Wow so this took a much longer time than I thought. This chapter is, however, about triple the regular size and stuffed with fear and a little bit of backstory. Enjoy the ride!
Kyle wakes not to the alarm he's set on the digital clock on the end table between his bed and Stan's, but to an incessant tapping, like a pencil to the top of a desk. He's familiar with this sound; there's always someone who taps their fucking pencil all through a test, and while he scribbles down equations and theories, there's someone in the background going on with that tap, tap, tap. For a while, he just rolls over and prays it'll stop. When long minutes go by and still it remains relentless, he sits up and looks around. Stan is drumming his fingers on the end table while he looks at something on his iPod.
"What in the name of Christ are you doing?" Kyle growls, flopping back down on the mattress.
"Huh?" Stan taps the screen and pulls a blue earbud out of his left ear. "What am I doing?"
"Yes, what are you doing," Kyle reiterates, laying his arm over his eyes.
"I'm watching a video Wendy and I took a week before we got here."
Kyle actually knows what this video is. He watched it the day before they left, when Stan was at his house and left his iPod idly on the arm of the couch while he went to the bathroom. Kyle had picked it up and scrolled through his photos, waiting for him to come back, and then came across a video. He hit play, and Wendy's voice leaked out of the shitty speaker.
"You ready to go?" she said, and the camera shifted shakily from a pamphlet for the hospital to her face.
"No. I'll never be ready," Stan said, from behind the camera. Kyle had smiled unconsciously at the note of panic in his voice.
"But you will be when you're there. Challenges are just things we have to face, and I know you'll be brave enough. You're always brave enough."
"This is different, Wendy . . ."
"It's not." The camera stopped shaking as she finished her sentence. "You'll pull through, hospital or not, phobias or not. And I'll love you whether it works or not, if you cry or break down, if you can't do it. I'll always be there for you."
There was a second of silence. She smiled. The camera zoomed in to her face.
"Don't be afraid," she whispered, and then the video ended.
Kyle had stared at it for a second, and then put the iPod to sleep and back to its original spot on the couch. If he had a girlfriend, he would want her to make him a video of encouragement to look at in his darkest times.
"What time is it?" he says, feeling much more agreeable than he did a second ago, but not awake enough to roll over and look at the clock.
Stan pauses before answering, waiting tentatively for that sweet don't be afraid, genuine and soft-spoken.
"It's 6:23."
"Oh, I might as well get up," Kyle admits. His alarm is set only seven minutes later. "You want the shower?"
"No, go ahead, dude," Stan says absently. Kyle flops out of bed and sits on the floor a while. He's terrifically unmotivated in the early hours despite his ambitious nature. Minutes pass before he finds it in him to scoot over to his bags and pull out some clothes.
"Where do you think we can get laundry done here?"
Stan hits the home button and the video disappears. "What? That was kinda out of the blue."
"This shirt smells like shit," Kyle sneers, and throws it at Stan. "Here, smell."
"I don't really care about what the pits of your shirts smell like, dude," Stan says, and starts wrapping his earbuds around his iPod.
"You should. It smells like Febreze and sweat."
"Why can't you wear normal deodorant that doesn't smell like air freshener?" Stan asks, sliding off the bed and crouching next to Kyle. "I would buy you wheelbarrows of Old Spice, man. Just say the word and it's done."
"Old Spice smells like jocks to me," Kyle shoots back.
"But you think I smell nice, and I'm a jock and I wear Old Spice," Stan retorts.
"Go away, it's too early in the morning for logical shenanigans," Kyle sighs, picking up his pile of clothes and walking to the bathroom.
"I've been up for like, an hour!"
"I'm sure you've been up for like, twenty minutes. Go brush your hair or something, it's all cowlicky."
"Oh, it is?" Stan says, glancing at a mirror mounted on the wall opposite the beds. "Oh, it is."
"Exactly. Now, go away, I need to sterilize myself," Kyle says, and shuts the door behind him.
Stan showers in the evening. Kyle has no idea why he does this; he is a firm believer that morning showers clean you better than night time showers, and that they are an effective way of waking one up. Also, it gives him the opportunity to scrub away all the drool lines from the past night away. He thinks it might be a jock thing, showering as soon as the game's up, or, rather, the day is done.
Kyle spends five minutes in the shower. In fifth grade he wrote a report about how much water can be saved by taking shorter showers, and even though Stan's the environment buff, not him, that report never quite left him. He dries off and pulls his clothes on. He also spends as much time as he has the patience for blow-drying his hair, but three minutes pass before he becomes utterly fed up with his awful mess of a hairstyle and turns the hair dryer off.
"Stan, the bathroom is yours," he calls out as he tosses last night's sleepwear onto his bags. There's a sort of liberty in not having someone squawk at him to fold his clothes and put them away neatly.
Stan walks over, fully clothed in artfully faded boot-cut jeans (frayed at the edges) and one of his many sports team hoodies, sleeves pushed up to the elbows. Besides the sports hoodie, he looks sort of like a passive hippie, all barefooted and messy-haired and scruffy-faced. He hasn't shaved yet.
"You harboured my brush in the bathroom and I couldn't get it," he says, padding past Kyle and into the cloudy bathroom.
"You know, you could have just came in and got it. There is a shower curtain, Stan," Kyle says, finger-combing his hair.
"Oh, right. It's early and today is going to hell in a handbasket," he defends, smoothing down his flyaways. "I don't have time for congruent thoughts."
"Shave while you're in there," Kyle calls, because Stan will forget otherwise. "I don't know why you're so concerned about this, it's not going to be anything super terrible," he murmurs, sitting on the bed.
"But it'll be super terrifying," Stan replies from the bathroom.
"You're super terrifying."
Stan scoffs. "That was super mature."
"You're super mature."
"Kyle, stop."
"Super stop."
"Just how high are you?" Stan accuses, walking back in. His floppy black hair is neatly brushed out. Kyle hasn't physically brushed his hair in months. His jewfro explodes when he tries anything but running his fingers through it.
"I'm not high at all, I'm just tired," he says. "Do you think we could just hang around the common room for a while instead of being cooped up in here?"
"Nope, we're not allowed out until seven," Stan replies, rooting through his bag and extracting a bottle of shaving cream and a reusable razor.
"Why the fuck not?"
"'Cause they're all gay and they all have steamy orgies until 6:50, then they clean up and let us out," Stan says, attempting a straight face but failing.
"Ew, Stan, no. Craig's gay and that's all."
"No, he's not. Kenny is," Stan says, regaining composure and nodding sagely.
"Oh, he is, isn't he," Kyle muses. "Right, right."
"What time is it, I'm so restless," Stan complains, getting up and going back into the bathroom.
Kyle looks at the clock. "6:39," he whines. "Why is time so slow?"
"Wait until I'm done shaving and then we can play Fruit Ninja," Stan says. Kyle waits patiently on the bed for a few seconds, then gets bored and watches Stan shave instead. Most people might become unnerved by this, but it doesn't bother Stan in the least, mostly because Kyle does it so often. They talk about the latest achievement Stan beat and then, when Stan is hairless and clean, they sit back on his bed and play Fruit Ninja for the remaining minute. As soon as the wakeup call goes off (it sounds like a fire alarm and makes both of them jump every time), the doors unlock automatically with a heavy-sounding click. They race off the bed and wrestle for the door handle, but to them, it's not just wrestling for the door, it's wrestling for freedom.
When they burst out of the room, they laugh and fall against the walls until Stan's face turns sour and he says, "Why the fuck did I want to leave? Now I have to face those fucking doctors and shit."
"Because freedom, dude. You were going to choke on that room if you spent a second more in there," Kyle says, slapping his shoulder. "Don't be so insecure. Everything will be fine."
"You sound like Wendy," he mutters.
Down the hall, a door opens and Wendy and Butters walk over, looking worn out and deflated. They trudge over with heavy feet.
"Hey, guys," Stan says. "You okay?"
"No," she says. "We were up nearly all night fretting about today." She doesn't lean into Stan. She just stands there, looking like a zombie.
"Yeah, we slept for an hour or so 'fore she said asked if I was awake, and I was, so we got up and had a depressing slumber party," Butters says. His short hair is turned in all sorts of directions, a sure sign of a night of tossing. Kyle wants to say something nice, something along the sympathetic-empathetic variety, but with his social skills, it's likely to come out lacking in both departments. He leaves the talking to Stan.
"Kyle and I woke up about half an hour ago; we did our fair share of fretting," Stan says, nodding. It's not true, per se — they ghosted over the subject once, the way Kyle remembers it — but it's comforting.
"I'm so upset and I look awful!" Wendy cries, finally falling to Stan's side. "I'm a mess, oh my god."
Kyle wants to agree, but he holds his tongue. He respects and likes Wendy enough, but he's not sure how to feel when she and Stan go into we're-a-couple mode. He much prefers Wendy when she's wearing her blazers and tying her hair back, and when she labours over calculus and challenges the teachers' opinions. He makes an unflattering face at them, but they don't notice, because Stan is petting her hair and telling her she never looks awful, and Wendy's got her nose buried in his shoulder, dead to the world outside of Stan.
Down the hall, Craig and Kenny's door opens and the two come out in a pace not quite like Stan and Kyle's, and yet not the zombie trudge of Wendy and Butters. Kenny's light blue eyes are dull and empty, and he has hollows under them that match Craig's.
"Morning," he says with a world-weary smile. The replies are just as vague. He looks them all over and laughs breathily. "At least I don't look the worst of us."
"We've been up since forever," Wendy complains. Butters bobs his head in agreement. Kenny nods knowingly and pulls her out of Stan's arms to give her a quick squeeze, the sort that looks like it might like to become a truly comforting embrace, but everyone knows better than to linger over Wendy when Stan's around.
"Pretty girls shouldn't be scared," he murmurs, and lets her go. She smiles. Leaving her to Stan, he moves to Butters and pushes his hair back into some form of neatness.
"And what's your story, sugar?" he asks gently.
"I, uh - I got no story," he says, red seeping his face like water creeping up a pair of jeans.
"You scared?" Kenny asks, still chasing his hands through his hair.
"Well, who isn't?" Butters replies, his eyes on Kenny's.
"You'll be fine," he says, and pulls his hands from Butters' hair. He returns to his spot next to Craig and rubs his eyes. Craig says are you guys dating yet under his breath and sniggers while Kenny gives him an exasperated look.
"Today's the fucking day, I guess," he states. "Who's excited?"
"Everyone, practically," Stan mumbles.
"Let's go to the common area," Kyle says. He starts walking that way, and the group follows apathetically. They scatter around the room. Everyone mulls over their state of mind semi-privately, in pairs or more or less alone. Stan. Kyle plops down next to Stan and tries for an empathetic sort of smile.
"It won't be that bad, Stan," he says reassuringly. "Look, they'll probably just ask you to hold a snake or something."
"But I don't want to hold a snake. I want to hide. I want to go home and never see this place again," Stan says glumly. Kyle briefly is irritated by the way he channels emotion. If it was just him and Kyle, he would be much less melodramatic.
"You don't want to go home after all this," Kyle says, a bit snippily. Stan doesn't seem to notice.
"When do you think they'll start calling people?" he says.
"Probably after we eat."
"What do we do until then?"
"Craig and Kenny are playing cards, apparently," he says, pointing to Kenny, who's tossing a pack to himself and suggesting Blackjack to Craig. "Butters is biting his nails. Wendy's looking for a book."
"What do I do?"
"I don't know, eat your hands or something. I don't care."
"That's like what Butters is doing. Don't encourage me to develop self-destructive habits," Stan sneers. It's an odd expression on Stan's face
"You wanna play cards too?" he asks after a while.
"I don't really know any card games," Kyle admits. "Like, unless you want to play Goldfish or-"
"Go Fish," Stan corrects lazily.
"-Go Fish, whatever, or Solitaire, I can also play Solitaire."
"Can we play cooperative Solitaire?"
Kyle shrugs. "Sure, dude."
They lose two games before the meal bell (a series of four or five rings not unlike Kyle's doorbell) goes, and they all get up robotically and head towards the dining area. The selection is fairly generous; cereal, toast, eggs, bacon, hash browns, sausages, and muffins. Next to the toast, patties of jams, marmalade, butter, honey, and peanut butter sit in neat stacks. Kyle takes bacon and sausages and potatoes, and one slice of toast. If he can help it, Kyle sidesteps kosher rules. He used to abide by them, but these days, it seems to be more trouble than it's worth. He picks up a strawberry jam patty and sighs and wonders if he should bother having faith at all. A few years in South Park is enough to make anyone agnostic.
Stan follows him to a table with a plate of two pieces of toast. Stan avoids meat when it's an option, but he doesn't identify as a vegetarian, and he doesn't go out of his way to avoid eating meat. It helps that he generally doesn't trust meat prepared in a public place. Stan is terrified of food poisoning. Kyle's impressed with how much he's been eating here.
"Hey, bacon," Stan says.
"Fuck kosher," Kyle mumbles. He stabs a sausage and bites the end off.
"Amen, dude," Stan agrees. He butters his toast and then spreads grape jelly on it. Kyle feels a twinge of distain at how sloppy he is with it; he doesn't try at all to cover all the spots, he just kind of throws it on and smears it around. When he takes a bite, he gets a blob of jelly on his mouth.
"You're so messy," he scolds, handing him a napkin. Stan licks the side of his mouth.
"Did I get it?"
"No. Would you just wipe your mouth?" Stan does, and then looks down at the napkin.
"Wow, I'm really bad at eating toast," he says.
Kyle shrugs as if considering the idea. "You're just kind of bad at everything."
Stan frowns. "That made me emotionally insecure."
"I'm not sorry," Kyle clips, finishing the sausage and stabbing another. He looks over Stan and sees that the other four have claimed a table of their own. Wendy sits between Kenny and Butters, but she's across from Craig. He looks back down at his food and hopes Stan just doesn't notice, or, just doesn't make a big deal about it.
Maybe he's in a good mood, or maybe he's just blind, because he neither mentions Wendy's whereabouts nor looks for her. He just eats, fretting about the day quietly.
"Hey, what'cha thinking about?" he asks as they carry their dishes to the dirty dish bucket.
"Oh, I don't know," Stan exhales. "Everything, I guess."
Kyle doesn't pursue it, for sake of keeping him from rambling about his mental state, or accidentally making him fall into one of his blue moods, like the one he seems to have lifted himself out of.
They walk back to the common area, and Stan asks suddenly, "Who do you think they'll call first?"
"I dunno, man. They didn't really have much in the way of order that first time. It kind of seems like they just, you know, draw it from a hat," he says, making hand motions as if pulling a slip of paper out of a hat.
"I hope I'm last," Stan mumbles.
"Me too, dude."
They fall on a couch. Soon enough, Kenny joins them, lying down with his endless legs across their laps.
"Couldn't let you guys cuddle without me," he says cheekily, but Kyle can tell it's a cover, and he can tell that he's nervous.
Stan gets Kenny's knees and Kyle receives Kenny's sneakers. He keeps his hands off of them for a few seconds, and then lets himself start tying knots in them. He makes a clove hitch around his finger, and a series of intricate bows that are really just shoelace bows tied several time over and tucked around some of the other knots. It's kind of stupid, but he thinks that if you look at it the right way, it looks kind of cool, in a way. Kind of Celtic.
It's not as quiet as it was the first time. Butters and Craig sit on the other couch and start some sort of mundane conversation about Bio homework, and Kyle assumes that they're in the same class, or have the same teacher, at least. Wendy and Stan play some sort of quiet thumb war. Kenny lies there, counting dots on the ceiling or something, and Kyle ties knots. He likes this sort of distraction for the tension much, much more than the endless waiting for the intercom to turn on.
But, it does still turn on, despite everyone's best efforts to pretend it's just a normal day, no terrors or treatments. It turns on and it crackles, and then somebody breathes into the microphone, and finally, they say, a little quickly: "Could Kyle Broflovski please report to the treatment area, Kyle Broflovski, thank you."
