I'm aiming for a once-a-week posting, with the target day being Wednesday, to spread things out between other author's postings  *cough*...Hockey Hunk...*cough*... My LIfe is Super...*cough*   I missed that target this week not because it wasn't ready, but because I forgot.  Living with severe ADD poses some interesting life challenges, among which is occasionally having to remind yourself to do things that you really enjoy doing.

Hopefully, VictusLupus will show up and answer some of your comments.  He's following along, but he should step up and get his accolades as well.  This is his story, after all.  I'm just telling it.   Today's posting is rather short, but it sets us up nicely for next week's more substantial installment.

Chapter Two

Bright,
yellow light from the security lamp streamed through the window, perfectly
illuminating the one bunk that had been empty when Victus had arrived.  He
should have guessed that there was a good reason why the bunk was empty, but he
really hadn't been thinking clearly at the time.  Not that it mattered.
 He had to sleep somewhere, and his choices were limited to the bed or the
floor.

A dozen other
boys shared the room, but none looked like him.  He was a "special
case", according to the people in the office. He'd liked it when his
mother called him special, but these people didn't make the word sound nearly
as nice. Nobody here
was nice, he thought, glumly, then corrected himself.  The nun was nice.
 She'd given him a toy to play with when he'd first arrived, a little
plastic man wearing a funny looking hat. It was broken now, though.  One
of the other boys had broken it in two and tossed it back on his bed.
 Victus hadn't even noticed which one had done it.

A glance at
the clock on the wall told him that it was a little after four in the morning.
He wanted to go back to sleep, but even more he wanted to not have that dream
again.  And he really didn't want to wake up the other boys. The last
time he'd done that twice in one night, someone got mad and hid his shoes. He
wouldn't have minded so much, but his teacher got mad. She pulled him up in
front of the class and told him that only babies take off their shoes, and
everyone in the classroom had laughed. One of the big kids said that he wasn't
a baby, he was just a puppy, and Vic, to his unending shame, had cried.

He laid in
his bed until the clock showed 5:00, then slowly, so as to not wake any of the
other boys, Victus got up out of his bed and crept to the door. His padded feet
made little noise on the floor, and he almost yelped in surprise when he heard
rustling in the bunks nearest the door. "Where are you going?" The
voice was sleepy.

Victus
recognized it as Cain's, the oldest boy in his room and their obvious leader.
It was his job to help Victus find his way around for the first few days.
 He'd been one of the few who hadn't teased him.  "To the
bathroom," Vic replied timidly.

"As long
as you're up, you might as well take your shower."  Cain yawned, his
small white teeth oddly bright in the dim, alien light.

"Another
one?" Vic's ears flattened against his head.  His fur hadn't finished
drying out from the last shower he'd taken. "Are you sure?" he
whispered, uncertainly.

"Every
day, Vic." Cain said, from the meager comfort of his bunk. "That's
the rule." He yawned again and echoed the words of the headmaster.
"Can't have us stinkin' up the place."

The young varius returned to his bed and opened
the small trunk at its foot, the security lamp doing a more than adequate job
illuminating the contents.  At home, he'd had a big closet full of toys
and clothes.  Here, he had a little pressed paper box that he could not
have hidden himself inside. On his first day, he'd tried. Now, the box held
three changes of clothes and the clear plastic bag of bathroom stuff that the
nun had given him.  Everyone had to keep his own bathroom stuff and take
it with them when they took a shower.  

He pulled out
fresh underwear and closed the trunk.  It had a latch on it, but nobody's
trunk had a lock because nobody had anything worth stealing.  Padding back
to the door, he walked outside as quietly as he could and pulled it shut after
him.  The lights in the building were still in night mode, which, although
dim, was still far more light than Victus needed to see his way to the
bathroom.

Feeling
better now that he was alone, Vic trudged to the bathroom and turned on the
light. The cold light from the industrial fixtures hid nothing. Dingy plastic
flooring and pitted chrome plumbing looked the same now as they did yesterday,
and like they would look tomorrow and for the next few decades. The sink faucet
squeaked when he opened it.  After not being used for several hours, the
water splashing out had a vaguely brown tinge and smelled weird.  While
waiting for the faucet to clean itself out, he put toothpaste on his brush and
tried to read what was written on the back of the tube.  Most of the words
were long and meant nothing to him, but it killed time until the water smelled
like water was supposed to.

He brushed
his teeth carefully, then started the water running in the shower. Again the
water smelled bad, but this time he had something to do while it cleaned itself
out. Stripping off the underwear he'd been given was a real challenge.
 Even though his tail fur was years from filling out, the tiny hole they'd
cut in the back of a pair of sapiens underwear made pulling his tail through a
chore. They'd taken away his underwear on that first day. They said they would
give them back, but nobody knew where they were. A centimeter at a time, he
worked his tail free of the encumbering cloth as he pushed it down his thighs.

