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“Jinx.” Milo hears a sharp voice. Someone standing in the door of the room they have locked him in. But he forgets that they are talking to him, that ‘Jinx’ is meant for him. “Hey! Don’t you ignore me.”
“What?” Milo replies, glaring at the keeper. He isn’t sure how long he has been in here. A few days, a few weeks, maybe even longer? But he hasn’t stopped fighting. And he knows that won’t until he is free. Not when they treat him like this. Refusing to even use his name.
“The cleaners are coming in. Go sit at the other side of the room.” The keeper orders. “And if you even think about moving, you know what will happen.”
Yeah, Milo has a pretty decent idea. As he slowly stands and moves away, he thinks about the fact that cleaners are necessary at all. Maybe if they treated him like a human, and gave him access to basic necessities, they wouldn’t have to do this. And yet they still complain.
The keeper follows him, watching him closely with a hand on his taser. The other keeper stands at his other side, also watching. Always watching. Even when they leave him alone, there is always a camera watching. “I have a name, you know.”
“What?” The other keeper is younger, a bit nicer.
“I’m not called Jinx. I’m called Milo.” Milo says. “Milo Murphy.”
The older keeper scoffs. “Keep repeating that, jinx. No one here’s gonna take orders from a monster. We have plenty of monsters who can speak.”
“But I’m not a monster.” Milo argues. “I’m human! And I really want to go home.”
The slap shocks him. He stares up at the keeper, slowly reaching up to touch his now stinging face. He’s used to getting hurt, this barely hurts at all. But he isn’t used to being hurt by people. By adults. And especially not just because he argued with them.
“Don’t you dare talk back to me!” The keeper roars. “You’re a monster. You don’t get to argue with humans, and you certainly don’t get to make requests.”
“I’m human.” Milo insists, refusing to back down even as the keeper raises his hand again.
———
Milo fights and struggles against the strong hands. “Stop it!” He argues, as he is dragged and shoved closer. “You can’t put me in there!”
“And why not, jinx?” The one who seems to be the most superior keeper motions for the rest to stop. He is still held too tightly to get out of their grasps, but he certainly tries. He won’t go in a cage. They can’t do that to him.
“Because I’m a human! You can’t put me in a cage!” Milo tries to yank his arms away, to no avail. “Besides, you’re making Murphy’s Law more dangerous! You’re making it worse, I can’t handle it locked up!”
The keeper chuckles coldly. “Human? I can’t tell if you really believe that, or if you’re trying to manipulate us.” He steps closer to the helpless, struggling child. “You’re a monster. A feral one, clearly.” He gestures at the minor injuries on some of the keepers. Milo just stares. He’s feral? They’ve beaten him up! “You need to be kept in a cage, for everyone’s safety.”
“No, I don’t! And I’m not feral!” Milo struggles even more fiercely. They can’t do this. They can’t. He’s not a monster, he’s a kid. They can’t lock a kid in a cage.
But they do. He can’t fight them off physically, he’s just not strong enough. They open the door, and they shove him in. Lock it behind him.
He rattles the bars, thoroughly unhappy with this situation. He needs to get out of here. It will be more difficult, with the cage, but Milo is a Murphy. He will get out of here. He won’t lose hope.
“Oh, shut up.” A keeper kicks at the bars, narrowly avoiding Milo’s fingers. It still spooks him a bit, although he immediately scowls at his captor. “You want us to believe that you’re human, and you act like this?”
Milo backs away a bit, but he doesn’t stop glaring. Any human would act like this if they were put in a cage.
———
Milo is dragged from the emergency cage to the newly repaired main cage. His broken foot bumps against the floor. He can’t even struggle, not when his foot hurts so much. He couldn’t run anyway.
He is shoved in. He doesn’t even get his foot in properly before they try to slam the door. He yowls, forced to stop by the pain. “Oh, hurry up! I’m not getting paid enough to watch you flail around.”
“My foot’s broken, what do you expect?” Milo points out. He knows by now that arguing with the keepers is a bad idea, but he won’t stop.
“I expect you to behave yourself, jinx.” The keeper shoves him fully and locks the door. “You have hurt dozens of keepers, and you expect me to feel sympathy for you?”
