33 (Part Two: Stray Dog)

Boston Institute was a paranoid's nightmare. An underground facility of horrors for the unlucky, the dead who were still breathing. The program kept the patients in individual cells: a tense and obscure ambience was born out of this prison-like state.

Corpse bags coming through the main hall, at 7 pm, as any other day. It was endless and the expression of those men, carrying them away, never changed: they weren't bugged. They all watched, prisonners and guards alike. It was the only entertainment they got out of the leisure time they were allowed: it always seemed harsh to have terminally-ill patients run around the facility with a strict schedule. Everyone could understand that this special kind of clinic needed a bit of organisation and had to keep everyone in check, specially with their chemo appointments, but what was the problem with them watching tv out of their room? All were isolated and weren't allowed much time to socialise: it never seemed like a safe space for cancer patients, nor anyone really.

Travis usually stood around his room, walking in circles. Sometimes he'd watch the ceiling for a while: he examined every crack, every nook of his cell's walls with a bittersweet curiosity. Behind his eyes, you could sense contempt but he was scared to never leave that empty white room. At last, Travis had found a place as blank as his heart. There was only a bed, a desk with a chair and a tv, although it was an old broken down one and there were only three channels. It didn't really matter though, that there were next to zero tv programmes he could watch, or maybe even enjoy if he was capable to feel anything, since he only really meant to look like he was doing something: if it were his decision, he would just sit on the bed and listen to the overwhelming silence that flew through the halls with a dense, sickening flow.

"Those pills are killing us. We're just fucking guinea pigs for their stupid government, bullcrap testing." : Paul's eyes didn't even flicker. Travis and him had met a couple days ago and got into a pretty unreliable friendship at the Institute: their liaison wasn't really going to last, Paul, the eldest, was expected to live up to three months upon entering the program. Both were Red Sox fans, and their common interests stopped there. Travis was almost his exact twin: he wasn't really handsome, he wasn't sympathetic nor capable of empathy. Mainly, he took him to his liking because they were inept human beings, emotionnally speaking, as if to form a duo of indifference and resignation. The only detail that told them apart was that Travis wasn't bald, yet.

Fortunately, Paul quickly became bitter, mostly about dying sooner rather than later, and he started to develop true feelings towards himself and the situation he was in: he had discovered emotion and sensibility through sheer fear of death and the impotence that presented itself in his linely, isolated cell. Depression was maybe the cause of newly his found behavior, and it seemed quite logical as his mind was infested by the constant thought of finally dying, after years of suffering. He could have played around with roadkill, poking it with a stick, and it wouldn't even have phased him: nowadays, he'd cry just by looking at himself in the mirror.

It got so bad, he started planning his escape. Travis felt compelled to help him.

Friday the 14th of January. Travis still didn't understand why they weren't allowed to leave the lab:"Your judgment is clouded, you need to think about it more, mister".

Paul had thought it all and still didn't count on dying that night. Bacon and scrambled eggs, with a heavy scent of coffee: Travis slowly ate his breakfast, pondering about the escape Paul had planned and if he were to flow through. He didn't even think about his only friend that day. It all felt hopeless and abusrd at the same time. He, the one that never understood why he was born to begin with, thought about truly escpaing the facility: before, it seemed he was only complying to the desires and dreams of a dying man, but both were already doomed by that point. God had sentenced them, or so he had thought, and the only thing left to them was the need to run free once more, of dying free. It was beautiful, seeing him finally feel the need of living.

Hidden away in his bible, Paul had kept the key to the stairs that led to the main area of the facility, locked away of the patients: he had gotten such item from an improbable deal a couple of weeks back. Paul snuck into the kitchen area once and got into the pantry to steal beer, that he would hastily, but carefully, hide in the ceiling panels of his room. Then, he traded most of it to hire, in some sorts, one of the other patient to steal the key from a guard and make a copy, with a proper kit you'd find in the movies for it, that he had previously smuggled in.

After planning the escape, it was all child's play. You'd walk out of your room at night to go to the bathroom - since a guard had to let you out and escort you to the damn stall, in case you tried to cut your veins with some old soap bar you had carved razor-sharp - and then just jump out of the stall and climb out the other side: all hygiene-related areas were poorly designed and that particular room was composed by two rows of individual stalls, thus having a front and back-side to the whole room. After getting to the other side, you'd just have to quickly get around the stalls and get into the main corridor, with all the patients' cells. There's the easy part then: go up the stairs to the main area and open the door. You'd get to the guards locker room by taking a left and getting in through the first door on your right and you were set: pry open one of the lockers with the material they'd usually leave behind, like screwdrivers and such, in the maintenance cabinet, and just steal someone's clothes and their work ID. Congratulations, you'd just have to walk out the building with your official identification card and clothes.

And the night was cold and unearthly when he walked out. The wind blew ice and froze his thoughts: what happened here? Is this really what I wanted? And he rushed into the night, throught the parking lot; his skin burning, aching as the whirlwind of darkness was colder than the embrace of cancer. The woods called to him and he listened, eyes shaking and teeth rattling the song of nightmare. He could never be this free again, this terrified.