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A blonde boy named Russel is dreaming, dreaming of a familiar room and a familiar kind zookeeper. Tabasa, the zookeeper, takes a bloody metal pole in his hands, ready to do exactly what Russel asked of him. Russel kneels and bows his head, ready for his dream to end.
Tabasa smiles warmly, “I wish we could’ve lived together a while longer, none the wiser.” The smile disappears, and his expression falls into something more melancholic. “…But, now…” He pauses, steeling himself. There’s a determined look in his eyes, “…It’s goodbye, Russel…” He lifts the pole, then swiftly brings it down over Russel’s head.
Russel wakes up as soon as the pole makes contact, eyes flying wide open. The dream is over. Tabasa’s last words to him still linger in his mind. He was right, nothing can make up for all of the horrible things he did. Even if the residents of the Happy Dream did cherish their time there, even if Tabasa forgave him in the end, none of it was truly real. The real Tabasa would never forgive him, none of them would. Their experiences in the Happy Dream meant nothing, and none of it would bring any of them back.
Russel sits up in his bed and looks around the boring white room for a bit before the monitor on the wall opposite the locked door turns on. He sees the nurse that had been assigned to him during his participation in the Happy Dream Rehabilitation Program.
“Russel, congratulations! The 7th day of your Happy Dream has proven to be a most celebratory day indeed!!” She exclaims cheerfully. “Now then.” She speaks a bit more seriously this time, “Regarding the Happy Dream Rehabilitation Program you have been participating in, by offering your own life to a person who you formerly killed, you have succeeded brilliantly!! What a truly fantastic thing!!” She finishes just as cheerfully as she began.
“As the first ‘success’ in the history of this program, you have been spared the death penalty! What do you think? Aren’t you glad?”
He is not. She continues to speak, but he tunes her out. Why are they sparing him? He doesn’t deserve this. Just because he feels guilt now doesn’t change anything. He killed Tabasa, and Gardenia, and Cody and Dogma, and Kantera, and Mirelle, and his parents. He killed them all on purpose. He didn’t feel any remorse while doing it. Him feeling remorse now changes nothing. He deserves to die. He deserves to die for it all.
Russel’s guilt weighs on him, threatening to crush him at any moment. The nurse is still speaking. He eyes the syringe. The monitor shuts off. She must be done talking. Russel gets up and makes his way to his bedside table. He stares at the syringe, thinking about how he’ll use it. Should go right for the heart? No, no. He deserves to suffer. Something painful, and slow. The stomach maybe? His neck?
Just as he makes his choice, two men in lab coats walk into his room. One of them speaks up.
“Hello Russel. As you have just heard, you have been released from the Happy Dream Rehabilitation Program as our first success. Since you are still a minor, we cannot release you until we find a suitable guardian for you. Unfortunately, you will have to stay here for the time being. That being said, you actually have a visitor. Come with us, we will take you to the visitation room.” They turn and walk out of the door.
Russel follows them through the bare white halls, confused. A visitor? For him? Who could possibly want to visit him? His entire family disowned him for what he did, and Chris probably hates him for killing Gardenia, so it can’t possibly be any of them.
The men in lab coats let him into a small room with a window that lets him see into another, identical room. In both rooms, there is a desk right underneath the window and an uncomfortable looking chair at each desk, as well as a phone mounted on the wall to the right of each chair.
Sitting on the other side of the glass is an older boy with pale blue eyes, chin-length pastel pink hair, and a small teal flower tucked behind his left ear. Russel sits down in the chair. He shifts in his seat. He was right. It is an uncomfortable chair. The boy sitting across from him picks up the phone and holds it up to his right ear. Russel does the same. The boy opens his mouth, and a vaguely familiar voice comes out.
“Um… hi, Russel. It’s been a while, huh?” The boy gives Russel a nervous smile. “You’re way bigger than I remember!” Russel stares at the older boy.
He knows this voice. He knows he’s heard it before, but it sounds… different? The pink hair reminds him a bit of Mireille, but he feels like he used to know someone else who had the older boy’s hairstyle. His eyes, nose, face, it was all familiar, just… bigger? Older? Older. But where does he know this guy from?
The older boy chuckles nervously at Russel’s silence. “I, uh… I happened to be in the city visiting a… friend. A-and I heard about… um…” He trails off. “… I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
Russel is silent.
The boy radiates a warm, gentle kindness that’s all too familiar to Russel. It’s so similar to what he felt when he met Tabasa for the first time. A kindness that reminded him of how much he wanted a kind older brother.
“Um… hey, Russel,” The older boy looks… worried? Concerned? …Disappointed? Disappointed. “Do you… remember me?”
