Chief Piece - Marottolo

The alarms go off or at least I think they go off or maybe they don’t. Sometimes I hear the alarms inside my head before everyone else does. But today all the patients - sorry, students - react. The teachers tell the students to go outside, go on the turf. I pretend I can’t hear them, so’s to not make them suspicious. All the students shuffle out of the classroom in neat orderly ranks, under the watchful eyes of the teachers. I don’t follow them. The teacher swings around and points at me, she calls my name but I just go on sweeping the floor. The teacher looms over me, her eyes sweeping my new janitor uniform, her fists ballooning up as she swells with rage - she’s about to knock me senseless! she pulls her clenched hand back! and - a student pops around the corner. Instantly she deflates, all the little cogs and wheels folding back in on themselves to make a person. She gestures to the patient - sorry, child - and says, Take Mr. Bromden out to the field with everyone else. She says it calmly, as if we’re just going on a walk, but I feel the tension in her arms as she drags me toward the student. He pulls on my hand and points at the door and gestures repeatedly until I let him lead me out (4a). Outside, the sirens are quieter, and the cold numbs my ears, dulling the sound, til I’m practically as deaf as I pretend to be. It’s misty out today, and the whole world’s swimming through the fog, doing the 100-meter backstroke, all the colors inverted and the trees pointing the wrong way …

(The bird sits in the tree, watching the pointer dogs sniffing at the base of the trunk. Papa picks up his gun and shots Bang!, but he misses this time and the bird flies away but I’m stuck down here on the ground and I don’t have wings and it’s cold and sirens are blaring from the buildings that may or may not be burning behind me).

The world snaps back into focus, and it’s no longer upside-down. I see the children lined up in rows, a group of seven or eight on each yard line, docile and quiet, shuffling back and forth. Each one is connected by wire to their advisor, one network, all reporting back to the central hub - the cluster of teachers in the center of the field (4). Each advisor competes to see whose advisory is most orderly, whose charges are quietest. Eventually the sirens stop. I hear the echoes of their clangorous screams reverberate in the fog, bouncing back and forth between my earlobes. I hear it rebound once, twice, three times before leaving my mouth.