Problems of a Distraught Cub - Week One: Monday (Morning)
#10 of Problems of a Distraught Cub
Monday Morning
They woke me up really early in the morning, the sun just barely coming up. I hadn't gotten any sleep the night before, because I was too restless to be able to sleep at all. Plus the night terrors that haunt my dreams nearly every night wake me up. I will wake up whimpering and barking and yelling, yet when I wake up I never really have much of a memory of what the nightmare was about.
I was basically sleepwalking as the guards dragged me to the doctor's office, wearing a dirty pair of street clothes that were a few sizes too small on me. They were the clothes I had been wearing the last time I got dumped in this place. The place I would be leaving for a 'minimum of four weeks', as the doctor would say. I was just waiting for him, curled up as best as I could be in the chair I always sat on. I had no possessions to take care of, nothing to pack. That's why I was taken in this office so quickly.
They consider me a bad kit. That's why I had a room to myself. Solitary confinement for me. I used to have a roommate. Or rather a cellmate. She had had asthma. The old bastard monkey knew that she had asthma and never told the guards. She had an attack one day when they overworked her. She had told them she couldn't go on any further, that she couldn't breathe, so they yelled at her and sent her off to her room with no dinner. I had decided to go with the same excuse, because I wanted to console her. We had become friends over time. She knew all about my past and all that junk. I went to the room and she sat on her bed, tears in her eyes, gasping for breath and not getting any air. I screamed for the guards to get her an inhaler, and that she needed help, but they did nothing. They did nothing until she passed out from lack of oxygen and an enclosed windpipe.
After that, the guards rushed in and took her out. They said she would be okay but I haven't seen her since that day. She was the nicest colt you could ever meet. She was kind, sincere, polite. Too nice to be in a place like this. The only reason she was here was because her parents had been killed and she had no other family and that this place was the closest to where she lived.
It was too early to be reminiscing about old memories. Because I know I'll be back in this dump before I can even say goodbye. Not that I would want to anyway. The doctor still hasn't come in, and I started to grow restless in my seat. I just wanted to go back to my room. The solitary confinement tomb that they had given me after I got more hostile after Marie, the kindest colt ever, left, leaving me without a friend in this place. I lashed out at the guards, other 'inmates', the whole nine yards. That earned me daily lashings for a while until I broke, and then medication that made me into basically a zombie while I was on it. I was slapped with red scrubs marking me as one of the least desirable kids in this place.
There is a system, they say, to this madness. Green and blue scrubs were the goodie two-shoes who seldom caused any troubles. Yellow and orange were for the normal cubs who were just here. They caused trouble every so often, but nothing severe. Red were for kits like me who liked to cause trouble. Black were for the kids who are 15 and above and are in here for serious crimes. Remember when I kept telling you this place isn't an adoption center or a penitentiary for cubs? Well I lied, at least a little bit. They stick these kits here because they can't send them to real jail, and since this place is close enough representation of a jail, they get dumped here.
There are punishments for thins you do here as well. The blues and greens got cleaning duties. Yellows and oranges got cleaning and a round of 1-3 day boot camp. Reds got all of those things plus digging holes in the yard and then filling them up again. Black scrubbed furs got everything previous plus an additional cost to what they did to get in here in the first place. This place obviously favored the money that the blue's and green's parent's money that they gave them to have their cubs there, while the rest of us were left here to rot.
Just as I was about to scream, get out of my chair and start pacing the floor, I heard the familiar footfalls of the doc. As soon as he entered I got up and went to his desk. He barely had time to remove his jacket and set down his briefcase down before I started barraging him with questions. "What the hell is this thing on my ankle? When are we leaving? What took you so long? Why do you insist on trying to help fix me? Why aren't you answering any of my questions?"
"Woah there Kayleb, hold on. At least let me sit down." He sets his things down, seemingly taking forever before speaking again after he had sat down. "Okay. The thing on your ankle is a tracker anklet plus a barrier holder. It will keep you near Josh, and it will keep you inside a barrier of the house. You can swim, take a bath, get it any kind of wet, and go into the yard with it on. We are leaving as soon as you're ready, which it looks like you are. I was just getting back from taking a different cub to their matched home. I see hope in you Kayleb, so I'm trying to get you to be happy again. Finally, you asked too many questions at once for me to answer in such a short amount of time. Does that work for you?"
I simply gave him a half nod, trying not to process all of what he told me. I sigh and curl up in the chair. After an awkward few minutes without any words being said. I sigh again. "Can we... get this over with already?" I ask as quietly as I can. I knew the doctor heard it because I was watching him through the corner of me eye, I saw his ears perk toward me when I said it. He pretended like he didn't hear me though.
"Keep an open mind Kayleb, you may like the guy more than you think you do," he said to me as nicely as he could, which was all the time was how he talked to me, "give him a chance, warm up to him. At least you'll get out of this place. He's a nice guy, not bad in the cash department, has a nice house, likes to cook. He's willing to keep you in his home, so be nice. Just, let him warm up to you."