And his stomach just fucking plummets.
(what)
He slides out from under Kenny's feet robotically. The fearful eyes of the others bore into the side of his head, hot like lasers. He can't bear to make eye contact.
He starts walking towards the room, that room that they couldn't go down to, the forbidden treatment hall. In the back of his mind, he's irked by how fucking high and mighty it sounds.
(oh I'm the TREATMENT ROOM oh I am so above you)
"Hey Kyle?" Stan calls. He still can't find it in him to turn around, let alone look at Stan. Stan hesitates, and then continues. "Just in case you die or something," — Kyle's heart stops at the possibility — "I, um, I love you, dude. Please don't get killed."
He wants to just pick Stan up and carry him away from everything, and then maybe just get married in the least homosexual way possible, just pet his hair and buy him Old Spice, and just keep him. He wants to live more desperately than he has ever wanted to live before, even though realistically, the chances of him dying in this thing are very slim. He's still pretty sure it's not going to be anything more than showing him a horse and asking him to pet it. He knows he's being rational, but his body refuses to accept this and his innards are knotting with the anticipation of terror.
"Fuck," he breathes, and it comes out like a sob even though he's not crying. He forces himself to just go, just run away and into the hall. No marriages this morning. Maybe tomorrow.
(if you survive)
He turns the corner, and the door is a heavy looking metal thing, a grey island in a sea of beige. The knob is cold and dead and it just feels so final, like this is it, that this cool, hard thing to grip is his last tie to this world. He swallows much too loudly and turns it. It's well oiled and turns easily. A small click, and the door gives under his push.
The room he enters is big, big enough to play a decent game of tag or something in. Kyle's shit at estimating height, but the ceiling has to be thirty feet high, give or take some. His footsteps are smothered by the cork flooring underfoot. And yet though the flooring looks expensive, and he's pretty sure the walls are soundproofed, the room is very bare, with its white stucco walls and fluorescent lights stuck to the ceiling. The room might be bigger than what he sees, as the far wall is made up of a heavy velour curtain suspended. It seems to be a shell of something much grander, and all he can think of is that this room is never meant to look the same each time you come in.
Dr. Kelly, the tall nurse he saw in the dining room that day, and Victoria stand some feet in front of him. In her hands, Victoria holds the reins of a tall dapple grey horse. Its eyes are large and black and liquid, its body rotund and powerful. It just exhumes gentility and dignity, enough to make him feel like bowing is in order.
"Good morning, Kyle," Kelly says. "As you are of course aware, we're going to be testing the severity of your hippophobia today. We're going to do two simple tests, and then you can leave. Sound good?"
Kyle can't find the part of his brain that makes words. He says, "Uh," and keeps his eyes on the horse.
Kyle hasn't been this close to a horse in a long time. The first thing he thinks is how it's stupid that he's scared of it, this gentle, soft-eyed equine. In another universe, he would step forward and run his hands lightly down its neck. He read once that horses like having their necks patted.
But this is not that universe. In this universe, his throat is tightening up, and all he wants to do is run far away and run faster than he's ever ran before. This is not a noble or elegant animal; this is a monster in a smooth-haired suit. The tall and strong legs that the monster showcases shattered his femur to the point the doctors had to stick a rod into it. This beast put him into crutches and physiotherapy for three excruciating months, and then a cane for another month after. As if to add insult to injury, the break left him with occasional aching pain in his thigh painful enough to keep him swearing under his breath as waves of dull hurt wash over it again and again.
And because of what? He was trying to feed it hay, for fuck's sake. He was trying to be nice, be a good little ten-year-old kid.
(monster in a smooth-haired suit)
(hey that was kind of poetic hey)
Kelly snaps him out of his daydream by saying, "Kyle, this is Indy, Victoria's horse. Indy is fourteen years old. She's a very kind, docile girl. Would you please come say hello?"
"No! No thank you," Kyle says shakily, backing towards the door. His whole mouth has gone dry. His leg aches. His knees feel like they might fall off and roll away, and leave him stranded here with two disembodied legs and two useless thighs.
(get out while you can)
"Please, Kyle. Come and pet Indy."
"I said no fucking thanks!" Kyle says, voice on the edge of a shriek.
Indy's ears flatten at the tone of Kyle's voice. Victoria scratches her back and mumbles nice things to her, and soon her ears flip up again.
(look she's scared too)
"Kyle," he says, and his voice is businesslike but sympathetic, "Come as close as you can to Indy."
He freezes, and his mind goes into lockdown. There are so many fucking things that could just go wrong right now, dozens more than the one thing that could go right: Kyle could approach Indy, give her a pat on the side, and leave calmly.
(might as well wish for a million dollars while you're at it)
He takes one small, miniscule shuffle-step forward, and for the first second it all goes well, and then all he can think of is a stampede of horse charging towards him and trampling his bones into dust, leaving him a bloody, mangled mess. He can feel every hoof, every bone splitting down the middle.
(fuck)
"No!" he cries, hopping back a step. His hands fly to his leg, and he covers the place where the break once was protectively. "I'm not doing it, okay? Let me go!"
Dr. Kelly murmurs something to the tall nurse, who scribbles something down on a clipboard. They're always with those fucking clipboards.
"More severe than I thought. We're going to drop the second test for now. Thank you, Kyle," Dr. Kelly says. "You may leave."
Kyle says nothing, but wrenches the door open and slams it behind him. The stopping mechanism keeps the door from actually slamming; mostly, he just kind of pulls it aggressively. When it quietly clicks behind him, he leans against the wall in front of him and puts his arms up over where his head would hit the wall. He buries his eyes and doesn't cry, but shudders and wobbles and aches all fucking over. His throat feels like somebody has pushed the whole world into it. It's hard to swallow. Breathing hurts. When he lifts his hands, they're shaking like an earthquake. His whole body feels like an earthquake. His knees shake in time to his fingers.
He doesn't so much recover rather than stop panicking. The state he approaches the rest of his friends in is much like the state he was in when he left the room minus most of the shaking.
"Hey, you're back already? Alive? Was it horrible?" Stan asks, obviously quite taken aback that he's still breathing at all. He gets a closer look at his clenched jaw and pale skin, and says "Oh, shit."
Everyone else is looking by now. They don't look concerned; they just look terrified. Wendy gets up from the other couch and walks over, her face a blend of uncertain emotions all bubbling over the edge.
"Jesus, Kyle, what'd they do?" Kenny asks, sitting up. He doesn't pet his hair or touch his arm. Kenny knows how Kyle works.
"T-there was a fuck- a fucking horse n-named Indy," Kyle says, and he hates himself for the stutter, he hates Indy, he hates that swear he threw in there. He feels like he's full of terror and hate, and all that ever was of kind feelings and honey love is dripping out through the bottom of his soul. "They told me to pet it, and— and I fucking c-couldn't, I just couldn't—" His head falls into his hands, and he feels like he's on the verge of crying, and yet somehow, he stifles it. Kyle has never been a crier.
"Dude, it's okay. Cry; it's cleansing," Stan says, and he pulls Kyle into his arms and hugs him tight, which is awkward, to say the least, as Kyle is at least three or four inches taller than Stan and a hell of a lot bonier. Kyle pushes his face into Stan's shoulder (this requires him to hunch his back somewhat awkwardly) and he gives up, letting himself tremble into tears. Nobody else says anything, or at least he doesn't hear them. He hears Stan's soft words and calming nothings, and his feels Stan's chin on the top of his head. He'd like to just stay in this sanctuary of a sports hoodie and the arms inside it, and he thinks maybe if the world ended right now, in his Stan's arms, he might be okay just like this.
Eventually, Stan's arms loosen, and Kyle resurfaces. Most of them look somewhat aghast, as if they thought it might be that Kyle is incapable of showing more than ten seconds' worth of emotion. He supposes it must have been a whole minute he spent sobbing. He swabs his eyes and says, "I'm better now, okay."
"What'd they do?" Wendy says, eyes wide. She's sat down between Kenny and Stan some time while he was crying.
"Nothing, really. They had this horse and they told me to pet it. I tried, and I couldn't, so they sent me out," he says. His throat hurts from crying.
"Are you sure that was all?"
He looks off to the side and then shrugs. "Yeah. That was all."
He pauses, and then says, "The room was weird. I'm pretty sure it was all soundproofed. They had some walls up, the kind on wheels, the kind they use in art galleries when they need to display more pictures than they have wall space for. They cut the area in half, but I think the space was bigger, like maybe the size of a theater or a gymnasium. The ceilings were really high, too."
"Like a room that is meant to change," Wendy breathes.
"Exactly! That's exactly what I thought!" he says, nodding rapidly. "I think it'll look different for the rest of you."
"Then all we can do is wait for the next person to be called down," she says, leaning back. Stan leans back with her and they tangle hands.
"Who was there?" Kenny asks.
"Dr. Kelly, Victoria, because it was her horse," he says, "and that one really tall male nurse. I dunno if you've seen him around. I think he's maybe in training or something, he's always aiding Kelly when I see him."
"His name is Dan. I met him once, when I was walking back from therapy. He was carrying a bunch of papers," Wendy says.
"How many are there, Jesus Christ," Craig groans, tipping his head back.
"You mean staff? Not including kitchen and housekeeping staff? Oh, I don't know. Maybe seven or eight," she says glumly.
"God," Kyle says.
After a small bit of silence, Kenny gets up and puts on a Pixar movie, one of the ones they've all seen. It's just something the fill the air. Kyle has never much liked The Incredibles, but there are a few scenes he finds charming. They watch the majority of the movie, and when Syndrome's robot is let go to destroy the city, the next announcement slices through the air.
"Could Stan Marsh please report to the treatment area, Stan Marsh, thank you."
Stan twitches, looking like a shock has been sent through his body, toes to temples. Kyle glances at him and sees how he's been frozen into his seat.
"Go," he says simply.
Stan winces, and he mutters fuck under his breath. He whips his head to Kenny, who smiles sadly, and then to Wendy, who squeezes his arm. She tells him to go, just like Kyle, but she sticks a little love name on the end of it, sweetheart or darling or one of those names they always toss around. Stan gets up, but he seems stuck, like he's left his brain behind and his body is functioning on autopilot.
"Stan, just go," Kyle says.
Stan blinks twice like his brain has just landed in his skull. "I can't. I'm going to run away and never come back ever," he says, and his voice is all panic.
"I'll take you," Wendy says, getting up and taking his hands. "Let's go, Stan."
"I can't, Wendy. I can't I can't I can't I can't-"
"You can," she says, pulling him down towards the hall.
"You don't even know, Wendy, I physically, actually, can't do this. This is- this is fucking torture, Wendy, I don't want to be here, I don't want to see a snake or throw up or anything, I want to go home and I want to never, ever, ever come back, and," he babbles as she pulls him around the corner. She drags him up to that heavy door and puts a finger on his lips.
"Stan," she says, looking him in the eye. "You can do this. Don't be afraid."
He halts and looks right at her. He's sure he's hurting her hand from how hard he's squeezing, but he feels vulnerable, and she's safety, his lighthouse in a raging ocean. He wraps his arms around her like she's the last living being in a world that's falling apart.
"God, Wendy, I love you so much," he says, forcing as much meaning as he can into those words. "You're the world to me."
She opens her mouth like she's going to say something, but it doesn't come out, and instead she kisses his cheek and squeezes him lightly. He pulls away and kisses her, desperate and fiery, on the mouth, the way they almost never kiss. Both are content with soft pecks and long hugs. This kind of sudden affection is a kind of territory neither treads on often. She moves her arms around his neck and kisses him back, melting into his being like she does when they kiss. God, he loves every inch of her.
They break apart finally, and she pushes the hair out of his face.
"Don't be afraid," she says again, and he pecks her on the lips lightly.
"I won't be," he promises, hovering near her face. He noses her cheek and leans into her until she lets him go. She does eventually, sending him one last loving smile before turning the corner and disappearing. A sigh slips out of his lips as he turns and looks at the door in front of him labelled Treatment Area. Under these bold letters in a smaller font is Authorized Personnel Only. Nice greeting.
The room he walks into isn't much like how Kyle described it. The ceiling is low, maybe eight feet, but the room looks small. A small space has been boxed off, maybe the size of his bathroom at home. The walls to his right and left are temporary walls that kiss the ceiling and match the nondescript beige of the room. Dr. Kelly, the tall nurse — Dan, he supposes he should call him, now that he knows his name — and Victoria are there, standing two or three yards in front of him. The separation behind them that completes the small space looks like a curtain, one of the heavy, velour sorts that theatre houses have.
"Hello, Stan. Nice of your girlfriend to send you off," Kelly says with a genuine little smile. Stan bristles at the thought that some aging man watched him through a little camera and said, "Oh, they're such a nice couple," while he broke down in front of Wendy, and not because he was driven to tell her he loved her at that second, but because he thought he actually might not see her again. It's dumb, he knows that. He knows Kyle was only asked — not even forced, for god's sake — to pet a horse, and that no harm was dealt, but he panicked and said his goodbyes.
(because you know just in case)
It's not even worth telling them what unbearable assholes they are, because what will they do? Apologize and call his parents so he can go home, maybe give him a hug and give him a juice box, apologize some more?
He mutters, "Weak, man," under his breath.
"I'm sorry to say this, Stan, but your initial treatment may take longer just because we're testing against three established phobia as opposed to just one. You'll get out alive, though," he says with a jovial wink, and Stan hates how Kelly knows he's playing up another fear of his like it's a little joke.
"Okay," he says evenly, though his insides aren't even at all.
"We'd like to start off with nosocomephobia, the hospital aspect, if you would," Kelly says.
"Sure, whatever," Stan says, and in his head he adds it's all just as awful.
"Lovely. Step through the curtain and we'll begin," he says, gesturing to the curtain. "There's an opening here."
"Thanks," Stan grunts, and pushes the fabric to the side at the divide Kelly pointed out to him. He feels like Alice and her tumble down the hole that led to a place so far away.
The world on the other side of the curtain is white and sterilized, long and narrow. The floor is the only thing that isn't white and perfect, a distraction in its hardwood appearance. There are beds on the sides of the room, just far enough apart to create a skinny little passage to walk through. Each bed has a person in it. Some are sleeping, some are reading books. Some are trying their hardest to just keep breathing. Some are hooked up to machines that breathe for them.
One bed, the one at the very end of the room, on the left, has a lump covered by a sheet. A heart monitor next to it flatlines.
Stan can feel his stomach creeping up his throat. The nausea he always gets when he's in hospitals is knocking on the door, quietly, a little rap-rap just to tell him it's there. There's an element of discomfort that floats in the room. The whole place is too clean. And despite his awful feelings, despite the fear that runs its fingernails down his lungs, he walks over to the covered bed. A sheaf of medical and important-looking papers lies on the table next to her. He picks them up and flips through them. Most of the many paragraphs are full of abbreviations, for what he cannot guess. Chemotherapy is mentioned. Cancer is mentioned. Stool consistency is plotted on an elaborate graph. The name Darlene Foster is written next to boxes that ask for the name of the patient.
He places it back and it really hits him that he has no place here. This shivering boy has no place among chemo and cancer, no place in a hospital. He should go home. Plenty of people go through their whole lives with things that they can't face, and why is he so goddamned special that he needs to be treated? These are people that need to be treated; this is a boy that needs to wake up and smell the coffee, realize that some people have it a whole lot worse than a moderate fear of snakes and vomit and hospitals.
Darlene Foster doesn't move. He can't stop looking at her, waiting for her to sit up and bend the perfect, ironed bedding. His hand drifts down to the upper corner of her bed. The notion that a horrid monster is waiting under there to jump up and scream in his face won't leave his mind. The nerves and muscles that control his arm, his fingers, retract and he pulls the sheet to the side.
