bright, red house with shutters on the windows and a smoking chimney rising from the roof. The house that Nathan drew sat on a big green hill, which had grass and pink flowers growing from the sides. There was a car next to the house, colored deep blue, and a shining yellow sun in the sky. On this picture, Nathan drew himself, and Nathan drew Becky with her big, beautiful eyes. He drew their skin with an orange marker; Nathan drew himself blue pants and a shirt, and for Becky, a flowing purple dress. In Nathan’s picture, Becky and Nathan were holding hands. Nathan worked long and hard on this picture, and when it was finished, Nathan set down his markers and ran from the room.

He ran down the hall until he found Becky. She was sitting on the floor in her long white dress, talking to the General as he tugged on his long, white beard. Entering the room, Nathan saluted and bowed, and then without waiting for permission, he took Becky by the hand and pulled her from the room.

“Fight hard man! Never surrender!” The General shouted as they ran from the room, and he continued to shout boisterously until Nathan and Becky reached Nathan’s room.

When they were inside, Nathan showed Becky his pictures. He showed her his pirates, and the hot air balloon; he showed her the building from the big city, and all the happy people that lived there. And Nathan showed Becky the picture he had drawn of them together, beside the big red house. Becky looked at this picture for a long time, and a tear rolled down her cheek, but she was smiling, so Nathan was pretty sure that she liked it. While she stared at the picture, she took his hand in hers, and they stood silently together until the nurse walked in.

“Oh my goodness, Nathan Brown! We do NOT draw on the walls!” She shrieked again and again, and soon there were other nurses, all making a fuss together. He accepted their chastisement and horror emotionlessly; he was content to stare at the picture he made. And Becky stayed with him, holding his hand and looking at all the color that he had put on the wall. Becky had stayed with him the way his mother never could, and she was with him still. Becky made him smile.

