Listening Ears

The sun was falling behind the trees in synchronicity with my hopes for the last group therapy session of the season - not that my hopes were high. The drop off, as I gazed out the plain but dirty window, left something to be desired. I could see it in my mind’s eye; if I jumped from where I stood, I would probably have escaped with a broken leg or two. And then I would have been wrapped up and sentenced  with crutches,  sent back to coping class - emotional regulation, social skills, breaks-through, and the regurgitation of "mindfulness" abound. Surely I wasn't the only one of the five who remained who regretted surviving their thoughts -  and the actions that followed -  enough to have been in group therapy bi-weekly for half a year. Six hours a week we spent forced time together in a dimmed room with hospital-gray walls, poorly decorated with paper birds and donated school-tables. On the other side of our room, beyond a half of a wall withholding the stairs to the attic and roof, was a small kitchen area where art supplies and the bathroom  stayed, mostly neglected. Art therapy had long been abandoned in our bleak sessions. 

            I often felt nauseated halfway through our group sessions,  and I felt watched, but never mentioned these inklings of intuition because my instincts would forever be written off as symptoms. Paranoia. Magical thinking.  There was no one-sided glass for me to condemn.
            How much was in my head, I didn't know, but the knocking in the wall was agitating. Only the sideways glances of the girl beside me - the only participant who may have hated the classes more than I did - helped me to consider that the dismissive knocks weren't hallucinations. But then again, her gray matter wasn't anymore reliable than mine. Jocelyn was no reliable witness to the knock, knock, knock,  even if she was mouthier. Words are only noise once you are stamped "suicidal."
            That's why we were where we were and, supposedly, that's why we abhorred it. Sometimes quietly and sometimes not. As she said, "sometimes you confront and sometimes you just front." I didn't know what that meant yet but it sounded right. It sounded better than the bumps against the wall and the knocking in my head. The click of the lock of the door behind me; that was new.
            Class had been scheduled a little early this week, because it was our last session  before Mrs. Oneil went on a two week vacation. It was a late honeymoon. She wanted extra time for us to all talk about our own mental health vacations, our self-care,  and how to keep our fears from tethering us. To what, I'll never know. None of us had the same mental hangups, and none of us had the same diagnoses. Jocelyn never failed to mention that we were like mixed animals in a farm pin. But our therapist was adamant. 

            Mindfulness - being in the moment, Mrs. Oneal preached with genuine helpfulness at heart and a bun of knowledge atop her head - plain but pretty. If she removed her glasses and got some sleep, she would even be attractive
            Anne, an auburn haired "meths-addict-recovered," benefited from the therapy. She really did make improvement.  And Mrs. Oneal never hesitated to use her as an example of worthiness to the new psychological religion, in case one of the patients spoke out in anger or, more upsettingly, genuine hurt and a need to recover from what was happening to them. To us. If I'd wanted help, like Jocelyn in the beginning, I would have been left in a state of spiritual rot and I would die - not fester. She festered. Her emotions seethed from her eyes and boiled in her throat. She was contagiously lashing - and to the dismay of professionals - was not a Paxil-and-push away from life enjoyment. It was daze.
            The pale girl beside me rolled her eyes but then gazed away in reluctant listening as the younger boy at the table, Tommy, spoke about his sidestep from suicide. He didn't survive his attempt, I contemplated at the time; he had been saved. The rope was cut. He was caught.
            I asked the flaxen young woman if she finished our optional homework.
            "Jocelyn, hey," I whispered. "Here on Earth....Jocelyn?"
            "Yeah," she looked at me. "You okay?"
            "I didn't do that Venn Diagram of our fears and dreams. I didn't get it."
            "Well, no one gets it, not with any sense," she said as we both pretended not to startle at the rustle and knock near the wall. "None of it's real. My fears and dreams are the same thing. Nothing goes in the middle."
            I nodded and gazed at her paper as she stared shyly at the ceiling. The middle of her diagram mentioned "wetting the bed." Maybe she wasn't fearless. But, God, she seemed fearless.
            I looked at my own blank page. A blank page seemed, in the way of what was honest, perfectly acceptable. And if it was optional, per  Mrs. Oneal's words, it shouldn't fucking matter. What mattered in that moment was that an exterminator should be called during her much needed vacation. It had to stop. Knock, knock, tap.
            The middle would be life, I thought. 

