Ryan's Suffering

by Lloyd Paulson

  I sat on the edge of my immaculately made bed, staring at the floor. I thought I had done well. More than could have been expected from an eight-year old, in retrospect. There wasn’t a single crease or rumple in the bed covers. The hospital corners were perfect. A drill sergeant would have grudgingly given a nod of approval. We could've bounced quarters off that fucker. However, I knew he would say nothing. Perfection was expected. Praise was never given in the School of Infinite Patience and Control. I was not here to be shown what I did right. I was here to be shown what I did wrong. School was in, and the lesson had commenced. Tick-Tock, baby.

  I couldn’t fidget. I could not speak first. I knew this from past lessons. I cleared my mind, and I waited, staring blankly at the floor as time ticks by, painfully slow. I knew how this would end; I knew there were no right answers. I simply had to endure it. This is the most horrific, painful, and final lesson in the School of Infinite Patience and Control. Endurance, above all else. Hauntingly, endurance is the only thing that matters.

  "What is wrong with this room?"

  I felt my bowels loosen slightly. Dutifully, I looked around the room. Carefully, I inventoried everything I saw. The papers were put away. All my pencils were in the cup on the desk. The stapler was straight. The books were properly stacked, from tallest to shortest. I checked the carpet, which I had vacuumed meticulously. I glanced at the bed, making sure the bedspread wasn’t rumpled. The pillow was centered. I glanced warily at the closet, and saw that the shoes were neatly lined up against the wall. I saw nothing amiss, but I already knew there was a problem somewhere. I started to venture a guess, and then I clamped my mouth shut.

  He waited patiently. I still found nothing. I knew I would probably never guess right. There are no right answers in the School of Infinite Patience and Control. Finally, I said, "I don’t know."

  He nodded then stared at me thoughtfully for some time, the anger clear and apparent." Is this room clean?"

  I made my seventh check of the room, trying desperately to find the source of his anger. I finally found it, but could never say it. It’s sitting right on the bed, in plain view. Since then, I've always known that's the real answer. It's me. It's me that you hate; it's me that's wrong. It's me. It's me. I felt helpless, worthless, and ashamed.

  I had a dilemma. It’s not as if I knew what the word "dilemma" meant back then, but I sure understood the concept. I had to answer the question. I knew there was no answer he would accept. If I said "yes," he would prove me wrong, and then tell me that I lied. If I said "no," he would ask me why I lied to my mother. If I said, "I don’t know," he would tell me that yes, you do know, and that answer of "I don’t know" was a lie in and of itself. Lying is the worst conviction he could render, and would result in the harshest punishment he knows.

  I fidgeted, trying to settle on an answer. I already knew I would be convicted of lying. I was a liar no matter what I did or said. There was no escape. I would never be a truthful child no matter how hard I tried. I wanted to be. I cried myself to sleep many nights, praying that god would turn me into a good child. God never answered me.

  I knew there was no hope for me. I would never be a good child. I would never amount to anything. God never answered my prayers. It was my fate, and everything else was aftermath. I was forsaken, a lost child that God would never claim.

  He was waiting for an answer. Defiance was very dangerous, so I finally picked an answer that was truthful, and that I already knew he would tear apart.

  I looked directly at him. "I cleaned it as best as I could."

  He stared at me, nodding thoughtfully. He walked over to the dresser, and crouched down. He reached way underneath the dresser, almost to the wall. I could feel my stomach sinking. He pulled out a pair of socks, folded together. He stood up.

  He stared at them, as though they were a peculiar specimen. He held them gingerly, as if they were tainted. He tossed them on the bed next to me. "That’s the best you could do."

  I had looked under the dresser. Obviously, I hadn’t looked far enough. I sat there, and kept my mouth shut. I already knew that any answer was the wrong answer. I knew that my best was never good enough. I hated myself for it. My best would never be good enough.

  He leaned against the dresser. "Do you think socks should be kept on the floor?"

  I shook my head no.

  He told me to speak up, that he couldn’t hear my head rattling.

  "No."

  He paced in the room for several minutes. I stared at the floor, and waited. I glanced at the clock, knowing that this was far from over. This was just the beginning.

  "So your room wasn’t clean, was it?"

  I stared at the floor. "No."

  "So you lied to your mother about your room being clean."

  I fidgeted. This was the conviction that was inevitable. I racked my brain desperately, trying to figure out how the socks ended up against the wall under the dresser. I remembered checking under the dresser, and not seeing them there.

  I looked up, knowing that no answer would be correct. "I did the best I could."

  He backhanded me across the cheek. I gasped, but I did not cry out. Crying out only encouraged him. "Your best wasn’t good enough. And you didn’t answer my question, smart ass."

  I felt tears coursing down my cheeks, and I tried to stop them. I clenched my jaw, trying to keep my lip from trembling. I succeeded, but barely. This was the school of infinite patience and control. It doesn’t matter that I was only eight years old. I was to learn a level of control almost no adult should have to master.

  He sat down on the bed next to me, and waited.

