The Punished

by Peter Meredith

  Even with the threat of a bizarre and horrible torture hanging over his head, he had trouble concentrating. He found himself, for the first time in years missing his mother. Or to be more accurate, he missed a mother in a general sense. His own was a pathetic loser, a prostitute strung out on drugs.

  Supposedly, that hadn't always been the case and he liked to believe that to be true. According to her slurred ramblings, there had been a time when she had been smart and beautiful, but a car accident shortly after he had been born had robbed her of this. Curt knew for a fact that she hadn't been lying about her looks, she had photos of herself that showed her as a fresh-faced pretty girl.

  That she had been intelligent was far harder to believe. But certainly, if the car accident hadn't scrambled her brains completely, then the drugs had finished the job. His first memories were like flash pictures in his mind and even then, she had been useless. He could picture himself standing on a chair, and so small was he, that there were two phone books beneath his feet, as he put something in the microwave. Another memory from that distant time saw him spooning soup into his mother's mouth as she lolled in a stupor, and in a third, he could picture himself laying an old towel over a fresh spew of her vomit. In each of these, he couldn't have been more than three years old.

  He had never known a time when he wasn't the one taking care of her, instead of the other way around. And he could recall the day when it had all changed. It wasn't a great life-altering event, complete with a vision from God, it was a sleepover.

  Not long after his sixth birthday, he had been invited to his first sleepover and it opened his eyes to the reality of his situation. And once he had seen how others lived, he quickly became disillusioned with what could only laughably be called his home life. After that, he began to spend more time away from home and whenever he returned, it felt as if a grim weight would settle onto his slim shoulders. Duty to family slowly gave way to bitter resentment as more and more he noticed the love between his classmates and their mothers. His own mother seemed incapable of love and her emotions only seesawed along the thin space separating anger and wretched self-pity.

  And so, a full season of summer before his seventh birthday, Curt stopped returning home altogether. It wasn't a heart breaking decision, when he finally left, it was a relief. That first summer was the most difficult on him and a few times, he thought about going back to his illusion of safety. But even at six years old, he felt too much cheated anger to allow it.

  He found spots around Pittsburgh where he built lairs, as he called them, though nests would be a more accurate term, and from these, he made forays throughout the city. He learned quickly the arts of panhandling, pick pocketing, thievery and burglary. At first he acted strictly on opportunity; strolling through parking lots, checking for unlocked cars, or maybe rifling the pockets of an unconscious drunk that he would stumble upon outside a pool-hall. However, hunger and the approaching cold matured him well beyond his years and by necessity, he not only worked hard to excel in his craft, but he became an adroit student of humanity.

  Humans became his prey.

  Though he knew nothing whatsoever about the concept of survival of the fittest, by his actions he demonstrated it to perfection. He preyed upon the weak. Not the weak physically, since he was always so small, but the weak mentally. The complacent, the unwary, the gullible, the foolish and the greedy, were his targets. But what paid the rent, so to speak, were the guilt-ridden. They made begging a breeze.

  In Curt's kill or be killed world, there was absolutely no room for the concept of guilt. Even at a young age, he understood that life was hard and you did the best you could with it, but he saw no need at all to apologize for any success one might have.

  However, he did understand generosity. Giving from a position of generosity made a person feel good about themselves and that made more sense to him than giving from a position of guilt. The guilt-ridden gave in order to avoid feeling bad; this seemed quite backwards to him.

  But backwards or not, they were the easiest marks and Curt used their guilt to his advantage. Not that he was immune to guilt, but he kept it well under control, living by his code: he never stole from anyone less fortunate than himself. Though he was a homeless rag-tag, the less fortunate encompassed more people than one would imagine, but still, there were many, many people with wealth waiting to be taken advantage of.

  And there wasn't anything that he wouldn't use to his advantage. Every human trait could be worked to his benefit, one-way or the other; a push to his pull, a yin to his yang. It was only a matter of finding the right combination of words or expressions or the best circumstance, even if those circumstances had to be concocted.

