Anonymous review replies: (forgot to put it in earlier)

Kyd Chaos: Well, I don't know if Vasquez himself would read any sort of fanfiction. I think Id have a heart attack if he did read my story, but I get what you mean and thank you. My Dad nearly gave me a panic attack when he said he met Vasquez at Comicon last year, gave him the link to my stories and Jhonen said he'd read them. When I nearly cried in embarrassment he said he was joking. I got him back later though, I got him real good. He really did meet him at Comicon, as I have an autographed copy of the Squee book, but he didn't give him the link, of which I'm glad. I've seen videos of Jhonen cutting people and their fan works down to size and I don't want that to happen to me.

MissMarientose: Thank you so much! I'd love to see these drawings of yours, no one has ever said these stories have inspired artwork and as an artist myself I am intrigued. I'd love to see your interpretation of this! And thank you for the song rec, I'm always looking for more music to help me get in the writing mood. If you have anymore I'd love to hear them.

"Some things I've learned since I have grown, the house I'm in is not a home."

~Todd Casil, age 15

Spiderfly

Chapter Seven

Uninterrupted

Footsteps, stair steps, baby steps, long steps, quick steps, my steps, these steps, your steps . . .

Johnny walked towards the security clearance door down a circular hallway at the opposite end of the storage area. A man, only visible through the glow of several monitors, was seated in the small fenced–in glass box. As he came closer the guard looked up at him and nodded. The buzz of the security clearance over the thick metal door rang loud throughout the enormous room.

Nny smiled and gave the distracted man a tiny wave as he walked through clearly mistaken as one of the early morning workers who had already left. On the other side of the door was a long narrow hallway that ended in several forks that twisted and turned in every which direction like the long tendrils of a monster, occasionally punctuated by an odd door colored in bright hues with flowers and rainbows. He walked for quite awhile, occasionally going in a direction that led to nowhere and having to turn back.

Johnny stopped at a baby blue door with six flowers on it, each daisy having five yellow petals and a single red one. He saw no other sign and when he opened the door, inside were six bright red tables with five yellow chairs each. He closed the door and continued on. The next one he came to, the final door before the hall made an abrupt ninety degree turn, was green with a big yellow smiley face in the center. When he looked in he saw several children sitting in chairs staring up at an old television blasting a kiddie show and occasionally static. One of them was sitting on a toddler's highchair and was being spoon fed a bowel of white mush by an elderly woman in a green apron.

The highchair child turned at the sound of the door squeaking open and looked at him, the moment their eyes met the kid started making odd choking noises, its mouth wide open. Johnny couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl. The only thing it wore were grey scrubs and white socks, most of the hair on its head was gone as well.

"Ahhhhhhn . . ." was called out to him, the old woman popped another spoonful of mush into its mouth.

Right then another, much younger, woman in a green apron appeared in the doorway in front of him effectively blocking his view of the children inside. She eyed him questioningly and put her hand on the doorknob.

"Wrong room." He said as he closed it himself. There was a clicking sound as the door was locked from the inside. He turned down the new part of the hallway passing many more doors with strange, child like drawings on the front. Nny never saw the same design on any two doors as he ventured deeper and deeper into the very large building. Every now and then a door would slam in the distance but he came across no one as he wandered from one place to another.

X

Waking up in one of the empty rooms on a testing day made it a bad day. There were only a few things you could do, you could stay there for a few hours, you could try to find your way back to the main waiting area for patients or you could try to leave the building out the back.

Todd knew it was a trap. Behind some of the doors people were waiting to drag you back to the doctors, waiting to see it you could remember where they would hide.

He ran in and out of rooms, trying to count flower petals and not stay in one place too long. Just one more test and he'd never have to come back.

X

Another door with flowers again, this time they were daisies with seven petals, three pink and four red. Johnny tried the handle but the room was dark inside. There was no switch that he could feel on the wall.

-

It's just a test, it's just a test . . .

-

He walked further down the hall, noticing more and more cameras as he went.

-

Don't get caught, keep moving, if you can't decide between left or right then take the one that looks like a longer run . . .

-

Another door, more flowers, a smiley face, a laughing sun, singing birds with blue feathers, keep running . . .

Red, blue, pink, yellow, green, purple, orange and brown . . .

Two red petals turn left, three red petals turn right, left, right, right, one red petal turn left . . .

Avoid faces, avoid animals, plants are sanctuary, sunlight is surrender. Monsters hide in dark places so avoid purple, brown and blue . . . there were rules to follow . . . every patient knows them . . .

