The Punished

by Peter Meredith

  He lost all control.

  His face turned instantly red and there was a murderous jealousy in his eyes as he came full into the room. As Matt advanced on him, his face contorting and his throat working up and down, the smaller boy set his feet against the frame of his bed, preparing and just as Matt reached out for him, Curt eluded him with a beautiful backwards somersault across the bed. Regaining his feet, with only a small thud on the floor, he sized up the situation, which didn't look good for him, being trapped in his own bedroom, but just then, the unspeakable happened.

  Matt spoke.

  In frustration and rage, he said, "Hugn!"

  It wasn't much of a word, yet it had a tremendous effect on the moment. Almost immediately, Matt lost the ability to organize the muscles of his face and they took his features through every range of human emotion in a matter of seconds. Finally, they settled on something that looked like a constipation attack and he turned from the room and fled quietly, his hands pulling at his own hair.

  During that time Curt could do nothing but stare in amazement, though once the boy left, he slipped around his bed with a wide toothy grin and stared after him. Turning back, filled with elation, he saw Amber hadn't stirred in the least during this very brief confrontation and still sat staring at the floor. In heartbeat, Curt's elation turned upside down and he became alarmed for her.

  Sliding quickly to her, he dropped into a kneeling position in front of her and looked up into her face. No longer did she look like a manikin, but rather a corpse. And forgetting all about Matt and indeed, about where he was, he too spoke.

  "Amb..." He caught himself in a flash, yet still he sucked in a sharp breath as a stab of fear at the sound of his own voice struck him. Twisting around to look at the door, he froze in place for many seconds, waiting for the dread sounds of approaching doom, but as nothing happened, he turned back to the blonde girl. Her eyes were as wide and empty as a Montana sky and just as blue. With a growing fear for her, he waved his hands in front of them, but nothing happened.

  However, when he gave her shoulder a little shake, she came instantly awake.

  "...With the yarn. Did you see..."

  He berated himself for being so slow. The volume of the words unexpectedly spilling out of her mouth, had froze him in place for an instant and it took him over a second to lunge forward and clamp a hand over her mouth.

  Those six words had been the loudest thing he had heard in the house since Miss Gladys had left five days ago and the air in the room came straight away alive with fear. Moreover, that horrid feeling of malignant anticipation grew about them.

  Amber was aware of what she had done and her pale blue eyes grew huge as she stared over Curt's shoulder at the doorway, leading to the darkening hallway. Curt desperately wanted to turn back and look as well, but there was a voice within him telling him to remain completely still and quiet. He could only kneel, looking into her eyes, hoping he would see what was coming from her expression.

  Amber seemed like a rabbit in her fright and he could feel her heart thudding crazily beneath his right arm. Now he had another reason to hold to that position, which had quickly become painful, he felt certain that if he moved, even the slightest, she would bolt out of the room. And they held to their positions long after he had lost feeling in both legs and his right arm.

  Finally, he relaxed and the air around them seemed to relax as well. He felt as though he had dodged a bullet and he tried to give her a smile of reassurance, but Amber shook it off, leaving the room in a hurry. Despite the fact that he was damp with the sweat of his fear, Curt wondered whether they were all being ridiculous about this whole thing.

  Together the four teenagers could overpower Miss Feanor with relative ease, in fact he could kill her himself, under the right circumstances. He had never killed anyone before and had never thought of himself as that sort of criminal, but any jury would see it as a clear case of self-defense.

  He decided to write to Paul on the subject, but as he read the older boy's note from earlier that day, he had second thoughts about whether he could trust the blonde boy so wholeheartedly with such a delicate subject.

  Chapter 9

  Set Up

  1

  Hi Curt,

  Everyone is on the edge cause it's been 4 days since the last punishment and everyone gets to feeling presure. Since i got here, the longest we have gone between punishments is 8 days and normally its around 5-6 days. You don't look good and if you feel the need to crack and just scream, no one will think badly of you. Actually they may like you better cause you have gotten it out of your system. if you do, try to do it in your room. its a little bit better.

  It almost seemed to him that Paul was hinting for him to crack, like it would be good thing. Suddenly Curt felt a need to reconsider trusting Paul, at least on the subject of murder. But on the subject of Matt, there was too much animosity between the two boys to worry about a lack of trust.

  Paul,

  i dont think i will crack just yet. The rain really saved me and i feel much better. Hopefully, i will last a little while longer. How do we deal with Matt? if the presure is on, he will only get meener. What do you do? Do you know anything about moris code? i'm trying to come up with a plan for dealing with matt. Whats SOS? Amber says, you two used to rite notes, do you still?

  Curt didn't like the note. Writing was a poor medium for lying, especially on single ply toilette paper. He had no plan concerning Matt and Morse code; he actually wanted the information in order to signal the outside world using his ceiling light. The idea had come to him the night before when Paul's light had flicked on briefly. He had wondered if he were being signaled in that way and he recalled the use of Morse code he had read about in one of his many stolen textbooks. However, other than the fact that dots and dashes had been used to signify letters, and that ships had sent out SOS calls when they were sinking, he knew next to nothing. It looked terribly complicated, but he figured he had time to learn.

