He watched Tyto Albans in the common room for a week, a month, meeting him face to face rarely. But Channard felt he grew to understand his pet creature better through observation than through all of the reluctant, rancorous, evasive conversations they had before.

Of course, the first morning, in the common-room, Tyto had efficiently rushed the open doors, as naturally as a ball rolling down an incline. The two guards posted there had almost let him pass in their surprise. Tyto had been indifferently struck down to the floor, Channard had sedated him, and it had been two days before he returned, when he had again rushed the doors, again beaten, again sedated. On the fifth day, Channard instructed that the doors be locked, and Tyto, momentarily surprised by the lack of countermoves by the guards, had burned both palms on the metal of the door-handles, and then stood there, for hours, staring blankly at the egress. Channard, watching all of this, secluded in the recessed observation booth, had alone carefully noted the slight forward tilt of Alban's head, signifying resignation and defeat.

On the sixth day, Tyto did not rush the doors. He stood, alone, in his tailor-knotted motley, and observed. Channard saw him see every portal, every nook, every path in the place that might lead away. Saw him see each window thrice barred with iron lattice, iron bars, steel padlocks. Saw him look over the other patients, seeing the weak amenities available, embodied in threadbare and shabby furniture, in games and puzzles, most with crucial pieces missing, spread insipidly over battered tables and clutched in medication-palsied hands, saw him cock an ear at the ancient PA system which was tinnily blaring out-of-date music, and cut his eyes precisely, and exactly, to the high concealed niches of the mirrored observation booth windows, as if they did not exist, and look at Channard.

"Do not forget that I do not forget," his eyes seemed to say, and then he turned his back to him and looked at the other peasants in the Kingdom of Madness.

Channard had expected Tyto to react in servile terror and disgust when the more engaged patients approached him in curiosity, hands outstretched to greet and touch. Channard did not particularly mind if Tyto were to react with violence, hurting them. He even smugly anticipated such a scene. But Tyto did not hurt the others, even when they put their hands on him, on his shoulders, his arm, even the hair of his head. Neither did he encourage them. He let the strange hands linger, then lifted them gently away at the wrists, spoke a few words to each too low to hear over the zoo-din of the common room, the music, and the plate glass of the observation windows. The ones he allowed to touch him went away, satisfied, their eyes brighter, their bodies more controlled and graceful than should have been possible for their circumstances. Only the few who approached him aggressively, or sexually—Haansen, who had raped and murdered two male prostitutes, or Reed, the paedophile, or Kara, who had facially disfigured her "whore daughter" with a paring knife—received a less inspiring reaction. Those strong talon-like hands prized first one caressing limb, next one aggressive jab, and then one too-familiar overflung arm from his body, biting into fabric and flesh, accompanied with a look and a word apparently more frightening than any violence to the receiver, movements invisible to the guards but easily seen from Channard's perch. These few never approached Tyto again, perpetually orbiting to the points of the room furthest from him, but naturally, casually, like identical poles of a magnet.

After the first few days, Tyto did more than stand in the center of the common room and observe. He began to be with them.

He moved with that confident swiftness, as he had toward the door on the first day, but in the direction of a table where a group of heavily sedated inmates were putting together a puzzle. The guards, seeing his movement, flinched with care, remembering. Channard was gratified to see their vigilance, and reminded himself to praise their poise. But Tyto seemed to slow as he approached the group, his movements becoming as languid as theirs. He waited a full minute before pulling out a chair and sitting with them, sorting through the jumble of printed cardboard pieces as painstakingly slowly as they did. He watched with some bemused surprise when Tyto lit the cigarettes of those whose bodies shook too much to do it for themselves, surprised and displeased when, on occasion, Tyto would accept and smoke a cigarette from another, as if accepting such things was normal, as if what Channard had given him, put into him, was of no consequence.

Channad flinched when, on the fifth day of the interminable puzzle, Tyto laughed aloud at some inane joke the man to his left had made. The entire room pricked up its ears, condensed a step toward the epicenter of pleasure-sound echoing from Tyto's slim throat. And Channard burned with longing jealousy. He had had the orderlies take Albans abruptly from the room and sedate him, as punishment. While they clutched him from the room, Tyto tilted his head up and gave Channard, through the mirrored glass, a romantic smile.

He could see that Tyto Albans was inhuman. What he hadn't anticipated was that his inhumanity could be congruous to the sub-humanity of the fellow-inmates who shared his captivity. It was fascinating, and not displeasing, and it scratched maddening itch to know that he could rain down separation and soporific drugs on his pet creature whenever he chose. He comforted himself with the knowledge that, like God, he could give in order to take away.

Last of all the windows Tyto Albans discovered was the television set, normally kept locked away in a supply closet until after the bland lunch and light sedation of the afternoon. Albans hadn't made its acquaintance until the end of his second week in the common room. He had come into the common room first on that day, and halted when he saw it, as if it were an unknown and unpredictable, possibly aggressive fellow-prisoner. Channard found it amusing to see Albans so disconcerted. The set was tuned to one of the bland, popular Proctor & Gamble dramatic serials marketed to housewives. Albans circled the room around it, taking the longest serpentine method, seeming both drawn to and afraid of it. After fifteen minutes of this careful dance, he came very close to the screen, tapping it and flinching away. He stood back and looked through the screen with an intensity Channard had only known children to possess, and watched the narrative unfold, aptly mimicking the common gestures and poses of the actors. He shivered at the first commercial break, looking around to see if the story he'd been so focused on had moved somewhere outside the screen.

A few of the regular TV-addicted patients, coming into the common room, had allowed this to go on, but now one came up to the set, nudging Tyto out of the way, obviously demanding to change the channel to a different program. Albans waited and watched, and then himself fiddled with the dials, and, pressing the power switch, turned it off.

Tyto Albans stared into the empty screen. It had gone black, becoming an opaque mirror. Channard saw him see his own reflection—for the first time? He moved his face forward, and then back, tilted his face one way and the other, seeing himself in the convex glass of the crystal tube. He stared into his mortal eye and then into his dark one. He touched his hand to his face, then pressed his fingers deep into his cheek. And he backed away from the dead television in sorrow and bewilderment. As he moved, he kept glancing into the mirror of the set, and finally collapsed hard into a couch against the side wall. His aspect remained aggrieved even as one of the other patients, in disgust, turned the television back on, adjusted the dials and antenna, just in time for the announcer's voice to inform the audience that this was THE SECRET STORM.

From behind the protective wall of his knees locked inside the circle of his arms, Albans suspiciously watched the electric window, the human puppet-show, the soap opera-as if the knowledge of these banal domestic dramas were painful, and necessary.

Channard touched the glass, wishing he held that same bewitching power, could provoke fear and fascination-could provoke any response. He ached for Tyto's regard. But to him, now, Tyto was as cold and opaque as smoked glass.

When he saw another receive the attention and love he felt was his by right, he drank deep of the Hate River, and prepared to drown her in his vomit.