She scrambles up the wall, imagining Tom as he tilts his head with curiosity toward the thing under the tarp, Tom’s last stand, the last attempt at assimilation, as the origin of insanity takes flight, a bird as black as his hair and as blue as his eyes, flying up into the infinity of his own mind. He attempts to grab it, to put it back in its box, to stop the sound of those fluttering wings, insanity afoot, a young man gone mad, a mind not yet mature enough to recognize his thoughts as being wrong, as cracked, as flown. She imagines him thinking he’s succeeded, that he beat the creatures that have held him down so long, the thieving entities that stole views, any views, all views, them all.

And at exactly the moment he believes he’s done it, that he’s stopped himself from going insane, he brings his fingers to his face.

And he rips.

And he tears.

And he screams the awful scream of a man made mad. Not even old enough to understand what’s being taken in the feet of that bird, taken out of reach, so high, out of sight now, out of earshot, too.

Even for Tom.

Malorie digs at the dirt. She has to get out of here. Now.

She thinks of the housemates, Felix and Cheryl, Olympia and Don. She thinks of Victor barking at blackened drapes.

She digs.

Whose voice did she hear? One of the housemates?

She feels naked without her fold. Completely exposed. She remembers Annette turning that corner, knife in hand, her red hair like blood from her head exploding back, back toward what drove her mad.

She digs at the walls. She jumps.

She cannot calm down.

“TOM!”

All he does is listen! All he does is hear! He’s done it better than anybody else for sixteen years!

He’ll hear her. He must.

Except…he’s on a train. With…with…

She walks right, too fast, and strikes a dirt wall. She flattens her hands to it and reaches up, up, up.

She imagines a square, high in the sky, an exit from the hole she’s fallen into.

She thinks, Safer Room.

Are there ways out of these rooms? Or is the idea…to die on your own terms…without going mad?

A stirring behind her and Malorie spins, eyes tight, arms up. She’s shaking. Breathing too hard.

She listens.

It moves.

“Stay away!” She yells.

And her voice is hysteria. A black and blue bird considering flight.

Either she’s heard this sound before or she’s so scared (Tom, Tom and Olympia, Olympia) that she’s mistaking this sound for one like it, one she heard behind her in an attic, as she gave birth to the very boy she now desperately wants to find.

Motion close to her right side. Malorie spins, backs up.