Sanford Crow

CHAPTER 21

Her finger stayed still. His eyes focused on the tip and nothing else. The rest of the room became a blur. Her voice was the only thing heard, instructing him to close his eyes, but to still imagine her finger where it was. His eyelids closed like a vault door, heavy and sure.

Diane's voice was soothing down to his core. Whispers. He followed each instruction without restraint, feeling his head getting heavier, his chin burying down into his chest. He barely felt her hand as it touched his shoulder and rocked his body like a cradle. She was in control, and his mind belonged to her.

"Now, when I say 'one' and snap my fingers, you will be totally asleep, and more comfortable than you've ever been in your entire life," Diane said, as she subtly rocked Sanford's body back and forth. "Five, your limbs are heavy as boulders, you can't lift them, no matter how hard you try. But you're okay with it, you're comfortable with it, you've given up control. Four, you feel yourself floating towards sleep, as if it's a destination or the next stop on a train. Three, the train is completely empty, except for you, because it's your train, and it's traveling back in time. You look out the window and you see the scenes of your life whizzing by. All of the moments that define who you are, all the moments that have made you. Two, you feel the train slowing down to its last stop, and you're getting ready to depart. As the train screeches to a halt you look outside, and you see the house with the numbers 631 bolted to the mailbox. It's your house, where it all began. The train comes to a complete stop at the top of the driveway, and the doors open. One..."

Her voice was gone the second he stepped off the train. It pulled to the top of his driveway as if it was a school bus bringing him home. He felt the weight of a book bag strapped to his shoulders.

He began to feel uneasy. This house numbered 631 was not the same as his childhood one.

The stairs to the front door had a different banister—silvery and thick, like those seen in a handicap bathroom stall, or a hospital.

A hospital, he thought as he opened the front door and saw the shiny, white linoleum floor, the white walls, and smelled the ominous scent of disinfectant covering up the deeper stench of death. This was not his house at all. He closed the door behind him and watched the last of the sunshine dissolve away.

Why am I here? The answer came to him once the door was completely shut, and he was surrounded by the fluorescent shine of hospital halls. When he turned back, the door was no longer there, it was only a long white corridor.

Eric, he thought, I'm here to find Eric.

Each footstep clicked on the floor as he walked, leaving a clatter of echoes. He saw doors with little windows along each side of the hall. He passed room after room and looked inside. There were patients locked away, some spitting out gibberish. They gawked at him as he rushed by.

The last room he passed held a man strapped to a bed, staring at the ceiling while whistling. Sanford moved to walk on by but was stopped by the man's voice.

"Look who's back! The prodigal son returns."

Sanford didn't think he looked familiar, only crazy—trying to gnaw at the collar of his shirt with his arms restrained.

"Who are you? You don't know me." Sanford said and listened to his own voice. He caught his reflection in the glass of the door. He was a ten-year-old boy again.

"Oh, I know you all right! Ha-ha-ha!" The man's accent was thickly Bostonian.

"Who are you?" Sanford demanded.

"You don't recognize me? I suppose you wouldn't, after all this time."

The fluorescent lights in the hall began to dim, then one by one were violently shutting off. Some exploded with sparks of blue and orange, pillaring the hall into darkness chunks at a time. Sanford looked down to where the last of the light shone. The figure of a man stood. He was holding a shotgun over his shoulder like a baseball bat.