Preamble:

Welcome to Crimson Claws! The fourth part of the Souls of The Night saga. Let me remind you of the chronology:

1) Souls of The Night Vol1 and 2 (both merged into one story) - set in 2023

2) Brood of a New Age - set in 1997

3) Souls of The Night - Vol 3 - set in 2023

4) Crimson Claws - set mainly in 2009

You should be familiar with the previous parts before reading even if there is no Lex/Nathaniel storyline here yet (but I can squeeze the 2009 Nate in somewhere . READ AT LEAST Brood of a New Age before.

Crimson claws is partly about Claw (especially at the beginning)- his perspective will be the only one in first person narration - so "I, Me" and so on. The other characters will be described by an omniscient narrator. Why? Switching around like this is exhausting for writers and readers - but ... I think I managed it quite well with Lex and Nate. In Brood of a New Age I was only narrating omnisciently and getting back into the first person perspective in Souls of The Night - Vol 3 was hard for me. Also, Claw is a mute character - which is always a huge challenge I think. Maybe it's because of his lack of verbal expression that there are so few stories that focus on him. That's unfair because he's highly interesting- even in the new Dynamite comics he's always just in the background like staffage (but okay- how do you portray sign language well in comic form?) I want to explore what makes him tick even when he becomes mute due to the mutation (or the trauma- I'm being vague) and for me I can do that better in first person narration. It's my preference and doesn't have to be yours - but go with it - I don't think it will be a detriment to the story.

Since I'm using an OC to delve into the depths of the Labyrinth Clan, those who don't know the 2007 Slave Labor comics or the Dynamite comics will be confused about some of the characters. The new mutants are created in the Slave Labor comics by Sevarius for clients who wanted to have soldiers with some form of "armor". We have Thug- a bipedal crocodile mutant with a crocodile head and tail (hehe- crocodile living in the sewers of New York City). We have the siblings Erin (mutated into a turtle- human with back shell (double hehe- Turtles) And Benny, her little brother. Benny resembles a large anthropomorphic woodlouse (also known as a roly-poly or pillbug). He can roll himself into a ball. - It was unclear how old these new mutants were but Thug will probably be about 42 in 2009 - Erin 24 and Benny 19. I try not to dwell on them too long but how the three of them cope could also be - NO NO, I already have too many storylines - dammit!

Ahh, Fang's real name is Fred Sykes. That's canon.

Then- second storyline is that of Graziella and Nashville. Remember- it's 2009. So Nashville is 16 (since gargoyles age half as fast and he was 10 in 1997). Graziella was eight in 1997 and is now 20/21. They've both changed- they're not the kids they were. They are basically new characters, just as we all develop into different people in 12 years. They're both more broken in their own way than they were as children - and it's getting darker and psychological. But if you know where they're coming from, that's definitely helpful for you - hence the recommendation for Brood of a New Age.

Finally, Enya and Brentwood's storyline. There ... well, I guess I'll surprise you (or traumatize you) at my own pace without spoilers.

So- enjoy:

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Crimson Claws (Prelude 1)

1.

Jürgen Schmidte wiped the fabric of his shirt sleeve with the cloth that the head nurse had given him at station four. Injecting an agitated patient a sedative was always a last resort. But the young woman had simply refused to calm down, lashing out, even giving one of the orderlies a nasty scratch on the face. Even when he had stuck the syringe in her arm, she had let her body rebel on the bed in such a way that he had slipped off and the blood came shooting out of the wound on her arm in a gush until he had managed to make a pressure bandage. That's just what happens sometimes. At least he had been able to inject her with most of the sedative beforehand and she was now sleeping on pink wadded benzo clouds until morning. He was lucky it was only the sleeve but he was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to get the blood out without a stain.

Dabbing the nurse had said. That didn't help. Rubbing didn't either. Maybe the staff down in the basement who worked in the laundry room knew how to get blood out of cotton. That was their job, after all, and it wasn't as if every conceivable bodily fluid or excretion didn't get on bedding or clothing all the time. Should he just put his shirt in a laundry bag and send it downstairs to the dry cleaners? A laundry bag with a big note on it that this was his shirt. Not that any of the other clients would wear a sixty dollar shirt. That would be a little overdressed for a state mental hospital. Not an insane asylum, not a madhouse, not a cuckoo's nest! He had been pushing for the remodeling of facilities - especially his own facility - and the abolition of those disgusting words for his institution had been the first step even before he had abolished electric shocks. He had corrected every patient, every visitor, every employee so many times - the employees, of course, the harshest - until the words were acceptable. Change the narrative, and you change people's perceptions and ultimately their attitudes about something. He believed in that. He had to believe it. How else could he have moved on after his father's death.

