Prototype by Brian Hodge Page A

bully-blood on their lips and chins, at bigger boys who for the first time knew pain and tears and their own high-pitched shrieks? Were these the boys who, no longer tormented, were shunned instead, abandoned to sit alone on green playgrounds with their sack lunch or a book or their own thoughts, the object of sullen loathing and — admit it — fear?
    In his experience, in his humble estimation, they were.
    For doesn't everybody stumble across their own survival mechanisms deep within, as if inscribed upon tablets that cannot be read, yet are nevertheless comprehensible? The most ancient languages are learned by instinct.
    This was his world, the one into which he had been born, the world that had penned its inarguable natural laws upon his heart, then demanded obedience or death.
    How odd, then, that his fellow citizens had passed so many laws against what seemed to come most naturally.
    But maybe it was him, all him, all wrong. At times he fretted about his heredity, some hideous genetic mistake inside, as had once been attributed to mass-murderer Richard Speck. Adrienne told him he need not worry, such claims had been mostly sensationalism. It was more vital that he focus on what he could control, could understand.
    And it came about fifty minutes into this, his fourth session in her office. Two full minutes of silence passed before he fell back into his present self from the past, and realized his broken bones did not itch. They would later, surely they would, but for now it was like realizing there was an end to the routine that had so quietly engulfed him.
    He would be discharged soon, would be on his way. Back to Denver, yes … but where?
    This was solitude; this was the loneliness spoken of by hermits isolated within crowds. This was the desolation that old Eskimos must feel when sitting on the ice, abandoned by family and waiting to die.
    Clay's breath began to come in spastic hitches; his throat constricted and felt suddenly raw. Worst of all was the scalding presence of tears before he even knew they were on their way. It was a low and brutish thing to do, but he could not stop himself. His body, loathsome thing that it was, was betraying him for reasons of its own. He was clueless, and spilling forth from within.
    "Shit. I don't — don't understand this," he choked out. How grotesque his voice was.
    Adrienne was there for him, as much as she could be, leaning forward to press a tissue to his fingertips. He looked at it for a moment before letting it flutter to the floor. If he was going to cry, then let it soak him.
    His sudden perspective on the office was that of a vandal. So much to break, so much to shatter into fragments that would cascade with enough noise to drown out tears. What release destruction could bring. He felt the urge resonate in bone and fiber, nerve and cell. It crawled within his arms, trembled within his legs; it wrapped around his heart and sang inside his blood.
    He clenched shut his eyes, wrapped himself with both arms, until it passed as surely as a seizure.
    He looked at Adrienne and realized she knew. She read it all in his face and her fleeting wisp of fear was as palpable as a scent. She had placed her faith in lithium and it had failed her, whereas his resolve had triumphed…
    If only this once.
    "Help me," he whispered.
    And this, too, might happen but once.

Five
     

    By sunset, everyone at the party had finished eating and now tended to amiably drift from one conversation to another. Adrienne found herself at the edge of the rear deck with Sarah, seated, content to watch the multihued glory of the melting sun. The back of Jayne and Sandra's house had a western exposure that opened onto a desert panorama, an ascetic flatland where spilled the day's blood, rich and rubied.
    It was the kind of house, kind of location, that she would have preferred, had Sarah not hungered to remain closer to the heart of Tempe and the campus. She could look at this sight every evening, never