“I didn’t try to hurt anyone.” Milo argues. He has tried to damage his containment, sure, although he still can’t actually control Murphy’s Law the way they seem to think that he can. But hurt anyone? He has never even tried. “You would all get hurt less if you just let me go!”
“We aren’t just setting a dangerous monster loose on the streets.”
Milo huddles in his cage, his foot throbbing. He shifts around, trying to find a decently comfortable position. But no matter what he does, his broken foot presses against the cold, hard floor and it is agonising. He is so tired of everyone calling him a monster. He can’t wait to go home, to see his family, who would never even think about treating him like this.
———
Two new keepers enter. They look over at him. “Jinx?” They check. As if they could be in the wrong place. It would be a long journey back if they really were.
“My name’s Milo.” He tries. It never works, but he has to keep trying. “Nice to meet you.”
“Milo.” The taller keeper repeats. The smaller one pokes him.
“The file says not to call it that!”
“But that’s my name.” Milo points out. They keepers come closer, looking around at the containment area with surprise.
“Your name is Jinx.” Small says. “Monsters don’t get to choose what they’re called.”
“My parents named me.” He misses them. He would do anything for a hug from his parents. Or to at least hear their voices. “I didn’t choose.”
“Monsters don’t have parents.”
“But I do.” Milo argues.
Small kicks at the cage. “Stop arguing!” She snaps, then looks momentarily surprised by herself. Milo hopes that she will realise how bad this is. Hopes that she will leave him alone, maybe even help him. But then she chuckles.
Tall looks more uncomfortable. “Ok, jinx, any injuries?”
“Milo. My name’s Milo.” Milo tries again, seeing how awkward and unsure Tall looks. “And nothing that wasn’t there yesterday.”
“Keep talking back and there will be new injuries.” Small says. Milo shrinks back, but looks pleadingly up at Tall. Who just looks back, before breaking eye contact and moving on with the checklist.
———
Tall and Small enter. Milo sighs. On the one hand, Tall is alright. Tall doesn’t hurt him, he doesn’t yell. But Small is angry and very willing to hurt him. And the last keeper who left said that he would be ‘disciplined’ when someone came back.
Small opens the cage and yanks him out by the arm. “Don’t you dare move.”
Milo curls up on the floor and shuts his eyes. The door is shut, they are both standing over him with tasers and tranquillisers. So he just has to pretend that this isn’t happening, that he isn’t here.
He hears a thump. He looks up to see Small on the ground, and Tall holding out a hand. Not a taser, a hand. “Hurry up.”
Milo can’t help but flinch, but hope grasps him and he in turn grasps the hand and is pulled to his feet. Tall immediately starts pulling him towards the door. He isn’t gentle, but Milo knows that this is bigger than gentleness or not. “Are you breaking me out?”
Tall hesitates. “The way they treat you is wrong.” He scans his badge to open the door. “Whatever you are.”
“I’m a human. Called Milo.” Milo tries, heart practically bursting. “What’s your name? I’ve been calling you Tall, but I doubt that’s your name.”
Tall hesitates again, but does answer. “Tom.” He says. “And I’m not that tall.”
“You’re taller than your friend.” Milo points out.
Tom sighs. “She’s a good person, really. She’s just… she cares a lot about this job. About keeping people safe.”
Milo frowns. She’s a good person?! She beats him up and enjoys it. She says over and over again that he deserves to be locked up, kept in his own filth, not even treated like a normal monster. Never mind a human. She wants to keep people safe? What about him? Why does no one care about keeping him safe?
But that doesn’t matter, as Tom disables the airlocks with some tool and pulls him through. He is going home. It doesn’t matter anymore what people here think of him. Because he is finally, finally going home.
And then pain shoots through him and he yelps, tumbling sideways to crash into the wall. Immediately he feels a boot on his back, digging in. He wriggles, but it just pushes down harder.
“Oh, come on Tom.” Small, sounding… less cruel than normal. Even hurt. “You knew you weren’t gonna get out of here with it.”
“I had to try.” Tom sounds scared. Milo feels guilty. It’s not his fault, he knows that! But still. He hopes nothing too bad happens to Tom.
