Song Of The Cuckoo
On Squee's first day at the insane asylum, the doctors take away all his pens and pencils.
"So you don't hurt yourself," they say, but Squee knows they really mean, "so you don't hurt us." When he asks, they give him some crayons -- weak, brittle things -- and a small pad of cheap recycled newsprint.
The paper is held to the pad with a thin strip of gummy glue that looks like snot. Spiral notebooks aren't allowed.
Squee tears off the colored paper from around each crayon, creating tiny, shredded piles of each color, and draws and draws until his hand is smudged with crayon wax and the colors are worn down to nubs. The doctors frown when they see the little paper piles, and they send in an orderly to sweep up the scraps. The orderly sweeps up Squee's drawings too, and the crayon nubs; when Squee protests they tell him art is for therapy only, and they don't want him to hurt himself.
Or them.
Dinner is stew and chalky vanilla pudding with lumps in it. When Squee looks at the pudding he is reminded of a boy in his school that used to eat paste, lumps and all. The boy is dead now; he choked one day, turning blue blue purple, eyes bugging out and paste dribbling down the side of his face while the other kids screamed. Squee wishes he could remember the boy's name, because names are important things. Like his name: Todd. It means nothing, nothing because it's not his name, not really, and Squee thinks it's somehow fitting that the dead boy doesn't have a name now either. Squee eats his stew, scooping it up carefully with the oversized plastic spoon, and while he chews he thinks about the name Todd, Todd, Todd. Like a tiny heartbeat, almost, too small for anyone to ever notice.
Squee doesn't eat his pudding. When the doctors come to take his tray they frown, muttering to each other and jotting notes on their clipboards.
"It was too much like paste," Squee tries to tell them, but they only watch him with their glassy doll eyes and scrawl "delusional" on their notes. Squee sighs, looks away, clutches Shmee tight and ignores the whispers of poison, they poisoned the food in his mind. When the doctors leave, they lock the door behind them.
On Squee's first night at the insane asylum, the doctors turn out all the lights at six and say, "Go to bed." Under the thin, scratchy blanket, Squee lays curled around Shmee. He wishes for the craziness to take him, like it took his parents, took the neighbor-man and Shmee, because if he's crazy then he won't feel scared anymore, ever ever again. Outside his room rise the hoots and cries of other insane children, sobbing and screaming and shrieking. Squee can hear someone wailing, a long ceaseless howl of misery, and he shivers. Clenches his eyes shut. Wishes.
His wish does not come true.
His wishes never do.