The Punished

by Peter Meredith

  Amber had a slim and very pink tongue that came out and showed itself to him when she said the word. He couldn't stop staring at it, and it so captivated him that he barely heard the slight change in the tone of her voice a few minutes later. She had been talking about some movie star when she mentioned Curt's eyes.

  "Your eyes are a nice blue just like his," she said and now her voice wasn't nearly as high as it had been. "Don't you like so totally think so?"

  Curt loved going to the movies, but whom she was talking about, he hadn't a clue. "You're right. I never noticed before," he replied. Having your eyes compared to a movie star's was very nice and he felt a little warm glow at this.

  "But you have better lips than he does," she continued and now her eyes were full on Curt's lips and the warm feeling that had been filling him evaporated. "Your lips are like so much bigger...or fuller I think I mean."

  She licked her lips then, and he knew they were about to kiss.

  5

  His chest seized up at the thought, he had never kissed a girl before, not even his mother as far as he could remember. She bent slowly toward him and he licked his own dry lips with a tongue that was drier still and tried not to think about the strange excitement, which had laid a hold of him, it felt distinctly like a form of panic.

  They kissed and he was certain that he had been terrible. It was a long, very wet, open mouth kissed and when he pulled away with a desperate need for oxygen, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand as if a Great Dane had slobbered all over her. But despite this, she smiled at him.

  He smiled back as if it had been the most remarkable thing, though in truth he didn't know what to think of his first kiss.

  His body had failed him in such a way that it almost seemed like it wasn't his. For one, he hadn't been able to breathe at all. And then, there were his hands, which had suddenly felt over sized as well as ungainly and he hadn't known what to do with them. His heart had pounded and he had been hyper-aware of it and he was certain that Amber could feel it beating through his chest, but at the same time, he had gone numb from the waist down.

  All in all, it felt as if he were a first time juggler who had been forced to juggle flaming bowling balls.

  But he was eager for more.

  Their second kiss felt in no way different from the first and Curt knew instinctively that he was doing something wrong. It was like there was too much work involved and whats more, there didn't seem as though there was any passion to his kiss. He wasn't certain he knew what passion was, but he did know that he wasn't feeling it.

  When it came to kissing, his only frame of reference came from what he saw at the movies and so he tried to emulate the actions he had seen there, to disastrous effect. Many times the actors appeared to be so passionate about their kissing that it was as if they were practically chewing the face off their partner.

  "Oh! Ow! Hey that hurt a little," Amber pulled back holding her mouth. Their teeth had clashed together with painful force. Curt grabbed his mouth as well, it was more to hide his tremendous embarrassment from the older girl.

  "That didn't go..." Curt started to say, but as frequently was the case, was interrupted.

  "I'm so sorry," Amber cut in, blushing. "I've like, never kissed anyone before."

  Curt wanted to say something to reassure Amber, however the blush in her cheeks had done wonders for her and she suddenly became beautiful. She looked alive and healthy and normal. Her blue eyes were deeper in color than he had at first thought and they reminded him of a picture he had seen of a beautiful white beach running along the bluest water imaginable. Her eyes were just like that, the blue sitting in the porcelain white china of her skin. It made him want to kiss her again and so he did, but this time he just wanted to feel the red of her lips with his.

  So, he planted a small gentle kiss on her lips and this time he understood what all the fuss over kissing was about. There was an instant connection between them, one that was awash in feeling and nearly endless possibilities. They kissed for some time like this and as they did, Curt relaxed becoming less aware of the ungainliness of his body. But as that left him, he began to feel the first stirring of his sexuality. However, the heart stopping fever of his lust that he figured he was supposed to be feeling was nowhere within him, instead all he felt was a growing concern that Amber would notice his...thing.

  It would be difficult for her not to, they were sitting very close together and it was pointing up, right at her through his jeans.

  He shifted his position, laying his arm across his lap and broke away from the kiss hoping to take his mind off of it, "Wow, for someone who hasn't kissed anyone before, you're a really good kisser," he said. He had no idea if this was actually true, but he did enjoy the kiss. She wiped her mouth again with the back of her hand and smiled her thanks at him.

  "Really? I thought I was so terrible and..." She stopped talking abruptly. She had grabbed his hand from his lap to hold it and not only did her hand actually touch it, but worse, she then looked down in confusion at it. Her eyes went wide and her mouth came open in surprise.

  But Curt's eyes positively bugged and he felt his cheeks go instantly red, while his ears burned with embarrassed fire. In a flash he half-turned away crossing his legs, "I...I...it...I, uh." This was all he could splutter as he watched her face go from surprise to confusion. He was completely mortified about what he assumed was the improper way his body had reacted. He had seen part of a dirty movie once and what happened there was totally different from this.

  For one, they were adults and for two, they were naked.

  Having not been raised with parents, or an older brother, or even with actual friends, his understanding of sex was contorted to say the least. In his mind, people didn't have sex with their clothes on, sure they could, 'make-out', while dressed, but they then would have to go to a bedroom to do that thing that so confused him.

