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Lord of the Asylum

1. Why I’m the Way I Am

I guess I should start this story off right from the beginning of my life. That way, maybe you’ll feel sorry for me and you won’t just think of me as some kind of evil monster for doing the things I’ve done. My name’s William Tyler and this is going to be like the story of my life. Everything I’m going to write about in here is really true, and it all happened exactly like I’m telling it. I think you’ll see that I’ve had a hard life compared to most people. I’m not just trying to make excuses. I really have had it pretty bad. I heard my sexy little lawyer saying in court one time that maybe it was all the unfortunate circumstances in my life that made me the way I am. So maybe the things I’ve done weren’t really my fault after all.

I’ll start my sad story way back when I was five cause that’s as far back as I can remember. My brother and sister and I were always hungry, and mostly we were left by ourselves with nobody watching over us. Our house was also really cold, and when we got sick, there was no medicine to take, and without much to eat and no medicine, I got sick a lot. When I was five, I ended up catching pneumonia really bad and I almost died. I probably would have died if our caseworker lady hadn’t called for an ambulance. Families as messed up as ours need to have their own caseworkers assigned to check up on them and make sure the kids are getting enough food and stuff. I don’t even remember anymore what that caseworker lady looked like, but I remember that, when she checked on us, she would sometimes have some healthy snacks in her big old purse – cereal bars and fruit and stuff like that – and she would give us things to eat. She was a very nice lady.

I guess the caseworker lady found me almost dying and called someone. I woke up in the hospital hooked up with this tube running in through my

nose and down my throat. I also had tubes with needles going into both my arms. And there was a machine by my bed that made little beeping noises. The machine had a little green light that bounced up and down. I pretended it was my own personal robot, and I even named it and talked to it. But that wasn’t because I’m nuts. Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not crazy. I have never been crazy, no matter what lies I told in court. I only talked to the hospital machine because I was bored and there was nobody else to talk to. That’s because nobody came to visit me for the first few days after I woke up. Finally, my mom showed up and stayed for about two minutes.

“Listen, Willy, I’m gonna have to leave for a few months,” she told me. “Me and Bart’s gonna go down to Miami – get out of this damn cold for a while.” Bart was her boyfriend at the moment.

“Can I come, too,” I pleaded, trying not to cry.

“No, you can’t stay with me anymore. That caseworker bitch says they’re placing you with your grandma. You remember Grandma?”

“Yeah, sure.” As soon as she said I was going to my grandma’s, I quit begging to go with her because I loved going to Grandma’s. She always had plenty of food to eat, and even a TV. She watched some really boring old-lady shows, but at least she let me sit in the same room with her to watch the shows, too. And she never locked me in the bedroom for two or three days, like Mom always did, with nothing to eat or drink and no bathroom till I had to poop in my pants. Grandma’s house was just fine with me.

If I could have just stayed there at Grandma’s house without ever having to go to school, I think everything might have been okay. But everything didn’t turn out okay. One thing about eating every day is that it makes you grow. My Grandma was very tall for an old lady – like over six feet I think. And she told me that my dad was probably this one guy Mom went with for a few weeks – a guy who was also very tall. I guess I was destined to become a giant. By the time I was in fourth grade, I was already six feet tall and very large-boned. That’s the same two words my principal always used when she wrote up police reports about me – “large-boned” – like I was some kind of dinosaur.

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What happened was that, since my mom never bothered to put me into kindergarten, I started out a year behind everyone else in school, and the school counselor said that, emotionally and mentally, I was a slow developer. And since I was so big for my age, I didn’t look like I was just one year older than the other kids. It looked like I should already be in middle school. And then they kept me in first grade for three years. Man, was that embarrassing! By the time I got to third grade, I was taller than Mrs. Wellborn, my teacher. She was the only elementary teacher I ever had who seemed to really care about me, and she was the one who finally taught me how to read and write. All the other teachers became frustrated with me because I couldn’t seem to sit still and concentrate. They were always sending me to the office for “being disruptive” or “being too noisy,” so I was never able to spend much time in the regular classroom.

Then I was in 4th grade two years in a row, and both of my 4th grade teachers were terrible. Those two years of school, I quit going very often. My grandma really loved us and stuff, but she was too old to watch us carefully, and she was sick a lot. If they called her from school to tell her I hadn’t come that day, she would talk to me whenever I came home that night, but that’s about all she could do. I knew I could do just about anything I wanted and get away with it. Grandma said I was strong-willed like my mama.

I never officially made it past 4th grade before I got locked up. I was already 12 years old by then and about six-and-a-half feet tall, plus I already weighed about 250 pounds. After that, they always had me in alternative centers for “endangering others” and stuff like that. At the alternative centers, there were mostly just teachers who yelled in my face and didn’t act like they cared at all.

But there was this one guy – Mr. Jeffries for U.S. History – and he always tried to help us. He gave us fun projects and made sure we got good grades. He even started a football team for us, and we could practice during our study-hall hour. He gave up his conference hour time to coach us then. Of course I was the star player because I was so huge. I was what is called a “tackle” and it was my job to tackle the guys on the other team who were trying to run with the ball. I did my job well – maybe even too well. The other kids gave me a

nickname – “The Executioner” – because I tackled pretty hard. That was the most fun I ever had in school. But it didn’t last long because a kid got his leg broken, and the principal disbanded the team right after that. I’m sorry to say that it was me who hit the kid who got hurt, but I didn’t hurt him on purpose. I was just tackling him because that was my job on the field.

2. Juvenile Prison Life

By the time I was 13, I had already been sent to a “juvenile facility” – in other words, a prison for kids. They called the place “Meadowlands,” as if it was some beautiful country resort, but it was a horrible place – shabby, cold and brutal. I was sent there because I hurt some guy in the alternative center – not the football kid whose leg I broke. It was some other kid who was stupid enough to disrespect me in front of my peers. Him I hurt on purpose.

Because I was so big for my age (especially for my mental age back then before I developed mentally), I think my peers and teachers expected me to act more mature. When I would start goofing around and acting like a little kid, they would always get ticked off and say disrespectful things to me. Most of the boys in there were several years older than me, including the ones I hurt, so I guess, to them, I was acting like a juvenile fool.

But I think my biggest problem in life is not just my size but the fact that I’ve always been way too strong for my age. You might be thinking that’s a good problem to have, but it’s not a good thing for someone like me – someone who lacks self control (according to my head doctors). It’s fine to be extra strong when I want to open a tight jar of jelly or something, but usually it just causes problems. Like, if I’m the one who closes the jelly jar or turns off the water spigot, then nobody else can open it and they all get mad at me. Also, lots of times when I’m trying to work on something, I break it because I turn it too hard or squeeze it too tight in my hands. I’m not trying to show off; I just do things the way

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it seems natural to do them, and things often break – including, sometimes, the people around me.

The first time they threw me in the Meadowlands facility it was, like I said, because I was horsing around with some guys at the alternative center, and one of them said something about me that I didn’t appreciate. I’ll admit that I jumped on the kid as soon as he said that, but I didn’t really intend to hurt him as badly as I did. What happened was that, when I fell down on top of him, the kid got some broken ribs, a crushed kidney, and a ruptured spleen. They had to do a surgery to remove his spleen and the damaged kidney. My lawyer told me about all that later after he had seen the doctor’s report. So I got two years inside. Then, instead of getting out early for good behavior like most kids do, I got six months added because of some things I did while I was locked up. There were a few fights, but the thing that finally got me time added was when I escaped.

3. Escaping from Meadowlands

Normally, there’s no way to escape from places like Meadowlands because they have these twenty-foot-high fences all around, with barbed razor wire on top and guards everywhere. But I managed to escape during a visit to the dentist’s office. They always take us off campus for visits to the eye doctor or the regular doctor or the dentist whenever we’re sick or whatever. They also feed us three times every day. That’s one of the good things about being inside – that they take good care of you and all – but it’s pretty much the only good thing about the place.

Like I said, they had taken me to the dentist because I had a toothache. I wasn’t too happy about someone drilling on my teeth. I had been to the dentist once when I was little, and I knew it was gonna hurt real bad. But that’s not the real reason I escaped. I’m not that much of a wimp when it comes to pain.

No, the main reason I ran is because I was missing my grandma and feeling sort of depressed. Don’t get the wrong idea about me. I wasn’t like some little baby, crying for his grandma all the time. But I was worried about her cause she was so old, and I thought she had gone missing. What had happened was, the last few times when I had tried to call home to talk to her, the phone was disconnected. I figured it was maybe just because she had forgotten to pay the bill, but this had gone on for over two months.

Then my prison caseworker told me that my grandma was no longer living there, and no one knew where she had gone. When the parole department had tried to go to her house to check things out and see if her home could be approved for me to stay there after I was released, they found out my grandma didn’t live in the same place anymore. Some other people had already moved in, and nobody seemed to know what had happened to my grandma. My sisters were already living in foster homes by that time, and they told the caseworker that they didn’t know where Grandma was either. For all I knew she might have been dead. So I ran off from the dentist’s office because I was wanting to get out of jail to see if I could find Grandma to make sure she was okay.

At the dentist’s office, I told the guards that I wanted to use the bathroom, so they escorted me to the men’s room and waited outside. The dentist’s office was on the fourth floor of an old building, and there was a window in the bathroom. It was a long drop down to the alley below, but after I managed to get the window open, I saw there was a little ledge outside the window. I got out onto the ledge on the toes of my shoes and, holding onto the bricks above me with my fingertips, I crept sideways across the ledge until I got to the fire escape. I went down that as fast as I could without making a lot of noise.

Then I ran like crazy for six or seven miles without stopping – all the way to Grandma’s old house. Sure enough, the people living there didn’t have any idea where she was living now (or even if she was still living at all). But they gave me the address of the person who owned the old house, and he lived nearby, so I ran over there. When the man answered the door, I recognized him because he had

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come by to collect the rent a few times from Grandma when I lived with her.

“I used to live in that little house you got over on 49th Street,” I told him. “I’m trying to find my grandma. You know where she lives now?”

“You mean Luvee Tyler? Yeah, she’s living over in the Rankin Projects now. I’ll get her address for you.” He looked me up and down while he talked to me because I was still wearing my Meadowlands prison garb – a faded blue jumpsuit with “INMATE” printed in big black letter down the front. But I guess the old guy wasn’t a snitch because he just told me where Grandma was and I left. Some people know enough to mind their own business.

By the time I found my grandma’s new apartment, the sky was already starting to get very dark. She was home, but she answered the door cautiously, not taking off the security chain at first. Grandma doesn’t see very well even when it’s light outside. When she figured out it was me, she acted all surprised and worried, but she unlatched the door for me. As soon as I stepped in, she started telling me I had to leave.

“You can’t stay here, Willy. The cops came by here half an hour ago looking for you, and they probably got people on their way over here right now. They’ll get me for harboring a fugitive if they find that I’ve been hiding you here – that’s what the man told me. I’ll lose my rent-free apartment.”

“Grandma, I got nowhere else to go.”

“Go back. Finish up your time. Then maybe we can talk about you coming home … although …” She was shaking her head like she had her doubts.

“Please, Grandma! Can’t I stay just for tonight?”

“I said no, Willy. It’s already cost me a fortune trying to keep you out of jail, and me with arthritis so bad I can hardly move. And now your sisters are skipping school and messing up. I had to let them go to foster homes … I just don’t know if I can take care of any of you guys anymore.”

“Well, can I at least get your new phone number so I can call you?”

“I ain’t got money for no telephone anymore,” she told me. “Now please go!”

I left there pretty sad and dejected, then walked around for a few hours, not even paying attention to where I was going. I was hungry, thirsty, and exhausted, without a dime in my pocket – in fact, without even any pockets in my Meadowlands pants. They were actually more like blue pajama bottoms than pants. Eventually, at about 3:00 in the morning, a cop car pulled up beside me and stopped. I didn’t even try to run, just stood there waiting to be arrested. It may sound strange but I felt kind of glad to see them coming to get me.

“You William Tyler?” One of the cops asked as he got out of his car.

“Yes, Sir,” I replied, lying face down across the front hood with my hands behind my back, just to save him the trouble of slamming me down there. “I just wanted to see my grandma,” I explained as he put the cuffs on me.

“Well, she’ll still be there when you get out, Son,” he said sympathetically.

“I ain’t your son,” I said, but I said it in a defeated voice. There wasn’t any fight left in me.

As soon as I got back inside, they held a level two hearing on me for fleeing apprehension, and I got six months added. Then, after I finally got released, I got in serious trouble again and got sent back almost immediately. I guess I should tell you how that happened.

4. Getting Set Up by My P.O.

After they finally let me out, I had gotten permission to go back to live at Grandma’s and she would have custody of me – just until I finished up my parole, and then I would be old enough to stay on my own. And they assigned me to this parole officer – or P.O. as we call them – and that guy hated me. I thought maybe his negative feelings about me were just because I was twice his size and he was scared of me. Most people I’ve ever known have acted scared of me. I didn’t know for sure why the P.O. hated me at first. But he was always snooping around, checking up on me, trying to get me in trouble. One day I actually caught him

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looking through the garbage in the alley behind my Grandma’s house, trying to find drug evidence maybe. No kidding! I bet he never went to all that trouble for the other kids he had on his list. But he seemed determined to put me back inside. That day I found him digging in my grandma’s garbage can, that’s when I learned why he hated me.

When I asked him why he was grubbing around in our garbage – why he seemed to have it in for me, he said, “I think we both know why you’re getting my special attention, Mr. Tyler,” as if I must know all about it. I had noticed that he always called me “Mr. Tyler,” but with the other boys, he always used their first names.

I started shaking my head. “No, Sir, I have no idea. It’s like you hate me.”

“I don’t hate you, Mr. Tyler. But I do hate your type.”

“My type?”

“You’re a violent felon. You have violence in your blood, and you’ll go through life hurting people … but not any time soon if I can do anything about it.”

“Most of the other guys in Meadowlands had committed at least one violent crime – some a lot worse than what I did,” I told him. But I’m sure he already knew that.

“That boy you assaulted on the football field three years ago was half your size,” he said.

“That was an accident,” I tried to explain.

“Not the way I hear it … And that boy’s father is a friend of mine.”

“If you knew the kid who got hurt, then you have no business being my P.O.,” I said, realizing that I had been right all along about him hating me.

“Well, you go right ahead and file a grievance about that, Mr. Monkey Face. We’ll see how far that gets you.”

From that day on, I understood that he would be out to get me, but there still wasn’t anything I could do about it. I did file a grievance saying that he was out to get me because he knew the kid I hurt, but he denied it and nobody believed me. Then, before long, the P.O. managed to nail me. He had the authority to call me in anytime he wanted, and

he could give me a urinalysis (or U.A. as we always call it for short).

A lot of my buddies on parole figured, if they had just been U.A. tested, they probably wouldn’t get tested again for a few weeks. So right after a U.A., that was usually like a party night where a guy could do pretty much whatever he wanted to do, then have a couple of weeks at least to get his system cleaned out before the next U.A. checkup. But that P.O. of mine was tricky. He called me in for a U.A., then barely two days later, when I had been partying hard and I was still having trouble standing up straight, he dragged me back in for another one. The next day, after totally failing the U.A., I was on my way back to The Meadowlands.

“Tough break, Son,” my P.O. said after he shackled my leg-irons onto the floor of the county van.

“I ain’t your son,” I told him as he slid the van door shut with a bang.

5. Back Inside

This last time when I went back to prison, I was angry and felt like things hadn’t been quite fair, so I guess I behaved worse than ever. This time, whenever, they decided to handcuff me and haul me off to solitary confinement, instead of acting all docile and putting my hands behind my back to let them put the cuffs on, I would back into a corner and keep my hands out of their reach where they couldn’t get a hold of them to put the cuffs on. Whenever one got close, I’d knock him down with a powerful kick. As big as I was, it would take six or seven of the biggest, burliest security officers to get me cuffed. All the other little thugs would be cheering and whistling while I fought off the guards.

But after the first couple of incidents where they had to restrain me forcibly, they switched to a different tactic. Instead of fighting with me, they would simply squirt pepper spray straight into my face as soon as I refused to turn around and offer my wrists. That pepper spray stuff would go

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directly into my eyeballs, up my nose, into my mouth. Of course I tried to jump around, dodge and turn my face away, but they just kept on spraying from all sides till they had soaked me. After that stuff gets in your face, there’s absolutely no more question of fighting or resisting. After being hit with that, a guy can’t do anything but cry like a little girl and beg for water to wash off with.

When I had resisted the old-fashioned way, wrestling and putting up a fight, it made me into a kind of superhero with the other youths. Like I said, all the others would be yelling and hooting, sometimes kicking desks around, getting all rowdy and out of hand. Any person being restrained by force could earn a lot of recognition as a tough guy, especially if he resisted so violently that it required six or seven guards just to restrain him. So it was a sort of status thing. The toughest guys who got dragged out by the biggest gangs of officers developed a solid reputation. And the guards all knew they would get sued if a kid ever got hurt, so they had to be extra careful with us.

But when they started with the pepper spray, everything changed. When a big tough guy like me went out weeping and begging for water, snot and tears dripping all down the front, just begging to be led out like a puppy dog by one skinny little guard, there was no glory at all in that. And the spray never left any marks or injuries, so there was no way we could sue them. A couple of kids had tried, but they lost because, after a couple of hours, their faces weren’t even red anymore. And there were no bruises or cuts to show how bad it had hurt. After getting the spray twice, I never resisted again.

I guess I should admit that there were some good things that came from being inside juvenile facilities so much – things aside from the free food and doctor visits. One good thing was, I became a good reader – not because their teachers were any good … because they weren’t. I just got so bored in there that I started reading all the time, and it got easier and easier. That’s how I found out I was a lot smarter than I ever thought I was, and a lot smarter than anyone else ever thought I was. I’m not an idiot even though most people have always treated me like one. Just because someone’s face looks really weird, like mine, it doesn’t mean he’s stupid.

My last time in Meadowlands, I was what was called a “zero minimum.” That’s what they call the kids who violate parole and get sent back inside. It meant that there was no minimum length of stay. If a kid could behave himself, he could be sent home again after only 30 days in. Most every kid I knew got sent back inside for one reason or another since none of us had been truly rehabilitated.

Rehabilitation in there is such a fake farce. There was an old saying we always used for pretending to be rehabilitated: “You’ve got to fake it to make it,” we always said. The staff inside would make each of us study from this big notebook all about self-correcting our negative behaviors; then they would send us right back home to the same families, the same neighborhoods, the same violent, drugged-up, gang-related friends we had always gotten into trouble with before. What magic did they ever do that was supposed to make us act any differently than we had before? Most of us offenders are sure to get thrown back inside within a couple of months because we leave the facility craving all those things that got us in trouble in the first place. We get out looking for trouble – and in our old familiar neighborhoods, it usually doesn’t take us long to find it.

As you might have guessed, I wasn’t one of the lucky ones who went straight back home after 30 days. I was inside for nearly a year the last time, and the only reason I was finally released is because I had stayed out of trouble for 30 days in a row, and the rule said I could leave if I did that. Then, when I came out, they gave me the same P.O. who had violated me before. I was determined not to let him get me again like he had the last time, but it’s like the old saying says, “The highway to Hell is paved with good intentions.”

6. On the Outside with Frisco

This one guy Frisco, a buddy of mine from my old neighborhood, got released out of Meadowlands a couple of weeks after I did. He looked me up right away since we were always pretty tight. We had

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each other’s backs while we were inside. He had been assigned to the same lousy P.O. I had, so I warned him what the guy was like. But in the end, I guess it wasn’t really the P.O. that Frisco needed to be afraid of … It was me.

I can honestly say that Frisco and I were a good influence on each other in the beginning. We would encourage each other to stay out of trouble, and for about the first time in either of our lives, we were going to school every day and actually doing the assignments. But it was tech school now, not high school or alternative high school. Frisco and I really didn’t want to go back inside. Whenever we would see each other, we started saying this little thing where the first one to talk would ask, “Staying out?” Then the other would answer, “Never a doubt.” Of course, we were talking about staying out of jail. But one day a couple of little peons in our automotive class started asking questions.

“You guys staying out somewhere tonight?” Asked this one boy who looked like he was about twelve. But he had to be at least sixteen to be in that tech school.

“We’ll come too … make it a regular party,” his little pal said. I was shaking my head, so he started talking faster. “I know these girls … course they’re under age, but they’re hot, Man!” After that, Frisco and I quit using the “Staying out?” “Never a doubt.” routine when we were around others.

When we had been out for about two months, we both got called in to the parole office on the same afternoon. We weren’t worried because we hadn’t done anything wrong and we had stayed away from drugs. Hell, we weren’t even smoking cigarettes, just to be on the safe side, since we were under 18 and tobacco was against the law for us. That P.O. could always smell smoke on me from a block away – even if it was only my grandma who had been smoking around me.

A little party had been going on at the parole office before we got there. It was for the birthday of the office supervisor lady and they had a big cake and punch and stuff. More than half of the cake was gone by the time we got there. While we were waiting our turn to go in for our drug U.A., the birthday lady was passing by, and she said, “Why don’t you young gentlemen help yourselves to some of my cake? I sure don’t need to be taking any of

that home with me.” I guess she was referring to the fact that she was kind of chubby.

We both went over and eagerly gobbled down a big piece of cake. There was a long kitchen knife there that they had used to cut the cake with. I don’t know why I did it, but I wiped the icing off the knife’s blade onto a napkin, glanced around to make sure nobody was watching, then quickly leaned over and tucked the knife down into my boot and put my pants leg over it. Frisco glanced around nervously, then looked at me with his eyebrows raised up like he couldn’t believe what I had done.

“Staying out?” He asked quietly, shaking his head.

“Never a doubt … Well, not much of a doubt anyway,” I whispered, grinning.

I was glad nobody saw me take it, and nobody patted me down and found it. Then we both passed our U.A. test as we expected, so we headed home.

We had driven over to our P.O.’s office together in this piece-of-crap car that belonged to Frisco’s sister, Hilda, and we were headed back to her house to return her vehicle. The car was a Chevy Nova, about forty years old. This car must have been kind of blue originally, but now, the only color it had on it was the color of rust, with big splatters of bird poop everywhere. The front hood was actually chained down to the bumper because it wouldn’t stay closed otherwise. Hilda had a boyfriend who was my second cousin, Paolo. Paolo was kind of crazy and mean. He’s the one who had taken a pickaxe and knocked a big hole through the front of her old car’s hood. Then he ran the chain through the hole and padlocked it down to the bumper so nobody in the neighborhood would steal the battery. Frisco and I lived in a kind of bad area for thefts. I’m sure you can imagine how embarrassing it was to drive around in that car. Fortunately, there was so much bird poop and dust on the windows that I don’t think anyone could have recognized us when we were inside it.

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7. At the Party

It was almost six o’clock in the evening by the time we got to Frisco’s house. I was hoping to stay over there because Frisco told me that Paolo had stolen a bunch of cases of beer from a beer truck, and he didn’t mind if we helped him drink them. We figured it was safe to drink some beer because that wouldn’t stay in our systems for more than twenty-four hours. Even if we got called in for another UA a couple of days later, it wouldn’t matter cause alcohol gets completely washed out of your bloodstream a lot quicker than other drugs.

Paolo was already way drunk by the time we got there, and he had smacked Hilda around pretty bad, leaving ugly bruises all over her face. She was crumpled down into one corner of the room, kind of crying quietly. Frisco rushed over to her, scowling at Paolo as he passed by him.

“Hilda, what happened,” he asked her. “Did he hit you again?”

“No, I’m alright. I’m alright,” she said, waving him away.

Frisco turned on Paolo. “What did you do, you son of a b_____? D’you smack my sister around again!?” He screamed at him.

“Take it easy, Kid. Ain’t got nothing to do with you,” he slurred in reply, his words running together drunkenly.

“I asked you a question!” Frisco was shouting even louder.

“You guys here to get drunk or not,” Paolo answered. “Cause if not, you can get the f___ out!”

I put my hand on Frisco’s shoulder and said, “C’mon Man. Chill out. We’ll drink some brews first. Then we’ll go.” I was wanting to get wasted and I didn’t want Frisco overreacting and messing things up. But Frisco shrugged my hand off and pushed me away.

“Don’t start shoving me around, Frisco,” I bellowed, “cause I’ll freakin’ knock you down!” I’m a big guy, and I’m not used to people trying to push me around, not even my best friends.

Looking back on that night, I’m very much ashamed of myself. To start off with, Frisco was just worried about his sister, and he had good reason to be worried. Her face was bruised up pretty bad. But all I was concerned about was making sure Paolo was still going to hook us up with some free beer. Frisco was legitimately mad at Paolo, and now I was starting to make him mad at me.

We started in drinking after that. Or more truthfully I should say I started in drinking because I never saw Frisco take more than one beer, and I never saw him drinking from the one he had. I guess he was too mad to drink, or maybe too worried about what else might happen to his sister.

I remember the first part of that night pretty clearly. A bunch more people started showing up as the night wore on. That’s how it goes in our neighborhood. Whenever someone gets a big stash of something – stolen or otherwise – people start showing up from all over the place and it turns into a big party. There were plenty of people there I didn’t even know, and, when it came to getting smashed, I was way ahead of everyone else – everyone except maybe Paolo.

I remember hearing Hilda shouting loudly at Paolo at one point. She screamed, “I still want to know who that whore was on the phone …. And don’t tell me it was just a friend cause I heard how you were talking to her.” She had gotten up out of the corner by this time and had been drinking some beers herself. Paolo raised his fist as if to strike her again.

“Are you crazy b____? Or just stupid?” He screamed at her with his fist in the air.

Right then, Frisco took a run at Paolo and slammed him against the wall. Paolo was a little bit heavier, but I had seen Frisco box, and he definitely had some skills. If a fight got started, Frisco was likely to prevail, and with all of Paolo’s buddies there drinking his beer, it was very likely that a bunch more people would jump in just for the fun of it as soon as anything started. The last thing I wanted was some big riot to start and the cops to come in. Frisco and I would be on our way back to Meadowlands the next day. So I stepped in and pushed the two of them apart, then kind of forcefully escorted Frisco across the room.

9

“C’mon, Man! Chill out,” I said. “We’re here to drink a few beers and party. We don’t need no cops rushing in here and taking us back to jail. Can’t we just get along?” I was trying to keep from sounding as drunk as I was.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Frisco demanded. “She’s my sister!” I had never seen him that angry before.

I vaguely remember a couple more times that night when Frisco was squaring off with Paolo for cussing his sister or smacking her around some more. I tried to intervene each time, just wanting to cool Frisco down so he wouldn’t spoil the party, but even as drunk as I was, I could tell he was getting more and more furious at me for stepping in. I don’t really remember anything more about that night after a certain point when I got too drunk to remember stuff. The last thing I remember was when these two Black guys were putting a tattoo on my wrist with this homemade tattoo machine they had brought to the party. I remember thinking how drunk I must be because it didn’t even seem to hurt at all.

