Day 40: Sun Room [Fourth Shift]
Well, that was... special. No wonder he was losing respect for this place--the fearful Martin Landel was coming undone, most probably with boredom. So scary. Even Nursey seemed a little exasperated, though that most likely had more to do with X's constant insistence to stay in the Sun Room rather than go inside the Greenhouse
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"We'll have you cleaned out in no time, Mister Ellis."
They'd missed the first time. They'd put it in his lung. He'd feel it slithering through the caked ash on quivering tissue, knew before they did that they had to start the hellish process all over again.
"Oops, let's try that again."
Sucking and invading and spitting, like some abominable hooker-leech hybrid, they'd cleaned him out, and lead him back into the big, bright room to miss lunch in peace. Not that he would've wanted food. He had a phantom sensation of that slender, sickening tube, ready to steal away anything he put inside himself.
Take your mind off it. Have a valium. Wait, dammit! Without drugs to turn to, Spider distracted himself by browsing the bulletin board, immersing himself in other people's plots, and references to his own. This Lelouch guy was pretty interesting ...
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No harm keeping up with today's bright mood. She headed for the message board as soon as her nazi nurse let her go. Harley had mostly ignored the thing her whole first week, but lately, it's been getting entertaining. Like reading the tabloids, except these change up every few hours.
Instead, she found herself being drawn to that familiar bald head sitting a few yards from the board. Spider, that was the name. Easy to remember. But he was looking a little strange... And by that, she meant meant not strange. Which was strange. What happened to all that energy from yesterday? Even last night. They didn't shoot him up, did they?
Ignoring the bulletin board, she headed straight for him. Maybe a normal person would have been worried or concerned. Harley was more curious. "Hey, what're doin'? You're not actually mopin', are ya?"
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"Silence," he muttered, continuing to stare at the bulletin board. "I am conducting research."
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Wow, he wasn't moping. He was just... really enthralled. She couldn't see why. Most interesting thing she'd seen on there was from this morning about Batman being here. Everything else was the usual garbage. Some of it was fun, sometimes, yeah, but nothing worth 'researching.'
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"I am hunting the nutsos." he said, softly. "Sometimes, nutsos know things, and sometimes you can write these things down. That is, if your handbones are not shattered." Spider felt a mope coming on, but it was tackled by a sudden idea. He quickly turned his head towards Harley.
"Your handbones are unshattered, correct?"
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"Huh? Mine?" Harley looked down as though to check before realizing what she was doing and looking back up at him. "Well, yeah. I sure as heck hope so, or I'm gonna have a problem."
Oh wait. He was still bandaged up, wasn't he? Jeez. This is what happens when you go around slamming your hands on tables and stuff.
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"Perfect, fantastic, great, yes! Sit down. Sit down. Why are you not sitting down? Listen. I have this thing. Umm ..."
Spider jammed his hand first into one pocket, then into the other, searching in vain for his journal, or at least a pen. As a last ditch effort, he stuck his hand down the front of his pants. The pill bottles weren't even there anymore. His expression drooped.
"I wish these thousand walls would sprout dicks and fuck themselves," he murmured, letting his head fall and bounce against the tabletop.
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Then he suddenly stopped, looking... disappointed? Um. "What's a matter? Lost it?" She put her hands on her hips in what could have almost been a parental gesture. "Can't you at least wait til ya get back to your room?"
You know years of asylum experience paid off when things like crotch groping and licking walls didn't even earn much of a lingering thought anymore.
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No contacts, no equipment, no manual dexterity ... but wait! Had he not built himself up from nothing once before? Did he not relish being the unknown element, the gangrenous thorn in the sides of the well-to-do cameldicks in charge? He did! These were facts! But how did he do it before ... that was so many years and so many drugs ago ... Ah! Yes! Journalism! Telling people things they did not already know, loudly and with lots of colorful adjectives! But what didn't people already know? Maybe he should check the bulletin board ...
No! He wouldn't find anything anyone didn't know on the bulletin board because if it was on the bulletin board it was already known! Hah! You would dare try to fool Spider Jerusalem, you stupid board? Never! He had to go find something that was not on the board, and then write about it. Yes!
Without lifting his head, Spider raised his hand and pointed at Harley.
"You!" he barked at the table, "Sit the fuck down!" He jabbed his finger at the surface in front of him. "And tell me," he said, forcing his head up and grinning, "what things do the nutsos not know?"
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She quickly plopped herself down on the couch next to him with all the elegance of a brick, deciding to cross her legs underneath her Indian style while she thought over his question. What didn't we all know? Wow, there was something she hadn't asked herself.