  I waited as well. I knew he would ask again, and the waiting prolonged the inevitable punishment. I was convicted the moment he said, "Wait." I prayed silently to god to make me a good child. I didn’t want this anymore. I was sorry. Whatever God wanted, I would give him. If only I could learn how not to be bad.

  "So you lied to your mother about whether or not your room was clean."

  I looked up at him, knowing that I did not lie to my mother. I thought my room was clean. However, I had to lie to him here, by saying that I did lie. If I said that I did not lie to my mother, he would convict me for lying to him on top of lying to my mother. I was not old enough to understand that this was a paradox. I was, however, a veteran of the School of Infinite Patience and Control. I didn’t understand the game of "You Cannot Win." I was still too young to realize that there was no hope there.

  With a calm, low, reasonable voice devoid of emotion, I told him, "I did the best I could. I cleaned my room the best I could, and then I told mom it was clean. I did not lie, I did my best."

  I didn’t look at him. I dared not show defiance.

  He grabbed the socks, and tossed them in my lap. "You call this your best?"

  I bit my lip, and refused to grab the socks. I let them lay in my lap. I waited.

  He crouched in front of me. "Do you think that your best is good enough?"

  I stared at the floor by his feet. This was the waiting game now. No answers were needed anymore, despite the fact my face still stung from being backhanded for not answering a question several minutes ago. This was the lecture portion of my education. This was where I learned not to react. This was where I controlled my emotions.

  "What if a doctor leaves a clamp in place during open heart surgery? Do you think that is good enough?" He stood and paced the room.

  "You say you try, but you don’t. You always do everything half-assed. You're just a quarter-breed abomination that will never amount to anything."

  I said nothing. I stared at the floor, wondering why I was so worthless. I did my best, and it was never good enough.

  He paced for a while more. "You know it too. You’re lazy, and you don’t give a shit. On top of that, you lied to your mom. You were in too much of a hurry to do it right the first time."

  He sat down on the bed next to me. "You never learn. No matter how often I try to teach you, you never l
earn."

  I glanced at the clock. I stared at the floor. I waited as several minutes went by, sneaking looks at the time.

  "You are always lying. No matter how many times…" He pointed at the closet. I felt my stomach tighten in fear, and I struggled not to let it show in my face.

  "…No matter how many times, you still insist on lying to me."

  He was getting visibly agitated. Hell, he was probably sporting wood, but I didn’t know about that back then, or to look for it.

  "Why do you always lie?"

  I struggled with the question. I didn’t know the answer to that. I could see the paradox; I could see that there were no right answers that I could give him. I berated myself for not knowing why I was always trapped in telling a lie. I berated myself for not knowing how to answer the question.

  Finally, I looked up at him. "I don’t know."

  He shook his head in disgust, but a smile played on his lips "Get up and get in the closet."

  I stood up slowly, almost stiffly. This was part of the progression, it would be over soon, but knowing that intellectually, I also knew that there was an entire gulf of time I would have to cross to get there. Oh no. Each individual second would savored by my father, and he would not let it go until the full, raw potential had been wrong from that precious moment of time.

  I opened the bi-fold closet doors, smelling the faint smell of urine. That’s why I was going into the closet, lest we damage the rug in my room with this set-piece choreography as it plays out. I wouldn’t be able to control my bladder, and I hated myself for that weakness. It was just proof of how undependable, how worthless I really was. God had rejected me. I was cursed. I was an abomination. If only Christ could redeem me. I had to stop this curse. The cat did not exist. Until I could learn to walk with god, there would be no redemption. I tried. I tried my best. It wasn’t good enough. Not for my father. Not for God.

  He stood up, looking at me. I looked at the floor, and waited.

  He sighed. "You know, there was a time when I could do something about a child like you. Some children are just born bad. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try as a father, you just can’t control them. You are just one of those kids."

  He paced for several minutes, and wouldn't even look at my, his agitation increasing with each turn. "Kids like that, back in the eighteen hundreds, man, you could take them out into the woods with a rifle. Nobody would say a word when the kid never came back again. It was simply doing the right thing, for the good of the family, for the good of the community. It's the right thing. You're worthless. As an elioud, you are already condemned, anyway, as an abomination that should be destroyed, but I keep trying to teach you. I don't know why. I keep trying to show you the way. I don't know why I keep making an effort to show you the way, but I'll get it beat into you one way or another. You'll either learn, or you'll die learning, whichever comes first."

  He stopped, and stared at me.

  He continued staring for several minutes, his agitation and anger increasing, his muscles in his jaw flexing as he clenched his jaw.

  "Now drop your drawers."

  I thought about what he said about bad children in the eighteen hundreds as I dropped my pants and underpants. I wished he would just shoot me. There was no hope for me. I knew it. God never answered my prayers. God couldn’t answer the prayers of lost children until they were part of his fold. I was not part of that fold. The minister had told me so. I stepped out of my pants and underwear and kicked them aside, since I knew they would just end up wet. I turned towards the wall, bent over and touched my toes, and screwed my eyes shut, my bare ass facing out towards the bedroom.

  "You trying to hurry me up? I didn’t tell you to touch your toes."