8. Waking Up in Jail

The next thing I knew, I was waking up in a jail cell. There were a few more guys in there besides me, mostly still passed out from getting too high the night before, but none of them were from the same party I had been to. I was so sick when I first woke up that I just flopped down on the floor by the toilet with my face hunched over into it. I was sitting in urine and I was clutching onto a filthy, seatless jail-cell toilet, hanging my head down into it, with my chin and neck resting on the peed-on stainless steel. When you’re that sick, you don’t think about what you’re doing. I stayed like that for a couple of hours moaning and retching into the bowl occasionally. A couple of times, my cell-mates asked me to get out of the way so they could use the toilet, and I obliged them. I guess you probably think I’m a real low-life to do something like that. But if you had been in my

condition, I’ll bet you would have been doing the same thing.

After my nausea started to subside, I crawled up onto a nearby bunk and tried to go back to sleep. But my rest was interrupted almost immediately.

“You the one stabbed that kid last night?” A man asked me. He was standing nearby and leaning back against the bars of the cell

“No, not me,” I said truthfully not knowing anything about what he was asking. “Someone got stabbed?”

“Yeah, some kid named Frisco Martinez,” another man said. “Guy in the next cell says you’re the one who done it … says they put you in a different cell from them for your own protection cause otherwise they was gonna kill you.”

This guy was starting to get me mad. I sat up on the bunk and pulled my feet up, mainly to feel around my ankles to see if that big knife was still in my boot – the knife I had taken from the parole office – but of course it was gone. And so were my boots. But the guards always take anything an inmate could use as a weapon before they dump him in a jail cell. Just because the knife was gone didn’t mean I stabbed Frisco with it.

“Frisco Martinez is a friend of mine,” I said finally to the jerk who was asking me stuff.

“Maybe not anymore,” the guy against the bars said.

“Listen, a__hole,” I said, clambering down off my bunk, “am I gonna have a problem with you?”

He raised his hands a little, like he was giving up. “No problem at all. I don’t even know that kid. Just curious is all.”

I crawled back up onto my bunk and lay down facing the wall. As sick as I felt, I was sure glad the guy hadn’t wanted to fight me. I lay there wracking my aching brain, trying to grab hold of any tiny spark of memory that might tell me if what the guy had asked me about was really true. But there was no memory there – nothing whatsoever. I had been so high that there was absolutely nothing I could remember past about midnight the night before.

As I lay there, I started to get curious about whether there really was someone in the next cell

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who was saying I stabbed Frisco, so I got up again and went over to the bars. It was impossible to see into the other cells because there were metal walls between the cells, but we could shout to each other through the bars.

“Hey,” I shouted out into the big metal hallway, “anybody out there who was at Paolo’s party last night?”

“Yeah, a whole bunch of us, and we’re stuck in here now on account of you, Tyler,” a man’s voice shouted back. I thought I recognized the voice.

“Is that you, Simms?” I asked. Simms was one of the Black guys with the homemade tattoo machine.

“Hell yeah, I’m Simms.”

“Did someone over there say I stabbed Frisco?” I yelled back.

“You know you did, Ese!” Now, that was a voice I didn’t recognize – obviously Hispanic, and definitely not Simms. The unknown voice continued. “And when his sister called for an ambulance, about forty cop cars showed up. All of us were trying to get the f___ out of there, and we all got popped for DUI. Now, you got me violated, you ____ ____ ____ ____.” He called me a whole string of filthy words one right after the other with English and Spanish all mixed in together.

I started cussing right back, then shouted, “Who says I hurt Frisco?”

“We all saw you do it.” I could tell it was Simms talking again. “You stabbed him like six times with some big old knife you pulled out of your boot, Man!”

Now I felt the hairs standing up on the back of my neck. I knew Simms wouldn’t lie on me, and he had described that knife perfectly.

“Is he … is he gonna be alright?” I asked.

“Don’t ask me,” Simms said. “What do you think, Man?”

Why would I have done something like that to my best friend? I stood cursing quietly for a few seconds, then sat down hard on my bunk and put my head in my hands. My head hurt so bad right about then that, if they hadn’t taken the knife away,

I probably would have used it to cut my aching head off.

9. Getting a Good Lawyer

After a few horrible days in jail, the guards called me out to speak to my new attorney. When I got to the conference room, there was someone in there who looked like a teenage girl – a truly hot teenage girl – but she was dressed in a professional looking outfit like a lawyer might wear. The guard waited by the metal door, and I walked over to the girl. The closer I got, the cuter this girl looked.

“They said I was supposed to meet with an attorney,” I said to her.

“You’re William Tyler?” She asked, getting to her feet.

“Yeah.”

“I’m Wendy Goddard. The court has appointed me to represent you.” She held out her hand.

“You’re a lawyer?” I asked, looking skeptical but shaking her hand.

“Yes, I’m with the Schifflin and Hines firm. We all take turns as public defenders in criminal cases.”

“I thought you’d look … older,” I said.

“And I thought you’d look younger,” she responded. “The paperwork I got said you were only 16, but you look to be at least 25. How old are you?”

“I am 16. How old are you? You don’t even look old enough to be out of high school.”

“Mr. Tyler, I graduated Harvard Law, top of my class. My age is irrelevant. I may be young, but my age isn’t going to matter. Your age, however, is relevant. It was my intention to file an Americus Brief seeking to prevent them from charging you as an adult. But I can see that’s probably not going to work. It’s not going to help us that you look so much older.”

“I can’t help the way I look.”

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“I know that, Mr. Tyler.” She kind of sighed like there was no hope or something; then she said, “Okay, let’s get started. I need to ask you some questions, and I don’t have much time. Please sit.” She didn’t sound like she liked me much. “First, do you understand the charges against you?”

“I don’t really remember getting booked – I was pretty messed up at the time – but some guys in there told me I was charged with stabbing a friend of mine.”

“Yes, you’re being charged with attempting to murder a fifteen-year-old named Frisco Martinez. He’s a minor, and since you’re sixteen-and-a-half, you’re technically an adult, at least in this state, when it comes to criminal charges. Prison sentences for adults attempting to murder children are typically extremely high.”

“How’s Frisco doing? Is he gonna make it?”

“He’s in intensive care with punctures to both lungs; one stab wound came within a millimeter of his aorta. If the knife had punctured that artery, he’d have died within seconds. You’d be looking at first degree murder charges right now. And the boy’s not out of the woods yet. If he does die, your charges will be changed to murder. In addition, the victim has some defensive wounds on his hands and forearms where he was trying to keep you from stabbing him. That’s not going to look good in court. And his sister also received similar injuries when she was trying to stop you from hurting her brother. You’re apparently going to be charged with aggravated assault as well for attacking her.”

“I didn’t mean to do it,” I said. I was trying to keep my voice steady so she wouldn’t know that I felt a lot like crying.

“How could you stab someone that many times and not mean to do it?”

“I had been drinking a lot – more than I ever drank before, I think. I don’t remember anything about stabbing anybody … Honest!”

“Unfortunately, being drunk or under the influence of drugs is no defense for attempted murder. That defense has been tried too many times already … But maybe we can work an angle based on that. You say you don’t remember anything about the attack?”

“That’s right.”

“Does this happen to you often … I mean, where you can’t remember things you’ve done? No, don’t answer that!” She added quickly before I could tell her that it had never happened to me before. “Don’t answer that question until I tell you a little bit more about the defense I think we’re going to have to make for you …”

“Okay, what are we gonna do?”

“Well, here’s the situation. You’re almost certainly going to go up on adult charges for attempted murder of a minor. And you already have a history of violent felony offenses. Preliminary statements from witnesses at the scene indicate that you brought the weapon with you to the party. The prosecution is going to try to suggest that you brought it there with the specific intent of using it to kill Mr. Martinez … Bringing the weapon with you demonstrates premeditation on your part. There are more than a dozen angry people prepared to testify against you. I’m afraid you’re looking at a minimum of 25 years without any chance for parole. And I’m not talking about 25 years in a youth facility either.”

“Aw, hell nah! That ain’t right!” I said pretty loud, getting to my feet. I could feel my whole life slipping away. The lady started looking pretty nervous.

“You’re going to have to remain seated and stop shouting if you want me to represent you, Mr. Tyler,” she said all bossy.

I plopped myself back in the seat and sat there taking deep breaths, trying to keep from getting out of control again. Finally, I asked her, “So, was there some plan to get me off that you were gonna tell me about? Cause I’d sure like to hear about it.” I was getting the sinking feeling that I was probably going to spend the rest of my life in a penitentiary. As hard as it is it for me to get along with people, I didn’t figure I would stay alive more than a few years in an adult facility, and certainly not 25 years. I was eager to hear whatever this girl-lawyer had to say that might keep me from going down that road.

“Okay, here’s what I think might be our best shot: If we could make it clear to the court that you are incompetent to stand trial, we might have a chance.”

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“What does that mean?”

“It means that, if we could show you have diminished mental capacity, we might get you off.”

“You mean like I’m too stupid to go on trial or something? I’m not retarded no matter what anyone may have told you. They tried to say I was a retard when I was little, but I know that ain’t so! I figured that out for myself.” I guess I was talking too loud again cause she was looking nervous.

“Please do not raise your voice! I’m sitting only three feet away from you … No, Mr. Tyler, I didn’t say anything about you being unintelligent. I’m talking about how you might have some kind of mental defect.”

“You mean like, I might be crazy?”

“Well, just for the sake of argument, let’s say the court did rule that you have a mental defect. You might spend a few years in a minimum security mental facility – maybe only a few months – until some doctor decides you’re fit to be out in public again. You wouldn’t even have another criminal offense on your permanent record.”

“You think we could get away with that? How could we get them to believe I’m crazy?”

“I’ve done some checking. Turns out your mother’s been placed in mental institutions twice.”

“Yeah, but Grandma said Mom just got in there on purpose cause she liked the drugs they give out.”

“Your mother used drugs?”

“Yeah, all the time. She used to shoot up and snort lines right in front of us when we were little. She even gave us drugs sometimes to make us sleep if she wanted to go off somewhere and leave us home for a long time.”

“Good! That’s good!”

“What’s so good about it?”

“No, I mean it’s good for our case. We can use that – for the legal defense we want to build.”

“Just cause Mom took drugs doesn’t make me crazy?”

“Well, there are plenty of other things we can use, too,” she insisted.

“Such as?”

“I’ve already done some checking around … called some of your former teachers and stuff. I’ve found several people who are convinced that you’re not all there, you know, mentally. I’ve already sent a legal assistant to gather depositions from some of them to that effect, just in case we needed to try the insanity defense.”

“So, you came in here already planning to claim I was crazy, didn’t you?” I asked her.

“It was one of the options I was considering – either that or trying to have you tried as a minor …” She looked me up and down again. “And that’s obviously not going to work. We’re going to have to do something pretty creative if we want to keep you out of prison for the rest of your life.”

“Sounds good to me,” I agreed. “I can do crazy.” I made a nutty face.

“It’s going to take a lot more than funny faces to convince them ... Now, Mr. Tyler, the thing you said earlier about not remembering anything that happened the night your friend got stabbed – that’s also indicative of a mental defect. Those kinds of lost-time episodes are typical with several mental disorders. There are these long blank periods where the mentally ill person’s memory can recall nothing about where he was or what was happening to him.”

“Kind of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde sort of thing?” I asked.

“You’ve heard of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?”

“Yeah, I’ve read the story. I used to read a lot when I was inside.”

She raised her eyebrows and looked at me like she was seeing someone new. “You’re just full of surprises … So, with all this in mind, Mr. Tyler, let me ask you again, has this kind of black-out ever occurred before, where you can’t remember what happened to you for hours at a time? … Think back carefully.”

I kind of grinned, realizing this child-like attorney wasn’t as inexperienced as she looked. “Yeah, now that you mention it, Ma’am, I have been having those blackouts pretty often, especially lately.” I had started thinking to myself that maybe I could stay out of prison after all.

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10. Fooling the Experts

As things turned out, I didn’t even have to go on trial because, over the next few weeks, the court decided in advance that I wasn’t mentally competent to understand what I had done. The psychiatrists testified that I did have some kind of a mental defect. Even the shrink that worked for the prosecution said he thought I had a serious mental defect. When I was talking to the doctors, I played it just like I figured Ms. Goddard, the lawyer lady, wanted me to. And let me tell you, that lady was plenty smart. She never came right out and told me to lie or what to say to get labeled crazy, but she had a way of making me understand what the head doctors would expect to hear from a loony bird. So when I was getting interviewed by the doctors, I knew exactly what to do. I must have played my crazy-guy role perfectly. Ms. Goddard would have been proud if she could have been in there listening.

For example, the one doctor working for the district attorney’s office said to me, “What was one of the earliest times you can remember having one of your blackouts?”

“Well, I don’t really remember much from when I was a little kid,” I started out, stalling for time as I tried to think of some lie to tell him. Then I said, “But I remember sometimes, when my mom would go off and leave us alone in the apartment, and it would be cold and getting dark in there, and I would be scared and kind of angry at my mom, and then, suddenly – like it was just a second later – it would be daytime.”

“Don’t you think you might have simply fallen asleep and then woken up the next morning?” The guy asked.

I thought for only a second; then I said, “Well, that’s what I would have thought, but my younger sisters would sometimes be beaten up, and they would say I was the one who hit them. I didn’t remember hitting them, but they always blamed me. And I guess they were telling the truth because once, when I was about six years old, I woke up from one of those blackouts, and I found myself trying to hold my littlest sister, Pearly, under the water in the bathtub. The only reason I woke up at

all is cause my other sister was hitting me with the toilet plunger to try to get me off of Pearly.”

I could tell from the guy’s face when I told that lie that he really believed me. I think the thing that really got him was the detail about the toilet plunger. I was pretty proud of that plunger idea. That had just come to me out of the blue. One thing about me is I can make up lies faster than anyone. I’ve always been able to do that.

11. My Day in Court

So after all the doctors agreed that I was a complete nut case, the judge ruled that I didn’t have to go to trial for stabbing Frisco. Frisco and his sister and all their friends were there in the courtroom during that whole mental competency hearing, and I could tell they really wanted me to have to stand trial. Any time I glanced over at one of them, they would usually be glaring straight at me, and I could see the hatred in their eyes. I felt like crawling under the table because the thing is, I didn’t hate them. I felt sick about what I had done. I’m not a monster. Just because I got drunk that one time and did something bad, and just because I did some fancy lying and got off without any prison time doesn’t mean I’m a monster. At least, in my opinion it doesn’t.

One of the things that made me the saddest is that Grandma didn’t even come to my hearing or come to visit me in the county jail where they were keeping me. Neither of my sisters came to see me either. But of course, they probably didn’t know anything about me getting in trouble. When people get put into foster homes, it’s like they disappear from the face of the earth. Nobody will ever tell you where they are. Not that I ever tried to find them, but that’s what I’ve heard. None of my friends came to see me, which wasn’t too surprising after what I did to Frisco. Everybody I know also knows Frisco, and I guess he’s a more likable guy than I am. When the hearing was over, they were planning to ship me off to the insane-asylum, but not for about another week. They said I would have to stay there

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in the county jail until a room was vacant for me in the mental facility.

The courtroom was clearing out. Frisco and all his friends and family members were gone. Soon there was almost nobody left but me, the prosecutor, and my public defender lady. Plus, the deputies were still standing by to escort me back to my cell. The lawyers were picking up all their paperwork and stowing it away in their attaché cases.

“That was pretty slick, Ms. Goddard, using our own psychiatrist against us,” the prosecutor said. “Let’s just hope your poor, sick client here doesn’t decide to use his knife on someone else any time soon.” He sounded angry, probably cause he didn’t like losing.

“Just doing my job,” Ms. Goddard said, still putting away papers, without even looking over at him.

There was nobody in the courtroom to tell me goodbye or wish me well – nobody except the little lawyer lady. And she was not very friendly with me lately. I got the impression that maybe she was feeling guilty for getting me off, like she was afraid I really was going to hurt more people if I got out of the nuthouse real quick.

“Good luck, Mr. Tyler,” she told me finally, after all her books and papers were put away. She stood there, extending her little hand for me to shake.

“Thanks for everything you’ve done for me,” I responded sincerely as I shook her hand.

“I hope the mental facility will do you some good,” she added. “Maybe you’ll learn something in there that will keep you from hurting people.” She turned and walked away, with her little briefcase hanging from her hand. She might not have been the friendliest person on the planet, but she was definitely one of the smartest. If it hadn’t been for her, I knew I’d have been headed to prison for sure.

12. Waiting to Go to the Nuthouse

In my county jail cell, over the past week, I’ve spent all my time writing all this stuff down about my life and how I got myself into this mess. My hand, as muscly as it is, has been aching all the time because I don’t ever stop writing. There was nothing else to do because they stuck me in this tiny jail cell all by myself with no television or anything. They wouldn’t even let me have a book to read, I guess because they were afraid I’d try to beat myself to death with it or do something crazy like that. Since I was labeled “criminally insane,” they said I was not safe to live among the other prisoners. In the beginning, I didn’t mind getting placed by myself, but after one day it started getting very boring, so I asked for paper and something to write with. They gave me some paper and a two-inch-long pencil (so short that I couldn’t stab myself to death with it I guess), and I’ve been writing ever since, sharpening the little pencil nub with my fingernails as I go. I’ve had had to ask for two more pencil nubs because the pencils became so tiny it was like trying to write with a piece of candy corn.

I figure now that I’ve already been labeled mentally defective by a court of law, I’ve been given a permanent get-out-of-jail-free card for hurting Frisco. They can’t come back later and say I’m responsible after all. There’s this rule in the law books against what they call “Double Jeopardy,” and that means they can’t ever take me to court twice for the same crime. When you spend as much time behind bars as I do, you learn about those kinds of things. So I’m not too worried about getting in trouble if the guards find my written account of my life and what I’ve done wrong. I don’t suppose there’s anything they could ever do about it, like filing other criminal charges, because the judge has already made his ruling.

At first, I was writing this just because I was so bored, but after a while, I got to thinking: Maybe I could find someone who could turn all this into a book. I could make myself some real money. Look at how much O.J. Simpson made from his confessional book, and I’m not as bad of a person as he was. I didn’t do my crime on purpose, and I only

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stabbed one person. Plus, my victim didn’t even die. Of course, this book idea is probably all just wishful thinking on my part. I’m not famous like O. J. Simpson. There are thousands of messed up young people in the world, and plenty of them have done stuff just as stupid as what I’ve done. Why would anyone be willing to pay money to read about my messed up life? But you never know. And maybe some more interesting stuff will happen to me in the nut house, and I can write about that, too.

They said they would be transporting me tomorrow to a place called the Pennington State School. I plan to take this story with me and continue writing more on it when I get there – maybe keep a kind of daily journal about life in a nut house. I bet some of those whackos in there probably do some crazy stuff that might be kind of interesting to write about. Maybe this could turn into some kind of expose about how crazy folks get abused in asylums. Anyway, I know I’ll have to make my story quite a bit longer if I ever want to sell it as a book.

I have to admit, I’m a tiny bit nervous about going to an asylum. I’ve never been around truly insane people before. Oh, sure, my friends and I always say we’re acting “crazy” when we run wild and do dangerous stuff, but I think maybe there’s a big difference between acting kind of wild and being truly crazy. Maybe the really crazy people won’t react the same way as normal people do when I try to intimidate them. Aw, what am I worrying about? As big and strong and mean as I am, I expect I’ll be running that nuthouse within a couple of weeks after I get there … We’ll see.

13. Learning How the Game is Played at Pennington

Okay, I’ve been in the Pennington nuthouse for three weeks now. But I haven’t written a single thing before today because they wouldn’t give me back my paper and pencil. I kept asking because, for one thing, it’s been even more boring in here

than it was in the solitary cell at County. They call the guards in here “orderlies.” The orderlies go around wearing all white. Even their shoes and socks are white. But don’t think just because they wear white that they’re not really like prison guards. All of them carry a can of pepper spray and a taser attached to their belts, and they don’t hesitate to use them. They kept telling me that they had to watch me and make sure I was stable and non-suicidal before they could give me any of my stuff back or let me go out in the “public areas.”

Anywhere except your own room is called a public area. When I say “room” I really mean “cell” because it has a half-inch-thick metal door on it, metal walls, and no window at all. At least it’s a little bit bigger than the solitary confinement cells in County. One of the first things an orderly did a few days after I came here was to read all the rules to me out loud. That really ticks me off when people read uninteresting stuff to me out loud.

“Look, I can read,” I interrupted him after he had been droning on for five minutes, rule after rule. “I’m not an idiot. Why don’t you just give me the freaking rules, and I’ll read them myself … if I care to.”

“That’s not the way we do it in here, Mr. Tyler … Now, we can either get through these rules without having to resort to using a mouth restraint, or we can put that restraint in place for a few hours. It’s your choice.”

I shut up, choosing not to get the mouth restraint again. I got that mouth thing put in my first day, and once was enough, believe me. It’s this device they use that keeps inmates from talking, screaming, biting, or trying to shove dangerous things into their mouths. It’s got this plastic ball, about the size of a small egg, which they shove into the inmate’s mouth. It’s attached to a plastic strap which they clasp tightly behind your neck. When they’ve got you strapped down to a bed with a straight jacket on, there’s no way you can get the mouth restraint off. So when the orderly threatened the mouth restraint, I sat there without any further complaints, listening to him drone on about all these stupid rules.

Some of the rules were pretty outrageous, like about how you can’t go into the public areas without your clothes on, and how you can’t

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masturbate or otherwise touch your private parts in the public areas. There was even one about how you can’t attempt to conceal food from the cafeteria in your clothing or in bodily orifices. I knew exactly what a bodily orifice was, but just for a laugh, I asked the orderly to explain that rule to me. He explained it pretty loudly, clearly and explicitly. I think he was losing patience with me. I guess when people are as crazy as the ones in here, they need special rules telling them not to do stuff like that in public.

I finally got my writing stuff back today, so I’ll try to keep track of anything interesting that goes on in here. First, before I forget, let me tell you about some stuff that’s already happened. The building they stuck me in is called Ward D, which was set aside exclusively for folks like me who have been labeled “criminally insane.” We are considered the most dangerous of all.

The first week I stayed in Ward D, they told me I was in my “Orientation Phase.” During orientation, a combination of medications and physical restraints are used to “stabilize” each patient. And during that initial phase, instead of going to see the psychiatrist, he comes to see you because you’re generally strapped down to a bed in what is called a full-body restraint, with an adult diaper around your privates. You don’t ever want to be in a full-body restraint, trust me. If you have to go to the bathroom, you can lie there screaming for an hour before they come with a bedpan. Once, when they had the mouth restraint stuffed in my mouth, I actually pooped all in my diaper because I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

The very first day of my arrival, after the orderlies had me strapped down in a body restraint, this head psychiatrist guy came to see me for the first time. He sat down right next to me all cozy like and said, “Mr. Tyler, I'm Dr. Fischer. How are we doing today?”

“Well, I don’t know how we are doing, but I am not doing very d___ed well.”

“Now, we don’t encourage a lot of swearing here, young man,” he warned me.

“I don’t give a f___ what you encourage,” I said real loud. “And I’m getting d___ed tired of lying around in my own s___ty diapers!” That’s the

first time I got the mouth restraint, and they left it on for twelve hours.

But I’m a fast learner, and I always find out right away how to stay out of trouble, how to earn my privileges and how to keep them. I figured I could play their little games by their rules if it meant having the run of this place. After all, this was a nut house. They have to have some rules, don’t they? Otherwise, some loony bird might end up hurting himself or one of the other whackos.

When my orientation phase was over, I had to spend two weeks going through the “socialization” phase. During that phase, you’re allowed out of your room during “public hours,” but you still can’t have any personal possessions. They watch you and make sure you’re not exhibiting any antisocial behaviors or endangering the other loonies. I had an orderly specifically assigned to watch me. Nobody told me that he was supposed to be keeping tabs on me, but about twice an hour, I saw the same orderly come snooping around with a clipboard in his hands. He would look around, find me in the crowd of crazy folks, then look straight at me for about a ten seconds, I guess to see what I was doing at that moment; then he’d jot something down on the form in his clipboard.

I guess I passed all of the socialization phase requirements because after two weeks, they moved me ahead into the “reintegration” phase. You stay in that reintegration stage until they think you’re about ready to go home – sometimes for 30 or 40 years. Some of the hardcore nut jobs just stay in that phase forever – well, until they grow old and die – because the doctors never decide they’re ready to be released. If they ever do decide to let you go, they move you to the final stage called “transitional.” The transitional inmates are monitored very closely and spend extra sessions with the shrink just to make sure they’re no longer dangerous before they’re finally released into society.

The good thing about being moved into the reintegration phase was that I got my personals back, including my writing materials. That was only this morning when my orderly gave them back to me.

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“Congratulations,” he said. “But don’t blow it. I don’t want to have to take these things away from you if you get yourself moved back a phase.”

“No, Sir!” I shouted, all Captain Commando style. “And thanks!”

A few minutes later, I was out in the day room writing furiously, trying to get all of this written down before I forgot anything. I had sat down two hours ago at this table where this weird looking blind girl was sitting, and I have been sitting here writing as fast as my hand would go for this entire time without stopping. For now, my hand hurts, and I can’t think of anything else to write, so I’m going to stop writing and start looking around for some new info for my journal.

14. Meeting a Crazy Blind Girl

I didn’t get to finish writing about what happened yesterday with this girl I met. As I said in my entry from yesterday, I had sat down at the table where she was sitting that afternoon and had written for a long while in my journal about everything that had happened so far at Pennington State School. (That’s the mental asylum I’m in.)

The reason I had sat at that particular table in the first place wasn’t to be close to this girl because she wasn’t all that nice to look at. At least that’s what I thought at first glance. She wore these giant, dark black glasses that were form-fitted against her face. The kind that only blind or really old people might wear.

Most of the inmates wore fairly normal looking white tee shirts and blue jeans, but this girl had on a hodgepodge of mismatched clothes, with two shirts on top and a hospital gown worn only over one shoulder. Those hideous clothes just kind of hung onto her all wrinkly and lumpy looking, with visible splotches of food and who-knows-what stuck to them here and there. There was also a faint odor of old sweat all around her. The way that girl was dressed, it looked and smelled like someone had

just poured a basket of super dirty clothes all over her.

The reason I had decided to sit at that table in the first place was because I thought the girl was blind. Why else would she always wear those huge dark glasses? And every time I saw her, she was trailing her fingertips against the walls wherever she went like she was feeling her way along. I hadn’t really wanted to sit next to anyone who could see because I didn’t want one of the crazies to find out I was writing down stuff about them and about this place.

But after I had sat there writing for two hours straight, she asked me, “What are you writing?” She had a sweet sounding voice. When I looked up, her head was turned in my direction, but I couldn’t tell exactly where she her eyes were pointed because of the glasses.

I quickly slammed my binder closed, thinking that she must have been watching me writing that whole time. How else could she have known what I was doing? “I thought you were blind,” I said bluntly. How bizarre, I thought, for someone to pretend constantly to be blind when she wasn’t.