And the anxiety attack of the last client was not even the first episode today that had required his intervention. Some of them had been ridiculous or at least unnecessary. Was it the date? Mental hospitals were not the best places for April Fool's jokes. Most staff members were grateful if none of the "funnier-tempered" patients knew it was April Fool's Day. Whereas most patients didn't even keep track of their calendars. Why should they when every appointment, treatment, meeting and session was dictated to them by the staff and they were often even escorted there. Or was it because it was Monday? Also rather unlikely. Every Monday was always a bit of a state of emergency. But now it was just before lunch - hopefully he would find some peace in his office.

He entered his bureau - still rubbing his bloody sleeve discontentedly - and went to his desk where he sat down in his chair. Then he flinched when he heard someone clearing his throat. He looked up- and the strange man he hadn't noticed though his sitting relaxed in one of the chairs in front of his desk smiled smugly.

"Some stains you never get out," he said in a peculiarly contemptuous way, and grinned even wider as he added, "When it gets to be enough stains, you can tell everyone it's a pattern."

"Who are you?" asked Schmidte, trying to calm his racing heart. He wanted to jump up and actually get very loud in the presence of the intruder in his office, in his privacy, in his little kingdom. But his voice was almost a squeak, something inside him curled up in indefinable discomfort because he recognized the voice at the latest at the first words and his memory also caught up at the face. He knew this man - but he had been much younger at that time.

The intruder, whose name was on the tip of his tongue because he knew he should have remembered such an extraordinary name for decades, pursed his lips patronizingly, then slowly stood up and made a theatrical gesture, which was funny but so seriously performed that Schmidke could only stare. It looked like an actor bowing to his audience, not low and humble, but expansive.

"Doctor Anton Sevarius, the one and only. I have not forgotten you but you have forgotten me - that hurts a little but I am not vindictive. After all, I came with a request."

"Sevarius," Schmidke breathed. Someone else - and probably Sevarius himself, for he sat back in the chair, smiling contentedly, and crossed his legs - would have described the tone as reverent. But nothing would have been further from the truth. The whisper with which humans have spoken of their gods since time immemorial was the same whisper they used to talk of demons. Sevarius himself had never given Schmidke any reason to think he was a monster. Not with actions at least. But he had sporadically listened to the conversations his father had had with the young, unadjusted and already then highly arrogant student.

Conversations in which there was no taboo, no morality, no medical code of honor. The most harmless question he had once heard from the next room was how long and with what medication one could keep a patient alive and lucid while removing skin and fatty tissue from his hand and fingers in order to observe the work of muscles and tendons on the motorically functioning subject. And his father - otherwise always overly correct, serious and reserved in his opinion to other colleagues and students had dwelt on it for ten minutes without denouncing the lack of ethics of the question. Now, after years and with his current knowledge, Schmidke of course knew why his father had been able to answer so nonchalantly. Why such questions fascinated him more than disgusted him. And that was precisely why he wanted Sevarius out of his office, out of his facility, preferably out of the entire state, as quickly as possible.

"What do you want from me? I have my next appointment soon."

"No reunion happiness among colleagues?" Sevarius frowned briefly-then corrected himself. "Not a colleague, I remember. Regrettable. You would have made at least a second-rate geneticist. There aren't that many of those either."

"What do you want from me? What do you want here?" repeated Schmidke.

"How nice of you to ask!" warbled Anton. "I'm starting a new project. Very interesting, very important. And with prospects for future ventures that just electrify me." He brought his hands together, intertwined his fingers, and chuckled cheerfully at the last words.

"What have I got to do with it?" asked Jürgen coldly.

"Nothing at all! That's the good thing. I'm doing you a favor by showing up here. I'm taking some of the lunatics off your hands-"

"They're not lunatics!" hissed Schmidke, and Sevarius rolled his eyes without losing his patronizing smirk.

"Fine, let's call them patients. For my project, I need test subjects. How many are housed here? Two hundred? And this place will have waiting lists like any other asylum. I'll take twenty of your little horses off your hands, and you'll have new space in the stable."