            “We'll talk about our assignment,” Mrs. Oneal said as she stood in front of the room, blocking my view of the window. I wished she would move. 
            Anne shared; her fear was relapse and how it would damage her mind and her skin. Her friends had not stopped their drug use. What if she slipped? She feared the rush. She missed the rush. And she wanted the drugs. I could hear Jocelyn's soft whispers- so soft I was not certain they were real – “liar, liar, veins on fire.” 

            Tommy feared that he would commit suicide. He was honest, in the most vague of ways; I thought he was still suicidal. Suicidality gives off a vibe that only other suicidal - especially the chronically suicidal - could ever absorb. That never fully faded. Hope and faith could bring it out, just a little, but nothing couldn't mute it. Not all the way. Suicidality is a silence that seeps into the marrow.
            When it was Jocelyn's turn, she glanced around, a bit confused - she'd been in her head as  usual, and she'd been doodling kissing cartoons and hearts across her mostly-blank homework. Jocelyn had long ago given up on Mrs. Oneal's methods.
            "Do you care to share, Jocelyn?" Mrs. Oneal asked. She was cautious with her because she had been known to walk out, to violate her mental health demands by the court after her own attempt at a peaceful exit from life, which she was denied. Jocelyn's defiance looked worse for Oneal than it did herself, and Oneal had a doctorate on the line.
            "Not really. I'm not afraid of anything. I haven't wet the bed in weeks. As far as dreams go...I really dream of the day I walk the fuck out of here and ride my bike home and never have to tell you another thing about my mind. That's my dream." 