Johnny stared at a purple door with another smiley face on it. He couldn't hear anything inside but he could see a light shining from under the door . . . avoid faces, avoid people, people could go either way . . . you don't know what's inside of people, it could be temporary sanctum or something bad . . . He continued down the hall, passing door after door.

Back door . . . ask politely to be let out and you go free, don't scream . . . just ask to leave and the man will let you out.

"This door locks inside and out when closed . . ."

Locked in a cold storage room until the morning, there is no way out.

Just ask nicely and he'll let you out . . .

No one escapes . . . no exceptions . . .

X

". . . his steps, her steps, run through the door and take your last steps . . ."

Leslie was sitting in the middle of the hallway in front of him. Johnny walked forward slowly, one hand behind his back and the other on his bag. She stared at her own feet folded under her.

"Did you hurt your arm?" She looked up at him, her right arm cradled to her chest. Johnny motioned to it, "When you fell, did you hurt your arm?"

"I didn't fall, I just can't play this game anymore. You can't play chess with broken bishops."

"I had a friend who used to play chess with rocks and sticks." Her face was hidden in her hair and her grey scrubs were dirty and dusty but not torn or ripped.

"How does he play now?" He saw her make eye contact. Big brown eyes . . .

"He doesn't." They stayed that way for a moment, just looking at each other when in the distance behind Leslie a door slammed. She turned to look, messy and matted blonde hair hardly moving around her head.

"Footsteps ringing through the halls of a dead place waking up in thralls, monsters crawling on the walls like spiders shrieking welcome calls . . ."

"I think someone's coming."

"I think you've been here before." She stood and dusted her pants off. Nny noticed that as she walked towards a yellow door with more daisies on the front she limped a little. He could hear them even more clearly now, footsteps coming down the hall. When he turned Leslie was motioning to him from inside the dark daisy room. He followed her in and closed the door behind them.

Johnny couldn't tell if the room was very big or not, and when he asked her, Leslie said there was just enough room to hide by the door. They were both on either side of it, staring at the light shining in from the bottom.

"At night they turn all the hall lights off, so sometimes it's best to find your way back before then. Unless you don't mind sleeping on the floor or not eating. They don't look in the flower rooms. These are your sanctuary."

"They let you stay out at night?"

"Only if you're in this half of the building." He couldn't see her at all, but her voice rang out clearly from in front of him. The footsteps were still echoing loudly down the hall, but they weren't close enough to warrant worry over how loud they were being.

"Do you know who's coming right now?"

"No."

They waited for a moment as the person outside continued towards them before Leslie spoke again.

"Why did you come back here? And who are you?"

"I didn't come back from anywhere."

"You wouldn't have made it this far if you didn't know the way."

Clack clack clack clack clack

They both went still as the obviously high heeled shoes passed them by. Leslie didn't make a sound until several minutes after they'd gone. When she sighed Johnny crawled forward on his hands and knees to grab the door handle.

Tiny hands testing the door, seeing nothing but dark in the hallway. He'd been in there too long, he'd have to find his way back in the dark.

"You should go back, the nurses will come looking for stragglers soon. If you don't want to get caught you should go."

"I never get caught." He said as he cracked the door to peek outside. The hallway was empty again, and sticking his head out to look the other way he noted that the woman who'd passed was gone as well. He stood and opened the door to let some light in, seeing that the room was indeed very small. "So plant rooms are safety."

"Flower rooms now. They painted over the trees. It's just the floral stuff that's left." He could see her silhouette in the corner of the room. She stared at his feet, "You must have been here a very long time ago to remember it that way."

"What do you know of a Dr. Manning?" She didn't move, didn't even seem to breathe as he watched her.

"He treated my mom, treated a lot of our moms."

"Is he still here?"

"They forced him to retire after they found out about him giving illegal prescriptions to people who shouldn't have had them."

"They're mine!"

"You wouldn't happen to know how I can find him, would you?"

"How do you know Dr. Manning?"

"You're always a slave to something."

He couldn't remember exactly where he'd heard of him. During his last visit perhaps . . .

"Someone mentioned him the last time I was here."

"Ah, so you have been here before." Johnny made an irritated noise and moved to leave the room, just as he was about to slip through the door Leslie grabbed his elbow. "They said he was sick."

"And?"

