Title: Dog's Day
Chapter II: Release
A/N: Thank you thank you thankyouthankyouthankyou to faithharris, for being my beta reader (my first one ever!) and just, beating the shit out of the shitty parts of this chapter and making them look glamorous.
--
RELEASE
by Onions Make Me Cry
--
--
(((FORTY-EIGHT HOURS PRIOR)))
--
Sylvia sighed, slapping her pen down on the clipboard. "I don't know what to do with him. I just don't."
The orderly that the nurse was speaking to shruggedfrom behind a large basket of dirty scrubs. He leaned over the scrubs with a cigarette dangling from his bottom lip, trying not to inhale too deeply. A patient had escaped from solitary confinement earlier in the day and taken a very wet shit on a stack of previously clean laundry. Laundry which was now doomed to return to the lava-hot triple-cycle of Happy Volts Home for the Mentally Unwell's incurably frightening line of industrial washing machines. If they were lucky this time, the batch of clothing would come out without any water scorches. But then again, not much about Happy Volts was lucky. They would probably just come out ten sizes too small. Either that, or they'd be on fire.
"I dunno. He won't take his pills?"
"No." The woman sighed. "He won't eat. Won't talk, except when he's shouting, won't let us touch him... Won't see any of the doctors. I swear to God, the only way we can get that kid to do anything is to knock him out with a tranquilizer dart first."
Sylvia was a rather plump woman. Three extra ruddy chins were currently protruding from beneath her real one as she stared down at the scuffed counter of the sign-in desk. An assortment of tiny, technicolor pills slid around from place to place, playing a slippery game around the thick tree trunks of her fingers. She glared at them, sweating with concentration, as she attempted to pinch them up and deposit them into little plastic cups.The orderly stared at her, not breathing, with a dull look of amusement painted across his thuggish face.
"Why bother with the pills if he ain't takin' them?" the man wondered, ash floating down into the laundry from the end of his cigarette.
The nurse sighed again, this time with greater frustration. "Well I just can't give up, can I? Dr. Collins won't be here until tomorrow morning with the sedatives."
"I say just clobber the kid. Though... Isn't he the same one that ripped out of three sets of restraints?"
"... four, actually."
"And the same kid that saved all his piss in a cup and dumped it on Collins last week?"
"Same one."
"The one that made that guy in D-block set himself on fire?"
"Again, yes. And it wasn't just the one person."
"The same little shit that got kicked out of that fancy school for criminals after inciting a riot?"
Sylvia's sweaty palm came down on the pills with a powerful slap, like a boot crushing a cockroach. There was a resonating moment of quiet before the great reveal... when the woman lifted her hand up again, all the pills were stuck fast. She observed them with a satisfied smirk, before plucking them up one at a time, and setting them in their appropriate cups.
"At least his release is scheduled for tomorrow," she conceded.
"Right," the orderly muttered, and stood straight again. Flicking the butt end of his cigarette carelessly into his basket, he sniffed, farted, and began to drag the laundry away. "Yeah... well, good luck with that."
The nurse muttered a brief acknowledgment of the man's departure, before daintily setting two cups of pink and blue pills on a small tray.
"Alright, Mr. Smith." The woman breathed, stepping out from behind the counter.
She would have to try this... one more time.
--
He looked brain-dead. That was reassuring. Sylvia slowly pushed open the heavy slotted door to Gary Smith's containment cell.
The boy sat limp-boned and expressionless against the far wall on the floor, hands flopped like rubber on the dull blue smock all the patients were required to wear. He hadn't had much contact with the outside world over the past few months... or the inside world, come to think of it. Most times, when the door to his cell opened, it was an invitation to have most of the room picked up and hurled at whoever dared come close. In the alone time that had resulted from such behavior, Gary's room had been re-assembled to resemble something like a children's fort. The bed had been turned over from where the boy had ripped the frame out of the wall, for one. Now it stood like a barrier between the door and the corner, where plates and trays and sheets had been threaded into the springs of the frame with anal precision. The mattress had been dragged against the farthest side of the wall, and the bedding had been rigidly made... Militaristically made. The blankets looked tight enough to bounce a quarter, and had stayed that way for quite some time. Gary had completely given up touching it and now slept on the floor instead.
