“You live here?” Bon-bon asked as they walked in the front doors of the asylum. Two weeks had passed since they’d first met. Of course they hadn't really spoken for most of the first week. In the week after that however, they’d become good friends. At least online. They didn’t really see much of each other in person. Only twice, and briefly at that, since Lyra had helped her that day. They face-timed because go figure, texting wasn’t exactly either of their strong suits.
“Yeah. I’m probably going to go back home in a couple days. It was just convenient living here with the therapy place being right next door in the hospital.” Lyra explained as she led her way through the second lot of glass doors towards the more sturdy secured doors. She had free rein of entry and exit but not everyone here did. She was here voluntarily. “And now that you’re done with your sessions there too, I just don’t see a point in sticking around here anymore.”
“I’m not done. I’m just out of them.” Bon-bon told her friend. She’d only gotten so many sessions booked and although she’d made leaps and bounds in her recovery, there was still so much more she could’ve gotten out of that place. Lyra had a huge, HUGE cash settlement that had covered all her medical costs and then some. Bon-bon wasn’t so lucky. She obviously wasn’t happy about the situation but despite the dark words, her tone simply conveyed it as a fact. Nothing more.
They'd learnt a lot about each other in their nightly gab sessions. Bon-bon, although still recovering, was still attending school. She’d always wanted to be a chef and had come to the conclusion that that was likely no longer an option. But once more, it was never said in a negative way, just that she had to find something else now and so she didn’t want to fall behind in her education.
Lyra was the opposite. She’d dropped out about two years ago. Sure she wasn’t educated past year eight but she wasn’t stupid. She had common sense, which if the internet was any indication of, was far less than common these days. Where Bon-bon was looking at her job prospects in the future, Lyra was completely content to live off of 4.83% interest from 2.5 million dollars. Huge settlement.
Lyra was a year older than Bon-bon at sixteen to fifteen but their birthdays were within a week of each other in about a week before X-mas. They didn’t know it at the time but would one day come to the realisation that they were both St. Patricks Day drunken sex babies. Then both agree that that was a good name for a heavy metal band.
“So you coming in or what?” Lyra asked as he held the door open. “It’s completely safe. All the real craziess are kept locked up and if a one-armed girl can live here, well then that about says it all doesn’t it.”
“That’s not a nice thing to say.” she said in a I’m-offended-but-also-agree kind of a way as she walked in past her friend. Her mobility had increased but she still wasn’t fast by any standards. She'd been recommended to use a walking stand but hadn’t so much refused as politely declined aggressively. She was slow, not fragile. Basic motor function had returned to her for the most part but fine motion was still foreign to her these days.
“Hey, let’s play a game.” Lyra suggested as she closed the door behind her. “Let’s play ‘guess which patient’s the cannibal’. I think You’ll be pleasantly surprised.”
“Is it you?” she joked back.
“Uhh… you ruined the surpr-I mean no. Now hurry up and follow me to my room, I’m getting hungry.” they both had a laugh at it and soon enough, even at the shuffling pace Bon-bon set they made it to Lyra’s room. It was surprisingly nice in this place, an open air garden, large glass walls so you could see the garden from inside the main area and across to the housing. Of course it was just as much for observation as well, but it was still a lot more serene than Bon-bon had expected.
Lyra swiped her card in the door lock, the door clicked and she opened it wide letting her friend in first. It was sparse to say the least. A ‘secured’ [barred] window looking outside of the facility, a desk with a built-in computer and a chair in front of it, another table designed for eating at, a bed over the other side with a clothes rack and basket between them. There were a few bottles on the eating table and a few unopened bags of chips laying around. There was also a slide door in the wall.
“Aww man…” Lyra groaned. “I keep telling them not to take away the open packets. That was like, a month of Nature Box they threw away.” she said as she flipped on a light and let the door go to slowly close behind her. She grabbed one of the bags off the table “Eh, whatever… here, help yourself.” she said as she through the bag to Bon-bon.
It landed square in Bon-bon’s chest and she quickly wrapped both her arms around herself trying to hold onto it. She caught it “Who’s 'they'?” she ask but as she tried to grab the bag properly with a hand. She dropped it. She leant down and managed to get a hold of it on only her second attempt.