The body of a withered old lady lies still. Her face is wrinkled like crumpled linen, and her skin is pale, like she hasn't been able to see sunlight for centuries. He pulls back the cover some more out of a morbid interest that he can't describe and sees that under her flimsy hospital gown, she has a breast missing. Scared and yet somehow satisfied, he lays the sheet back over her.
"That's my nana," a voice behind him rasps. He whips around and there's a boy sitting upright on a bed. There's a think bandage around his neck with a scratch of blood seeping through. Stan opens his mouth to speak only to find his vocal cords have turned to stone.
"She died about ten minutes ago," the boy wheezes, his cold eyes holding a steady bond with Stan's shivering ones. "They haven't rolled her out yet. I don't think they've noticed."
"Aren't you scared?" Stan breathes.
"No," he says, looking down and picking a cuticle. "I've seen so many people die. She's just another fallen leaf."
"Why are you here?" He doesn't know why he says it. The only part of his mind that isn't urging run run run run is saying, hey, I wonder what this kid is doing here, let's find out.
"They brought us here."
"I meant why are you hospitalized." Why is he pursuing this? He should have taken the misunderstanding as a sign that he has no business asking.
"I had an operation on my neck," he says in his struggling whisper. "Do you want to see?"
(no)
The boy reaches up to his bandages and unwraps them. With every layer that he strips, the blood stain gets bigger and bigger, angrier and brighter. The nausea that contracts in his stomach grows strong and he grows increasingly faint.
"Stop," Stan gasps.
He pulls off the last bandage, nearly soaked through with blood. Stan doesn't wait around to see what it looks like underneath. He shrieks and tears to the end of the shiny room. Another heavy curtain separates the beds, the white floors, the glimmering equipment, from the rest of the treatment room. He only finds the divide in the wall of fabric by running into the curtains and waiting for them to fall away behind him. His heart beats so fast it feels like it might pump out of his ribs.
(like a bird in a cage just trying to fly far away)
Dr. Kelly and Victoria and Dan are standing on the other side, and Stan assumes they made a passage around the hospital setup they created. The section they stand in now is small and entirely separated by temporary walls, except for a small opening in the far right corner. It's bare save for the four of them, a table with a glass case and a heat lamp on it, and a bowl of- what is that? Some sort of dough?
"Well done, Stan! You did much better in there than we expected. It's a fairly light phobia, isn't it?"
"Yes, I've said that before," Stan pants. His knees are weak and his throat is lurching.
Kelly pauses and then asks, "Do you need a moment?"
Stan nods and smoothes his hair back. His hand drifts to his wrist and he starts massaging it, hoping for nausea relief by pressure. For a second, he almost feels thankful to Dr. Kelly for letting him rest, but he remembers what he saw. Dead people. Dying people. People who are going to be trapped in the inertia of this may be my last day until that day comes. He's not really thinking straight right now — he feels like he's swaying left to right and everything's a little foggy — but he's thinking straight enough to connect those people to Kelly, who must have brought them here, and with that connection, a million new questions float up. Where are these people from? Did they agree to be part of this? What's going to happen to them now?
"You brought these sick people in here just for me to look at?" he accuses. "You took them from their families to be stared at by me? You sick fuck! There's a lady dead in there, you sick fuck!"
Kelly's eyes twitch. "Stan," he begins. "We're a licensed treatment center for emotional trauma, mental disabilities, and substance rehabilitation. Do you think we're capable of the actions you just accused us with?"
"Then explain—"
"Stan," he says firmly.
This is where the conversation is supposed to end, but images are running around his mind and he can't make them go away.
(the blood seeping through his neck god it looked so poorly looked after)
(her wrinkled crinkled corpse flatlining and just left there nobody has noticed)
(what about all those other people?)
"You sick fucks," he mumbles. Nothing makes sense; even if there was a proper explanation, he's in no shape to comprehend it. His head is aching and his stomach is reeling with nausea intense enough to make him want to just curl up on the ground. Stan. He's good at controlling it his nausea and as a result hasn't thrown up in several years, but damned if it doesn't make him just feel like shit. He keeps squeezing his wrist like he does when he feels sick and glares at the ground.
Kelly glances at the nurses at his side. They glance back, Victoria's thin brows shrugging quickly.
"Are you ready?" she asks. She doesn't have a very nice voice, he thinks; a little nasal, a little deeper than he likes in a woman, a little chillier than he likes. But when he looks at Victoria, her stick legs and her lined face, he thinks that she didn't have a fairytale life. She looks like the kind of woman that could tell you a thing or two about trauma.
"Yeah, I guess," he says. The fear is still trembling in his kneecaps, and the sickness is still stirring his gut, but he might as well say yes. It's not like it'll get better.
"Good. We're going to test against ophidiophobia now, alright? It won't be bad. In that case over there," she points to the glass box sitting on the table, "is a corn snake. It belongs to one of the therapists here. Do you know Joseph?" Stan shakes his head. "I guess he works with somebody else. Anyway, the snake's name is Ella. She's very nice, very docile. Corn snakes aren't poisonous in the least; they make very nice pets." She looks at him with her pale eyes. "Do you understand? Ella won't hurt you."
Stan wishes to be anywhere but here. Send him to Dubai, ship him to Italy, fly him to Uganda, kick him out into the cold air and thawing ground outside. Send him anywhere but here, where there's a snake he's supposed to touch and hold and accept and god, these people are lunatics.
(slippery slimy slithery serpents! poisonous petrifying putrid pythons!)
He wants to say nothing but "I understand" slips out instead. Victoria nods and says, "Would you like me to bring her to you or do want to come to her?"
"I don't think I can move," he whispers.
"I understand," she says. Dan marks something down on his clipboard, nods at Victoria, and she nods back. Then, she approaches the cage, opens the top, reaches in and pulls out a cream-coloured, smallish snake. It hangs quite passively on her hands, but a lot of awful things look benign before you look to close.
(this is not okay communicate this! tell them this is not okay!)
She turns to brings it over to him and he says, "I'm sorry. I can't. I can't do this," and he sounds quite alright, but inside it's red alert and his heartbeat has picked up significantly in the past seconds, and he's sure if she doesn't get rid of the reptile right now he's going to faint.
"I'd like you to try," Kelly says.
"Fuck you, you sick fuck," Stan snaps. He hasn't forgotten the bloody bandage and the chemo papers. Kelly doesn't even blink.
"Stan, please try to touch Ella," he says.
"Why should I? The world won't end," Stan says, and his hands ball into fists nervously. Stan has never been a fighter. He's not about to renounce that fact, but he doesn't know what to do. They're threatening him. They're hurting him inside.
"Please try. I haven't seen you try yet," Kelly says once again.
He doesn't even consider it. Ella has picked up her head and is looking curiously (menacingly) at Stan. Her eyes are empty and glossy, but snakes are smart. She's got some fangs stored up in there, and the second he reaches for her, she's going to flip them out and bite through his hand. But he's not falling for it.
He leaps back to try and run away, but he's barely started going before a strong pair of arms wrap around his chest and pulled him back. In the background, something clatters to the ground. He blinks and looks over his shoulder, and Dan the tall nurse has him caught. His clipboard is upside down on the floor.
(so that's why he's here)
"Running away isn't the way to face your fears, Stan. Please, one more time, try to step forward to Ella. She's okay. See?" He reaches over to Ella and strokes her head. She doesn't react, just hovering there like none of this has anything to do with her.
Dan turns Stan around and holds his shoulders while he faces him towards Victoria and Ella. Stan makes eye contact with Ella. She doesn't give one fuck.
(maybe you can pretend you don't give one fuck?)
He reaches a hand towards her. He's trembling, he can see his fingers wobbling, the sirens in his head are still screaming, but he keeps going. The two feet or so between them feels like two miles, the six seconds it takes feels like six years. And finally,
(touchdown)
His fingers meet the top of her smooth head. She's not slimy. She's not slippery. She's just cool to his fingertips and lightly textured with the etchings of her scales. She doesn't move while he roams the space between her eyes. Then, she twitches and moves her head up, and Stan yelps and jumps back, but he doesn't get far with Dan's hands bolted to his shoulders. He did something right. He touched a snake. He's immensely proud of himself inside and he's also immensely terrified, because he touched a snake and that's only the scariest thing he's ever done in his life except for maybe puking up blood.
Kelly starts clapping. "Fantastic, Stan! Do you realize what a tremendous step you've made?"
"Yeah, I'm pretty damned-"
He's cut off by his breath. It starts coming much too fast, much too much, but he can't seem to stop gasping for it. He's aware that he's making sad little animal noises, whimpers and whines, but the pounding in his head is saying
(too much air! too much too much breath out! breath out!)
"He's hyperventilating," Dan says.
"I thought he would. I'd be quite impressed if that sort of action against a phobia went without a panic attack. Sit him on the floor," Kelly replies, and Dan does. Stan feels himself sinking to the ground. Dan lets go of him and crouches in front of him, his towering height collapsing to a modest, comfortable size.
"You're hyperventilating, Stan. You're taking in too much oxygen. I need you to breathe out. Just breathe out. Focus on exhaling," he says, and Stan nods shakily, head bobbing erratically. He exhales unsteadily, interrupted frequently by desperate attempts to inhale more. It takes him a minute or two before he can breathe normally. His brain swims, lightheaded.
"How do feel?" Dan asks gently.
"Kinda dizzy," Stan says, dropping his head forward.
"That's to be expected. Your body took in more oxygen than it needed." Dan stands up and walks to pick up his clipboard.
Stan takes a few seconds to mentally recover. He hugs his knees and rests his head on them. Hyperventilating is nothing new to Stan; it doesn't happen often, but often enough that he knows what to expect, and often enough that he resents Dan talking to him like he's a child who doesn't know shit. He waits until the dizziness fades, and then he stands up.
"Can I go now?" he says.
Kelly cracks a smile. "I'm sorry, Stan. We still have to test against emetophobia, your fear of vomit. This should just be a quick test, though. You can go right after we're done."
(fuckin three phobias the others are so goddamned lucky)
"Fine," he grumbles. "Let's get this shit over with." Despite his tone, Stan's actually rather impressed with himself for touching Ella. There's a bubble of optimism in his stomach, and it makes him feel lighter.
Kelly goes over to the table where Ella's case is. Sometime while he was recovering, Victoria must have put Ella back, because Kelly makes a cooing noise into the case. He grabs the bowl that Stan noticed earlier and comes back over. He pulls a layer of saran wrap off. Inside is what looks like cookie dough. Kelly dips his finger in and licks it off. Then, he offers it to Stan.
"Care for some?"
(that shit's not even baked you madman)
(how long's that been sitting there?)
"No thanks," Stan says.
"Not even a bit? It's sugar cookie dough. The cooks made it this morning," Kelly says.
"Not even a bit, thank you." Stan's better with this phobia because he deals with it on the most regular basis. While he goes into a hospital maybe twice a year at the worst of times and thinks about snakes only when he's in an environment where they may be present, he's constantly offered food that may be contaminated, and he's constantly in situations where he has to consider food poisoning in the efforts of avoiding the possibility of vomiting. Stan doesn't have a problem with rejecting food. It's being forced to eat it that bothers him.
Kelly looks at the bowl in his hands and then back at Stan. He smiles and says, "Thank you, that's all. You can leave through this exit here so you don't have to go through the hospital wing again." He nods and steps through a small opening between the walls and walks into a corridor, a different one than mock hospital wing he came from. He's feeling okay, really; a little wobbly, a little shaky, but besides that, he can comfortably say he feeling fine.
The hall he walks down has nothing interesting in it. One side is temporary wall; the other is the actual solid wall of the treatment room. He can tell the temporary walls from the real walls because at the bottom, he can see very small stubs of feet. They lift the wall up maybe a few inches off the floor, enabling them to be moved somehow. Stan thumps one. Surprisingly, it doesn't sound solid. Not exactly hollow, but somehow — not solid. He doesn't know how to put it. Even so, it must be monstrously heavy.
At the exit, that big heavy door, he hesitates. What are they doing in the hospital setup? Are they dismantling it now? Surely they must be. It's not like they have so much time that they can just idly move everything back when they feel like it.
He steps towards the curtain and pulls it aside. He wishes he hadn't.
There are several nurses huddled around a certain bed. They're talking in fast, serious voices and running around, grabbing equipment. When there's a clearing, he can see an older man shaking and convulsing on the bed. He jerks particularly violently and a glob of vomit escapes his mouth. It dribbles down his cheek, and shortly after, a sizable portion bubbles out. A nurse blocks Stan's view and starts taking action, but the damage is done. He saw it.
There's a noise boiling in his chest, threatening to come out like a scream, but he claps his hands over his mouth and allows his legs to go weak under him. He falls to the ground hard on his hip, and though the pain is a distraction from the fear, it's not enough to cancel it out, and he's got to distract himself or get out of here before the noise comes out and he lets them know he saw everything.
(hell they're probably watching you anyway)
He doesn't feel faint; rather, he feels incredibly alert, by adrenaline, naturally. But he feels like he's on the edge of another panic attack, and he really can't afford another one.
(that sick sick man they have no right to keep him here)
(no don't think about that)
(he could fucking die and I'll bet they don't even care!)
(get outta here)
Stan stands up and grasps the doorknob. He pulls the door open and throws himself out it, letting it shut by itself.
The harried voices of the nurses disappear with the closing of the door. All there is on the other side is silence with the occasional voice from the common area that only carries well enough to catch a few sounds from. Stan curls up in a corner and hugs his knees again. Stan is a crier. There's never been any denying it. He always goes red when he cries, always so fucking red that he can't deny it, and this is why he tries to resist the tears before they come. And then he thinks he probably looks like a wreck anyway, that there's really no point in pretending he's more than he is. He cries into his jeans as quietly as he can manage. When he picks his head up, his left knee is soaked with tears and mucus. He wipes himself down as best as he can, takes a few breaths, and walks back into the common area.
They've finished The Incredibles and have started The Hunger Games. Craig's passively bickering with Butters over the book versus the movie, and Wendy's leaning against Kenny's shoulder while Kyle sits on the other side of the couch. He knows he shouldn't, but he hates it when Wendy and Kenny cuddle like that. It flares something inside him — jealousy, he supposes — that just makes him want to yell at them.
(I get how fucking awesome you are Kenny you don't have to flaunt it like that)
(fucking dick)
"Hey," Stan says. A couple of them jump, and they all look over to him.
"You were gone longer than me," Kyle says. "Come sit down, dude, you look awful."
"They had to test against three phobias. It took longer," Stan grumbles, taking a seat between Wendy and Kyle. Wendy shifts off Kenny in favour of Stan's shoulder, and that soothes the flicker of jealousy. He really shouldn't bother being mad about it, but god, he can't help it sometimes.
"So what'd they do?" she asks. "I'm happy you're back."
"I'm happy to be back," he says, nosing her hair. She smells good, like that sweet perfume she wears; she always smells like vanilla and jasmine, and her hair always smells like candy, but she says it's supposed to smell like strawberries. He's safe here, between Kyle and Wendy, who'll always be there for him.
"What'd they do?" she asks again, and his nice little bubble of sweet sanctuary is burst by having to remember it all.
He sighs. "Some fucked-up shit, man. So the first thing they tested was my fear of hospitals, right? They send me into this skinny little corridor, and I swear to god there had to be a dozen hospital beds in there, like those flimsy metal ones on wheels. Every bed had a patient in it, and there was this one kid with like, neck surgery? He started talking about his nana, who was sitting the bed across from him, and she'd just died. She had cancer, I saw the forms. And then he started like, unwrapping his bandages and stuff, and there was all this blood and god, I screamed and ran away. I couldn't take it." He rubs his temples and catches his breath before continuing. "Then Kelly got me to touch this snake that belongs to one of the therapists here, some guy named Joseph?"
"He's my therapist," Craig says.
