The Punished

by Peter Meredith

  Curt got the hint and cast his features back into dour somber look. Smiling in Miss Feanor's house was clearly a suspicious activity. Paul went to the bathroom and a few minutes later came out, moving with very deliberate slowness.

  'Don't go running for the bathroom.' Paul's body language told him. So Curt forced himself to again count to a thousand, or rather that was his aim, but he gave up around five hundred and scooted into the tiled room.

  Hi Curt,

  You can never scream, or make any noise. EVER! You can't escape throogh the windows and doors, don't even try. Mat hates everyone. He has to be Mr. Perfect and thinks that the only way to be perfect is if everyone isn't. You know what i mean? But there is another reason that he is after you. He wants you to crack. He wants you to get punished and soon, so be on the lookout for him. When i first got here he said that he held the record for going the longest without being punished- three and half days. Beth won't hurt you, but she will get you both punished.

  Three and a half days without being punished? That didn't seem right to Curt, who hadn't seen or heard anyone being punished yet.

  Paul,

  i've been here four days and haven't seen anyone get punished yet. How much noise does it take to get punished? i screamed into my pillow earlier, but nothing happened. Will i be punished tonite? Beth came after me with her hands out, i think she was going to try to tell me something or grab me. When is lunch?

  After Curt planted his note, Paul studiously avoided the bathroom, for what must have been an hour. This drove the younger boy up the wall and he took to pacing in his room and counting for as long as he could. He had hoped that waiting for the notes, would help to stem the need for him to scream, and it did, but only for those brief moments when he was reading or writing them. The rest of the time, the scream was right there with him, hiding just below the surface of his throat, biding its time. Threatening to explode.

  Finally, the blonde boy went to the bathroom.

  Curt felt as if he were dancing on fire to get the note he was certain that Paul would leave him. It seemed that his precarious sanity rode on getting that little piece of toilette paper and it was all that he could do not to go rushing into the bathroom after Paul had left. He forced himself to wait, but he waited too long and Amber, looking very mopey slid in before him.

  He nearly cursed aloud, but held it in by the barest margins and was obliged to pace his room a hundred times after Amber had left.

  Hi Curt,

  i'm sorry, but we don't get lunch. Diner and brekfast are always the same, except for once we had two feet of snow and we ate some of the other food. Beth will try to grab you sometimes, just push her away. i don't know if you will be punished tonite. If you screamed, i didn't hear it, maybe they didn't either. The record is for who lasts the longest when they first get here. As far as i know, everyone gets punished there first nite, so that doesn't count. This is your fourth day, so if you make it through to tommoro you will have the record.

  The note hurt more than it helped. This was due mainly to the idea of not having lunch and his stomach growled insistently from then on at the notion of eating. Not that he expected any food prepared in this house to be any good, but it would at least break up his day, which since there was nothing to do, seemed so dreadfully long.

  For the first time in his life, he wished mightily for a watch. Before he had been a prisoner of Miss Feanor's, in his previous existence as a hustling thief, he had always hated watches. To him, they were a symbol of laws and rules, and he scoffed at people who lived their lives as if the little piece of metal and glass on their wrists should dictate where they went and whom they saw.

  But there were no watches in the house or clocks for that matter and for a second he considered trying to go about constructing a sundial, but first he had to write his return note.

  Paul,

  What do i get if i break the record? A cookie? Ha-ha How long did you last? Do you know anything about sun dials? i'm wishing i stayed in school longer. Did i ask about a telephone already? What about the mailman, have you tried to signal him in any way? i don't think i can last here, i'm going crazy trying not to talk.

  He planted the note and waited, and waited, trying his best to ignore his all-consuming need to talk. This was how it went for the rest of the afternoon, planting notes and then pacing his room endlessly with his fingers shoved into his mouth to keep from speaking. During that long afternoon, he would have frequent visitors from the other children, all of whom would stop by to eye him closely and other than Paul, they all looked as if they expected, as well as hoped that he would crack at any moment.

  When Curt would go to the bathroom and see the strange red-eyed boy with the wild tangled hair looking back at him from the mirror above the sink, he'd think he was on the verge of cracking up as well. For the time being, the notes kept him going.

  Hi Curt,

  Braking the record means putting off punishment, which is worth a millyon cookies! It will get better in a day or two, just try to hold on. We never get mail here, so there isn't a mailman. i've never heard a telephone ring, but once i heard Miss F talking quietly in the down stares bed room once, so there mite be one, but i never go in that room. i don't know anything about sundials, but i've seen them. i was in the 5th grade when they put me here, so i'm not so smart either.

  Paul,

  Your a brain compared to me, i only got threw the second grade before i quit going to class, it was to boring. But i have lived in a couple of schools and i read a lot, including text books which is kinda funny when you think about it. You said it will get better in a day or two, what happens then? Hold on to what? Theres nothing here but crazy people and silence(no ofence) i think i'm going crazy too. i can't think straight half the time and i feel like i'm about to explode. You never told me how long you lasted when you first got here.