Schmidke frowned in disgust. He didn't care that it had to look like a snarl. He couldn't even describe the abhorrence that just gripped him and his voice was a threatening murmur.

"The patients in this facility are not livestock to be bought from anyone. They are here to be healed or at least get better and no one is going to leave this facility for whatever 'project'."

He put quotation marks around the word project with his hands and because of this gesture his counterpart looked annoyed for the first time.

But only for a moment before his features smoothed out again and he leaned back in his chair as if he were in control of the situation and as if the conversation was not yet over. But he was the facility director here - HE alone decided when a conversation was over.

Schmidke stood up and pointed with the flat of his hand to the door.

"Have a good day. It's a pity you had to come here for nothing. May you have a good life, Doctor Sevarius."

"... I was ... probably under the misapprehension that my good relationship with your father would make you obliging. I have other options, but I came to you first out of kindness."

"Out of kindness? That must be a very flexible term if you mean that I would consider it friendly if you demanded patients as if they were bargaining chips. Whatever you think is being negotiated for here."

"Your father would have known," said Sevarius. "I was so enthusiastic about him, but the apple fell pretty far from the trunk." Schmidke ignored the insult, which, unbeknownst to Sevarius, was actually a huge compliment. To make it clear once again that he had no intention of continuing the conversation, he took a stack of files from his desk and leafed through them without really reading.

"Enthusiastic about my father?" he said casually. "I don't know. He was lifelong-"

"For that very reason."

"If you only knew," muttered Schmidtke, adjusting his glasses.

When he looked up, he saw Sevarius grinning. The strange doctor tapped his nose as if that should tell him something. Which it did. He lowered his documents.

"Shit."

"Ha!" Sevarius laughed. "Yes, Schmidke. I can tell by your chalky Sauerkraut face that you're now ready to negotiate."

Now Jürgen Schmidke's voice was just a whisper again. This time the fear was completely justified. "What do you want here? There are records of every client. People who would miss them, or at least the state who would ask questions. You want twenty? Even four or five patients who would disappear only with massive manipulation of the documents would be a risk. For me AND you."

Sevarius thought, scratching his chin with a grin. Then he shrugged his shoulders.

"Okay- but I wouldn't have wanted to come all this way for nothing. Not a dozen, but maybe two? Just one or two of your occupants. Someone no one will miss. Not too unstable. Do you have anything physically healthy and obedient to offer?"

Schmidke jumped out of his chair.

"My father didn't flee Germany with us back then to-"

"Oh, no half-truths, please, when we both know that I'm in the picture. He fled - but from whom? Not from the Nazis, wasn't he? And that he had fooled the whole world with this story about Brazil. Even though he spent his last thirty years as a professor at Harvard. I had such wonderful conversations with your father. I really take credit for the fact that he mentored me even after the committee dismissed my dissertation as a madness. Private. Such fascinating conversations. He was - inspiring in every way."

"I'll bet he was. Madness can be contagious."

"Oh, that's the professional talking!" mocked Sevarius, putting both hands to his chest without a trace of embarrassment. "Although I don't presume to ever have a similar reputation to your father. People will still be telling each other his horror stories a hundred years from now. I was the last of his students. And the only one to whom he confided who he really was."

"You believe in tales. My father was a senile old bastard with no moral conscience."

"That's why I liked him so much. And you have to keep repeating the senile thing over and over again if you want to keep up your charade of my-father-is-not-who-he-said-he-was-to-you."

"What do you want?"

"What I've already said. I want subjects. Healthy, without relatives. Easy-to-lead-."

"Healthy? You do realize you're in a mental institution here."

"You and I both know that the whole spectrum of mental disorders is admitted here. From depressed housewives to psychotic mass murderers. From chronic onanists to Hannibal Lecter wannabe cannibals. You can keep the onanists, mass murderers and cannibals. Physically healthy, with a condition that is well manageable."

"So basically you want guinea pigs that don't belong here anymore?"

"Exactement."

Jürgen Schmidke stood up and turned to the window front. He looked out over the park-like grounds where a few inmates were wandering around, enjoying the mild sunny weather. He fancied himself a philanthropist. The exact opposite of his ill-fated father. Had he known who he had been - in Germany? No - for the first 22 years of his life he had not. His father had really been able to deceive the whole world. Even his own child, who believed he had been a small guard in the Ausschwitz concentration camp. Just an overseer. Yes - so were good lies knitted. There always had to be a little truth in it. And in a strangely caring way, his father had protected him with it.