            Mrs.  Oneal stared at Jocelyn for a moment, somewhat agape, and pained in the face. I felt a pang of empathy, though brief, for our therapist. She was trying harder than most group counselors did. Her stupidity, in that suspended moment, felt irrelevant. She wanted Jocelyn to improve.
            "Do they, uh, does anything overlap for you?" she asked.
            Jocelyn shrugged and pushed her page aside, near mine.
            "I guess if I piss on my bike on the way home tonight, sure."
            I shot her a glance and she ignored me, and ignored the rest of the class. I heard the wall sliding alongside my desk, as if it would grow warmth and become sentient at any moment to help me be less harsh than Jocelyn despite my suddenly defiant blank paper. But with luck, Davey was called on next.
            "My dreams are to begin a business and a family. My only fear is failing. The American Dream, you know..."
            "That's great, Davey," Anne interrupted nervously. "That's a good goal."
            Mrs. Oneal covered her face with her hand and moved away from us to go around the wall to the bathroom, sniffling.
            "I'll be right back, guys," she said. "I'll only be a minute."
            When Mrs .Oneal had vanished around the corner, Davey and Anne stare across their table to ours, at Jocelyn.
            "You made her cry," Anne said. "Don't you feel bad?"
            Jocelyn glared at Anne. She didn't want to be there. I didn't either. I would have gotten up and walked out if my mom wouldn't have been called about it.
            "Not really," she replied quietly as she went back to doodling on her paper. Anne sighed loudly and turned her chatter to Davey and Tommy. We awaited Oneal's footsteps, and we would wait more than a minute, and maybe five, before we heard her steps.
            But I heard four feet. And so did Jocelyn.
            We turned around in our seats, following the gaze of our group partners, and saw Mrs. Oneal. But she wasn't alone.
            "Everyone, I'd like you to meet someone very special," her voice still shuddered unsteadily. "A guest. This is Grendel. She's been staying with us for a while, inside to keep out of the heat."
            A woman stood ever so slightly behind Mrs. Oneal, appearing afraid and almost - to my thoughts – shy. Like a child behind her mother. Her hair was a flaxen fading to a gray - a gray darker than the blonde that preceded her age.  She wore a dress that was bright and tattered.
            "Oh, hello, Miss Grendel," Anne said cheerily. "We're friendly, don't mind us. Mostly," she shot a look at the petrified Jocelyn.
            "I know, and I won't," the newly introduced Grendel said in a soft but quivering voice. "You're such a beautiful bunch. Have a good session, now."
            I felt my face scrunch in pity and maybe confusion as the lady walked away, and Mrs. Oneal promised to come and check on her in a few moments as she made her way to the little blackboard she kept pinned to the wall - a humble attempt at making the room into a class.
            I ignored what she was writing checked my phone. It was almost dead.
            "Okay, Davey," Mrs. Oneal said, avoiding looking in the direction of my table. "Tell us about your fears and dreams. I apologize for the interruption."
            Jocelyn whispered as she read the tiny writing on the little blackboard.
            "Relapse. Suicide," she looked at me. "Now what?"
            I shrugged. We waited for Davey.
            "I already did. Failing. I, uh, I don't want to be crushed by the pressure. My social anxiety.  I want to succeed."
            Mrs. Oneal smiled and wrote "failing pressure," and beneath it "bed wetting."
            Jocelyn sighed.
            "Wow," I whispered. "Seems a little unnecessary."
            Anne shot me a judgmental glance, but Tommy seemed taken aback as well; a fan of positivism, it was sure to disturb. I thought that perhaps Jocelyn pushed Mrs. Oneal too far. Even the most mindful had  breaking point.
            "Well, Isaac didn't write anything on his paper, as usual," she said, leaning against the wall. "So he won't have a fear listed on the board."
            "I couldn't think of anything. Sorry."
            Mrs. Oneal nodded.
            "Some of us are just don't have any dreams."
            I was hoping class would end early. Mrs. Oneal clearly needed the vacation she was prepared for, and we all needed a break from group counseling and from each other. And more than anything, I needed a break from the bumping and knocking and sliding from the wall beside me.
            "If you'll excuse me for a moment, I'm going to go check on our guest and be sure she's comfortable."
            As Mrs. Oneal clicked her heels out of the room, I saw blonde hair hit my shoulder as Jocelyn leaned close to whisper,
            "I wish that old woman would stop moving the fuck around."
            I stared at her large green eyes for a moment, for the first time - she wasn't being sarcastic. Sometimes it was hard to tell with Jocelyn. Even her brief, quiet comments between exercises in therapy were laden with a layer of sarcasm so that I never was quite sure how to respond.
            "All that noise... You hear it too?"
            "Yeah. But now at least we know what it is. Did you think you were imagining it?"
            I slowly nodded, not entirely sure I wanted to admit that "hearing things" happened to me enough for me to keep quiet about it for six months.
            She nodded understandingly, glanced around, and confirmed,
            "It's been going on for a while, and it's real."
            We looked at each other as we heard "thump, thump, slide, knock, knock, KNOCK, thump, KNOCK."