Story 1: Sanctuary

As Daniel A. Radcliff climbs out of the backseat of a police car, he tests the strength of the handcuffs holding his hands behind his back. His lawyer has already told him that he will likely be put into a straight jacket immediately upon entering Lakeview Home, and he does not intend to go without a fight. He watches his lawyer climb out of a separate car, the only other vehicle in the small parking lot, and when the lawyer meets his gaze, Daniel gives him a scathing look which plainly says, I’m going to kill you. He has the immense satisfaction of watching the lawyer go visibly pale, and he knows that this time, he will not be underestimated.
Daniel takes a deep breath, and then screams. “I’m not going back in there! I’m. Not. Crazy! I’m not! I’m NOT! I’m NOOOOOT!” He makes the last note a siren call and wishes that there was a tree nearby which birds could fly out of, startled, like in the movies. A tree would be better, he thinks: anything would be better than this.
The lawyer hastens over to where Daniel is standing, a Deputy Sherriff on either side. The lawyer’s palms are sweaty and raised helplessly toward his client. Sweat and empty promises: that is what Daniel always receives from this lawyer. He is an expensive attorney, and many of the men that Daniel met in prison assured him that he would get off. Daniel is a killer, convicted many times over, with a large enough inheritance to buy his way out of a prison cell and into a padded room. The inheritance is from Daniel’s parents, who he killed almost three years before.
“No one said you were crazy, Mr. Radcliff,” says the lawyer. Daniel is not looking at him when he says this; he is looking at the Deputy Sherriff on his right, a short, bald man with the beginnings of a potbelly who is rolling his eyes at his partner. Daniel A. Radcliff cannot decide whether he wants to kill the Deputy Sherriff or the lawyer first, but he does not move because he knows he is helpless with his hands behind his back. His hands are tingling; he is imagining what it would be like to wrap his hands around the Deputy Sherriff’s thick neck and squeeze. Or maybe he would dig his fingers into the man’s neck like a drill, until his artery burst; he wonders if he can puncture the skin.
There is a bright, painful sound that snaps through the otherwise still air. Daniel lithely turns his neck, ever the lion, and watches a nurse walk out of the starchy white building, a wheelchair in tow. Her white uniform glints unforgivably in the white sun, and Daniel eyes the wheelchair with disdain.
“Never said I was crazy? Are you crazy? Are you stupid? Are you blind? What about what you told the jury? What about that?” Daniel says all of this in a low, sharp voice to the lawyer, and he feels like cursing. He tests the handcuffs behind him again; there is so much rage boiling through his blood, and he needs to hit something, to cut, to bite, to make bleed. He considers slamming his body into the Deputy Sherriff, but knows that he, Daniel, would be the one to end up on the ground.
He directs his rage instead at the building, and the nurse walking toward him. He pours his anger into his glare and hopes that it causes her pain. What a stupid name, he thinks of the psychiatric institution. The four-storied building sits in the middle of a cornfield of a small town in Iowa, and there is no lake in sight. Daniel A. Radcliff mentally runs through all the different ways that he can burn Lakeview Home to the ground. I’ll kill them all and walk right back through the front doors, he thinks. The lawyer told him once that it would be safest to plead insanity; this is his lawyer’s fault. Daniel will kill the lawyer, in time. He is not crazy, not crazy, and he knows it.
A soft breeze stirs the stale air around them, but Daniel holds his breath against the fresh air. The aggravating bright voice of the nurse is carried toward him again; she is slowing down, stopping in front of him.
“Welcome to Lakeview Home!” says the nurse. She has brown hair that is braided carelessly down her back, and squinting brown eyes which remind Daniel of a mouse, and of his mother. He wonders, because she looks so similar, if the nurse would scream as loudly before her death as his mother had. He imagines holding her throat in his right hand, and using a pillow to smother her with his left. He wonders if she is weak like his mother had been, and how long she would struggle before her heart stops-
“-Checked in, and then we can meet your new roommate!” This is what the nurse is saying that draws Daniel back into the conversation like an electric shock. All of his money; the stupid, insipid lawyer with his judges and his ethics and his words; all of these things have not prepared him for this. They would dare give me a roommate? Daniel thinks this to himself, and it makes him laugh out loud. His laugh is maniacal and makes him sound crazed; it is the sole reason that his lawyer would not allow him to plead “Not guilty.” Even if Daniel A Radcliff had not been guilty of the thirteen murders he had committed in the last four years, he could convince no one of his innocence, with a laugh like that. Daniel knows that the roommate is doomed; he is already imagining the funeral of a stranger that will not survive the night.
The lawyer is ignoring Daniel’s laughter; he is indignant, enraged as only a well-paid lawyer can be. “Excuse me?” The lawyer says with great affront. His eyes are bulging with haughty incredulity. His whole body is poised, as if to attack, and it reeks of disdain. “My client will have a personal room.” The look of him at that exact moment makes him worth every penny that Daniel A. Radcliff has paid. Perhaps he will not kill the lawyer after all. In Daniel’s eyes, the lawyer has a great many flaws, is pathetic and sometimes weak- but that look of disgust for the nurse, for Lakeview Home, for the whole of the situation! If a picture is worth a thousand words, the real-life image of the lawyer’s wrath is priceless.
“Oh now, it won’t be so bad,” the nurse says placatingly. She is nervous; she is fighting the urge to wring her hands, he can tell. Lakeview Home is a private institution which prides itself on personal customer care; the nurse knows the difference between a mental patient and a customer. She does not know what to say, and so she tries to smile at Daniel, as if she is his friend. “Wouldn’t you like to meet some new friends?”
“You look like my mother,” is all Daniel says, and he laughs again. The nurse shrugs- she does not understand- and the vein in the lawyer’s forehead looks ready to burst. The Deputy Sheriffs fidget, finger their gun-less holsters. Neither man has ever met Daniel in person before, but they have read the stories in the newspapers. They know how Daniel suffocated his mother, and how the police found him trying to cut out his dead father’s heart with a knife. They were chosen specifically for this assignment; they are ready for anything.
The lawyer is huffily explaining to the nurse complicated legal obligations and financial arrangements. He is careful to make only subtle, borderline threats that will not get him in trouble with the Bar Association, or with the law. Daniel A. Radcliff loses interest in the conversation; he rattles the metal of the handcuffs again, and then looks meaningfully, almost longingly at the straight jacket that is sitting so unobtrusively in the wheelchair. He is intrigued, even excited to meet his new roommate, his next kill.
“Can’t we just get this over with?” Daniel says, and rattles the handcuffs again. His words are interrupting everyone, invading private thoughts and agendas. The Deputy Sheriffs look at the nurse and shrug; they are ready to assist her, and the taller, black-haired officer has even done this before.
“Now Mr. Radcliff,” the lawyer warns. “I would advise you to comply with all instructions.” He should not have to say it: Daniel A. Radcliff is by no means a child, but he wants to go on record before it is too late. Daniel does not respond to the lawyer, but looks meaningfully toward the straight jacket again, rattling his handcuffs.
Everyone is tense, but the switch goes according to plan. Daniel immediately tests the restraint system of the jacket; he complains it is too tight, that it is cutting off his circulation. The nurse loosens the jacket a very small amount; Daniel is testing it again, and thinking that it will be just loose enough. He will have to wait until he is alone, but he is fairly certain that, with a little effort, he will be able to break free.
The Deputy Sheriffs leave Daniel at the door, but he is never left alone. First there is paperwork, which one of his hands is freed to sign, and thumbprints must be taken, and a tour of the facilities, too. There is a small cafeteria on the first floor where everyone takes their meals, and a small lounge with couches where the residents can watch TV. The nurse is explaining these things, and the lawyer puts himself between her and Daniel, as if afraid that his client might suddenly burst from the straightjacket to attack. Daniel is intrigued by the lawyer’s fear; it reminds him of his father on the night that he died.