Once he was
finally naked, Victus pulled a clean towel and a cylinder of soap out of their
respective dispensers and brought them with him into the shower. The soap
wasn't anything like what he'd used before.  When it was dry it was about
the size of his little finger, but as soon as it hit the water it swelled up
and dissolved. It hadn't taken him long to learn that he had to hurry if he
wanted to get most of his body soapy before it disappeared down the drain.
 But he hadn't yet learned how to get all of him soapy. Even though he had
a lot more fur to clean than the other kids did, he got the same amount of
soap. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get the machine to give him a
second piece. The thought occurred to him that maybe that was why he'd been so
itchy.  Maybe he really was a dirty little boy. He felt his ears lower in
shame.  He would have to learn to scrub faster.

He rinsed
until his fur squeaked under his fingers, then shut off the tepid water.
 He pushed as much water as he could out of his fur with his handpaws,
then rubbed the towel over his body until it wouldn't absorb any more.
 He wished they had a drying cabinet, or at least a hand wand. When he'd
first asked for one, the attendants had treated him like he was asking for
something special and had laughed at him. He'd quickly learned to watch and see
what the other boys were doing, then to do that and nothing more.

Back in his
room, the other boys were beginning to stir.  Victus had barely closed the
door behind himself when Cain spoke to him. "You've got school today,"
he reminded Victus, unnecessarily.

Victus
sighed, feeling betrayed by this lackluster impostor of a school. School was
not supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be fun and happy, with
friendly teachers who made you feel safe. They were supposed to show you
interesting things and work puzzles with you, to take you on field trips and
teach you how to play games outdoors.  

What these
strange people called "school" could not have been any more
different.  The teachers expected him to sit in a desk all day without
moving around, to keep his eyes on the sapiens person at the front of the room,
but also to write down everything they said on a pokey old slow school tablet.
He knew how to write, but how was he supposed to do it with a stupid little
stylus that had been designed for sapiens fingers?  And without ever
looking at the screen?  His notes were
so sloppy that later, he couldn't read anything he'd written.

His math
teacher was trying to explain something Victus already knew when a knock at the
door interrupted the lesson.  Without waiting to be answered, the door
pushed open and a tall, dour man poked his head in. He scanned the room,
his gaze settling on Victus.  "You," he said, "come with
me."

Victus looked
back at the man for a few beats, uncertain whether the man meant him or someone
else. "Come on, boy, don't make me wait," the man insisted, waving
his hand in a 'come hither' gesture. Victus didn't know what the man wanted,
but at that point he didn't really care.  Anything to get him out of math
class...

Vic virtually
jumped out of his desk and followed the man down the hall, tail wagging back
and forth with his curiosity.  The man ushered him into a room that had
been dark for the past two weeks. "In here." Upon delivering his
charge, the man closed the door and walked away, the hard soles of his shoes
clacking against the plastic flooring.

The office
was small, with barely room for a desk and a couple of chairs.  Aside from
a few posters of animals, there was little to look at other than the man on the
other side of the green metal desk. There was even less to do here than there
had been in his classroom, eliciting a frustrated wuff from the boy.

The man
checked his notes. "Hello, Victus!" he said, a bit too brightly to be
authentic.  "How are you doing?"

"Fine."
 It wasn't true, but it was the expected response.

"Good!"
The man smiled broadly. "I'm Mr. Barr, Victus." the man folded his
hands in front of him and leaned forward.  "I'm your case worker.
 Do you know what that is?"

Victus's ears
lowered. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was supposed to know
this, by now.  He'd heard the other adults talking about case workers, but
he didn't really know what they were.  He'd seen other boys pulled out of
class to talk to theirs, so maybe having a case worker was a good thing.
"No," he said, timidly.

"I'm
here to help find you a new home," the man said, with the subtlety of a
hammer.

Victus
bristled, shocked speechless that the man would even suggest such a thing.
 

Mr. Barr consulted
what was written in his folder. "Your test results are good, but your
classroom performance so far..." he paused, uncertainly.  "Well,
let's just say, there's room for improvement. That's understandable," he
said, quickly, "you've just gone through a traumatic experience."
 He consulted his papers, then looked quite grave.  "There
aren't very many varius families this far away from
Earth, Victus.  If you ever want to have a family again, you need to work
on getting along with the other boys."

They talked
for another ten minutes or so.  Or rather, Mister Barr talked and Victus
endured. The boy nodded his head when he thought it seemed appropriate to do
so, he shook hands and agreed with whatever the man said and tried his best to
not cry, but in the end none of it mattered. In his memories, the experience
had turned into a single, monolithic blur of anger, sadness and fear.