            When Tommy, Anne, and Davey finally glanced at the wall beside us, I felt a duo sigh of relief and at once a tensing of fear. They heard it now, too, and that meant it was loud. This was no folie a' deaux. This was real.
            "Maybe that lady doesn't feel like she needs to hide now?" I asked. "Since she finally introduced herself?"
            "For as long as we've heard it?" Jocelyn asked skeptically. "Half a year."
            "Oh, calm down," Davey snapped. "Mrs. Oneal said she was a new guest. Don't blame your psycho shit on some poor homeless person."
            Jocelyn glared at Davy, smirked, and said nothing as she went back to doodling on her page.
            I felt myself shudder as the sounds in the wall continued, grew louder, and finally silenced. No one else seemed to notice or care, except for Jocelyn, who stopped drawing and put down her pencil. She didn't move, except to turn her head slowly to the locked door.
            I heard footsteps. One, two, one, two, stop. One, two, one, two.  And stop in the distance where it began.            I began to wonder what happened.
            "Someone should go check on Mrs. Oneal," said Anne after we had spent another fifteen minutes doodling and texting and whispering.
            Something felt turned and sick. My heartbeat pounded in my ears as Anne got up from her seat and walked around my table and towards the kitchen to check on our therapist.
            No one should have to check on anyone. This is therapy. It was group therapy. It was created for uselessness.
            Jocelyn glanced at me from beneath her hair and shuddered. 

            Thump, murmur. Step, step. Knock, murmur. 
            I heard a  soft, feeble, almost kind voice from behind me. I turned and  was surprised to see Anne. She held her hand behind her and asked,
            "Tommy, can you come help us with this?"
            "Yeah. With what?" He asked as he stood eagerly. "Is everyone okay?"
            "Yeah," Anne smiled a she pulled in the sleeves of her cardigan. "Don't be a fag!"
            Tommy laughed nervously along with Anne, like an inside joke of the newest friends. He walk behind us to follow Anne until we heard a clock and no more forced - or nervous- laughter. A door closed and then the world of the three of us became so quiet that we heard each other breath, slowly, quickly, uneven. 

            Knock, knock, slide, slam, scream. 

            Jocelyn stood and walked to the blackboard. She ran her fingers along the words, lightly enough for them not to smudge, as I listened through the wall as a muffled voice shattered into silence.
            I wanted nothing more than to go home and take my medication. I was surely losing it.
            She crossed out "suicide" on the blackboard of our "fears."
            She glanced at me from the side, eyes gleaming.
            And she asked the oddest question yet, in the six months I had known her, turning her head to look at Davey.
            "Are you ready to expire for your convictions?"
            "What convictions?" Davey asked "Where is Anne?"
            Jocelyn shrugged and looked at me - the second moment of eye contact she had made since we met. I felt myself grow weak and unsteadied. I felt unstable.
            "Not here, motherfucker. Are you deaf?"
            "If I was, I wouldn't read your lips,” Davey seethed. He never liked Jocelyn. From day one, her bitterness was the background noise if and awful, tainted oil that seeped through the vents of the dimmed room and the unstable  brains of us each. 

            Jocelyn sat beside me as she waited, but at the time I knew not what for. She stared at her purse. We both turned and glanced at the dark glass windows. It was so dark out, nearing nine o'clock.
            She rose to nudge the doorknob. It was locked.
            "Why is that door locked?" I asked as she quickly scuffled to her seat. I heard a sliding against the wall and a creek, and then footsteps come from around the corner.