“I am blind. So you don’t have to try to hide your little journal from me, Mr. Secret Agent,” she said in a teasing voice.

“You’re not blind. If you really were, you wouldn’t have known I was writing, and you wouldn’t have known I closed my binder.”

“I’m blind, but I’m not deaf. I knew you were writing because I’ve been hearing your pen on the paper for the past two hours. And I knew you were hiding your writing just now because I heard you close your binder in such a big fat hurry. I even know you were writing with a gel pen.”

“How in hell could you know that if you can’t see?”

“I knew it because gel pens are much quieter as they flow across the page. Regular ballpoint pens scratch louder – they make a scribbling sound.”

“I still say you’re lying.”

“In fact,” she continued, ignoring my rude comment, “I know exactly where you swiped that gel pen – from the head orderly, Lonny Hendricks.”

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I suddenly felt paranoid. This girl was creeping me out. I had indeed swiped the pen from one of the orderlies who wasn’t assigned to my hall – this guy the crazies all called Lonny. But how in hell could she know that. I stole it while I was in the men’s room. The orderly guy had left his clipboard out on the edge of the sink since the toilet stalls didn’t have any place to set stuff down. I came in, saw his pen there, and simply stuffed it in my pocket since I knew there were no security cameras in the bathrooms. There was no way this girl could have seen me do that unless she could not only see, but see through bathroom walls.

As soon as she told me exactly who I had stolen the pen from, I felt the hair standing up on my arms and the back of my neck. “How could you know that – blind or not?” I hissed.

“Lonny Hendricks is the only staff member here who uses those gel pens,” she explained. “The other staff just use the standard, government-issue ball point pens, cause I guess they’re too cheap to go out and buy their own good ones … and if Lonny catches you with his pen, he’s going to kick your butt.”

“Nobody kicks my butt,” I bragged.

I sat there staring at her in disbelief. After a moment, I realized my mouth was hanging open, so I closed it. Without paying any more attention to me, she reopened this oversized book she had kept open for the past two hours. I kind of stretched my neck out in her direction to get a look at what she was doing and what the book was about, but I saw that the pages were all blank. The strange girl was running her fingers across the white pages. I looked more closely and saw that there were tiny bumps all over the pages of the book, and she was feeling them with her fingertips.

“Take off those glasses,” I demanded.

“Why?” she asked, her fingers frozen on the page.

“I want to see your eyes. I want to see if you’re really blind.”

“You think you can tell if I’m blind just by looking at my eyes? Silly boy!” She had this little smile twitching at the corners of her mouth that caught my eye. Suddenly I noticed she had an extremely sexy mouth, and I realized something

else about her. It was the thing that had seemed so weird to me about this girl. Her luscious mouth didn’t seem to fit at all with the rest of her – her dirty, rumpled clothes, her huge black glasses, her entire homeless-and-crazy ensemble that made up the rest of her appearance. That mouth seemed completely out of place with all the other weird stuff she had going on.

“What are you doing in this place?” I finally asked her, getting interested in her for the first time.

“You mean, ‘what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?’” That little sarcastic smile was still playing around at the corners of her very kissable mouth.

“Man, if you bothered to put on some lipstick – or any make-up at all for that matter – I think you’d be gorgeous!” I said, keeping my voice low and smooth.

“How would I do that? You volunteering to put it on for me, big boy?” She purred.

“How would you even know if I’m big or small?”

“Well, I heard you plunk your big old self down here a while ago, but your voice is still standing up.” There was that teasing smile again. I got the impression that she found me mildly amusing, like I was a little kid who’s doing something funny but doesn’t realize it. Normally, I’m a super-confident person, but not at that moment.

“You’re obviously not a nut case.” I said. “Tell me how you ended up in this place. I seriously want to know.”

“Truth is, I poured diesel fuel all over my house and torched it. Must have been a sight to see! I kept having to move further and further back as it got hotter.”

“Now, why would you want to do something like that?”

“Well, maybe I just thought my mom needed some cooking.” The smile was playing around her mouth again. For the second time in this same short conversation, I felt the hairs standing up on my arms and my neck. I could also feel how my heart had started beating hard and fast in my chest.

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“Your mom was in the house?” I gasped, horrified. She nodded calmly.

“My mom and my little sister both. That’s why I torched the place … You still want to see what my blind eyes look like, Big Boy?”

“I, um … no, that’s alright,” I stammered.

“Then I’ll get back to my reading,” she said. Her fingertips had remained poised on the bumps of Braille on the page of her book. Then she began to skim her fingers across the page again although she remained head-upright, facing in my direction, never looking down.

Overwhelmed with an uncanny feeling of horror, I got up quietly without excusing myself and stumbled off to my room. I lay on my bunk trying unsuccessfully to nap for a couple of hours, but wild thoughts kept rushing through my head and disquieting visions appeared continuously – visions of the shabby blind girl with her provocative mouth spewing out disturbing tales of abject evil. I know what I did to Frisco was also evil, but I could never have smiled and talked about it nonchalantly.

As I lay there hovering between wakefulness and sleep, thinking about the mysterious girl, I thought of the fact that I wasn’t even aware of her name. For some reason, that thought made me feel sad, hopeless, and completely alone. And while I was stretched out there, feeling sorry for myself, I felt warm tears begin to squirt out from my closed eyes and run down my nose onto my pillow. Finally, I fell asleep and slept without waking for eleven hours.

15. Lisa’s Eyes

When I came out of my room this morning, I went to the day room and sat down at an empty table to write in my journal about my meeting with the blind girl yesterday evening. I didn’t see her anywhere today and, as enchanted as I was with her, I was still relieved that she wasn’t around. I would have felt strange sitting beside her and writing all

this stuff about her. I had no idea what I would say to her if I happened to bump into her again.

After I had been sitting there writing for a few minutes, she came up from behind and sat down close beside me, with her bottom bumping right up against mine. She was wearing the exact same clothes from yesterday, but today, the grubby housecoat was draped across her opposite shoulder.

“You left kind of abruptly last night, Big Guy,” she said. “And just when I thought we were going to be such good friends.” Her face was turned toward me, and her thick black glasses were only a few inches from my face. I avoided looking down at those lips, not willing to be seduced by them again so early in the day. After her comment went unanswered for a few seconds, she continued.

“Sorry if I freaked you out with my story yesterday.”

“Yeah, well, you did,” I admitted. Then I started writing again, trying to ignore her presence.

“You forced me to tell you,” she asserted.

“No I didn’t.”

“Well, you asked me what I was doing in here. When I tried to make a joke and change the subject, you kept on asking … so I told you.”

“Well, I’m sorry I asked then,” I said.

She remained quiet for a minute or two after my rude comment, then said, “I haven’t told anyone else. You’re the only person in here who knows about what happened with … with my mom … except for Dr. Fischer and Lonny, of course. Fischer had it all in his reports before I ever even talked to him. But you’re the only other person I’ve talked to about that …well, except for Robby I guess, but he’s … not with us anymore.”

“Well, please don’t single me out to tell any more of your creepy little secrets to ... You don't even know me, okay? I don't need a psycho killer playmate to share torture stories with.” She stayed quiet for a few seconds, then started standing up to leave. But I put my hand over hers where she had it on the table. “I’m sorry I said that … Please don’t go,” I told her. I didn’t even know exactly why I was stopping her except that it just hadn’t felt right being rude to her like that. I was thinking, if she

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really is crazy, maybe she simply can’t resist the temptation to roast other family members to death.

She sat down slowly, but I kept my hand over hers. After a while, she kind of tugged her hand out from under mine.

“The fire that happened at your house,” I said. “Is that how you got blinded?”

“No, I’ve been blind since I was a toddler. It was cancer that blinded me.”

“So, the cancer destroyed your eyes. Is that why you have to wear the glasses, to hide your eye holes?”

“I wear the glasses because I want to, not because I have to. The cancer was in the middle of my head. It completely destroyed the optic nerve that runs from my eyes to my brain … Don’t worry; I have two perfect eyes, and I don’t have cancer any more. The doctors cut it all out when I was little.”

“So there’s no chance you’ll ever regain your sight?”

“None whatsoever. But I’m used to it.” We both got quiet for a fairly long time. I was thinking how glad I was, in a way, that she was blind because that way she could never see what I looked like.

I haven’t written much about this so far, but the truth is, I’m not good looking at all. There’s something really wrong with the shape of my head, like it’s kind of warped to one side. My mom always claimed the doctor dropped me on my head. Plus my eyes are much too far apart and set too low on my face. The kids used to tease me and call me names like “Monkey Boy” and “Quasimodo.” (That was the name of the hunchback of Notre Dame. And I really do look like that hunchback guy from the old movie.) Still, I beat up a lot of kids for calling me that, and I believe that’s one of the reasons why I turned into such a strong and mean fighter.

I still wonder if my odd appearance might have been one of the reasons my teachers always hated me so much when I was in school – and maybe why my mom didn’t want to stay and keep being my mom. I think one of the main reasons why I’ve never really had a girlfriend is because of the way I look. Don’t get the ridiculous idea that I never had a

love life cause I’ve been with girls before – a couple of times at least – but those girls were always completely stoned out on something or other. With this blind girl, things seemed to be very different. She was straight and sober, and she still seemed to like being around me.

“So why won’t you let me see your eyes?” I asked, finally. I was actually wondering if her eyes might somehow be as ugly as mine. The black glasses were extra large like I said, covering up a lot of her face and going around the sides of her head even – the kind of glasses lots of blind people wear.

“I don’t like for people to see my eyes because I can’t see theirs back,” she explained. “That puts me at a disadvantage.”

“You’re not missing much in my case. I guess I look kind of funny. My eyes ain’t much to see.”

“I could show you my eyes I guess,” she said quietly. “But not here.” She got up, and I jumped to my feet to follow her. I was glad she didn’t head toward the male dormitory wing or the female wing because that was one of the asylum rules the orderly had read loudest as he was reciting them to me.

“No females are allowed in the male dormitory wing and no males are allowed in the female wing!” The guy had almost shouted.

But the blind girl led me toward the little hallway where the public bathrooms were located. As she dragged me into the hallway, I glanced around to see if anyone noticed we were walking off, but nobody seemed to be looking our way. I thought she was going to stop in the hallway where nobody could see us and take off her dark glasses, but instead, she towed me straight through the door into the men’s room. I was relieved at least that she hadn’t pulled me into the ladies’ room.

“Hey, wrong door! You can’t come in here,” I warned her.

“It doesn’t matter, remember. What am I gonna see?”

“Oh, yeah, you’ve got a point.”

“Anyway, there’s nobody in here but us. I don’t need eyes to figure that out. I would hear them breathing.”

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She felt for the door of one of the stalls, then dragged me into it and closed the door. She sat on the toilet and pulled her feet up out of sight. “Just in case someone comes in,” she said. Then she took hold of her thick glasses with both hands. “Okay, you ready?”

“Go for it.”

She pulled the glasses off and waited with her face turned up toward me, her eyes opened wide. And those unseeing eyes, even with no makeup of any kind, were unquestionably the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen. They were big and brown with tiny flecks of green and amber embedded in the brown. The shape of those eyes was so clean and perfect, they looked like works of art or some graphic design – the kind of perfection only a computer could create.

But it was obvious to me that the eyes were completely blind. For one thing they were aimed in my general direction, but there was no eye contact at all. Also, when she took the dark glasses off and turned her face up toward the bright fluorescent lights overhead, the pupils of her eyes had not gotten smaller to adjust to the lights she was looking up into. Those unseeing eyes seemed to draw me down closer. It was as though gravity had doubled the weight of my head, and my face was being drawn close to hers. But I was afraid to kiss her yet … afraid it might scare her.

I believe it was at that moment that I was already starting to fall in love with this girl whose name I didn’t even know. How could eyes so completely useless be that enchanting?

“Well?” She finally asked. Her fingers were fumbling nervously as she put the glasses back on.

“Oh … my … God!” I moaned.

“What? … What’s the matter?” She obviously had genuine concern about what I had thought of her eyes.

“Baby, you’ve got to know how beautiful those eyes are. Surely people have mentioned it.”

“They’ve told me.”

“Then why in the world would you go around with those ugly glasses on if you know how pretty you are without them?”

“Maybe I feel safer behind the glasses. Maybe I don’t want to be pretty and seductive. My mom said I had demon eyes – eyes to tempt and seduce men. She made me start wearing the glasses when I was little.”

I stared down at her, feeling tender thoughts, wondering who had wounded this poor girl so deeply that she would hide herself behind glasses like those. What kind of mother would tell a little girl something like that? I became intensely curious.

“What could drive a wonderful, intelligent girl like you to do the thing you did … setting the fire I mean? … To me, you don’t seem … evil or … or crazy or anything.” She stood up and pushed past me.

“I don’t know,” she said as she rushed out of the restroom. “You’ll have to ask Dr. Fischer about that. He’s the expert.” She was acting like my question had offended her. I guess it was too direct or too soon. I was almost jogging to keep up with her as she made her way out the door and down the little hallway. As I trotted behind her, she marched quickly across the day room toward the female dorms, with her little rubber flip-flops flapping loudly against her heels. She wasn’t feeling her way along a wall now but striding confidently, and she never saw the chair someone had left pulled out from one of the tables.

“Watch out!” I said a split second before her toes slammed into the heavy wooden chair.

“Ow! Damn!” She groaned, crumpling down into the chair and feeling of her injured toes.

“You okay?” I asked lamely, putting my hand on her shoulder.

“What do you think?”

I rubbed her shoulder. “I’m sorry I said that about you maybe being evil or crazy. Can you forgive me … uh … hey, what’s your name anyway?”

“Lisa.”

“I’m sorry I said that, Lisa,” I said, still rubbing her shoulder. “I’m William Tyler, by the way.”

“Yes, I know. Very pleased to meet you, I’m sure,” she said, extending her hand, all fancy-pants diplomat style. I took hold of her little hand with

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both my hands. “I’ve overheard the others talking about you,” she continued. “They said you had an oddly shaped head … but you look good to me.” She got that sweet little mocking smile again, but then she started looking serious again.

“It’s true I guess … that I’m evil or crazy … or both,” she said with a sad voice. While she spoke, she continued to massage her stubbed toes. She didn’t say anything else right away, so I pulled up another chair, took off her flip-flop and started very gently massaging her toes even though they were so dirty they appeared to be gray.

16. Lisa’s Horror Story

After I had rubbed Lisa’s injured toes for another minute or two, she spoke again, sounding kind of sad and hopeless. “I’m not sorry for what I did to my mom,” she said. Then there was a moment of silence.

“How about your little sister? Don’t you feel bad at all about what you did to her?”

“Dahlia was already dead when I burned down the house … Dahlia was my little sister.”

“You killed your sister, then burned her up?” This girl was suddenly beginning to give me the creeps pretty bad again. I felt like dropping her dirty foot and running out of there. But then she spoke again.

“No, Mom killed Dahlia. I think it must have happened about two weeks before the fire because that’s when she disappeared. At first, Mom tried to claim Dahlia was still there in the house with us – told me that I couldn’t hear Dahlia since she was forbidden from making any noise. I didn’t believe her of course.”

I had stopped massaging her feet, too shocked and bewildered to do anything but sit there with my big mouth hanging open a little. “Why would your mom kill your sister?” I finally asked.

“She had been trying to kill us both for a long time I think … See, Mom was really religious. Like, she made us stay on our knees for two hours saying prayers every night before we could go to sleep. And then she started thinking that we had demons inside us. She said a hundred and forty-four thousand demons were living in our blood. ‘I can hear those demons swimming around in there,’ she would always say. She would tie us down and cut us a lot of times – said the demons would come out of there if she let enough of our blood out. We were both light-headed a lot of the time cause she was cutting so much blood out of us.

“Then she started burning our skin. She said it was because the demons didn’t like to be uncomfortable, and if she made them uncomfortable enough, they would eventually want to come out of us. She always grabbed us when we were sleeping, tied us up, then took us down into the basement. She had a little gas camp stove down there, which she would use to heat up metal things to burn us with. She liked to use things with unusual shapes cause they left interesting marks she said – things like forks and corkscrews. She said all those weird burn scars would keep any of the other demons – the ones that were just roaming around and weren’t inside us yet – from getting any funny ideas. She would be talking to us about all that stuff while she was heating things up till they were glowing orange. I couldn’t see it, but Dahlia would tell me, and then we would start screaming and begging for mercy … but there was never any mercy.”

I saw tears coming out from under her dark glasses and dripping off her chin even though her voice didn’t sound like she was crying. Then I realized tears were coming out of my eyes, too. “Why didn’t you get out of the house and just run away?”

“We were little. I was just ten, and Dahlia was only seven by the time she died and the house burned down. Plus we lived way out in the country in the middle of nowhere, and all the doors and windows had burglar bars. We weren’t allowed outside … ever.”

“How did you find out Dahlia was dead?”

“There was a smell from the basement. Mom said a rat had died there and she couldn’t find it, but I knew it was Dahlia. One reason I knew it was her

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body down there was because Mom had suddenly started keeping the door to the basement locked. She hadn’t cut me or burned me in two weeks. I knew something was wrong since she had never gone that long without dragging me and Dahlia down there to torture us.

“Then, after Mom had gone into town for groceries one day, I got a knife and forced open the lock on the basement doorknob. It was easy to open because it was just a crummy indoor lock. I went down there, and the smell was getting worse. I kept going toward the exorcism table. That’s what Mom called the metal table where she would torture us to exorcise the demons from our blood. As I went down the stairs, the closer I got to the table, the stronger the smell was, so I knew Dahlia was dead there on the table. By the time I reached the table and felt its cold metal against my skin, the smell was so overpowering that I was gagging, holding my hand over my mouth, trying hard not to throw up.

“I couldn’t see anything, of course, but I heard hundreds of flies swarming everywhere. As I stood right by the table, those big fat flies kept bumping into me – my face, my arms, everywhere. I swung my hands around to shoo them away from me, but that just seemed to stir them up. They started to fly around faster than ever, so more and more of them were bumping into me. I guess they were growing out of Dahlia’s dead body.

Then, very faintly, behind the sound of the flies, I thought I could actually hear a sound coming from the table. Dr. Fischer says I didn’t really hear anything – that it was all in my head – but since I’m blind, I can hear a lot better than most people. I know I heard it – a tiny, slithery, squishy sound where the worms must have been all in her, swimming around like those demons Mom was always talking about ... Or maybe Fischer was right and I just imagined that worm sound. I wanted to touch Dahlia, just to make sure it was really her. I reached out, but I … I couldn’t do it, and I turned and ran away up the stairs and locked the door back so Mom would never know.”

Now Lisa really was sobbing out loud as she talked, right there in the public area with patients all around. Some of the psychos were looking over at us now, and a couple of them had gotten up and put

their hands over their ears, bouncing their heads up and down like they often do when a sound is bothering them. I scooted my chair over and put my arm around Lisa’s shoulders. I had no idea what to say. What could anyone say after a story like that? One of the orderlies finally came over then to see why she was crying.

“Everyone doing alright here?”

“We’re fine,” I said. “Lisa just stubbed her toe.” I pointed at her foot still without its flip-flop.

“We gonna need to have that x-rayed?” He asked. “Must be hurt bad. Lisa never cries.”

“No, no, I’ll be fine,” Lisa croaked, choking down her sobs.

“Okay, Lisa, but you let me know if it still hurts tomorrow,” he added.

“Sure, Al,” she told him, “I’ll let you know.” She got quieter after that, but tears were still falling onto the ratty clothing across her chest.

17. Learning about Lord Xi

“You’re not crazy, Lisa,” I told her after the orderly guy left. “Anyone would have done what you did to your mother. That was self-defense. You don’t belong in here.”

“Yes, I do. I really am crazy. You don’t understand about me... the other stuff I’ve done.”

“I understand enough to know that whatever you’ve done was because of how your mom treated you. You should never have been put in here in the first place. Didn’t you explain to these people what your mom was like, what she was doing to you?”

“I was completely insane. I couldn’t explain anything. I remained catatonic for over two years.”

“Cata … what? What’s that?”

“Catatonic. I couldn’t talk or move, just lay there on my bed in diapers with a feeding tube down my stomach.”

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“But at least you were aware of your surroundings it sounds like.”

“No, I wasn’t aware of anything. That part of my life is like a black hole in my memory. All I know about the catatonic state is what I’ve read about it in psychology books since then.”

“But you’re obviously not catatonic now. When you finally woke up and figured out where you were, didn’t you explain to them what had happened? Why would they still be keeping you here?”

“Coming out of that wasn’t a sudden thing like waking up. I was completely disoriented at first, and couldn’t remember anything about my childhood. I didn’t even remember my name at first. Plus my body was completely weak and shaky from staying still so long. It took me nearly two years to regain my mental and physical strength. The memories … they were the last thing to come back. Dr. Fischer helped a lot with that. He said we had to take things really slowly when it came to accepting the memories. He said the trauma of my abusive childhood had almost destroyed my mind.”

After a minute of silence, she continued. “But Dr. Fischer thinks I’m going to be better soon, that he might be moving me up to the transitional phase within a few months … Maybe I can get out of here someday soon … But not if he finds out for sure what I’ve done just recently.”

“What did you do? Break one of their stupid little rules?”

“No, I … I tried to set fire to another person – that character they call Xi.”

“You tried to burn up some guy named … Sigh?” I asked that because that’s the way the guy’s name had sounded to me when she pronounced it. “Kind of a different sort of name.”

“Yeah, it’s Greek – one of the Greek letters. In English, we spell it out like X. I. But it’s pronounced like the word sigh.”

“Where did you meet this … Xi?”

“Oh, he’s from here. You’ll meet him, believe me. You’ll be one of his disciples soon enough, no doubt, just like all the others. Even Dr. Fischer practically worships him. Every time I complain

about him, Dr. Fischer says I’m exhibiting paranoid tendencies.”

“So, this Xi fellow is a patient here?”

“Yeah. He’s usually here. He’ll be back Tuesday … from the hospital. And I’m sure that, as soon as he tells all his little minions who burned him, they’ll be after me like a pack of wolves ... Well, I’m not scared of them.” She suddenly looked very worried. “Is there anyone sitting nearby – anyone who might have overheard us talking?”

She claimed she wasn’t scared but, to me, she certainly seemed to be acting pretty scared. For the first time since I had met this strange girl, she looked and sounded like she was terrified about something.

“Look, what’s all this stuff about disciples and packs of wolves. What are you talking about? What are you so afraid of all of a sudden?”

“Can anyone hear us? I can’t tell you anything if they’re listening. Is anyone close by?” She asked in a loud whisper.

“No, there’s some of the loonies way over there, but they’re too far away to hear if we keep our voices down. Now what’s this all about?”

“I’ll tell you everything, but not here. Someone might get too close and hear what I’m telling you.” She yanked her flip-flop back onto her dirty little foot, then jumped up and held her hand out for me to take. “C’mon, I know a place.”

18. In the Exercise Room

I took her hand and we went down another little hallway. I was afraid she was about to drag me into another bathroom, but she stopped by a door with a sign that said, “Exercise Room – No Admittance Except When Accompanied by Attendant.”

“This is the exercise room,” she explained.

“Yeah, I can read, remember? And it also says we’re not supposed to go in there.” She had pulled a

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little flat piece of metal out of her robe and began digging between the door and the door jamb beside the knob.

“Of course we’re not allowed in there. We’re not allowed to go anywhere worth going. But that doesn’t stop me. They got these cheap little doorknob locks – same as the one that was on our basement door when I was a little girl.” She suddenly yanked open the door and tugged me inside. “As long as we leave the lights off and stay hidden, we’ll be alright. There’s no Gym class on Saturday. In here no one will hear anything we talk about ... But don’t turn the lights on.” We sat on the floor behind some weight lifting equipment and leaned back against the wall.

“Okay, what was all that about the followers of Xi and about you setting the guy on fire?”

“I was trying to explain about Xi! If he knows it was me who set his bed on fire, he’ll send them after me. He has them under his control, like zombies.”

“He has who under his control?”

“His followers! Haven’t you been listening? They do his bidding.”

“Who are all these followers?” I asked incredulously. Right at that moment, I was beginning to think this girl might truly be about as insanely paranoid as all the other serious nut cases in the day room bobbing their heads up and down.

“All the ones under his spell – pretty much all of the patients and even a few of the orderlies. Haven’t you noticed his symbol they’ve all tattooed onto their hands?”

As soon as she said that, I knew what she was talking about because I had seen it. It was a funny looking symbol they had on the backs of their hands. I’ll draw in the shape of it below so you can see it, too:

Ξ“I have noticed a few people with an identical

symbol on the backs of their hands – like three parallel lines with the middle one shorter,” I told

her. “I thought it might have just been a stamp to be allowed out in the day room or to get into a dance or something. That’s what it looked like.”

“Don’t be an ass,” she told me. “Why would people in a state mental facility have to get stamped for a dance? … As if they’d let us have a dance in the first place!” She sounded pretty disgusted.

“Well, I’m kind of new here. How am I supposed to know what they had stamped on their hands?”

“It’s not a stamp. It’s his symbol, showing they belong to him – the Greek letter xi. They tattoo it on themselves using ink from pens they steal from the orderlies.”

“How do they get the ink under their skin?” I wondered. “There’s nothing around here that they could use for a tattoo machine.”

“They do it by hand, one poke at a time. They don’t seem to care about the pain. They’ll use any kind of sharp instrument they can get their hands on – needles, staples, paper clips – anything they can sharpen to a point. And they’ll sit there poking themselves over and over for hours pushing the ink under their skin.”

“How would you know about all this, you being blind and all?”

“I can smell the ink. I can hear the repeated jabbing sound. I can hear the dummies talking about it and warning each other when an orderly is coming near. I don’t need eyes to know what’s going on around me, remember?”

“Yeah, I guess you’ve proven that … So, you say this Xi character’s coming back day in a few days?”

“Yeah, Thursday morning. That’s all his little groupies ever want to talk about lately – Lord Xi’s return! It gets me so bored the way they talk about him all the time – like he’s God or something ... My only hope of survival is if he didn’t know it was me who burned him. And I have reasons to hope maybe he doesn’t know.”

While she was talking, I gently pulled her glasses off. She made no effort to stop me, but she asked, “What do you think you’re doing?”

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“I’m taking your glasses off. I like to look at people when I’m talking to them … especially people who look like you.” I placed the glasses carefully into her hands in her lap.

“Aren’t the lights off in here?”

“Yeah, but I can still see you. There’s a dim light coming from under the door, almost like moonlight.”

“How romantic!” She said with obvious sarcasm.

“Well, maybe not for you, but it is for me … So how did you burn this guy up? You still haven’t told me.”

“I didn’t burn him up, unfortunately, although he was pretty badly burned. I went in his room one night – about three in the morning. I figured even a freak like him had to sleep sometime. I stood against the wall in his room, perfectly still and quiet for an hour. I heard heavy breathing noises that entire time, so I figured he was sound asleep. I took this paint thinner I had swiped from the arts and crafts room and poured it all around the sides of his bedspread, then set it on fire.”

