Day after day.
They send my friends away

Another one of them was gone. Out the front door, hands in front of them like they were at the can, head down. They didn't look back, or think about looking back, because these were the ones that probably could have gone home at any time they wanted to anyway. Through the speckled glass, making the pattern on the floor even more backwards. They walked out in dingy shirts, with slack faces, into the dusty light and noise.

To mansions cold and grey
To the far side of town

They were gone. Left the place for good. It was closing, he had heard them say. The train would come, growling and rattling, pushing sand up from its tracks and throwing it in through the windows that were broken upstairs. It would come, pick up their dirty cloths and tallow-pale faces and pull them along like animals on the ends of leashes. Out into the rough summer sun, the summer sun that felt sometimes like it was reaching fingers in around the edges of corners trying to burn him.

Where the thin men stalk the streets
While the sane stay underground.

He didn't want to see what it was like after the train, though to see was not an option, really. He knew how they felt, how the sun felt, how the sand felt. He could smell that the hospital was growing empty. When he was allowed to, he sat in the foyer on the ground, feeling th eir footsteps as they went outside, feeling the grumble of the train on the ground. He could imagine the way they went about their lives beyond the hospital. It must be like a world of ghosts, he reasoned. The train was what took them away, into the afterlife. It wasn't safe past those doors.

Day after day.
They tell me I can go
They tell me I can blow
To the far side of town

There was surgery, they told him, to let him see again. If he thought he could handle it, he could leave. It would be worse soon, they told him. Remember during the winter, when the snow came in through the windows and there wasn't any food or electricity? The power never came back on, they say. There's other places, and he was alright before he came here, so he can get on the train if he wants. Follow its squeaky wheels to somewhere. To become dried out in the sun? To burn up? No. No, no. He'd crawled under the mattresses during the winter, and they'd had to pull him out. He didn't need their food anyway. Or electricity. He didn't need it.

Where it's pointless to be high
For it's such a long way down

He could remember coming here, being on the train, how it shook around. It felt like it was going to roll over and fall off the tracks, and roared in his ears, and he felt sick. If he stayed still, sometimes it didn't get to his stomach. He had crawled between the seats and stayed there until the conductor took him away. He hated the train, and didn't want to get on it again. They said if he didn't leave soon, the train would stop coming altogether.

So I tell them that,
I can fly, i will scream, i will break my arm
I will do me harm.

The jacket they put him in was uncomfortable. But it was the best way. He knew, because he was listening to them. The others who were staying, they weren't let outside because they might hurt themselves. He didn't understand why it mattered. But the solution was simple. Tracing his fingers against the cool tiles in the foyer, he'd thrown himself down against them, palms flat against the grit and ceramic. He'd started to pound his forehead on the ground. Their arms looped under his armpits and dragged him up, and he went limp. They put him down, he did it again. Again, and again, until they stopped talking about letting him leave, and put him in the jacket that pulled his arms tight against his sides and made the bones rub on eachother. At times, it almost tickled.

Here I stand, foot in hand,talking to my wall
I'm not quite right at all...am i?

He'd never been in the rooms on the lower level. He didn't know the hallways, and didn't like the big open areas he had to cross to get to them. The stairs were simple to get up and down, he could feel ahead with his toes, but he couldn't get across the room without his hands outstretched. And he didn't like to walk like that, it made him feel dizzy.

But here he was, in one of the lower level rooms. The walls felt soft, slick, covered in a sort of foam. The floor was the same. If he rubbed his head against it, his hair would begin to stand on end. It was entertaining to bounce his shoulder against the foam surface, feeling it push back at him. All the same, the room was dark. He could feel the chill on his skin, had the odd deffinition of it on his eyes- forwhatever use they were. And now, he wasn't allowed out to wander. He didn't like that...But it was better than the train.

Don't set me free, i'm as heavy as can be
Just my librium and me
And my e.s.t. makes three

Maybe it was a chancey venture to tell them he'd done that on purpose, but the thought didn't cross his mind. He told the truth, because he was unfamiliar with the concept of lying. And because they had been doing their best to give him some sense of values, they had no reason to doubt him. But what was the part that let him stay? Because he truely wanted to, or because he admitted to purposefully smashing his head against the tiles?

In any case, the train had gone, and he could feel the odd tense feeling of the stitches on his scalp. They pulled in a way that sent a crawling feeling up his spine when he rubbed them against the wall, and they caught slightly on its surface.

Cause i'd rather stay here
With all the madmen
Than perish with the sadmen roaming free

It was better, he could tell himself. He could rock back and forth, because there was nothing else to do, his toes curled around the edge of his mattress. Out there under the sun, he'd dry out. The train would make him sick, and the air on board the planes was stale and cold and made him dizzy. Outside, sometimes he just did not want to be around them, and would stop where he stood. He was unhappy and unready. It was better inside, where when he was fed, he could hear the scratch-scratch of someone kicking at the wall next to him. Better than letting his pale skin melt down to nothing in the sunlight.