            It was Anne. 
            "We're going to need a little more help," she said rapidly, pleading. "Come on, Davey, why don't you come help out?"
            I looked at her, a plain girl, pale, chubby from gaining weight after her recovery. She was shaking with excitement. Or fear.
            "What are you guys even doing?"he asked. "You've got everyone back there. Is that lady sick?"
            "Davey, we just need you. You ask so many fucking questions; no wonder you're in here working on social skills. You're a fuck boy."
            Davey looked up, shocked and maybe even hurt at Anne's snappy remark. The two of them had become good friends in the therapy group, even exchanging numbers and providing emotional support outside of the class. I had done the same with Jocelyn, but our friendship was much more of a connection based on general hatred of others. Anger and hatred were exuding from Anne this time, though, and excitement and fear and desperation. She seemed struck.
            Jocelyn was quiet as she observed Anne. She was reading her like a list.
            "The real you comes out when you get that fix," Jocelyn remarked. "I guess you just weren't that afraid."
            Anne glared at Jocelyn.
            "You're next, bitch. Davey, get up."
            "She's next for what?" Davey asked, nervous, not moving. "Did you shoot meth?"
            "This woman is going to die if you don't come and help, Davey. Get off your ass."
            I eyed Davey who stayed right where he was, defiant.
            "I'll call an ambulance, but I'm not going wherever you've been. You're fucked up. You're shaking!"
            "I think we need to get out of here," I chimed in. "Where's Mrs. Oneal?"
            "I wonder what her biggest fear was," Jocelyn whispered, looking up at the vent in the wall. "I didn't listen close enough."
            "Was?"
            Anne's breathing was growing more and more rapid as she clenched her fists.
            "Fine. Fuck you, Davey. Get up and come with me or someone will die."
            Davey shook  nervously but did not stand.
            "No."
            Anne sighed in exasperation and finally turned on her heel to head back around the corner. I wondered what was going on in the kitchen nook. Did Anne bring her own supply and shoot up when she was faced with helping that tattered woman?
            Did she just shoot up in front of Mrs. Oneal?
                        When Anne was out of sight, Jocelyn stood and dashed to the window I stood in front of before each class, imagining my fall. Only a few stories, but a possible death all the same. 

            She pushed up on the window and it did open. She turned and shot me a wary glance.
            "I don't know if we'll make it down," she muttered, glancing from the gray vent above out table and back to me.
            "Survive the jump?" I asked.
            Davey turned and stared at her, his eyes the epitome of confusion and hers the darkened awareness and clarity of the situation we were in. She knew something that none of us had known before.
            She was trying to warn me. So I quietly stood and walked to her, across the room, and gazed down at the dark garden. It was quite the fall. I looked at Jocelyn; she wasn't fragile but she wasn't sturdy enough for that fall. In my mind I could see her fall and landing on her back in the overgrown grass, barely moving. Still at the mercy of whatever she was escaping.
            "You would be immobile," I whispered. "That doesn't seem beneficial."
            "It isn't," she said, a single tear falling from her cheek onto the windowsill. 

            I heard footsteps and we raced back to our seats. The atmosphere of the room had changed and synced from Jocelyn, to Davey, and finally settled in me and it was anxiety and despondence.
            The steps stopped for moments. The floor-space between the therapy class and the kitchen area was only a few feet but it suddenly felt like an echo chamber without the benefit of being far enough away to escape someone with any enthusiasm.
            "Why don't Tommy and Mrs. Oneal come back out and ask us for help?" Davey asked. “What are they doing?”
            Jocelyn was shaking and she demanded quietly, glancing to the vent and back to Davey,
            "Lower your voice."
            "What's behind that vent?" I whispered. Jocelyn's fingers gripped the bar of her chair and she looked around the emptying room warily before she told us,
            "Someone who's really, really confused."
            Even her whisper seemed to echo anymore, and I looked at the darkened door, four stories into the sky. I could easily dart down the stairs. It had been done many, many times. But that door wasn't going to open. That glass wasn't thin.
            "I don't know when she locked the door," Jocelyn muttered as she followed my gaze. "It doesn't matter now."
            I heard a click and footsteps once more. Anne was returning with a renewed fire.
            "Come on, Davey!"she shouted. She wasn't far from stomping her feet and throwing the nearest object - a houseplant- across the room.
            And then she brandished a gun. A pistol.
            "You have to. Crawlspace. Go. And whatever you're fucking plotting," she growled at Jocelyn, "isn't going to fucking happen. Davey, NOW."
            Davey stood, despite Jocelyn's forbidding gaze, as if she could will him to stay in the room. My heart was beating louder than Anne's shaking, agitated voice.
            Not as loud as Davey's soft, hesitant footsteps, shooting a pleading, confused glance at us. We couldn't help.
            Anne tried not to make eye contact as the gun stayed aiming at Davey, and then with me again as they disappeared around the corner, four feet moving in rhythm, and I heard a muted click.
            "I've got to get out," Jocelyn whispered, hardly audible.
            "What the fuck  is going on. And how do you know?"
            "Have you ever tried being perceptive?"she asked, more with genuine curiosity than hostility. She wasn't angry. But she was frustrated. 