“We’ve been friends since kindergarten, and you chuck all of that away for a monster?” Small really does sound hurt. It’s… odd, hearing his keepers acting so human and normal. So vulnerable. To each other, at least, he is still at their mercy. “You hurt me. And it manipulated you into doing that, Tom.”
“I didn’t!” Milo insists. It earns him a sharp kick.
“Shut the fuck up, you stupid jinx.” Small sounds furious, more furious than he has ever heard her.
There are more footsteps now. He hears Tom grunt in pain. And he is hauled up and dragged back to his cage.
He rattles the bars and sighs. That is the closest that he made it in a while. It is becoming clear that he can’t escape from this place without the help of a keeper. But so few will help him.
The next time Small comes in, she is still broiling with rage. And next to her is the cruelest keeper. He is immediately dragged out of the cage and thrown to the floor. “You’re a selfish, evil, feral monster, and I wish that we didn’t have to keep you alive!” Small roars.
“Why-“ Milo shouldn’t even have tried to argue back.
Her steel toed boot collides with his small body. He cries out, curling up and squeezing his eyes shut as pained tears prick at them. “My best friend is dead! Because of you!” Another kick. And then another. It hurts. It hurts so much.
But what she says shocks him. “Wha?” He manages to get out before another kick shuts him up.
“You manipulated him! Tricked him into believing that you’re some vulnerable,” kick, “helpless,” kick, “innocent,” kick, “child!” And another kick. And then she stops to take a breath, breathing heavily. He can hear the sobs with every inhale and exhale.
“Want me to take over?” Cruel. Milo waits in anticipation. But Small turns him down.
“I’m alright.” She wipes her eyes and looks back down at him. “And you’re still doing it. Looking up at me with those big brown eyes, like you deserve the slightest hint of sympathy. Like you’re not an unfeeling, feral monster, who manages to get people killed even while locked up! He was kind to you! He treated you kindly, I watched! And you still used him. Manipulated him into dying for you!” More kicking. Over and over, until he is sure that his small body will just shatter from it.
“I- I didn’t want him to die.” Milo pleads. Did they really… he assumed that Tom would be demoted. Or fired. But killed? They killed him?
If it was Cruel, taunting and teasing, he might be able to persuade himself that it is all lies. But Small is devastated. That’s clear. And her grief has been turned into a burning ray of hatred pointed right at him. “Yeah, ‘cause he isn’t useful to you dead. God, you’re horrible! Why do we keep this thing alive?!”
Milo is used to the keepers’ hatred. But he isn’t used to them spelling out so blatantly that they want him dead.
“The higher ups insist, we can’t kill a monster. No matter how feral and uncontrollable.” The cruel one says. “But hey, think about it this way. If we kill it, no matter how painfully, it suffers once. If we keep it alive, it’ll keep suffering for the rest of it’s miserable little life.”
They call him feral. But the look in Small’s eyes is feral to him, feral with grief and loss and anger that she can’t direct towards those truly responsible. The people who are responsible are too powerful. So she directs it towards him. Because he is easy. Safe. He can’t do anything to her.
“Oh, as long as I’m here it’ll suffer.” Small spits at him. Milo flinches.
———
“This is the jinx?” A young voice. New. Fresh. “It’s so small. And it looks like a little kid.”
“Careful! The file says that it’s dangerous. Manipulative. Look, people get hurt all the time here! If we’re not careful, we could die.” A hushed voice, also new. Do they think that he can’t hear them? If he growled, or rattled the bars, they’d probably take off running in fright. He amuses himself with the idea but doesn’t do it. The consequences would be dire.
They discuss protocol as they do it. Milo can tell that they’re nervous. They’ve been scared by all of the rules, all of the warnings, all of the stories. They don’t want to mess this up.
But they’re new. And nervous. So when they open the cage, he is still right next to the door. He blinks, and starts moving away. But they freak out. And suddenly he feels a sharp pain in his shoulder, and the world goes very blurry.
He collapses against the bars of the cage, unable to do anything to stop himself. A little whimper drops from his mouth as he slumps down, arms like spaghetti. Everything is fuzzy, it’s like he’s underwater.
“Should we have done that?” One of the new keepers. “Now it’s all..” She pokes at him with her pen. He can’t even flinch away, is forced to just lie there and take it. “… limp.”