"Time for your medicine, young man." The nurse said in a sing-song voice, though her tone wasn't without bitterness. Theirs was a mutual hate.
Gary looked up from the floor, dark circles framing hollow-looking eyes.
Nothing.
Silence.
Half expecting the boy to fling a dish at her like a frisbee, Sylvia approached with some caution. "Here, come take these." He continued to stare blankly. "If you do, the Doctor won't have to come see you about them tomorrow morning. Remember how you hate for them to wake you up?"
And then, like the hand of God acting out a minor miracle, Gary stood. It was a slow motion, and felt exhausting, even to an observer. First, the boy dragged his feet under himself, and with shaking, flopping hands, Gary crawlingly felt his way up the side of the wall. Every muscle twitch screamed with tiredness, and every step dragged with a dull despair as he moved out into the center of the room. Step by agonizing step, the sickly figure made his way across the bleach-white floor, until he stood, swaying just a little, in front of Sylvia's pill tray.
The woman gaped. Was he really going to do it today? Would he finally give in to his situation and willingly take his medication? The track marks on his arms weren't enough to inspire sympathy out of Sylvia, but they did serve to remind her of what a monumental hassle it had been up until that point to administer his proper dose of drugs.
Questing with a trembling hand, Gary plucked the little plastic cup off the tray, and looked dully down into itscontents.
Was he really-? Did he actually-? Would he finally-? "Oh! My goodness, well, here you go, dear." Atwitter with excitement, Sylvia took another step towards her patient, and with a very large, very greasy smile, held out a sweating cup of water.
Gary's eyes fell on Sylvia's chubby hand clutching the slippery cup, and for a moment he stared at it with the same vacant sadness many of the other Happy Volts inmates hosted; a mournful look devoid of all competent thought. And then he slapped it out of her hand.
The cup clattered loudly on the floor, ricocheting off the woman's ankles and spilling it's contents everywhere. Sylvia shrieked and dropped her tray, falling back the few steps it took to be standing just outside the room, and when she looked up again, her patient wore a malicious smile.
Slowly raising his hand, Gary leveled his eyes with the nurse's, and dumped his pills pointedly on top of the spilled ruin of the glass of water.
"Where do you come off, behaving like that?" The nurse shouted, obviously spooked by this sudden turn of events. "You need to take the medicine you've been prescribed to you by your Doctor! Don't you want to get well again?"
Gary tilted his head a little as he observed his nurse. Folding his hands across his chest, his vindictive smirk faded a little, in favor of an injection of bitterness. "...None of you people seem to understand. I'm clinically insane. Not stupid."
"Yes, well, good luck on the outside." The woman muttered. What was wrong with this kid? Well, besides the psychoneurosis. "See you back here in a month, if you're lucky. Maybe two months, tops."
That comment caught Gary off-guard. It hardly ever happened, but there it was, all the same... that narrowing of the pupils. That slight intake of breath. "...What do you mean?"
Sylvia drew herself up to her full height, and set to sweeping off the front of her uniform. "You're being discharged. A taxi is coming tomorrow night."
Whether or not it seemed odd to Gary that a mental institution would deem it appropriate to ship off one of their patients in a city cab without a declared clean bill of health, hardly seemed important. The strangeness was simply washed away by an immediate wave of elation. Freedom. Free from this place. Gone... Gone, and soon. So much sooner than Gary had ever thought possible.
"...Why?"
The question was pointless; he was still leaving this place tomorrow night regardless of the answer. Really. Come hell or high water, he was leaving. But it had to come out, all the same.
"Why, dear?" Nurse Sylvia questioned, and stooped to pick up her pill tray. Her hips were so wide, that from her position just outside the door and in the hall, her sides were shaved off by the looming door frame. "Well, I suppose because your parents stopped paying your bill."