Lyra reached over and rolled up the sleeve of her left arm. “The cleaners. They gotta come in everyday and make sure that blah blah blah. You know, Your standard hotel dealie.” she said as she slid opened the door. With it open, Lyra moved her left elbow to the latch and shuffled it up and down against it until a small click sound was made. She then grabbed her fake arm, flicked one of the straps with her thumb and took it off.
She’d figured out an easy way to get at the clip in the hard to reach spot of her stump a while ago. Leaving the door open, she turned around towards the table and hung the arm up on the rack that hung above it. She had three prosthetic arms in all. The one she had been wearing and most oft worn was the most practical and useful: a hook hand with a clamp. The second, and least used one on the rack was an actual hand looking one. Skin tone and immobile, it was purely for show.
She’d worn it maybe three times in as many years. The first time was a couple of months after the incident to her middle school graduation. She was still in a wheelchair at the time and hadn’t been to school in over six months but her parents had insisted that she still be allowed to attend the ceremony and graduate from the school. Back then it had meant so much to her but ultimately, seeing her friends then, she made up her mind and when up on stage had grabbed the mic and told everyone that she wouldn’t be continuing school the next year.
The third arm was... “What the heck is that thing?” Bon-bon asked as she saw it there up on the door. Lyra just smirked and hung up her arm before grabbing the thing down. And ‘thing’ was really the only way to describe it. The attaching end looked identical to the other two in that it was a prosthetic but the ‘hand’ end almost looked like a torture device.
“This thing? My brother made it for me. He called it ‘The Swiss Arm Knife’.” Lyra demonstrated by putting it under her arm, holding it while she fidgeted with the mechanism until she pulled out a knife from it.
“You’re allowed to have a knife in here?” Bon-bon asked. Lyre just smirked once more.
“You call that a knife?” she said as she flicked it back into the arm and then clicked out another “THIS is a knife.”
“That’s a spoon.”
“Huh, I see you’ve played knifey-spoony before.” she joked. She dumped the arm on the table, grabbed a bag for herself and pulled the chair out and sat forwards against the back of the chair. “But seriously, they couldn’t not let me have the hook and I argued ‘em down to if I can have the hook how much worse is that thing?”
“Well I guess that makes sense. It still looks pretty dangerous though.” Bon-bon replied as she too took the seat from in front of the computer and turned it to face her friend in the swivel chair. She sat in it normally however, then began to try opening the bag. “Sweet potato chips?” she read then did her best at pinching the sides of the drop. She couldn’t get a strong grip on it though.
While she was doing that, Lyra got up and grabbed a shirt from the rack and pair of cargo pants from the basket. “I’ma ganna get changed. Ya mind starting the computer up for me?” she said before opening the door to the side of the room and entering the bathroom. It was cool in there now but her green jacket and leggings would soon get way too hot. Bon-bon found and pressed the boot button on the computer and a moment later she heard a very loud thud followed by “Damn it!... ough.” groan come from the other side of the door.
Not too long Lyra came up toon after, wearing just a t-shirt and shorts with no shoes now. The rest of her clothes must’ve been left in there but she brought her jacket out and laid it on her bed before sitting down on it, just behind Bon-bon sitting on the computer chair. “So… you like mint green I take it.” Bon-bon said, taking note of her clothes. It read ‘I’m not wearing’ then had a cute animal picture that Bon-bon didn’t recognise.
The walls were a beige-y colour similar to Bon-bon’s own clothes but almost everything else in the room was a shade of light green. The chairs, her bed spread and most of her clothing. All of it was a minty colour with white secondary and a few gold accentings. There were a few exceptions of course. A black pair of pants here, a blue shirt there but for the most part “U’unno…” Lyra shrugged “I guess. So you don’t like sweet potato I take it?” and replied.
Bon-bon had yet to open the bag Lyra had thrown her earlier. Though it wasn’t from lack of trying “I can’t get it open.” she said and demonstrated as she tried to get a hold of a fold.
“Pass it here.” Lyra told her friend as she extended an arm. Bon-bon obeyed and in a second Lyra had flipped it around in her hand so that she was pinching one side of the bag. Without her prosthetic on, Bon-bon wondered what she could even do with it but she was answered without even asking by “Took me a while to get used to things too, but I got the hang of it.” and with that she raised the bag to her mouth and bit down on it. She then pulled the other side with her hand and opened it right up. “Not bad, huh?”