  This was the last note that he wrote before Matt, with a hard look on his face, came up to tell him that it was time for dinner.

  3

  Dinner was not as expected.

  He had sat down, knowing full well he would see the same plate of food that he had already seen twice before and would again many times well into the future. But that foreknowledge didn't matter much since really, there was no preparing a person for a break with reality.

  It all happened so fast. Sitting down, he saw the white plate with its unkempt piles of carrots and rice, and its formed slabs of spam and suddenly the table fell away from him. Reality spun into the unknown, leaving behind only that plate with its rambling mounds of eternal bland sameness. Déjà vu became layered upon déjà vu and seeing his plate as it always was, sent a picture-echo rampaging through his mind, upsetting the carefully arrange teacups of his sanity.

  His plate seemed stacked upon another that looked just like it, and that was stacked upon another still.

  And then suddenly, his entire world turned into layers of spam and rice.

  It was impossible to blink away the image, and there was no seeing past the plate and now it was as if he was looking upon it for the hundredth time and then the two-hundredth. His eyes bugged out and his jaw worked in silent protest at what he was seeing. Thousands of plates stretched down before him, stilted and stacked, making stairs that twirled and twisted.

  He began to lose the feeling of the chair beneath him, and dimly he was aware of his chest expanding, filling with the air of a scream that was all but unstoppable. But he didn't care about a scream, not in the slightest, not then. That plate was the only thing in his universe.

  But thankfully, Matt, unable to wait for Curt to implode on his own, rescued him once again. From nowhere, according to Curt's warped senses, a carrot slapped him coldly, dead center in the middle of the forehead. It bounced off him and rolled away, like a little orange wagon wheel, and as it did so, Curt's eyes followed it hungrily.

  It seemed improbable, that someone would throw a carrot at his head, yet to his fragile mind, this was far more real than seeing hundred
s of plates of spam and rice, accordioning up and down in front of him. Therefore, he turned to the carrot, which acted in the most normal fashion, rolling from the table, it bounced a few times before coming to rest a few feet away.

  When he looked up, still attempting to right his mind, he saw the other children staring at him as they shoveled food into their mouths as fast as they could. Miss Feanor bent and picked up the carrot and looked at it strangely for a moment before she calmly put it on his plate. He almost protested this and would have, save for the fact that his mind still seemed only distantly connected to his body.

  Instead of protesting, he reached down without looking at his plate, and picking up a carrot, stuck it in his mouth and chewed. He finished his meal this way; bare handed, afraid to look down at what he was eating, afraid that his mind would fly away again. Slowly his mind came back to him as he ate, and with it came the sane fear of insanity.

  If one didn't counted his first day, which he slept through most of, he had been there only three days and already he was having mental issues. It was like his brain was a living mass of grey worms, each struggling against the next so that all his thoughts were starting to jumble and work at cross-purposes but what he did after dinner helped a lot; he cleaned.

  Even though he was just cleaning things that were still clean from the day before, he was at least doing something physical and it helped, not only to pass the time, but to focus him as well. His hands touched and knew each of the figurines; he traced the lines of theirs features, convincing himself of their reality. Soon he no longer doubted his eyes and rapidly, his mind was once again closer to what it had been and he thought with greater clarity during those two hours of useless cleaning that he had all day and as he worked himself into a sweat, he realized that Matt was not done with him yet.

  Because of that stupid record, Matt would want to break him as soon as possible, which meant either a physical attack or another round of destroying his room. Curt guessed the latter as the most obvious point of attack, and hurried through his chores hoping to have time to set the room straight, before Miss Feanor came through. But almost too late did he realize that he was vulnerable in other places as well.

  All of his areas of responsibility could be marred or rearranged at the last moment in such a manner that would invite punishment. With maybe ten minutes to go, Curt had finished his chores and zipped quietly down the hallway and up the stairs. At the top, a cold look from Paul greeted him and he knew without looking that his room was trashed and so without pausing, he skated past the blonde boy.

  Strangely, he felt good for the first time that day. This was a dilemma, a puzzle to be solved, a battle to be won. His keen mind and agile body reacted well to this sort of pressure and moving quickly with the barest whisper of his feet on the gleaming wood he went straight for Matt's room at the end of the upstairs hall and barged in.

  Thankfully, the older boy wasn't in the room and Curt opened the top dresser drawer, scooped out the clothes there, turned for the hallway and heaved them down the backstairs. Ducking back into the room, he opened the next drawer and threw the contents of it around Matt's room. The third drawer he took with him and zipped back to his room.

  There he went about setting his room to rights and with Paul's help, they were done just as Matt came in seething with silent rage. Curt dive rolled over his newly made bed and grabbed up the stolen drawer that sat just on the other side of it and threatened to unload the contents of it onto his floor.

  Matt stopped in his tracks.

  Curt was not very good at pantomiming yet, but he managed to get his point across.

  'I...look...downstairs table...clean...you get drawer...messy?...I dump drawer.'

