The Gray House

“I don’t think she’s got much left,” she’s saying to Sphinx. “Sleeps almost all the time, and doesn’t recognize us anymore. Even the cats are avoiding her.”

Sphinx says that this is sad.

“Or not.” Ginger shrugs. “I guess everything’s for the best.”

I knew that the girl was a monster, and so did Sphinx, apparently, which is why he’s not appalled by those words.

The monster extracts a ragged teddy bear from the backpack and puts it on her knee. Playing up the innocent child. I get almost physically sick from her routines and all that talk stuck on death and burials. I lie down and turn my face to the boombox’s speakers, so I can avoid hearing any of them.

But even here I’m ambushed by Lary, jumping out from who knows where.

“Even if Spiders found something really bad with you, it’s still not the end, man, it’s not the end,” he says, handing me my own pack of cigarettes.

“Thanks,” I say. “That’s very comforting to know.”

It is Tabaqui who wakes me up.

There are only two of us in the dorm. It’s very sunny and very hot. One half of the bed is made, exactly up to the place where I am. Tabaqui is wearing three T-shirts of different lengths, with no buttons in sight. None. I remember that yesterday I didn’t see any on him either. I guess that period of his life has come and gone.

I rub my face, scratch my head, and yawn.

“Let’s ride!” Tabaqui demands impatiently. “It’s the perfect time for paying visits! Come on, get dressed! Quick!”

An untidy bundle is aimed at my head. I unwrap it. It’s my shirt, crumpled, covered in brown stains and with the burn mark on the breast pocket. I put my finger through the hole; it’s black when I pull it out. I decide not to change out of my sleeping T-shirt. It also isn’t fresh, but at least I’m not going to look like I killed someone.

Tabaqui crawls to the edge of the bed and noisily tumbles down to the floor. Had he tried that trick in the Sepulcher he’d be put in plaster casts for a week. Arms and legs, both. To wean him off that nasty habit.

The paying of visits begins in the Coffeepot. We take the table by the window, and Tabaqui orders two coffees and some rolls. It’s a sparse crowd today. Four Hounds, yawning, work on scrambled eggs.

“Do they serve stuff like that here? I thought it was only rolls,” I say, not entirely sure because I’ve never been a regular.

“They do now. Almost no one goes to the canteen for breakfast anymore, so Shark has authorized some stuff to be redirected here. It gets reheated, and the result is truly atrocious. I emphatically advise against it.”

“Where is everybody? Why is it so empty?”

Tabaqui extracts a cigarette from behind his ear, sniffs at it, and pulls the ashtray closer.

“Who’s everybody?” he asks suspiciously.

“I mean, our guys.”

“I don’t know. Look, we’ll sit here for a while, have a talk, and then go visit Humpback. Then we’ll be three of our guys.”

We drink the coffee in deathly silence. This is so unlike Tabaqui that I feel more and more awkward.

Hounds finish their reheated eggs and leave. I suddenly remember what it was I wanted to ask Tabaqui.

“Listen, where’s my diary? Where did you put it yesterday?”

“Your what?” he says, looking puzzled. “Oh, the diary. Must be in the room somewhere, I guess. I didn’t put it in with my stuff.”

He slaps the side of the fat backpack strapped to the back of his Mustang. The backpack is so overstuffed that it would have tipped him over if he hadn’t balanced it with small weights attached to the footboards. They jangle and rattle as he goes, and must be getting in the way, but Tabaqui is ecstatic at his own ingenuity and is not planning to get rid of them. One might even think he likes the clamor.

For some reason I start talking about the Sepulcher, how bored and alone I felt there, and how I couldn’t even get down from the bed and crawl around to keep myself in shape. Crawling is frowned upon in the Sepulcher. As is smoking. Or reading at night.

Tabaqui listens with apparent interest.

“Horrors,” he says when I exhaust my complaints. “I don’t know if I can eat properly, now that I know all this. Or at least if I can enjoy food anymore. A scary place, that Sepulcher, I’ve always said that.”

I say that it’s not that bad really, that it’s more comfortable than a Cage, that you only get prodded and bothered during the rounds, and the rest of the day is yours to enjoy peace and quiet, but Tabaqui just repeats that he’s never heard anything more horrible.

“Rounds,” he mutters. “Imagine that. Horror, pure and simple.”

“You mean you’ve never been in the Sepulcher?”

“No, I haven’t. And now it’s unlikely I’d end up there before the end. Which is the only thing that comforts me when I think of graduation.”

Someone slaps me on the back and says that he’s happy to see me. Black. Carrying a pack of milk with a straw sticking out. He sits down on the edge of our table and asks me how I’m doing.

“Great,” I say.