Where did that desire for a kind older brother come from? Did Russel used to know someone like that? Fuzzy memories of soft blonde hair and kind blue eyes, bug hunting and making mud pies at the local park start to surface. A nice apartment where his grandma lived, where he used to play all day with his cousin.
“… Basil?” Russel mutters, not entirely certain he was correct.
The older boy’s eyes light up. “Yeah! It’s Basil, your cousin!” His mood changes from nervous to excited in the blink of an eye. “We used to play together all the time before Grandma and I moved, remember?”
“…I guess, yeah.”
“Ah, that’s right. You were only five when we moved, so I guess you don’t remember much, huh.” Basil smiles sadly. Something about that expression makes Russel’s heart hurt.
“…Well, I guess I remember making mud pies all the time at the park, and…” Russel pauses, sifting through his mind for more memories. He thinks of bug hunting, and picking flowers, and drawing together. But none of these memories are important enough. Not as important as, “…you were nice to me. No one else, except for maybe grandma, was that nice to me. Not even mom and dad.”
Basil’s expression falls into something more contemplative. “Yeah, auntie and uncle were…” He frowns, searching for the right words, “…not very good people. I never really liked them all that much.” He pauses, considering his next words. “Is… is that why you… killed them? Did they… do something bad?”
Ah, so that’s why he’s here. It’s understandable he’d want to know how such a sweet five year old boy could become such a monster. It doesn’t matter that dad killed Yumi. It doesn’t matter that mom was awful. It doesn’t matter that Mireille and Kantera had killed people too, or that Kantera had asked him to kill him. And it definitely didn’t matter that he was jealous of the others. He killed them all, and nothing could change that. There’s no use talking about it. “…Your hair is different.”
Basil frowns. Russel looks away. Disappointed, once again. “Ah, yeah,” He plasters on a fake smile as he continues, “My friend convinced me to dye it last year, and I thought it looked nice, so I decided to keep it like this.”
“Pink is a nice color.” It is. It looks nice on him.
“Yeah, it is! My friend thought it would look cute on me, and she was right.”
“Is this the friend you’re visiting right now?” Keep distracting him, Russel. He won’t ask about it again.
“Ah, no. I’m visiting a different friend right now. My other friend, she lives in the same town that I do.” Basil sighs, and his expression suddenly becomes something more serious. “Russel, listen. I can tell you’re trying to avoid talking about it, and I don’t blame you for that. But I can also tell that you’re not in the best place right now. Mentally, I mean.” Basil sighs. Russel stays silent. “I recognize those eyes. My eyes used to look like that a couple of years ago.”
Russel knows Basil isn’t talking about the fact that they both have blue eyes.
Basil continues, “I know it might be hard to believe, but I get it. And I don’t just mean the uh… suicidal thoughts. That guilt you hold in your heart? I’ve felt something like that too. I know what it’s like to feel like a monster.”
Russel looks up at Basil. He opens his mouth, about to tell him that he doubts that. That Basil could never be a monster, and that he probably has no idea what Russel is feeling right now, but…
…Basil suddenly looks so tired. Not sleepy tired, tired like someone who’s spent years trying to crawl out of a deep trench, and is only just now starting to see the light. Tired like someone who understands.
“I just…” Basil sighs again. What happened to him to make him so… weary? “…I don’t want you to feel like there’s no way out of this, ok?”
Russel looks down at the desk, studying the patterns in the wood grain. Basil waits.
“I don’t…” Russel pauses, “What… what am I supposed to do about all this?” He tries to swallow the lump forming in his throat. It doesn’t go away. “I can’t… I can’t fix it. I can’t fix any of it. What am I supposed to do now?”
Basil is silent for a moment, a pained expression on his face. He’s heard this before. “…You get better. That’s the most important thing you can do. It’s the only thing, really.” Basil smiles, and it reminds Russel of when he used to show him all the cool bugs he found at the park. “It’ll be hard, but I can tell you’re on the right path.”
The door to Russel’s side of the room opens, and the men in lab coats are beckoning him over. Time’s up.
“Russel, I’ll be here for you if you need it, ok? I’ll come back tomorrow.” Basil says with a warm smile and a wave before putting the phone back in it’s place on the wall. Russel waves too, and puts the phone back. When he leaves, Basil is still sitting there, smiling fondly at him.
Russel enters his room and immediately lays down on the bed. He turns to stare at the syringe once again. There’s nothing he can do about any of it. It happened, and that’s it. All of that talking was useless, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?
But as he stares at that empty syringe, Basil’s words run through his mind.
“You get better. That’s the most important thing you can do.”
“I don’t want you to feel like there’s no way out of this,”
“I know what it’s like to feel like a monster.”
“I’ll come back tomorrow.”
He only woke up about 30 minutes ago, but Russel is tired. So very tired. He gets under the covers, and falls into a dreamless sleep.