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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOKWhat They Did to the Kid 175%u201cTomorrow night,%u201d I said, %u201cyou%u2019ll see Mrs. Doney standing on a table, posing for Alfred, with a rose between her teeth.%u201d %u201cShe%u2019ll have numbers on her body....%u201d%u201cSo Alfred can paint her!%u201d%u201cWe could move the numbers around.%u201d%u201cThat%u2019s what they did to Picasso%u2019s mother!%u201d%u201cMove one eye here.%u201d%u201cMove the other eye there.%u201d%u201cHere an ear.%u201d%u201cThere a nose.%u201d%u201cWe%u2019re so uncharitable,%u201d Lock laughed.Suddenly, Lock was shoved aside. %u201cThat%u2019ll be all, Mr. Roehm.%u201d The Full Gunn thrust my door open the rest of the way. He held Lock by the nape of his blond neck. %u201cYour foot%u2019s over the threshold, Mr. Roehm. A mortal offense. Not even the toe of a shoe enters another seminarian%u2019s room. When I come down a corridor and see you visiting anyone, I want to see your full body in the hall.%u201d He shoved Lock away, and turned full on me. %u201cYou should have told him, Mr. O%u2019Hara, to stand back.%u201dHe pulled my door closed with a slam and made a great noise bitching Lock out in the hall. All the other boys could hear, but everyone knew Lock Roehm was too golden to ever be shipped. He was temporarily stuck at Misery while the Vatican old guard and the Vatican new guard fought over him.A guy couldn%u2019t win for losing. Screw them all. I picked up one of the many novels the Jesuit had bundled over to me from his private collection, still stowed in his unpacked trunk. He warned me if Father Gunn or Rector Karg caught me with his books, he would have to deny he ever had such worldly goods.%u201cBut this is,%u201d Sean O%u2019Malley, S. J., confided, %u201cbest for you.%u201dPriests know best, and Jesuits trump ordinary priests. Wasn%u2019t that why the Pope himself had ordered the Jesuits to be spiritual counselors to make Misery%u2019s seminarians into parish-ready priests who belonged to no religious order? My nerves, my underground books, my blue pills, my big recovery were all top secret; privileged, entrusted, professional secrets for Sean O%u2019Malley and necessity for me. Misery and Gunn and Rector Karg looked with disfavor on any personal crisis. We were supposed to come to Misery in a state of perfection and remain so. Latitude for crisis and growth frightened them. Somehow they had missed or forgotten the physical and spiritual crises of their youth. No potential priest was