"Sick doctors make sick patients," she released his arm, "and sick children for that matter. Did you know you have a better chance of having a mental illness if one or both of your parents have one? I didn't know that before I spoke with Dr. Manning a few years ago. He used to visit us before Dr. Herring banned him from the property. Here comes Nancy, give it a minute or two before you go, alright?" She left the room just as a nurse walked up and was lead away. He waited a little while longer on her insistence before disappearing down the hall in the other direction.

X

He decided to come back that night.

Finding his way to the security guard had been easy enough. The distant man buzzed him through without even a glance. It would seem that no one cared if someone wandered from the hallway and into the storage area as long as the service door remained locked. As he crossed the room he could see that thin ray of light shining against a distant wall, he rounded a corner and there it was, still open and still accessible.

When he reached the door he pulled it open and studied the lock. Nny figured it would be easy enough to jam. He pulled several tools from his bag along with a small scrap of metal and hammered it in place. He tested the door and was pleased with himself when it opened easily.

The sun would be setting soon, he'd been in those stupid hallways for hours just walking around. How he'd managed to get as far as he had was a mystery even to him. Would he be able to find his way in the dark?

There was the side door as well, it would probably be a better way to go through and was a lot closer to the nurse's station where records were held.

He'd already fixed the back door though. Oh well, maybe Leslie would use it as a way out. At least she wouldn't get stuck in that enormous storage room, at least for her it wouldn't all be a trap.

Running through an inky blackness. Tripping over metal things and cutting his legs. Todd felt along the walls for hours until he felt the cold handle of a doorknob. Hope and happiness swelled up inside of him, his tiny hands pulled on it only to get nothing. The door was locked. Dr. Herring had lied.

'It's only a test, if you get outside you'll never have to come back.'

Todd screamed and cried, he wanted to see his parents again. He wanted out of this place.

They found him the next morning with a twisted ankle. After that Dr. Manning refused to allow Todd Casil to participate in Dr. Herring's maze experiment any longer.

X

Johnny's finger traced over the room key in his pocket. The sun was still sitting above the horizon and a low, howling wind had started up again. There were very few cars on the road surprisingly, and an even smaller number of people wandering the streets. By the time he made it to the run down hotel it had gotten just dark enough that Nny noticed the light that had been on yesterday in the office area had been turned off. There were still no signs of a car or desk manager.

He hopped over the small gate that blocked any incoming cars and was suddenly very glad he moved his around back. The heavy padlock looked too thick to cut through with anything he'd brought along with him. Johnny stepped over the small bar gate and walked back to his room to wait until night came.

X

"Something's reaching out to you, something in your eyes," Leslie's crayons moved across the paper Nancy had provided her with, "Is stealing wisdom from your head and filling holes with lies." Her nurse passed her by, glancing at the paper the thirteen year old was coloring on.

"What are you drawing, Les?"

"They said you were a sweet boy but all I see is wrong. When all that sweetness is used up you'll sing an empty song." She continued singing and the nurse walked away. "You'll sing of dying butterflies, of bugs and crocodiles." She was sitting in the main recreational area for Happy Times patients with her meager art supplies just playing. Other patients were sprawled around the white washed room staring at the television or leafing through tattered magazines. The table she was set up was in the back of the room, farthest from the door. A young boy was sitting across from her playing with his own crayons and paper. As if feeling the weight of her eyes on his face, the boy looked up.

"You'll sing of empty towns and streets that run for empty miles." Leslie sang on, staring straight into the eyes of someone who suffered from epileptic delusions and panic attacks. "They said you were a smart boy but all I see is hell. When all that smartness is used up you'll be an empty shell." The boy, whose name was Jaden, tightened his grip on his bottle-rocket blue crayon. "A shadow of your former self, no person left to blame. Silhouette sewn in through the hide of a monster looking tame." Her voice dropped down to a whisper as she held his eyes, silently daring him to look away.

"Something's reaching out to you, something in your skin, is taking all that's left of you and eating it again."

Later that evening just as everyone had been put to bed, Leslie watched from her door as they practically dragged Jaden to the solitary ward screaming. Nurse Nancy watched as well, from her post across the hall. She looked over at Leslie, once the spectacle had disappeared through the security doors, with an old question in her eyes. The young patient gave a little shrug and slipped back inside, the sound of her door closing echoed loudly to the other children in their rooms.

X

I can't help but wonder what's more ridiculous, the idea of obsessing over the meager attention we get from our chosen audience or the fact that we're fixated on them at all. They don't care, and they won't notice when you're gone. When we're gone.

End Chapter Seven

A/N: A little look into who Leslie really is. The Monster Poem is the song she was singing.

But before you go . . . review please