Even after his death, when suddenly strange men came and took away the corpse and the coffin. They even called the corpse DOKTOR. Their respect and reverence with which they handled the dead body went far beyond piety for the deceased. Their leader called himself Heinrich and shook his hand as if he had to know what was going on. Schmidtke was no fighter and no brawler - but when he tried to stop the men, Heinrich had wrestled him to the ground with a single move. And when he realized that Schmidtke knew nothing - nothing at all - he had laughed. And whispered the terrible truth to him in a hushed voice. The truth about his father, Josef Schmidke, who was never Josef Schmidke. A false name for a false life. And when he read in the newspaper a few days later that the spectre of countless European camp inmates had been found dead in Bertioga, Brazil, Jürgen Schmidke - who alone felt nauseous when he thought of that other last name - knew that it was all true.

He - blessed with a generous inheritance but still in college - had changed majors not a day later. His father - the Harvard professor with the clearly falsified curriculum vitae and certificates - had been cold, taciturn and reserved. Now Jürgen realized that this had only been a cover. His real father had been insane - the foreign father from the concentration camp. The man who had passionately spun the yarn from which the nightmares of thousands of survivors were woven – until today and beyond. And he would have turned over in his grave (was someone like him ever buried normally?) at the specialty his son had then taken. Two very good reasons to go into psychiatry. In the hope of helping people. For more than twenty years he had thought of himself as a humanitarian. He had prescribed pills - well-tested pills - where others still unquestioningly used electric shocks. He had introduced talking therapies and relied on more costly long-term psychotherapies where others locked their patients in padded cells and threw away the key.

But now - and with horror to be shown the truth about his own self - Jürgen Schmidke saw his own reflection in the window pane and knew he would give Sevarius what he wanted. A monster in the mirror - one in the back, he thought, as he looked at the shadowy figure behind him through the glass pane. How he slouched self-righteously in the armchair with his hands folded. He could guess what his father had seen in the then dishonorably exmatriculated student, who was probably of a similar age to his real son. A promising young geneticist. A protégé. A "son" - more intelligent and empowered by moral depravity than the original - who carried on the unholy legacy built up in Germany.

No - Jürgen Schmidke was not one of the good ones. He was a cowardly pig who didn't even want to save his own skin but only his current, quite good life. Of course, he could have convinced himself that he was doing it for the patients. But he was too much of a psychologist and psychiatrist not to know that he was really only doing it for himself. Not for the poor sheep under his care - some truly dangerous - but most just ... different and confused. But it benefited the others. The ones Sevarius wouldn't get. So they could be stabilized. To be able to return to their families or at least to society without being a danger to themselves and others. That they could live - others would have to ... he didn't even want to think about it. The monster at his back cleared its throat and snapped Schmidke out of his racing thoughts.

He turned around and raised his hand with an outstretched index finger. Give as little as possible, get as much as possible in return. "You'll get one. A single one." Sevarius shrugged and grinned. "One is better than none. I'll get the other subjects from other sources. It's less conspicuous that way anyway."

Schmidke strode to his filing cabinet and pulled open a drawer. His fingers flew over the files. Who - who could he give to Sevarius? Not a woman! No telling what this "doctor" would do to a woman. At the same time, Sevarius would notice it immediately and would probably follow up with consequences, if he really did give him sick or mentally retarded inmates.

Physically healthy, without relatives, easy to lead, no longer belonging here. With the words he let wander in his head, a name had immediately come into his mind. He slammed shut the drawer with A - F of the current patients and pulled open the lowest R - Z. Just to buy time for his thoughts.

Why him? asked his conscience - what he thought was his conscience. Why this man? He was decent, good, innocent in a highly rare and strange way for men. Perhaps a little simple but not because of mental incapacity but because of his lack of knowledge about the world and his fears. How could one blame a man who had spent the first fifteen years of his life under the thumb of his presumably truly mentally ill father. Almost on his own in the most desolate part of the state, in the woods. Who had read his every wish from his fathers eyes, had been his errand boy, workhorse, whipping boy. To protect his own mother from a beating, as the psychiatrist and psychologist had gotten out of him after years of sessions. This boy had not even been able to read very well when Schmidke had come here fifteen years ago. Slowly - very slowly - he had introduced him to books. Tom Saywer and Huckleberry Finn. Peter Pan. Robin Hood. He was just at the Jungle Book. The first book he had ever asked for. The very fact that he asked for something for himself was a breakthrough. And the theme - a boy in a vast jungle - without barred doors – finding himself. It said so much - about his true wishes and dreams.