"There you go. Anyway, so I actually touched it, which was super horrible because I've never gotten with six feet of a snake in my life, let alone touched one. Then, he gave me some cookie dough to eat and I said no, because come on. There could be germs and stuff on it. Then he let me go, and when I got to the door I glanced through into the hospital thingy they made and there was like, this guy having a seizure and throwing up everywhere, and I got so scared I just ran the fuck outta there. I kind of hid for a few minutes until I felt okay, and now I'm here."
There's thick silence for a moment while they process the information.
"There was a dead guy in there?" Kenny blurts out.
"Yeah, this old lady. She had breast cancer. I walked over and she was just flatlining."
Kenny slumps back in his seat. "Shit, man, that's somebody's mom. I can't believe they'd actually do something like that."
"It's not like they killed her. She died while she was there," Stan says.
"And what gave them the fucking right to take her away? She shoulda been with her family while she died, not in a fuckin treatment center. Jesus Christ," Kenny says, running a hard tiredly through his hair.
"I asked Kelly about it and he didn't give me an answer," Stan says. "He just told me that they're not allowed to do stuff like that and then they just made me drop it. It's unfair as shit, man, but I don't know what I can do about it."
"That coulda been anyone we know. How would you fuckin feel if some people came and took your dying mother away so they could put her in a cramped little hall so some kid can stare at her? That's not just unfair, it's inhumane."
"Forget it, Kenny. It's done," Craig says from the other couch.
"How can you just dismiss it like that?" Wendy says, glaring at Craig. "This is serious! There's a lady dead because of Stan! No offense, Stan," she adds quickly. "Nobody in the world should be able to do that."
"Wendy, please," Kenny starts, but he's drowned out.
"She's right, man," Kyle throws in. "It's not done, there's a lady dead in there because of us. You can't say that's not serious."
"Serious or not, it's done. You can't go back in time, you can't save the world. You can't save her life."
"You act like they're going to get away with it!" Wendy yells. "They can't fucking get away with keeping all these dying people in one place like that! You can't buy a life away."
"For the right amount of money, you can," he says.
"What do you think you're even talking about?" she groans.
"You really think everything in the world works so goddamn ideally, don't you? Do you know where those people are from? If the families aren't rich, then they're struggling with hospital bills. What if you had the choice of taking out a loan for a hundred thousand or have somebody else pay it, providing they can use the person for scientific research? I'll bet you'd say yes, wouldn't you?"
Kenny sighs and says, "Craig, don't push this."
"That's not the point, Craig. You morally can't buy a life away!"
"So what? They did," he answers, purposefully nonchalant.
Wendy falls face-first for it and goes red, crying, "I can't believe you can be so passive about this! We could do something about it, and you're just signing your life away like it doesn't mean a thing!"
"And what are you gonna fucking do, Wendy? Call the police? They'll say you're not mentally well, and you know what? They'll believe Kelly, because you're a patient in an insane asylum, and he's the doctor. Do you think you can really do anything?" he spits back.
"It's those kinds of words that make nothing happen. What if I can do something? What if I can do something but I never will because you fucking talked me out of it?"
"Who's going to save the world if nobody thinks it's possible?" Kyle throws in. He's flushed and clearly worked up, but it doesn't take much to upset Kyle. Stan looks at Kyle resignedly and slouches back in the couch.
"Nobody's going to save the world because nobody can save the world. There's too much world to save," Craig says. "That's my point, but you two are so fucking thick it just went right over your heads. You think you can save the world by holding a fucking bake sale and making a speech about why we should be good people, don't you? That's what they say, but man," he chuckles humourlessly, "you gotta be pretty damned stupid if you really believe it."
Stan notices that Butters has slinked off to the armchair and is picking his cuticles idly through the mayhem, waiting for it to stop.
"I'm not stupid, Craig! You're the stupid one for just blowing this off. Do you get off on other people's misery or something? Somebody out there lost their mom today, and you're saying 'let it go'? Are you really too self-absorbed to see how serious this is?"
"She was going to die anyway, Kyle. What do you care where she dies?"
"I care because the next person that goes in there has the chance of seeing something like this!"
"Now you're the self-absorbed one. You say you're upset for the family and then you say you're worried for your well being."
"He's worried for you, asshole!" Wendy says.
"Would you all just shut the fuck up?" Kenny shouts, getting up and standing between the couches. Kenny's not an intimidating guy for the most part, but when he's standing like this, six foot two and towering over all of them at sitting height, he's nothing to scoff at. In one second, the air of the room has gone from chaos to control. Butters lifts his head to watch.
"I get that you three tolerate each other the best of times, but holy shit, do you have to be so goddamned immature about it? What the hell do you think you're doing, pushing each other like that? We're all we've got, and if you can't get past your petty fucking hang-ups, then what's the point of even trying?"
"Hey, fuck you, Kenny, you're the one that started-"
"Kenny, that's not fair, he was saying that-"
"Don't say you agree with him, you can't-"
"Don't fuck with me! I don't want you three in the same room until you've fucking relaxed. There's no excuse for this. Beat it," Kenny hisses. Craig glares at him, stands up, and relocates himself to one of the tables. He snatches a deck of cards off the table and starts shuffling them moodily. Wendy also gets up, and her lips are firm in a straight little line, but her eyes are glossy with tears of frustration. She storms off to the dining area. Kyle mutters something under his breath and heads to hallway leading to the group therapy room.
Kenny watches them until they've either settled or gone out of sight, then sighs.
"God, I hate doing that." He looks down at Butters, who's smiling from his chair. "Come over here, Butters, I'm sorry for the commotion."
"Not your fault, Kenny. It's real brave of you to take control like that. I'd never be able to," he says, getting out of the chair and walking over. Kenny pulls him into a one-armed hug. He's comparatively short at average height.
"You gonna sit down or what?" Stan says.
"Yeah," Kenny says, and pulls Butters over to the couch. They settle in and stay quiet for what feels like a long time, but really might just be ten or fifteen seconds.
"You know, I'm feeling pretty fine right now. I was expecting that we'd all talk about my feelings and I'd start crying or something, but instead we just had this nice big fight and I'm numb," Stan says. "Not that it was nice to sit through that, it's just nice not be feeling so scared right now."
"No. That thing was shit. I'm glad you're feeling okay, though," Kenny says, patting Stan's head with a heavy hand.
"You know, the movie's been playing this whole time," Butters says.
"Oh, right. Shit, I totally forgot about it. I haven't even seen it yet, if you'll believe that. What have I missed?"
"Not much. You'll catch on," he says.
They watch for fifteen minutes or so (somewhere in here, Stan turns and notices Craig's moved chairs to get a better view of the screen) until Kyle sulks back in to sit on the other couch. Stan wants to go sit with him, but he's way over there, and Stan's still a little disappointed in him for getting so worked up over Craig, whom, they both agreed years ago, is not worth their time. He's joined in another five minutes by Wendy, who looks a little red still. Her eyes are dry, but he can't tell if it's because she cleaned up or if she never cried at all. Craig still stays at his table, and Stan supposes he's either residually pissed off or comfortable.
Then; "Could Kenny McCormick please come down to the treatment room, Kenny McCormick, thank you."
Kenny sighs. "I'd hoped it might not be me next."
"They're going alphabetically by last name," Craig says from behind them. Kenny looks over the couch and smirks.
"That's the most useful thing you've said all day."
"Fuck you, Kenny," he says, slumping forward over the table. "It'll be Butters next, then Wendy, then me."
"The more you know," Kenny says with a shrug. He gets up and gives a lazy salute. "Be seeing you, maybe. They're testing against poison, so I might get killed or something. Please sue if I don't return."
"You make this sound funny," Wendy says.
"It's not that funny, really, but pretending it is makes all of this a little easier," he says. "Don't fight while I'm gone."
"I think we can control ourselves," she mutters.
Kenny laughs and turns away. He slips between the couches and past the tables, where he stops to kiss the top of Craig's head and say, "Cheer the fuck up, sunshine. You know I wouldn't beat the shit out of you."
"Don't kiss me," Craig mumbles. "Good luck in there."
"Thanks," Kenny says, continuing past him and down the hallway. He has to admit he feels alright, maybe more alright than he should, but he got to hug Butters and kiss Craig, so to his thinking, even if it goes awfully, he'll have something nice to hold onto.
(kissing Craig hmm we could do more of that if he's gay)
His nose wrinkles at the thought, and he tries to banish it as he opens the door. He's a little disappointed when he sees Victoria, Dan, and Kelly standing there in the boxed-off space, but by what Kyle and Stan had said, he's pieced together that this is the group that'll be present for all of them. Kelly of course has to be there because he's the boss, Dan perhaps because he seems to be Kelly's assistant or something, but over the days he's wondered if Victoria might be the head nurse/therapist. She seems to know her shit, and she does deal with all of them, every day, unlike the private therapists, who have much easier jobs by comparison. Victoria seems older than most of the others as well, looking to be maybe in her late forties, but it's hard to tell if she keeps herself younger than she is, or if she's old for her age. She could be thirty-nine; she could be fifty-five.
The three are standing behind a table which has on it six sealed glass beakers. The first beaker is small and has a white powder in it. The second is also small, and has several black berries inside. The third is bigger and has a white mushroom in it. The fourth has a large brown spider inside, standing shock-still. The fifth has a yellow liquid inside. The sixth is not a beaker, actually, but a sealed glass tube with a yellow tint. Beside the table is a box, just a Plain Jane cardboard box. An upside-down this-side-up sticker is peeling in front.
"Hello, Kenny. How are you feeling today?" Kelly asks.
"Gross," Kenny says, eyeing the table. The scrap of happiness he held when he came is has hidden in place for something wary and tentative, pushing on his temples and squeezing his heart. His chest throbs painfully.
"Oh, that's unpleasant. Let's get down to business, shall we?" Kelly says with a nod. Kenny hates how goddamned happy he always seems, how genuinely pleased he always looks. "On this table are six potentially deadly poisons. Can you identity any?"
Kenny's body flushes cold. It's not that he wasn't expecting it, but just to have his thoughts reinforced makes his stomach twist up. At least they're sealed up; he finds them less harmful when they're showcased like this and far from his wandering fingers. Ironically, among all these deadly things in front of him, he's thinking about the glass cleaner that could be on the beakers. Still, he doesn't want to touch them, and doesn't really want to stray from this comfortable distance.
He studies them for a little while.
"The white powder is either arsenic or cyanide. I can't tell. The berries are nightshade. There's a few growing by Stark's Pond, actually. I dunno about the mushroom, it's just kinda big and white, as far as I can tell, but I'm sure it's like instant death. The spider is a brown recluse spider. I see them in the house sometimes." He picks up the beaker of yellow liquid and looks at it, turning it from side to side and catching it in the sunlight. It's not totally clear, but he wouldn't go as far as calling it cloudy. He frowns and looks a little closer, and then he jolts with realization. He puts it back on the table as gently as he can manage with his hands that want nothing more than to jam into his pockets, and says, "That's snake venom, isn't it? Jesus fuck."
"Very good. Now, what about the last?"
"That's fluorine gas. Where the fuck did you get fluorine gas? That shit's regulated, you can't just walk up and buy it."
Kelly picks up the beaker of white powder and says, "Your answers were very close. The white powder is indeed potassium cyanide; very, very lethal. It was the preferred toxin for suicide pills when such was popular. Hitler himself bit into a cyanide capsule while shooting himself." He puts it down and picks up the mushroom. "This is a destroying angel mushroom, very toxic and present through much of the world. As little as half the cap can be fatal if not treated." He places it back down.
"Where the fuck did you get all this? Cyanide, fluorine, even those fucking berries! They're not even in season right now," Kenny demands. He's doing better than he expected, but he supposes his aggravation and confusion is covering the fear up. When he separates his emotions from the physical state of his body, he notices his chest clenching and that he's licking his lips much too much.
"That's not for you to ask about."
"Well, that doesn't fucking matter now, does it? I'm asking," he says.
"Kenny, that's confidential. I'm sorry, but I cannot volunteer any more information," Kelly says stiffly. "If you don't mind, I'd like to continue."
"So it's gonna be like that. Okay, I'm chill. Do what you want," Kenny mutters.
"I'd like you to turn around for a second, if you don't mind," Kelly says, reaching towards the box on the floor beside them. Kenny obliges without comment, and presently hears the clinking of glass.
"You guys drinking without me?" Kenny says, covering his frustration and fear with bland humour.
"Nothing nearly that exciting, I assure you," Kelly says, the smile in his voice audible.
"You saving the Chardonnay for yourselves?" Kenny asks, but he knows he's carried the joke beyond its brief life when they don't reply. "I've never tried Chardonnay. It sounds pretty fancy, though. Is it fancy?"
"Chardonnay is a kind of wine grape, actually, but the wine by the same name can be hit and miss. There's good Chardonnay, there's bad Chardonnay."
"I'm gonna ask for a bottle for my next birthday." Shortly after Kenny says that, he realizes his birthday is incredibly close. "Oh, wait, my birthday's next week. Never mind. I'll ask for some for Christmas."
"Your birthday is coming up?" Victoria asks.
"Yeah. March 22. I'll be seventeen."
"Well. Tell the cooks and they'll make a cake." The glasses clink behind him.
"They will? That'd be super nice," Kenny asks, honestly surprised. He starts wondering what kind he'll ask for.
"You can turn around now," Kelly says, and Kenny's brought from cake musings back to the treatment room. He turns slowly and looks at the table. The six beakers now all have partners. Duplicates, really; inside each is a substance or organism matching the ones he looked at earlier. There are now two spiders, two piles of powder, two yellow puddles, two mushrooms, two piles of berries, two yellow tubes. His innards lurch.
"The next part is a little more difficult. One of the items in each pair is non-toxic. I'd like for you to try and tell me which is poisonous and which is not."
"Are you fucking out of your minds? I'm not going near there," Kenny bites. "I identified them. Okay? I'm done. I'm not doing this."
"I'd like you to try," Kelly says simply.
"I said no, Kelly. Fuck off."
"I don't see you trying."
Kenny glares at Kelly, and he holds steady eye contact back. Kenny is beginning to notice that Kelly isn't a guy that's easily intimidated, but there's probably no room to be intimidated in his job. If he was cowering at every half-baked threat, the success rate coming out of the hospital would be much lower.
Kenny's suddenly seized with the impulse to impress Kelly. If he can't intimidate the guy, he sure as hell can knock him off his feet. What if he nails every single one of these comparisons? Kelly's face would be so fucking rich. It would all be worth it.
"Watch me, motherfucker," he says, and walks right up to the counter.
(what the actual fuck are you doing no!)
He can feel the warning bells going off, and he's aware that pretty much his whole body is beginning to quake, but he picks up the first two beakers and looks at them closely. One is a grainy white powder, one is smooth.
(oh this is harder than I thought)
He shakes them a little bit and sighs. The grainy stuff looks like sugar, but the smooth stuff looks like baking powder. God, he could make a cake.
"Is this baking powder?" he asks, figuring he doesn't have much to lose. He puts the smooth powder on the table, not expecting much. But then Kelly's face breaks into a grin.
"Well done! Cyanide is grainy, like sugar. We were going to use sugar, but we decided it'd be nearly impossible. Very impressive, Kenny!" he says. "Try the berries, now."
A surge of pride goes through Kenny. He picks up the berries and finds them much easier to tell apart.
"These are nightshade. They're bigger. These are elderberries, I think. I mean, I dunno, I've never seen them in real life, but I saw 'em in a movie once and they looked sorta like this," he says, putting them back on the table.
"Exactly. You're doing quite well, Kenny."
"Thank you, I'm a champion," Kenny says. In the mushroom cases, there's one larger one and one smaller one. Kenny recognizes the small one as your average store-bought button mushroom, and receives appropriate applause from Kelly, who explains destroying angels are bigger but often mistaken for edible mushrooms. He moves onto the spiders.
"This one has stripes all over it. A real brown recluse spider is only one colour, like this one," he says, putting down the brown recluse and holding up the imposter. "I don't know my spiders that well. Here." He hands it to Kelly, who gives it to Dan, who's been packing up the beakers Kenny's identified.