And i'd rather play here
With all the madmen
For i'm quite content they're all as sane
As me

Out there was a bad place, he knew that because he'd lived in it. He'd felt people dying out in the street. Too many people spoke too many languages, and wanted too many inane things done. Out there was a war that he couldn't understand. People were fighting- it seemed like they fought simply for the sake of saying they had. They were losing, and winning, and it all played and got bigger and bigger like a fat tick on the back of the whole world. Of course, the world was bigger now too. Harder to find your way around in. It was better to stay inside, even if it was cold and dark and he was held together in a jacket. He could kick back on the wall if he wanted to.

(where can the horizon lie
When a nation hides
Its organic minds
In a cellar...dark and grim
They must be very dim)

Kick, kick, kick. The wall felt funny on his feet. The further he pulled his knees back, the more solid the wall felt when he hit it. Whoever was on the other side of the wall would start getting excited and thump back. It was like a game. With his back on the ground, he could just keep kicking at the wall until he fell asleep. In the morning, sometimes, he'd wake up feeling someone wrapping his feet up. Next to him, the person on the other side would keep kicking. He had to kick back, it was the rule. Part of the game. Better than the outside world.

Day after day
They take some brain away

He did not like it when they locked his feet together, wrapped them up in metal bands that held close with chains. All he could do then was lie on his back and clink the chains together, until there was never any kicking on the other side of the wall. They probably couldn't hear the chains. He wanted to pull back and kick the wall until he got another sound, but when he tried to pull one foot back, the other was dragged along, and if he went as far back as before, he rolled right over. It was hard enough to get up from lying on his back with his arms tied together without his feet chained. He did not like it.

They turn my face around
To the far side of town

Someone with a deep voice would come to his room and tell him that they could still let him leave, if he wanted to. But he didn't want to. Now there wasn't even a train. He'd have to walk through all the sand, feeling every little grain on his feet until he didn't want to feel any more and got tired and fell down. He wanted to stay in the room, even if it was boring, stay there until everything stopped being so demanding outside. Until there were no more trains, or sand, or sun, or people. He didn't care if that was forever.

And tell me that it's real
Then ask me how I feel

How are you feeling today, Grey? That was what they told him, what they called him. He didn't usually make a sound back. If he felt like it, he'd kick at the chains so they jingled together, or roll around. Sometimes he'd roll right off his mattress and hit the floor hard enough that it knocked a little of the breath out of him. It was alright, though, because it made him positive of one thing- He wasn't out there on the train, following it's half burried tracks to become a ghost. The train ate you, it almost ate him, and he knew that. So he wanted to stay. So he refused to tell them he wanted to leave. Which he didn't.

Here I stand, foot in hand, talking to my wall
I'm not quite right at all.

If anyone had asked why he was there, he couldn't have told them. He didn't know. It wasn't his buisness to know. He remembered some things, but his memory was notoriously bad. Before they chained his feet, sometimes he forgot there was another person on the other side of the wall. That was why kicking was so important, to remember where he was. What he did remember was very far off and dusty, like smelling the sand blown in through the doors, but never feeling or touching it.

Don't set me free, i'm as helpless as can be
My libidos split on me
Gimme some good 'ole lobotomy

He could barely remember something, or someone soft. He remembered the sensation of a fur or a cloth under his nails, against his nose. He could remember that his thumb and index finger fit around the neck of something, almost perfectly, so it didn't take long at all. He could remember things breaking, and that he did it, and he didn't like to remember that. If they could make him forget there was another person by the wall, couldn't they make him forget people lying under broken rocks and sticks? If he waited long enough, kept away from the train, maybe he'd forget it all forever. Go back into nothingness.

Cause i'd rather stay here
With all the madmen
Than perish with the sadmen
Roaming free

That was all he really wanted, in any case. To keep away from the sun, the train, all of it. He didn't need anything at all. When someone kicked on the wall, he didn't have to hear it, becuase he was chained up. If he wanted to make a noise, he could. He didn't have to follow traintracks, or feel sick from the sand.

He could just stay here, and hide through it all, feeling nothing but the springy sensation of the wall and the floor against his spine. Sometimes he wondered if beyond the doors and traintracks and sand, there was something important he was forgetting, but it didn't really matter. He knew what was out there for certain, and even the sensation of the soft stuff under his fingernails couldn't have been worth it. Because he was here now, here now, and that was the way it was supposed to be.

And i'd rather play here
With all the madmen
For i'm quite content
They're all as sane as me