“And they didn’t catch you? What about all the security cameras?”

“Oh, I disguised myself. I’m not an idiot. I put on a bunch of clothes to make myself look fat, and I wore a paper sack over my head. I even cut eye-holes in the bag like as if I could see through them. But Dr. Fischer still suspects me cause he knows I go wherever I like and could have swiped the paint thinner. After he reviewed the security camera footage, he told me he knew it was me because I had the eye-holes pointing the wrong direction while I was running around in the hallways. Still, though, he can’t prove anything.”

“Why did you want to burn Xi? I understand perfectly about what you did to your mom, but what had Xi ever done to you?”

“It wasn’t anything he did to me. It was what he did to a … a friend of mine. And how he uses all these morons who follow him. He’s some kind of freakish alien, or maybe a demon from hell … like the ones Mom was always worried about. I don’t think he’s even human. That’s why I burned him. I

wish I had killed him! And as soon as I can, I will kill him!”

I could see she was getting almost hysterical. Her one hand that was not holding her glasses kept balling up into a fist, and she was trembling. I put my arm around her and snuggled closer to her.

“Calm down, Baby. You’re losing it. I still don’t understand why you hate this guy so bad. What exactly did he do to your friend? I want to know more about your friend.”

“Well, my friend’s name was Robby …”

“You say was? Past tense? You mean they … like … killed him?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

“My God! Someone killed him? ... In here?”

“Yeah, just a couple of months ago … He was blind, same as me. They keep all the blind people from the whole state who are mentally ill, right here in Pennington cause they have special classes for us – Braille and Blind Life Skills, stuff like that. But Robby and I were the only ones here in Ward D cause we’re the only ones who ever did anything criminally insane. But what he did to get himself locked up in here was kind of like what I did in a way. I think he was justified. Anyway, he was just a kid, only thirteen – two years younger than me.”

“Wait, you’re only fifteen years old?” I asked in disbelief. “Damn! You’re underage jailbait! Fresh meat!”

I wasn’t trying to disrespect her. I was just throwing around some ghetto trash talk like everyone always does where I come from. But that beautiful face of hers was abruptly filled with rage. It was kind of disturbing to see something so beautiful turning into such a face of hatred. She was suddenly talking loud and scrambling to her feet.

“I’m not your bait! You can’t talk about me like that! Like I’m just some piece of meat to throw out as bait for filthy beasts! Nobody uses me like meat! Not anymore!” Her dark glasses had gone skittering across the floor when she hopped up. I had jumped up beside her, but she was waving her fists around wildly like she was trying to hit me, and it was so dark in there she actually managed to land a few pitiful little punches on my face since I couldn’t see them coming.

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So I threw my arms around her arms and hugged onto her tightly, pinning her arms to her sides. Then she started wagging her head around, trying to head-butt me and bite me, but I leaned back, squeezing her tighter and tighter, trying to stay out of her reach. I swear, all I was trying to do was get her calmed down. This whole time, she continued screaming wild things.

“I’m not anybody’s meat! Nobody’s gonna cut me … or brand me … or bite me … or stick things into me! Nobody’s ever gonna do that to me again!” I kept a tight hold on her, trying to say things to sooth her, wondering how long it would be before the orderlies came charging in there to bust me.

Stuff like this was not part of my plan. My whole plan was to behave as a model patient, demonstrate my stability and sanity, and get myself out of this place within a few months, then maybe make a pile of money from a book deal. I didn’t need some crazy little fifteen-year-old getting me busted already. I held her even tighter.

“It’s okay, Baby,” I told her in a soothing whisper. “Nobody’s gonna hurt you. I’m your friend, remember? I didn’t mean anything by what I said.”

I was relieved that she had stopped screaming and wiggling, but then she started feeling kind of limp in my arms, and her head and torso was sagging off to one side. Her eyes were still open, but of course that didn’t mean anything in her case. I realized she had lost consciousness, so I lowered her gently to the floor.

“Dang! What have I done?” All my life I’ve been breaking things and hurting people because I’m too strong for my own good. And now it looked like I had managed to squeeze the life out of this poor, beautiful little creature just because she had gotten upset and was acting excited. Her legs were splayed out awkwardly in both directions across the floor, and her dirty old housecoat had fallen completely off her. Now all she had on was a couple of mismatched shirts and blue jeans. Even in my distressed condition, I couldn’t help noticing that she had a pretty nice body after all, under all that sagging, dirty clothing.

“Oh, God, Lisa! Please don’t be dead!” I looked in her eyes, but of course that didn’t tell me

anything. I picked up her wrist and tried to feel for a pulse, but my hands were shaking so badly I couldn’t find the right place. Then I held my hand in front of her nose and mouth, but I couldn’t feel any breath coming out.

I quickly got above her to one side of her head, tilted her head back and started giving her artificial respiration like I’ve seen them do on TV. There was another thing they always did where they pushed down in the middle of the unconscious person’s chest using little short, fast pushes. But I didn’t know anything about how to do that, and I didn’t feel good about placing my hands there, so I just kept on breathing into her. My lips were on hers, but believe me, there was nothing romantic about what was going on. I was in a complete state of panic. I just knew I had killed this young woman – really just a child. She had been abused her whole life. But it took a big dumb jerk like me to finish her off, I was thinking to myself.

But right about then, she started coughing and wheezing, then pushed my face away pretty violently. “Get off me … Who are you?”

“It’s me, William Tyler, remember?”

“Where have you taken me?” She crawled away from me, animal-like across the floor until she came up against the wall.

“We’re in the exercise room. You don’t remember?”

“There’s nothing wrong with my memory. I’m just blind. I thought you might have taken me somewhere else to … to do something to me.”

“I didn’t take you anywhere. I was just trying to wake you up. You had gone kind of berserk, and then you lost consciousness all of a sudden.”

“The way I remember it, you said filthy disgusting things to me, then attacked me. I couldn’t even breathe.”

“I’m so sorry, Lisa. I never meant for things to happen the way they did. Sometimes, I’m too strong for my own good. I was just hoping to be your friend. I’m new here and I only wanted someone to talk to … I promise I won’t ever act like this again.”

“I don’t want to talk to you anymore,” she hissed. “I don’t want to be alone with you in here. I think I can understand now why you’re in this

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place,” she said, in a voice full of terror. She was still crouched down on the floor, up against the wall, but she had kind of wiggled herself up underneath the bench of a weightlifting machine as she talked, and now had positioned herself behind the heavy iron legs of the device, trying to protect herself against me I guess.

“Please forgive me for hurting you, Lisa. Please give me another chance. I promise I just wanted to be your friend. You’re such a wonderful person,” I pleaded, but she wouldn’t listen.

“I want you out of this room … now!”

“Okay, okay, I’m going.” I left, closing the door quietly behind me.

Once I got out into the hallway, I just stood there, wondering what I should do next. Instead of going into the day room, I asked my orderly for permission to return to my room, saying I didn’t feel well.

“Getting a little homesick, are you?” He asked with a knowing grin.

“No, just a little stomach ache I think.”

After a couple of hours, the orderlies came to summon me for lunch, and then a few hours later, for supper, but I told them both times that I wasn’t feeling well and asked them to please excuse me from the meals. I was very relieved that they had not said anything to me about what had happened with Lisa. Maybe, I hoped, she wasn’t going to tell on me after all.

All day and then all night I lay there on my bed, but never once fell asleep. I was worried about what Lisa might tell them. But most of all, I was worried about Lisa’s welfare. Was she still crouched in terror in the exercise room? Had she found her dark glasses by herself? Had I broken any of her ribs? Would she ever be able to forgive and trust me again?

I lay there in anguish all night long thinking of many things. I just knew that she would never speak to me again. Somehow, that thought completely broke my heart. I felt sadder than I had ever felt before, sadder even than I had felt in the county jail when I learned I had stabbed my best friend so badly that he might not live. What had come over me? Was I falling in love with this girl? And then I

knew with absolute certainly. Of course I was in love with her. Who wouldn’t be? And that realization made me even sadder still because I knew she would hate and fear me throughout eternity. Those beautiful blind eyes haunted my waking dreams all night long.

19. The Morning After

This morning I tried to play sick again so I wouldn’t have to go out in the public areas, but we’re required to come out of our rooms to participate in ‘socialization’ for a minimum of eight hours every day.

“I’m still too sick to eat,” I told my orderly when he came to roust me out of bed. His name is Tad, which is a pretty ridiculous name. What were his parents thinking? But he was an okay guy – except when it came to letting you stay in your room all day.

“C’mon, Tyler! Get your butt out of bed. I know you haven’t eaten since breakfast yesterday, and we’re having sausage and eggs with pancakes today. It’s about the best breakfast they give here, and, right now, you’re making me miss it, so crawl out of that bed … Do it now!”

“No, I’m really sick. I promise.”

He was already shaking his head before I ever got the words out of my mouth. “That’s not gonna cut it man. Unless you’ve got a fever, or some obvious bacteria crawling around in your throat – something like that – you have to come out with everybody else. Today’s Monday, a regular, full-activity day. You’re gonna benefit from academics, recreation, meals, and work duties today, same as all the others.”

“What about that psycho in the cell next to mine? He never has to go out of his room.”

“You mean Winkler? Winkler’s a biter. If there’s nobody else around, he’ll bite himself. He

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has to wear his bite restraint twenty-four-seven. Well, except for twice a day when we have to strap him down and spoon-feed him. You don’t want to live like him, do you?” I didn’t answer so he continued. “Look, yesterday was the only break I’m gonna give you. If you don’t get up now, I’ll have to bring in the doctor, and you don’t want that. He’s likely to bump you back into the Resocialization Phase. You’ll lose those pencils and notebooks. And I’ve seen how attached you are to them.”

“My throat is also hurting a little …” I probably sounded like a whining loser to him. He had no idea what I was going through. Then I started begging straight out, and anyone who knows me would realize that doesn’t ever happen. “Please, Man, I’ve been up all night.”

“And you’ll be up all night again tonight if we let you sleep all day.” He sat down on the chair near my bed. “Look, I can see you don’t look so good. You’re eyes are all red and your face is puffy. My guess is you’ve been crying a lot. Don’t let this place get to you. I know you’re probably homesick. Everybody goes through that at first. Hell, I felt homesick myself when I first started working here, and I get to go home every night. But you’ve just got to tough it out. It’s for your own good. We’re trying to get you well enough to go home for good … So, last chance, Tyler. What’s it going to be?”

I was still moaning and groaning, but I started climbing out from under the sheets so he could see I was getting up. After he left, I rubbed my face for a minute, then dragged myself into the same clothes I had worn the day before. I thought to myself, pretty soon I’ll start looking and smelling just like Lisa, wearing the same smelly clothes around day after day. Just thinking about her got me sad all over again.

When I got to the chow hall, I was the last one there. All the others had gone through the line, and most of them were already finished eating. I saw Lisa sitting off by herself like she always did, but I knew better than to try talking to her. In fact, I tried to sit as far away from her as possible so maybe she wouldn’t notice me with those magical radar ears and nose of hers. But this stupid psycho who looked like a baboon yelled at me.

“About time you showed up, Funny Face!” He hollered. Everyone had started calling me Funny

Face, making fun of the way I looked just like that damned P.O. had started treating me before he got me violated. I glanced over at Lisa right when the idiot hollered at me. She stopped eating suddenly and put her hands in her lap. She was sitting very still as if she were listening intently. When I reached a table in the far corner of the room, I sat myself down there, hoping she wasn’t going to come over and make a scene, like maybe screaming at me and waving her fists all over the place again.

When I was about halfway finished swallowing my first bite of scrambled eggs, she came up and pushed herself in beside me, bumping her butt up against mine just like she had done the day before, as if nothing had gone wrong between us. I was so startled I could barely swallow my bite without choking on it. Glancing over, I saw her eyes were red and puffy, probably a lot like mine.

“You look like hell,” I said after gulping down a swig of milk. “And I mean that in a good way.” Right then the thought struck me that she was out in the public areas and she wasn’t wearing her glasses. Either they were still in the exercise room, or she had decided she didn’t need to wear them anymore.

“Yeah, I’ll bet I look pretty bad,” she said with that precious little voice of hers. It felt like my heart was melting inside my chest. “You look kind of like hell yourself. No wonder they call you Funny Face,” she said, her blind eyes aimed somewhere in the vicinity of my left shoulder. She had her little hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth. I didn’t know what to say to her. When I didn’t say anything for about half a minute, she got quiet again and said with a tiny voice, “I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t bother me. I’m used to it. I’ve been called names all my life because of the way I look,” I told her honestly.

“No, I mean I’m sorry about yesterday – the way I overreacted. I’m famous for overreacting and going off on people.”

“You didn’t overreact. I did.”

“The way I was flailing my arms around? You’re lucky I didn’t hit you.”

“I think you did hit me a couple of times, but it didn’t hurt. I might survive,” I said with a teasing voice. Her little smile came back, but then went away just as quickly.

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“I used to do that a lot when I was little – throwing my arms around wildly. Whenever my mom would start trying to get a hold of me, if I wasn’t asleep, I would do that to try to fight her off. Since I’m blind, I didn’t always know which direction she would be springing from, so I just waved my fists around like crazy in all directions … but it never worked. She was … big and strong like you. Once I did manage to bite her arm. But I regretted that in the end … boy did I ever regret it.”

Her voice was getting emotional, so I put my hand over hers on the metal table. The dining hall tables and benches are like picnic tables, only made of stainless steel. Each piece is bolted permanently to the floor.

“I was afraid you’d never speak to me again … that you’d hate me forever,” I said in a voice low enough that none of the people sitting all around us could hear me. “I was pretty upset about that.”

“I know. You never even came out to eat yesterday. I kept listening for you. I even asked one guy I can trust, but he said you never showed up.” She tugged her hand out from under mine and put it down in her lap. One thing I had already noticed about Lisa was that she never liked anyone to be touching her for very long.

20. Rec. Time

By then the orderlies had started trying to herd all the loonies out of the dining room. “Monday morning rec. time, ladies and gentlemen. You know the routine. Let’s get it moving,” the one named Lonny was saying loudly. He was a little older and seemed to be loosely in charge of all the other orderlies. The staff would move along behind us with their arms spread out, physically nudging the most disturbed patients forward, much like farmers trying to move reluctant cattle or sheep. One of the nuttiest patients stopped moving with the herd, raised his knee up and started throwing little karate kicks out wildly in the air in Lonny’s general

direction. He looked completely ridiculous, and some of us were laughing out loud.

“Which is it going to be today, Bernard?” Lonny asked him. “The pepper spray, the taser, or full body restraint for a few hours? You feeling lucky? Maybe we can manage to hook you up with all three.” As he asked the questions, Lonny pulled his pepper spray out of its holster. Bernard quickly lowered his karate kicking leg and moved along with all the other cattle. I started making a mooing sound as we moved along together, and Lisa followed with another higher pitched one. Soon, some of the other nut cases were mooing much more loudly all around us, and making a number of other bizarre animal sounds and other noises I couldn’t even recognize. The usual head-bobbing hard-core crazies were already covering their ears and starting to shriek and wail and look around nervously.

Lonny shouted at me, “Kindly don’t get them started … uh … what’s his real name?” He asked Tad. Tad told him my name. Lonny moved in closer to me.

“Please don’t encourage the others to make a lot of noise, Mr. Tyler. It causes unnecessary fear and stress among our more severe patients. What may seem like a harmless joke to you can become an emotionally traumatic event for some of them.”

“Sure, Boss,” I said agreeably. “I get what you’re saying. Sorry, I just didn't realize.”

I was acting like a nice guy because, for one thing, there’s no sense infuriating the guy who is in control of the pepper spray can. “Don’t f___ around with the man with the can,” Frisco always used to say when we were inside together. But it wasn’t just that. I also wanted Lisa to see that I was a good person. More than that, I truly wanted to become a good person. Whenever Lisa’s around, I want to be a better person, and I really think I’m already starting to become that person.

As we approached the doorway of the exercise room, I was feeling strangely nervous – not because I thought Lisa would have another fit of fist-waving but because I felt so bad about what had happened in there. Our big crowd was bunched up outside the door as Lonny pushed his way through to unlock it.

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Then I felt Lisa’s little arm slipped into my huge arm.

“Don’t you know you’re supposed to take a blind person’s arm?”

“I wasn’t sure you would want me to.”

“I don’t mind.” She kept her arm under mine, with her little hand resting on my forearm. Then she stood up on her tiptoes and whispered loudly toward my ear, “I’ll bet you’re not that eager to go back to the exercise room with me ... Worried I might run amok again?” I knew before I even looked down at her that she would have that little sly grin on her face, and she did.

“You don’t scare me,” I said right back at her.

As soon as we got in there, I took a quick glance around, looking for Lisa’s dark glasses. Sure enough, I spotted them where they had landed in one corner of the exercise room, and I managed to scoop them up before an orderly spotted them. I discreetly handed them off to Lisa. “Look what I found.” She quickly slipped them on.

After we finished our stretching routine in the exercise room, we got herded outside to the playing field for team sports. Dr. Fischer was really big on team sports. He came outside with us, all dressed out in his running shoes and shorts. He never participated himself, only dressed up and pretended like he was going to. He had the orderlies stand us all together so he could talk to us. He strutted around, holding the soccer ball, while he talked. Except for the soccer ball in his hands, he reminded me of this guy in a history film one of my teachers had shown us a few years earlier. The man in the film was some Italian Dictator named Mussolini, strutting back and forth, yelling out an Italian speech. That Mussolini film was shown to us by the same history teacher who taught us football – Mr. Jeffries. Dr. Fischer was also strutting back and forth, talking really loud and fast. He even had his head shaved just like Mussolini’s was. Since Lisa had mentioned that Fischer was kind of a follower of that Lord Xi fellow, I looked at his hands, wondering if he had tattooed himself with the Xi symbol like all the lunatics had done, but there was nothing on Fischer's hands.

He suddenly stopped pacing and started talking slower. “If you can learn how to function as a

productive member of a team,” he was saying, “you can learn how to become a productive member of society again,” he was proclaiming each word loudly and distinctly over the sound of the wind. Fortunately (in my opinion) his audience got distracted immediately and began milling around right after his speech began. The head doctor got so frustrated finally, that he threw his soccer ball down and marched back inside. He didn’t even stay to watch us play.

As soon as it dawned on me that Lisa wouldn’t be able to play team sports (for obvious reasons), I asked Tad if I might be excused since I still wasn’t feeling well enough for physical activities. He sized me up, looking kind of skeptical. I shook my head, kind of disgusted.

“Do I look to you like a guy who would try to get out of team sports?” I rolled my t-shirt sleeves up above my shoulder and flexed my huge muscles for emphasis. “C’mon, Man, these guns were made for war!” I roared, like a steroid-crazed athlete psyching himself up for battle. “Only, not today,” I added much more quietly. Tad was starting to look seriously nervous.

“Yeah, maybe it’s best if you didn’t play after all. We don’t want anyone getting hurt.” Tad conceded. So I had two glorious hours to sit in the grass under a shade tree and talk with Lisa. As soon as I sat beside her, she took off the dark glasses and laid them in the grass beside her. I guess she wanted me to be able to see her pretty eyes while we talked. Then she sat right up against me, with her body kind of leaned into mine. What I was figuring out about her was that she liked to be close up against me, but she didn’t like me to put my hands on her.

“You like to sit pretty close to people, don’t you?” I asked her.

“Well, I guess so … some people. I can’t see them – can’t look at their eyes – but I like to feel them connected to me somehow. I like to sit close to you … And I liked to sit right beside Robby before they killed him … and I used to like to be right beside my sister, Dahlia, all the time before she died. I remember when I was little, as long as she was right up against my side, under my arm, I felt like I had eyes. If Mom was hunting us, she could warn me, or if I needed to get completely quiet because Mom was prowling nearby, she

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would warn me with a certain little pinch she used. We were always stuck together, side by side. We slept together in the same little cot. And I would try to protect her the best I could since she was so little. We were only about half as big as we should have been. I guess that was because we never got much to eat, and because Mom was always taking blood out of us.”

It broke my heart whenever Lisa talked about her childhood. I never knew what to say. Finally, I said, “What did Dahlia look like? … Oh, stupid question!” I slapped my forehead.

“Yeah, it was … but I would guess that she probably looked a lot like me, only younger. My mom said the same kind of stuff to her as she said to me. You know, about having whores’ eyes and whores’ mouths, stuff like that … So, tell me more about what you actually look like? … I mean, why do they call you funny-face and monkey boy?”

“Cause my face looks really strange I guess.”

“Strange how?”

“Well, like my eyes are down too low compared to most people. One sits a little lower than the other. And they’re way too far apart.”

“Can I feel you?”

“Feel my face?”

“Yeah, if you don’t mind.”

“No, I don’t mind.”

She raised herself up on her knees so she could reach my face easily and began gently moving her hands around, touching my facial features with the tips of her little fingers. I was delighted to see the childish look of wonder and exploration in her face as she mapped out my face with her fingers. I guess because she couldn’t see her own face, she hadn't ever learned to hide her thoughts like most people do, so she always let her feelings be really obvious through her expressions. She didn’t seem to have any idea that her feelings were so easy to see on her face, and that made it impossible for her to hide herself like most people can. In this way, she was almost like a little child. When she was mad, her lips would stick out all pouty like a little girl. And whenever she came up and was happy to see me (or in her case, to ‘feel’ me), you could see her pure joy beaming out all around her.

“Here,” I said, holding her hand and directing it to the space between the bridge of my nose and one of my eyes. “Can you feel how low my eye is compared to the top of my nose, and how far away it is from my nose?”

“Yeah.”

I moved her hand over to her own face. “Now feel how close your eye is to your nose and how much higher it is than mine. See? Your eyes are about the same height as the top of your nose, just like they should be, but mine are too low and too far apart.”

“It feels like only the tiniest bit of difference to me,” she said.

“But it looks like a lot to people who can see me ... I know. I've learned the hard way ... a thousand hard ways. When I was a little kid, I never even realized how funny I looked. I was kind of trapped in the house like you were cause my mom locked us in there. I never really began to understand that I looked funny until I was stuck in the hospital with pneumonia for several weeks. That was when I first began to know something must be wrong with my face. This new nurse had come in and had looked at me funny.

Then I heard her talking to my regular nurse, Wilma. She told Wilma, ‘That poor child! Now I know God has a sense of humor.’

Wilma had looked all shocked and said, "You’d better be quiet! He’ll hear you!’

Later, when the new nurse was gone, I asked Wilma, ‘How did she know that God has a sense of humor just from looking at me?’

‘Oh, she was just being silly. Don’t pay any attention to her,’ Wilma had told me.

But that nurse’s words always stuck in my mind, and when I started school the next year, and all the kids and teachers treated me like I was ugly and stupid, I figured out how that nurse must have meant God had a sense of humor to create some pitiful creature that looked like me.”

Lisa raised back up on her knees and hugged me really tight for a long time. Then she leaned her face into mine, apparently attempting to find my lips with hers. I made sure she found them. Her lips were so soft and wonderful, and she knew how to

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use them. After a very long kiss, she sat back down again.

“Dang!” I said quietly but with enthusiasm. “I didn’t figure a girl like you could have become that good of a kisser in a place like this.”

“Yeah, Robby and I used to practice together.”

“Practice? No kidding?”

“No kidding. He was just a kid, but he turned into a really good kisser after we practiced enough. Course I didn’t like him for a boyfriend or anything, but I wanted to be ready in case the real person came along … We would sometimes kiss for an hour at a time just for practice.”

“Why you dirty girl,” I said in a teasing voice. But the instant the words were out of my mouth, I knew I shouldn’t have said them. Her look of childish innocence and trust suddenly twisted into a wounded look of pain and she was struggling to her feet.

“Baby, I’m sorry,” I said, trying to take her by the arm, but she yanked her arm away. “Please don’t leave,” I begged her. “I just grew up in the wrong way. I never learned how to talk to a sweet innocent person like you. I didn’t mean anything by what I said. You’re not a dirty girl. I know that.” I was talking fast, trying to get the words out before she could run away.

She was on her feet now, but she wasn’t moving away. I had hopped up, too, but I was not about to try putting my arms around her like I had done in the exercise room. She stood beside me for a minute, and it looked like she was taking some deep breaths. Then she sat back down again on the grass. I quickly sat beside her.

After a minute of silence, she said, “Mom used to call us that exact same thing – ‘dirty girls.’ She’d come in wherever we were hiding, saying, ‘You think you can hide from me? I can smell you from across the room. You girls are dirty! Filthy! You hear me? The folks down at the church can smell you from clear down the road.’”

“And whenever she’d start in on us like that, calling us filthy, we knew we were in for a scrubbing. She’d get hold of both of us at once, strip all the clothes off us, and plunge us into a tub of cold water. She’d grab us by the hair and plunge our

heads under that water so long we thought we wouldn’t live to see another day. But the worst part was the scrubbing. She’d take a big hard scrub brush – the kind people use for cleaning floors – and she’d scrub us and scrub us and scrub us, no matter how hard we screamed. When those baths were over, our skin would be oozing blood wherever she scrubbed the most. I couldn’t see the blood of course, but I knew I was bleeding cause when I would touch the places she had scrubbed hardest, they felt sticky. Then huge, thick scabs would form there a day or two later. Some of those scabs would be eight or ten inches across.”

I was sitting beside her and tears were dripping down my face. I had just barely met Lisa two days before, and here I was weeping like a schoolgirl for the second time. I couldn’t find any words, but I guess I was moaning or blubbering or something because Lisa felt of my face again, with all the tears dripping on it. Then she crawled up into my lap and put her arms as far as they would go around me. I was beginning to understand a lot more about why Lisa might not like to take baths very often after what her mom had done to her in the tub. I sat there holding her and rocking slowly forward and back for several minutes before Lonny spotted us from the playing field. He blew his whistle, gave a time out signal to the psychos attempting to play soccer, then jogged about fifty yards closer to us.

“Hey, none of that, you two! Get off of him! And you both get back over here on the bleachers where you belong.” He shook his head in disgust as we got to our feet and walked toward the bleachers.

21. What happened to Robby

“You never finished telling me about your friend, Robby,” I said after we got ourselves situated on the bleachers. “Not about the kissing practice, but about how he was killed by that Xi fellow or his goons.”

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“Yeah, poor Robby.” She lowered her head but continued. “He was a lot braver than me or anyone else in here. He stood up to Xi right to his face.”

“How come Robby was able to stand up to him without falling under his … his spell, or whatever it is? Why was he stronger than so many of the grown men who were falling under the Xi guy’s power and putting his brand on their hands?”

“Neither Robby nor I are influenced by Xi's powers at all. We aren’t sure why not, but we think it has something to do with our blindness. Robby always thought Xi must be hypnotizing people through their eyes somehow, whenever they would look directly at him. But his power went deeper than that. Robby and I ordered a lot of books on hypnotism from the library for the blind, and some of them said that the hypnotist’s power couldn’t make anyone do anything they wouldn’t be willing to do anyway. But some of Xi’s zombies – people who were kind and gentle creatures before – have done horrible, horrible things.”