Jürgen Schmidke swallowed hard again. He really liked this man. He had been here longer than he had. He was big and strong - but gentle. The last thing spoke for this choice in this situation - he could not give someone to Sevarius who had no conscience, no moral compass. This patient did have one - but he had not yet learned to assert himself against someone more dominant. Maybe he would learn it in the outside world. Middle drawer G - Q. At M, he pulled out the admittedly rather thin file.

"I have someone here ... who might fit your requirement profile," Schmidke said coldly, feeling so miserable. "He's 36 and suffers from a moderately severe case of autophobia and post-traumatic stress disorder."

"Autophobia? Fear of oneself?" asked Sevarius with a wrinkled nose, showing that psychiatry was really not his specialty. Schmidke shook his head.

"Afraid of being on your own. I think that will play into your hands."

"Ah-we have a jailbird here who likes to be imprisoned and dominated-that has a nice ring to it."

"Let's not call it dominated. This young man needs firm structure, daily routines and instructions. Give him tasks and he'll do them - no matter what. Tell him what to do and how, and he will try to do it to the best of his ability. This patient is highly receptive to any kind of control. If someone shows him a way, he will go that way. Put a leader in front of him and he will follow."

"Is he German, too?" sneered Sevarius, and Schmidke stifled the biting comment he had on his lips and handed the file to his father's last favorite, who opened it with an amused grin.

"Is that last name a spoof?"

The warden didn't acknowledge the question, so Sevarius continued reading. He skimmed the brief biography and medical history and his smile grew wider and wider.

"He really sat next to his mother's corpse for a week?"

"When a landslide happened in his hometown in 1976, his mother was trapped under boulders that fell on their hut. His father left and-"

"Let me guess - he said 'boy, stay with your mother'. And he stayed."

"And he stayed," Schmidke repeated bitterly. "Eight days until the rescue teams arrived. His mother probably died on the very first day. In the first few minutes after his father left. Her legs were crushed and the boy wouldn't have been able to reach the wounds to treat them."

"Anyone else would have run away. The boy must have been pretty under his father's thumb," Servarius muttered, looking at the photo on the first page. The house - or rather the hut - was completely smashed and half buried. Only one corner of it was still standing.

"What did he drink and eat for so long? For eight days."

"Drank - probably rainwater that ran into the house. And eating ... the rescue team found dozens of rats next to the child and the body. He probably ate anything ... animals that tried to get at his mother. It was summer and she-"

"-was available, rotting meat that he didn't touch. Or did he?"

Sevarius' eyes met Schmidtke's, who had never had to struggle so hard not to vomit.

Schmidke winced as Anton Sevarius laughed loudly and dramatically. "- Interesting case. I think it's understandable that something like that would send you to the nuthouse," the monster speculated with a smile and Schmidke had to stop himself from running over the mouth of his age-mate.

"And daddy?" his father's buddy asked.

The head of the institution sniffed disparagingly. "Tragedy of fate - as he was trying to get help, he slipped while climbing down the slope and cracked his skull. Less than four hundred yards from the house - if the boy hadn't been the way he was, he would have found him. But as it was ... he followed his father's last orders. He even attacked the paramedics when he tried to get them away from his mother."

"Submissive AND loyal without too much brain. I can work with that."

Schmidke took a deep breath. He didn't think this patient had little brain. He was simply calm. And careful. And dependent. The psychiatrist was deeply ashamed. This man deserved ... least of all to be thrown to someone like Sevarius. Least of all. At the same time, however, a fiber in Schmidke's mind thought that this was precisely why he could get out of this. That this person could escape Servarius - whatever he had planned for him. This man - who had long since ceased to be a patient for Schmidke - had the strength to survive things that would kill others. There was something about him ... a ... resilience to suffering that some doctors never develop their whole lives.

