🚀 go-pugleaf

Sedative Pie



Calais...Calais...Calais...

He whispers it incessantly. At night, clutching his pillow,
repeating it endlessly until sleep finally takes him, and during
the day, on all fours crawling the tiles of his room, hissing it
violently.

Calais...Calais...Calais...

And at the worst of times, when his whispers become only faintly
audible under the bed with the lights turned out and his eyes
turned wide, when he is terrorized by the memory. It was the
highest expression of hatred for him, a word which exulted his
heavy contempt for the cruel hands of fate. It was all he ever
needed to say.

His name is Paul, which he has long forgotten, and which his
caretakers never knew. They were looking through the thin window in
his door right now, as he scuttled across the floor on his hands
and knees like the strange combination of a jungle cat and a
spider. He lived in number 26, and his food was passed to him on a
tray through a smaller door built into the large white one.

Number 26 was considered unpredictable and potentially dangerous.
When he had first been delivered he was silent, drugged by the
police and restrained. When he woke in a locked room he was almost
reasonable, twitching slightly and staring. His spasms weren't
lingering after-effects of the drugs and his stare wasn't a
reaction to the lights, they discovered however. He was fighting
against imminent loss of muscle control and his eyes spoke verses
of insanity. It was then that they opened the door while he
appeared almost reasonable and he spoke his first word.

"Calais," he said.

They were puzzled. They assumed it was his name. "Calais?" they
said. It was a mistake.

It took several men to collect him from the closet later where he
had barricaded himself. Calais...Calais...Calais... hissed
devilishly from behind the door. He was bound tightly in a
restraining jacket and fastened to a stretcher. He was wheeled back
to the room where they had kept him, the wheels of the stretcher
spinning over the gleaming floor and sliding over the newly soaped
area in front of door number 26.

Paul had torn her cheeks off. At the mention of the word he leapt
forward onto the woman, dug his fingers deep in death-grip into her
jowls and ripped. It was two years ago, and ever since he had lived
in the same room, with sedative medication kneaded into his food.
He appeared almost reasonable.

They were still looking into his window. A group of them, peering
through the glass which was woven with a grid of fine steel thread.
A key fit into the lock on the outside, and the handle began to
turn. "It's unthinkable," an authoritative male voice came through
the slowly opening door, "to keep a man locked up for two years on
medication without any regular tests."

Paul sat up on the bed. He had been flushing most of the meat pies
which contained the sedatives down his toilet for the past three
weeks. He fought hard against the nervous twitches which were
convulsing down his left side as the man fully thrust open the
door. He didn't tell them about the sedatives. He appeared almost
reasonable.

"Good afternoon..." offered the man who had entered.

Paul said, "Calais."

The man assumed he was filling in his name. He extended his hand to
shake, "Good afternoon, Calais."

It was a half hour later when the police were finally notified of
Paul's escape. Dangerous and unpredictable they described him,
shaking their heads sadly over the blood stench and the mess, the
flayed off skin and the heaps of meat pies under the bed.


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Brought to you by the Shepherds of Grace and Danger, Ottawa, Canada.

           "We will breach no sheep before their time."