            And tried, I never did, because I was in my head and whatever she perceived could not be true. Absurdity was seven million miles away - it had come and gone, left its mark, and then the absurd moved along.
For the first time after quite a while, I felt disturbed.
            Jocelyn looked at me as we listened to a quiet voice between the walls.
            "Get the other two - you'll be rewarded. I promise," I thought I heard. Jocelyn stared at me with the wide, adrenaline-crazed eyes.
            "I've got to go," she said, hushed. "Are you coming?"
            "The door is locked."
            Jocelyn stood and tested it again and with a bobby-pin and a card, and we hit the floor when we heard what clearly was a roar  from within the room between the walls. We heard Davy's voice, responding to an animal. We flinched as we heard slams against the wall and saw as it moved.
            "Oh my god."
            "Fuck this," I said. "Fuck it."

            Jocelyn calmly took three pills from within her purse, stood and lifted her chair, aiming a swing at the door.
            "What are you thinking?" I asked.
            "I have to wait until I know he's dead. Anne is trying to survive us. Are you coming with me?"
            I didn't have time to think about it. She was about to do something and what the result would be wasn't within my minds reach. The glass was thick. She could have been planning to evaporate for all I could consider. It was stay and be intimidated into God knows what, at gun-point, or somehow abandon the situation by joining Jocelyn.
            She interrupted my train of thought.
            "Do it or don't."
            Jocelyn had walked to the middle of the room and held the chair above her head and ran forward, smashing the chair against the glass.
            The color fell from her face when the crash rendered only cracks. She turned ghostly as we heard movement from the wall.
            I decided to move. In the fearful flashes of several moments, my chair hit the glass. A few chopped moments later, hers hit again - metal to glass.
            SHATTER.
            "Ugh! Fuck, let's go," she hurriedly said, barely noticing the small shards of glass that were in her arm. And then I heard the heels in the hall and Jocelyn's face changed when she realized that Anne had a gun aimed right at her.
            She was only standing a few inches from me, I could feel her there for moments after I saw her actually dash out of the room through the shattered door. I heard her scream "You have to run, Isaac!"
            I heard Anne coming closer, looking more afraid than I had suspected, and then she stopped in her tracks. She stood beside me and watched what she thought had been impossible.
            I glanced out at the parking lot where I could see Jocelyn riding away on her bike, unwilling to turn back and see anything else. But I still felt her beside me.
            "Stop waving a gun around, Anne," I said. "I could have run by now."
            Anne didn't look willing to shoot anyone. She looked more like she was in shock than she was actually a dangerous person.
            "I need your help in...aiding  Miss Grendel. She's stuck between the walls."
            "That's not what's happening."
            As I walked in front of her, being led at lazy gunpoint by someone I barely knew socially, but knew more intimately as we all shared our stories.
            We turned the corner and the kitchen lights were off - nothing looked odd at all except the scissors cast open on the counter. I saw a piece of cut rope.

            The door opened to the crawlspace and Anne pushed me in, and gently shut the door.
            My heart sank and my emotions abandoned me. Mrs. Oneal was hanging from a meat hook on the wall,Tommy was hanging from the wall by a noose, his limp body lost of color. Beside him, Davey was beaten so badly he was unrecognizable. He had been alive only moments before. Trampled.
            "Grendel, this is Isaac."
            I looked at the woman sitting tightly to herself near the window. But my eyes refocused and I could only keep them on the bodies of my teacher and support group. Blood seeped through the floorboards.
            While I was expecting to hear sirens at the time, at any second- just one pure moment because Jocelyn called for help and got the police - all I received was silence. And then the breathing. Mine nervous, Anne's desperate, and Grendel's low calm breaths of impatience.
            "Thank you for bringing the company for a visit," Grendel said as Anne neared closer to her and she continued. "You did fine, honey. You're about to feel a fair bit better."
            Anne nodded and as she did, I took a step back. Grendel had a needle but it was meant for Anne.
I glanced once more at the bodies and wondered how everything had gone so badly that they couldn't defend themselves against this woman. I could  smell their iron draining and dripping against the thin walls of the crawl space. 