  After writing the note, Curt wanted to go to the family room to see if there were any books there that might mention Morse code, instead he ran into Paul, who unfortunately told him it was time for dinner. Curt wasn't hungry. He should've been starving, but the idea of spam and carrots killed the hunger pains neatly, and setting aside his mission, as he saw it, to the family room, he went down to the kitchen.

  As he had at breakfast, Curt kept his eyes off his dinner plate and for the most part only looked at Amber. To look at the others was far too upsetting. Paul's twitch had progressed, Matt was still Matt and the mouse kept shooting bits of rice and carrot out through her constantly moving lips. To Curt's surprise, whispers came out as well. They were barely over the sound of her breathing, but they were still in the low range of audible. He tried to catch what it was that she was saying, however the whisper seemed mostly composed of the letter "S" or the "Sh" sound.

  She sat right next to Miss Feanor, but the mad woman appeared not even to notice the tiny noise. Her muddy brown eyes were far away in another world.

  So Curt ignored the others and did his best to make eye contact with the blonde he now thought of as his girl friend, but she ate robotic like and her eyes never came around in his direction. In fact, her eyes never focused on anything and he noticed that she missed her mouth with her fork frequently, it was disturbing.

  There was a lot that was disturbing about the dinner. Chiefly, it was how the others were clearly feeling the pressure of the upcoming punishment. The rain and his ability to talk and be close to Amber had helped Curt's state of mind tremendously, but seeing the other children's anxiety only increased his own. He decided to wolf down the hated meal as quickly as he could and get to his chores before he began to feel that sense of losing it as he had before the rain came.

  2

  This was why, within minutes of sitting down at the table, his plate was clean and he was up, heading off to do his chores...again. The chores that night were difficult for him. He was supposed to be hurryin
g, but his mind wandered ceaselessly, hopping from memory to memory before settling into a nice fantasy about escaping the house with Amber.

  In his imagination, he had just been showing off his legendary lock picking skills to the helpless blonde girl, when he heard a whisper behind him. He had been in the downstairs hall, wiping off the microscopic particles that he couldn't see, but assumed had gathered on the knick-knacks during the last day, when he heard the noise. It wasn't the sound of sock covered feet swishing towards him, but that of a breathy whisper.

  Startled out of his daydream, he turned and saw the crazy eyed mouse heading toward him. She moved slowly, yet not very quietly and was easy to duck around, which he did, twisting away from her. Paul had suggested pushing her away, however the idea of touching her disgusted him, but in the end, he was forced to. She kept coming at him over and over, no matter how much he dodged. Finally, he gave her a hard shove and it was like turning a wind-up car, she walked off in the direction in which she had been pushed, knocking into a wall as she went.

  It was a horrible sight.

  Returning to his dreary repetitive work, he forced himself not to daydream and to be more on guard, which proved useful in two ways. First, he finished his chores quickly and second, he caught sight of Matt on two separate occasions and neither time did the older boy look as if he were just out for a stroll. Curt felt like a sparrow stalked by mountain lion and it set him on edge.

  For as long as he could remember, he had been a thief, and he had fancied himself the quietest, the slickest, and the coolest under pressure. But Matt, with his constant nasty presence had him second-guessing himself. With his chores finished early, Curt decided to turn the tables on the older boy and went in search of him.

  Surprisingly he was only feet away, just in the dining room, dusting like mad and at first, he didn't see Curt in the doorway. When he finally did, Curt fought hard to suppress a huge smile at the older boy's look of shock. Matt glared at him for a moment, looked slightly confused for another, glared again and then went back to work. Curt decided to test the older boy. Leaving the room, he stopped just outside of it, stripped off his long sleeve turtleneck, waited a moment and tossed it down the hallway. It made only a very small sound. Within seconds, Matt had crept to the doorway and peeked around the corner, but jumped again startled at the sight of Curt standing there.

  Curt snorted quietly and retreated as Matt turned toward him. There was an urge within him to turn and slide off down the hall, however five days with the older boy had taught Curt never to turn his back on him, since that was when Matt was most dangerous. So he stood his ground and sure enough, Matt eventually went back into the dining room.

  He allowed himself a moment of elation at this and then took off in a quiet fast slide up the stairs to his room grabbing his shirt on the way. He would change and get ready for his ridiculously early bedtime and then zip back down to keep an eye on Matt. Oddly, there was a bag sitting on his bed and when he looked into it, he saw that all of his borrowed clothes were neatly folded up in it.

  Could he be moving out? His heart jumped happily at the thought and he pictured himself waving goodbye to Paul and Amber as he stepped out the front door. However, he then saw a little note on top of the clothes.

  Put your dirty clothes in the bag and set it outside in the hall. Put these where they belong.

  Curt deflated at this. And feeling stupid for even thinking he would ever be allowed to leave, he went through the motions of putting the clothes away. He almost forgot how he was going to keep watch over Matt and when he remembered, he went down the stairs in a gloom. He could tell his emotions were getting away from him again, because inadvertently he startled the older boy for a third time, yet despite the panicky twitchy jump Matt performed, Curt could only look at him dully.