His father had screamed loud- louder than his mother, even. Such a weak man, and a fool if he thought he could buy Daniel’s love. “It’s not about the money!” Daniel had screamed this while he plunged the knife into his father’s chest for the first time, and then he had ripped the checkbook out of his father’s hand and thrown it across the floor. The knife was what he cared about now; how interesting that it could slip so easily through his father’s skin. “You’re not listening!” Daniel had screamed this and plunged the knife in again; he would still be screaming it when the police found him three hours later, plunging the knife deeper and deeper into the shreds of his father’s heart.
Daniel slips back into himself and out of thought and memory and dream with enough time to speak with the lawyer before he leaves. A private room will not be available for three days- this is what Daniel learns from his lawyer. There is an elderly man who will be moving out; his family is moving him into one of those low-cost retirement homes – not that it matters, the lawyer says. The lawyer is efficient: he answers questions that Daniel A. Radcliff has not yet asked. No, there really isn’t any way he could be moved sooner. Yes, there is still a place for all of Daniel’s things.
When the lawyer leaves, Daniel thinks about shouting “I’ll see you soon!” after him out the door. But he thinks the lawyer will be better off not knowing what is to come. The nurse, whose name is Nancy, takes Daniel to the cafeteria and feeds him, since he still cannot use his arms. They still do not trust him; Daniel is honored to be so revered.
After he has eaten, Nancy tries to introduce Daniel to another resident: a boy around his own age who stares forlornly out the window while the nurse tries to catch his attention. It is only after the nurse goes over to another resident who has peed himself that the boy looks over to Daniel, appraising him; Daniel does not like the way this other boy looks at him, and Daniel grins.
Daniel A. Radcliff’s grin is very much like that of the Cheshire Cat: knowingly cruel, smiling at your expense, and not for your own goodwill. His lawyer calls it a “psychotic” smile; the psycho-therapist had used the term “manic” at his trial. Daniel knows that his smile is part of the reason he is being put away: it scares people, he can see it in their faces when he looks at them. He sees it now, in the boy’s face, which is frozen with hesitancy; Daniel hopes the boy will see that he is not to be taken lightly, not to be befriended, trusted, engaged. The boy stares at Daniel for several long moments, and Daniel holds the smile in place as if posing for an artist.
“Your smile’s all red,” the boy says finally. “It makes me hurt, just to see it. It makes me wonder….” He pauses, lost in his own train of thought, and then shakes his head. “At least it isn’t white,” he says at last. “White is a terrible thing. You’ll see.”
Daniel is indignant at these remarks; he hopes this boy is his roommate, who he still intends to kill. If not, Daniel thinks, there will be a second killing tonight. The grin does not waver from his face, but a blur rushes past the table and steals away his thoughts. All Daniel has time to see is the shocking blue of her eyes, and then without a word, the boy gets up from the table and runs after her; Daniel is not sad to see him go.
Several hours later, Daniel has feigned sufficient exhaustion to be led by a new nurse, a wiry old man named Peter, at long last up to his room. The elevator ride is maddening; he is on the third floor, but the elevator moves slowly and by the time the ride is over, Daniel is nearly blind with rage. The elevator is small and there is a lingering smell of body odor, which might be from the nurse. Daniel tells Peter that he would smell better if he were dead, and though Peter says nothing in response, he does turn a sickening, pasty white.
Peter leads Daniel down a long, windowless hall with closed doors and open doors and bright white walls. When he finally stops, it is in front of a door marked “23B”, and there is a plate of uneaten food next to the door. Peter motions for Daniel to be quiet: “Jeremiah will probably be asleep by now,” he whispers cautiously. “We have to be quiet.” Peter also removes the straight jacket, freeing Daniel’s hands to use the restroom, brush his teeth, and change into a pair of cotton shorts and t-shirt before bed. Daniel is careful, obedient while Peter watches him, and when they enter the room, he does his best to make no noise.
But to Daniel’s dismay, Peter does not leave the room once Daniel has settled onto his bed; he pulls up a chair, seemingly out of nowhere, and settles in with an apologetic smile. “Just want to make sure the first night goes well,” he whispers to Daniel. It takes everything Daniel has not to lunge at him, right there. Slowly, Daniel A. Radcliff lowers himself onto his pillow; he lies there, seething with anger, and stares at the white ceiling, the white walls. He imagines what it would be like to paint the walls red.
Daniel is unnerved by the fact that Peter, even knowing of the bad things that Daniel has done, chooses to set his chair closer to Daniel than to the sleeping boy. Daniel also notices that Peter does not turn his back to the boy, not even at an angle, not even slightly. Daniel knows fear well, and he recognizes it in the male nurse. This thought keeps him awake long into the night, but he pretends to be asleep.
It is late when Daniel stirs, awakens; he had unwittingly drifted off to sleep. Raising his head, he sees that the nurse is no longer there. The timing is perfect, the entire place is silent, and Daniel is careful as he climbs out of bed. Once he is barefoot on the cold floor, he stands completely still and listens intently, studying the breathing of the boy across the room. Flat and even; perfect, for what Daniel has in mind. He moves his left leg forward, tests his weight, studies the sound that the floor makes. Silence. Daniel puts one foot in front of the other, silently creeping across the room.
The boy’s eyes are wide and staring; Daniel is startled when he realizes it. He quickly draws his hand around the boy’s throat, before he has time to move. The boy doesn’t make a sound; he lies completely still and stares into Daniel’s eyes with a solemn gaze. Daniel tightens his hold around the boy’s throat, squeezing enough that the boy’s face starts to turn red. And still, the boy does not make a sound. Daniel squeezes harder; the boy’s face turns bluer, and he continues to stare directly up at Daniel, his face an emotionless mask.
It is too disconcerting: Daniel draws his hand away. He is breathing heavily, almost without realizing it, and he finds that he cannot move his legs, cannot retreat to the safety of his own bed. Daniel A. Radcliff is a killer, convicted many times over, and this boy acts as though he is meant to die.
Reaching out again, Daniel touches the soft skin of the boy’s neck; the boy does not move: he lets Daniel grasp him, waits patiently for Daniel to squeeze. Daniel wants to- he wants to kill this boy, who is so obviously willing to die, but Daniel feels as though everything has been strangely suspended, and for the first time in his life, Daniel questions what he feels.
“Once upon a time there was a boy,” the boy in the bed whispers softly. “And the boy had parents, and the boy’s parents were afraid. They sent the boy away, sent him off alone, and then when they were less afraid, they took him back. Once upon a time, there was a boy, and he was insane, and lost, but no one knew it. And no one could help him, and he didn’t understand how to control his own rage.”
Daniel’s hand squeezes quickly, almost reflexively. He can barely breathe and it seems only fair that the boy stop breathing too. The boy’s face turns red again, then blue; he is on the brink of death when Daniel wretches his hand away. The boy still does not move; Daniel doesn’t even think that the boy blinks. He is shaking, Daniel is shaking, and he is the only one in the world who can move.
A second, five minutes, an eternity passes, and finally the boy speaks again. “Once upon a time, there was a boy, and he hated it here. But it was only here that he was safe. And he said this was his prison, but it was his sanctuary. He was safe here, and he could rest.” Finally, the boy moves; his neck slides away from Daniel’s still-outstretched hand, and the boy turns calmly to face the wall.
Daniel is still shaking, and his legs still cannot move. His hand is reaching, grasping only air; he feels suddenly, strangely empty as his thoughts, his mind begins to slip away. Daniel A. Radcliff tries to breathe, but the air escapes his lungs as easily as it escapes his hand. Daniel opens his mouth, and he screams.