            Drip, drip, drip. 
            "Come sit down Isaac," she cooed as Anne sat, shaking.
            I did sit down. She had the gun at that point, taking it back from Anne, surely in exchange for what was in the needle.
            I hadn't noticed the large painting of a sitting elephant with flowers surrounding all over was hanging on the less bloodied side of the wall. It was held on with thumb tacks  and appeared to have been ripped out of a frame.
            Grendel glanced out the window.
            "It really is a beautiful night for this, isn't it?"
            Somewhere from deep in my throat, I found my voice, but it didn't feel like mine anymore.
            "For what?"
            "Oh my God," Anne said, clutching her chest.
            "She's having a heart attack," I said quickly as if it would be considered an emergency in this situation. I wanted to run. The dead faces of my group therapy friends made them seem closer somehow. But I was there, and until the cops arrived, I needed to survive this woman.
            "Oh, my, she's just taking too long."
            Miss Grendel stood and quietly, quickly reached down to where Anne was struggling, and with a a quick movement of color, two red lines appeared. They darkened and flowed as blood came spurting and pouring.
            I felt a dysfunctional resistance to vomit as most of my mind either shut down or went into hyper-drive.
            "That won't be long," Grendel assured, sitting back down in a steady comfort.
            I listened in panicked breaths and moments of hope at a siren as Anne gasped and finally stopped moving at all on the floor. As I glanced to her, the sockets turned with gravity to the floor. She had wanted my help.
            "It's a shame that other girl got away," she said abruptly. "I guess the good ones tend to though."
            Being in the situation I was in, aware that an escape attempt would likely end in my death, I decided to engage. I used my voice despite myself.
            "Good ones?"
            "Well, the dominant, those strong types - always the first to escape," she giggled gently. "Anne tried hard. She was reluctant but she did try," Grendel explained as if Anne wasn't a foot away, murdered, dark blood seeping around my shoes. "I wanted a dominant, strong personality to keep my ears big," she smiled. "She did it wrong. A for effort, but D for dead."
            "The meat hooks," I managed, realizing there was one lonely unused set.
            "That's for bleeding them out before I get to taking what I want. I think by now I've learned that the flank can make the whole meal.  It's a shame to waste but look at this space, my dear boy."
            My heart dropped and my stomach turned and I wanted to pretend I wasn't in a crawl space.
            "What do you need a dominant personality for so badly that it's worth this?"
            As Grendel shifted slightly to the side and held out one brawny but dirty arm, she pointed my gaze directly at the old elephant painting. Blue, yellow, orange, and a jade staring at me from the withering canvas he existed in. It was a simple piece of art.
            "This is my elephant. I need someone to help me cater to him. Like a caretaker," she smiled. "He takes care of me; I lost my hearing long ago, so I take care of him. Can't leave him with just anyone." 