Maybe it was numbness, Schmidke thought. This man had lived and worked here for twenty years. He took care of the other patients. He cleaned those who soiled themselves and their rooms with their own excrement, he had held the heads of those who vomited uncontrollably, damn it, last year he had helped Schmidke cauterize the tongue of a woman who had bitten her own tongue before she bled to death. Schmidke remembered the case of a fourteen-year-old girl whose family had been burned in a fire and whose hands had been mutilated as a result. This battered child had masturbated day and night - despite her burn gloves. Until her private parts were sore and raw. Then this man had tended to her. He had nothing but time - and he had given it to her. Apart from nights when she had been tied to her bed in her room, he had held her hands almost constantly for two years so that she wouldn't touch herself. Calmed her down, talked to her. Although Schmidke didn't think that talking had helped her, because the guy wasn't much of a talker. It was the quiet, unobtrusive presence of this man. He didn't ask for anything, he was just there - like a guardian spirit. Or a pet. It was easy to open up to his pet.

This man - without education, without property, without family - had a gift. He could heal. Simply by being there - and if the other person accepted it. Anyone he could heal but himself. Maybe it was good that he got out of here. New challenges, new impulses - as much as they would put him to the test.

.

Henry's eyes lifted and he grinned his typical cramped smile. His hands, also cramped due to the spasticity, twitched excitedly and mush ran out of one corner of his mouth as he struggled to get the word "Daktor" out. Only then did I notice that he was not looking at me. I lowered the bowl of porridge and turned around in my chair in the lounge and dining room as Doctor Schmidke came in and was immediately besieged by two or three other patients.

I turned to Henry.

"He doesn't usually come here at lunchtime. He knows that just after lunch everyone is psyched. Want some more?", I asked, and Henry shook his skinny head in probably painfully ticked-off motions. He was not a good eater. But who was, when he had not only spent his life in an insane asylum for quadruple homicide but was also additionally stricken with multiple sclerosis at the end of his life?

I took the towel that I had put in the collar of his T-shirt and wiped his mouth.

My gaze fell on Julia, who had stopped cradling the little doll in her arms. In one of the few obviously lucid moments, she puffed out her full black lips and said:

"Schmidke is showing people around again. It's driving the kids crazy."

I nodded without turning around again. Doctor Schmidke was a good man. He should brag a little about his facility. Ever since he'd taken the reins here fifteen years ago, this had been the best institution in the state. Not that I had much to compare it to, but I heard stories from other inmates. From the staff. And where in my first years here, under the previous director's leadership, I had been tried to be cured with far too strong experimental drugs and sporadic electric shocks, with Schmidke this had stopped immediately. Sometimes I didn't know whether the individual and group therapies were really more healing than the cruder methods - but it wasn't as if I wanted to be cured. I scraped the last of the porridge out of the bowl and put the spoon in my own mouth, at which Julia and Henry both mouthed in disgust.

"What? Food is food."

" Misärrrr," Henry croaked with a grin, and I grinned too.

"Someone who's never had money can't be a miser. I'm cost efficient - that's all." I licked the spoon with relish and hung it on the tip of Henry's nose, who rolled his eyes indignantly. Pursing his lips with difficulty, unable to use his hands, he tried to blow his new appendage away. At which Julia and I chuckled.

"Yu gais ar ashols," Henry gurgled, his spastic body shaking under his laughter, which caused the spoon to fall. I caught it before it could fall clattering to the floor and then saw the neatly polished dark shoes on the linoleum beside me.

"Klaus?"

I sat up. Julia and even Henry looked up at the doctor with wide eyes. He was standing next to me, a file and a white envelope in his hands. Usually the doctor often smiled when he faced me, but not today. He looked tired and unhappy as he nodded to Julia and Henry, took a step back and pointed with the palm of his hand at the person behind him. A brown-haired, somehow shifty-looking man, who - in contrast to many other visitors - didn't seem to feel uncomfortable at all in this environment. Which made me suspect that I was about to be introduced to an professional.

"This here is ... Doctor Anton Sevarius. He ... has an offer to make you, Klaus."

"To me?"

"Dear friend," the strange doctor chirped with a strangely affected tone that I somehow associated with an actor. He raised a hand as if it were full of good gifts. "-This is going to be the chance of a lifetime. I'm going to get you out of here."

"Out of here?" I looked from Henry to Julia, who had nervously started cradling her doll again. Which indicated that she wasn't about to be with us anymore.

"I-I'm a patient here." I murmured, feeling like I'd been hit on the head.

