The Punished

by Peter Meredith

  The Punished

  A Novel by

  Peter Meredith

  Copyright 2011 Peter Meredith

  Kindle Edition

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  The Punished

  The Thief

  1

  The home, from its tall red brick exterior with its great shading trees to the wonderful white walls and gleaming hardwood floors of the interior, could only be called beautiful. However, the air had an odd stiff feeling about it...a Nazi feel.

  Books were aligned with precision on the shelves, pictures hung on the walls with an engineer's exactness, and even the furniture looked to have been arranged as if in preparation for a parade. Not a single mote of dust strayed upon any of the surfaces, and the glass of the windows showed not a streak, nor even a solitary fingerprint.

  Everything looked far too clean, far too perfect, at least to 12-year-old Curtis Regis, but not to Miss Gladys. Her large brown eyes took in the cleanliness and the order, seeing only an idealized suburban home, missing the truth.

  Though generally quite astute, Curt missed the truth as well.

  He was in too much of a state of shock and after a brief glance around at the home, could only stare at the pristine, almost snow-colored square carpet that sat in the middle of the room. It looked practically brand new and before stepping off the hardwood floors, Miss Gladys directed him to remove his shoes.

  This he did, placing his stolen Converse sneakers neatly next to Miss Gladys' giant pink high heels. She stood as big as a house and like one, she was trimmed around the edges. Her nails, her shoes, her lips, even the ribbon in her hair were all pink and a garish pink at that. The rest of her outfit, a great ballooning pantsuit, was a chocolate brown.

  Curt didn't think that the brown went well with the pink, but it certainly matched her skin tone. She was a commanding black woman and filled the room with her presence. He felt like a mouse next to her, and though she hadn't been anything but nice, Curt was thoroughly intimidated by her.

  This was the reason he had smoothed down his wild curly brown hair and had sat up as straight as he could during the car ride through the suburbs of Pittsburgh, to his new but very temporary foster home.

  "Curtis Regis," Miss Gladys announced in a big voice. "I would like you to meet Miss Feanor, your new foster mother."

  Earlier that day, Curt had been punched twice, where the bruises wouldn't show, which turned out to be just above his left temple, and he had a doozy of a headache. But despite that, he still managed to smile up at the lady. Miss Feanor, on the other hand, wasn't smiling at all. She wore a look of shock, which she laced heavily with revulsion.

  He looked down to see what had her so worked up and noticed that his socks were dirty. At one point, they probably had been white, but now they were such a dark grey as to rival his black converse. With the right one being the darker of the two, he timidly stuck it behind his left calf.

  "Oh my! Is that your feet I smell?" Miss Gladys had her face wrinkled in resemblance of a prune. "Oh my!" She was quite loud. Everything about her was loud and her volume seemed to make Miss Feanor cringe, and with his head thumping the way it was, Curt was right there with her.

  "I...uh, haven't had time to get to the laundromat this week," he explained. Lying was second nature to him; he hadn't ever been to a laundromat to clean clothes, only to steal them. It was fine place to pick up a spare outfit.

  Miss Feanor acted as though she hadn’t heard him and could seem to do little but stare at his feet. Her muddy brown eyes were huge and uncomprehending as if she had never seen dirty socks before. There was something else in those eyes that caught his attention.

  Fear. She seemed actually afraid that he would make tracks on her perfect carpet.

  Fear did not sit well on her features, even this silly fear of his dirty feet, it made her look older. With her hair a nearly equal proportion of grey and brown and her face lined with deep groves, he had put her age at 55. Normally, he was quite accurate at this sort of thing, but he would be very surprised to find out later that he was off by 15 years.

  "Matt, go fetch a pair of clean socks," she ordered. Her voice sounded old as well, soft and quiet, dusty even, as if she wasn't used to speaking often.

  Four teenagers, two boys and two girls, had been staring at him in tight-lipped silence and now the tallest of them, a boy with thin brown hair hurried off, disappearing down a hallway. They were not a very impressive or scary group; each was skinny and pale, and in his opinion, they wore the oddest outfits. Each had on blue jeans and white, white socks, this was ok he guessed, but their matching long sleeve slate grey turtlenecks were downright strange.

  He hoped they weren't expecting him to wear a turtleneck as well, they were ghastly.

  Now, since he had entered the home Curt has glanced at them occasionally, and he really only expected trouble from Matt who, due to his size, he suspected of being the eldest.

  Matt had a look about him that made Curt think of the word Nazi, again. Before he had been sent on his errand, Matt had stared at Curt's socks as well, and seemed just as appalled as Miss Feanor, though he hadn't shared in her fear. Rather his look was tinged with haughty contempt, and in the brief few seconds that they were in the room together, Curt had found himself judged; probably correctly.

  Finally pulling her eyes off of his socks, Miss Feanor looked him up and down, "Paul, have Matt fetch an entire change of clothes, please," she said, again in a low voice, and Curt noted that the word please had a special quality to it. It was clear that it wasn't a word that frequented her lips; she even paused before using it as if to remember its definition.

