Crooked Halos

Gerard was dead, but at what cost?

I rolled onto my back and stared at the bunk above me, trying to remember how things were before the killings, before everyone went mad – including me. See, I know I’m crazy, the same way I can look around and know that Shannon’s the only one left hanging on to sanity.

Gerard’s dead, and I still hate him.

I hate him for taking Brendon from Ryan.

We all knew wiL wasn’t strong enough to deal with loosing Kyla, we all knew it was a matter of time, but Ryan is that much stronger. He won’t die, but he won’t live either. As it is, he just seems content to... exist.

Filched a rubrics cube from class and spends most of his time sat over there on his bunk, twisting it and finishing it in less than five minutes, then spinning it again until he has a new puzzle to solve. Spends the rest of the time bent over a notebook trying to solve some impossible maths problem.

He won’t manage it, but I guess thinking in numbers helps him relax or forget.

I try to bring up memories of Gabes hyperactive antics, Jared’s sarcasm and I find that I can’t, the memories I recall are faint, distant, blurred – a photo seen through dirty glass and I can’t be sure whether I ever saw it or whether it was a dream I once had.

And then there are the memories of my mother, her warmth, her laugh, a dream I never knew.

Gerard’s dead and no one else has died in the week since but I can’t shake off this feeling of continual horror, as if the deeds within these walls have left some subconscious stain, as if they hold our memories now but know that the worst has yet to come.

The worst, what am I on about? Gerard’s gone, dead; there can be nothing more to come other than the slow decay of our minds through years of institutionalisation.

It snowed last night, blanketing the ground outside in ice, shining blue in the moonlight and sending that cold draft up the corridors.

***

Jade can’t stop shivering in class, he doesn’t make anything of it, but it’s so obvious the cold gets to him more than any of us, the way his body trembles, shaking continually no matter how high Ms. Smith turns up the half-broken heating system.

Ryan sneezes, interrupting the lecture on... whatever... and I go back to staring out the window, at that metal fence, the wire so cold in the white wasteland.

The lines on the pages of the blank notebook on the table in front of me, are they there to make sure it looks nice or are they to keep the writing from spilling off the page, spewing across the floor in a flood of emotion, of loss, of things I have yet to lose?

I wish I knew. I wish I knew why there’s a continual haunting dread that lingers here, always in the corner of my mind, cloying, smothering, consuming.

***

Jade had to go to sick-bay.

It’s been three weeks since Gerard died and it’s like his ghost is still here, making us sick, there have been a bunch of kids vomiting blood into the toilets, across the corridors. They died and it was goddamn ‘natural causes’.

It wasn’t natural causes, Gerard did it – he’s making us all sick, killing us one by one, I should have known the wardens wouldn’t help. I should have known, I should have known.

Shannon says it was natural causes, he says it was the cold, the fact that they don’t bother heating the dorms to save energy, he says it was the rationed food we’ve been put on since the food-trucks can’t get up the icy road.

“Which icy road?”

“Beyond the fence, it’s too icy for them to get trucks to the gate.”

Beyond the fence – it’s a different world, do people live there? They must since I came from there once upon a time. Beyond the fence is a dream we all dream of living and we won’t, we’ll die in this place, if not of the fever then Gerard will hunt us down, kill us, one by one by one by one...

It never ends, never stops, never slows, Jade’s gone and we won’t see him from sick-bay, no one comes back from sick-bay anymore, they’re too sick, the fever got them and the fever makes them vomit blood, sweat, collapse, rinse, repeat.

Then there are the youngest, starving to death because they can’t eat what they’re given, they look so frail now, limbs like bird legs, so easily broken, bones already too sharp, their eyes too wide and sunken back into their skulls. Sometimes they get too thin and the nurses pump them full of drugs to stop them hurting.

We never see them after that.

***

“William, are we going to go and play in the snow?” My mother smiles, her hair dusted with snowflakes that make her cheeks and nose flush pink.

I laugh as she puts my wellies on, they’re green, two sizes too big, but they fit snugly over the four pairs of socks to keep my feet from freezing.

“Where’s your scarf? Hat? Gloves?”

I obediently trot off to where she keeps the winter woollies in the plastic bag, finding my blue bobble hat with the matching scarf and gloves grandma got me last Christmas, and when I get back, mommy is wrapping her rainbow scarf around her neck, her hat and gloves already in place, her coat far too big and it looks disproportionate because her head looks so small.

We go outside and the world is magical, transformed with a white blanket and mommy throws a snowball at me, exploding it against my side and I throw one back, it explodes against her jeans, leaving an imprint of white as though she was touched by a ghost in the morning light.

She laughs, takes my gloved hand in hers, tells me we’re going to walk into town, so we walk.

It’s no more than half a mile, but tiring over snow and ice and when my legs ache too much mommy picks me up, lets me ride on her back and I curl against the soft material of her winter coat.

By the time we get to town I’m nearly asleep, waking up when mommy takes me to her favourite little cafe and lets me have marshmallows in my hot chocolate – flurries of snow still falling outside the window, but inside it’s warm, comfortable.

Later, when we’ve walked home, we start making a snowman, daddy’s car pulls up in drive before too long, he gives mommy a kiss on the cheek, puts his gloves on and helps us make it really big, far taller than me and when it’s finished, mommy gets a carrot and daddy picks me up so I can wedge it into the snow-persons face as a nose beneath the black stones mommy had stuck on as eyes.

Daddy gives it his scarf, wrapping it between the head and the body and mommy makes dinner when we get back inside.

***

Jade returns after a few days, paler and thinner than he should be but between the fever and the rationing, aren’t we all a little bit too far underweight?

Shannon sleeps beside me, night after night, sharing body-heat and kisses beneath the blankets since he pulled his duvet down to cover my bunk as well.

He knows about the nightmares, the faces I see after all the lights are drowned, but he doesn’t mention it. We both hear Ryan crying night after night, creeping out, returning just before daylight and curling beneath his blanket as though nothing had happened. Jade and Davey sleep only punctuated by coughing, Jades lungs working too hard and Davey doing his best to calm them.

We all have problems and none of us can say a word as the fever takes life after life, night after night.

In class, Ryan remains silent, subdued, he does the work but makes no notes, knows the answers but doesn’t answer questions.

“Turn to page, seventy, copy out paragraphs four, five and nine.”

Ryan complies wordlessly, hollow cheeks and sunken eyes streaked with tears.

Jade breathes out; a harsh, rattling sound punctuated with a short cough as Davey rubs his back with one hand and turns the pages with the other.

Shannon flips through the text book in front of us and starts copying, ink over-writing the lines on the blank page and I start copying whatever it is he’s writing, not really seeing the words, just mindlessly copying them across the paper covered with lines to stop the words falling off, half an eye on the white wasteland through the window covered with lines to stop us falling out.