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Chapter Two
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Het
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I recalled my soul back into my body silently.
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The extension of my spirit came winding rapidly back, sifting through harsh, pebbly stone and the dark, dusty spaces between floors, winding along narrow, harshly lit stone passageways, and spiraling up and down circular flights of stairs. Until, with a feeling of plunging downwards into a very dark, claustrophobic drain, I slid firmly back into my body.
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Gasping, I shot up straight in my cot and took in the sight of my honey colored, slightly freckled hands, digging their natural all-black fingernails into my tangled grey blanket. I blinked my entirely black eyes hard, my heart pounding in my slightly pointed ears.
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And, instinctively, I caught and held my breath—Not wanting to wake anyone else up.
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Mine was the bottom bunk in a small corner of the enormous stone room that served as the boy’s ranks dormitories. I slept surrounded by all my friends.
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Boys I’d known since they were first institutionalized by the outside world and cast into this dangerously corrupt system that I was forced to call home, all knew and answered to me now.
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It’d been that way for years.
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As the oldest boy in the ranks by nearly four years—My birthday had been chosen for me as December 31st by the Board, almost as if they tacked me onto the calendar as an afterthought—And so, I had a sort of societal tenure when it came to the boy’s ranks at Shepphard Reft.
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It hadn’t always been the case but, for the last several years or so—it’d been down to me and my two best friends, Tooth and Nail, who’d run the show.
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Everything moved through us and our merry band of followers, a rag-tag little group of scamps who had the audacity to call ourselves the “Lost Boys”. After the infamous band of scoundrel boys who had caused no end to mischief in the thrilling tale of Peter Pan. One of my favorites.
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Some of the boy’s called me Pan, even. But, it was a hero’s name, and I wanted nothing to do with it, after a while. And, so I went with what the staff at Shepphard Reft had always seemed to mockingly call me--”Het.”
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I couldn’t read or write, but Peter Pan was one of the many stories that I had my friend Tooth read for me, and some of the younger boys, every night before lights out.
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Looking about myself at all the other boys, splayed out or huddled in their own respective bunk-bed cots, I saw that I was mostly alone in being awake at this hour. Or at least visibly so.
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It must’ve been just past a quarter to four in the morning...
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The faint smell of white lilies wafted towards me suddenly. There was a distant clip-clop of femininely heeled shoes flapping over to the boy’s dormitories. The new nurse!
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“Shit.” I muttered under my breath.
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Knowing that she was coming, that she was most likely the new nurse Dr. Doht had been talking about handing my case over to, and that she was most likely coming for me--It was about as useful as knowing the weather; you could sometimes see it coming, but flat out stopping it was out of the realm of possibility. I bit my tongue, anxious and feeling more than a little sick to my stomach.
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There was absolutely nothing I could feasibly do to change what was about to happen. To hold at bay the coming tide that was due to wash away my fragile, imprisoned, spurt of a life.
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If I really was about to be transferred over to the Men’s Ranks in Shepphard Reft… Then I was facing certain death at the hands of my Boy’s Ranks rival, Skiv Greaves’, older, adult brother--Johnathan Greaves.
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Because, three years ago, when Skiv was still the new kid on the block and had started selling drugs to the younger boys, here at Shepphard Reft, he’d approached me with an offer to join forces and, no doubt, rule the rest of the boys in Ward I with an iron fist… I had decided, in that tension-filled moment, when Skiv had approached me and my Lost Boys on his own, without any of his pesky, little lackeys there to back him up, to reject his offer.
Skiv Greaves had trouble taking no for an answer.
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I had just turned to walk away from him, to head back to my trademark seat on the piled-up stack of gym mats that we’d nicked and set up in an old, abandoned office room where we were known to conduct business, when he grabbed my wrist.
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And, that was all it had taken.
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Before I had even known what was happening, several of my Lost Boys had simultaneously jumped on the, then, fourteen year old, Skiv Greaves…
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That was the day, three years ago now, that Skiv--Johnathan’s younger brother--lost his right eye…
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As the leader of our little, childish band of tricksters and thieves, of graffiti artists and freestyle rappers, and every other sort of outcast and social misfit that had been welcomed into our ranks; it was up to me to take full responsibility.
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And, that’s how the rumor got started that I had taken out Johnathan Greaves’ little baby brother’s right eye...
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The Board of Shepphard Reft had elected to hold me back from graduating for three years, as a result of my “legal transgression”. The graduating age for the Boys Ranks in Shepphard Reft was almost always at the age of twenty-one--I was now twenty-three years old, as of last December.
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And, I had wondered how long they could hold me back? How long could the Board’s misguided attempts at punishment continue to provide a stable layer of protection for me?
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Because Johnathan Greaves was one of the few adult patients at the backwards, old mental institution that had been granted an extended leave of absence.
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What was otherwise formally known as an “L-O-A” amongst both the staff and the patients. This meant that he lived nearby, in an off-campus apartment complex that was only an hour drive from the nearby city-village of Fell’s Haven.
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This meant that Johnathan was able to foster connections on both the inside and the outside of the Shepphard Reft mental institution. He had real people money--Not just piles of commissary tokens that were hoarded or stolen within the Boy’s Ranks.
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Word had it that, out on the streets of the backwater, little acropolis that was Fell’s Haven, Oregon, Johnathan Greaves had recently been granted a new position in The Fingers gang. That he’d been promoted to the title of “Middies”, short for the Middle Finger of the Hand, the Hand itself being a shadowy figure at the heart of five lethally dangerous gangs.
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Each gang is named after their respective finger, and so, it could be assumed, that Johnathan Greaves was now the head of the Middle Fingers.
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Taking orders from the Hand itself…
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And, he was out for my blood. All because I--
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I made up my mind to simply let it all play out and hope for the best, in the end. Just before the new nurse creaked open the heavy wooden double-doors to the Boy’s dormitories and stepped tentatively inside, I came to my decided choice of action.
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Groaning to myself, quietly, I leaned back into my starchy, white pillows and burrowed deeper into the rough fabric of my grey blanket. Closed my eyes.
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And, I pretended to be asleep.
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It took a few minutes of the new nurse searching the patient ID numbers tagged in plastic laminate along every bed’s rear post before she found me.
I kept my eyes sealed shut. Allowed my breathing to stretch in and out more slowly, feigning the sedation of a deep sleep. There came again the clarifying, floral scent of the white lily, but this time it seemed to be coming from directly above me.
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The new nurse came to a halt just before the head of my bed. Her heeled shoes snapping to an abrupt finish against the cold, dusty stone floor. I felt, more than any other sense I suppose, her reaching out to touch me, and—
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“Boo!”
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I shot upwards ferociously all of a sudden, trying to sit up—And, in the process, somehow, I managed to swing my entire head directly into the face of the young nurse.
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She’d been reaching out to jostle my shoulder. About to wake me--
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--Pain exploded through my head, and I winced, falling back into my sheets and staring up at her through a carousel of pinwheeling stars. Ouch.
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“Oh, my god. Ow!” The young nurse wailed in shocked pain and terror, “What’re you trying to do, break my face?!”
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And, that’s when the laughing began...
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…
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