"Klaus," Schmidtke said, and I looked at him. He smiled but that smile was worrisome. He seemed smaller to me. But so did most people. I was almost six feet tall. "You haven't belonged here for a long time. I ... kept you as long as I could - but at government expense, it's difficult. The auditors are looking at us more closely than they used to."

I wanted to jump up, scream at him and this strange doctor that there had to be a mistake here. That I had to stay here, required healing, might never be healed. Just at the thought that something would change for me, my heart began to race. But I resisted the urge to make a scene. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Carl and Elias loitering nearby, eyeing me. Sometimes I forgot who I was - and who they were. But I realized that no matter how much I helped and no matter how normal I acted, they always knew who was a patient and who was a caregiver. They would pounce on me if I appeared to be a danger to the doctor and his guest. That's why I cleared my throat strained and tried to stay calm. The doctor was a good man, he would be receptive to arguments.

"I-I do work. You said just last week, thanks to me, you save yourself nurses. I- I serve food to patients who don't eat on their own, I diaper them, clean them and shower them. I do cleaning and make beds. And instead of salary, I receive therapies and live here. I can calm some patients where the staff cannot. You said I was important. You said I was valuable."

The doctor puckered his lips unhappily. "You are valuable, Klaus. But ..."

"If it's about the room-. I-I can sleep in the attic. I- I don't need much space."

"We both know that's not the right thing to do. You're healthy. It's not right to keep you here with the whole world open to you."

"I'm not healthy! And I don't want the world!"

"You are as healthy as you can get. Your fears are a result of being isolated in here. Like being afraid of driving when you haven't done it for a long time."

Now I did stand up, slowly, with wobbly legs. Carl and Elias had approached and looked at me but the doctor indicated to them to stay away. I looked out of the window, trembling. Out of the window with the bars and the wire mesh in front of it. What should I do without bars and wire mesh that told me I was safe? From the world outside.

"I-I can't go out there. It-it's-I can't. Jürgen, I beg you."

"Afraid the sky is going to fall on your head?"

I looked at the other doctor again, who was smirking at me, apparently taking in my height, and seemed pleased. How was I going to explain to Schmidke's strange guest what was wrong with me? Why I was here? Or did he already know everything? If this doctor, as he had said, wanted to "get me out of here," then he probably knew everything there was to know. That's why I kept it simple.

"I-I can go outside. To the park. But-where would I go? I don't have anything out there. And - this world- is so big. My father is dead. He used to tell me what to do. And in here, the doctors and the staff tell me. What am I supposed to do when no one tells me what to do?"

"You do it yourself!" cried Julia, lifting her eyes from her dolly, standing up and coming to me. She was quite far away although she was facing me. "You yourself, my darling. My gold nugget. The apple of my eye! My little boy. You yourself dance on the rainbow of your own happiness. You can do anything you want." She pulled me in her clinging grip and began to cradle me even though I was two heads taller than her. As she would have done with the child she had drowned herself. But sometimes she still saw it. In the nurses. In some patients. In me. But with her madness, she overrode my burgeoning panic attack. I grabbed her arms and smiled at her. She smiled back maniacally.

I gently stroked her head of short-cropped hair. "Thank you. Mommy, that was sweet of you. Can you get me something to drink. A Pepsi?"

"Of course, sweetheart. Mommy will get you anything you want. Even the stars from the sky." With hurried steps, she set out to get a Pepsi, which wasn't even available here.

The strange doctor - what was his name? - had watched the spectacle with a thoughtful grin.

"My dear ... colleague," the new doctor said, sounding absolutely as if the word colleague gave him trouble." - Hasn't even explained the details of my offer yet. You would not only work for me. You would, of course, continue to be cared for by me. At my facility."

I looked confusedly at Schmidtke, who glared unhappily at Servarius for a moment. Then he nodded with a sourpuss expression.

"Of course!" the new doctor assured me enthusiastically. "Quite intensely. In my facility you can live, eat, we would have sessions every other day. On the side, you care for the other patients-just like here. The spectacle just now, was enough to prove your worth. Interview successfully completed."

"Interview?" I laughed out loud at that crazy word.

Never before had I had a job interview but I knew, from watching TV, that they didn't work out that way.

"It wouldn't change much for you at all, Klaus, I can call you Klaus, can't I? Saying your last name alone would be bad juju- which of course isn't your fault but we dont want to jinx it, huh? But honestly - if nothing at all changes in your condition, I'll accept that. I'm not one of these newfangled doctors who can't accept when there's no improvement for some conditions. You can live in my facility for years under my care without me ever turning my back on you. I always need good caregivers."