  Miss Gladys didn't notice this. Her eyes were on the two girls in the room, and she beamed at them, purposely not paying attention to how Miss Feanor looked to have swallowed something nasty. Perhaps she was embarrassed at having brought Curt in such a condition.

  He was secretly glad that she had. The chaos of Curt's life had made it a necessity that he assess people quickly, and many times he did this based on only the barest of information. His gut told him that Miss Feanor would be a hard one to hustle and coming to her door looking like an abused puppy was a happy accident.

  He went with it.

  Casting his face into a mold of sorrowful embarrassment, he said, “I’m sorry about my clothes, ever since my mom left me all alone, I haven't been able to keep anything clean." He darted his eyes to her face every second or two as if he was used to being beaten, but in truth, he did this in order to check for the proper signs of concern.

  Her face registered none of these signs. Her mouth didn't come open and her eyes failed to widen, her hands didn't reach out to touch the wretched child in front of her, and worst of all, she didn't say, "Ooh, poor thing."

  Instead, her lips, already set together, tightened so that he could see many tiny lines emanating from them. Worse were her eyes. It didn't appear that she had seen through his charade; rather, it looked as if she couldn't care in the least.

  This wasn't a new thing for Curt. As a seasoned panhandler, he had seen it before, many times. In fact, for every dollar he stuck in his pocket from the gullible, he had to endure a dozen or more of such looks. Normally, he would go on to the next person as quickly as possible, knowing that begging was a numbers game. However, in this situation, he couldn't move on so easily, nor did he want to.

  The home, despite its Nazi-like perfection, was a very nice, one and he felt this would be a good place to rest up for a bit before
he got back to his life. He'd allow Miss Feanor to fatten him up somewhat, to clothe him and get him his school supplies since all of his stolen ones had been confiscated. And only then would he leave.

  "Do you have anything I can eat?" he asked. "I don't remember the last time I had a proper meal." He placed his hands on his stomach for emphasis. This move was a guarantee with women; it had never once failed to elicit a motherly reaction.

  Except for now.

  Miss Feanor's eyes narrowed and he saw that within them were innumerable calculations. Instinctually, he knew she wanted to tell him no, but instead, she gave him a wintry smile.

  "Let's get you dressed properly first." She held him with her eyes and he decided she would be even harder to hustle than he first thought. Just then, Matt and Paul came back into the living room. Without a word to anyone, they handed the clothes, socks, jeans and a grey turtleneck to Miss Feanor, and she handed the socks to Curt.

  When he had slipped them on, Miss Gladys' eyes went to squints, "Wow, those stink to high heaven. Here, let me put them outside for now." She took the socks, holding them by their very ends, and moved to the door but couldn't open it.

  "Does this lock on its own?" she asked Miss Feanor, who hurried forward.

  "No, but it does get stuck sometimes," the older woman responded and with ease, opened the door. "You just have to know how to work the knob correctly."

  Turning back to Curt, she handed him the bundle of clothes and jerked her head toward the hallway. He was about to ask where exactly he should change, but a hand turned him around and Paul nodded his blonde head toward the hallway.

  Curt paused in confusion, but Paul gave him another tug and it was clear that Curt was to follow the boy, which he did, walking past the two girls.

  The taller of the two looked like nothing more than a five and half foot tall mouse. Her brown eyes were small and protruded slightly from her narrow face. She wore her thin brown hair parted in the middle and hanging straight down. Her stick thin body, she held stiff and nothing about her moved, except her eyes. These skimmed over him without pause for thought, or so it seemed to Curt.

  The other girl, four inches shorter and roughly his own height, was easily the most colorless person he had ever seen. Every part of her appeared to have been bleached, even her hair was so blonde that it was practically white. Her eyes had the greatest hint of color. They were a washed out light blue, but he could barely see them as she kept her head down and her eyes half closed most of the time.

  Albino probably, he thought as he passed her, misunderstanding the term. Curt understood little about science and less about math. He should have been in the seventh grade, but the last full grade he had completed had been the second. However, when it came to knowledge, what he lacked scholastically, he made up in understanding human nature. For instance, it was obvious to him that for some unknown rationale, Miss Feanor didn't want to feed him. At least not yet and that the only reason she had agreed to was that Miss Gladys was present. He made note of that, and as he followed Paul into a long hallway, he wondered how he could best use it to his advantage.

  However, he had trouble concentrating on this. Paul was clearly afraid of something. As Curt trailed along, he noticed that Paul turned to look back at him as much as he watched where he was going. Perhaps they had been warned about Curt's penchant for stealing, and Paul was just checking to make sure that he wasn't pocketing any of the nice bric-a-brac that sat upon many of the surfaces in the home.

  Paul needn't have worried though. The porcelain figurines and fanciful vases were not the sorts of things that Curt would ever likely steal. He had no idea of their value and what's more, they looked highly breakable. Nor would he steal on his first day in a new foster home; that was just stupid. However, if he were to steal anything, his primary choice would be silverware and then jewelry or maybe a gaming system if they had one.