Bon-bon reached out and grabbed the bag of chips back with both hands as Lyra offered it to her. “Yeah. Not bad… not sure that’ll help me out too much bu-wow!” she said as she looked down to her friends legs. The left one was fine but the right one was just covered in scars. And not normal deep cut scars, perfectly straight lines with small dots down the sides of them.
“Surgical scars from a car crash. Cool huh?” Lyra replied.
“So… so you really were in there for a reason after all…” Bon-bon said more to herself than her friend.
“What’s that s’post ta mean?” Lyra retorted, jokely acting offended as she raised her hand and put it fingers spread, pointed against her chest.
“N-nothing! I just… you seemed fine, and walk fine. Compared to everyone else there.”
“Yeah well, four bolts and a steel plate tend to do that to your leg. Happened like three years ago. I walk fine now, I just have a uh… what was it?... ‘loss of muscle mass’ in it sometimes and gotta learn to walk all over again. So annoying. I had a ‘relapse’ few months back and… you know.” Lyra told her friend the half truth, leaving out the reason why she’d had muscle loss. “Sometimes it’s just hard to get out of bed and I feel like sleeping for weeks straight.”
While she may’ve seemed calm and fine with telling Bon-bon all of this Lyra was holding more back then she’d let on. Which is kinda the whole point of holding something back. Bon-bon however didn’t notice any of it and simply thought Lyra was telling her everything. “So, how’d you lose your arm?” she asked. No sooner had she asked did Lyra’s mood shift.
Lyra had learnt long ago not to ask someone she’d met in physical therapy what happened to them unless they were flat out bragging about it or making it obvious they wanted to tell people their story upon request. And in turn, she’d also learnt to avoid telling her own story to others… or herself. “I… don’t actually remember it. I was told a bus hit our car.” she said, looking down towards her remaining arm to avoid eye contact.
It was surprising to her. For all the time they’d spoken with one another online she’d never seen Lyra with anything less than a cocky smile on her face and some pop culture reference she didn’t understand at the ready. “I never thought… it’s weird but, I never thought I’d see you sad. You always seem so… happy!” Bon-bon said as she thought out loud.
“Eh… we all have our moments. Besides, you always seem so happy. How am I happier than you always are?” Lyra asked as she looked up at her friend. She wasn’t crying and showed very little outwards signs of doing so, but internally, she was just on that edge, feeling that strange sensation that wells up in your nose and just below your eyes before the dam breaks.
“Not always…” Bon-bon replied, now her turn to look away and avoid making eye contact with the other person in the room. “You saw me last week. Crying like a little kiddy.”
“I don’t know… I like to cry.” Lyra shrugged back.
“Hmm…” Bon-bon let out. A low groan of disapproval. “I know that, maybe, you’re trying to lighten the mood, and maybe it’s needed a little, but that’s not a funny joke Lyra.”
This however made Lyra shoot to attention with “I wasn’t joking. It feels good to cry.”
“Um… huh?” was all Bon-bon was able to come up with.
“Yeah, like… it feels kinda crappy at the time, but when you’re done, it’s just… gone. Like it’s just, gotten out of your system. I cry sometimes. Hell, some of my favourite movies, TV shows, games, you name it… the sad ones are the best.”
“I guess… I mean, Wreck-it Rudolph was-”
“Oh my god that movie!” Lyra interrupted. “It was absolutely amazon!”
“‘Amazon’?”
“Amazon!” Lyra replied with manically wide grin on her face with near pinprick eyes. She’d lightened the mood of the room that’s for sure. And she hadn’t even meant to. She knew exactly how to re-darken it again now. “I’ve got this one show, it’s so happy and sad at the same time, it’s like… oh my god it’s so good!”
And with that she stood up and pulled a small box out from under her bed and grabbed a USB stick out of it before pushing it back under. Moving over to the computer she put in the flash drive and began to do stuff. “You… want me to move over?” Bon-bon asked as her friend leant over her in her seat to use the mouse.
“Nope.” Lyra said as she moved back and pulled the USB out of the socket. “This is your homework!” she said, holding the USB stick at full arm extension centimeters from Bon-bon’s face. “It’s just twelve episodes long so it’s a short length series.”