            I stared at the painting on cloth, ripped and fringed, but displayed so prominently. She didn't seem to be deaf. She surely didn't seem deaf at all, as she heard us through the vent.
            "Can't uh, you need someone to care for your painting?"
            "Painting," Grendel covered her mouth with her long, unpolished nails as she eyed me carefully. "How could you look at that and only see a painting? Look closer and you will see the *soul* of this beautiful being. He uses his large ears for listening."
            There had never before been a train of thought built within the pathways of my brain to ride for this situation. Words spilled from my mouth anyway, as choppy as my thoughts had become.
            Only the street light outside provided me with any ability see beyond that point, as the kitchen lights beneath the door turned off on a timer. I stood and got nearer to the painting, wary of the motives, confused by the elephant, and desperate.
            I felt myself nearing the urge to pray that Jocelyn was sending the police.
            "I...do. I do see it."
            "Can you hear him asking how you're worthy of taking care of him?"
            "I...yes. He is asking if I'm worthy."
            "Are you?" Grendel snapped her head to the side to look at me, her tone taking a somber note. "He tramples. He's a wild animal and he will goreyou."
            I nodded and the blood dripping echoed in even the smallest of spaces. I needed out of the room.          Jocelyn, where are you?
            "Your trait of resilience is a good one, and the elephant agrees. We would love to have such a quality."
            "Give you...how do - how do I-"
            "You should worry less. That's what I learned about you over the last half a year. You stay so quiet because you worry so much."
            I felt rather concerned that she implied an elephant was with her, between the walls. Elephants are big. Large animals do not dwell in crawl spaces.
            "What did you... Why did you?"
            "Don't worry about that. I have to hide," she said, gesturing outward to the tiny space filled with my dead classmates and a painting of the Elephant, as if the crawl space was her palace and I had been brought for a special tour.
            "Listened to us and decided which ones to," I glanced briefly at the bodies hanging on the wall. And whispered, "eat."
            "He told me everything he heard. It's not about me  eating them - it's feeding my Elephant."
            "How?" 

            Grendel looked back at the painting and smiled. Her smile looked so genuine that I almost believed she was genuinely in love with this creature  as well.
            She interrupted my thoughts and said,
            "Well, you're going to find out. Your soul is deep, you've got so much to offer."
            I felt my skin crawling with each mention of the Elephant. But I grew more afraid when Grendel turned from admiring the painting to the butcher knife that was gleaming on the floor. She stooped and picked it up.    My heart beat against my chest so hard that I barely heard her speaking at all. Not a word mattered anymore.
            "Plans don't always go as expected," Grendel muttered as she gripped the knife she wielded tightly and moved only an inch closer. An inch, when between walls, is a vast space closer. I was in reaching distance. So I was in chopping distance.
            My eyes were fixed on the round window. A nicer, cleaner window than the one in the therapy room.  It was going to be a long fall or it was going to be a deadly fight that my entire class lost, except for Jocelyn. I asked myself again why she didn't send help, and I asked myself why I didn't go with her.
            "How am I any good?" I asked. "You are what you eat - is that it?"
            Grendel went blank for a moment and then said,
            "My Elephant absorbs your qualities and intentions through a servant - devouring them."
            I felt sick and dizzy and I found myself taking a step back with a every word Grendel spoke.
            But even as I opened my mouth to remind her, and myself, that what she said made no sense, I felt the floor beneath me rumble like thunder for several seconds. Grendel had no reaction. Surely she felt it.
            "What was that," I asked myself out loud.
            "He sure is getting hungry," Grendel said, in the tone one takes when desiring to walk away from a casual conversation, but without a way to do so politely. It was time to feed the elephant in the room.
            I stared at the black of the glass and thought about Jocelyn's life-saving snap-decision. Her strong arms made cracks and together we shattered glass. And I could have gone with her, and I thought about that, too. I could have followed her on her bike, chased her to her home, held her in her bed.

            I could have been anywhere else. 
            My feet moved and I  heard Grendel's voice as she shrieked, a large kitchen knife swinging towards my ribs as I moved out of the way, towards the window. I felt a tug at the skin on my leg, realizing painlessly that she had supplied the second in many of the cuts I was to receive as I shattered the glass and fell into the dark. For minutes is seemed, I fell to the sound of sirens in the distance, in the grass, immobile.
            The shrieks and sirens were all I heard, and from the woods I heard a familiar voice scream my name and then amongst the chaos,
            “Cannibal!”