Room 22: Excerpt

Chapter 4

Isaac hated Mondays. Well, he hated every day, but especially Mondays. They were always full of chattering and whispering between most of the patients, which got extremely irritating after a while.

"Who disappeared this time?" "I heard it was Taylor." "No Taylor's right there." "Well who didn't come out of their room this morning?" "I don't know I wasn't looking."

It was as if him and Dylan were the only ones that actually knew who had disappeared this time. He couldn't stand it. Most of the time he wanted to tell them to shut up and punch them all in the face. Of course, it would take forever to go around and punch fifty people in the face. That's why he hadn't done it. Yet.

It was the bell that had woke him up. Not the 8:00 bell, but the 9:00. He liked to sleep. It wasn't like he had anything else to do. All he did was check the cameras at night and walk around during the day just to make sure they weren't killing one another. They tried to kill each other a lot. Everything else, he just let Paul handle. But Paul couldn't do his job for him. He still had to go watch them shower to make sure no one drowned.

Isaac stood up, rubbing his eyes and checking the screens for any strays wandering the halls. He grabbed his Sudoku booklet and a pencil, then headed toward the bathroom, dragging his feet along the way. He plopped down in the chair closest to the door and nearly buried his face in the book, not really wanting to see all the grown men running around naked.

He never got to go into the girls' bathroom and make sure they didn't drown. A female doctor always did that. No, he had to stay in the guys' bathroom and watch half of them aimlessly wander around naked before finally figuring out where the shower was. Dylan was the only decent one out of all the guys. He was always the first one in the bathroom and always the first one to leave. Sometimes Dylan was gone before Isaac ever even got in there.

Dylan had arrived the day after Isaac started working. He remembered that day vividly. It was a Wednesday, like always. He was sitting in his chair in the office, staring intently at all of the screens. It's funny, remembering a day when he actually cared about his job. He had glanced at the screen that showed the entrance to the building, and saw two large men dragging a kicking and screaming boy. He had pressed a few buttons to make that screen larger, pushing all the other screens out of the way.

The boy was young, maybe fourteen or fifteen. He looked as if he was crying. Isaac couldn't tell. There was no sound on the monitor. Isaac had gotten up, practically running down the hallway to see what was going on. As he had approached the entrance, it became clearer and clearer what the boy was saying.

"No! Mom! Please, come back. I didn't mean it. I swear I didn't mean it!" he had screamed. Isaac clamped his hands over his ears. It was an awful, piercing screech that made him want to rip out his eardrums. When the boy finally stopped his high-pitched wailing, Isaac took his hands away from his ears and looked down at them. There were splotches of blood on his palms. As he approached the entrance, he could still hear the boy crying and wailing.

One of the officers that had brought the boy in was dead. He was lying on the ground, eyes wide open, blood pouring from his ears. The boy stopped crying and looked at the dead officer. He stepped back, putting his hand over his mouth.

"I did this," he had whispered. "This is my fault. This is what happened to her. I did this. I killed her." His voice was rising to where he was shouting again. "This is all my fault! I killed her!"

Isaac walked over to the boy and put his hands on his shoulders. The boy stopped yelling and looked at him, his eyes full of tears. "It's okay," Isaac tried to make his voice as soothing as possible. "This isn't your fault. I don't know what happened but this isn't your fault. None of this is your fault."

The other officer looked at him, puzzled. "Yes it is. The same thing happened with his mother. They got into an argument and he screamed and she died. Or at least that's what he says. The same thing just happened with my coworker. Jerry is dead because of this little bastard!" The officer grabbed the boy by his shirt and shouted in his face, "Look, I don't know what the hell you are but you killed him and you're gonna pay for it!"

The officer reared back his hand as if he was going to strike the boy. Isaac grabbed his arm before he could do anything. "Don't do something you will regret later," he whispered harshly in the officer's ear.

"Fine," he let go of the boy's shirt. "You can deal with him." The officer stormed out of the building and Isaac ran after him.

"Wait! What's your name?" he yelled.

"Ian," The officer had grunted as he got in his car and slammed the door shut.

Isaac ran back inside to see a nurse caring for the boy. "And what's your name?" she asked him.

"Dylan," he had whimpered as she led him down a hallway and into the first room on the left.

The chiming of the bell made Isaac snap out of his reverie. He looked up at the clock on the wall. "10:00 already?" He rolled his eyes and sighed as he stood up, yelling at the couple of stragglers still in the bathroom, naked. "Get your clothes on and go outside already!"

Isaac stomped out of the bathroom, down the hallway, out the glass door, and into the Yard. Everyone was already there, sitting on the grass, wandering around, or staring out past the fence. He spotted Dylan sitting with a couple other people under the only tree in the field. The sun was bright, and he was already feeling kind of sweaty.

"Yep, today's going to be a great one," he mumbled as he sat down on a bench next to the building, placing his Sudoku book over his face, trying to fall asleep.