Stampede

Day 9

The Ward was quiet.  I had more privileges than most of my compatriots, but sneaking out sure wasn't one of them.  Coucher would kill me if he knew.  Maybe.  He's an understanding guy and it was just coffee with an old friend and a stroll through the outside world and the potential to undo months of steady, difficult work.  Besides, Crutches was lonely and my friend had the bright idea of taking him to the Clover for some grub.  A little humanitarian work never killed a madman.

Blue shiny Bellevue in the highest moonlight.  Rows of windows, empty corridors.  No patrols-- Too much security would set the paranoiacs on edge.  Junior was at his usual spot at the entrance.

"What's the word, Hank?" he asked as I walked through the front door.  Sneaking can be done in the open, so long as the right people don't know about it.

"Same old, same old," I said, slipped him a few dollars and the number of a girl my friend scouted for me.  Collateral.  Keep Junior happy and the doors are never barred.  Good guy, clear intentions, the easiest kind to deal with.  "Her name's not important, and I know you like that.  Besides, she's always on, according to Mr. Scout.  True blue buxom blond, no doubt."

"Same as last?  She'll be toothless and forty.  Not that I mind, mind," He smirked and waved me on.  Clear intentions, no pretense.  He'd never end up in a place like this.  I could learn a thing or two from Junior.

The shrinks were all home, fucking their wives, boyfriends, dogs, whatever shrinks fuck when they finish up asking about the fantasies of crazy people.  The only people I had to avoid were the other sick fucks in the joint.  Stumble upon one getting back from a piss break and there'd be a lot of explaining to do.  A man would think tricking a nutter would be a simple task, but they get real hard to convince after they've been cooped up for so long.  Some would be bitter, too, finding out a day pass only cost twenty bucks and the promise of a blowjob.

I dodged through the dark activity room, empty couches and tables, ghostly shadows from the big windows, the little courtyard outside bathed in moonlight.  I stopped at the door to the hallway where half the patients lived, listening for any sound.  "Not a creature was stirring," I whispered and began gliding through the hall.

I was wrong; There was movement.  A door opened and I froze.  There was nowhere to hide, unless I wanted to risk walking into someone's room and waking them up.  I did not.

"We have to find it," a voice said, slow, unsure, as if asleep.  No, it was asleep.  A sleepwalker.  A mark, a rube, a second of fun.

"Find what?" I replied.

"We have to find them," the voice said, not reacting to my inquiry.  Why the doctors decided to take off the locks on the rooms was a mystery.  Sleepwalkers roamed these hallways, always stuck in their silly dreams.  This time it was Buffalo, big ol' Buffalo, roaming the empty hallway.  "We have to get there quickly."

His Western twang didn't follow him into his sleep.  The real Buffalo, stuck in a dream, wandering.  An opportunity.  I quietly ducked behind him and took off his robe.  He didn't notice and continued on his quest, stark naked and drooling.  Poor bastard.

He stood in the frame of the doorway to the activity room, gazing at something faraway, his giant pale ass awash in the silver light.  I normally wouldn't have messed with the cowboy, but he had been getting to be too much as of late, prancing around, picking fights with people he thought were robber barons, cattle rustlers or Apaches.  I approached the situation with grim determination and no sense of enjoyment.  Well, maybe a little.

"We have to help them before it's too late," he announced to the empty room.  "We need to get them out."

"Well, you better hurry, then," I said and began running towards him.  I held out my arm and, at the very apex of my dash, slapped his ass as hard as I could.  "Never wake up a sleepwalker," they say.  Whoops.

Buffalo didn't hesitate.  He jumped a few feet in the air and bolted into the activity room, screaming like a scared child, toppling chairs and tables, leaping over a couch and ended up taking a leftward turn towards the giant windows facing the courtyard.  Diving through, the glass shattered and, for a moment, there was silence.  By the time Buffalo started crying and the rest of the patients started waking up, I was back in my room smoking a smuggled cigarette.

It took a while for Buffalo to return to his cowboy ways.  Sure, he was timid as hell afterward, and he had no idea it was me, but once he became the blustery old fool again, he made sure to keep it to a limit that was more suitable to my tastes.  Coucher said I couldn't change the world out there, but I was determined to change the world in here.  All I had to do was get the Buffalo rolling.