  Everything about sex was a puzzle to Curt, even the mechanics of it left him feeling stupid. He knew that his thing would go into the girl, but his, went straight out, at least most of the time, while a girl's thing was more upward and he pictured their bodies forming an odd T. This was in direct contradiction to the bit of the movie he had seen and he felt certain that his thing was broken. As further evidence of this, his thing would frequently grow for absolutely no reason, sometimes painfully so and it would remain that way for a long time.

  Not only that, his thing was weird looking, at least to him it was.

  6

  All this went through his mind in a wink and Curt felt a strong desire to apologize, but also an even stronger desire to hide. However, he was perfectly petrified in his shame and could only sit in his awkward position and seconds ticked by uncomfortably.

  At first, Amber stared at the floor, then an uneasy look came over her and she darted her eyes up to his face a couple of times.

  Standing up abruptly, she said, "Come on, I...uh want to show you something."

  "No, that's ok, I'm good right here," Curt replied, still covering up. His petrifaction wasn't entirely metaphorical and there was no way he was going to stand up anytime soon. But Amber had other ideas.

  Turning around she said very quietly, "I won't look, I promise."

  "Maybe you can show me later."

  "Uh-uh, it'll be too late soon, now come on," she insisted. Curt scrambled up and self-consciously pulled his shirt out to cover his erection. Amber turned around and immediately broke her promise by glancing down with nervous eyes at his crotch. She then peeked back to his face with a guilty look.

  'Come on,' she motioned and then taking one more quick look toward his thing, she slid silently out of his room. Curt looked down as well and shook his head at the lump pushing out.

  "Jeez," he whispered in frustration and then slid after her. She waited in the hallway, just outside the bathroom door.

  'Be very quiet,' she motioned with her large eyes while her index finger went to her lips. Then taking more care than was usual fo
r her, she slid to Paul's door, nine feet away and with a delicate slow twist of the knob, she cracked it open an inch.

  Now Curt was very confused. He stood there waiting for further instruction from Amber, but she had her eye to the crack. When she turned back, it was with an almost sick look on her face.

  'Come here and see,' she pointed.

  What he saw through the door was unnerving and though he had spied on hundreds of people, perhaps even thousands, he felt a guilty shame at this particular view. Stretched out, onto each other and totally naked, were Paul and the mouse. They were making love in the most graceless and inelegant fashion. Not that Curt was in any way an expert, but what they were doing seemed altogether uncompelling. They ground their sad and dreadfully skinny bodies together, their faces contorting in what looked like pain. Similar to Curt, they seemed unable to overcome the inertia of the strictly enforced silence of the house and they moved against each other without noise, but also without any passion or even enjoyment as far as he could tell.

  He stared for all of two seconds, before Amber pulled him away, taking him by the hand and drawing him back to his room. She looked at him, still with that slight sick look on her face, but now he re-interpreted it, as nervousness bordering on fear.

  "Do you want to do that?" she asked in a low whisper.

  Her question sent a tremor of anxiety so deep into him that he felt it in his bones and now it was his turn to look sick. The idea of being naked in front of Amber, especially now that he was covered in nasty green and yellow fading bruises was almost enough to make him wish for an end to the rain.

  "I don't know, do you want to?" He figured that she did, otherwise why else would she have shown him, Paul and the mouse. His question was a delaying tactic only, and he struggled hard to find a cool sounding reason not to.

  His desire for sex was as immature as he was. He had only just begun to look at girls in that way for maybe the last year or so, and to progress from his first kiss to making love in the course of an afternoon was too much for him and there was now a trickle of nervous sweat running down his back.

  "I don't know...maybe. I thought you did, cause of your...thing," she retorted with another glance at his crotch.

  His thing, in the space of the last minute had shrunk smaller than its usual size and was currently in hiding. He didn't know what to say to her. There was no way he was going to explain the defective nature of his penis to her, but it turned out he wouldn't have to, because almost immediately she started talking again.

  "We don't have too if you don't want to...I don't know if I want to. I like kinda do, but...I'm a little scared. You know what I mean?"

  "I..." was all he could get out before she began to speak again.

  "Matt and Paul both want to do it with me, but I can't. Matt is like way too much of a jerk and Paul...he's like a brother to me. He helped me out so much at first, you know."

  "I..."

  "But I don't want you going to Beth." She took a deep breath, "So...if you want to, we can do it."

  She paused longer than usual, but it was only from nervousness, not from a lack of something to say.

  "I..." he said again.

  "Have you done it before? You're awfully cute and you're such a good kisser..." She left off and Curt waited for the pause to draw out a long time before he even considered answering her.

  Awfully cute? He had never been called that by a girl before and it did wonders for his confidence, which had faded to nothing over the last few minutes.

  "I've never done it before...I'm only 13 you see," he lied casually, since he was only a few weeks away. "I don't think I want to do it just yet...I mean, I've only just kissed you after all, but I promise not to go to Beth."

  "You won't? Good, good. Thanks a lot," she was practically in tears with relief, which had him wondering, what all this meant. "You don't know what this means to me," she added as if she were a mind reader.

  "I guess, I really don't," he said truthfully. She gave him a sharp worried look at this, as if she suspected him of attempting something underhanded.