Never in all of Gary Smith's life had the concept of parental neglect ever made him grin so hard, without so much as a trace of cynicism.
"Well, I'm glad you're pleased about something. Finally. But who is going to clean up this mess?"
The boy's face was puzzled for a moment, before he looked down at his feet. Oh, water. The water... Right. Droplets twinkled from the dull cement floor like small fish eyes, reflecting everything from a strange, warped perspective. The nurse shot her patient an indignant look, but before she could do anything, Gary grabbed the edge of his door and slammed it shut in her face.
Outside in the hall, Sylvia belted out another one of her famous, miserable sighs. He would be gone by midnight tomorrow, at least. There was a little comfort. Soon he would be out of her hair. How he had managed to maintain that same sense of prescient evil throughout his entire stay had been a complete mystery to the fat woman. Orderlies had beaten him. Doctors had restrained him. And most importantly, they'd been knocking him unconscious and pumping his veins full of anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, sedatives, supplements... everything he needed and more. Yet even still, he carried an eerie awareness about him that spooked the orderlies, made the other patients prone to setting themselves on fire, and gave Sylvia herself a healthy dose of the rather more serious heebie jeebies. Gary Smith was more like a ghost than a person.
Clutching her tray to her breasts, Sylvia peeked in through the slotted window of the cell. Gary hadn't begun to braid a noose together with ripped strips of sheet, like she'd half hoped to discover him doing . He had retreated instead to the opposite end of the room again. And there, squatting next to his mattress, he drew a single photograph out from underneath his stone-stiff blankets.
What.. ?
The boy stared at the picture for a few moments, and then rolled over onto his back to hold it up to the light. There on the floor Gary laid, for some time afterwards, examining the glossy photo with an expression of faint excitement.
It wasn't until the following night, when Gary had packed his few things and been ushered lovelessly off in a taxi cab, that Sylvia was allowed back into the room again. The photo was still there, dog-eared and lonely in the middle of the floor.
Bending to pick it up, the woman brought it close to her face. It was a photograph of two young boys. One of them was small, smiling weakly from beneath a head of short-cropped brown hair. The other boy was larger, and thick-necked, with a smattering of reddish freckles. His face was obscured by a large X, drawn in careful black permanent marker.
Eerie. Everything about Gary Smith was eerie. Nurse Sylvia snorted to herself, thinking again how pleased she was to be rid of this particular inmate once and for all.
Flipping the thing, she noted a line of cramped hand-writing that marked a note across the back of the picture.
'First semester, Jimmy's first week.'
--
(((THE PRESENT)))
--
This was obviously some kind of sick joke.
"Get out."
Like, kicking the kneecaps out from behind old ladies sick.
"Seriously. Get out of my room."
Gary looked up from the book he'd been reading, sprawled on his stomach across Jimmy's bed, and offered a pleasant smile. "No, I don't think so."
"Yes. Really, Gary. Get out right now, or I'm going to throw you out myself." The young king took a threatening step towards the bed from the open doorway, but to poor results. His unwanted intruder merely gave him a bored look, and let his eyes fall back down to his reading.
"How did you even get in here? Everybody must be looking for you... I'm not gonna be responsible for a maniac on the loose, so fuck off and get out of my room."
"Language, Hopkins." Gary murmured blandly, and turned a dusty page with one long finger. "Once you set a bad example, your loyal minions are sure to pick it up, and then it's nothing but work, work, work, all the time."