“Such as killing Robby.”

“Yeah … yeah, they killed him. I’m sure of it.”

“How can you be positive?”

“Because of what they did to him after they killed him … at least I hope they did it after he was dead. It’s the kind of torture Xi would have demanded for anyone who stood against him.”

“What did they do to him?”

“They skinned him.”

“Skinned him?” I hissed in disbelief.

“Yeah, just like you would do with an animal you’re butchering … only more carefully. They even skinned his fingers and toes. Then they sewed his skin back together and stuffed it with sawdust from the wood shop. They braced him up with a piece of metal rebar stuck into a board beneath him, and stood him up in the dining room. When we came down for breakfast one morning, there he was, standing there naked, stuffed like a hunter’s trophy.”

“That’s crazy! I don’t believe it!” I almost shouted.

“It’s true! Ask anyone. Ask Tad … or Dr. Fischer. They all saw him. I was the only one who

couldn’t see him. The others were crying out in horror, ‘My God! That’s Robby!’ So I rushed over and almost knocked him down. But when I grabbed the thing to keep it from falling, I knew it wasn’t really Robby. It was just some … some leftover thing, like a skin coat he once wore. A few days later some fishermen found the rest of him ten or twelve miles downstream from here. Both parts of him – the inside and the skin – are now buried right here on the grounds. I’ll show you his grave. There’s a little cemetery for people when no relatives claim their bodies. And Robby’s relatives are all … deceased.”

I sat there, stunned speechless for a minute. Then I muttered sadly, “I’d have been better off in prison than this place.” She lowered her head again, so I said, “No, Baby, I didn’t mean that at all. Since you’re here, I’m glad I’m here. It’s just this place. It’s so strange and horrible. I feel like I’ve died and gone to hell.”

“This may not actually be hell,” she said quietly, “but the devil’s living in here.”

“Let me see if I can get this whole thing straight in my brain,” I said after we had sat without speaking for about a minute. “Tell me again why Xi would have gone after Robby? What was the kid doing, besides not tattooing his hand? Cause I’ve seen a lot of others who aren’t wearing that tattoo.”

“Well, like I said, he would challenge him about things, accuse him of things right in front of everyone. Plus he was contacting the media. There had been reporters here from the newspapers and television, asking a lot of questions about some other mysterious deaths that had occurred here since Xi’s arrival. Of course, eventually, the reporters always got around to interviewing Xi, and as soon as they locked eyes on that fiend, they would be under his spell, and the story would just die. The paper would publish all kinds of plausible explanations for the ‘accidental’ deaths, with no reference to Xi. But one reporter came here right after Xi was hospitalized. It was about a week after Robby’s death, because that’s when I burned that bastard.

“The reporter lady interviewed me first because she had learned that I had been a close friend of Robby’s. And I warned her not to interview Xi or get anywhere near him. From me, she got an earful.

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Then she went around talking to others – especially those without the tattoo. Her magazine article came out before she was ever exposed to Xi and turned into a zombie, so she told the truth, and it blew the lid off this whole mess. Dr. Fischer’s been fighting off the media ever since, trying to cover everything up. I hope they fire him. I used to trust him, but not anymore.”

I heard Lonny’s whistle blowing and his loud voice ordering all the patients to start moving back toward the building.

“Tell me more about all the other patients who aren’t followers – the ones without the tattoos,” I said quickly to Lisa. “They aren’t blind. Are you telling me they’ve never made eye contact with Xi? … Or does he only decide to hypnotize certain people?”

Lonny had gotten close to where we were seated and barked out his order directly at us. “I said everyone back inside. Tyler and Andrews, that includes you!”

“Your last name is Andrews?” I asked, helping her to her feet.

“Yeah,” she half whispered. “I’ll tell you more about Xi and Robby later when nobody's around.” We joined ranks with the loony birds moving toward the big dark buildings of Pennington State School.

22. The Non-Followers

Lisa and I had to go our separate ways after that because we each had different classes. Hers were mostly with the other blind patients who all went to school together in a different ward. In this state mental hospital, each ward is a separate building, and she was escorted there for the rest of the class day. She even ate lunch at the other building on weekdays. Then after school, each of us had different work duties. I knew the next time I would see her wouldn’t be until supper.

Except for Lisa and a few other blind mental patients, all the criminally insane patients had to attend the same classes all day long. Instead of calling us criminally insane patients, the orderlies always called us CIPs, which they always pronounced like ‘kips.’

“I’ll take Lisa over to G Ward,” Lonny hollered at the other two orderlies. “You two get the CIPs into their classrooms – without any incidents this time.”

“What are CIPs?” I asked Lisa under my breath before Lonny could usher her off.

“That’s us. It’s short for criminally insane patients.”

I watched him lead her off and felt a twinge of disappointment that she didn’t even turn back for a last look at me, and then I laughed at myself. Of course she didn’t look back. How could she?

The classes I had to sit through were mostly about keeping ourselves under control, keeping our hands to ourselves, anger management – stuff normal people already learned about before they got past kindergarten – none of which I felt like I needed. When I’ve hurt people in the past, it was never because I was angry. The worst part of our ‘education’ was that we sat there in the same classroom, with the same teacher all day long. There was a break for lunch, but it was still pretty deadly. I figured if the nut house was going to be this boring every day, they better think about adding some suicide prevention classes.

At least I was able to try talking to a couple more of my fellow CIP patients during our breaks. I was hoping to get their perspective on this Xi character. The bathroom breaks would take about thirty minutes because each patient had to be escorted in there one by one. During our lengthy wait in the restroom line, there was this anorexic looking guy beside me who didn’t have the funny tattoo on his hand, so I tried to strike up a conversation, to see if maybe I could get the viewpoint of someone who had actually seen Xi with seeing eyes.

“So, I hear some guy named Xi is returning from the hospital tomorrow,” I said to the skinny patient. He started looking around with his eyes

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twitching from side to side like he was pretty nervous.

“I don’t like to talk about my beliefs,” he informed me.

“Your beliefs? You mean you believe in this guy … like to worship him or something.” The skinny man had pulled a little crucifix out from under the neck of his shirt and was rubbing it very, very quickly between his thumb and finger. Now he was starting to make me feel nervous.

“No,” he said, finally answering my question.

“So what do you believe in then?”

“I don’t like to talk about my beliefs,” he insisted again. He was rubbing that crucifix so fast it must have been getting pretty hot from friction by that time.

“Okay man! Chill! It’s none of my business really,” I told him, patting his shoulder. As soon as my hand touched him, he suddenly bolted into the restroom before he had been given permission.

During the next break, I managed to talk to another non-tattooed fellow. He wasn’t the friendliest person I ever met, but at least he was able, more or less, to carry on a conversation. I started off with the same comment about how I had heard some guy named Xi was coming home.

“Yep,” he said without even looking at me. “Don’t mean nothin’ to me.”

“I see you’re not wearing that tattoo thing so many of the guys are putting on their hands. I take it you don’t care for that Xi guy much,” I added, still fishing for information.

“I don’t care for anybody much,” he said glumly, still not making any eye contact with me, and I believed him when he said it.

Then, after our "bathroom routine" as the orderlies called it, next came our work detail. New guys like me always got stuck with the most unwanted job – cleaning the public bathrooms. There were the two small bathrooms, one of which Lisa and I had already visited together. Then there were two larger ones with shower facilities, located beside the exercise room where people could shower after recreation time. And the last two were located halfway down the male dorm hallway and

halfway down the female dorm hallway. But all I had to worry about was the men’s rooms. I thoroughly cleaned all three of them in less than an hour. One thing about me is that I’m a super hard and fast worker. That left me with another two hours to sit around doing nothing.

After Tad inspected the men’s rooms, he said, “Excellent job, Buddy! You must be feeling a lot better already. So tomorrow morning, no more excuses for not getting up.”

“No, I feel fine now.”

“You can go to the day room and watch TV for a while then. The only ones down there are the severely handicapped, so there won’t be anyone to play cards with or anything.” Then he got this knowing grin on one side of his mouth. “Oh, and Lisa Andrews is down there, too. She can’t be on a work detail since she can’t see what she’s cleaning.” I hurried off down the hallway, trying not to make my excitement too noticeable.

23. Plan of Attack

Sure enough, Lisa was there with her Braille book open before her on the table. As I walked up, her fingers stopped on the page and she froze like she was listening.

“I thought you had to work,” she said, turning in my general direction.

“I already finished ... like that.” I snapped my fingers.

“Mr. Speedo,” she said with her little smile going.

“Mr. Speedo? I’ll bet you don’t even know what Speedos are. I’m pretty sure you’ve never seen a guy in Speedos before.” I sat beside her, and she pushed her behind over against mine.

“I’ve never seen a guy in anything, but I’ve had Speedos described to me.”

“So how did you know it was me who came up just now?”

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“Well, for one thing, I know your step now – heavy and confident, with a tiny squeak each time your left foot settles down … at least when you’re wearing those sneakers.”

“You’re something else!” I said, putting my hand over hers.

“So are you.” She put her other hand on top of mine.

“I was asking some other guys here what they thought of Xi … At least I was trying to ask them,” I told her. She pulled her hands away.

“You didn’t believe me about Xi?”

“Well, sure I believed you. I just wanted a …”

“A second opinion?”

“No, I just wanted to help out with … with our investigation. I thought we were a team, trying to learn as much as we can so we could know what to do about that guy.”

“Oh, okay then,” she said, sounding rather embarrassed. She reached around till she found my hand and held onto it again. “You probably shouldn’t be asking too many questions until these folks get to know you better. They don’t warm up to new people very fast.”

“That’s for sure. I tried to talk to a couple of CIP guys without the Xi tattoo, but they wouldn’t tell me anything … So maybe you could explain something for me. Why don’t all the non-blind patients fall under Xi’s hypnotism or whatever it is? I think maybe you might know something about that.”

“Yeah, Robby and I figured out that there were two categories of seeing patients that he didn’t seem to have any power over. One category is the autistic people. There’s only a few of them, and none of them obey Xi or wear his mark. Of course they don’t seem to obey anybody else very well either. Then, there are the religious fanatics, and there’s a bunch of them. And none of them seem to be affected. They’re from different faiths, but all of them are fanatics – probably because they’re crazy. I don’t know why any sane person would believe in God. I had a big taste of religion from my mom when I was little, and believe me, that one taste was enough.”

24. Lisa’s Sense of Humor

A not too bright looking patient came over right then as we sat talking. This dummy just stood there gaping down at us. He looked like he must be one of the too-severely-handicapped-for-work-duty guys.

“What do you want Darryl?” Lisa demanded.

“If you wasn’t blind, you’d know that feller there with you looks like some kind of stupid cartoon character." Lisa made no response, so finally he added, "I thought I’d tell you is all.”

“What makes you think I'm blind, Darryl?”

“Everyone knows that, Lisa."

"Everyone?" She demanded with her thick glasses pointing straight at him.

"Yeah, everyone says.”

“Well, if I’m blind, how could I have known who you were when you came up just now?” Darryl looked confused, then his face brightened.

“Cause you know my voice, that’s why!”

“When you first walked up, I asked you, ‘What do you want, Darryl?’ before you ever even said anything. Don’t you remember that?” Now he was looking more confused than ever.

“Well, how come they all say you’re blind if you ain’t?”

“Cause they’re making fun of you again, Darryl. Remember? We’ve talked about this before.”

“I don’t know, Lisa.” He was shaking his head and glancing back at his schitzo friends seated behind him. Then he looked like he was having another bright idea. He snapped his fingers several times before he started talking. “Okay! Okay!” He shouted. He seemed almost too excited to say anything else, but he finally choked out a few more words. “Okay, if you can see me, what am I wearing?”

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Lisa moved her head up and down as though she was examining him. With her dark glasses on, the poor fellow had no idea where her eyes were pointing.

“Alright, let’s start with the shoes. They look like some kind of sad little tennis shoes – might have been white at one time, but not anymore. Then you’ve got on some pretty filthy blue jeans, Darryl. Oh my! Looks like those could stand up on their own if you weren’t in them. And then up on top, you’ve got a faded out old green t-shirt full of holes – has some kind of emblem on it – too worn out to read anymore – might be Michigan … something?”

“Michigan State!” He screamed gleefully. “By God! I told those guys you could see!” He literally galloped toward the other psychos. We saw him pointing in our direction as he howled loudly in triumph about how he had gotten to the bottom of the mystery of Lisa’s pretend-blindness.

“Kind of hard on him, weren’t you?” I said, chuckling.

“I just didn’t appreciate the way he talked about you. You’re not a cartoon character, no matter how you look – You’re more like my comic book superhero.” She found my hand again.

“Some hero!” I said, taking her tiny hand in mine.

“Maybe you don’t know it yet, but you are. Heroes never know what they are until their time comes.”

“Sounds like you’ve been reading too many comic books … Hey, can they even make comic books in Braille?”

“I don’t need to read comic books to know a superhero when I meet one.” She took her hand from mine and squeezed my giant bicep muscle with both her little hands. “I like my superheroes to come in three-D.” She said.

“So how did you know what that idiot was wearing?”

“Everyone knows what Darryl wears every single day. I’ve heard them making fun of him for wearing those same things. He won’t let that Michigan State shirt out of his sight. The orderlies force him to let them wash it once a week, and he’ll stand there in his pajamas, mumbling, right beside

the washer and dryer, snapping his fingers and rocking back and forth, waiting for it to come out. They say he’s peed in his pajamas more than once because he didn’t want to leave the laundry room long enough to go to the restroom … And just now, he smelled like he might have wet himself again recently. They really ought to make him change clothes more often.”

25. Lisa’s Hygiene Issues

“Maybe Darryl’s not the only one around here who needs to change clothes more often,” I suggested. Lisa got quiet and pulled her hands away from my arm. Then she pushed her bottom lip out a tiny bit like a little kid. Like I said before, Lisa has never learned how to cover up her childish mannerisms like everyone else does – probably because she’s blind and can’t see what her facial expressions look like. So, as smart as she was, she couldn’t hide her feelings as well as most of us can. After a long silence, she responded, but she still had her face downcast.

“I just don’t like taking a lot of baths … I have my reasons. Margie takes me down on Thursday nights so I can bathe by myself.”

“You bathe once a week?” She was nodding, looking kind of embarrassed, but I continued. “I don’t want to sound like the hygiene police or something, but once a week isn’t enough. Listen, I know exactly why you’re afraid of taking baths – because of all that scrubbing your mom did to you – but you don’t have anything to be afraid of here.”

“I don’t like going down there with all the other ladies.”

“Don’t they escort each lady in one at a time? That’s what they do with us in the male wing.”

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“Yeah, it’s the same for us,” she responded. When I used to go with the group, they took us in one at a time.”

“And each of you gets your own shower stall, right?”

“Yeah, but people can still see me in there. The shower stalls are just made of plastic.”

“Nobody can see you in there, trust me. It’s not see-through plastic.”

“Well, I still don’t like coming out with just a towel. People can still look at parts of me.”

“Use your bathrobe. They gave you a bathrobe didn’t they?” She was nodding again. “Well, what’s wrong with that?”

“They can still see everything below my knees. The robe only comes down to my knees.”

“So, who cares if they see what’s below your knees? There’s nothing dirty or nasty about people seeing your legs. I don’t care what your psycho mom might have told you.”

“I’ve got a lot of bad scars down there from when my mom would always burn us … Well, the scars are all over really, except for my face and hands. Mom left those parts alone, probably in case she ever had to take us out in public ... I don’t want people to see me in the showers because I don't want to have to keep answering a lot of questions the other patients would start asking about my scars.”

“Is that why you always have on long sleeves and long pants – cause of the scars?” She nodded. “Would you be willing to show me your leg for a second, the part that would be visible below your knee?” She started shaking her head, but I persisted. “Just pull up the leg of your pants a few inches so I can see the scars. I’ll bet they’re not as bad as you think. You show me your leg, and I can tell you what I see.”

“Okay,” she said, finally. She hoisted her leg up on the bench between us so the patients behind her couldn’t see it and pulled the leg of her pants up almost to her knee. I jumped back a tiny bit and sucked in some air suddenly because of what I saw, and my eyes immediately filled with tears. I didn’t mean to let her hear my shock, but what I saw was such a surprise I just gasped in some air before I

could stop myself. Her entire leg – every inch of it – was completely mutilated with terrible scarring – jagged cut marks, horrific burn scars in bizarre shapes, scars bulging out on top of other scars, all crisscrossed and intertwined. I was fighting not to sob or groan or make any more noises that would remind her of how grotesque her injuries were. But she looked extremely embarrassed and pulled her pants leg back down quickly.

“You won’t tell any of the others what I look like will you? … Promise me!”

“No, Baby, I won’t say a word.” I pulled her over beside me and held onto her with both arms. “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

Later on that night, I convinced Tad to let me use some of my work-detail earnings to buy Lisa a floor-length robe so she could shower with the others. We only get 75 cents per hour for our work here, but with no place to spend it, they say it adds up pretty fast. Tad said patients weren’t normally allowed to buy each other presents, to prevent the more powerful patients from extorting money and gifts from the weaker ones. But in this case, he was sure they would make an exception. I filled out a form, and Lisa is supposed to get her floor-length bathrobe within a month.

26. Why Robby’s Death Had Gone Unsolved

But before I left the day room to ask Tad about getting Lisa a robe, I was able to talk to Lisa more about that boy, Robby, and how he was killed. As soon as we both got over the emotion of me witnessing her scarred leg, I started asking her all about the murder. It was obviously a painful thing for her to talk about. But I kept asking her questions, and she kept answering them, and soon I knew the whole story.

“Did anyone ever properly investigate Robby’s murder?”

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“Oh, yeah. Some homicide investigators came and asked us a lot of questions, but nobody would tell them anything. I would have told them plenty, if I had known anything. But the ones who knew how it happened are under Lord Xi’s mind control, so they weren’t giving up any information.”

“Did the cops talk to that Xi person?”

“They might have tried, but Xi doesn’t talk.”

“What do you mean he doesn’t talk?”

“He doesn’t speak … Not in any way so that you can hear him anyway.”

“Then how can you say he’s telling all these other guys what to do if he can’t even talk?”

“Cause he is telling them what to do … somehow. I don’t know how he does it, but his followers know.”

“Do you know how crazy that sounds?” I was shaking my head like I thought she was acting nuts.

“Then why do they all tattoo his symbol on their hands? How do you explain that? And why are they always trying to hand over their snacks to him and bowing down to the floor every time he passes? You’ll see what I mean when he comes in here next week … And whatever you do, don’t look at him. Don’t even turn your head in his direction. Otherwise, you’re gonna end up under his spell just like these other poor idiots.”

“This whole story sounds kind of like science fiction to me,” I said, still not fully accepting her weird story. “But I guess I’ll find out more next week … Do you know if the cops have any suspects at all in Robby’s murder?”

“No, but of course they all suspected Jode McElhaney from the beginning since he was a taxidermist before he got put in here, and since the crime that got him in here involved taxidermy – only using people.”

“Taxidermy? That’s like stuffing animals, right?” I asked her.

“Yeah, you know, deer heads to put up on the walls, grizzly bears – creepy stuff like that.”

“So then, I get the impression that this McElhaney fellow had already been skinning and stuffing people before. Why don’t you just assume

he was the one who came up with the idea to do it to your friend? Why would you think Xi was involved?”

“That’s not possible. McElhaney can’t even think for himself anymore. He’s become pretty much dysfunctional. Anyway, he liked Robby … before he met Xi at least. And from what I overheard the detectives talking about, this crime was very complex, involving several people working together.”

“If McElhaney skinned people once before, whether or not he’s dysfunctional now, he’d still be my prime suspect. Why didn’t the cops believe he could have done that to Robby by himself?” I wondered out loud.

“Well, for one thing,” she explained, “when the investigators reviewed the cameras, they showed several people – four at least – out in the hallways the night Robby was killed. They wore masks, but the cops think they might know who the guys were anyway. Xi, of course, was nowhere to be seen. He's way too smart to let himself get implicated. And there's another way I know it wasn't just McElhaney. Whoever masterminded it, managed to get a hold of Lonny’s master key that opens all the locks in the building – the dorm rooms, the shop, everything. And they got a copy made of that key somehow. To get a copy of the key made, they would have had to get out of this facility. Xi’s the only one who can do that. Because of some medical condition he has, he goes into town for check-ups every week ...”

“I’d be more inclined to suspect the orderlies made the extra key – maybe that Lonny fellow,” I suggested.

“No, not Lonny.”

“Why not? He gets to leave the facility every night, and he’s the one who carries the key.”

“Lonny would never do something like that. He’s not that kind of person. He liked Robby a lot, and Robby looked up to him like a father figure almost. Plus, Lonny has always been against Xi. He was one of the ones pushing hardest to have that fiend thrown out of here.”

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27. Lord Xi in the Local News

Lisa stopped talking to me and tilted her head a tiny bit, listening intently to the television that had been playing in the distance.

“That’s about him!” She was suddenly up out of her seat, towing me behind her.

“What are you talking about?”

“On the TV. It’s something about Xi! Didn’t you hear them?”

“Well, no, but then I don’t have your magical hearing ability.” By that time, we had gotten close enough so that even I could hear clearly what the news broadcast was saying. The screen showed a prisoner with a black hood over his head, being wheeled along on a metal gurney, flanked by several armed deputies. The prisoner was handcuffed to the gurney at both wrists and both ankles.

When we got in range, I could hear the reporter saying, “… This mental patient is believed to be the central figure in several gruesome killings of inmates at the Pennington County Mental Facility recently. He will be sent back to the facility next Tuesday after two weeks in the county hospital’s trauma ward where he was recovering from severe burns received when another inmate attacked him, apparently setting him on fire as he slept. Police have released this security camera footage showing his attacker as he or she moved through the hallways of the facility. His attacker appears to be just over five feet in height and has a slight build.”

A short television clip showed Lisa, with a bag over her head, moving quickly through the hallway, without ever once trailing her fingertips against the walls. But Dr. Fischer was right. Her eye-holes didn’t line up quite right with where they should have been.

I whispered in her ear, “The doc was right about the eye holes not being lined up quite right.” The female newscaster’s face appeared now on the screen.

“The burn patient is known only as Xi – spelled like the Greek letter Xi. Among his followers, he is referred to as ‘Lord Xi.’ His true identity is not known by the authorities, nor by the psychiatric staff at the mental hospital, where he is housed in the ward for the criminally insane. Many of our viewers may remember this same Xi character as the convicted mastermind in the San Francisco serial killing cult that claimed several hundred lives in Northern California last winter. That group is now commonly known as the Cult of Xi. Even though Xi doesn’t see, hear or speak, it is believed that he somehow controls the minds of those around him. During Xi’s short hospital stay, several other patients and two orderlies who have come in contact with him have already exhibited abnormal behavior, some even viciously attacking hospital staff and other patients for no apparent reason.”

“In other local news today …”

For the first time since Lisa had begun telling me this crazy story about Xi, I began to believe she really wasn’t making the whole thing up. As soon as the news story on Xi was over, she pulled me back toward the more isolated seats where we had been sitting earlier. I don’t know why she bothered. It wasn’t like these crazies were gonna figure out anything we were saying. These were the worst of all – the ones who couldn’t even push a broom. They were labeled Severely Disabled, but the orderlies always referred to them as SDs. The SDs just sat around chewing on their knuckles, bobbing their heads around, and making strange noises.

“They’re gonna pin that fire on me, and Xi’s gonna be coming after me,” she said. “It’s just a matter of time before one of his thugs kills me, too.”

“Maybe we should tell the authorities everything we know about Xi. We might get them to take him somewhere else,” I suggested.

“Where? The jails don’t want him back, and the hospital obviously can’t let him stay there with patients and staff attacking each other left and right … No, we’ve got to kill him, William … before he kills us.”

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28. Oatmeal for Breakfast

When I went down for breakfast this morning, Lisa wasn’t there yet. I wanted to make sure we had a chance to talk some more before that Xi character arrived because I had some questions I still wanted to ask her. Questions like, how were we going to kill that guy without him killing us first? And how could we get away with it without getting ourselves caught or videotaped by one of the cameras? It wasn’t going to be easy. We needed a plan – a good plan.

The breakfast for that day was oatmeal, and I hated oatmeal. I didn’t even bother to get in line. Who in their right mind would eat that stuff? But of course, none of these dopes were in their right minds. One old SD seemed all excited about it. He kept chanting “oatmeal, oatmeal, oatmeal” over and over, with his head bobbling around like one of those little doll things people used to stick onto the dashboards of their cars.

Lisa finally showed up and got right in line without even sniffing around for me first. I’m not saying ‘sniffing around’ just to be sarcastic. She really could find you just by smelling. Lisa didn’t actually sniff out loud, but she had told me that, with her supersonic bloodhound sense of smell, she could tell people apart even if they weren’t walking or talking, just by the way they smell. Except for Xi – she said he had no personal odor, but she always knew when he was approaching because there was a dark presence, like a coldness that she could feel in her bones.

“You saying I smell bad?” I had asked her when she had told me she already knew my smell.

“No, you just smell different. Every person smells different from every other person … I like the way you smell,” she had told me, taking a hold on my arm. “Since I can’t see, my other senses are much more acute – like smell and hearing and … and touch.” She squeezed my arm after she said that. “I like the way your arm feels so big and strong when I’m holding onto you.”

Man, it was crazy how much I was starting to love that girl! And I noticed that, this morning, when she finally showed up at the breakfast line,

she wasn’t wearing her pile of dirty laundry, but was dressed in a single long-sleeved shirt and some blue jeans, both of which were clean and seemed to fit her very nicely. So I came up behind her real quietly as she was waiting in line, and I just stood there, waiting to see if she would recognize my smell without turning around. After about five seconds, she knew I was there.

“Were you planning to say hello or were you just gonna stand there breathing down my neck?” She asked without even turning around to face me.

“Well, I do like the sound of that ‘breathing down your neck’ you mentioned,” I said, putting my arms around her and pulling her up against me from behind, snuggling my mouth down blowing gently on the side of her neck. “But I guess I could say hello.” She leaned her head back against my chest.

“Okay, you’ve said hello. Now let’s get on with the breathing-down-my-neck action,” she said in a sexy voice. Then we heard Lonny’s high-pitched voice screaming at us.

“Tyler! Andrews! Cut that out!” I let go of her immediately and took a little step back, but Lonny was already practically sprinting toward us. “This is your second warning. Do I have to put you both on restriction? Cause I won’t hesitate to do it if you pull this crap again. You got that, Tyler?” He was staring hard at me and still shouting even though he was only about a foot from me.

“I can hear you, Sir. You don’t have to yell in my face.”

“How long do you want to stay in this institution, Mr. Tyler?”

“The minimum possible, Sir. The absolute minimum.”

“You need to keep in mind that there’s no end of sentence date here. We can hold you here indefinitely.”

“I’m aware of that, Sir.”

“Well, if I continue to see you consorting with underage female patients, you’re likely to find yourself still here in fifty or sixty years, waiting to be buried on the grounds. Am I making myself clear?”