“What is it?” she asked as she reached up with both hands and took hold of the object, pulling it away from her face.
“It’s a 4gig USB stick.”
“I know that… I mea-”
“Also it’s a Transistor sword replica one too, be careful with it.”
“Alright, but what’s on it.”
“Your homework. I told you that.”
“Lyra!…” she groaned. “How come I get homework and you don’t?”
Lyra just chuckled and finally answered. “It’s an anime called Watapone. And you’re right. Tell me something I have to watch! That way, next time we meet up again we can talk about it.”
“Um… ok. But isn’t it stealing to give me a copy of this?”
“Pffthahaha… good one.” Lyra laughed for a moment before “Oh wait, you’re serious? Let me laugh even harder bwaahahha!” to which she got yet another annoyed groan. “Oh c’mon… even if it was stealing, which by definition has to take something away from someone else where as this is just making a copy of it trust me I’ve googled it, my brother’s DVD collection… yeah, we’ve more than given them enough money to make up for it. Seriously, like, tens of thousands worth…”
“Ok… well, how about... oh! You should watch Tangled!” she said remembering Lyra having liked Wreck-it Rudolph but knowing this movie had gone by with most people thinking it was just a Rapunzel remake.
“Disneigh?” Lyra asked.
“Disneigh.” Bon-bon replied.
“Alright then!” she said cheerfully as she leant back over Bon-bon and opened Windows Explorer #WindowExplorerMasterRace and opened up her favourite torrent site.
“You could at least buy it if you’ve spent so much on DVDs.”
“Uh… fine…” Lyra accepted and instead typed in the URL bar.
Of course Bon-bon had something to say about that too. “That’s meant to be amazon, not amazing.com.”
“Sh-shut up!” Lyra growled in embarrassment. She’d been used to saying and typing amazon that she’d legitimately gotten the two mixed up. “Look away while I put in my password.” she said and nudged Bon-bon to the side slightly. Her friend looked away while "One-one-one um… one."
Bon-bon turned back as Lyra minimised the page. “Wow… that’s a lot of games.” she said seeing half the screen covered in thumbnails of various games. She even recognised a few. And that was coming from someone whose only experience with games was Candy Crush and 20-40-8. And the cheap rip off versions of them: Bejeweled and 3s.
“Yeah. I kinda have a problem with Steam sales… these are just the ones I’ve installed.” she said with a laugh that hid deep deep regret. “I’ve been playing a lot of The Gryphon Among Us lately.”
“You really like those horse things don’t you…” Bon-bon said.
“Eh, they’re alright.” although it hadn’t been what Bon-bon had really wanted to ask. It was just the first thing she could think of to avoid asking the question she had thought of: ‘How?’. From what she knew of non ‘filthy-casual’ games didn’t they require two hands to play?
As if reading her mind, Lyra said “Oh, let me show you something.” as she went back and grabbed the box from under her bed again. This time she placed it down on the computer desk in front of the two of them. It was all computer stuff, USBs, controllers, batteries and…
“Um… why are you showing me that?” Bon-bon asked nervously as Lyra pulled out a long purple rubber object.
“Huh? I wanted to show you it and let you test it out. Duh.” she said as she waved it in front of Bon-bon’s face. “Move over a sec.” she said as she attracted the object to the keyboard. “Cool huh? It goes over the WASD and presses them down when you move it. It’s kinda like a joystick.” she finished, getting more than just a chuckle from Bon-bon. “What?” she genuinely asked.
“I bet it’s a joystick…”
“What?...” she asked again, turning from Bon-bon to the big purple stick now standing on her keyboard. “Oh, eww!” she cringed. “My brother made this!”
“Your brother sure seems to make a lot of stuff.” Bon-bon snickered. It was immature of her but what do you expect? She watches disneigh films still…
“Well, yeah. He’s an inventor. It’s what he does. Most of it catches on fire though. Oh, we should totally watch some vids of time testing his stuff. Most of it catches on fire. He even once managed to pour milk into a bowl of cereal and have it ignite!” and with that the two spent the next half hour watching Lyra’s brother on viewtube.
“Wait a second.” Bon-bon said abruptly. “Was that a simpsons reference?”