"Very good. Incidentally, that's a fishing spider, which is venomous, but only as severe as a bee sting. I wouldn't be scared of these guys," he says.
"Most insects don't scare me. It's the really bad ones — black widows and stuff — that make me uncomfortable, but even so. They're no big deal; I can always squish 'em," Kenny says, picking up the two beakers of yellow liquid. One doesn't have the slightly cloudy quality the other had.
"This is the fake. Snake venom's not this clear."
"Mm hmm. This clear one is apple juice," Kelly says. He takes the beakers and hands them to Dan. "And the gases? Can you tell me which is fluorine?"
Kenny looks at them for a second and decides that one is merely tinted glass, the other being fluorine. He puts them on the table and grins.
"See that, motherfucker? I got every fucking one of those. Every fucking one!" he says.
"Congratulations, Kenny. I'm surprised you were so calm though the test," Kelly said. Victoria scribbles something down on her clipboard.
"I only get scared when there's the chance that I could've come into contact with that stuff, but you guys had it in like, scientific containers and stuff. But goddamn, my heart's racing," he says with a weak laugh. He feels like he's one-upped the doctors by not fainting or throwing up or really being too scared at all. He's too proud of himself for indentifying everything to feel scared or even mad about where they got this shit.
"Well, we're quite impressed. Well done."
"Can I go?" Kenny asks.
"You may. Thank you, Kenny," he says, pushing his glasses up and taking Victoria's clipboard from her. They discuss it in low voices while Kenny leaves.
When the door closes behind him, all he can think of is how badly he needs a smoke. God, he'd do anything right at this second to feel the paper crinkle between his lips while the nicotine hits his lungs. He rubs his temples and plays with his hair until it feels neat. His heart's beating fast, thumping against his chest with every violent flutter. There's an unmistakable panic growing in his chest, though right now there's nothing to be scared of. His whole body feels awkward and shaky, like it just wants something solid to hold onto.
Then he starts singing, just to refocus, just to get his mind off everything. "Eleanor Rigby," he sings quietly, "died in the church and was buried along with her name. Nobody came; Father Mackenzie, wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave." He looks at the metal door in front of him.
"No one was saved," he whispers, finishing the verse.
Maybe it was just a shitty choice of a song, or maybe his emotions were leading up to this, but he suddenly feels very drained, lifeless and hopeless. If there's really a point to all of this, it feels distant and faint, irrelevant, even. He wanders back into the common area and sees they're all still watching The Hunger Games, all situated on the couches except for Craig, who's still at the tables, chair pulled over to put his feet on.
Kenny walks over and wraps his arms around Craig's shoulders and neck. Craig glances to the side briefly and says, "I thought I heard you singing."
"I'm feeling shitty and icky," he says. "I'd really love you if you could lend me a cigarette right now."
"You'd love me anyway. I'm saving them," Craig says, and it makes Kenny even more miserable. He noses Craig's hair (which smells like the peppermint shampoo in the bathroom) while the others turn around and notice him there.
"Hey, Kenny, how'd it- oh, are you guys having a moment?" Stan says.
"We're not having anything. I'm really tired," Kenny muffles.
"What'd he say?"
"He's tired," Craig translates.
"That bad, huh?" Stan says sympathetically. "What'd they do?"
"Nothing bad," Kenny says. "I had to indentify some poisons."
"Oh, that's alright, then. Come lie down or come cuddle, or whatever, you know? We're all here for you," he says, smiling softly.
"What was the room like this time, Kenny? Did it change again?" Wendy asks, looking over the couch.
"Average ceiling. Maybe ten feet. Kind of a small space, temporary walls that reached the ceiling, I think. Nothing too supernatural."
Stan looks over and says, "They reached the ceiling? My ceiling couldn't have been ten feet, and they reached the ceiling for me too."
"It's a mystery for another time, Stanny boy."
Stan shrugs and looks back to the screen (Kenny can hear him reporting, "Kenny's back" to Kyle).
"They had all this shit and I don't know where they got it. Cyanide. Fluorine gas. Snake venom. It wasn't the tests themselves that bugged me — they went fine — but just where do they get that shit? It doesn't make sense," Kenny mumbles.
"What'd he say?"
"Nothing," Craig says.
Kenny ducks his head down to the crook of Craig's neck and whispers, "Is this a moment?"
"No," Craig says. "You need to go lie down. You get weird and affectionate when you're tired."
"And you know this as a fact?" Kenny says.
"Yeah, you always want to cuddle when we do movie marathons. I can always tell when you're tired when you start doing this," Craig says, standing up and slipping out of Kenny's grasp. "Come on, let's move you."
"Are you guys flirting?" Kyle calls.
"We're planning our wedding," Craig deadpans, and it earns a snigger from Kyle.
Craig shoos Butters off the couch to the chair to make room for Kenny to lie down. Butters makes a face, but gets up anyway. He changes the angle of the chair for a better view and settles in while Kenny lies down. Craig moves his feet and sits on the far end.
"So far away?" Kenny pouts.
"Mm. Watch the movie."
"Cold," he mutters, looking towards the screen. The heroine onscreen is running from some new danger. Kenny's decided that he's not such a fan, generally preferring high-speed action movies, car chases and machine guns and whatnot. He's not the kind that likes to notice all the little details in a movie. He just likes to see, be entertained, and not think about it afterwards.
He must have dozed off at some point, because when he notices the screen next, some sort of romantic thing is going on onscreen between the heroine and a character he doesn't recognize. Craig hasn't moved, though. He's making some sort of clicking sound with his retainer, watching the movie but clearly not wholly enthralled. Butters is picking his cuticles again in between watching. He's sitting sideways in the chair, legs draped over the arm, shoes hanging half-on, half-off. On the other couch, Stan watches the movie blank-faced, shoes on the floor and feet tucked under his legs. Kyle drums his fingers against the couch cushion and watches with waning interest. Wendy braids her hair and rakes it loose again, braid and undo, braid and undo.
Kenny looks down the couch and focuses on Craig, waiting for him to notice the eyes on him. It takes a minute, but Craig eventually meets his gaze. Kenny smiles at him and receives an almost-smile. If he was anyone else, his lips would move, but instead a smile flashes in his eyes and no more.
His throat twists closed as he reflects that he truly thinks Craig's really pretty. He loves working a real smile of him, but god, those eye-smiles kill him.
"Could Butters Stotch please report to the treatment room, Butters Stotch, thank you."
"Good call, Craig," Butters says from the chair. He sucks on a bleeding finger he's picked at too aggressively.
"Told you it was alphabetical," Craig replies.
There's this look that Butters adopts sometimes that unnerves everyone who notices; his face just blanks. There's nothing more to say about it. His eyes go dull and his lips are flat, and you can look at that face for years and not know any more about what's going on underneath than the first time you saw it.
"It's really not so bad-" Stan starts, but then he frowns and closes his mouth. He pauses and rephrases. "It's bad, but you'll be okay. They can't hurt you, physically."
"Gee, I feel much better now, Stan," Butters mumbles, standing up. Stan starts to apologize, but Butters waves him down.
"Hey, you want an escort?" Kenny says.
"No," Butters says. "Thanks, though."
"Good luck, Butters," Wendy says. "I hope it all goes okay."
He smiles wanly and says, "Me too, Wendy." He's holding by a thread not to spill out a pile of messy emotions, fear and worry and concern all eating him toes-up, but if he keeps his eyes level and his lips shut, they seem to remain at bay.
He can feels eyes on his back even as he turns the corner, like they don't trust him not to break down. This fragility has haunted him his whole life, from his stupid never-ending trust and store of second chances to the way he's never really learned how to hold back his tears. Even the way he talks and thinks makes people think they have to baby him, and though he admits he likes the attention, he just wants-
(just want somebody to see me as the strong one for once)
But there's nothing to make anyone think that. He's never shouldered anyone's problems. He's never stood up for anyone, let alone really stood up for himself. He's never done anything that makes somebody look at him and say, "That kid could be a superhero someday."
(is is selfish to still want it?)
He opens the door and finds a tall room, boxed off into a small room about the size of his bedroom. He looks up and marvels at how this room could be the curtained, claustrophobic room of Stan's description and the airy, bare room of Kyle's. There must be some mechanism in the roof that lowers and raises this ceiling. He doubts it's real; more likely, it's a lighter, flimsier thing easily raised or lowered. Even so, it'd be interesting to see how it really works.
"Hello, Butters. How are you feeling?" Kelly asks. Butters looks over and freezes. Dan and Victoria are bouncing a yellow balloon back and forth, like little kids looking for cheap entertainment. Dan taps it off his fingertip and it floats carelessly to Victoria, who pokes it back. It's a game, just a childish game of don't-let-it-touch-the-ground. He used to play those games, once upon a time.
"I've been better," Butters says, eyes following the balloon like it's a snake preparing to strike.
"Haven't we all. So, you are of course aware that this is an exercise testing against globophobia. We're going to be doing two little tests. For the first, I'd like to ask you to simply bounce the balloon back when Dan sends it to you, alright?" He speaks like a newly-poured road; nice and smooth, no bumps, no cracks.
"I- I don't know, Doctor," he replies.
Dan catches the balloon in his hands and says, "Ready?" The way it's tilted in his hands makes Butters notice that there's some writing on it: Happy Birthday!
"Happy birthday," he breathes, pulse quickening.
"Hmm?" Dan says. He looks at the blue balloon between his palms and says, "Oh, yeah. These were the only ones in the back room. Sorry about that."
(sorry about that he says)
(the party the birthday party)
The gates burst and he stutters out, "I was at- I was at a birthday p-party when it came a-about." The words are strange on his tongue. They fit like squares trying to fit into triangles, corners bumping and grinding.
Kelly looks him in the eye. "When your phobia came about?"
"Yeah," he says. "Th-there was this man- this man with a g- he had a g-" His brow explodes into a cold sheen of sweat, and he starts shivering. He tries to push on with his sharp-edged, awkward letters, haphazardly smashed into words. "He was j-just a guy helping out with the p-party, but he wasn't, he had this g-g-gun," he spits, the word leaving a hollow taste in his mouth, "and he pointed to this little boy like he was a t-target on a sh-shooting range, like he was m-meat, like he was . . ." There are spots flitting through his vision. He can't hold on much longer, but he wants to expel the rest of the story before he goes out. "I saw it all, saw- saw everything."
(there you go sugar you got it out)
(Victoria's voice all like he's gonna faint Dan grab him)
(Dan's like I got him)
(it's coming back)
(never tried to deny it)
(never tried to embrace it . . .)
He's in his favourite shirt, the blue one with a big Tyrannosaur Rex, and his little six-year-old fingers are wrapped tight around a present bound in smiley-face wrapping. His parents pull up to Jamie's house, all pretty brick and manicured lawns. Butters has known Jamie ever since he can remember. Jamie's parents and his parents were friends through university, where his mother received her English degree and his father scaled his Sociology degree. The links between them run deep.
Can I ring the doorbell? Butters asks.
You may, but only press it once, Linda Stotch says.
Butters grins and reaches up to the doorbell, smashes his fist against it. There's a bing bong inside and the scrambling of little feet and tiny voices. The door cracks open and it's Jamie, curly brown hair and pug-nose. He's got smudged face-paint on his cheeks, drawn in what might have been a tiger's face at one point but now is a streak of black and orange. A few similarly decorated faces peer over Jamie's shoulders. There are appropriate greetings and introductions around, and Jamie tells Butters where to put the gift so he can come downstairs and join in with the games. He drops it on the table and dashes to join the party while his parents settle in and talk about whatever parents talk about.
The basement — the party's main base — is decorated extravagantly with streamers, banners, and more balloons than Butters has ever seen. You could bury somebody in all the balloons. There are some helium ones on shiny ribbons tied to the furniture, some more stuck on the ceiling, even more lying around the floor. Chips and other snacks are on the coffee table. There's also a guy doing face-painting, sharing space with the snacks, his paints set up in between the bowls of ketchup and barbeque chips. He sits on a low stool and draws a butterfly on a girl's cheek.
Who's he? Butters asks, taking a chip out of a bowl.
He's Brandie's uncle, Jamie replies, pointing to a girl across the room. He dropped Brandie off and turns out he decided to stay and help. He's really good at painting.
Butters nods, having received all the information he wanted to know, and he picks a balloon off the ground.
Don't let it touch the ground! he shouts, and a couple other kids throw balloons in the air as well. Within seconds, seven or eight balloons are being hit back and forth feverishly, all the partygoers trying hard not to let them touch the forbidden carpet flooring. It's a frenzy of balloons and red and blue and yellow, and yet through the chaos Brandie's uncle sits nearly motionlessly, delicately painting on the other wing.
There you go, Butters hears the man say, and the girl thanks him and joins the game. Butters emerges from the bouncing balloons and stands in front of him.
Can you draw dinosaurs? he asks.
Yeah, sure I can, the man says, a smile clenching the corner of his lips.
Cool, Butters says. Draw a T. Rex on my cheek, okay?
Okay, he agrees, and he leans in close to Butters' cheek and swipes green on his brush. Long minutes go by and he says, Alright, kiddo. Wear it with pride.
Thanks, he says, and pauses for a second to look in the mirror before joining the rest of the kids. It's green and swoops around his face so its mouth is over his lips. When he opens his mouth, it looks like the dinosaur is roaring, ready to burst into life.
Wow! he says. Jamie sides up to him and grins.
He's pretty good, huh, he says.
Super good! Butters replies.
Jamie tugs on his arm. C'mon, we're gonna make a fort.
The next couple of hours of the party go smoothly, with Jamie's mother coming down with hot dogs for everyone. She talks briefly to Brandie's uncle and invites him upstairs to join the other parents, who are having coffee upstairs.
No, he says. I'll supervise down here.
Well, thanks, she says. Come upstairs when you feel like it.
He nods and says he will. Butters watches him out of the corner of his eye and decides he's kind of a weird guy. Good at painting, though. He touches the dinosaur on his face gingerly and smiles while he chews. Jamie's teaching everyone that it tastes really good when you put chips in hot dog buns. Butters tears his attention away to learn just how many chips and what kind to use.
When they finish eating, Brandie's uncle clears the plates and goes upstairs. He lingers up there for ten or fifteen minutes; in the meantime, Jamie sets up a new game to play, something to do with a lot of Play-Doh and the promise of gummy worms to the winner. Butters doesn't notice Brandie's uncle coming back down, but when Butters does look up, he's nestles in his stool around a multitude of balloons. He bounces one absentmindedly between right hand and left hand.
Some minutes pass and Jamie's mom calls from the stair case, Clean up what you're doing! We're going to have cake in five minutes!
The kids yelp for joy and start scrambling, stuffing Play-Doh back into containers and talking about what kind of cake it's going to be.
Kids, could you all look here for a minute? Brandie's uncle says. Over the course of the game, he's collected all the stray balloons and made a handsome pile around his little stool. His eyes are large and tired-looking. His face is all gently wrinkled. Grey is shot through his hair in tiny silver streaks. Butters is suddenly aware of just how old this man looks, and a phrase pops into his head: Forty-something.
It's the first time in his memory that he's bothered to estimate anybody's age.
He starts throwing all the balloons in the air at the kids, lightly. They shriek with laughter and start swatting the balloons around. Butters grins automatically and watches the man, who reaches into his sweater and pulls out—
Is that a gun?
What's that? Butters asks, just to confirm his suspicions, but he's drowned out by the cacophony of kids enjoying themselves. The man's hands wrap around the gun butt and his finger sneaks up to the trigger. His hands are shaking, but his face is deadpan. Butters' smile drops off his face and something horrid grows uncomfortably in his stomach.
Jamie! Butters shouts. Look!
Jamie looks at Butters, curly brown hair, pug nose, and then looks the direction of Brandie's uncle. His eyes widen, his smile unsteady, and then
a bang
a pop
a crash
another bang
all before Butters can blink.