[Untitled]

Dancing to the silence

We hold hands,

Standing on the petals

Of a single rose.

Hearts touching while

Shy eyes refuse to meet

Whispered "I love you"s

Bring the music crashing down

Such a wonderful sight

Such a beautiful sound

Stranger, lover, best friend

The silent noise comes

Crashing down.

ideas

one of his own, a woman who is a killer, spying on a girl through the window, an unbelieving professor, a woman who attempts exorcism, a bunch of school kids, a dying man, a woman whose husband has died



.....



Don't ask. It's all for a project I'm working on: the House on Dunmore Street. I'm VERY excited about it!!!

Goodbye

“I hate you! I hate you! Leave me alone!” Jenny struggled violently against the nurses who were trying to hold her down. “Leave me alone!” She cried again, though it didn’t do her any good.
Brian sat down anyway, putting his face in his hands. It had been a long day- a long week, actually. Well, actually, it had been a long year. But today of all days had been especially bad, and it wasn’t going to get any easier.
“It’s okay, you can go,” he said quietly to the nurses, who gave up their chore at once and hurried from the room. When he heard the door shut, he sat up straight in his chair and looked Jenny calmly in the eye. He could tell she hadn’t been sleeping well: there were faint little circles below both of her eyes and a single wrinkle in her forehead that only appeared when she was tired. One look at her wrists told him that she hadn’t been eating, which really wasn’t a surprise. Jenny had always been a picky eater, and the hospital food was not exactly five-star.
“You’re so stupid! I hate you! I wish you would just go die!” She was screaming lots of other things too, which Brian only half-heard as he sat in the chair at the foot of her bed. The insults were bad, but he had heard worse, and they barely fazed him anymore. He had been coming to this hospital to visit her every day after work for exactly nine months and two days, and there wasn’t much that could come out of her mouth that would surprise him. He only wondered whether all of this hatred was a product of the accident itself, or whether it had been building up for years. She had always been a very peaceful girl…
“Are you listening to me?” Jenny huffed from her bed. “Worms will crawl through my rotting body before I ever even THINK about touching you again! Do you hear me? After what you said to me last night? Do you hear me, Brian Brown? You’re disgusting!” She let the last word linger on her tongue, relishing the pain she tried to cause.
Sighing, Brian bit down hard on his tongue. He knew that no matter what he said, she wouldn’t change her mind. And even if, somehow, he could change things today, he knew already that tomorrow would be the same. Which made arguing with her ridiculous, of course, though it didn’t take away the temptation.
“Jenny,” he began patiently, “I’m sorry for what I said, okay? I honestly didn’t know that it would make you so upset.” The words were true, even if only because he couldn’t remember what they were fighting about anymore. He didn’t think she remembered either, not really anyway, although he certainly wasn’t going to ask. They had been having the same argument for nine months and two days, night after night and week after week. Whatever he had said to her- more than a year ago, now- had been inconsequential, said en route to some stupid party that he had insisted on taking her to.
They had never had this argument while Jenny had been in her right mind; they had never made it to the party, either. Brian had been driving too fast, as usual, and the music had been turned up too loud. He didn’t notice how badly the car in front of him had been swerving: he barely had time to see their break lights before the crash. It was a good thing, they had told him later, that he had been wearing his seatbelt- a pity really, that Jenny had hated putting it on. He didn’t remember exactly how many feet she had flown from the car, and it didn’t matter that the other driver had been drunk. As far as Brian was concerned, it was all his fault.
“This is all your fault, you know,” Jenny snapped harshly. “You never really loved me. I really don’t think you ever loved me! You stupid jerk, you should just go to Hell!” She was shaking in the bed, she was so angry. Her pupils were dilating and her face was flushed. It reminded Brian of how she had looked that night, in the hospital. He had never seen anyone so beautifully bruised. As on that night, he was struck by the inconceivable urge to reach out and touch her, but he knew from experience that she would rip his hand away.
Jenny barely remembered anything from that night- except for their fight, oddly enough. It had broken Brian’s heart the first time he had walked into her room after she had finally woken up and she had screamed for him to leave. He had never known it would be so hard to love someone, and for a long time, he asked God to take that love away, to let him feel nothing instead. But he woke up hurting every day, and he kept dragging himself back.
As Jenny drew another breath to start a fresh tirade, a doctor knocked softly and then poked his head into the room. “Ah, I thought you were here,” he said timidly to Brian. “May I have a word?” Brian obediently stood and set the fresh bouquet of flowers in Jenny’s lap on the bed.
“I’ll be right back,” he promised, moving toward the door.
“See, you see what I mean!” She screamed after him. “A total stranger asks you to do something, and you jump at the chance to be a stupid, obedient prick, but do you listen to me? God forbid! You’re so stupid, I hate you! I hope you never come back! Just leave, and don’t ever come back, you stupid Asshole!” Her screams followed him from the room and for quite a ways down the hall. The doctor lead Brian into his office where, once the door was closed, Brian sank hopelessly into a new chair.
“Well, she’s still got her fighting spirit, you see,” the doctor joked grimly. Brian didn’t bother to respond, he just sat patiently in the empty silence. The doctor seated himself in the plush chair behind his desk and took a deep breath.
“She was asking for you last night, after you left.” The doctor let the words sink in, watching solemnly as Brian’s eyes slowly widened. “She also mentioned a picture of the two of you? It seemed important to her.”
Brian nodded absentmindedly. It was sitting on her nightstand, next to a fresh glass of water than Brian put there every night, a habit which he could not, or did not want to break himself of. They had been at the beach, Brian remembered; she had worn a white sundress that day. The sun had been just about to set, and the light was hitting the water just right. Jenny had asked some stranger to take a photo of them together, and he had picked her up on a whim, surprising her so that her mouth was open and laughing in the picture. He woke up beside that picture every morning, and he clung to it desperately on the nights that were hardest. Brian tried to control her voice.
