Prologue: Little Boy Lost
"The ultimate triumph of philosophy would be to cast light upon the mysterious ways in which Providence moves to achieve the designs it has for man." - Marquis De Sade
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Everything hurt, and someone was spinning things around. He could hear hissing (hiiiiissss-haaaaah, hiiiiissss-haaaaah) and clicking (tick-tick-tick-tick-tick) and beeping (be-beep, be-beep, be-beep). The room smelled bad, and sounded big; he could hear someone crying, a room or so away, and people walking back and forth somewhere closer. He was too tired to open his eyes, and went back to sleep.
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The world faded in and out unpredictably. He could hear strange people talking, saying things he could only sometimes understand. They said words he knew, like pins and swelling, and ones he did not understand, like tebeeiye. He tried to remember how he got here, but all he could remember being pushed, hard, and a sharp pain, then a woman's scream and the wide, frightened eyes of a man.
He was not able to talk; there was something down his throat that was in the way. His legs were heavy and stiff, with something hard wrapped around them so they would not bend; one arm was also stiff and intensely painful, but not wrapped up, though for some reason it would stop moving before it touched anything, like it had gotten really wide. His head was heavy, too, with something wrapped around it. He was so cold, but he knew he did not have another blanket; he had only ever had the one. He tried to open his eyes, but nothing happened.
He heard them talking to each other about boidoh; he did not know what that was, but wondered if it was like the bright-coloured clay he had seen once, before the other boy tried to flush it down the drain and made all the water run out of the toilet and all over the floor. The other boy got to play with all the toys. The other boy also got to go to the little kids' school, but he had to stay home. He would not get to go until the other school started, the one that was free.
He wondered where the woman was, and the man; he never heard them talking. And nobody ever yelled at him, even though he stayed in bed.
The pain was a constant; the only change was how bad. Sometimes he would hear someone by his bed, and the pain would mostly fade for a while. Sometimes no one would come, and the pain would go on and on. It was bad when they took his bandages off. Worst of all were the baths, when they would take him and scrub him with brushes on his hand and up his arm, across his shoulder and up the neck to his face. They would hold him when he tried to get away, and he would try to scream but the thing in his throat was in the way. Sometimes he got angry and tried to hit them, but he never made them stop.
Sometimes he could hear other people yelling, too, when he was lying in his bed, and crying, from places that sounded close and places that sounded farther away. He cried too, a lot of the time, when it hurt too badly, which was a lot.
They took the bandages off his eyes at last, and he could see where he was - a tall bed with shiny railings, in a white room with two doors. There was a television up high in the corner, and a tall metal coat rack by his bed with bags hanging from it. They would turn the TV on in the morning, and he got to watch cartoons. They were as good as they had always sounded, and even better.
There were machines near his bed, too, which made various beeps and clicks and hissing noises. There were cards for someone standing up on a table at the far side of the room, and toys. He could see a bear, a yellow truck, blocks, crayons, and books. He wondered whose toys they were. Men and women would come in through one of the doors do things with the machines, the bags, or the bed, and sometimes they would smile at him. Sometimes they talked to him as they worked, asking how he was and if he liked this or that. It would have been nice if he had not feel so bad all the time, and if he had been able to talk to them.
His arm was red and ugly, with cream smeared all over it (and he hated the cream, he hated it, it felt like it was on fire and it burned and burned). There were metal spikes coming out of his arm, attached to a set of metal rings a little above his skin. He did not like to look at it, and could not stand to touch it.
Now that he could see, he could see the faces of the people whose voices he had come to know. He was surprised that they did not look like they had sounded like they looked, when he could not see them. Some of them he liked, but he did not like the ones who took him to his baths and scrubbed his skin off where he was hurt, even though they were nice the rest of the time. He knew about people like /that/, that were nice where other people could see them and mean when alone, and nobody was meaner than the nurses who scrubbed him even though it hurt so bad.
He wished he had another blanket, but would not have asked even if he could speak. Adults, he had learned, did not want to be asked for more or less of anything. He could not help crying, though, when it hurt. Sometimes when he cried one of the women would come to his bed and do something with one of the bags hanging on the tall pole beside his bed, and he would feel better for a while.
One of the women would come in and shine lights in his eyes, and have him do strange things. She would have him follow her finger with his eyes, or wiggle his toes, or look at papers she would hold up with numbers written on them and ask him to hold up that many fingers. Whatever he did, she would write things down on the paper she carried around.
One of the men came in one day and took the thing out of his throat - it was a long tube, and it felt really strange coming out. It was hard to talk even then; his throat hurt, and his voice was scratchy when he tried to speak.
The eye-light woman started asking him questions after the throat-tube came out. What was his name, what were his parents' names; did he remember how he got burned? How did he get to the alley, and did he know where his home was? He thought he was going to be in trouble, because even though he could talk now his name wouldn't come out. The woman asked if he remembered, and he did, but had trouble with words that didn't want to come out; a lot of them hid from him, like hide and seek, but he couldn't figure out where they were. He could tell the lady his mommy and daddy were gone in a big bang; then she wanted to know who had been taking care of him. He knew that - it was the big yelling man, and the mean lady, and the other boy, but their names were hiding too.
He could not remember how he had gotten hurt. Something bad had happened, something really bad, but all he remembered was the push and the scream and the eyes. He asked the lady, then, about the thing they kept talking about, with the bright colours that you could make into shapes. She listened to him for a while, and made notes on the paper she carried, but she didn't understand until one of the other women came in and asked about the stuff, the boidoh. The lady understood then, and told him that boidoh was not a toy, that he was boidoh. She said it carefully to him, boi-doh, then wrote it out on a paper and showed it to him.
Boy Doe.