The wall behind Jamie is red and splattered. The girl standing behind him is coated and she's probably screaming, but there's an alarm in Butters' ears that makes it impossible to hear anything but the bang reverberating in his head. He looks slowly around and there's Jamie's uncle, toppled backwards over his stool and his paints. The wall above him is red and there are chunks of something dripping off.
Jamie's parents, Butters' parents, and a few other adults he doesn't recognize run into the basement. They're stuck in inertia for one still second, and then the women start screaming. One of the men throws up. Butters looks dumbly at them, at Jamie's mother, who's howling, Jamie!
He looks mutely to the ground and there's Jamie, a hole through his forehead and his eyes rolled upwards. A popped balloon lies sadly on the floor next to him. There's something evil in the room that Butters is wholly aware of, clenching them all around the throat.
The children are either shocked into pause mode or wailing relentlessly. Butters sits on the floor and realizes there's that red on his shirt.
He knows what blood is. It's what comes out of his skinned knees and paper cuts, but it's just so much easier to call it red.
The whole room feels red. The static of screams grating his ears; red. The words passed scraping his mind raw; red. The stained carpet flooding his vision; red. The smell and essence he tastes in the air; red. The balloons coloured blue and yellow and green and pink dripping quietly; red.
The awful silence in his mind; red.
(. . .)
The presence of his head on his shoulder is the first thing he wakes up to, and the pressure of his eyes in his sockets is the second. He moans and sits up, rests his head in his hands.
"You were certainly out for a while," Kelly says.
"How long?" Butter asks, snapping awake.
"Don't worry, not that long. Eleven minutes."
"Eleven minutes?" he gasps.
"Some are out for hours. It could have been worse."
"I- Oh," he says, gripping his temples. "That's long for me."
"Has this happened before?" Kelly asks, kneeling down next to him.
"Once or twice," Butters says, "but they've been for seconds. Just down and up, kinda like a spring."
"Can you describe what you experienced at all?" Kelly asks gently.
"Oh," he sighs. "I relived the place where my fear of balloons comes from. Everything I remember, anyway, but I remember everything pretty much perfectly, so I think I'm about ninety percent accurate."
"Can you go into detail at all?"
Butters shakes his head. "Not here. Maybe in therapy tomorrow."
Kelly nods. "We're going to end the test here. You've expressed the extremity of your reaction quite sufficiently, I think. You may leave whenever you feel strong enough to go."
"What else were you gonna do?" Butters asks.
"If you passed the balloon-passing test, we were going to move on and see if you could inflate one as well."
He shakes his head again. "Not a chance, mister."
"So I've concluded."
Kelly stands and writes something on his board. Butters waits for a few more second, just breathing on the ground, residually lightheaded, then gets up and stumbles towards the door.
"Thanks," he says while opening it, but he realizes he's not thankful at all.
Kelly doesn't answer to this, but says, "See you later, Butters," instead.
The door shuts quietly behind him, and he sighs heavily. He doesn't feel like crying at all. He doesn't feel anything.
(do you feel strong now?)
He wipes his eyes for good measure and walks back into the common area, where his accomplices are spread around the tables, Stan and Kyle occupied with Cat's Cradle once again at one table, and Wendy eying Kenny's cards while he plays Poker with Craig.
"I'm back," he says.
"That was quick," Wendy says, look up. "Second fastest, I think. Right under Kyle."
"It didn't work out," he says, sitting on Craig's side of the table and glancing at his hand. He has shit cards, but he has more tiny folded paper squares (seemingly the currency in this game) on his side than Kenny has on his.
"What do you mean?" she asks.
"I uh, I fainted. They had to cancel the test they were gonna run." He's beginning to regret his no half-truths law, but the rest seem to be abiding by it. It just makes him feel like a failure, to admit he fainted at the sight of a goddamned Happy Birthday balloon.
"Oh, shit," Kenny says, laying his cards flat. Over his shoulder, Stan and Kyle are looking up, string cast aside. He's pretty sure it's Stan's shoelace again. "Are you alright, sugar?"
"Yeah," he says glumly.
"What'd they do?"
"They, um. They didn't really do anything. They just had this balloon, and they were gonna throw it to me, but I fainted instead. I had a flashback, back from when I was six."
He pauses and wonders if he should tell them what happened at that birthday party. He hates talking about it, but he'd rather just get it over with. He takes a second to breathe, and then says, "When I was six, I went to a birthday party and a kid was shot right in front of everyone. I saw the whole thing. This is the long-term damage."
Even Craig looks up at this, brows up and eyes wide. "What the shit? This happened?" he says.
"Yeah. This happened," Butters mumbles. "You don't have to look so— so surprised."
Craig leans back into his chair and puts his cards down. "I get it, man. I just didn't know. That must be a mindfuck to live with."
It bothers him that Craig couldn't work up the heart to say something a little nicer, a little more sympathetic, but this is as sensitive as he knows he's going to get. "It is," he sighs. "I was on pills to help me sleep, but I've been gettin' along pretty good without 'em lately. I haven't been taking them for over a year now." He doesn't know why he tells them this; it just slips out before he can stop it.
There's a second of silence while he sulks. Then, Kenny picks up his cards and flips them at Craig. They bounce harmlessly off his shoulders.
"I fold," he says.
"Thank god," Craig says, and leans over to his side to pick up the fallen cards.
"Butters and I are gonna draw unicorns and cuddle," Kenny continues, standing up and walking over to the vast store of paper. He snatches a few pages and a couple of pens and sits in the chair next to Butters.
"Okay, now that we're all nicely settled in," he says, handing a blue pen to Butters and giving him a sideways squeeze. Butters twirls the pen in his fingers (a skill he learned from Craig in the Biology class they share) and waits for Kenny to let go. He'd normally love a hug, but he's not feeling it right now. Kenny gets the message and lets his arm fall off his shoulders.
"I can't draw worth shit, just so you know," Kenny warns, placing pen to paper.
"I don't mind," he replies, looking forward to seeing Kenny butcher some drawings. Kenny draws a crude unicorn and gives up at the hind leg, and Butters just laughs.
He sketches one quickly. Kenny make oohs and ahs and jealous noises. It's just a cartoony little doodle that he didn't put much effort it, but he's learned over the years that when it comes to drawing, it's not hard to impress people who can't draw. The praise is silly, but he'd be lying if he said it didn't help a little bit.
Kenny ropes Craig into drawing a unicorn, and Craig produces a shitty, shitty unicorn with sparkly eyes and a neck that fits a giraffe better than a unicorn. He passes it down to Wendy, who scribbles a poor My Little Pony.
"Stan, Kyle! You gonna join?" Butters offers.
Stan shakes his head. "We're good, man. We'll come around later and see the results, though."
"You're just gonna sit over there and play Cat's Cradle forever?" Kenny jeers.
"Maybe. We could put in a movie or something."
There's a widespread groan.
"Not another fucking movie, Stan! I am so sick of watching movies!" Wendy says, running her fingers through her hair.
"Just a suggestion," he says meekly, picking the string up from Kyle.
"What time is it?" Kenny asks. "We could go get food if it's lunch time."
Craig pulls his phone out and checks. "11:56."
"They start serving at 11:45, right?"
"Yup. You know what they're making?" Craig asks. Kenny shrugs in reply.
"You wanna find out?" he asks.
"Why not," Craig says.
The rest of them tag along. They're serving soup, which is palatable, though suspiciously green and tasting of lime. Stan goes to ask about it and discovers that they're eating something called avocado citrus soup, something that none of them have experienced in their small town, nobody-to-impress life. The most appealing thing about it is that it makes a delightful noise when allowed to slide off the spoon and land in a thick pile on the surface. Saying it's satisfying is perhaps putting it too strongly, but the bread served along with it is fine (though not so excellent dipped in the soup, they discover). They leave the dining area still making faces and tittering about it, and when they settle back in their spots, they're still talking about it. Never has a soup garnered so much attention.
The next while goes by uneventfully. Stan and Kyle go back to their Cat's Cradle (made of the same shoelace as the first time) but sit at the same table as the rest of them. Craig teaches Wendy and Butters (and refreshes Kenny) how to play Hearts and the four of them play for a half-hour or so. Eventually, everyone disperses around the room again. By ten after one, Wendy and Butters have migrated out of the game and have started reading paperbacks found in a bookshelf at the back. Wendy paws through a two-bit adventure while Butters reads Jodie Picoult. Craig makes coffee and shuffles cards while nursing a mug of it, listening to Kenny ramble endlessly while he sips at his own cup. Stan and Kyle drink green tea and talk about who they hate in their English class.
"It's been kind of a long time. What do you think the holdup is?" Wendy asks.
"Dunno," Butters replies, as the others seem caught up in their little conversations. "You're next, huh?"
"Don't remind me," she mutters.
"You brought it up, girlie," he snips, playfully snarky. "Maybe your test is more detailed than the rest of ours. The building of it, I mean."
"How do they test against the fear of being left behind?" she asks, absentmindedly twisting her sleeves. "You were easy. All they needed was a balloon."
"I don't know, sorry," he apologizes, as if it's his responsibility to know.
She sighs and looks at the clock on the wall for several long seconds, and when time doesn't seem to go any faster, she flips to the back of the book and reads the ending. With a name like The Dragon's Secret, she's assuming little from the plot. The dragon's secret is that he's actually human, and she snaps the book shut with the disdain a book of such poor quality deserves.
"Could Wendy Testaburger please report to the treatment room, Wendy Testaburger, thank you."
Butters lays his book on the arm of the couch and look over at her. "Good luck, Wendy," he says simply, sincerely.
She sighs again, louder, and stands up. She tugs her sweater down and says, "You wanna come see me off, Stan?"
"Absolutely," he replies, shuffling his chair back. She waits while he stands up and also rearranges his clothes, which have ridden up unflatteringly while he's been sitting. He extends an arm to her and says, "Shall we?"
She smiles and takes it.
"Hope it goes alright," Kyle says. "You'll be okay."
"You keep your chin up, chickadee," Kenny calls.
"Thanks," she calls over her shoulder.
They stop walking as they turn the corner.
"Listen, Wends — they watch you go in on the cameras, I don't know if they can hear too but they definitely watch, so I'm not gonna hang around too long. You'll be fine, it's not really so bad. Just try not to let them get to you and keep your head up," he says, tapping her chin. "I love you. Good luck."
"Thanks, Stan," she says, and they kiss once, briefly, on the lips. She still doesn't like the thought of cameras all over, even though she's encountered them several times. Stan waves and walks away before she has the chance to become upset. She watches him go, even though she knows she shouldn't. When he's gone, she looks at the door and nips the inside of her lip.
"Here we go," she whispers, twisting the knob and walking in.
Kelly, Victoria and Dan stand in front of a velour curtain, stretching all the way from the skyscraping ceiling down to the caramel cork floor. They look up from their clipboards when she walks in, and Kelly nods and smiles in greeting.
"Good afternoon, Wendy. How are you today?"
"Fine, thanks," she says. "How about you?"
He laughs. "It's been a busy day."
"I can imagine," she says. Small talk is easy, easier than real conversation.
"Yes, yes. Shall we begin?" he asks, dipping his head towards the curtain.
"Oh. Right. I suppose we should," she says, stuffing her hands in the pockets of her jeans.
"That's the spirit," he says. "Now, you know of course that we'll be testing against athazagoraphobia, the fear of being forgotten, ignored, or left behind. Ready to start?"
"Could you at least tell me what's going to happen?" she asks.
"We're going on a walk. Trust me, it's nothing you can hurt yourself on."
She nods, but she's not sure she believes him.
He pulls the curtain open, and before she can really see what's going on behind it, he ushers her up what looks like a crude observational tower made of a step-stool and a five-foot block. From the top, she can see why it took them two hours to prepare her test; they've created a huge maze of the movable walls the others have been talking about. They're maybe ten feet tall, with the ceiling being about fifteen. Two hours now feels like a very modest amount of time, considering they put all this together.
"Holy Christ," she gapes, "this is amazing."
"Yes, I'm quite pleased with the results," Kelly says. "Not an easy maze by any means."
"You didn't just build this!" she says.
"Our crew works very quickly, but this isn't an original design by any means," Kelly says, shrugging as if this is no big deal.
"It's a much smaller and somewhat modified version of the Hampton Court maze," Victoria adds.
"The Hampton Court maze," she repeats dumbly. "What does this have to do with me? I'm fine with mazes, Kelly."
"I know that, Wendy," he replies. "You and I are going to walk through. Just follow my heels. This design is notorious for its twists and bends."
"Sure," she says, following right after him as they walks into the entrance of the maze. Shortly after they turn the first corner, she hears a heavy-sounding scraping. She glances over her shoulder and asks, "What was that?"
"I wouldn't worry," Kelly says with a shrug.
She's still looking behind as they round another corner and approach a three-way split. Kelly goes down the middle. She tries to see where the other ways go, but she can't look for too long, as Kelly turns another hairpin corner.
They approach another divide, and just before she can tell which way Kelly's headed, the light flash off. She yelps in surprise, jumping back. They come on short seconds later, and when she looks up, the man she's to follow is gone.
"Dr. Kelly?" she yells, looking down both paths. He's nowhere to be seen.
"Kelly!" she repeats, turning around and beginning to retrace her steps. She runs straight and turns at the corner of the maze, yet when she thinks she's back where she came from, there's nothing but a dead end.
"Kelly! This isn't fucking funny!" she screams, running past the dead end and finding another one. She turns around again and dashes down to the other end of the hall, turning the corner and going left at the three-way split. The wall ends and she realizes that the left path and center all connect to the same hall. God knows where the right goes.
"Kelly! You can't just fucking leave me in here like this!" she howls. There's a blind panic eating her inside out, and all she can think of is running, just running until she gets out. She's back at the divide where she lost Kelly, and she whips her head around wildly.
(missed each other going around the gas pumps)
"Oh, shit," she whimpers. A moment's thought passes and she darts down the left side. It turns sharply once, then again, and she finds herself at another dead end. She snaps back and dashes back to the divide, going right this time. This one leads into a long hallway with two exits visible; one on her right-hand side about halfway down, and another corner at the end. There's panic still splashing in her stomach, and her brain is screaming
(run! run! run!)
but her legs are giving out and her body is betraying her. If she keeps running like this, she'll fall over. Wendy is not a runner. She goes on walks with her mom and she spends half an hour every morning on a yoga regime she's perfected, but she's unpracticed in endurance exercises such as running. She's gasping, but she makes it to the end of the hall and turns the corner. From what she sees, it goes back up and turns again. Panting hard, she slows to a walk. Without the physical distraction, the fear comes on, and it hits her hard, right between the eyes.
(they're gone they're gone and you're alone)
(do they even know you're still in here?)
(have they forgotten?)
She blinks away tears and makes herself run again, down the hall and around the corner, which predictably leads to another long hall and corner.
"Fucking hell," she moans, slowing back to a jog, feet heavy on the sound-absorbing floor. She trots to the end and finds another long hallway. She stops and breathes hard, and for a second all she can think of is how fucking awful this is before the fear hits her again.
(they've forgotten and you're alone)
(alone)
She gasps for another quick breath and runs down to the end of the hall. Her feet feel like they might weigh a hundred pounds each, her legs moving robotically.
At the end of the hall, she realizes she's back at the three exits, but she's come out of the hall on the right; in other words, she's right back again where she started.
"You fuckers!" she shrieks. "You can't just fucking leave me like this, I don't even know where I'm going! I've done this whole fucking maze and I'm back where I started again!"
She stands there for a second and sniffs, rubbing her eyes, allowing herself a moment of self-pity before she remembers that there's one hall she didn't go down, the entrance on her right side when she went right at the divide. She lopes back up there, feeling wounded, and walks down the right side. Halfway down the hall, there it is; the one entrance she missed.
"This is it," she says. "This is the only place I haven't gone."
