Larry

            Nobody talked to him anymore.   Nobody told him nothing.   But that didn't mean he didn't know.

            He stood looking down the hall of the seventh floor, the fucking seventh floor .   Barely any light came through what windows there were, because of the bars and grates on the glass.   The white walls reflected the shine of the sunlight so bad it seemed just to make things darker.

            Everything in here, he thought, made it harder to see.   But that didn't mean he didn't see things.   Fuckers.

            Larry had been standing at the end of the hall when they brought the guy in.   His own fucking room and everything, down the hall.   Two guards walked with him, holding him up, but there were no cuffs, and they held him like he was gonna fall down, not like he was gonna run.

            Larry knew the minute he saw it go down.   The guy was wearing all white, like, hospital PJ's, a big bandage wrapped around his head, like he'd just stepped out of some fucking cartoon.   How stupid did they think he was anyway?

            All Larry saw then was the door click behind the guy and the two guards walk out, back to the stairs, and that's it.   No guards, no police, no doctors, no nothing.   Jack shit.

            Larry wasn't crazy and Larry knew a fucking bullshit set up when he saw one, and this one was one of those for sure.   Nobody comes to the seventh floor,   and doesn't get a guard for the first twenty-four, let alone a fucking hand-cuff free escort.   Fuckers .

            That was when Larry started working his brain.   Somebody knew, Larry didn't know how, but somebody knew he'd been fakin' it, and that someone was six doors down, waiting.   Waiting for Larry.

            Larry scuttled back to his own room, slid inside, and locked the door behind him.   He sat on his bed and worked his brain.   The floor was slick and shiny in here, too, but out of the sunlight, and Larry felt better.   There was nothing left in there with him, nothing under the bed, nothing under the floor -- no floor boards to hide under -- nothing.   He'd burned it all down when they came for him, set it all up in flame with a bic and ninety-three ounces of butane.   Larry let them believe he was crazy.

            He chuckled softly and shook his head.   They may have a man inside here now, but Larry still had the upperhand.   No one could get inside his head, and that's where it all got locked up now.   And no one could get inside his head.   No one could prove he wasn't a crazy, and if that meant he stayed here, so be it.   Fuck them.

            Larry shot up off the bed and cracked open his door.   The sunlight hit his brain like bricks.   No guards ever stood outside anymore, no one gave a shit, no one told him nothing.   He peered through the crack down the hall and watched the door of the new guy, six doors down.   Nothing moved down there, and Larry was scared.   The fuckers had found out, and he didn't know how.

            Two years ago when that white fucking freakazoid had gotten locked up on the seventh floor holding ward, someone had come by and prepped them all for it.   Seemed like the dude was a fucking looney-loo, like the kind they write about in novels about crazies.   Looped.   Like, had to lock him up because he killed and would keep killing, and rotated guards outside of his room for like, two months.

            Larry had watched that afternoon, too, when they'd brought that guy in, and had seen the eyes on that crazy fucker looking down the hall at him, through the crack in the door.   Like he felt Larry's eyes and found them, in seconds, and locked into him from all the way the fuck down there.   The guards had come by and told Larry to curb it, to curb his "dumb bullshit" and leave the guy alone.   No walking to his door and fucking with him through the glass, like the other guys.   This guy was different, and Larry would stay away from it if Larry knew what was good for him.

            But no guards this time, though, no orderlies talking him down or forewarnings.   Just this, this fucking cartoon with the head wrap and pajamas, strolled into his room and they just walked away.

            Larry knew something had clicked in the night, and he didn't know how he knew that they knew, but he knew that they knew, and worried that -- before too long -- they'd know that he knew it.