“It was a threat to us.” The other decides.
Milo is sedated so he can hardly think straight, utterly at their mercy. And yet he is a threat to them. He is the dangerous one.
They finish their tasks. But when one goes to lock the cage, the other stops her. “Wait. The file says that we’re supposed to punish it for misbehaving.”
“Punish it how?” They are still too scared of him to take him out. But one reaches in to the cage and hits him awkwardly. Like she isn’t really sure what she is doing. It doesn’t really hurt. But he still hates it. She hits him again, a little harder. It’s still awkward, but Milo wishes that he could at least try to move away.
And then they leave. And he lies there, not in too much pain but woozy and fuzzy. Sedated like a dangerous animal.
———
The keeper shoves him to the floor. “Bad!” She scolds. “Bad jinx.”
She slaps him, then holds him down. She isn’t too cruel, she isn’t interested in hurting him for the fun of it. But the words sting more than the slap. It feels like how you might speak to a misbehaving animal.
A few keepers speak the same way. “Bad jinx! Sit still.” One scolds.
“Bad jinx! Bad!” One tuts. “Stay put.”
“I can see you plotting. Bad jinx.”
“Don’t talk to me like that! Bad jinx.”
“Look at how it was looking at me! It was glaring, practically showing it’s teeth. Bad jinx. You’re so aggressive.”
“Bad jinx, hurry up!”
“Bad jinx.”
“Bad jinx!”
“Bad jinx.”
———
The jinx curls up on the floor of its cage. His cage. His.
He scrubs at his eyes with his fists. When was the last time that someone called him by name? Treated him like a person? He isn’t a monster. He knows that he isn’t. But sometimes it’s just so hard for him to remember.
“Your name is Milo.” He whispers, a secret comfort that he won’t share with the cameras. “Milo Murphy. You’re a human. You’re a Murphy, which is the best thing in the world. You’re part of the best family, and they love you. You have an amazing best friend and she loves you. You’re not a monster. You don’t deserve this.”
He doesn’t always say it out loud. But he repeats it in his head a lot. Some days, the bad days, he just needs to say it out loud, to help it stick.
———
“Hey, Milo.” Melissa whispers.
Milo doesn’t reply.
Crap, was he sedated again? She tries again. “Milo?”
He looks at her, now. But there is a funny look in his eyes. Confusion. “Milo, are you ok?” It’s a stupid question, one that she regrets as soon as it leaves her mouth.
Realisation flashes in his eyes. “Oh. Sorry.” He apologises, avoiding eye contact. “Sometimes I forget.”
Melissa’s blood boils. But she can’t show that. “No need to apologise.” She reassures him. “Ok, let’s get on with the checklist.”
Her hand shakes as she writes. She can see how the keeper’s cruel, inhumane treatment is affecting Milo’s view of himself. And she hates it. But aside from treating him as much like a human as she can, she can’t do anything to help him until she breaks him out.
They have a plan. And maybe it’s not great. But it’s a plan, and they have to try. They can’t leave Milo locked in here any longer.
On the bus, she sits and boils, like an angry pot of soup. She has to make sure that she isn’t acting in anger. This plan needs to go perfectly, no room for errors. But they have been over it over and over and over again. The only thing left to do is pray for luck.
She turns to Zack, who has his own shadow over his eyes. This mission is killing them both. She leans closer and whispers, like she would about crushes and jokes and secrets. Like she would Before. But now it’s After, and they whisper secrets that could get them killed if someone overheard. “Monday.” She breathes. They have the weekend to finalise.
Zack nods. They are both frightened. But ready.
———
“Your name is Milo.” He whispers, once she leaves. He hugs himself tightly and imagines that she is hugging him, or his sister, or his mom or his dad. “Milo Murphy. You’re a human. You’re a Murphy, which is the best thing in the world. You’re part of the best family, and they love you. You have an amazing best friend and she loves you. You’re not a monster. You don’t deserve this.”
He needs to keep hold of that, remember those facts and hold on tight. Because it gets harder each and every day.
Sometimes he forgets that Melissa and Zack are talking to him, that ‘Milo’ is meant for him.