Free A Vagrant Story by Paul Croasdell Page B

raise suspicion. I’ll pretend your still here then claim ignorance when they find out. Right now the police still think you’re asleep so they won’t check for a while anyway.”
    “What if someone finds me while I’m still asleep down in the boiler room?”
    “The janitor hardly uses that room anymore, just in case I have the master key to the building, I’ll lock it for you and leave the fire exit open.” The doctor glanced to the doorway. “Okay, the nurse is back from her lunch. It’s now or never, are you ready?”
    Henry took one pill and pinched it between two fingers. Against every bit of doubt he found his hands moving gradually toward his mouth. He swallowed in one. His vision hazed and with it Henry began to anticipate the darkness of sleep. Instead, he found his head falling back. He didn’t go asleep, he just couldn’t move. What he saw was like looking through someone else’s eyes, all the vision without thinking to rationalise.
    The doctor had told him he would sleep the whole way through. There was no sleep in this. This feeling, it clutched him like a waking nightmare. He felt afraid, though he couldn’t really feel so much as imagine the familiarity of fear. It was paralysis, a gripping paralysis. Finally, that most anticipated darkness appeared, but came in the form of a blanket folded over his face.
    As sounds around echoed into senselessness, Henry felt pressure on his chest like someone leaning down. An obscure voice whispered words he could barely hear or stand to remember.
    “Gullible idiot.”
    The darkness remained, his senses drifted in and out. What he felt next might have been the bumps of movement, or the thud of his brain beating against his skull. It continued for a while, so too the murmurs of people they passed. Each new sound brought with it a promise of freedom, so long as new ones came he knew they were still moving and hadn’t been caught. Each one of those new sounds went lost on him no sooner than he heard them. His mind swam round and round until the next reset. In each passing moment he awoke anew with the mental comprehension of a new born baby, and he couldn’t even cry to vent his confusion.
    Those sounds dispersed, replaced by droning gurney wheels rolling on a concrete floor. The gurney moved faster in this place, as though safer to do so, or as though the doctor lacked a good excuse if caught down here.
    They stopped. A noise like rattling steel touched Henry’s ears. It sounded like steal rubbing off steel, an almost intolerable sound similar to metal floor grating. The rattling stopped along with the gurney‘s wheels. Suddenly a noise of groaning steel droned in Henry’s ears. It was like a heavy steel door opening right next to his head. Slowly, he felt the gurney roll forward until arriving at a total stop. Footfalls walked away. The heavy door slammed shut.
    There came a lonely silence, but not a total silence. Loud creaks, like those of churning pipes sounded above. They popped as though they’d crack open any second.
    Now more than ever Henry longed to tear the blanket off his face. The heat in the room was fierce and this cover did little to placate the issue. Though thinking on instinct alone, these emotions were good signs. At least now he could form the mental linguistics required to want the blanket removed. At least he could feel fear again, and feel the burning heat enough to hate it. These were the first of his restored senses. By time he became aware of himself he’d fallen off the gurney. Crawling on the ground like a mole in day time, he slipped on his glasses in the hope his double vision would cease.
    The room continued to wobble in and out of double and single vision until hot steam shot straight into his face. It hit hard enough to straighten his sight to a stable single vision. Rubbing his eyes to be sure he found himself alone in a small room lined from ceiling to the walls in pipes.
    “The boiler room?” he spoke groggily, only