  The same could be said of his present situation. There had to be a way out and if anyone could find it, Curt could.

  5

  As he wiped away the streaks, he had inadvertently put on to the mirror, he slowly pushed aside the little boy in him, the one that wanted to be pampered and coddled by a motherly figure and set his mind turning over ideas on how to get out.

  With the doors impassable, and the second floor windows likely so, the chimney and the garage door were clearly his easiest routes for escaping. For another child, the chimney wouldn't have been an option, but Curt was small and slim and not only that, he was fearless when it came to heights. He saw the chimney as the better of the two choices, since it would be an almost noiseless escape. Moreover, the garage door most certainly had an alarm hooked up to it, otherwise, someone would've used it by now.

  Though he had checked, he hadn't seen an alarm on the front door, but in this crazy house, it was likely the alarms were on the outside, to keep the kids in, rather than to keep the bad guys out. He stood there stewing through different variables of his escape plans and with the combination of his mind being so preoccupied and Matt being so quiet, he didn't notice the bigger boy standing just behind him.

  Matt punched him in the back of the head.

  Thankfully, Curt was too stunned to even cry out. The room spun around sickeningly and for a moment he couldn't stand, but sagged against the sink. It was all he could do to hold himself up, but then the room spun again, this time in reality as Matt pulled him around. Despite his small size, Curt was a very good fighter, but there was no fight left in him after the sucker punch, and luckily, Matt wasn't looking for a fight.

  He yanked Curt to a standing position and then began to yell at him in a silent fashion, gesticulating madly, but getting his point across all the same. Curt was being too slow.

  With a final shove, Matt left in a silent huff. After that, Curt definitely began cleaning faster, and he would have been faster still, if he didn't feel the need to look over his shoulder every few seconds.

  Twenty minutes after the punch, he moved on to the main floor hall. Here, despite his head pounding away with a sharpness that kept him blinking, he set to work, dusting with a will. But he had barely begun, when Matt showed up and he wore a look of fresh anger. Curt Followed him warily back to the powder room, and Matt snatched up two of the pictures of the little room and began pointing at them with a face that suggested Curt was an imbecile. He had missed something.

  Spotting the error in the first picture came easily, the hand towel lay an inch too far to the left, but he could see nothing wrong with the second picture of the floor-mat. He could only give the older boy an embarrassed shrug, thinking he was about to be hit again. Matt rolled his eyes and pulled Curt to his knees; there he ran his hands along the edge showing how the mat lay imperfectly aligned with the tile pattern of the floor.

  Tugging it into place, Matt straightened and eyed the bathroom as if he were involved in a military inspection. The older boy then backed out, pulling Curt along with him and handed over the picture of the bathroom door, which showed it open about four inches wide. Curt adjusted the door, something he hadn't done before and looked to the older boy for approval. He didn't get it, but he also didn't get hit again, instead Matt turned without another
look and slid away.

  For a twelve year old, Curt possessed an amazing eye for detail, however Miss Feanor demanded a level that he worried was simply beyond him, and he went back to his dusting, doubting that he could avoid being punished for very long. It just didn't seem possible. He paused wondering how anyone, even a crazy person could find biting a proper punishment and lifting his shirt, he looked again with revulsion at the bruises and bite marks.

  With an inaudible groan, he lowered his shirt and returned to work.

  The drudgery of his chores continued on for well over another hour with Matt making periodic inspections, but one punch seemed to have been enough for Curt. Making sure to eye the pictures from every angle, he strove in sweaty anxious silence to make his areas of responsibility perfect. He took the lack of hitting, coupled with the sour looks of disappointment that Matt gave him, as proof that he had somehow completed his chores properly.

  Curt felt completely exhausted.