  These things were portable and he generally knew their market value, or at least he knew what he could get for them. As he looked around, he sadly realized there likely wasn't going to be a gaming system in this house, and if he had to bet, he would guess they didn't have cable TV either.

  The thought depressed him.

  "Hey Paul..." he started to ask if there was a Nintendo or PlayStation in the home, but the rest of his sentence caught in his throat as Paul rounded on him with a frightfully angry look on his face. The boy snapped his fingers and then held up his hand to his own mouth, making it clear that Curt should be quiet. Struck dumb by the surprising move, Curt just stood there until Paul took a hold of his shirt and dragged him on. A moment later, the larger boy turned, giving him a quick look and winked at him.

  It was the oddest thing, and so terribly perplexing that Curt barely paid attention to where they were going. The long hallway they were walking down had seven rooms leading off of it, the first had been the living room and catty-corner to that had been a family room. Further down on the left was a bedroom and judging by the size of it, he guessed that this was the master bedroom.

  The final three doors were at the end of the hall. Straight ahead, lay the kitchen, to the right a dining room, and to the left a small powder room. Paul pointed towards this last with one hand, while the other he kept up to his mouth, demonstrating that Curt still shouldn't speak.

  Curt gave him a shoulder shrug and mouthed the word, why. At this, Paul began gesticulating, trying to tell him something with only his hands, but the movements were too quick, running into themselves, and Curt wasn't able to keep up. He shook his head.

  Leaning in so close that his breath tickled Curt's ear, Paul whispered, "She will hear you." Or at least that what he thought Paul had said, the whisper had been just along the low range of his hearing. As the larger boy leaned back, he winked again at Curt.

  Curt frowned at him, thinking the boy was either crazy or that he was pulling a prank on the new kid. But Paul missed the frown. He had turned into the bathroom and set the clothes down on the toilet. He then waved his arms again, this time telling Curt not to use the sink.

  "Sure. Whatever," Curt said in his normal voice. This game Paul was playing at annoyed him, but since Paul stood a head taller than he, there wasn't much he could do about it. This time Paul didn't get angry at his words. He simply shook his head sadly, winked at him a third time and left the room.

  2

  The little powder room, like the rest of the house he had seen, looked to have been decorated by, and strictly for, women. There wasn't a thing about the place that could be considered masculine, not that Curt was the most masculine boy, in fact, he was one of the least. He was very small for his age and rail thin. His features were somewhat delicate and when his mass of curly hair became wet, it wasn't at all obvious that he was a boy.

  He did think it was strange for a house to be decorated in such a girlish manner. Everywhere he looked were figurines of kittens, little pink pillows, and odd containers of sweet smelling dried flowers. The pictures upon the pristine walls were of cherubs or babies or meadows full of flowers and the wallpaper, laced roses in a repeating pattern, was equally as feminine. It seemed over the top. He was starting to think there were a lot of odd things about this house and the people in it.

  When he had changed clothes, he looked at himself in his new uniform and could only shake his head, feeling idiotic. For one the clothes were way too big for him and for two, he was wearing a stupid turtleneck! Still mortified at his pathetic clothes, he left the room and found the hallway happily deserted.

  With no one about, Curt decided to see if this foster home was going to be a proper fit for him. On cat's feet, he slipped noiselessly into the kitchen and went straight for the refrigerator. Opening the door, a blast of stale air struck him, and with a single glance into the appliance, he knew right away that he would need to find another foster home. The first thing he saw was a jar of prunes and right beside that was another jar holding pickles, and behind these, a glass container of oats or some such with the label reading
Wheat Germ. He had never heard of that before, but it certainly looked as unpalatable as its name. And perhaps the worst thing about the scene before him was the distressingly large amount of vegetables, most of which appeared limp and close to rotting.

  The freezer was worse. It was mostly empty, with only some ice trays and some ancient Tupperware containers filled with an unknown brown substance and, of course, more vegetables. He shook his head in disgust. There was no evidence that a frozen pizza had ever been in there, nor were there any of the TV dinners that he liked.

  "Not even a microwave," he whispered, glancing about the room.

  The kitchen, like the rest of the place was flawless. The cabinets were all of an oak hue, sporting intricate patterns and gleaming brass handles. The countertops appeared to be marble and fairly shined in brilliance, and the floor was constructed of large grey-blue tiles. And not a single crumb sat anywhere in the room.

  There were three doorways in the kitchen. The one to the hall he had just entered through, one to his right that lead up some stairs, and another at the end of the room across from a little eating area. This last was the only one with an actual door and it sat partially open. He stared at this briefly, trying to remember if it had been open when he had first walked in; he hadn't thought it was.

  To this, he gave a little snort of puzzlement, but just then his stomach rumbled, and he remembered his purpose to being in the room.

  A line of cookbooks sat on the counter to his left and one had a place marked with a paperclip. When he opened the book to that page, Curt saw with a feeling of dread that it was a recipe for goulash, and the horrible picture that accompanied the title made his stomach turn upside down.

  If this was the sort ghastly food that was served in the house, he had seen enough and without checking any of the cabinets for chips, certain there wouldn't be any, he decided that it was time to move on.