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“Perfectly clear, Sir. It won’t happen again,” I promised.

“It was my fault, Lonny,” Lisa said, trying to keep me out of trouble. “I slipped and nearly fell, and Willi … Mr. Tyler just caught me.”

Lonny looked rather tired and fed up. “Don’t even try that crap with me, Lisa. I’m not blind, remember?” He spun around and went clicking off with his precise military stride. I thought his last comment was pretty rude, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

“Jackass!” I said under my breath.

“Oh, he’s alright,” Lisa said. “I get the feeling he’s always trying to act like the father-I-never-had or some garbage like that. He looks out for me though. He’s on our side, not Lord Xi’s. We can count on him if we need to. You'd best remember that.”

“That is good to know. Come on. Let’s sit down,” I said.

“No, I want to eat. They’re serving my favorite breakfast meal this morning.”

“I can’t believe you’re lining up to eat oatmeal. Couldn’t you smell what they’re serving today with that magical nose of yours?”

“I know perfectly well what’s on the menu. I happen to love oatmeal. It’s good for you. Don’t you know anything?” I could tell she had her little smile on because I could see her dimple on one side even though I was still standing behind her. Lisa has these precious little dimples that make my heart feel like melting every time she smiles.

So I ate oatmeal that day for the second time in my life and it actually wasn’t as bad as I remembered. They put lots of butter and brown sugar in it, and it wasn’t overcooked. Plus there was toast to eat with it so it wasn’t just the squishy cereal by itself. While we ate, Lisa warned me about some things.

“Remember what I told you. Whatever you do, don’t make eye contact with Xi. Don’t even look in his direction.”

“Yeah, you’ve told me that a couple of times already. But it’s not going to be easy to look the other way after all the wild things I’ve heard about

him. If he really is some kind of alien or demon, I’d like to at least get a glance at him just to see for myself.”

“Please don’t do that, William. I need you on my side. If he’s got you hypnotized, you’ll be like every other one of his human robots.” Her little hand was groping around on the table until she found my hand, then she put her hand on top of mine. “I don’t think I could like you much if you were one of Xi’s zombies.”

“Okay, Baby, whatever you say,” I promised. I don’t know exactly what it is about this girl, but just with the touch of her hand, she can make me her slave. I don’t have to wait for Xi to hypnotize me. I’m already hypnotized.

29. The Stolen Papers

“I want to show you something,” she said, whispering toward my ear. “Is anyone watching us?” I looked around quickly. There were only a couple of the SD’s with their eyes rolling around in our general direction.

“Nobody we need to worry about,” I whispered back.

She dug something out of her pants pocket and pushed it against my leg under the metal cafeteria table. “Here, look at this and tell me what it says.” I took the paper, unfolded it, and glanced down at it without ever bringing it up on top of the table. Stamped in red letters across the top of the page, it said,

“Confidential Medical Records

Shred Only – Do not Discard”

Then I noticed the next line where it said, “Patient: Name Unknown – A.K.A. Xi”

“Dang, Little Girl!” I whispered loudly. “Where’d you get this?”

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“I was in with Dr. Fischer in his office when his assistant came in and said something about receiving the file on Xi. Fischer told her, ‘Just leave it in my basket,’ and I heard her put the file in the basket. As soon as Dr. Fischer turned his back, I pulled out the top piece of paper from inside the folder. It was a thick folder, so I figured they wouldn’t notice if I just took a single page.”

“How could you have even known whether or not Fischer had his back turned to you? He probably saw you take this.”

“No, his back was turned like I told you. I can always tell because, whenever I start talking for more than a few seconds, he likes to go over and stand by the window looking out. I guess he gets bored and goes to have a look at what’s going on outside. I suppose he doesn’t realize that I know when he’s not really paying attention to me. So yesterday afternoon, I just started talking for a long time about stuff he’s already heard, you know, to get him bored, and as soon as he stepped to the window and started looking out, I opened the folder and grabbed the top paper from it. Like I told you, I figured, as thick as that folder was, one paper being gone wasn’t going to be noticed.”

“But how could you tell for sure that Fischer was really standing over by the window, and not still staring straight at you?”

“Because I can always hear his voice echoing off the window when he’s looking out. I can tell whenever someone’s voice is echoing off of a hard surface. I can hear each word in the regular voice and then a split second later, the echoed word. And the echo sounds flatter. Remember, I hear lots better than you do. So I knew Fischer was faced away from me toward the window at the moment when I took the paper.”

“Okay, Little Miss Magic Ears, if you can tell when someone’s talking toward a hard surface, why don’t you tell me whether or not I’m talking toward the table right now?” I had leaned over and was speaking down toward the table as I said the last few words. She suddenly reached out and pushed the back of my head down so that I bumped my nose pretty hard onto the table. I never knew she could move so fast.

“Ouch! D___ it!” I said, grabbing my nose. She had taken me completely by surprise. I saw she had her little smile going again.

“Yeah, William, I’m pretty sure you were, in fact, talking toward the table.”

“How’d you like your nose bumped on the table?” I grabbed her by the hair behind her neck. She then put her hands to either side of her mouth as if shouting to someone in the distance, then began whisper-shouting.

“Daddy-Lonny!” She pretend-shouted. “Oh, save me, Daddy-Lonny! Rescue me from this big mean boy with the boo-boo on his nose!” She still had her little smile on.

“You are evil,” I said, playfully, letting go of her hair. After I let go, I kind of brushed her hair down flat with the palm of my hand, and I noticed for the first time how beautiful her hair was – all wavy, light brown and almost gleaming. And then it hit me – she had washed it recently – probably the night before. Along with the clean, nice clothes, she had fixed her hair and face up.

“Hey, you washed your hair,” I commented. “And you’re all dressed up in clean clothes. And my God, isn't that a little bit of make-up you’ve got on? What’s the special occasion? I don’t suppose you’re getting all primped up in honor of Lord Xi’s return.” She looked kind of embarrassed.

“No, stupid.” She suddenly sounded a little bit irritated.

“Well, why then?”

“Why do you think? … Big jerk! God, I don’t know why I even bothered!” She was struggling to get up, but I put my arm around her waist and held on, pulling her back down onto the bench. A light bulb had finally turned on in my brain – she had herself all fixed up for my benefit. I put my arms around her shoulders before she could hop up.

“Lisa, I’m sorry! I just wasn’t thinking, okay? I’m a guy remember? We’re born idiots, and we just go downhill from there ... You came in here so radiant and beautiful, and all I could talk about was … oatmeal.” She was still wiggling her shoulders around, so I added, “You still want me to tell you what’s on the paper, don’t you?” Her shoulder-wiggling suddenly dwindled down to nothing.

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“Yeah,” she said all quiet and sad like. “Sorry I bumped your nose … but I owed you one. Remember what you did to me in the exercise room?”

“Yeah, I think you owed me a lot more than a nose bumping for that.”

“Do you really think I’m pretty now?” She asked me in a voice almost like a little girl.

“Babe, you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. You’re even prettier than the models in the magazines.” I rubbed the tips of my fingers gently down her cheek as I spoke. “You really have no idea, do you? … So who put your makeup on for you?”

“I do have friends for your information. I’m not a complete loner yet.”

“You’ll never be a loner as long as I’m around.” I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. But right then, I saw Lonny marching back into the cafeteria from the hallway, so I snatched my hand away, telling her under my breath, “Lonny!”

“Okay, folks, let’s get in line for Rec.” Lonny commanded. When we didn’t move quite fast enough to suit him, he blew loudly into his whistle. “Move it!” He shrieked.

“You still haven’t told me what the paper said,” Lisa said under her breath.

“I’ll tell you outside,” I answered.

30. Learning Some Things about My Fellow Patients

But once we got outside, Lonny didn’t let me sit out the team sports time again. This time it was a softball game. When I tried to talk my way out of playing softball, I attempted to use the same scary muscle-man routine on Lonny that I had used earlier on Tad. I flexed my huge biceps and told him I sure didn’t want to accidentally hurt anyone out on the field, but he just reminded me that if I hurt

someone, I might really end up getting buried on these grounds in a few decades.

“Graveyard’s right over there, Tyler, behind those trees. You wouldn’t be the first smart ass who ended up there.”

“That’s where they buried Robby,” Lisa told me, putting her hand on my forearm. “You’d better go play.” I trudged out onto the field and didn’t ever have a chance to talk to Lisa again until after school and work detail.

After Recreation time got over, I was stuck in my horrible four-hour class on how to treat those around me with love and respect and how to keep my hands to myself, etc. I decided to pull out the medical paper Lisa gave me about Lord Xi, so I sneaked it out of my pants pockets and slid it into the booklet I was supposed to be studying from. The page of the book I was ‘studying’ was actually about how to shake hands with others while making eye contact. The booklet even had several pictures showing just how it was supposed to be done! I’m not making this up. After studying the hand-shaking instructions and the pictures for ten minutes, I was supposed to practice this ‘skill’ with a few of the loonies around me. Pretty exciting stuff.

So while I was supposed to be studying, I slipped the stolen paper out and took a quick look. But it wasn’t the psychological profile or mental history I was hoping for. Instead, it was some kind of cardiology report. Apparently the great Xi, Lord of the Asylum, has something wrong with his heart. I suppose that’s why they keep taking him to the hospital for checkups as Lisa had told me.

I couldn’t figure out much about what the medical paper meant, but I figured Lisa would know more when I talked to her about it later. As young as she is, she still knows a lot more than me about tough, advanced vocabulary and such. The most amazing thing is that, before three years ago, she had never even been in school. She told me that her mom had never let her go anywhere (for obvious reasons), and for a few years after coming here, she was like a vegetable. So, three years ago, she started her formal schooling here, probably at something like kindergarten level. And she must be super smart because she’s learned more in a few years than I’ll ever know. In fact, she’s been helping me to make improvements on this journal

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I’m writing. I’ve actually learned a lot more from her than I ever did from any of my teachers in school. I sometimes read parts from my journal aloud to her, and she tells me what’s wrong with them. She tells me better words to use and how to fix my grammar and spelling and stuff. Of course, I don’t read certain sections of it to her – the personal stuff about her and what’s happened to her – cause I don’t want to embarrass her.

When the school and work day was finally over, I shared with Lisa the contents of the stolen medical report. She told me what some of the words meant because I had no idea.

When I had read the medical report out loud and we had talked about what it meant, she said, “That report sounds like it’s very serious … like his heart might stop all of a sudden. That part where it says ‘prognosis’ makes it sound like he might die any day.”

“Yeah, maybe he’ll just die, and we won’t have to figure out how to kill him,” I suggested hopefully.

“No, all it means is we need to find a way to kill him sooner. After what he did to Robby, he doesn’t just get to die on his own. He needs killing. He has to suffer for what he did.” She had a hard, cold expression. It was the first time I ever fully understood the level of hatred she had for Xi. But at that point, I still didn’t get it. I had never seen the guy before and it’s hard to work up true hatred based on second-hand information.

I told her, “Sorry, Lisa, but now that I know he’s dying of heart problems, I don’t plan to participate in any plot to kill him. I don't plan to live out my life in this dump, which is exactly what's going to happen if we kill this guy and get caught.”

“You’ve got to help me, William! If he comes back here knowing it was me who burned him, he’s going to have me murdered within a few days. His goons will come after me.”

“I won’t let that happen. Trust me.”

“You’ll never see what’s coming. That’s the way Xi operates. That’s why he’s been able to murder hundreds of people. Please promise you’ll help me, William. I don’t want to die. And the only way I’m going to stay alive is if we kill him first.”

“If we do kill him, we’ll almost certainly get caught, and I just don’t want to do anything that’s going to get us in that much trouble. We'll both be stuck in here for life,” I told her.

“What would be wrong with staying in here? At least we’d be together.” She was moving her fingertip around on my forearm as if she was drawing something there.

“I guess you’ve never actually seen the real world out there,” I told her, “but I have, and I like it. And I plan to see a lot more of it. I want to live out my days with you, but not in a nuthouse. In here, we could never be together properly, like a real couple. I say if Xi is already dying, we should just let him die. The truth is, Baby, I was kind of hoping that we could stay out of trouble so that we might both get out in a few years … and I was thinking we could be … you know … together then, with nobody there to tell us otherwise … You’ll be a few years older then, and maybe we could even get married if that’s what you wanted …”

When I said the thing about getting married, she started shaking her head in little jerky movements, and she had her beautiful lips pressed together hard like she does whenever she’s set her mind about something. I plunged ahead, trying to convince her.

“You’ll be old enough by then and I just thought …” her head was still shaking even harder and she didn’t look happy. “I know I’m not anyone special – compared to you,” I continued, “but I thought maybe you felt the same way I do … I never had a girl before who loved me, but I thought … Well, really, I’ve never had a girl who even liked me except a few drunk ones who just liked my muscles …”

“I can’t … I can’t do it, William … I can’t ever do that,” she said.

“Well, why not? Why the hell not? I know you haven’t just been pretending with me. I know you feel the same way I do.” I guess I was sounding pretty upset. She started groping around in my direction like she was trying to find my hands, so I took both her little hands in mine.

“There are some things about me I haven’t told you yet.” She lowered her face a tiny bit.

“Like what? … I don’t care what it is.”

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“For one thing, I can’t ever have children.” She looked back up and I saw big tears were coming out of her lovely eyes.

“So what? I don’t care about that … And if you want kids, maybe we could adopt some. But that’s a long way down the road, and it really doesn’t even matter.” While I spoke, I saw a stream of tears from both her blind eyes streaming down her cheeks, over her jaws, coursing down her throat, and disappearing finally into her collar – sliding down where all her scars were hidden.

“It’s not only that I can’t have babies. I’m … I’m damaged goods. I can’t ever be with you – not like that. I can’t ever be with any man like that.”

“Why not?” I hissed. There was something very disturbing about the horror in her face and in her voice.

“My mom hurt me down there, William. She called it my nasty place, and she burned me real bad a lot of times.” I felt the hairs standing up on the back of my neck and on my arms.

“Lisa, there’s doctors who can fix stuff like that – plastic surgeons and stuff … Have you seen a doctor about it?”

“Of course I have! I’ve seen all kinds of doctors, but they’ve already done everything they can for my skin and for the … the other stuff.”

“There are specialists. I’ll make them take you to a specialist.”

“I’ve seen all the specialists. I’ve had surgeries. There’s nothing else left to do. It’s not just external. I had a lot of very, very serious … internal injuries.”

“My God!” I said, raising my voice more than I should have. I saw Lonnie stand up suddenly and look over in our direction.

“I knew it would be like this,” she wailed way too loudly. “That’s why I didn’t want to tell you. I knew you’d be … disgusted with me … and if you ever see what I really look like all over …” She leapt to her feet and was trying to run from the room, but I caught her hand and jumped up beside her, hugging her and holding her against me. I could feel her little body shaking.

Lonnie came charging over right then. “Tyler, what in hell are you doing?! Get your hands off

her!” I took my arms from around her, but held onto her hand so she wouldn’t run away. “Lisa, what did he do to you? … What did he say?”

“He didn’t … do anything,” she said between sobs. “I’m just … overreacting again. I told him something I shouldn’t have told him. It’s not his fault.”

“No, Lonnie, I’m the one who overreacted,” I insisted.

“I want to go to my room now,” Lisa said, trying to pull her hand out of mine.

“Let her go, Tyler.” I immediately let go of her, and she walked away quickly, wending her way through the bolted-down furnishings without even putting her hands out in front of her.

“It doesn’t matter,” I called out after her, but she never slowed down.

After she disappeared into the female dormitory hallway, Lonnie said quietly, “So, she told you about her injuries?”

“Yeah, she told me.”

“She told you … everything?”

“I sure as hell hope that was everything ... But like I told her, it doesn’t matter. That’s not why I care for her.”

“Of course it matters. But I’m encouraged to hear that you’re not just hoping to use her.”

“I want to be with her forever. I don’t care what’s happened to her.”

“Tyler, when I saw her trying to get away from you just now, I was on the verge of dropping your phase and restricting you to your room for a few months until you could learn to keep your hands to yourself … but maybe I’ll wait on that. This is the first time since Robby died that I’ve seen her acting like she has something to live for.” He stopped for a few seconds and was staring hard into my eyes.

“You can be Lisa’s friend, Tyler, but don’t you dare break that courageous little heart of hers. It’s the only thing she’s got left … You hurt her, and I will put you down like a dog. You got that?”

“Yes, Sir,” I said. He turned and was already clicking away when I added, “And thank you, Sir.”

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Without turning around, he kind of raised one hand up to acknowledge my thanks.

31. Getting Lonny’s Perspective

I didn’t sleep so great last night, and when the lights came on and the wake-up siren went off at 5:30 in the morning, I had already been lying there awake for hours. Our morning alarm is not really a siren, but that’s what we call it cause it’s so loud and shrill. The way this place works at night is that, at 9:00 pm every night – even on Friday and Saturday nights – they march us all around, depositing each of us into our individual rooms, where we are locked in all night. Then at 9:30 pm, the main lights in all the rooms are automatically shut off. The patients don’t control them. The orderlies have the controls in the “Bubble,” which is what everybody calls the control center, kept behind thick, unbreakable plexi-glass windows. From that central control center, the guards can watch both dormitory wings and the dining hall.

It stays plenty light in our individual bedrooms though, after the main lights go out, because there are these dim lights recessed into the ceiling and they stay on all the time. When I first came here, those lights made it hard to sleep, so I asked why we always had to have them on. The others told me it was because they watch us and that our actions and behavior were constantly being tape-recorded by the cameras in our rooms. When I first came, I was so angry at the world I actually thought about standing up on my single chair and pounding those night lights out with my fist. But I knew if I did that, I’d just drop back in my phases and spend a few weeks lying around in a full-body restraint, pooping my diaper because no orderlies would come around when I really had to go. I truly believe that kind of humiliation is one method they intentionally use to keep us under their thumbs.

Anyway, when our wake-up siren went off at 5:30 a.m., and the bright lights came on, I sat up immediately. Usually I would put a pillow over my eyes and try to go back to sleep because there

wasn’t anything to do in the cell for an entire hour following the alarm. After exactly one hour, the door would automatically be unlocked at 6:30. I could always hear the loud click, so I knew when it was unlocked. There was no shower in my room, not even a sink to brush my teeth in, and it sure didn’t take me an hour to pull my clothes on. All the showering and teeth brushing was done later, as a group, under supervision, in the public bathrooms.

But this morning, I went ahead and dressed myself, then sat there for an hour, wondering what I should say to Lisa. Should I talk about her injuries and tell her again that they didn’t make any difference to me? Or should I keep my big mouth shut and just try to hug her? What if she felt so embarrassed that she never wanted to talk to me again?

I was feeling very insecure about our whole relationship partly because, to tell the truth, I’ve never had any kind of lasting relationship with a girl. Some have been with me for like one night, but when they got sober and wide awake, I guess they took a better look at my funny face and wondered why they ever slept with me in the first place. I had also never been in love with a girl before, so this was an entirely new experience for me, and I felt like I had been completely screwing things up over and over again. Deep down, I suppose I was wondering when that sweet little angel was going to wake up and dump me like all the others.

When we got down to the dining hall, Lisa was nowhere in sight. Instead of getting in line, I went back and was lingering where I could see down the corridor of the female dormitory wing, hoping she would come out soon.

“Get in the chow line, Tyler!” I heard Lonny barking at me. Lonny always called it the “chow line” and the “chow hall” instead of the dining hall like everyone else. Lisa had told me once it was because that’s what they called it in the military. He had been in the Marines for 20 years and still had the haircut to prove it.

A couple of minutes after I sat down with my tray full of food, Lonny came and sat down right across from me. He took everything off his tray and arranged it on the table in front of him with military precision. Then he started eating quickly, his jaw muscles bulging with each chew. For a guy in his

49

forties, he was really muscular and athletic. His nose had obviously been broken, and everyone said it was because he had been with the US Marine Corps boxing team in between wars. I’ve seen that guy restrain one of our biggest male patients, who was trying to hurt himself, so I knew Lonny would be a formidable opponent if I ever had to fight him. Of course he was about a foot shorter than me, but I still would not have been eager to mess with him. He finished his food before I did, then guzzled down two little boxes of milk in a row.

“She ain’t coming out today, Tyler,” he said, finally, when there was nothing left on his tray to eat or drink.

“Did you talk to her?”

“No, Carter did. I told him to go ahead and let her stay in during breakfast, but she’ll have to come out the rest of the day.”

“Did he say whether she … Do you think she’ll ever …” I didn’t really know how to ask the question that was on my mind, but he answered it anyway.

“That ain’t for me to say. She’s a strong-minded person, and she’ll do whatever she decides to do.” He was putting dishes back onto his tray to leave so I asked him another question quickly, hunting for more information.

“I’ve only known Lisa for about a week now, actually just four days I guess, though it seems like a lot longer ... You know her pretty well right?”

“I’m sure you know her story as well as I do by now, as much time as you’ve been spending with her,” he said.

“She’s a wonderful person, and I’m lucky she’s been willing to be my … my friend.”

“That’s for damn sure. What’s your point?”

“The thing is, she’s been telling me about some things that seem kind of, well, unusual. And I was hoping to maybe get a second opinion, a different perspective … not that I think she was lying but …”

Lonny glanced at his watch. “You’ve got five minutes before I have to start moving these patients, so if you have any specific questions, you might want to start asking them. I’ll only respond to those I’m at liberty to talk about.”

“Okay, first of all, what can you tell me about Lisa’s friend Robby?”

“Robert Thornton was a good kid. Never should have been put in here with the adult population. But he had made a lot of progress. Probably would have been released within a few more months.”

“You’re talking in past tense. So does that mean he really did die here? … She wasn’t lying about that, right?”

“No, that’s all true. Robert was brutally murdered and … well … mutilated. There was no next of kin still living so his remains are buried here on the grounds. Like I told you, there’s a little cemetery where unclaimed remains are interred … Never should have happened.” He was shaking his head with a disgusted look on his face.

“And Lisa’s also been saying all kinds of things about another patient – some guy she calls Xi,” I continued, hoping to learn as much as I could.

“I’m sure whatever she said about Xi is also true. That creep should never have been placed here either.”

“Is it true that he killed a bunch of people in Northern California?”

“All I know about that is what I hear on the news. And it's all over the news lately.”

“Is it true that he can hypnotize people with his eyes just by looking at them.”

“I don’t know what he does to them exactly, Tyler. But I know he doesn’t do it with his eyes. You need to understand, Mr. Tyler, this Xi fellow doesn’t even have eyes.”

“No eyes?!” I gasped in disbelief.

“No, he has two deep depressions where most normal people would have eyeballs, but there’s nothing in there – nothing but evil.”

“Then he’s completely blind, like Lisa.”

“Well, no, I don’t know about that. I certainly wouldn't say blind. He always seems to know exactly what’s going on around him.”

“And is it true that he doesn’t speak?”

“Not with any sounds I’ve ever heard.”

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“Then why does everyone say he’s the one behind all the diabolical things that have been going on? They were even saying stuff like that on the news.”

“Oh, Xi is behind it alright. Trust me. I don’t know how he does it, but it’s him doing it. We studied all about mind control and hypnotism while I was in the Marines – you know, just in case we were ever taken prisoner and needed to keep from getting brainwashed by the enemy. But this is a lot more than just hypnotism. They say that even when you’re hypnotized, you would never be willing to do anything you wouldn’t be willing to do if you weren’t hypnotized. But Xi’s henchmen will do unimaginably evil things.”

“Like skinning Robby.”

“Exactly.”

“So all your military training – that’s how you’ve managed to keep from becoming one of his brainwashed followers?”

“That ain’t how. That's got nothing to do with it. I'm not the only military-trained person in here. The percentage of institutionalized ex-military is considerably higher than the average population ... Lots of good reasons for that. Lisa once asked me the same question though, about my military training being a defense against Xi's mind control. I’ll tell you the same thing I told her. It's not so much about mind control but spirit control. A wise man once said that a man can’t serve two masters. And I already have my master.”

“So you’re saying you’re religious, right?”

“Not exactly.”

“That’s what Lisa was telling me, something about how religious beliefs could block Xi’s ... influence. So how would that work exactly?”

Lonnie was shaking his head. “I really have no idea. The way I see it though, every man has a black hole in his heart. Something’s gonna fill that hole. Let’s just say, mine was already filled,” he said, getting to his feet. “But I’ve got no time to discuss theology with you right now.” He strode off, heels clicking, stuffed his tray into the used tray slot, then faced the room, his hands behind his back and his feet ten inches apart in a military parade rest stance.

“Alright now, line it up for morning athletics,” he growled. All the loonies – myself included – started lining up.

32. Lonny Is Okay

Today’s team sports activity was soccer - the second time this week, and I’m pretty good at that game. I’m not bragging either. I really do excel at anything that involves running around and kicking things. Lonnie let two of the other patients choose sides. I was among the last few guys chosen, probably because the guys choosing had never seen me play sports, except softball the day before, and I wasn’t even trying then. They probably saw I was big and heavy set, and that usually doesn’t help you in soccer. But as soon as we got the game going, all the loonies on the opposing team figured out right away that I was the guy they were going to have to stop. Right away, I scored two goals without any assistance.

After we’d been playing for a few minutes, I noticed that Lisa had showed up in the sidelines. She was laying in the grass over there, reading from one of her blind books. One thing about her is that, pretty much all she ever does is read. I didn’t have a chance to glance in her direction more than twice because the game was moving pretty fast. Some of these psychos actually had some speed and some obvious skills.

Every time I was sprinting down the field with the ball, all the guys on the other team started screaming stuff like, “Get the Gorilla!” It was really starting to get on my nerves. Finally, this one little fellow gets in my way and hollers, “Let’s see what you got, Monkey Boy!” After that, I kind of lost my cool. I kicked the ball hard, off to one side, where one of my teammates was running. Then I grabbed the loudmouthed midget by the throat and picked him up clear off the ground.

“What did you call me?” I bellowed straight in his face. He was kicking his legs around, but because I had him around the throat so tight, he wasn’t answering me too clearly. “I can’t hear you!” I shouted. I heard Lonny’s whistle blowing a

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long blast behind me. I didn’t turn around to look at him, but I knew he was running toward me pretty fast because the sound of the whistle was getting louder.

“Let him go!” Lonny screamed. I immediately dropped the little jackass on the ground and he lay there grabbing at his throat and moaning like he was dying. “Tyler! You’re sidelined the rest of the game. And you’ll stand on that side of the field.” He jabbed a finger toward the far side opposite from where Lisa was. She had been sitting on the grass, fingering one of her Braille books, but when all the whistling and shouting started, she had gotten to her feet, looking nervous.

“Okay, Sir,” I said. “Sorry about that.” I trudged obediently to the far side. Behind me, I heard Lonny talking to the other patients. He wasn’t shouting, but I could still hear him.

“That young man’s name is William Tyler,” he told them. “You will call him either William or Tyler. I don’t want to hear any more name-calling on this field or anywhere else … You got that?”