  "What do you mean? Everyone needs someone...I need someone," she began to sound desperate to the point of being in pain. "Beth already has Matt and Paul, and I know she has her eye on you. I can do the...uh, that...uh, the same things she does, ok? We can do it right now..."

  She began to paw at him and he was forced to hold her hands, "Amber, please. It's ok. We don't have to do anything just now. I'm just trying to understand. Are you trying to say you want to be my girlfriend?"

  Her eyes were wet with tears, "Yes...please, I need someone. She's trying to get me all...uh, all...what's the word? When there is nobody, uh, like near you?"

  "Alone?"

  "Yes, she wants me to be alone, all by myself."

  "Why would she want that? Maybe she is just lonely too," Curt said reasonably.

  Amber looked around the room, or so Curt thought at first, but then he realized that she was listening. And it was with a much softer voice that she continued.

  "She wants me crazier than her. She wants me to be punished, all the time."

  Curt was finally getting some real information from her, "Why? Did you do something to her?"

  At first Amber seemed insulted by this question and before answering she looked at him as if he were being terribly rude, "No of course not. How could you ask that?"

  "Then why..."

  "Why is she trying to get me punished?" she asked, shocked that he wouldn't know. "You may be cute but you aren't too...brittle? Or uh, smart I mean. She wants me punished so she won't be. It's as simple as that." His look must have shown his confusion, because she only paused a second before going on, "Somebody has to be punished, right?"

  "No, I don't think so."

  To this she gave him a queer look, "I guess you are still...frag...is it fragile? When you are new to a place? Darn it! I mean new, that's the word I wanted. You are still new here." She shook her head with angry frustration over forgetting her words. "The others all use the word punishment, but it's not really punishment. You can be like perfect in every way but the teeth will still come, they are...I don't know the right word to describe this, but I think that hungry is close. They have to come, like it's a need. That's why the first day after someone gets punished, it's usually more relaxing around here. The need is gone."

  "They have to come? This whole house is so crazy," he said. "How do you keep from getting like Beth? Her eyes scare me!" He gave a little nervous laugh at this, "Paul said that I should hold on to something, to get through this. What do you hold on to?"

  She started to answer, "One time..." Suddenly her eyes narrowed at him and little lines creased her forehead, but then she turned unnaturally cheery, "Just stuff really, nothing much. You should ask Paul about this anyways, I'm sure he will tell you."

  She was easily the worst liar he had ever encountered. Quite possibly from lack of practice, yet either way, he didn't want to upset his new friendship and said, "I will, thanks."

  "Does Paul write you notes and leave them in a book?" Her manner was far too casual.

  "He did at first, but..." he trailed off purposely, hoping to draw information from her. Her eyes narrowed at first and then she nodded as if understanding.

  "He's fine right now, but if he ever stops writing notes that means he'll want you punished pretty soon...but please don't hold it against him," she said in honesty. "He's normandy...norm... uh, usually such a good guy, but there's a lot of pressure you know and he gets kinda," she waggled her hand a little suggesting Paul would go a slightly crazy.

  Curt believed her. In fact, he was sure they all were a little crazy. "Should I hold it against Matt?" he asked, knowing that he would, irregardless of her answer.

  "Yeah...you should, he is so nasty about everything." Her delicate pale face darkened at this, but then she grew sad, "I don't want to talk about him or the house. The rain sounds like it getting...lesser? Is that the word? Lighter? Either way it could end
soon and I don't want to waste my time... how bout you tell me more about you. You don't do much talking do you?"

  7

  For a little while he spoke about inconsequential aspects of his life, however as he expected, within a minute, she had taken over the conversation and he happily listened to her chatter on sweetly. He would have rather went back to kissing her, but it seemed the mood had left her, though she still held his hand with a warm needy grip and it was enough.

  Unfortunately, the feeling of being on vacation ended soon after. The heavy rain gave way slowly, to a much quieter steady shower and this drifted into a fine drizzle. As it did, Amber's voice sank lower with each passing minute, until finally she stopped talking altogether and only sat in the growing dark, staring at the floor. Eventually, Curt got up and switched on the overhead light and saw that at some point in the last few minutes, she had transformed.

  Sitting so still as to appear lifeless, and with her perfectly white skin, Amber now resembled a manikin in a store window. She barely even blinked. It was unnerving having her sit like that on his bed, and Curt was a little afraid to touch her, or in fact, to move at all. With the passing of the rain, the house had once again, gloved itself in its constricting silence, but along with it, came a dreadful feeling of anticipation. It felt as though the house was waiting for something to happen and the feeling sent an army of goose bumps marching across his flesh. He decided to wait out this odd feeling in absolute silence but that was not to be.

  A few minutes of staring at Amber, as she sat with glazed over eyes looking at the floor, was all he was going to get, because Matt showed up then. As usual, Matt was absolutely soundless as he approached and only the small feeling of air announced his sneering presence to Curt. The relaxing rain had done nothing to calm Matt's hate for him, but Curt was surprised at how fiercely angry the boy became when he saw Amber sitting upon the bed.