She swabs her cheeks with her sleeves and walks shakily down it. The hallway it leads into is twist and turns sharply. Her feet carry her on autopilot down to the bend. She looks down the hall beyond the bend and it just seems to keep going.
"I can't fucking do this," she sobs, settling down in the sharp corner. She curls up and drops her head on her knees and just cries, breathing unsteadily and coughing with the overexertion of panic and too much running. Her stomach and torso are in twists and knots, and her legs ache dully. She hiccups and sniffles into the fabric of her sweater. Her knees are wet with tears and sticky with mucus and other hideous bodily fluids, but she doesn't care in the least. Wet knees don't matter; leaving does.
Time goes by and she doesn't bother to pick her head up. When she does, she looks down the hall for a long time, judging the distance and maybe how long it would take if she just crawled over. She makes a curious scoot forward and groans.
"I can't," she mumbles, horking back snot. Her whole face is wet and red, but she can't find it in her to clean herself up. She looks around again, just in case maybe something's changed in the last seconds, and her eyes come to rest on a spot of wall next to her. There's a square on the wall that looks removable.
"What's this?" she whispers to herself, and hooks a thumbnail into the crack. She pulls on it, and just before she feels her nail start to break, the panel shifts and threatens to come out. She eases it out gently and places it in her lap, and then begins to investigate what it was covering. It's a control panel with a few little switches and keyhole, and for a second she just stares at it, because why would a fucking wall need a control panel? She replaces the panel of wall and leans back to think about it for a while.
It should have been obvious, but her brain's running slow and her thoughts are disorganized. She remembers Stan's comment earlier questioning the height of the walls and decides they must have an extension inside to make them taller, with a minimum height of eight feet or so. The controls pull out the extension. She looks up and notices that every wall has a two-foot top that's slightly smaller than the rest of the wall. She knocks the wall she's leaning on with her fist and the bottom makes a hollow sort of thump, but near the middle the hollow sound disappears and it sounds solid again.
(well look at you go solving mysteries)
Despite her little victory, she feels no better. She wishes she was the kind of person who carries a watch, because she has no clue how long she's been here, and she didn't look at the time before she left. She keeps making these sad little promises to herself, okay we'll get up and go soon. Okay, we'll leave in twenty seconds. We'll leave in a minute. But with every deadline that passes (and many do), she becomes more aware of the fact that she's petrified. She can't fucking leave this spot.
She whimpers goddamnit in the most tragic voice she's ever heard herself make, and that in itself brings on another flood of tears.
(so you're just going to sit here huh)
(well that's okay then maybe they'll remember you one of these days)
"God fucking damnit!" she whines.
"Wendy?"
(what?)
"Wendy, are you there?"
She snaps her head up and wipes her cheeks and nose. "Yeah? I'm here."
"Oh, thank god," says Dan, turning the corner and coming face to face with her.
"Thank god what?"
"We've been looking for you. You're stuck in a blind spot, just beyond the cameras. If you had been just a foot or so over to the right, we would have seen you, but you really tucked yourself into that little nook. We started to worry."
"How long have I been here?" she asks, struck.
"About an hour."
"Holy shit!" she gasps. "Jesus!"
Dan nods. He taps a microphone on his shirt and says, "Everything's okay, I found her."
"Why did you leave me this long?" she demands, standing up. It must have been a long time; the heaviness of her limbs has disappeared.
"Accident. We intended to let you go for twenty minutes or so, just long enough to feel forgotten, so we could gauge your reaction, but you slipped into a blind spot while we weren't looking. We let it go for a half-hour longer, but you still didn't come out and Kelly was beginning to worry. He sent some of the staff to check the cameras and some more to check the maze, and, well, we've got you now," he tells her, leading her towards the exit.
"You let it go for half an hour?" she says. "That's fucking ridiculous!"
"I'm just the newbie, Wendy, I really can't say why Kelly decided that," he says hurridly.
So that's why he looks like Kelly's little secretary. "What does being the newbie consist of?" she asks, changing the topic and immediately feeling less explosive.
"Oh. I mostly watch, so far," he says, laughing nervously, clearly relieved she's calmed down. "I've only been here since January. Theoretically, I have the education and the training to be a nurse or a therapist, but I don't have enough experience. So, I do most of the filing work, assist with evaluation, and I'm just placed in situations where I can gain some experience with being responsible for anybody. Dr. Kelly wants to wait a year, maybe less, before I start working with the patients on a more personal level." He pauses and smiles. "I really admire Dr. Kelly. He has a really hands-on approach with his patients. The success levels are amazing."
"Really?" she asks, raising her brows. "I don't feel much better than I did last week."
"That's because you're at the beginning of your treatment. You'll see. By the end, you'll see massive improvements."
She's about to argue the point by using Stan's horrifying experience as a model, but she holds her tongue. This doesn't seem to be the time nor the place. Though Dan seems to spend a lot of time with Kelly, she doubts he knows that much. Asking him about it would merely fluster him.
They exit the maze through an opening she doesn't remember, leading her to believe this was never a fair maze. Kelly and Victoria stand expectantly. Wendy watches them without making eye contact.
"We're sorry, Wendy. I never intended for you be in there for so long," Kelly says, and she can't make herself believe that regardless of how sincere he sounds. She nods curtly.
"We have the information we need. You're free to go."
She leaves without saying anything, the door clicking shut lightly despite its weight. Outside, she doesn't feel anything but this dull anger simmering in her stomach, bubbles popping and releasing tiny, furious thoughts. She grits her teeth and holds her temples, muttering hissed obscenities under her breath. The anger steams quietly on low heat, but she can feel it clouding her eyes and she knows she's going to snap if she doesn't do something about it. There's no fear left in her; just anger, venomous anger.
(feelings? no sorry there are none left here)
(I just want to break that madman's neck and HURT him and HURT him and HURT)
And suddenly she's scared of herself, of how badly she wants to do terrible things to him. This has happened before in her past; she doesn't call herself an emotional person but there are people in her life that can push her buttons just the right way to make her see red and only red, and she doesn't like it. She's snapped in front of people before and it's not pretty; she's hospitalized two people in her life and caused bleeding noses on triple that, at least. For some, this amount of scraps is nothing, but for her, it's a lot more than she's comfortable with. It scares her, how easy it is to hurt somebody. There's nothing hard about getting a good hit in when nobody's expecting it. And there's nothing hard about saying something that will ruin somebody's life, something she's never done alone but has certainly aided in within playgroup gossip.
This is what scares her; the reality that she is capable of hideous things.
(I just want to hurt him . . .)
"Fuck," she says. The weight of the word feels nice in her mouth, the stigma around it soothing. She tosses words like that around too much for her own good. They lose their meaning when you use them so much. If she was friends with different people, perhaps she wouldn't do it as much, but she doesn't even have to do that. Nobody notices when you stop swearing; it's starting that makes everyone notice. She figures as long as she's not like Kenny, who has to try very consciously not to swear, she's fine.
The anger in her has ebbed away, and she feels fine enough to join her friends. They don't notice her coming in, which makes her frown. She approaches quietly and sees that Stan is sitting on the floor in front of one of the couches, tapping at Craig's phone. The others are standing near him or sitting on the couches, leaning forward.
"I can only get static," he says.
"Try 710 AM. That's a newscast, I think," Craig says.
"Okay," Stan says, and he taps at the phone for a second or two. The quiet sound of static fills the air.
"Nope," he sighs.
"Fiddle with it some more."
"You got it."
Wendy decided this is a decent time to wander in. "Hey," she says.
They look up. "Hey, Wendy," Stan says. "You were gone for a long time. Did everything go okay?"
"They had we walk through a maze and I ended up resting in a blind spot. They weren't sure where I'd gone, so they left me for a while to see if I'd come out. I didn't, so they had to come get me."
"A maze? What's that got to do with you?" Stan asks, eyes moving back to Craig's phone.
"They walked me through it and then ditched me. They left me alone, and that's what aspect of my phobia they were going at."
Stan looks up, brows knitted in concern. "Jesus, baby. Are you alright?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. It dissipates pretty quickly once I realize I haven't been forgotten. I was upset, though, for a while."
"Good," Stan says. "We were getting a little worried."
"I had no idea how much time was passing," she admits, shaking her head. She sits on the arm of the couch and asks, "So what are you doing?"
"Seeing if there's radio. I mean, you can choose not to have internet, and you can cut off service, but public radio's everywhere, man. We're kind of in the middle of nowhere, though. We haven't had much luck."
"Oh. How long have you been trying?"
"A couple of minutes. We found a religious station, but it was pretty crackly."
She gets up and walks over to Kenny, nudging his arm with her shoulder. He looks down at her and wraps an arm around her waist.
"How'd Stan get to borrow Craig's phone?" she asks under her breath.
"He just asked and Craig said sure. It was weird, man," he murmurs back.
"Hey, I got something!" Stan says. Craig, who's been lying prone on the couch, sits up and takes his phone back.
"A newscast or another religious station?" he asks, turning up the volume.
Behind the crackle of static, a vague male voice comes through: ". . . house fire in — krzzzkrzkrzzz — families homeless with little to no belongings to their — krzzzz — says the cause of the fire is most likely due to — krzkrzkrzz — left unattended. Police say that arson is not a — krzzkrzzzzz — In other news —"
"Holy shit," Craig says, an uncharacteristically wide smile painted across his face.
"See? I got a newscast!" Stan hoots.
"This is fantastic," Craig says, still grinning. He saves the station as a favourite and puts his phone away. "Well done, Marsh."
"Why do you want a news station?" Wendy asks.
"Keep up with what's going on. I really don't think what they're doing here is legal, and I want to see if it'll come on the radio at all," Stan says. "Like, what if they report a batch of hospital patients missing? Something like that."
"You're gonna have to listen to it constantly if you're going to find when they do the national news," Wendy says.
"They'll do it at seven-thirty or eight or something. They always do important stuff on half-hours or even hours, at times when people are waking up or driving to work."
"Oh, yeah. Of course."
"Mm," Stan hums. "You wanna talk more about your test?" Kenny's arm slides off her waist as Stan looks up.
"No, not really, it was kind of — oh, right, wait, I found out that the walls all have extensions or something in them, there's a control panel on them that changes how tall they are. They don't get smaller than eight feet though, I think. I couldn't change it because you need a key to unlock the controls, but, yeah. So that's that."
Stan and Kenny look at each other for a second, and then Stan laughs lightly. "Fine, then. I thought my estimating skills were really just shit, but that makes sense. Good job, Wendy."
She smiles and says, "Thanks. It's going to be a while before they call Craig down — you're the last one, right? — so we'd better find something to do for a couple hours."
"No movies," Kyle says testily.
"Yeah, yeah."
They clean up faster than they took to set up the maze, giving them a much more tolerable hour and a half before they call anybody down. They do much the same thing as last time, Butters still chipping away at his silly romance/drama, whereas she's found a more interesting looking book about the life of a girl growing up in the shabby areas of Montréal. Kenny talks at Craig some more, Craig nodding occasionally and throwing in a few words while he practices false-shuffling cards. Stan and Kyle talk quietly about what kind of tattoo they'd get, if they liked tattoos (Kyle thinks they're idiotic, and in Stan's world, Kyle's word is law).
Just after the clock ticks past five-thirty, the intercom clicks on again.
"Could Craig Tucker please report to the treatment area, Craig Tucker, thank you."
Craig doesn't bat a lid, shuffling his cards like nothing happened. He spreads them across the table and they're all still in their perfect order of suits.
"Go, man. Waiting makes it worse," Kenny says, nudging him.
"I don't really want to," Craig says.
"It doesn't matter if you want to or not, you have to," Kenny replies, frowning.
"Look, I've been watching you guys and I really just don't think it's that beneficial. It seems like a shit scare," he mumbles.
"Bullshit. You're here, you'll do exactly what they fucking say."
"Who fucking cares, Kenny? There's gotta be better methods that shoving you right up against it."
Stan mutters chickenshit from the other table. That catches Craig's attention, and he glares down at him.
"I'm not fucking scared. I think it's stupid."
"You're scared, man. Everyone's scared. Now get up or I'll carry you there," Kenny says snidely.
"Jesus Christ, it's just that—"
"Go," Kenny interrupts.
"Kenny, would you just fucking listen to me so—"
"Okay. I gave you a chance. Let's go," he says, standing up.
Craig stares at him as if he knows he's fighting a losing battle.
"Would you just fucking get up?" Kenny groans.
"Fine, okay," Craig says, shoving his chair back and standing up. Kenny walks over to him and bends over, grasping the inside of his thigh and his forearm.
"Hey, what the fuck do you think you're—"
"I'm going to carry you there," Kenny replies, hoisting him up fireman-style over his shoulders. He rearranges Craig slightly for comfort. Craig is silent (but somewhat red in the face) for a second or so, then he heaves a long, heavy sigh.
"You're actually doing this."
"Yeah," Kenny says.
"There's nothing I can do," Craig says.
"No. You hardly weigh a thing, Skinnybones."
Craig kicks at Kenny half-heartedly, then gives up.
"This isn't worth my effort," he concludes.
"Absolutely right," Kenny says.
There's a pause, and Craig says, "If you're gonna take me there, better start walking, buddy."
"Alrighty," Kenny replies. He starts walking fairly steadily towards the door, humming as he does. Craig makes a lazy salute to the rest of them as they round the corner, and they call a couple of good-lucks.
At the door, Kenny slides Craig off his shoulders and catches his breath. "Okay, you're not that light."
"You're not that strong."
"Touché, I suppose."
Kenny looks like he doesn't want to go. He just stands there like he doesn't know where to go next. Craig frowns.
"You gonna watch me go in?"
Kenny shrugs. "I guess."
"You don't have to mother me, Kenny."
Kenny leans over and pecks Craig on the temple. "I don't care. Good luck."
"Stop fucking kissing me," Craig says, shoving his arm.
"See you later," Kenny says, giving him a characteristic cheeky grin. Craig's always liked that abut Kenny; his easy, teasing smiles. Craig's one of those kids that scowls on picture day, and he liked to blame it on his braces, but he doesn't have them anymore and has no real reason to not smile when he wants to. Now it's a habit, and it's become a joke that working a smile out of Craig is an accomplishment.
Honestly, he's not so much into maintaining this image these days. When he was a kid, he wanted to be tough and stoic because being that way made sure you weren't targeted, and, as a result, he made it to high school with a reputation to the effect of if you fuck with Craig, you'll lose your teeth. Once in high school he had the friends he wanted and the respect he wanted, and suddenly intimidating his peers didn't matter anymore. Now, it's his personality; it's just so much easier than being sensitive. But when he sees Kenny dropping smiles like penny candies, he wonders if it's really easier to not bother. It's just that smiling gives the impression that you like whom you're talking to, and Craig doesn't like most people. Kenny's the only one he genuinely likes, and even then sometimes he hates Kenny, too. He does like smiling with Kenny though, and he likes how Kenny's eyes light up and he gets so goddamned pleased with himself when he does.
Once or twice, Kenny's said Craig has a really nice smile, pretty, even. Craig's not sure why Kenny cares so much, but he likes that too.
He shoves the door open and makes himself stop thinking about it, makes himself banish the small smile that's crept across his face while he was suspended in thought. Better not look too happy for the doctors.
The room he enters is at maximum height and surface area, and oddly enough, quite cold and damp. None of the others reported a difference in temperature, and now he's wondering if they didn't notice or they simply didn't receive such change. A skiff of fog sits on the floor, swirling around his knees. His throat tightens, but he forces himself to keep breathing normally. Victoria, Dan, and Kelly stand a few yards away, talking idly. Their feet are eaten by the fog.
(I'm going to be eaten by the fog)
"Hello, Craig," Kelly says. "How are you feeling today?"
Craig shrugs, attempting nonchalance through the increasing pressure in his lungs. "Fine."
"Good. You do know of course that we're testing against nebulaphobia," he says, looking at his clipboard. "The fear of fog. Not common, if I may say." He looks up and smiles. "But you don't seem to be that common of a person, do you?
