The soothing melody of a heart monitor played a ghostly tune off the inner thoughts of Sidney’s mind. The sound had long since replaced itself with the quiet of metal and stonework. Even his cellmate was quiet, for the moment. The doctors who came round would probably balk at the description, but what else could you describe someone who kept you in a prison against your will besides a warden? So that’s what he referred to the only other sane human contact he's had.

Sidney only referred to the wardens as such in his mind, the speaking part of his mind currently being quieted by a frustrating, involuntary, vow of silence. He tried to break that vow, of course, but found he was impeded by his vocal cords tightening their grip every time. At first, there was a moment of confusion, followed by panic, when he wanted to launch off a quip but was unable. A well-placed word or phrase, Sidney found, would be all that was needed to set someone off. To flip their switch and make them yell. Sidney loved it when he could get an emotional response out of someone. That meant he was better than them.

Just like he was better than his parents.

Still, try as Sidney might, he was unable to latch onto those old habits; the methods of communication that kept him at a safe distance between others. The trick was to never show a moment of remorse, not until you were alone.

A loud snore broke Sidney out of his train of thought. His cellmate managed a particularly loud note on the trombone of his lungs. How was anyone able to even breath with so much obstructing their airways?

Sidney resented that sleep. He hadn’t slept in a few days. Not since he woke up in here, anyway.

They had tried to call someone, of course, but the numbers that were on file for his family were all to the house, and the phone there didn’t ring anymore. When they asked him personally who they could contact for him was when he first realized his vocal deficiency, the shock of which gave the nurse the first inklings that maybe not all was right with his head. All it took from there was a confrontation, a little jolt, an outburst, and he ended up down here.

With trombone boy.

It was silly what first set him off. The heart monitor felt so much like the tinny thunk of the ceiling fan of his old house. A comforting presence, serene in its monotony. Yet for some reason, perhaps the inability to communicate or a particularly bad memory, the sound of the monitor began to grate. And once things start to grate on his mind, there was only one spiral to fall down.

They actually sedated him! When the nurse had walked into the room to deliver the daily regimen of off-brand jello and something only an alien would call orange juice to see a dyspneic Sidney standing over the death throes of a perfectly good heart monitor, she screamed. The next thing Sidney knew was being tackled to the ground by an orderly and given a shot, followed by the blue-green walls of a cement cell. The memory made him wince and reflexively grab his shoulder where they had carelessly jabbed a needle.

Sidney was debating if he should lie down and try for the fifth time that night to get some sleep when the call of nature grabbed him before he could make any progress. At least his cellmate wouldn’t be awake to stare at him sit to pee. The last time he tried, it only took a sharp look at the man to kept him from making any kind of comment. A derisive gesture Sidney had perfected well beyond the efforts of the most ardent method actor; tailor made to ensure the other person would understand, without a single word, that their very life was meaningless before Sidney’s.

Still, what he wouldn’t give for a good conversation partner. The last good one he had was with his old teacher, Mr. Jonson, right before—.

Sidney slapped his neck. It was an old tic, a habit of his. For some reason, being hit right above the clavicle rendered any thought as mute as he was now.

The front door opened and in walked the very last person he ever wanted to see again, ambivalent towards his current nakedness on the open toilet.

“Sidney? I’ve signed your discharge papers. For now, you are to address yourself as my son. Leave whatever you need, and I’ll buy you more; we’re leaving, and we are short on time.” Came the slightly frightened tones of the history teacher, Abigail Knightly.

◊◊◊

Sidney had never known the history teacher to be so on edge. Her slim fingers bounced off the sleeves of her arm as her bundled nerves sat in her crossed arms. Now that Sidney thought on it, Ms. Knightly was the only one who had ever kept her cool in front of his prodding; declining even to so much as give him detention when he would disrupt the class, merely asking him to leave the room. The fact that something made her nervous managed to unsettle something within him. Still, he followed wordlessly through the corridors of the somehow far too brightly, yet dimly lit hallways. Left, right, left, right, left… right. The designers of this particularly cold mental hospital had managed to make the corridors shift dizzyingly from one direction to the other in a zigzag pattern, and Sydney wondered if it was intentional. If you can’t ever get up to a dead sprint, Sidney reasoned, you’d never get out of the basement in time before a call was made. And then a guard had you on your ass while another orderly jabbed another needle into your arm.

All the frustration and exhaustion had left the shoulders and traveled to Sidney’s feet, transmogrifying themselves into something jittery and nervous along the way. If Sidney could speak, he’d even answer honestly that this was somewhat fun. Kind of like the excited jitters you get when being woken up at six am on your sixth birthday to go on a trip to a cabin or a park to celebrate or to try and leave your father under the cover of night.

By the time he was done with that mental alleyway, he was happily out of the dizzy-making corridors and tasting the sun-kissed winter air. Or perhaps it was only warm in relation to how frigid those rooms were.

Sidney scanned the parking lot, looking for the teacher’s old sedan she drove everywhere. After walking a bit, he could reason that they were headed to the dark blue hatchback at the end of the lot. It was carefully parked in the shade, despite the winter chill, and decidedly facing away from any cameras. He climbed into the passenger’s side door as he fastened his seatbelt, knowing the teacher would refuse to start the car before he did so.

It wasn’t until the pair had gotten onto the back country roads before the teacher would say a word; Sidney being content to let the silence stretch out the amount of time before the questions about his muteness came up. The silence broke anyway. “I told you if anything happened, to sit still and wait for me. How did you end up in a psych ward? Do you know how hard it is to get enough documentation together to fool an entire floor of doctors into thinking you’re my ward?” When Sidney didn’t reply, she continued. “Heaven knows how we’re going to get out of this place quick enough now that I had to lose my favorite alias.”

Sidney looked at Ms. Knightly confusedly, and despite her irises never trailing a millimeter from their trained spot on the road, she seemed to see his unspoken question written over his face.

“Is there a reason you’re not speaking to me?”

Sidney could only shake his head.

“Ah, so you’re just doing it to mess with me, then? Because I should tell you I'm not in the mood for any of your antics.”

Another shake.

“Whatever. I’ll explain more once we’re through security. Do exactly what I say, and say nothing.”

Sidney found that an easy task, considering his current state, as they abandoned the car into the parking lot of the nearby airport. The hatchback opened its trunk to the sky as the not-teacher grabbed a black duffle bag, the large kind you see in cop shows full of money, from the back and a couple of passports from her purse.