"I see."

"Because nothing is government funded with me. Everything private.- And if I list you as an employee, no one will ever ask questions."

"Really?""

"Really," Anton Servarius said, lifting the envelope in the air. "So, Klaus- I have your discharge papers here. You have to leave here, but there are two different ways of leaving. You have a choice. One: get out of there without support. Into the big strange world without a-" he pointed at Julia who had just gone to get something to drink for me and was now already running after another patient because she saw her child in him. "- without a mommy. And without a daddy to tell you when to go left and when to go right. Or the other way - with me. Gosh, I have no problem giving you small-step instructions. I LOVE bossing others around. So - what's the deal? The big strange world? Alone? Or a life rudimentarily similar to before, in safety, with clear rules - under the loving wing of Anton Sevarius. What will it be?"

.

It took less than five minutes to pack my few belongings and clothes into a plastic bag. I looked around my sparse side of the room, grabbed the Jungle Book, which I had only been able to read halfway, and turned to Henry, who was seated in his wheelchair and not looking at me.

"I'd stay if I could, you know that," I said, feeling terrible guilt. Who would see that Henry was clean now? Who would see that he was eating? He ate so slowly, none of the nurses or orderlies had patience for it. No one had the patience to decipher what he was saying with his slurred speech. What must it be like to be mentally lucid and no one understood what you were saying? Then again ... in an asylum, few people cared what you said.

Henry's lucid eyes returned my gaze and even with his face distorted by the illness, not master of his few muscles, he made a meaningful roll of his eyes, slurped up the saliva that had collected in his mouth and swallowed it audibly. Before he spoke.

"You'r ang idiod. Yo havnd don anyting anyet yo led youselv be lockd up ere. You'r lucky te Creep Doctor ish takin you. You'll ged out ofte syshtem. Yocan learn do becom normal and find awife, hav children. Whide house with a garden fence and all that."

I chuckled. Even though I was terribly sad and even distraught about having to leave, I refused to break down in front of Henry. He made it easy for me to maintain the illusion of gaiety.

"You mean house with a white picket fence. Me? And a wife?"

"Or a hushband - I've sheen theway you ogle mei ass when you wash me."

I gasped in feigned indignation, pressing both hands to my chest as if Henry had stabbed me in the heart. Gestures often said more than words. I was practiced at speaking with my body.

"I've been found out! Damn," I whispered just for good measure.

I hugged him as hard as a man of his age and health could stand, and I felt his gimpy arms go around me despite his pain, and a quivering breath escape his body. We both felt the sharp teeth of loss, I supposed. I had no family left. Henry and the others had been my family. Lots of loony uncles and aunts and nieces and nephews. I mustn't think about it too much, or they'd have to drag me out of here by my arms and legs.

Then I went outside without looking back. There was a dark, expensive car outside - old but shiny. With Doctor Sevarius and Jürgen Schmidke.

"Your book, doctor," I said.

"Keep it, it's yours."

I smiled and bowed my head, deeply melancholy and deeply grateful. Unshed tears stung behind my eyes.

Jürgen Schmidke shook my hand and pulled me then into a hug. I froze at the intimate touch. I hadn't been hugged for years, apart from the clutches of other patients I had helped with transfers or who had been in an agitated state and had simply clung to someone. And the fact that I was being hugged by someone - a man, my own doctor of many years - was absolutely disturbing.

So I just held still and listened to what the doctor said as he lifted his head and whispered:

"I'm so sorry. I wish you all the happiness in the world."

What else could the doctor have meant but that he was sorry to have to push me into this strange world. I nodded as if in a stupor and got into the car - on the passenger side. I had never been allowed to ride shotgun before. I rarely came along on the strictly supervised trips and had always been in the back between the other patients where I had felt a minimum of safety. They were madmen, but somehow my family, my pack and taking care of the others had distracted me from his own anxiety. I didn't like being outside, I didn't need being outside and had only come along on the advice of my doctors. As the car drove off, I wanted to cry. I hugged the book, which was now mine, and ignored the smug and ominous grin of Sevarius as he glanced sideways.

"You'll be better off in my facility, Klaus," Anton Sevarius assured me. "I will look after you. With you as my employee and my patient."

"Thank you very much, sir."

My life changed on April 1, 1995.