This takes him by surprise. "What?"
"I'm entirely serious. You don't come by personalities like yourself that often."
"I figured I was just a B-grade loner," he says.
Kelly smiles. He has a whole dictionary of smiles. "I can see that. But I can also see that you're not the kind of person who wishes to be lonely. Am I correct?"
"Look, does this honestly have to do with anything? Can we get started?" Craig pleads, suddenly horribly aware that they watched him come in, watched Kenny kiss him goodbye. There are fucking cameras everywhere, and it makes him claustrophobic like he's never felt before.
"We certainly can. I apologize for my digression." He sticks his hand into the pocket of his nicely-pressed pants and pulls out a green rubber ball of average size. "The test is simple. I will throw the ball. You will find it and return it to me."
"Find it in the fog?" Craig repeats.
"Yes, in the fog. Are you ready?"
"As I'll ever be," Craig says, spitting it out before are you kidding me can come out.
"Excellent," Kelly says with a grin. He throws the ball down the room with unremarkable force, not too hard but hard enough to get a couple of good bounces in. For a few seconds, he's frozen, because his feet are covered by the thick fog and if he can't see them, he might as well not have them. It takes him a moment of buildup, but he works up the nerve to kick at the fog and watch it go swirling in lazy currents. His feet still work. That's all the reassurance he needs, but he'd be lying if he said there wasn't a thought at the front of his mind that was still trying to convince him that he was going to be eaten away.
Craig starts trotting in the general direction of the ball, and for the first few seconds it goes fine but then he looks down and notices the fog swirling and twirling around his legs.
"Holy shit," he says, and runs faster. It's grappling at his ankles, at his calves, and he feels like he has to outrun a monster that simply cannot be outrun. He's aware of the panic building in his chest, and he glances behind him to judge how far he's gone, just to give his mind a distraction.
Perhaps it's an ill-placed shadow, perhaps it's the way the mist moves, but for a second, he sees a figure. It's only for a second, and it's shadowy and out of the corner of his eye, but all it takes is that one moment and his brain plummets from the last scrap of rationality and he bolts.
(HOLY FUCK)
(NO)
(NO WE ARE GETTING OUT OF HERE RIGHT NOW)
He stumbles on his own fucking feet in the pure, delirious fear that shrieks run run and his ankle rolls underneath him. He falls hard on it and finds himself on the ground before he can even process what happened. His thoughts are still all static, just this steady buzz of no no no and the small part of his brain that's still here in this room is realizing that somewhere far away, a body part it screaming in agony.
A sound of pain and misery almost slips out between his panicked breaths, but he gnaws on his lips to make sure they don't open anymore. He curls up on his side and watches the fog move with every laboured exhalation through his nose. The static is still there and it's loud, drowning out his ears and the rest of what could be a thought worth thinking about. The static is loud and it hurts his temples, but he's always had loud thoughts because that's what you do when you're trying to be tough; you stay quiet, even when everything hurts, and so, to compensate, another part of your being makes the noise that begs to be uttered. Another small part of his brain awakens, and this is the part that realizes there's fog swimming around his shoulders.
(NO NONONO BZZZZ NO NO BZZZ BZ BZZ)
(pain)
(fog fog)
(BZZZZ NONONONO BZZZZZZ NO BZZ)
(pain fog breathe can't breathe)
A sad, pitiful sound that toes the line between a whimper and a moan finally escapes through his heavy breathing, and he hates himself for the weakness but feels better by the release. He sits up and gets his head over the fog and instantly his breathing comes much better without the noose of mist around him, though the rest of his body is still tight and constricted, like being wrapped up in saran wrap. Kelly's little clique watches with eagle eyes, waiting for him to do something. The pressure to continue is as thick as the fog, and in an attempt to thin it, he stands up slowly, realizing halfway up that he foot is certainly twisted quite badly if not altogether sprained. There's a force pushing up from his burning throat, and he takes his lips in teeth again to keep it from reaching his eyes.
"Are you alright, Craig?" Kelly says.
"No," Craig replies. His voice wobbles with fear and hurt and suppression of tears. He bites harder on his lip and opens up another old wound, filling his mouth with the sharp taste of blood.
Kelly starts walking over, and Craig does his best to pull himself together before he gets there. He's not sure he could bear Kelly's sympathetic face. "What caused that fall?" Kelly asks with worried eyes.
"I tripped," Craig says, looking at the ground to hide his flushed face and dilated eyes.
"You look like you were startled by something," Kelly says.
Craig licks some blood from the inside of his lip and says, "Was there somebody else in here?"
Kelly frowns, so Craig continues.
"It was just for a second, but I saw something . . . I don't know what it was, but it looked like a person and I — I got scared," he mumbles.
"Somebody you know?" Kelly asks gently.
(as a matter of fact yes)
(but I don't believe I'll be going into that right now)
Craig opts to say nothing. Kelly and Victoria trade glances. Dan looks worried, but he keeps his mouth shut obediently.
"Nobody but us was in here, Craig. If you saw something, it was your imagination playing tricks on you," Kelly says finally.
"I thought so," Craig says. "It was only for a second. When I looked up again it was gone."
Kelly nods and takes the clipboard from Dan. He scribbles something on it and asks, "Is your foot okay?"
Craig shakes his head. He's thankful for the subject change. "Sprained, I think."
"Oh? Dan, would you have a look?"
Dan asks Craig to sit down, and he does. Dan's big fingers untie Craig's shoelace and loosen it to the point where it can just slip off. Craig winces as it leaves his foot. Dan pulls down his sock and looks at his ankle, moving his head to get different angles.
"Definitely a sprain. See all the swelling?" he says, lightly touching the joint.
"Mm," Craig hums. The breathing's getting slowly easier, though he prefers to breathe through his mouth still. He wants to inch a little closer to them, make a little human barrier and keep him safe even though he's admitted that he doesn't trust them anymore.
"Come on, let's get up," Dan says, grabbing Craig's hands and pulling him upright. "Can you put any weight on it?"
Craig tests it and shrugs. "A little. I don't want to walk on it."
"Can you turn it?"
He tries that too, reports, "A little."
Dan nods. "Sounds like everything's okay. We'll put a brace on it and you'll be fine."
"Oh, lovely," Craig sighs. The last thing he needs is a sprained ankle to go along with all of this. He's done this a few times before, most recently back in September when he was in the elementary school playground, jumping off of swings with Kenny. He landed wrong and sprained his ankle quite badly. Kenny had apologized for roping him into doing stupid shit with him with a dime bag of weed the next day, but Craig couldn't stay mad at him long enough for it to be an apology gift rather than a regular gift.
"Can I go?" he says.
Kelly hesitates and looks at his board. "That ended a little faster than I would have preferred. I was hoping to get a clearer reaction, but I think I've got enough to build from."
"Oh."
"It would be quite useful for us if you could tell me more about what you experienced in therapy tomorrow. Would that be alright?"
Craig's shoulders twitch. "Sure. I don't mind."
"Excellent. We're done here, then. Dan will take you to wrap up your foot."
"Okay," Craig says.
Kelly and Victoria turn and start talking. Dan looks at him and says, "Can you walk?"
"I don't want to. Not on this," Craig says. He looks at the fog and adds, "Not through this, either."
"It's most tender right after you sprain it. Would you prefer if I carried you?" he offers.
"Um. Sure, I guess. Not over the shoulder, though, I did that today already."
Dan gives him a funny look and then smiles. "Long story?"
"Not really."
"Got it. How about bridal style?" He says it with a light bent to his voice, joking but serious.
"Sure, why not," Craig says, figuring he's got nothing to gain or lose. Dan laughs, light and lilting.
(kinda like Kenny's laugh hey)
"Alright, then. Here we go." He leans over and slides a hand behind Craig's knees and shoulders, and in one swift movement he lifts Craig off the ground and into his arms. He shifts and says, "We good?"
"We're good. I'm not too heavy or anything, right?"
Dan snorts. "Not in the least."
They go the opposite direction of the door Craig came through, and Dan notices the way Craig cranes his neck in confusion and tell him there's a small office on the other end of the room. He drops Craig to his feet gently and unlocks the office with a small key on a large ring of keys stuck in his pocket. The office has a stretcher, a desk similar to the one in Kelly's office (even the computer is the same), a mini-freezer and a shelf with glass doors boasting and impressive library of bandages and pills and the sort. Craig hobbles over to the stretches and sits down on top of it. The pressure in his lungs finally dissipates now that he's out of the fog. Dan opens the shelf and roots around until he pulls out a black ankle brace. He pulls it over Craig's foot and tightens the Velcro at the top.
"There we go. Just give me a second and I'll grab you a cold pack," he says, ducking down to the freezer and pulling open the door. He grabs a reusable cold pack and hands it to Craig.
"I've sprained my ankles before, Dan. I know how to look after them," Craig says before Dan can start explaining.
"Ah, sorry. Well, you know the drill, then. I'll ask Kelly if we can move this little freezer into your room so you don't have to keep bringing the used-up cold packs to me. But for now, you can go. Do you need a hand, or can you handle it?"
"I think I can get to the common area. Thanks, though," Craig says. He hops off the stretcher and walks over to the door. "See you, then."
"Have a nice evening. Stay off the ankle," Dan says.
"I will," Craig replies. He shuts the door behind him and sees that the fog hasn't cleared.
He opens the door again and grudgingly requests another ferry service, which Dan provides with a jovial laugh.
He's glad when the door shuts behind him and he doesn't have to look at that grinning face anymore, because though Dan's a nice enough guy, Craig finds him tiresome, even if he does have Kenny's laugh.
(but you find everyone tiresome don't you)
It takes him a few steps before he gets the hang of limping again. He's had plenty of instances that have given him time to perfect the skill, but walking normally for six months or so gets you out of practice. He lands badly on it for a couple of steps before he finds a way to walk and keep most of the weight off of it.
The others are scattered around the room. Butters is doing homework that involves looking through a novel for a few seconds, then scribbling something down on a lined piece of paper, then looking back to the novel. Wendy is sitting on the floor with Stan and trying to get him into a few difficult-looking yoga poses. Kyle's reading a thick book that Craig recognizes as required reading. Kenny's tearing up strips of paper and folding little links to add to a large chain. The one he's got going so far is taped to the table and extends to the floor.
"I'm back. Hi," Craig announces, and he's well aware of how tactless it sounds when it leaves his mouth.
"Hi," Kenny says, finishing up a link before looking up. "How'd it — oh my god, what do you do to your foot?"
This makes the others all look up.
"I fell. Tripped over my own fucking feet," Craig says. He starts hopping over to a chair, but Kenny stands up and offers assistance. "Goddamn, you treat me like a toddler," Craig grumbles, but Kenny just laughs.
"Helping you when you're hurt doesn't count as treating you like a toddler."
Craig waits until he's seated and then says, "It really wasn't good. The room was huge, like gym size, and full of fog and they threw a rubber ball down it and made me fetch it. I tried but I thought I saw something and I freaked out, so I tripped and fucked up my ankle. I was pretty done so they let me leave." He pulls the brace off his ankle (which Kenny has propped on a chair) and puts the ice pack on it, sighing as he does. "I don't want to talk about it anymore."
"Oh. Well, um, thanks for the report?" Wendy says tentatively, settling into a sort of stretch that Craig is certain he's not flexible enough to pull off.
"You're so welcome, Wendy."
She snorts. "Wiseass. How bad's the ankle?"
"Could be worse. It's just your average sprain."
"So not fractured or anything?"
"No. It'll be fine, I just have to keep off it and put ice on it."
"Sucks bad, Craig," Butters says from his spot at the other table. "You're gonna be out a foot for 'least a couple weeks, huh."
"More like three," he says.
"Oh. I've never sprained an ankle 'fore, so I wouldn't know," Butters says, smiling apologetically.
"Don't worry about it," Craig says.
"You're being so civil today," Kenny comments.
God, he hates that. He doesn't mind his reputation, but he hates it when people assume he's incapable of being nice. He likes arguing and gains a certain amount of pleasure from seeing people like Kyle and Wendy worked up, but that doesn't mean he can't be civil when the atmosphere calls for it.
He can't come up with a snappy comeback fast enough, so he rolls his eyes and puts his head on the table.
"Is it dinner yet, I'm hungry again."
Kenny checks the clock and says, "Still an hour or so to go, man."
"That was actually the worst soup in the world though," Craig says.
"Are we really going to talk about the soup again?" Kyle groans.
"Yes, we are. Don't tell me you're already over avocado citrus soup," Craig replies.
"I was, just about, but then you brought it up again and now all I can hear in my head is avocado citrus soup."
"Oh my god," Wendy says. "That soup was so terrifying. It's just like, I don't want limes and avocados ever interacting again. They're on opposite ends of the spectrum and should stay that way."
"Aren't they fruit too?" Stan asks her.
She looks at him and frowns. "Um. Aren't they vegetables?"
"Are they?"
"I have no idea, actually," she says, looking defeated. "I never think about avocados."
"I didn't really think the soup was half-bad," Butters says. "Nice texture."
"But the lime in it! Blah," Wendy says.
"I didn't really notice anything wrong," Kenny says.
"'Course not, you just eat. You don't taste," Stan says. Kenny makes a sort of exasperated grunt which really does make Craig smile, though quietly.
Craig finds a book to entertain himself with, and they whittle away the time left before dinner's served. A few minutes before 5:30, they wander into the dining room and claim tables while the doctors file in, chatting about the day, and while the kitchen staff lays out the evening's meal. Kyle and Stan get a table for themselves and go up together when a cook calls out that the food is done.
"So I'm trying to think of the right adjective for how today went," Kyle begins.
"How about 'awful'?" Stan suggests.
"No, awful is too general. I was thinking something more like, um . . ."
"Horrendous?"
"Not quite the ring I wanted, but it'll do," Kyle says, handing a plate and utensils.
"How 'bout 'abominable?"
He considers it. "Today was abominable," he says, testing it out. He shakes his head. "Horrendous will have to do, man. Abominable just isn't right."
"Fine," Stan says with a shrug. He stabs a couple of slices of roast beef and scoop of mashed potatoes, and Kyle does the same. They leave the line with glasses of water and look around for their table.
"I think they took our table," Kyle says, pointing to a Maria and a young redhead he's seen around tittering away at a table near the door.
"Dicks," Stan says. "There's a table over there. I'm gonna go sit."
"Okay, man. I'll be there in a sec." He feels the need to glare at them for a few more seconds before being content to go to their new table, which won't be as nice as the one that was stolen from them.
He's just about to leave when he hears the redhead, say, "So did you see the kids today?"
Maria shakes her head. "No. I don't see any of them on treatment days. How'd they look?"
She shakes her head and takes a second to sip her tea. "Bad. The first one started crying when he got out."
"At least one usually does. It's pretty intense stuff. I wouldn't want to be the patient, honestly."
"Yeah, but I dunno. I always feel so bad for them once they get out," she says, clearing the hair from her eyes.
"Better get over it soon, the testing only gets more intense. The ones that do well now do better later," Maria says.
"I know," the redhead says, leaning back. "I just wonder about Dr. Kelly's methods sometimes."
Maria nods. "It's not pretty, but it works."
"It does, doesn't it."
Maria nods again. "It does."
The redhead sighs. "I just feel bad. Kelly's going to tear them apart."
"They come out fine, though," Maria says.
It's at this point that Kyle wants to run away, but he finds that his feet are bolted to the ground with nothing but tear them apart running through his head.
(tear them apart)
He turns slowly and starts walking to Stan's table, his feet feeling far away from him.
(Kelly's going to tear them apart)
Stan looks at him funny when he sits down, and he might even ask what's wrong, but he's so far away and all Kyle can hear is
(tear them apart)
I don't usually put notes at the end of chapters, but if you're interested in some behind-the-scenes work (read: complaining), headcanons, and writing I won't post here, check out my fancy writing blog! - catawampuswords . tumblr . com