  This was probably a good thing, since Curt wasn't trying to irritate the older boy; he just wanted to keep an eye on him. But he didn't have long to do that either, because Matt, who finished cleaning the living room a few minutes later, scurried upstairs in a huff. Curt trailed after him, making sure to leave plenty of space between them, but the older boy simply went into his room, shutting the door behind him.

  Curt then went to use the bathroom that he shared with Paul and Amber, pausing to watch the shimmying bottom of the blonde girl. He wished that she'd turn around and acknowledge him, but she went on cleaning and he knew that if she had turned, he would have only seen the dead eyes of her listless self. When he was in the bathroom, he found Paul's note and the paranoid kid within him saw it as a reaffirmation that Paul wanted him punished.

  Hi Curt,

  I read a book and they used Morse code, I think SOS is three long, three short, three long, but those were sounds not lights. What are you thinking about doing? Matt is hard to take, I guess you just have to get used to him. Amber and I used to write notes back and forth, but she got caught and got punished and now she won't do it any more. I'm happy that the rain made you feel better, but sometimes after it makes it worse, cause you remember the sound and it starts to become a fuzzing noise in your head. Fuzzz! It can drive you nuts.

  Just as soon as he finished reading the note the first time, Curt could suddenly hear the fuzz sound that Paul referred to. The house was so dead silent that the fuzz, which reminded him of static from an improperly tuned radio, grew louder filling the void where normal sound should have been.

  It seemed to grow very loud, very quick, forcing Curt to cover his ears, but this did no good. The sound now seemed to fill the inside of his skull and it shifted, suddenly forming a long, apparently endless tone, much like a dial tone and it raged hugely in his mind. He knew the noise wasn't real, but that didn't stop the need within him to scream it away and he was very close to crying out.

  He pulled at his hair. He paced back and forth in the small white tiled room and he even began slapping his head, but nothing stopped the eternal tone from ringing. At length, he turned on the water in the sink to splash his face, but he paused as his ears finally found something real they could hold on to.

  The tiny sound of the water trickling out of the faucet. Amazingly, it had the strength to push back against the ringing in his head and for a long time he stood, bent over with his head in the sink.

  Paul had done this to him on purpose.

  Curt knew it as a fact, not as part of his paranoia. He had even been warned by Amber that Paul might try something. And he remembered how she had pleaded with him not to hold it against Paul. It was absurd to think Curt wouldn't, in fact, just then he hated Paul more than he hated Matt. The eldest boy at least hadn't pretended to befriend him.

  He seethed in a silent rage at the betrayal, and began plotting all sorts of improbable revenge scenarios, but a minute later he heard a voice in his own mind speak a single word.

  'Hypocrite.'

  3

  It's not the same, he thought to himself. But it was the same, essentially.

  There had been many times over the past six years that Curt had falsely befriended all sorts of people, and in the last four months this number had been growing. He had discovered an interesting tactic to breaking and entering, he called it befriending and entering. It had become nothing for him to search out lonely marks at the different schools that he made rounds at and get chummy with them, hinting at how long it had been since he was invited to a sleep over. The power of suggestion was a strong force and usually within a day, he would have his invite. The parents of these unfortunate loners would always be gung-ho for junior's new best friend or in many cases, first best friend to come for a sleep over, not realizing they were opening the chicken coop to the fox. Curt made it a point never to steal during these all night bore-a-thons, but instead he used the time to eat and make discreet inquiries.

  "Do both your parents work?"

  "Do you have any older brothers and sisters?"

  "What are you doing for summer vacation...winter break...spring break?"

  Later, just before sunrise, he
'd 'lift' a set of the keys, normally the mother's, and make sure that he was out of the house with a proper thank you just after breakfast. A week or two later, he would then burgle the home, usually in the middle of the day, making sure to gouge at the lock with a screwdriver, disguising the fact that a key had been used to gain entrance.

  No one ever suspected a twelve-year old boy was behind these break-ins.

  This sort of B&E was quite profitable as well as easy. But now trapped in Miss Feanor's house, Curt cursed the ease of it all. It had made him lazy and he had done little to learn how to pick a lock. He knew only the very basics, pins, tumblers and such, but he had never tried more than to pick the simplest locks.

  He could always ask his new 'best friend' Paul, if he knew anything about picking locks. The thought made him shake his head in frustration and he suddenly wondered if the older boy knew anything about Morse code at all, as he had mentioned in his note.

  Now suddenly, everything Paul had ever said or done became suspect in Curt's eyes, but then he remembered the fight he had with Matt. The two boys had fought simply because Paul was helping him out and Curt would have cracked for certain that night without intervention.

  He breathed out tiredly, not knowing the truth behind anything and left the bathroom without a glance at Paul, who stood patiently outside it. Going to his room, he was pleasantly surprised to see it still in one piece. But he no longer trusted anyone or anything and went through it inch by inch, making certain that it was indeed perfect. He then slunk about the house re-checking his areas and only just climbed into bed when the hall light shut off behind him.