"Uhh, lemme see," she droned, rocking forward and back restlessly. "I guess, no one knows where all the monsters keep comin' from. There's a lab with 'em but there's only a few cages in there." She did not want to think about that lab again. "There's how we get back to our rooms all of a sudden. And why they let us run around all night. And why they make clones of people for Visitor Day. And how when you destroy some room, everything gets fixed up good as new next day. And why they serve fish without anything better to choose from 'side some fruit and a salad."
Wow, that was a lot of stuff to not know. There was probably more, too. Of course, she never considered any of it: she'd simply accepted it as a fact of life here. Just like she didn't even question why he would ask such a thing. All she did was answer.
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"Okay, so we have monsters, clones, teleportation ... and the fucked-up little inscrutable brain-worms infesting the head bastard." Damn, was that someone else's term? He couldn't remember. Sounded like something he'd say. No time, moving on. "Sounds just like my City. Makes my stomach acid bubble and rise into my journalistic attack glands. Faces will melt, and soon.. They will melt, I tell you! Now, if they're doing these things, and I think that we can assume that they are doing these things, they need some things from your future. Things I'd recognize, and that'd boil off important parts of your brain if you laid eyes on them without proper warning and a ten-week course. If anyone'd spotted something like that, it'd be on the board, so where aren't people looking?"
Spider ground his teeth. They just didn't seem to fit together right without a cigarette between them. While he was doing his journalism, maybe he could pick up a few packs. Not likely. Fuck. He snapped his fingers repeatedly.
"Come on, come on. You've been here a while. Where aren't people looking?"
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Harley continued rocking to and fro as she considered this one. Where was no one looking? She had to really consider that one. I mean, no one looked there, how would she know it even existed? ...Wait a sec!
"Oh!" she exclaimed in revelation. "Well, when you're outside, you can see there's three floor, but I don't think anyone's been on the third one. Never seen any stairs that go up after the second floor neither. I seen a map for the roof, too, but I dunno how anyone gets up there. Highest anyone goes is the second floor."
Another pause as she thought. "And outside. I hear stuff 'bout people goin' over the wall, but never hear nothin' of what they find outside. Not on the bulletin or from anyone I talked to anyway. I dunno how far people went out."
There were probably rooms people had never been in, but she hadn't run across any such rooms yet. Then again, she hadn't exactly memorized the map to remember all the blank spots.
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"Options, then! We can go upstairs, or we can go outside." Spider was crouching on the couch now, waving his cast around animatedly. Perhaps he thought he was holding up the fingers on his left hand, because he seemed to be ticking them off as he continued.
"Going upstairs. We've established that no one knows how to get there. There's no one to ask about it, and nowhere in particular to start looking. But there's got to be a way up there, or it wouldn't be there. Unless it's a decoy ..." Spider trailed off in order to stare more intently at a nurse who was watching him. "I am not causing problems yet." he said to her, before turning back to Harley.
"Outside. I have not been outside. Those who have been outside have not reported back." One of the advantages of not actually having fingers to tick off was that he could keep going with the motion as long as he wanted. "It is a well-known fact that outside is larger than inside. Which means ..." Oh no. He really was onto something, wasn't he? This was the part where he took on something bigger than himself, and lost. This was how it went, with all these fucking people fucking and screaming and disemboweling each other around him like living confetti. This was the process that they'd interrupted when they brought him here. And he knew how to do it by now. He couldn't let himself know what he was doing. He had to do it, and he had to stay stupid and clever and interested and alive long enough to make it happen. He knew what his conclusion was, already. He was a dozen steps ahead of himself at least. But he wouldn't say it. Instead, he looked up at his assistant blankly and spoke with quiet resolve.
"We are going outside tonight, Channon."
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...Had he been talking to her this whole time thinking she was someone else? Honestly, just when he was making sense most.
"I ain't Channon!" Harley said dubiously. "And... what're ya gonna do when ya get outside? Like you said it's bigger than this place. You just gonna wander around and hope ya find a motel?"
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"What? Who said you were Channon? Of course you're not Channon! You're shorter and your boobs are smaller. And would you not agree that a motel would be an ideal place to plot further action? They don't inject you with sedatives in a fucking motel."
The idea was sounding better and better. Not that he hadn't already decided on it. He was just glad he had already decided on it.
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Argh! Time out! She wasn't even following anymore! What were they talking about again? Right. Outside. Man, if he kept confusing her like that, she might go off her nut for real.
She sighed like she was tired all of a sudden. "Well, if there was a motel out there, it sure as heck would beat bein' here."
Food and finger paints aside, she really wanted to get home already. And she knew there couldn't be any bloody motels out there (who put a motel by a nuthouse?), but whatever. Like she was going to argue logic.
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