“I have it…. But did she say why she wanted it? I just….” Brian left off, unsure of what to say. There wasn’t anything he would withhold if he thought it might make her happy, but this- This was different. That photo meant everything- everything- to him, and he wouldn’t give it to her and watch it be ripped into shreds. Because that was what she did- it was what she was doing right now to the flowers, Brian knew. Everything he brought her, she ripped to shreds like confetti. She had even managed to tear in half the sweater he had given her for Christmas. The photo would be too much, even for him.
“What about taking her home?” He asked absentmindedly. “You said if she showed some signs of progress, you’d consider it. This is progress, right?”
The doctor shook his head delicately. “I don’t think so. I’m sorry. She’s just so fragile right now, mentally I mean. Maybe if she had some memory of people or events- if she could recognize that she’s been sitting in a hospital for nine months, then maybe we could think about it. But it’s really not an option at this point. I’m sorry. I know how hard this must be for you. I’ve told you before, though, that we have to hope for the best and expect the worst. It’s likely that she may never be able to live independently, or co-dependently, in your case, again. I’m sorry.”
He was always apologizing, that doctor. It drove Brian crazy- the whole thing drove him crazy, really. But Brian didn’t let himself get angry; he blamed himself, again and always, for everything that could not be undone. He stood and stretched wearily, saying nothing to the apologetic doctor, who stood also to let Brian out of the room. They were past the point of pleasantries by this point: no Hellos, Goodbyes, Thank-You. Brian didn’t have it in him anymore, and the doctor seemed ready to oblige.
Walking back to Jenny’s room, Brian imagined what it would be like if he was able to take her home. He would make her macaroni and cheese every night- the spiral kind, her favorite- and they would sit on the couch watching re-runs of Friends. He would rub her feet, and make her S’mores in the microwave, the way she liked them. And at night, they would sleep on the floor of the living room, under the sky-windows that he had finally put in. She would have loved those sky windows; he wished he would have put them in sooner, so she could see.
The room was completely silent as he opened the door. And the bed was empty- Brian had never seen it empty before. He gasped sharply, throwing the door wide-open so he could see the whole room, searching for her. She was sitting in his chair, Brian’s chair, at the end of the bed. The floor was covered with shreds of leaves, lonely flower petals, and pieces of the stems. Except for one last flower, a white lily, which Jenny held tightly with both hands.
Brian tried to open his mouth to speak, to call out, maybe to ask for help. He didn’t know what to say. A shiver ran down the length of his spine, then back up, but his legs still wouldn’t move, either into the room or out of it.
“I don’t know why you stay.” Her voice was broken and hard to hear. The contrast between this and the harsh anger he had been bombarded with only minutes before was terrifying, and for a moment, Brian thought he must be hallucinating. Jenny wouldn’t look at him; she stared down at the lone flower, watching as her own fingers softly stroked the petals. He watched her fingers too, as they moved through their delicate caress. It took everything he had not to fall to his knees. His heart skipped a beat, and then another; he reminded himself to breathe.
“I’m sorry about the things I said,” she mumbled, and her head tilted so that she could look nervously into his eyes. “You know I didn’t mean them. It was just- I was just being silly. But none of it really mattered and-“
“Jenny,” Brian whispered thickly. “Oh my God, Jenny.” Her eyes filled with tears at the sound of her own name, and before he could stop himself, Brian was rushing toward her, wrapping his arms around her delicate frame. She was crying earnestly now, and convulsing wildly with emotion. He tightened his grip around her, forcing her body to be still, and cursed himself silently as a tear escaped his eye. He tucked his face into her hair, smelling the strawberry shampoo and nuzzling against the warmth of her neck.
“Brian, I’m so sorry…. I’m… so…. sorry!” Jenny could hardly get the words out. He shushed her; it was impossible to listen to her trying to apologize when it had been his fault- everything had been his fault- all along. He kissed her forehead, her hair, and wiped away the tears from her cheeks as he cradled her. He couldn’t believe how tight her grip was around him, how strong she still was after spending so much time in a hospital bed. His fault- and he wanted to apologize but there weren’t words for what he wanted to say.
Hours passed with near silence, bare sniffles, between them. A nurse came in at one point, checking to make sure that both patient and visitor were still alive. She had almost run from the room when she saw them together, peaceful for the first time in months.
“I don’t know why you stayed,” Jenny’s voice crackled like fire and then flickered out. The words were thick in her mouth like ashes, un-cried tears lodged in her throat and ready to cascade out. He smoothed her hair for the millionth time, gently caressing her skin beneath the corner of her eye with his thumb. He didn’t want to answer her; he wanted to stay where they were forever, holding each other and remembering. A sob caught in his throat, stopping his breath and making him still.
“I had to say goodbye,” he said finally, failing to hold back tears as her body convulsed with sobs again. He cried with her, for her. “I’m sorry Jenny, I’m so sorry.” There was nothing else to say.
He could feel the muscles in her stomach clenching; she was holding back, attempting to reign herself in and he clutched her tighter, not ready to let go. He couldn’t say anything, so he listened as her breathing slowed, quieted. He could feel her mouth against his neck opening, preparing to speak but she didn’t manage more than a low, helpless wail and then her eyes were wet with fresh tears again. He began to rock gently back and forth and to hum “Still” by Brian McKnight, her favorite song.
“I don’t want to forget,” she mumbled. “I don’t want to forget loving you.”
Brian matched her tone, sang through both their tears. “I’m still mad about you, all I ever wanted was you; you’re still the one. You’re still the one.”
He sang until she fell asleep, her tear-stained face nestled gently into the crook of his shoulder. And then he laid her carefully back, trying hard not to wake her, and tucked the thin blankets of the hospital bed under her chin.
“Goodbye Jenny,” he said, fresh tears in his eyes. He never saw her again.