I had reached the sidelines and was facing them now. I saw them all nodding their heads like they were trying to break their necks. One thing I’ve observed in here is that most of these guys nod their heads pretty vigorously.

“Sorry Coach,” that idiot, Darryl, said. I noticed he was still wearing his filthy green Michigan State jersey.

“It’s cause we thought that was his name,” the little guy on the ground said, still rubbing his neck.

“You thought someone’s name was ‘Monkey Boy’?” Lonny screamed in Darryl's face.

“That’s what everyone calls him,” the guy on the ground whined.

“Well, not anymore,” Lonny bellowed down at him. I thought for a second he was going to kick him, but he didn’t. “Now get up off your butt, Thibodeau! And cut out that whimpering.” The little shrimp scrambled to his feet, and the game continued, but now, with me sidelined, the other side started scoring some of the points. Before long, the score was tied. Luckily, we ran out of time before they could score another one and beat us.

I trotted over to walk in with Lisa before she had to go off to her blind classes.

“You mind if I walk in with you?” I asked her.

“Course not.”

“You’re not still mad from yesterday?”

“I wasn’t angry at you yesterday – not at all – just embarrassed. And, as usual, I overreacted.” Once again, all was forgiven and forgotten. One thing I knew for sure about Lisa by now – she didn’t hold a grudge (except maybe against that Xi guy). “What was Lonny yelling at you about?” She asked me, taking my arm.

“Aw, nothing. I just grabbed some little runt for a second. I didn’t even hurt him.”

“Were you mad because everyone was calling you names?”

“Yeah, but Lonny told them to cut it out.”

“I heard that part … I told you Lonny was alright, remember?”

“Yeah, I see what you mean now. I think that’s the first time in my life anybody has ever stood up for me – you know, taken my side. Grownups usually just ignore it when other kids are saying crap to me and making fun of how I look, like as if they can’t even hear it. But the second I lay a hand on any of those kids, the grownups are right there ready to slap the cuffs on me and haul me off.”

33. A Typical Day in the Loony Bin

When I had said goodbye to Lisa and watched her being led away to her blind classes, we non-blind folks went in for another fun-filled day of “Life Skills Training.” To give you an idea of how dumb these lessons are, I’ll just describe one of the things we learned about today. The section was called “Hand Clapping Etiquette,” and it was all about how to clap and when to clap. I’ve jotted

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down a few lines from the textbook's lesson so you can see just how ridiculous it was:

“It is customary to clap to show appreciation and respect for a public speaker or some other public performance. However, it is important to know when clapping is appropriate, and when it is not. There is nothing more embarrassing than clapping at the wrong time when no one else is clapping.” After we read all about clapping, then we took about half an hour practicing how to clap with the correct volume and how to stop clapping on time so we weren’t the only ones still clapping when everyone else has stopped. Then we watched a video of speakers and performances and we all practiced clapping in sync with the audience on the screen. One of the SD patients actually wet his pants and had to be led out during this clapping exercise. I guess the excitement of clapping lessons was more than he could handle.

When our school and work routines were over, I was hoping to see Lisa, so I rushed back to the day-room where we all hang out during free time. In there they have the usual metal tables and chairs bolted to the floor, for playing games and such. And there’s always a television going in one corner. But there’s no way to change the channels or the volume because the thing is encased in a metal box with nothing but the screen showing. And there’s usually nothing playing on it except some stupid old black and white movie or some ‘educational’ program or maybe some really lame television program like “Lassie” or “Little House on the Prairie” or “The Andy Griffith Show.”

When I complained about the TV programming to Lonny once, he said it had to be that way to keep the patients from becoming ‘over-excited.’ "We can't run the risk of airing any programs that might overstress or traumatize the more severely handicapped patients," he explained.

In that same room, there are also some comfortable sofas and easy chairs where we can sit around and talk. They’re kind of dirty looking and smell a lot like urine, but at least they’re not hard metal.

34. Taking My Girl to Dinner

I was relieved to discover that Lisa was in the day room. She was lounging sideways in one of the stuffed chairs, with her legs hanging over one arm of the chair and her head hanging back over the other one. As usual, she was reading one of her Braille books. If her eyes could have actually seen anything, they would have been looking straight up at the ceiling and not at the book down in her lap, but I knew she was reading because her fingers were slipping quickly back and forth across the page. It only seemed to take her about half a second to scan each entire line of dots.

I guess the reason why she had been able to learn so much after only about three years of school was that she read so constantly and so fast. And whenever I asked what she was reading, she would read aloud to me for a few lines, and it was always some old novel full of big words and long sentences or some scientific journal full of technical mumbo jumbo I didn’t understand (or didn’t want to know anything about). I had learned that she was also super smart in math. One of the other blind students told me that she knew lots more than the teachers in all the school subjects.

Anyway, as soon as I saw her, I went over and stood about two feet away from her, waiting for her to notice me, which took about two seconds. I knew that she knew I was standing there because her fingers stopped on the page and she was getting that little smile of hers.

“What?” She said, finally.

“We’ve got to talk,” I said.

“Not about what we were discussing yesterday I hope.”

“No. It’s about Xi,” I said, lowering my voice because some of the other patients were nearby.

“Not here and not right now,” she whispered. “I know a place we can go after supper.”

As we went down to the dining hall together a few minutes later, she stopped in the hallway and said, “Oh no, not again!”

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“What? What did I do?” I asked, figuring she was complaining about something I did or said.

“No, it’s not you. I just don’t like the Salisbury steak.” She was walking along with me again.

“Is that what they’re serving?”

“Yeah, can’t you smell it?”

“I can smell food cooking, but I didn’t know what it was,” I admitted. “I don’t have your supersonic nose. Anyway, what’s wrong with the Salisbury steak? That’s one of my favorite meals here.”

“Well, it’s not one of mine. For one thing, I don’t eat meat.”

“I’ve seen you eat chicken and fish.”

“I don’t eat red meat. I don’t eat anything if I can still taste the blood in it.”

“Why not?” I asked, but when I saw her eyes were getting watery, I said, “Never mind. You don’t have to explain.”

“It’s alright. I need to tell you about something else my mom would do to me. But not till after we eat. I don’t want you throwing up your steak.”

“Never mind about telling me,” I said. “I think I’d rather not know about it.”

She started looking sad in her obvious, pouty way, with her bottom lip sticking out a tiny bit, little kid style. “You’re starting to think I’m completely disgusting, aren’t you? After all the ugly stuff I’ve told you about my life, I doubt you even want to be around me anymore.”

“Sure I do, Baby! I love being with you. You’re all I can think about.” We were already standing in the chow line by then, so, after looking around to make sure Lonny wasn’t watching, I put my arm around her and pulled her close against me. “So where were you planning to take me?”

“Well, first I want to take you into the library. We’re allowed to go in there Wednesday evenings, and hardly anybody but me ever goes in there. We can talk about Xi there. Then maybe later tonight, I could show you Robby’s grave.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t think you believed me when I told you what happened to him. I could tell from your voice.”

“Well, I believe you now. I spoke to Lonny, remember? And he said everything you told me about Robby was true.”

“Why can’t you just believe what I tell you in the first place?”

“Lisa, you have to admit, some kid getting stuffed like an animal sounds pretty unbelievable. Things like that just don’t happen.”

“Well, it happened.” Her voice was getting emotional.

“I know, Baby. And I’m so sorry it did.” We had reached the point where we had to ask for the food we wanted.

“You don’t want the meat, do you, Miss Andrews?” The lunch lady asked.

“No, thanks.”

“Wait, can I have yours?” I asked her.

“Sure. I’ll take the meat after all,” she told the lady.

“Sorry,” the lady said, looking at me. “We don’t allow sharing. You ought to know the rules by now.”

“I’ll get it for you next time,” she whispered when we had moved beyond the lady.

After we sat down, I asked her, “So how can we get out of this building tonight to see Robby’s grave? I thought the alarm would sound if we tried to get out?”

“Yeah, it will. We have to ask Lonny to take us over there?”

“You think he would do it?”

“Sure. He’ll do whatever I want him to do. All I have to do is look sad and start talking about how bad I miss Robby.”

“You’re a regular con artist!”

Her voice got sad and quiet. “Well, not really, cause I am sad and I do miss Robby.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry, Baby.”

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35. Plotting a Murder

Later, in the library, Lisa and I got to talk at length about a plan to take down Xi. Or more accurately, I should say the lack of a plan because neither one of us seemed to have a clue how we could take that fiend out. The only person in the library besides us was an ancient orderly, reading the newspaper on the far end of the room.

“I know what we might do,” she said quietly after I told her no one could hear us.

“Okay, I’m listening.”

“First, you have to promise not to get all mad or something.”

“Why, what did you have in mind?”

“Well, I don’t have a specific plan of operations, as they say on the war movies, but I think I should go after him on my own … without you there.”

“You’re not going against that fiend unless I’m there to help,” I insisted.

“Why not? You already said you didn’t want to get involved, that you didn’t want to get in trouble.”

“I don’t want you in trouble either, and I sure don’t want you dead.”

“But, William, if you come along to try and help me, you’ll take one look at Xi and turn into one of his zombies.”

“Well, you’re not going after him alone. I’m sure as hell not sitting on my butt while you go after him by yourself. He’ll kill you ... We ought to just try to stay away from him.”

“The only way I’ll get killed is if I sit around here for a few days and do nothing. He’ll sic his goons on me and I’ll be dead within a few days after his return if I don't do something as soon as he gets back from the hospital.”

“Okay, okay, I guess you know more about this fiend than I do. You’ve made your point. I’ll help

you any way I can. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“No, William, I’m not just trying to pressure you into helping me. I really do think it would be safer if you weren’t involved.”

“Well, if either of us does it on our own, it’s going to be me, not you,” I insisted. We stayed there arguing about what to do for quite a while, but we really made no plan of attack. We couldn’t even agree on which of us would actually do it.

36. My Encounter with Xi

Later that day, after Lisa had gone off to her blind classes, Lonny was escorting me, along with about a dozen other patients, from one of our classes to the next. Suddenly, more than half of the patients started making the same odd, high-pitched humming sound. Right when they started making that noise, they broke off from the rest of us and started moving off down the hallway. It was an eerie sight, with all seven or eight of them moving in sync, their legs all stepping at the exact same time. They weren’t in, like, marching formation or anything, but they were definitely marching.

Then, up ahead, in the direction they were moving, I saw a bunch of SWAT-type personnel and some medical technicians in the distance, bringing that Xi fellow into the building. I immediately knew who it was. It struck me as very strange that it would take that many personnel just to escort one skinny looking little creep.

Several of the SWAT guys had a tight hold on Xi, but not with their hands. Nobody was actually touching him. They had these restraints that looked like dog collars on the end of metal poles. The collars at the end of each pole were cinched onto different parts of his body – his neck, both ankles, both wrists, and with a big one around his waist. Two of the cops followed right behind him to either side, with police-issue sawed-off shotguns aimed constantly where his head was.

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They had a thick black hood down over his head, so I couldn’t see what he actually looked like. The only way I knew for sure it was him is because all of the loonies marching in lockstep suddenly started flopping face down onto the floor toward him, just like Lisa had said they would do. They reminded me of all those Arab types when they’re saying their prayers, with their faces right down on the floor.

I was thinking that these were some really pathetic losers, but then I began to feel something terrifying. It was as if cold, invisible, metallic claws had gotten hold of my brain and were clutching and twisting it. I fell down on the ground and my arms and legs started moving around, like I was trying to swim across the floor or something, and I was swimming toward that Xi creature. I wasn’t moving fast, but I was moving, and there was nothing I could do to stop myself. And I was howling in terror, only my howling was beginning to sound more and more like the high-pitched humming of the psycho losers flopped down on the floor in front of me.

And then, as suddenly as the episode had begun, it was over. Xi had been ushered by his handlers out of sight down a side corridor, and my feelings of helplessness and pain subsided almost immediately. I hopped up off the floor, feeling like a complete jackass. Although I was completely covered with sweat, my skin felt cold and I was shivering uncontrollably. I quickly got back in what was left of my group, but I noticed that Lonny was staring at me with a look of concern.

With nothing but that one brief glimpse of Xi from a distance – no more than fifteen or twenty seconds – I was still left with a cold chill of horror, not just on my skin but all inside me, like my bones had gone cold, and I knew now exactly what Lisa had been talking about. I wished she had been there with me then. At that moment, I felt like I needed her worse than ever.

Fortunately, I never saw that creep again today. I think Lisa’s right though. From now on, if I know he’s coming, I’m going to keep my head turned away from him just in case. In fact, I’m going to run away as fast as my legs will carry me. And I think she’s right about something else. Maybe I have no business trying to go against this fiend. If I’m not

careful, he’ll have me doing his dirty work for him, and I can’t let that happen.

Later, at suppertime, when Lisa and I were done eating, we still had some free time to talk, so I told her, “I managed to get a glimpse of your famous Lord Xi today. They were bringing him into the building.”

“And you looked at him?! I told you not to look at him.”

“I didn't actually look right at him. It apparently doesn’t even matter if you look at his face. They had his head covered with a hood, and the guy still got a hold on me somehow.

“What do you mean, he got a hold on you?”

“I don’t know what I mean exactly. It was like some powerful force was dragging me toward him, and there was nothing I could do about it. Gave me chills I can tell you.” She suddenly pulled my hand over and started sniffing the back of it. Then she grabbed my other hand and sniffed it, too.

“What the heck?” I said, pulling my hands back.

“Just checking,” she said.

“Checking for what?”

“For the smell of ink and blood.”

“I don’t have the tattoo if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s exactly what I mean … So, are you maybe feeling the urge to make yourself a tattoo sometime soon?”

“No urge whatsoever for a tattoo. I promise. You can still trust me. Whatever weird urge that was that I had just lasted for a few seconds while they were dragging him across the hallway up ahead of us.”

“Us?”

“Yeah. I was with some other patients. Lonny was escorting us when an exterior door on the back of the building opened up and in they came through with that freak all secured with restraints and with shotguns pointed at his head.”

“What did the other patients do when they saw him?”

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“Most of them started making a strange whining noise and ran down the hall to flop on the floor near their master or whatever he is to them.”

“And what exactly did you do?”

“Well, I didn’t run down the hall toward him like those other guys. I just kind of fell onto the floor and my arms and legs started flopping around, almost like I was trying to swim across the floor. I watched while my limbs were moving like they belonged to somebody else or something.”

“Were you making the Xi worship sound?”

“Maybe a little bit,” I admitted, feeling like a complete idiot.

“What did Lonny do while all this was going on?”

“I honestly never looked at Lonny until it was all over, and he was looking at me like he was … alarmed or at least worried.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he was … You shouldn’t have looked at Xi at all. What if that hood hadn’t been on his head?”

“I couldn’t help looking, Baby. It’s human nature. If some group of people walks by, anybody is going to just naturally look over there … Well, not you maybe, but people like me who can see are just naturally going to turn our eyes that direction whenever something’s moving. But listen, maybe they’re planning to keep a hood on him from now on since the media has exposed what a creep he is. Anyway, I found out there’s really no danger of looking into his eyes like you suggested because Lonnie told me he doesn’t even have eyes.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that. But he’s got something that hypnotizes people. Just look around you at all these idiots bowing down to him every time he passes by. Maybe all you have to do is get close to him to be under his spell … I wish you would just stay in your room until we can figure out what to do about him.”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but they don’t allow you to just stay in your room around here.”

“I’ll talk Lonnie into letting you stay in. I can talk him into anything if I beg enough.”

“I’ll just bet you can …”

37. Xi’s Eyes

The next day – today – seemed like any other day at first, but before breakfast was even over, something very disturbing began to happen. The Xi followers – the loony goons wearing his tattoo – started giving Lisa the evil eye. They would walk right past us where we were seated at our table, glaring like they hated our guts. Lisa, who couldn’t see any of their nasty looks, kept right on chattering at me between bites, telling me all about one time about a year ago when she and her little friend, Robby had sneaked into Dr. Fisher’s office and taken his whistle. Fisher had a habit, during outdoor recreation, of blowing extremely long blasts on this really loud and shrill whistle he kept on a lanyard that was always hanging around his neck. I knew exactly what whistle she was going on and on about because, just lately, I had been annoyed, too, at how often and how long he would blow on it.

“I thought you used to like Dr. Fisher – back before he started siding with the great Lord Xi.”

“Oh, we liked him just fine. We were just messing with him. Back then, he actually seemed to enjoy when we would play little tricks on him.”

She told me how, after they had swiped the whistle off Dr. Fisher’s desk, they had gone out to the rec area, and she had held Robbie up on her shoulders so he could tie it to the basketball hoop in the rec area.

“Aren’t you kind of small to be holding some teenaged guy up on your shoulders?” I asked her.

“Well, Robbie wasn’t even a teenager yet, and he was a little bitty guy and very skinny.”

“You couldn’t even see him. How would you know if he was skinny?”

“Cause if I grabbed his leg with one hand, my fingers would go clear around it and overlap a bit on the other side. Plus, when I picked him up, he was really light – I think even lighter than my sister, Dahlia, had been.” For some reason, the knowledge

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that Robbie had been such a tiny, shrimpy little guy made me happy. I guess for a while I had been feeling a bit jealous of some little dead kid’s former relationship with Lisa.

“So why did you guys want to hang Fisher’s whistle on the basketball hoop?”

“Cause we knew basketball was scheduled for rec the next morning, and Robbie just wanted to hear Fischer howling like one of the patients when he saw it hanging up there.”

“What?!!” I suddenly roared pretty loudly at this Xi-tatted loony who came by glaring at us. He was about the third one in a row who had slowed down to give us this look of hatred, and I was getting sick of it.

“The whistle … when Dr. Fisher saw that his whistle was hanging up there, remember?” Lisa said. She sounded kind of scared because of how loud and angry I had sounded, and she was cringing away from me with a scared look like a dog that’s been beaten way too often.

“No, Baby, I’m sorry,” I said, putting my hand gently onto hers. “I wasn’t even talking to you.”

“Who were you talking to then?”

“It’s those loony tunes going by. They keep giving us the evil eye. When we get out on the playing field today, I’ll teach them to look somewhere else.”

“Oh, God, no!” She moaned.

“Don’t worry Baby! I didn’t mean I’d really hurt them – not seriously anyway.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about. Don’t you see? This means Xi knows! He knows everything!”

“What makes you think so?”

“Why else would all of his groupies be glaring at us?”

“Cause they’re nut cases. Crazy people glare a lot. Anyway, how in Hell would Xi know anything? He doesn’t even have eyes.”

“Willy, he’s got eyes all over this building. You’ve already seen a few of them staring at us this morning.” I realized she was probably right, but I didn’t say so. No sense getting her more worried than she already was.

"Hey, since when do you call me Willy?" I asked her, hoping to take her mind off the evil-eyed inmates.

"You don't like Willy?"

"Sure, I like that name fine. Willy's what my grandma used to call me when I was little." I lay my huge paw on top of her little hand on the table. Then she put her other hand on top of mine, and I put my other hand on top of the stack. Her little grin was playing at the edges of her mouth again, and I knew I had succeeded in taking her mind to a happier place.

38. Lisa Vanishes

During our rec time this morning, it was pretty much impossible for me to beat on any of Xi’s evil-eyed goons because we were playing badminton. That’s right; I said badminton, believe it or not. I thought the only people left in this world who still played that game were hoity-toity rich folks from England. But Dr. Fisher was pretty enthusiastic about it.

As soon as Fisher said the word ‘badminton,’ the loonies started groaning. “Aw, hell no! Not this game again!” One big black loony growled out loud. I was glad to hear that I wasn’t the only one less than eager to play it.

“We will hear no more of that, Mr. Norris,” Fisher warned him. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Badminton is one of the best games on earth to build eye-hand coordination – something that many of you are sorely lacking I’m afraid. Now, let’s number off down the line, ones and twos.”

He started down the line pointing at each patient. The loonies were each supposed to say “one” and then “two” and then “one” and “two” but about half of them apparently didn’t know how to count that high (either that or they were so disgusted about playing badminton that they just refused to say it). Whenever there was any hesitation, Fisher would bark out the number at the patient.

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“Alright, ladies and gentlemen,” he called out after going down the line, “all number ones look to your left. The person you’re looking at is your badminton partner. Is that understood?”

Almost no one responded, and the ones who did were saying stuff like, “Yeah, whatever.”

Fisher got his stern look on his face and assumed his General Mussolini stance, feet wide apart, shoulders straight, hands pressed tightly into the small of his back. “Now get this straight, folks. Badminton is a civilized sport played by ladies and gentlemen. I expect to see no horseplay or bad sportsmanship. Do I make myself clear?” The response this time was even less enthusiastic than before, but he didn’t seem to notice or care.

“Good!” He said. “Now, each of you number ones, get a bird and a racquet, then line up on that side of the net.” He was pointing. “Hurry it up! Now, you number twos grab a racquet and stand on the other side. Face off against your partner.”

Badminton birds were already flying all over the place by this time. Nobody was hitting back and forth to their partners. It was clear that most of these kooks had no idea who their partners even were. It was a frenzy of bird whacking, with excited patients often whacking each other. Fortunately those racquets were so lightweight, nobody was really getting injured, but there were angry words being exchanged and within a minute after the Doc gave us the go-ahead to begin, there were several patients rolling around on the grass, pounding each other pretty vigorously with fists and racquets. That’s when Fisher started blowing like mad on that damned whistle of his. He kept it up until even I felt like putting my hands over my ears and bobbing my head up and down. While about a dozen of the SDs continued their nervous meltdowns set off by the loud whistling, the good doctor proceeded to lecture us all on the importance of getting organized, following instructions, respecting our neighbors, etc., etc. Meanwhile, distraught SDs continued to cover their ears and bob their heads, to squat down squealing like animals, to whine, mumble, scream, or run around in a frenzy, bumping into one another. All the while, Fisher droned on amidst the pandemonium all about good sportsmanship and whatnot.

Finally, he got all exasperated and stepped off to one side to talk to Lonny. “You have got to work on the level of self-discipline among these patients,” I heard him say, as if Lonny had done something wrong.

“Yes Sir,” he said quietly as Fisher began marching back toward the ward where he could take refuge in his office.

“Okay, guys, I’m going to need your attention up here,” Lonny called out loudly. “Martinez! You need to stop that immediately.” One of the patients stopped howling like a wild animal and flopped down on the ground, pressing his face into the grass like he was pouting or trying to suffocate himself.

“Okay, now, Enfield! Jacobs! You need me to come over there with the tazer or the pepper spray?” Two guys who had been rolling around, pulling each other’s hair, biting and scratching like girls, quickly rolled apart and sat on the grass looking fearfully at Lonny.

“That’s better. Now, is anyone really hurt?” The loonies were looking around at each other. One approached Lonny, holding out his elbow for him to look at. “Carter, that’s the same scratch you’ve been showing me for a week. It wasn’t bad enough for a band-aid a week ago, and now I can’t even see it anymore. You’re going to be alright.”

“Now, we’ve got way too many people out here trying to play at once. All of you from here over, go sit over there in the shade. You can just wait until it’s your turn.” Pretty soon, Lonny had the few remaining patients actually playing something that resembled badminton. They would never be any good, but at least no one was getting hurt.

After a few minutes at this, another orderly came out and whispered something to Lonny. “Okay, guys, just keep on playing,” I heard him say to the ones still whacking birds around. “You’ll get only about five more minutes before we rotate, so make good use of your time.”

Then Lonny walked toward those of us under the nearby oak tree. He was looking right at me. “Tyler, when’s the last time you saw Lisa?” He said as he walked up.

“She was at breakfast,” I answered. “But then she said she had to go over to the D Ward for

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calisthenics with the other blind patients cause they can’t do badminton.”

“So, what exactly was she doing the last time you saw her?”

“She and Reeves were leaving with the orderly named Tad. They were supposed to do calisthenics. Why? What’s happened to her?”

“Tad and the two patients he was escorting never showed up at D Ward,” Lonny said, looking terribly worried. A sickening vision crept through my brain. It was as though I could see Lisa’s dead skin, stuffed and mounted like poor little Robbie had been. A pitiful sound came out of me. Something halfway between a wail and a moan.

Right then, I heard one of Xi’s stupid goons snicker and I saw a few of them with Xi tats smirking at me, all grinning on only one side of their mouths – the same side – exactly the same way, like something was controlling them all in sync. And then it hit me. This wasn’t just a few random crazy guys smirking at me. This was actually that fiend Xi himself smirking at me – all around me, in stereo.

I suddenly charged at the Xi guys, ready to pound those smirks off their faces. But Lonny grabbed me from behind before I could clobber more than two or three of them. As he tugged me by the waist away from them, I noticed that even the ones I had smashed in the face were still smirking. Nobody I had ever hit before was still standing afterwards, much less with a smile on his face.

“You sons of b___es!” I howled. But that just made them snicker even louder.

“Are you going to work with me to help find her,” Lonny yelled in my ear from behind, “Or are you going to force me to have you placed in restraints for the next 48 hours?” I quit struggling immediately, and a few seconds later, Lonny let me go.

“So where should we look first?” I asked. “You know this place better than I do.”

39. Final Conflict

Lonny pulled the hand-held radio off his belt and spoke into it.

“We’ve got some missing patients and a missing orderly. What’s the status on that?”

“They’re still looking around over in D, but no word yet.” A voice I didn’t recognize said on the radio.

“Has anyone contacted the authorities yet?” Lonny asked.

“No, they only went missing an hour ago. Dr. Fisher says it’s too soon to call anyone.”

“With all the crap that’s been going on here, they could be dead already. I’ll call the cops myself.”

“Fisher says no.”

“I don’t give a damn what Fisher says.” Lonny clipped the radio to his belt and screamed suddenly at the patients. “Rec time’s over. Line it up. Now!” The patients all lined up, myself included. As he marched us toward the building, I heard him speaking on his cell phone.

“This is Alonzo Finch speaking. I’m the director of activities at the Pennington State School. We have an extreme emergency situation out here. We have what appears to be a hostage situation with at least three hostages. The perpetrators appear to be heavily armed and shots have been fired. We’re going to need a lot of cops out here in a hurry … and maybe a couple of ambulances … No I can’t keep talking to you right now. I’ve got to get these patients to safety. You’ve got my number there on your system now, right? Well, call me back on this same line in a few minutes. Yeah, thanks.”

He clicked his phone shut, stuck it in his pocket, and winked at me. “That ought to get someone out here.” The more I got to know this Lonny character, the more I learned to respect him.

Once we were in the building, Lonnie went straight to the command center – the secure room they call ‘The Bubble.’ “Wait here, and don’t get out of line,” he told us. When he stepped into the

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bubble, he didn’t bother to close the door, so we could all hear what they were saying inside.

“I want this whole place on lock down immediately – all patients secured in their cells, all wards secured. That’s automatic protocol when patients go missing. Why hasn’t that been done already?”

“Fisher said to hold off.”

“I don’t give a damn what Fisher said. You know what the protocol is when patients go missing. Now obey the regulations and do your job.” He stepped out in the hallway, looking angry. About the time he came out of the bubble, I saw Dr. Fisher practically trotting down the hallway toward us. Lonny already had his cell phone out and was pushing buttons.