  Matt glared fiercely, but sourly as well and he hurried off down the stairs. Curt followed slowly after with the drawer lifted ready to be dumped and watched as Matt arranged the nick-nacks properly on the running tables in the hall. Curt then pointed to the powder room.

  'I didn't touch that room,' the older boy said with a quick headshake. Curt believed him and in an effort to make peace between them, he handed the drawer to Matt, though he could have let it fly. And what's more, he followed after and picked up the clothes he had dumped down the stairs. Matt's face was unreadable at this.

  But there was no time to read into it further, Paul was glaring at him from down the hall and Curt suddenly remembered that the blonde boy had to finish as well. On winged feet, he noiselessly made it to the bathroom and brushed his teeth while watching Amber's bottom shimmy toward him.

  Feeling good, even triumphant at his small victory, he let himself become distracted by the sight. A moment later, Paul punched him the arm.

  'Move it,' the blow told Curt. Sheepishly he did so and was in bed minutes later with his lights out. One by one, he saw the other lights in the house wink out and then suddenly, one flicked back on for a moment and then it too went out for good. It had been Paul's and he worried for the boy.

  And then he worried for himself.

  Chapter 8

  The Record

  1

  Curt had much to worry about as he laid in the dark with the covers up over his head.

  There was still a chance that Matt had been lying about messing up the powder room not to mention, the older boy could've cleaned his own room up quickly and went back down stairs for more mischief. And there was this also, maybe he knew Miss Feanor's schedule so well that right now he was slipping up silently to Curt's door and that any second, he could expect an attack from the older boy.

  In alarm, he jerked the covers back and looked about. His now darkened room was empty, but just then a shadow loomed outside his doorway and he had to make a snap decision. Was it better to be hit or hurt by Matt or caught with his covers down by Miss Feanor?

  He slipped beneath his blanket.

  Hot sweaty minutes passed and when no sound came from the other side of his covers, Curt allowed himself to move but only enough to build his little breathing tunnel.

  Now he could worry in earnest.

  And he did. Lying there, he wondered if his scream from earlier had been too loud or if all of his little noises had added up enough to mark him as the child in need of punishment. Only time would tell and it took a very long time indeed. It felt like hours before Curt heard the first tell tale noise.

  Crreik.

  This was his fourth night and he knew now the number of the stairs. There were twelve and each heralded a coming doom with a slightly different call. Some were louder, others higher pitched and the fifth, held on to its sinister Crrrreik much longer than the rest. Together the twelve sly sounds were enough to push a boy over the brink of insanity, if he were near enough to the edge.

  And Curt had his feet dangling out over that terrible abyss.

  Earlier, as he had cleaned, he had marveled at how quickly he was succumbing to the insanity of the house. Foolishly, he had just assumed that he would possess a mental toughness that was superior to the other children, and this was mainly due to the fact that he hadn't started out as a well-adjusted All-American boy from a normal family. He thought that his life on the street would have hardened him in some way and he supposed that since he was nearing some sort of stupid record, it had.

  But all the same, there he was, huddled in a ball beneath his covers and at that first sound, his thumb had come unbidden to his mouth and he began to suck. In no way was he embarrassed by this, in fact he didn't even realize he was doing it. His whole mind was taken up with the coming teeth and the huge possibility that tonight he would be punished. The dread noise from the stairs was a countdown to this and his terror mounted as the sound came closer and closer. Crreik, crreik, crreik.

  Wwhhhhhh. His door opened in that near soundless way and somehow he forced his trembling body to go absolutely still.

  Again, the sly footsteps walked around his bed and then back, and for a moment Curt thought that she had passed on him once again, but then there was a new sound in his room. A soft li
ttle sigh; the breath of air that the plastic runners of his dresser drawers made as they were being pulled back.

  New fear flared within him as he worried about how well he and Paul had put his drawers back in order, but they must have done a good enough job because soon the drawers were pushed back into place and Miss Feanor left.

  Tonight she visited every room in turn staying a long time in each, and Curt refused to stir a muscle until well after she had moved on toward Matt and Beth's rooms. Even then, he did little but shift his position and wipe away the tears. He always cried.

  Thinking that the danger of the night had passed, Curt slept.

  2

  The next morning, Miss Feanor woke him again and just as she had the previous day, she pulled up his shirt and looked at his chest. She gave a small unreadable shrug at what she saw there and motioned that breakfast was ready. Curt nodded and tried to prepare himself for what was coming. Not the lukewarm oatmeal, that he could take, but it was the certain feeling of déjà vu that would accompany it, that he worried over.

  Heading into the nook, he decided that last night's policy of just not looking at the food was his best option. It wasn't easy keeping his head high while he ate, but it worked. Unfortunately, since he wasn't looking at his food, he was forced to look at his fellow inmates and that turned out to be nearly as upsetting. There was something decidedly wrong with all of them. Each of their personal eccentricities were more pronounced. Matt, who once wore a look of sour peevishness, now looked straight up angry, and not just at Curt, but at everyone.