The recently released inmate of Happy Volts had gotten himself cleaned up since his last appearance at the Vale Theater. He'd obviously taken a shower, for one thing. His hair was clean again, his teeth were brushed, and he wore an obnoxiously familiar white collared shirt. It wasn't part of the Bullworth uniform, but with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow, coupled with a sharp pair of khaki shorts, the illusion was quite remarkable. He didn't have the vest, but after a year of sometimes wearing it, sometimes not, its presence wasn't required to cast the right kind of spell. Gary looked nothing short of a much cleaner, albeit bargain-brandier reincarnation of his former glorious self. And how the shit-bag had managed to get into Jimmy's room, much less travel across campus without being spotted, was a mystery. But here he was, all the same, as if he'd never been expelled at all. As if his summer at the insane asylum had never happened. But most importantly to Jimmy, Gary was behaving as if they were comfortable with each other, and that above all things was unforgivable. Gary was behaving as if he hadn'tgone to the theater last night. As if he hadn't tried to beat Jimmy's skull against a sink. As if he had never attempted to smother him to death in a public restroom. And as if he had never given his arch nemesis the fastest, questionably non-consensual public hand job known to mankind. Less than thirty-two hours, and here he was again.
It hadn't even been two whole days. Why, was he here? Why did Gary Smith have to be here?
Jimmy stalked across the room and ripped the book out of Gary's hands. "You can't stay in my room, if that's what you're thinking."
Gary watched the book go with mild interest, then let loose a long, luxurious stretch. It ended with the boy flopping over on his back and tucking his hands behind his skull, zooming in on Jimmy's face with a lazy, confident smirk. "Oh, I think you'll change your mind."
"And why is that?"
"Because," Gary spoke slowly now, as if explaining a difficult concept to a small child, "if you don't do everything I tell you to do, I'm going to tell your girlfriend why my hand smells like your dick, Jimmy-boy."
James stared, incredulous. But when his mouth opened again, what came out was only, "You didn't wash your hand?"
From the bed, Gary gave a theatrical sigh, and rolled his neck. Dark hair fanning out over Jimmy's sheets, the boy looked more like a magazine spread than a mental patient. It was funny how such a large change could have occurred over such a short time... All that remained of the scarecrow from the previous night was a lingering thinness. And a paleness that still shone a little waxy in his face. It would take a month or so of good, fresh vegetables to eliminate that side effect, but it too would disappear with time. Now, here was the old Gary. The confident, handsome young man who had been able to win over so many other people to his cause, if not just for brief integers of time. This was Gary, the mastermind.
"Washed my hand? That's really not the point, now is it?"
"So what, are you just going to pitch a tent on the floor or something?" Jimmy shouted, incapable of containing his frustration. Gary was still here. He was still here. Why was he still here?
"No... I'm going to sleep in the bed. Yes, despite the fact that it's probably a crusty feasting ground for bacteria because you haven't washed your sheets in an eon, I'm going to sleep in the bed. It's yours, and I want it. You'll be sleeping on the floor."
"What? No way, fuck that."
"Would you rather sleep here with me?"
The distinct memory of Gary's callused fingers running up his dick rushed up and hit Jimmy in the gut. Silence was his response, though unconsciously his face contorted into the sort of expression a drunken fraternity brother makes before throwing up into a bowl of punch.
Gary's smirk widened a fraction of an inch. "I didn't think so."
Not that arguing would have mattered. It was already too late. Gary was already there. And he already had all the ammunition he needed to make Jimmy's life a living hell for the next three to five consecutive years at Bullworth Academy, should he decide to do so. Zoe wasn't just a jealous girl... she was a smart, perceptive, (not to mention amazingly bitter) jealous girl. If she decided that she wanted Jimmy dead, it would take nothing short of the hand of God, coming down and scooping him to safety to avoid the inevitable kamikaze explosion that would eventually ensue. The bitter reality of his hopeless situation sunk in, and the king had a sudden, acute understanding of just how fucked he was. If being between a rock and a hard place was a regular difficult situation, this was like being stuck between a meteor and the sun.
With a sigh that tasted bitter and dry on Jimmy's tongue, he shoved Gary's feet out of the way and sat on the end of his bed. "...fine. Whatever. But just for a week, okay?"
The smirk became something like a gloating grin, and Gary kicked at the boy by his sneakers. "I knew you missed me, Hopkins."
What Gary Smith wanted, Gary Smith got.
--
/TBC/
