CREEPY CATALOG

Been In Jail For A Short Time, But Absolutely Something Sinister Going On

They said they found me in a girl from school's bedroom in the middle of the night.

I don't remember being there. I don't remember her parents shining a flashlight on me. I don't remember her screaming. I don't even remember which girl in my class it was.

All I remember is getting put into the back of a cop car, my hands zip tied behind my back, my 12-year-old wrists too thin for the cuffs. I remember my parents showing up in the middle of the night. I remember the bits and pieces I heard them discuss with the cops under their breath. I remember hearing something about charges, an offender, options. I remember not knowing what any of it meant.

I remember taking a long drive with my parents. I remember them kissing me goodbye in the rain. I remember watching them drive away in the night. I remember being taken away into a dark building which I have yet to leave ever since.

My new home was like some kind of nightmare setting where Freddy Kruger would live in a dream. It's damp, dark, dirty and no one was ever let outside, but I would be lying if I said my life before my new home was much better.

Born an albino, my youth had been nothing but answering questions, fending off weird looks, hearing quiet snickers and facing outright insults and jokes from classmates. It seemed every few months my parents would talk about putting me in home school or a small private school, but my dad always reasoned the world after school did not take place in protected seclusion.

Even if the world was a tough, ugly place, there was no escaping it eventually.

But maybe my dad changed his tune. I now rotted my days away in this prison of sorts, rarely seeing the light, sleeping on a cot in a dusty cell and eating my meals and sharing my bathroom with a bunch of freaks.

The freaks, I haven't even gotten to them yet.

Everyone else in this place had some serious issues. Far worse than me.

For starters, my roommate Karl was some kind of mutant mangled by his father in an attempt to save his life when he was younger. The story went his dad was a doctor who went crazy when he was around six, convinced himself Karl was dying of cancer and did a bunch of horrible experiments on him to try and keep him alive. Now, Karl was covered in hideous scars all over his body, a hideous almost teal skin tone and couldn't grow hair anywhere on his body. This was all garnished with horrible rage issues. He destroyed our cell mirror twice in the first month of me being there.

But I liked Karl. His anger issues were understandable. I didn't even know what was wrong with me, but I felt like breaking that mirror every once in a while. Why be reminded of the horrible hand you had been dealt in life?
Karl was the only other inmate (I will use that term for lack of a better one) I talked to in my first month at the still yet-to-be-named place. I ate lunch and dinner everyday with the other 15 or so inmates and saw them around the facility on my rare breaks, but no one ever seemed interested in engaging.

My first introduction to an inmate other than Karl was not a pleasant one.

It started out just like any other typical night. I read the crappy old paperback novels from the library after dinner until lights out at 10 pm then lied there in the dark until my body forced myself to go to sleep. It's hard to get drowsy when you spend all day just moping around a small room, eating watery cafeteria food and reading The Boxcar Children.

I heard feet scamper outside of the bars of our cell an hour or two after lights out. I drifted my eyes in the dark over to the bars and first saw nothing, but heard another scamper shortly after once I looked away.
The noises drew me up off my feet.

"Karl. Karl," I whispered up to the top bunk.

No answer. I hate deep sleepers, infinitely jealous.