  Without knowing exactly what he should be doing, he went to put away his cleaning supplies. But he had only just got to the top of the stairs when a stressed out looking Paul, winking as though he were sending a message in Morse code, pulled him into the bathroom. There, the blonde boy handed him a new toothbrush and made it clear that Curt had to get ready for bed, fast. The little thief nodded in understanding, however in truth, he didn't. Judging by the light filtering in past the shuttered windows, and his own internal clock, he guessed the time to be somewhere around seven. Far too early for bed, but after everything he had been through, he didn't bother to ask questions and did as he had been asked.

  After he used the bathroom, he went to his room and in his small dresser, discovered a pair of lime-green pajamas that he slipped into. Even though he felt tired, Curt found it strange going to bed so early and he popped his head out of his bedroom door to see if the others were getting ready too.

  Paul wasn't; he was cleaning the upstairs bathroom with a frantic speed. Wearing a hard look of determination, he wiped down surfaces and polished the chrome as if his life depended on it.

  There was someone else cleaning as well. The blonde girl, dressed in an ill-fitting pair of pajamas, washed the floor of the hallway on her hands and knees, backing toward him as she went. It was an intriguing sight.

  She worked the brush in a circular fashion and as she did, her bottom shimmied in a small circular motion as well. With her pajamas fitting so poorly, being at least a size too small, Curt found himself gawking openly. Looking over her shoulder a minute later, the blonde found him gawking as well.

  It was a few moments before he noticed her looking at him, and when he did, his face went hot with embarrassment. Turning quickly to head back into his room, he walked into his partially open door, hitting the side of his face sharply. Now the heat in his cheeks went straight to his ears like a wind driven fire, but when he heard a snort of amusement come from her direction, he fled into his room.

  Once in, he shut his door as quietly as he could and sagged back against it, shaking his head at how stupid he had been. Despite her being slightly smaller than him, the blonde girl seemed older than Curt, and on a certain level, a sexual level, he felt intimidated by her. There were only two groups of people that he ever had trouble speaking with: good-looking teenage girls and priests. The latter he suspected of possessing secret knowledge and he worried that they could see through his lies. He avoided priests like the plague.

  It was quite the opposite situation when it came to teenage girls. An interesting thing about girls was that there had been a time when he could hustle them with relative ease. They fell for his patented, sad/cute/lost look, almost without effort on his part, however in the last year or so, even though his looks hadn't failed him, his tongue had begun to. And hustling them started to take on an extra challenge, one that he failed at with startling frequency. But still he tried, and many times, he lost sight of what he was exactly trying for.

  Picturing the blonde girl's bottom, shimmying in tight little circles, he sighed loudly and as if someone had been listening just for this, his door came open with a jerk. He jumped feeling guilty.

  Paul stuck his head in to the room and glanced around. The older boy's face went from concerned/curious, to strictly concerned in a flash.

  'Where are your pictures?' he asked by pantomiming operating a camera, coupled with a quick shrug.

  Curt pulled the pictures from his dresser and was just handing them to Paul, when he caught sight of the shocked look on the boy's face. Paul stared at the open dresser drawer as if a dead body had been mixed in with the tangle of clothes. After snapping his head around at the darkening window, Paul quickly yanked out the drawers of the dresser and laid them on the bed. He then snatched the photos from Curt's hands, rifled through them, and found the pictures of the bedroom that Curt had overlooked.

  'Make the drawers look just like this and hurry!' Paul said by way of hand gestures, pointing first at the pictures, then to the drawers and then tapping his wrist quickly.

  The two boys worked speedily, folding clothes and laying them back in the drawers with an exactness not normally found in teenagers. Each article had to be folded just so, or Paul would point at it in a harsh manner and Curt discovered that his hands were beginning to shake with nervousness. Paul had a real fear coming off of him in waves and with his constant glances to the window, checking the progression of the advancing night; he had Curt feeling it as well.