"Did you actually call in all those cops at the gate without my authorization, Hendricks? You think I'm going to let them in here to swarm all over the place like last time?" Fisher screamed as he approached us. Lonny quickly held out his outstretched arm, with the palm of his hand only a couple of inches from Fisher's red face.

"Lower your voice. I'm on the phone to Dr. Mason," Lonny told him.

"Get your hand out of my face," he screamed back, swatting at Lonny's arm. But the hand stayed right in his face. "I'll see you fired for this, so help me God!"

With his one hand still stretched out there in Fisher's face, Lonny started talking into his cell phone. "Dr. Mason's office, please. This is an emergency."

"So that's the way you're going to play it, huh? Well I've got news for you. I have friends at the capital myself ... plenty of friends."

"Dr. Mason?" Lonny said into his phone. "Yes, this is Alonzo Hendricks at Pennington. We have a serious situation here - three lives are at stake. An orderly and two patients have gone missing since early this morning ... Yes, I just called them, as soon as I heard the three were missing, but Fisher's trying to sit on it like he did when the Thornton boy disappeared last year. If something isn't done immediately, these missing persons are going to be killed if they're not dead already. And one of the

missing patients is a child - a fifteen-year-old blind girl who should never have been put in here in the first place ... Sure, here he is." Lonny held out his phone to Dr. Fisher. "He wants to talk to you."

Fisher held the phone to his ear listening for about thirty seconds, looking very worried. Then he started talking, obviously answering rapidly fired questions. "Yes, Sir, I was aware, but I only found out an hour ago ... No, Sir, they're still outside the gate, but I was on my way to let them in just now when Mr. Hendricks called me over ... Of course. I was headed into the bubble to order the lock down of the entire facility right now." He was lying like the devil now, and all of us there listening knew it. "Yes, Sir. Right away." He flipped the phone closed and handed it back to Lonny. "You'll pay for this, Hendricks. These state-level bureaucrats like Mason never stick around long. And as soon as he leaves for greener pastures, you'll be out of here without a reference." He turned around and stomped off.

Lonny stuck his head into the open door of the bubble. "You heard what Fisher just said about an immediate lock down, right?"

"I certainly did," a voice said from inside. Immediately afterward the lockdown siren started buzzing and the lights along the ceiling started blinking bright red.

"You patients get in your rooms immediately." They all began shuffling off down the dorm wing, myself included, but Lonny stopped me. "Not you, Tyler. You stick with me. I might need some muscle. I have no idea how many perpetrators we might be up against." Then he stuck his head back into the bubble and shouted. "As soon as you've got the cells closed off, I'm going to need a count immediately of how many more patients are missing, and I'm going to need their names."

"We're on it, Boss," the voice inside said. Then the same voice started barking orders. "Herbie, you've got D-Ward, Jack, take C, Martin, check A, and Ross, you stay here and check B-Ward. I want you guys running, not walking." Four uniformed guards with nightsticks and pepper spray flopping from their belts, came charging through the door from the bubble and trotted off in different directions.

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Lonny led me down a couple of long hallways, then stopped, turned to me and said in a quiet voice, "I need you to stay right here for a minute. There's someone I need to talk to before we go off with no idea where we should look. But don't follow me. I don't need you turned against me. Okay?"

I nodded. "I won't move an inch till you say so, Lonny."

He went on the run and turned into the same hallway where I knew they had secured Lord Xi. A couple of seconds later I heard a heavy metal dead bolt clanking open and a big metal door slamming out against the wall. About two seconds later, I heard Lonny absolutely screaming. "Get your a__ out here, you sick freak." Immediately after that, I heard what sounded like a body being slammed hard against the floor, then Lonny's voice screaming again. "Yeah, I feel your little control signal trying to manipulate me. But you ain't got nothing over me. Remember? ... You can't touch me, remember? ... But I can sure as hell touch you ... How does that feel, Huh? ... You like that? ... How does this make that filthy little sick heart of yours feel?"

Lonny was still screaming as loud as any human can, but I couldn't hear any sounds of roughness whatsoever - no punching sounds, no slamming sounds, nothing except Lonny's screams. I was becoming intensely curious about what Lonny might be doing to him at that moment. Was he strangling Xi? Twisting his arm? Whatever it was, it was done in complete silence. He started screaming again, his voice full of rage and fury.

"You want me to stop? ... Huh? ... Is that what you want, you puny runt? ... Cause let me tell something. Your pitiful little control signals ain't even touching me. You want me to let off the pressure? ... Then you call off your dogs. When I see your followers come in here and lie down on that floor, then I'll let you up, and not until then."

At this point, I was overcome with curiosity; either that or this Xi character was sending his mind control messages around the corner or through the cinderblock wall of the hallways. I felt this overwhelming urge, like I just had to find out what Lonny was doing to him. I was hoping he would just strangle him and get it over with before one of his goons could hurt Lisa.

I crept without a sound down the main hallway toward the smaller side hallway. As I drew closer, I felt that feeling growing stronger and stronger inside me - the overwhelming compulsion to see what Lonny was doing to Xi. I stuck my head out and saw Lonny there above Xi, looking like he was doing a Marine Corps pushup, but with his hands together in the middle of Xi's skinny chest. He wasn't doing pushups. He just stayed like that, his arms extended, with all of his upper-body weight concentrated on the center of Xi's chest.

The moment I stuck my head out and looked around the corner, something suddenly changed inside my head. It was almost a physical feeling. I immediately tried to jerk my head back out of sight, but my body was no longer doing what I told it to. I felt like a soldier in one of those wartime killing video games ... like someone else's hand was on a joystick somewhere moving me around.

I staggered down the hallway, zombie-style, fighting against my muscles each step of the way. I knew exactly who was controlling me. I had no idea exactly what he was going to make me do once I reached Lonny, but I had a pretty good idea it wasn't something good. Because I was fighting so hard against every move Xi was requiring, it was taking Xi a good ten seconds before he could get me to finish taking each step, and it seemed like maybe it was getting a little bit easier to resist him. It seemed to be taking him longer and longer to force each step, but I finally did reach them. I clenched my two fists together and raised them high in the air above Lonny head. I was fighting so hard against following Xi's commands that it took maybe twenty seconds for him to get my fists raised all the way. But then I kind of froze there, shaking and wobbling around for several more seconds. And then, all in an instant, I slumped down to the floor as limp as a sleeping puppy. It was as if I was a balloon that someone suddenly deflated. I lay there quivering and moaning for a few seconds, not sure what was going to happen next.

"I thought I told you to wait over there," Lonny said, feeling Xi's wrist for a pulse. Then he smiled a bit and hopped to his feet.

"Yeah, I tried to," I said as Lonny hauled me to my feet. "But unlike you, I'm not completely resistant to Xi's control signals."

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"Looks like you were resistant enough though, after all," Lonny said quietly as we looked down at Xi's body.

"Is he dead?"

"He's roasting in Hell right about now I'd guess."

"How did he die?"

"Looks a lot like a heart attack. I did everything I could - even tried heart massage, but it was bo use."

He looked over at me, and gave me a little smile. I nodded and smiled back. "Sure does sound like a heart attack, Boss."

"Come on! We have to find Lisa and the others. No telling where his goons took them." He took off walking extremely fast down the main hallway. I had to practically trot to keep up.

"Whew!" He said as we raced along. "That little skirmish got me all worked up. I'm covered with sweat ... Hey, you're all sweaty, too."

"Well, maybe you were too busy to notice, but I was going through my own battle back there, too."

"Wait a second. There's another reason why we're sweating so much. It's getting hot as hell in here!" He started glancing around at the ceiling of the hallway, then suddenly sprinted fifty feet down and started holding his hand up in the air toward an air vent.

"It's hot air!" He yelled.

"Why would they have the heat on in August?" I asked.

"They wouldn't!" He suddenly took off running flat out down the hallway, and I was running right behind him. I realized where he must be going. Sure enough, he unlocked a door that said "Utility Basement" and threw it open. He went running down the concrete stairway into the blast of warm air rising around us. It felt as though we were descending into the pit of Hell.

"Oh God! Oh God!" I groaned, walking down much more slowly than Lonny. As I proceeded, I couldn't keep myself from thinking about the time Lisa had told me about the time she had gone down into her own basement to come face to face with the

horror there. And I knew with terrible certainty that a similar horror must await me down below.

"Get over here and help me!" Lonny was screaming over near the huge central heating furnace. The metal of the furnace walls was getting so hot that it was actually glowing orange. I trotted toward him. As I reached him – maybe 25 feet from the furnace – the heat it was throwing off was practically unbearable. Lonny shouted again.

"Someone turned the thermostat all the way up and then disabled it. We've got to find the power source and shut it down. You go that way."

"I'm not sure what I'm looking for."

"It'll be a large switch with huge electric cables running into it and out of it ... or it may be a large metal panel box, probably gray."

"There! Is that it?" I said, pointing at a big grey panel nearby with giant wires going in and out.

"That's got to be it." He ran over, grabbed a big metal bar and began hammering it against the padlock that kept the electric panel closed. The third time he hit it, the lock went flying off and skittered out of sight under some machinery. He yanked the box open and started switching levers one after another until all of the larger levers had been switched off. Then he ran and looked at some gauges on the heater.

"Looks like we’ve got it shut down," he said, sounding relieved. "Another half hour and this entire unit would have been melting down."

I suddenly ran toward the utility door on the side of the furnace. "Get away from there!" He bellowed at me.

"We've got to get her out!"

"If they really are inside there, it's not going to matter whether we take them out now or an hour from now after the furnace has cooled down some."

"I'm getting her out!" I shouted stubbornly. But by the time I was six or seven feet from the machine, I felt that my face and hands were getting terribly burned just from the heat it was throwing off. Lonny dived down there across the floor and dragged me away from the furnace. When we were twenty or so feet away, he hugged onto me to keep me from trying to go back to the machine.

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“We can’t leave her in there,” I screamed, trying to get away from him. “It was the thing she feared the most – being set on fire.”

"Tyler, listen, maybe this furnace thing is just a diversion. Maybe they’re just trying to distract us from something they’re doing elsewhere.

“You don’t believe that! I know you think she’s in there, too!”

Look, Tyler, if you go back over there, it won't accomplish a thing. All that's going to happen is that we'll have one more body to carry up out of this basement. We'll check it out inside after it's cooled down enough to be safe. Now, let me get you upstairs to have your hands and face bandaged. Okay, Son?"

"I'm not your son," I said weakly. But he kept hugging me, and I leaned my forehead against his shoulder and sobbed like a little boy.

40. Unidentifiable

As soon as we came out of the basement, Lonny took me up to the infirmary where the nurse lady took a look at my burned face and hands.

“Nothing but first degree burns here,” she told Lonny. “It’s fortunate you got him away from that heat as quickly as you did.” She was like many other staff members out here. They ignore patients like me, assuming we’re too loony-toons to understand what they’re saying. She started wrapping bandages around my hands, glancing occasionally at Lonny.

“Just keep these on him for two or three days. There should be some …”

“Hey, Lady, I can hear you and understand you, okay? You don’t have to ignore me.”

I guess I spoke to her too loudly because Lonny put his hand on my shoulder and told her, “You’ll have to forgive Mr. Tyler. He’s been through a terrible ordeal this morning. You can speak directly to him, tell him whatever you need to, and he’ll understand you. He’s one of our brightest and most capable students.”

“Okay, sorry Mr. Tyler. For the next few days, there will be some minor blistering and peeling, but it should heal up nicely. Probably won’t even cause any long-term scarring. Your face must have been a couple of feet farther from the heat because it doesn’t look like it will even blister. So we won’t have to wrap you up like a mummy … You’ve got your fingertips free, so you should be able to unwrap the bandages from your hands on your own. Try to remember to do that about this same time Friday morning. If you find any significant area with undrained blisters, get an orderly to bring you back so I can recheck it. Okay?”

“Will do, Ma’am. Thanks, and sorry for talking too loud.”

When we got back out into the hallway, I expected Lonny to lock me in my cell since we were under a facility-wide lockdown, but he didn’t. “Stick with me for a while, Tyler. I’m sure you’re as eager to find out about Lisa as I am.”

First, we went back toward the bubble. Halfway there, we came across a group of six or seven patients being escorted back to their cells. I noticed that every one of them had the Xi tattoo. I also noticed that they were all looking down and avoiding eye contact with Lonny and I, like they were ashamed or something. I stopped in the middle of the hallway, glaring at them.

“Did you do something to Lisa?” I bellowed super loud. “Where is she?”

One of the patients started crying and babbling. “We didn’t want to do it! He made us!”

“What did you do?” I screamed, stepping up to him, right in his face. But instead of answering, he dropped down onto the floor, covering his head with his hands.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he started bawling over and over again.

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“He was forcing us,” another guy said. “We couldn’t help it!”

At that point, one of the other patients flopped down on the floor in front of me and wrapped his arms around my legs. It was a CIP everyone called Bubble-Butt because he was overweight with an oversized behind.

“Pwease don’t huwt me. Pwease don’t huwt me. Lisa was my fwiend.” The orderly tugged on him for at least two minutes before he could get him to turn loose of my legs. Bubble-Butt had tears and snot all over his face, and I noticed some of the same on the tops of my shoes where he had been blubbering.

“Get up off the floor and start moving to your rooms!” The orderly commanded. “That includes you, too, Buddy.” He was pointing at me.

“No,” Lonny told him. “This patient’s with me. He’s injured and the nurse said he may need further medical attention.” I noticed he didn’t mention that the extra medical attention wouldn't be required for another week and probably not even then.

As the Xi loonies were herded along the opposite direction, we made our way toward the bubble. In the hallway, we saw a cluster of uniformed cops and SWAT team members.

“Here’s Mr. Hendricks,” said one of the facility guards. “He’s our activities director. He may know more about the situation.” The guard seemed relieved to turn all these cops over to Lonny.

“Hendricks, your name was on this report. You’re the one who called this in right?” An older looking cop asked him. He was dressed in a business suit, but he had “Cop” written all over him – his haircut, his shoes, the perfect trim on his mustache, the two-way radio on his belt.

“Yes, Sir?”

“I’m Detective Connelly. You had reported hostages being taken and shots being fired?”

“That’s right. I heard some loud reports. Sounded like it could have been gunfire, and with patients and staff missing, I didn’t want to take any chances.”

“And who is being held hostage?”

“Well, I believe the two patients and the orderly were taken against their will, but they’re probably not being held any longer. We found a furnace on full blast in the basement. Someone had jacked with the system so the thermostat would never shut off. This entire building would probably have burned to the ground if this patient and I hadn’t found a way to get the power turned off.

“I wonder if this has anything to do with that psycho killer fiend they keep talking about on the news, that Lord Xi guy,” Connelly said.

“He was definitely behind it. But he had some other patients doing his dirty work for him. We passed them in the hall just now, and they were crying and apologizing. I really don’t feel they should be held responsible for what happened.”

“Where are those patients now?”

“They were being escorted back to their dorms by Sheldon, one of the orderlies.”

“You don’t think they’ll overpower Sheldon and maybe take him hostage as well?” The detective looked worried and was pulling his radio off his belt.

“Nah, they’re harmless now. Trust me. The man behind it all is dead.”

“Xi’s dead?” The cop asked, looking excited like he was happy to hear it.”

“Yeah, his body is here in this ward, over in the hallway at the East end. Looked like a heart attack.”

“Good riddance, I’d say,” the Pennington guard said.

At that moment, we saw Dr. Fisher in the distance and he was actually running toward us. “Arrest that man!” He exclaimed, pointing dramatically at Lonny.

“Who are you?” The policeman wondered.

“I’m Doctor Ignatius Fisher, the director of this establishment.”

“Fisher! You’re the fellow the guys at the gate quoted when they said we couldn’t come on the premises.”

“He also refused to call a lockdown which is required by state law for this facility whenever a patient goes missing,” Lonny added.

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“Isn’t this man your director of activities?” Connelly asked Fisher, looking puzzled.

“He is, or I should say was. But he’s also a cold blooded murderer,” Fisher squeaked, his voice breaking with excitement. “We’ve got him on tape crushing the life out of a patient – the one they call Xi. He was on top of him, pressing down in the middle of his chest with both hands. I sent a staff member to check his pulse, and he was dead.”

"You've got a video showing Mr. Fitch here killing this Xi fellow?" Connelly asked.

"Yes, that's what I just said!" Fisher's voice was squeaking again. "The security camera was pretty far away, and the lighting wasn't great, but you can tell it was Fitch. And this patient was in the shot, too, an accomplice maybe." He was pointing at me.

“I was performing CPR," Lonny said. You know, cardio-pulmonary resuscitation ... external heart massage,” shaking his head in disgust. "He was on the floor with no pulse, so I did CPR."

One of the guards from the bubble spoke up then. "That's exactly what it looked like to me and the others. It was obvious that Hendricks was trying to administer CPR."

"He's lying!" Fischer shrieked. "They're all lying!"

The detective spoke up now. "What you describe seeing on your video tape does sound a lot like CPR, Doctor ... "

"I was an eyewitness." I said, taking a step closer to Connelly. "I saw the whole thing happening. And Lonny really was doing CPR. 'Stand back,' he told me. 'This man needs CPR' and then he started pushing on his chest like I've seen on TV."

"You were in on this!" Fisher squealed, turning on me. "I saw you there with your hands raised up in the air, just standing there, ready to smash those big hands down on the patient if he escaped from Lonny."

"You know how I get, Dr. Fisher, when I'm nervous about something. I always raise my hands up and get all shaky and sometimes wet myself. That's why I'm in here, remember? Because of the nerves and ... and all the bad stuff ... all the bad stuff." I said, doing my crazy-guy act. "But I know

what I saw and heard in the hallway. I'm not crazy any more. Like you said, the medicines are helping."

A few minutes later, I was placed back in my cell and the detective and Lonny and Fisher all went off to sort out what really happened in the hallway. About ten o'clock that night, Lonny came to my cell.

"Come with me, Tyler," he said, not smiling.

"Did you get in trouble?"

"No, don't worry about me," he told me as we walked down the hallway. "The detective said it looked to him on the video like I really was doing CPR. And then about an hour later, guys from the state capital called and permanently relieved Fisher of his duties - fired him, basically."

"Good! ... Did they find Lisa? Is that where you're taking me?" He had a grim look on his face, but he didn't answer. "Was she in the furnace?"

Lonny hung his head for a few seconds, then looked up at me. "I wish I had better news for you, Son." He put his hand on my elbow. "I'm not really qualified to talk to you about what happened to Lisa. I want to introduce you to an old friend of mine, Dr. Winifred Sloan. She worked here for many years, back in the good old days before she was promoted and went to Sacramento. She's come back to take over this place for a few months or years - whatever it takes to get us past the damage that's been done."

He ushered me into Fisher's office where I met a tall, kind-looking woman. "You must be William," she said, taking my hand in both of hers and holding it for a long time, getting tears in her eyes. Soon, I had tears in my eyes as well.

"So she's gone?" I asked. "Lisa's gone . . ." My question had become a statement of certainty.

41 - Aftermath

As the weeks and months went by, I learned more of the details. Because Lisa's death was

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explained to me with such gentle grace, I learned to accept it without bitterness or rage. After all, who was left for me to hate?

I learned that almost nothing was found in the bottom of the furnace but a few ounces of fine ash with fewer than a dozen little bone or tooth fragments, none larger than a kernel of corn. Three human lives reduced to a tiny residue that could have been poured into the palm of my hand. They determined that the remains were human but completely unidentifiable – apparently three people’s remains mingled together with no trace of DNA remaining.

The new shrink lady, Dr. Sloan, reminded me of the social worker who saved my life when I was little. She was a truly compassionate person. Eventually, after I learned I could trust her, I spoke to her about everything - my childhood, my criminal past, my relationship with Lisa.

As a psychiatrist, she seemed fascinated by Lord Xi. She asked something about him almost every time we met. I explained to her how it felt, looking down upon Xi on the floor as he compelled me, irresistibly, to murder Lonny, how, when I looked down into those dark pockets where Xi's eyes should have been, it felt as though I was gazing through two little windows into the dark heart of hell.

After I knew her really well, I gave her this story of mine, the one I've been writing down for the past six weeks, and I asked her to read it. "Maybe that'll help you understand how I'm feeling." Mainly, I wanted her to understand why I loved Lisa so much and why it was so wrong that such a beautiful young girl probably had to suffer terribly at the end of her life. I'm so horrified by the possibility, no, really the probability, that Xi had his goons stuff her into that furnace when she was still alive, how she must have begged and screamed and pounded on the furnace walls as they turned on the heat and cooked her to death in there. That is my recurring nightmare that I wake up from at least twice each week. That is the stark vision Dr. Sloan is working hard to blur and soften in my soul.

It turned out that Dr. Sloan, the morning after I gave her the story to read, gave it back to me along with a laptop. That computer has the Internet disabled, but at least I can type on it. I spent about

sixteen hours a day working on typing it and writing more.

And then, when I showed the typed version to Dr. Sloan, she asked if I would mind her sending it to someone she knew - some editor who had published books she had written on psychiatry. Turns out that publisher didn't handle my kind of writing, but he sent it to someone else who really is going to publish it. It's supposed to be a tell-all book about the infamous Lord Xi, told from the point of an insider from the same nuthouse where Xi was housed. But I've made sure that the story remained focused on someone much more important than Xi - my dearest friend, Lisa.

Perhaps the most important thing Dr. Sloan did for me was to show me love, acceptance, and forgiveness. Slowly, my anger issues were being addressed. All these crazy little patients are no longer frightened of me. In fact, they’ve gotten so comfortable around me that they feel free to act like jerks and call me names, knowing I won't pound them to the ground.

The thing that has always bothered me most - aside from Lisa's death - is what I did to Frisco. I've sent him letters begging for forgiveness. And I've talked to Dr. Sloan about it a million times. She said I had to think about it, talk about it, work through it, and come to terms with myself for what I had done - what I had been. I don’t know how I could ever do all that. All I know is that, Like Dr. Sloan says, I can’t force someone to forgive me.

But I finally thought of a way to prove to Frisco that I really was a different person. I sent him a signed contract agreeing to give him half the proceeds from the sale of my book. I also sent him a copy of the Publisher's letter accepting the manuscript and offering a $50,000 up front payment against future royalty earnings. Frisco wrote back and said I really must be sorry after all. He still doesn't want to see me yet, but in time, maybe I can sit down with him and show him I'm a different person. (Of course, 'Frisco' is not even my friend's real name. My publisher made me change everybody's names so nobody would be embarrassed and so we wouldn't get sued.)

I’m almost eighteen by this time, and Dr. Sloan and Lonny have been after me to leave the asylum and make a life for myself on the outside. But I

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didn't know about that. I feel as though I would be leaving Lisa behind in this place – not just leaving behind some tiny handful of dust and bone fragments but leaving behind her smile, her laugh, her eyes, her beautiful wavy hair, and most of all, her sense of humor and fun.

Yesterday I walked out to the little graveyard at the far end of the playing field and found Lonny standing there staring down at the three little grave markers where they had buried the handful of dust.

"Hey Lonny," I called from twenty paces away. We stood side by side looking down for a couple of minutes.

"So, Dr. Sloan tells me tomorrow's the big day," he said, referring to the fact that I would be leaving Pennington State School the next day to live in a halfway house in the free world.

"I guess."

"You guess? ... What's bothering you?

"Oh, same old things. I just don't feel very ... confident. Without Lisa, I just don’t know who I am anymore."

"None of us really know that for sure. You're going to do fine. And remember, you're not going to be alone out there. I live out there, too. I just work in here. I'll be coming around to visit so often you'll want to run me off."

"Thanks! That means a lot to me."

"Welcome to the grownup world, Son." He stuck his hand out and I shook it warmly, just as all of us looneys had been taught to do in our handshaking classes.

42. Becoming a Model Citizen

It’s been nearly a year since I wrote any more on this book. It’s taken that long for my publisher to get everything lined up and legal so the book could get printed and sent out. My publisher – I’ll just call her Susan – asked me to make one more chapter just

to show that I turned out alright. And I guess she’s right. I guess my life is better than it was, but I know I’ll never be a happy person.

Soon after I got out, I found a halfway house where I could live for almost nothing, and it’s only a few blocks from my publishing company. I kept stopping by so often at Susan’s office that she finally gave me some work to do, probably just to keep me out of her way. She gave me a few manuscripts to read through to see if I thought they were any good. Most of them were plain boring. Maybe I just didn’t understand them. But there were a couple of them that were really fun to read. When I told Susan that, she read the ones I had recommended and she agreed that they were really good, but that they needed work.

After that, she offered to arrange for me to be paid a little bit to review some of the manuscripts people sent in hoping to have them made into books. So she would send me home with stacks of unpublished books to read. After a while, they started paying me a lot more, so that makes it kind of like a real job. My pay goes automatically into my bank account, and I don’t have hardly any place to spend it, so the balance in my account keeps getting bigger.

Lonny has invited me over to his place for dinner a couple of times. His wife, Carlita, is really nice and a super great cook. The first time I went over there, I noticed that they had a picture on their mantelpiece that I thought from a distance might be their children.

“Those your kids?” I asked, pointing.

“No, we can’t have children of our own,” Carlita said.

“Take a closer look,” Lonny told me, so I went over to see. By the time I was a few steps away from the picture, I recognized one of the people in it. It was Lisa when she was maybe twelve years old, holding hands with a little skinny fellow about a foot shorter than her, and both of them were wearing the thick, blind-people glasses. Even back then, Lisa had that mischievous grin on her face.

“Is this kid Robbie?” I asked.

“It sure is,” Lonny said. And then, right here in the middle of their living room, the most ridiculous thing happened. Water just started pouring out of

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my eyes like I was a fountain or something. Pretty soon Lonny and Carlita were hugging onto me from both sides. It was the first time I had really let myself cry since they found Lisa’s ashes. It’s not a good idea to let the other people in a halfway house see you crying.

Sometimes when I see some girl walking in front of me – some girl about Lisa’s size with light-brown, wavy hair – I’ll find myself walking a little bit faster to catch up with her … just to make sure. Okay, I know that’s stupid. But I just miss her so much!

I know it’s been over a year since I lost Lisa, and that I should be learning to get over her loss by now. But what would be the point of “getting over” Lisa? I can’t help thinking I will never have another chance at loving someone and being loved in return. Any girl would have to be blind to develop feelings for someone who looks like me. But Lonny and Dr. Sloan both say I shouldn’t feel that way. They say I’m still just a kid, that life is long, and that anything can happen. But I don’t want to find someone else to love – blind or not. I would feel like I was not being faithful to Lisa … to her memory.

I realize it’s wrong to go around feeling sorry for myself. And I know that I’ve been given a second chance that I never deserved. I also know Lonny’s right, that I should feel blessed to be healthy, to have work, to have food to eat and a roof over my head. And I do feel thankful for all that stuff. But most of the time, it seems I can’t help feeling like I will always be the loneliest person on the planet.