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The Screaming Abdabs (996 words)

I don’t want to get up in the night. That’s when the screaming abdabs crawl around on the carpet. If you see one, you end up in here. But the drugs They give me mess up my body, make me sleepy in the day and wide-awake at night when the abdabs and the woofs and the lurkers are in the carpets and the curtains and the walls.

Most of the time They tell us there aren’t any. But every now and again, one of Them will take one of us aside to tell what will really happen if the abdabs get you. You have to be at least two inches above the carpet so they can’t. I lowered a piece of string over the edge of the bed to check, and their snatching claws couldn’t reach higher than that.

But tonight the back door is going to be open. The nurse with the pink lipstick and the fake-nice smile is on duty, and she leaves it unlocked every Friday so her boyfriend can sneak in with pizza. They think we’re stupider than wet paper bags, but Skippity Lou has ears like a bat, and when we can, we pass messages.

I’ve worked on this for weeks. I’ve taken the wooden trains from the playroom every day and made happy choo-choo noises and looked blank-eye doped until They accepted that the trains are mine. I’m short and skinny and I’ve only got little feet. I can balance, one foot on each train and skate over the carpet in my room to the safe lino of the hall. 

Nurse Fake-nice comes into my room a little before sunset. 

“Did you read your nice story?” she asks.

It’s not a story, it’s a guided meditation. There is one in the Book for every day of the year, after the list of Rules. We have to read one every night, and tomorrow they will shine lights and put wires on my head and ask what did you dream what did you see. But I just nod.

She picks up the trains from the windowsill. “You’re not a baby any more. I’ll tidy these away.”

I feel like screaming. Instead I smile. “But I like them.”

“We must learn not to be selfish,” she says. She turns the light off from the switch outside the door. The evening sun shines on the stupid bunnies in trousers smirking  at me from the plastic-covered picture on the other side of the room. I think and I think and it gets dark.

I saw Big Eric throw a chair at a window last week and it bounced off. Everything in here is bolted and strapped down. I let my eyes get wide and I can see the rounded black shapes of the furniture. I can climb on it, but there is only a bed, a cabinet, and a chair. Not enough to get me to the door. Maybe if I stood on the bed, I could swing and jump from the light. But if I fell short, I’d land on the carpet.

There’s nothing else in here, except the Book. But the Book is very thick. I could tie it to my feet with a strip from my nightie. I can’t rip the material even with my teeth, and there are no sharp corners  on the furniture to tear it on.

I crawl to the end of the bed, stand and jump. The bolted-down chair can’t teeter over or slide. It only makes a little whumpf as I land on it. I have to stretch on tiptoe and lean right over to tip the stupid smirking bunny picture off the wall. It thumps to the floor, and I wait, with my heart banging. After a few moments I take off my nightie, hook a bit on the nail head and pull and pull. Finally it rips, the sound zip-tearing the quiet. I put the nightie back on, jump to the bed, and tie the Book to my feet with the torn strip.

I am careful with my first jump, but still it makes noise. I must hurry. My second jump is awkward, and I have to windmill my arms to stay upright. The third takes me nearly to the door, and the light flicks on.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Fake-nice stands in the dorrway.

“I needed to pee.” We’re not allowed up at night, but if you wet the bed They bend over you to slap and pinch and punish, hiding it from the cameras. She’ll believe that I’d want to go.

“Get off the Book and back into bed.  And calm down or you’ll make yourself sick.”

“I can’t get off it. The abdabs will get me.”

“You’re too old for all that nonsense.”

“I really need to pee!”

“If you won’t calm down, we’ll have to help you,” she says. But she doesn’t move to strap me in or jab me with a needle or slap me. She’s still on the very edge of the safe slippy lino. She hasn’t put one toe into my room, where I can see a forest of tiny grasping claws waving above the carpet.

She’s afraid. But she told me to get off the Book. And if one of us dies in here, there’s always an awful fuss, and people get the sack. And I suddenly see, she’s afraid of me. I slowly untie the Book from my feet, and step down onto the carpet. It’s like dropping a stone in a pond, ripples spread out as the ab-dabs make room and turn face out around me. The lurkers slide along the walls,  the woofs boom from the curtains. When I move, they move with me.

Fake-nice’s face is all big round ‘O’s. She turns and runs. I suppose she’s going somewhere with no walls, or carpets or curtains. I have plenty of time to get the others. We skippity outside, hand in hand.