  Finally, they were finished to Paul's satisfaction and without further hesitation or explanation, the bigger boy said, 'Get in bed, now!' There wasn't much in the way of pantomiming this, just a good deal of shoving and with Paul's fear ratcheting up, Curt hastened to get in.

  He wanted to know what all the rush was about, but Paul pushed him down onto the pillow and gave Curt a final warning. Pointing at his own eyes and shaking his head and then tugging on his ear, he motioned, 'Don't look. If you hear anything.'

  With that, Paul covered Curt over with the blanket.

  Chapter 4

  Steps in the Night

  1

  Lying under his covers, Curt at first felt a great fear. Paul had been so frantic about the coming night that his fear had rubbed off on Curt, but after a while when nothing happened, the only thing that he felt was an intense stuffy heat.

  He slowly pulled the covers back an inch at a time and found his room darker than he had expected. Paul must have turned off the light as he had left and with the setting sun and the shuttered window, the room was drenched in an unsettling gloom. Feeling a sudden and very rare nervousness about the dark, Curt sat up slowly, trying to see through the murk into the darker corners of his room, but there was nothing to see and the same was true with the closet.

  He was alone.

  And he felt loneliness. Just as his fear of the dark, this new feeling was quite unusual for him. Although he could be glib and gregarious, Curt in truth preferred being alone. People in general annoyed him, with their hypocritical selfishness, their tarnished self-righteousness and above all their stupidity.

  But now he missed people.

  Wishing he were back in his lair at Ben Franklin elementary, he stared out at the crack of his door. It was from here that the only real light in the house made its way into his room. From the angle of the dim light, he guessed that only the family room remained lit.

  A shadow passed in front of his door.

  Curt slipped under his covers, moving beneath them smoothly like the moon ducking behind a swift flowing cloud. Lying completely still, he breathed as lightly as he could, in attempt to hear the person in the hallway, but the person didn't remain there for long. Without hearing the slightest noise, Curt could sense that the air had shifted slightly in his room and he guessed that his door had been opened further.

  Under the blanket he tensed, his muscled becoming tightened coils, ready to spring at the first sign of an attack. He felt Miss Feanor's presence. She seemed to be just over him and when she touched the blanke
t, he thought he'd scream, however the noise caught in his throat. The blanket bunched in two places on either side of his head and he was sure that she would yank back the covers, but instead she moved them higher up, perhaps covering him better.

  With that, her presence seemed to pull away from him and a moment later, he felt the air shift again, in that insignificant way, which made him suspect that she had left his room. Curt was desperate for air, but he feared that she had laid a trap for him and that she had only pretended to leave and was now standing in the dark near the door.

  She was crazy after all.

  His fear kept him paralyzed under the blanket, despite the fact that the air had become stiflingly hot. Minutes dragged slowly by and Curt decided he'd count as patiently as he could to a thousand and if he hadn't heard anything by then he would get some air.

  He never made it to a thousand. Somewhere after two-hundred, his mind wandered and he found himself thinking of the blonde girl and her shimmying bottom again. Realizing this, he forced his thoughts back to counting, but a dreadful feeling of suffocation began to increase on him and just after six-hundred, he gave up.

  Still he had the presence of mind to move with careful precision. He inched the blanket back at a snail's pace, but when the cool air of his room hit him, his presence of mind went out the window and he gulped it in greedily, his chest heaving, drawing air. Thankfully, the room was empty.

  Maybe it hadn't been Miss Feanor creeping about, maybe it had been Paul, he thought.

  Of everyone in the house, Paul had shown him the greatest kindness and it seemed like something the boy would have done. But the feeling remained, that it had been Miss Feanor, and Curt considered it likely that it had been one of the nicer personalities that made up her schizophrenic mind. Thinking it possible that the crazy lady was still lurking about the house, Curt pulled the covers back over his head, and this time he fashioned a tunnel to breathe through. He could see a little as well, but only just the area near the top of his bed.