Update:

Obviously, Caution is brand new. I'm still working on a revision for General and Smile, but ENOUGH and MONSTER have both been re-posted with revisions.

Caution

It’s not like you wake up in the morning and decide you’re going to kill someone. Consciously, you don’t have much say- if you ever have any say at all. Probably, your first thought waking up is whether you should have toast or cereal for breakfast, and whether there is any milk. You wonder, still halfway lost in the dreams of the previous night, what you should wear that day, and whether you will need a coat. The killing never occurs to you, you see.

You eat your bowl of cereal in front of the T.V. as you watch the daily forecast and the monotonous talking heads. When you are dressed and ready, you walk out the door, locking it behind you as any responsible adult would do. The air is chilly, and you are glad you brought a coat, even though you know you probably won’t need it by lunchtime. You start your car and notice that it doesn’t sound so great; you make a mental note to take it for an oil change over the weekend.

On the way to work, your mother calls. She hasn’t heard from you in a while, she says, how are things? You tell her about work, maybe you even bring up the car, but in general you tell her that everything is “fine” because when it comes down to it, there’s nothing more to say. You don’t tell her how you’re feeling unfulfilled, like you’re constantly waiting for something but can’t figure out what it is. The waiting depresses you, but you can’t tell her that because you know she’ll worry. You check the call time- less than five minutes- but already you’re anxious to hang-up, and so you make up an excuse and promise to call her back before the end of the week. She probably knows that you won’t call, and you know it too, but you tell the lie anyway. You finish your drive in silence.

When you get to work, you feel like you’ve been sucked into your own personalized version of hell. The mundane tasks of your career repeat themselves daily and the same old people bitch about the same old problems; you have a flashback to high school when you learned about Tantalus in Greek mythology. You have an important meeting with your boss, who looks right through you, and at lunch you sit at a table with some close friends who know almost nothing about you and who you never see outside of work. You waste away a large portion of your afternoon shopping on EBay, and as soon as the clock strikes 5 PM, you’re out the door.

It’s on your way home from work that you see the face of the person you’re going to kill. Maybe it’s the woman who runs the dry cleaning shop, or maybe it’s the guy who delivers your pizza; maybe it’s the man waiting next to you for an elevator, or the woman in the car next to you on the street. And killing isn’t even on your mind, but when you see their face you just know, somehow, that whoever it is will change your life someday.

The face stays with you for the rest of the evening as you watch more T.V., as you clean the kitchen and scrub the sinks, as you look over that report you brought home from work and finally as you brush your teeth before bed. And you see it in your dreams that night, though you might not even remember who it is, or where you saw them or why you remember. Your dreams aren’t anything revealing or life-changing, and probably, you won’t remember them at all when you wake up.

The next day passes in much the same manner, except you don’t talk to your mother this time. The stack of paperwork on your desk has grown impossibly tall in the sixteen hours you spent at home. For awhile, you might sit there, watching it, willing it to grow smaller with your mind. Perhaps you look furtively around, to see whether your co-workers are busily at work, and perhaps you feel comforted that the man whose desk sits closest to yours is currently engaged in a game of Solitaire. You consider starting your own game, but don’t because it would mean turning your computer on. At this point, you might sigh, even yawn, as you pull the papers nearer. Sign on the dotted line, turn the page. Sign on the dotted line, turn the page. Sign on the dotted line, turn the page.

