Tony O'Malley was a psychopath. He had been sent to Smith's Grove because he'd violenty attacked his father while he was in bed, nearly killing him. When questioned about the incident, his only given motive was "he made me mad sometimes." Thusly, to avoid charging a minor with aggravated assault and to shut up the press, the boy was sent to Smith's Grove. Even there he caused incidents - sometimes someone's bedsheets would go missing, or perhaps a letter from family would be found torn to bits.
One day, when he'd been at the sanitarium for seven years, he saw the Smith's Grove security bringing in a young boy. This intrigued him; usually someone would come with their parents or guardians, but never with so much protection.
Upon talking to the boy the following week, he found that the new kid would not respond. It irritated Tony to his wit's end; he always found some way to discover how people ticked. It was his greatest skill and his worst weakness. After several tries, he relented.
Day after day he attempted to get a response from Michael. Day after day Michael ignored him, and it drove Tony mad. He began to bully him, pushing him down or tripping him as he walked through the corridors. He gloried in the boy's supposed despair; but still he kept a blank, uncaring expression on his face.
At last Tony's curiousity reached its peak. Waiting until soon after the eagle-eyed Dr. Loomis left Michael's presence, he slipped in unnoticed.
"Hey, Mikey." Tony swaggered into the room like a rooster. "Got a surprise for you."
Michael remained in the chair. He could just barely hear a faint snoring issuing from him.
"Ah, so you don't wanna talk, huh?" he cried. "That's cool. Let's get to it, then. Wakey, wakey!"
He lashed out, catching Michael around the neck in a headlock. They wrestled furiously, Michael attempting to loosen Tony's hold. He began fumbling for anything he could use and found a solitary crayon on his nightstand. Grasping it quickly, he jammed it into Tony as hard as he could, muffling the howl of pain with the nearby bedsheet. Dragging Tony's body across the hall, he stuffed him under Roger Soles's bed.
It took all of half an hour for the doctors to find Tony, raging and screaming his lungs out. By that time Roger had been woken up from a deep sleep; he was a narcoleptic who was known for cutting himself, and had crashed after lunch. Due to the circumstantial evidence, they could only surmise that poor Roger had stabbed Tony in his left eye with the crayon. But as soon as Loomis heard of the attack, he knew what had really happened.
"Wynn," he started when he arrived that night, "it was Michael."
"Loomis, don't start tonight," Wynn lamented. "The poor boy died in the hospital several minutes ago. We don't need any nonsense tonight."
They looked into the room; Roger was rocking back and forth, glasses askew, repeating over and over:
"If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out. If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out...if thy eye offend thee, pluck it out..."
