The Abandoned Trilogy (Book 1): Twice Dead (Contagion) by Suchitra Chatterjee Read Free Book Online

he asked me. Like Phoenix, Paul watched a lot of TV.
                  “The satellite dish is on the blink,” I said automatically.
                  He grimaced, then asked me to put a DVD on for him, which I did. I didn’t choose a Zombie film. I then helped him get comfortable, and went and got him some ice for his bottled water. His room was dark, how he liked it and on Adag’s instructions, I took some tablets into him and watched as he took them.
                  I closed his door softly behind me leaving him staring at the flickering captioned images on his screen opposite his bed, for the moment oblivious to what was going on beyond his own room.
                  Adag was busy in the kitchen, making snacks for the others. Mitch had gone back to his garage and I saw everyone was still engrossed in the Wizard of Oz.
                  I didn’t know what Seb and Phoenix were doing, but I didn’t really want their company right at that moment. I slipped out of the building and made my way to the bench under the tree. I sat down, pressed my palms on the grainy wood, and turned my face upward toward the innocent blue sky. How lovely it looked I thought, how ordinary, a late afternoon on a Sunday in the quiet grounds of a residential home.
                  My life was made up of endless routines in a world that was structured around my disabilities. My leg throbbed so as to make me aware of my physical limitations and I pushed at the leg brace so it was in a more comfortable position.
                  I could live independently in my secret opinion, but Social Services obviously thought otherwise, and because I felt safe under their care however disparate and indifferent it might have been at times, I had gone along with it and not fought them. I had played a part in my own gilded incarceration whereas Seb had been forced kicking and screaming into a world that inhibited and enraged him.
                  We were different ends of the spectrum I thought, both a product of an environment that didn’t truly value our individuality. We were inspirations when we did something that was perceived to be extraordinary, but if we didn’t inspire admiration, then we inspired tolerance of something that had to be endured.
                  It wasn’t so bad I supposed for those with learning disabilities where their world was set out in a certain way as to what they could or couldn’t do. I thought of Jasmine, Stevie and Cassidy, the common thread they shared was they had learning disabilities, but even they weren’t the same, even I could see that.
                  Thorncroft at least took a holistic approach bringing together different disabilities and it worked, primarily because it was not a big home and also because it was private and had money to make sure it worked reasonably well. I remembered my last placement, and shuddered, now that was a place that did not work and no one noticed because after all, the majority of the residents had issues that Social Services were simply not equipped to deal with due to lack of funding.
                  I heard a twig snap and turned my head.
    It was Mitch. He smiled at me and pointed to the bench. I nodded my head and he sat down. He was holding a box of cigarettes and a lighter in one of his hands.
                  “Don’t tell Adag,” he said as he cupped a hand around the cigarette in order to light it. I wondered if he knew that the Assistant Manager was always sneaking out of her office for a quick puff on a cigarette behind the water butt just outside the kitchen door.
                  We sat quietly, side by side for a few minutes, and it was Mitch who broke the silence first.
                  “I don’t think it’s good,” he said.
                  I didn’t pretend not to understand him, “What do you