You don’t see the face again for the whole day, or if you do, maybe you don’t consciously recognize it. Your boss tells you that he’s noticed a slight decrease in your work ethic lately, and he wants to know whether everything is okay. And you tell him that you’re “fine”, just like you tell everyone else, and that you’ve just been stressed out lately but you’re going to work really hard from now on. You could tell him that you’re just not getting that sense of satisfaction you expected from your career or that you feel his management style is repressing, but you don’t, because he probably wouldn’t care anyway. As soon as you can escape from his office, you do, and you turn on your computer and go back to EBay, where you’ve lost the bid you’ve been watching for three days. You might feel frustrated, but you don’t say anything because you really weren’t supposed to be on EBay anyway.

That night, you have the dreams again, and the face swirls endlessly through your mind amidst towering stacks of papers that need to be signed. You toss and turn all night, trying to forget, or at least to understand, but every time you wake up the face looses focus in your mind. You are dreaming about it right before your alarm goes off the next morning: you dream that you are running, and that the face is chasing you, pen and paper in hand, like a rabid dog. Any friendliness or gentle recognition is now gone. The alarm terrifies you when it goes off, and you feel like maybe you should write the dream down before you can forget it. Probably though, by the time you’ve found that pen and paper stashed away in your night stand, the opportunity has already gone. Later that day, you will tell your friends that you didn’t sleep well last night because you were having a bad dream about something, but you can’t remember what it is.

On your way home that night, you see the face walking past you down the street. The setting is unfamiliar; the person you see is a stranger, and you would have thought nothing of him if not for the terror that suddenly seized you, the adrenaline that coursed through your blood and set fire to your veins. The fear shames you: not the same, not the same one, you try to tell yourself. And perhaps for the time, it will be enough. You will regain your motor skills; the lump will disappear from your throat; you will go home, to where you are safe, until the face finds you in your dreams.

When you get home, you lock your door, and even check to make sure that the windows are shut up tight. There are leftovers in the fridge for dinner, but you can’t settle yourself enough to take them out, so you order a pizza instead. It’s getting late, almost too late to eat but you’ve already placed the order, and probably your credit card has already been charged. The pizza comes later than they said it would be, almost a half hour later. You’re probably frustrated, and starting to feel tired, and thinking that you should just give up and go to bed. You take your wallet, which you’ve been holding ready for the last twenty minutes in your hand, and slam it onto the kitchen table, at the same time as the doorbell rings. You leave the wallet there, determined to waste the delivery man’s time, and you answer the door.

It’s him. Is it him? He looks so familiar and the fear is there, but you suddenly aren’t sure. Is this the same man? His brother- a twin, maybe? He is probably apologizing for being late, offering a discount of some kind. You can’t hear a word he’s saying as you take the pizza box into your hands.

He’s holding out a little slip of paper, and a pen. Will you sign this, he is asking, I just need your signature. Your dream last night is like a memory, it’s so real, as it flashes through your mind. The face, the same face is chasing you, pen and paper in hand through stacks of papers just waiting to be signed. You are trying hard to think, to hold onto his words; did he ask if he could see your card? You tell him to hold on, and you walk back to the kitchen, you set the pizza box down. Next to a knife.

There’s a knife on the counter. You left it out- why? Perhaps you had meant to put it away, and just forgot. You take the handle into your hand and then lift it, as if to test the weight. It’s a big knife, but it’s so light. You might not even remember why you had it out in the first place.

Setting the knife down, you go back to the door, credit card in hand and apologetic smile on your face. You could say that you’re sorry for making him wait, but you probably don’t, because he was a half hour late in the first place. He thanks you, turns away; you think of your knife as he leaves. Before he is even into his car, you are struggling into your shoes, pulling on a jacket. The pizza is still on the counter, growing colder; you grab the knife instead. Before he has even started the car, has even pulled away, you are racing toward your own and hoping, praying that he doesn’t see. And you don’t think that he does: he just drives away, perhaps a little faster than you usually drive, but you start your own car, start following.

You follow him through your neighborhood; probably, you have no idea what you intend to do, or why you brought the knife along. He’s threatening, you think you feel threatened; you want to sort him out, convince him not to do it again. You are probably thinking that you just want to talk to him, find out what his problem is with you, what the problem is. You turn the corner, still following. You drive for a while, through darker neighborhoods, neighborhoods that are not as safe, neighborhoods that you would have never walked into by yourself at night. You drive through them and out of them, relieved but still thinking of turning around and just home. You might reason with yourself: you’ve already come so far. Haven’t you? You think that if you could just talk to him, everything would be okay.

You drive into a ritzy neighborhood, on the other side of town from where you live. His car stops; you drive past him, turn the corner, park out of sight. You turn off your car, ease the door open so it doesn’t make a sound. It’s a good neighborhood, right on the edge of the city limits. It’s dark and there’s no one outside, not in a neighborhood like this, not at this hour. You walk back around the corner quietly, casually glancing around you, trying to see through the darkness behind the windows of the four, five, six houses now in your view. You might be amazed at how peaceful everything seems; your neighborhood is nice, but never so quiet as this. Still, you probably don’t feel entirely safe. Crazy things happen all the time, you think. You never know who the killer is until after you’re dead.