  I stood back up, and turned to face him again. I was naked, my genitals exposed. My window was open, and I didn’t know that it was darker inside the house than outside, and I didn’t know that no one could see in. I stood there, thinking that the whole world could see the bad child standing there, naked and afraid. I felt I deserved the humiliation, that I deserved to be on display.

  "No matter how hard I try, you just won’t learn, and it's my job as your father to make sure that you learn."

  I stared at the floor, and I could feel myself break out in goose bumps although the room was overly warm. He waited for several minutes, watching me. Time passed by at a crawl, each second seemed to be hand drawn, like cold tar dripping slowly from a nightmarish clock.

  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity he spoke again. "Bend over and touch your toes."

  I complied, and I clamped my eyes shut. I waited. And I waited. And I waited.

  I smelled urine. I trembled, and I tried to control the trembling. I knew what was coming. I heard him sit on the bed. I waited, struggling to control my fear and to control my emotions.

  With your fingers touching your toes, and your ass exposed, you are already humiliated. You are already fighting fear, and you struggle to maintain control. You will not stand up. You will not protect your bare ass with your hands. Nevertheless, you aren’t sure if you can control that, so bladder function drops lower on the priority list. Fuck Mazlov's hierarchy of needs. In conditions that would make an SS officer proud, self-actualization needs are irrelevant.

  I heard the tinkle of my father's belt being unbuckled. I tried to stop my legs from shaking. I tried to keep from standing up and bolting from the room. I knew that running was not an option, because I tried that before. What was about to happen was going to hurt like holy motherfucking hell. Although it would hurt like a cock-knocker to sit down for the next few days, I was probably not going to suffer any permanent damage. Not physically, it turned out. However, running away posed a serious health hazard that may be permanent, as I had learned from experience, so I forced myself to sit still, and I waited as the seconds tick painfully by.

  "This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you."

  I knew this was a lie. I wasn’t old enough to know that he was actually enjoying this.

  I heard the click of the lighter being flipped open. I kept my eyes shut, and tried to control the shaking in my legs. I could hear the sharp ‘shick’ and ‘whoosh’ of the lighter being lit, followed by the familiar metallic ‘shing’ of the lighter being shut. Such a nostalgic sound, with so many memories tied to it. I hope that the lighter company that starts with a letter near the end of the alphabet and rhymes with "hippo" (and can suck my balls) goes bankrupt one day, so I never hear that sound again. Ever. I hate that goddamned sound.

  My heart was hammering along madly in my chest, and still I kept my eyes pinched desperately shut. I hoped he would change his mind about this, but I knew it was false hope. There was never a reprieve. My father simply was waiting with that deadly and terrible patience that terrorizes and immobilizes you with fear.

  I could hear the soft crackle from the cigarette as he drew on it. Across the street, I could hear the laughter of the neighbor girl playing on her swing set. I wondered what she was going to think of me when finally there was the steady rhythmic and unrelenting crack of the belt that would ultimately render me shrieking and begging uncontrollably for it to stop as tears and snot pour uncontrollably down my face. If you can block the horror for the moment, isn't the inevitability awe inspiring? It's like seeing the future, in its bitter and horrendous glory. You can taste the tears far before they start, and the future you see so clearly will come; it's a relentless and unforgiving engine of destruction that will run hot and hard. Balls to the fucking wall.

  That eight-year old? He's only a player of a bit part in a machine he can't control, can't divert, and can't stop. Nevertheless, Shhh. Don't tell him…there's no point. There never was. That’s the true pity. That's why, in the end, only endurance ever mattered. Not love. Not acceptance. Not hate. Not fury. Not reason. They're all irrelevant. Only endurance remains.

  The eight-year old version of me waited, as my father was waiting. There was no sound in the rest of the hous
e, though I knew my mother and sister were sitting somewhere, waiting and listening while pretending to be busy.

  It always took me by surprise. I never heard the whoosh of the belt first; all I felt was the bright burning pain across my bare fucking ass. I barked out a small shriek of surprise, and tried to clamp it off. I instinctively tried to stand up.

  "Keep touching your goddamned toes!"

  Shaking miserably, I tried to touch my toes again as tears leaked from my eyes. I couldn’t stop whimpering, and I hated myself for not being able to control it. He waited for me to gain control. He was infinitely and terribly patient. Only after years of observation would I latch on to this as the key, but at this age, I couldn't begin to comprehend this terrible patience. That's one of the keys of dominance. Terrible patience, letting fear and pain struggle and fight for control in your victim. Let them commit their own psychological damage, tearing themselves apart.

  I fought to restrain from standing up, my legs shaking as I forced myself to touch my toes again. I felt each second tick by, and I waited for the next blow, crying with my teeth clenched, shaking uncontrollably. It takes impeccable and sadistic timing to make this work as well as he did. It is quite terrible, the sheer terror. Each second it didn’t happen cranked up the tension inside me by another notch as I whimpered and struggled to keep my fingers on my toes.

  The next blow came. I cried out, and I clamped down on the scream I couldn't control.

  My body betrayed my control, and I started to stand up. I forced myself back down, shaking with the battle for control over the instinct for survival. Before my fingers touched my toes again, I heard the loud whack and the burning pain across my buttocks trebled in strength.