Sanity in an insane world can be a very dangerous thing.

  The small room Foster Evers called home for the past eight years was finally starting to look as clean as when he first arrived. Ordinarily, his cell walls were plastered with a deluge of wrinkled and well-worn sheets of paper. He often referred to this preferred decoration scheme as his “wallpaper of mania.”

  Now though, with the end of his time near, they were gone.

  Weirdly, his compulsion began with a journal article that Dr. Armstrong once discovered. Filled with disturbing drawings, it hypothesized that visualizing unhealthy emotions as art could aid in a patient’s recovery. Convinced of the article’s validity, Dr. Armstrong had been utilizing this visual catharsis with every inmate. But, after years of insane doodles, Foster couldn’t help but wonder if that journal was still in print.

  The only good thing to come out of Armstrong’s misguided experiment was the unlimited resources he received to create his “masterpieces” of pain. Every day, the patients had ample time in which to work. And, no matter how weird or strange the patient’s scribbles turned out, the staff dutifully encouraged their efforts. Foster took advantage of this mandate to workshop some of his more bizarre questions.

  From multiple unknown species of aliens to pages and pages crammed with scribbled ones and zeros, nothing was out of bounds in his pursuit. He had a particularly productive period in 2011 when he drew a plethora of heavily shaded symbols and glyphs whose complexity would have driven the most dedicated Egyptian archeologist mad.

  Foster referred to this form of investigation as riffing because the mystery had borne him very few clues. Now, his attempts at making sense of the last eight years of insanity were just four large piles of discarded memories lying contently on the corner of his bed. Foster almost wished he had a box of matches.

  “Why are you getting rid of your drawings?” Said a rather large man, with tightly cropped black hair, standing just outside of Foster’s room. “What’s going on?”

  “Hey, Mouse.” Foster knew who it was without looking up. At six-feet tall and almost 300 pounds, the imprecise label always seemed a little out of place. Foster even tried to get the nicknames bulltiny started a few years back. But for Mouse, the genesis of his moniker was born from a more complex, more tragic set of circumstances.

  Anthony Black, as the social security rolls knew him, loved to go hunting with his father as a small child. It was on one of these outings that the two of them interrupted a feeding between a bobcat and her litter. The attack lasted for less than a minute. In that minute, his back and torso were ripped to shreds.

  The resulting scars were so tightly packed together that doctors often confused him for a burn victim. He even suffered from a deathly fear of cats. A fear that often caused him to become violent. But as horrible as that day was, Mouse never once tried to hide his scars. A fact that Foster always thought was cool.

  “I’m not getting rid of them. I’m just doing some spring cleaning.” Foster carefully laid each drawing on the bed. Then with his broken phone, he feigned the process of taking a picture of each drawing. “You know,” he said, shuffling another image toward him. “This would go a lot faster if this thing had a better camera. What I wouldn’t give for an upgrade.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “An upgrade?” After eight years, Mouse shrugged off most of Foster’s eccentricities. “It’s broke. What does the quality of the camera matter?”

  “Mouse,” he said with the air of having had this conversation before. “Pixels are the most important thing in the world. Some might even say the most important thing in life.” Foster’s eyes drifted down to a crudely sketched picture of an insect with a human head. “It’s a good thing I don’t draw in high definition.”

  “You’re weird.” Mouse peeled some paint off the doorjamb with his finger. “I’m starting to worry about you.”

  “From you,” Foster caught his friend’s eye and smiled. “That might be reason enough to start worrying.”

  He finished ‘photographing’ the last couple of pieces in his collection, then stacked them precariously together on the tallest pile. Oh well, he thought. Soon, they’ll be someone else’s problem.

  Foster whispered under his breath, “I know you’re almost full.”

  The comment wasn’t directed at any one person. But since Mouse was the only person in the room, he took a chance. “What do you mean I’m almost full? Are you talking to me or that phone of yours?”

  “Full?” He asked searchingly, remembering that even though the date was here, he still had some secrets to keep. “Yeah, of course, I’m talking to you. The way you were shoveling those hamburgers down at lunch, I’m surprised you’re still awake. Much less walking around. An orderly should be rolling you around like those little guys in Willy Wonka.”

  “You mean like an Oompa Loompa?” Mouse frowned at the visual of orange skin and slicked back hair. “No way. Besides, you know how much I love hamburgers.”

  “That I do, Mouse. But right now, I’m in the mood for more of that peach cobbler. Do you think there’s any left?”

  Mouse stepped back and careened his head to look down the hallway. A couple of patients passed by, pushing a mop bucket. “I don’t smell any cobbler, but that doesn’t mean anything. Briscoe threw up in his room a few minutes ago, and this whole wing reeks with that bleach smell.”

  “Bleach,” Foster said in disgust. “Why can’t they ever use some of that lemon cleaner around this place? Bleach smell is one step removed from torture.”

  “Torture is illegal, Foster.” Mouse went back to picking at the doorjamb. “Bleach is both cheap and legal. The government loves cheap and legal.” Mouse thought about what he had just said and amended his comment appropriately. “Well, cheap and sometimes legal.”

  “Did Briscoe eat any peach cobbler?” His stomach gurgled with hunger. “I don’t need to get sick right now.”

  “No,” Mouse answered as a rather large piece of paint tumbled to the tile floor. “He hates fruit.”

  Thank god, no matter how much he loved peach cobbler, food poisoning was the last thing he needed right now. “Mouse, you know this facility is privately funded. Besides sticking me here illegally, the government doesn’t have much to do with this place.”

  Mouse stood there in silence, enthralled by the stacks of drawings. The next few hours were going to be hard on him, and Foster knew it. Mouse had become quite attached to him over the past eight years. And to be honest, the feeling was mutual.

  With a heavy heart, Foster hopped up off his bed and joined his friend by the door. He pressed the light switch, and his room slowly descended into darkness. Soon, only the bed’s outline was visible. Mouse searched in vain for the pictures, but darkness had shrouded them from his eyes.

  “I’m probably going to miss you the most, Mouse.”

  Close to tears and not fully understanding what his friend was saying, Mouse reached down and swallowed his friend in a hug that took his breath away. “Foster,” he said, with tears forming in his eyes. “You’re crazy if you think you’re ever getting out of here.”

  “Mouse,” Foster pulled away from his large companion’s tight grip. “The only thing keeping me in here are the locks on the doors.”

  “That’s the only thing keeping any of us in here.” Both men stared at one another with a look of complete understanding and friendship. “Well, there’s also the guards.” For the first time that day, both men laughed out loud. “Plus, I don’t think anyone outside these walls would be ready for your kind of sanity.”

  “No one is, Mouse.”

  With that, the two friends went off in search of a piece of peach cobbler.