As you get closer, he is just walking away from a still-dark house, lighting up a cigarette as he moves. He’s facing you, maybe even watching you as you start to walk toward him through the dark. His gaze throws you off guard and you lose control of yourself: your body starts to freeze and your heart all but stops and it’s like you’re having an out of body experience, you see everything so clearly. You’re getting closer and maybe you’re slowing down, but you’re close enough now to look for recognition in his eyes. You see none, and you’re suddenly afraid that you’re dreaming again.

It seems impossible that the dreams started only days ago; it doesn’t occur to you. He terrifies you, this stranger, but you won’t wait for him to defeat you: you attack; you take out the threat before it’s ever there. Many years later, you will probably wish that you had taken it more slowly, taken your time. You will probably wish that you could remember how the knife felt as it cut through skin and soft tissue, mortally damaging his internal organs. You will probably wish that you could remember the warmth of the first blood your hands ever felt, and how quickly it started to flow as you stab him again, again, again. You will probably wish that you could remember the terror in his eyes, but you don’t. All you remember is the fulfillment, the sense of purpose you had been missing that is suddenly washing over you in waves.

When you control yourself enough to finally stop, you will probably stab him one more time, just in case. You know enough from watching T.V. not to throw the knife away; you wipe it on his pant leg and then you take it back to your car; you walk away. Your eyes probably search the windows of the houses again as you leave, waiting for someone to run out to you, to stop you, but no one comes. You are careful as you get into your car, careful as you start the engine, careful as you drive away.

Your mind is unusually blank, something you will register only after that night, when the moment has long passed. There is fear, aggression, vindictiveness, confidence, fulfillment- but you are not thinking any of this: it is just there. It isn’t until later, when you’re washing the blood of your hands, that anything becomes real. You scrub your skin raw, and tear the clothes off your body like it was acid that you spilled, instead of blood. Screaming rings passionately in your ears for hours after you’ve returned home, and it alarms you. He hadn’t screamed when you killed him; there wasn’t time; he had made almost no sound at all. But the screaming is what makes you realize exactly what it is that you’ve done.

Probably, you run out of soap long before your hands start feeling clean. You think about the bottle of bleach that you have stored under the kitchen sink, wondering if it will wash your hands of the stain. They already look so red though, from the scrubbing- your hands look red like blood. So you stop scrubbing and you turn your attention to the pile of bloody clothes that are lying ominously on the floor. Walking into your bedroom, you throw on some sweats and then walk out to the kitchen trash, which is about half full. You throw the bloodied clothes on top of a banana peel and a stale loaf of bread; you open the fridge and add the leftovers on top of the pile. As you tie the top of the bag together tight, you will probably count the days in your head, hoping that the garbage collection is soon. And then you take it out, and once it’s gone, you can almost pretend that it wasn’t real.

You don’t sleep that night. You try to watch some T.V. but nothing catches your interest. Maybe you decide to take a long shower to loosen up those muscles that won’t un-tense in your back. But it doesn’t work, and for the larger part of the night, you just sit on your bed with your back against the wall, rubbing your hands together self-consciously and humming to yourself. You don’t want your neighbors to think that anything is wrong or different in some way, so you sit there alone, and everything is dark. When the sun comes into the sky again, you eat the pizza for breakfast.

In your head, you probably try to make sense of everything that has happened, but the only thing racing through your mind is fear. You’re not afraid of being caught, of being punished, or anything like that. People commit crimes all the time, you think. Many of them go unsolved. Right? Yes, you tell yourself. The only thing that scares you, the thought keeping you awake, is that you don’t feel scared, guilty, at all. The adrenaline is still rushing through your veins; you’ve replayed the night in your head about a thousand times. And still, you feel nothing. How effortless it is to become a killer- that is what keeps you awake all night.

You call in sick to work the next day, and spend a considerable amount of time worrying that everyone knows what is wrong. You never take sick days. You never take vacations. Surely, you think, everyone at work will know what you’ve done. You check the paper thoroughly: Yes, it’s there. A small piece. Police were investigating his last stop of the evening, but no suspects had been identified, you read; the family is baffled; they ask for anyone with information to come forward. They don’t know why anyone would want to hurt him; the president of the home owners association is dismayed that something so tragic could happen on her side of town.

You order take-out- Chinese, not pizza today- and you sit on your couch watching movies that you’ve already seen about a million times before. There’s a knock on your front door, which you don’t answer until you’re sure that whoever it was is long gone. Just a delivery man, probably Fed-Ex, dropping off a package that you’ve been expecting for weeks now. A couple of books that you ordered online- but nothing that you feel like reading right now. After the sun sets, you decide that you want to go for a walk to clear your head.

You probably aren’t surprised when you end up at the scene of the crime. Not that you intentionally walked back that way, because it’s a long walk, out of the way, really; not that you gave any thought to it at all, but it seems fitting, poetic somehow. You stand at the corner, less than twenty feet away from where you left the body. There’s yellow police tape. Caution, it says. Do not enter. Caution. No one else is around, and so you allow yourself to laugh a little, maybe to sneer. Caution, the sign says. Wouldn’t it be more fitting if the tape was around you?

Not that you mean to dishonor the man you killed. It’s this that stops the laughter in your throat. Because he wasn’t stupid, and it wasn’t meaningless. The police will never find you; if you are arrested, it will be many years from now, when you’ve turned yourself in. The man you killed will go unavenged, and for this reason you spend a few silent moments at the scene of the crime. To honor him. He is your first victim- your only victim. Until, that is, you kill again.