The Punished

by Peter Meredith

  Somehow, from his hiding place in the cabinet, Curt was able to see that the person Matt laid upon the table was Amber. The older boy stared for a moment at the girl's disfigured body, before he stepped away out of Curt's vision. When he returned to the table, he carried a cookbook in one hand and a large knife in the other.

  Curt wanted to run. Above all else, he wanted to run and not look back. Only in the dream, he seemed frozen in place and couldn't turn his head even as the cookbook came open to the page marked Goulash.

  Matt brought the knife up.

  2

  Curt awoke with jarring suddenness, but he had been in the house long enough not to jump, or even twitch. Only his eyes moved, and though he wanted to take in great gulps of air, he didn't and forced himself to breath just as he had been.

  The ambient light slipping through the blanket told him that it was likely only minutes after sunrise, and with care, Curt pulled back the covers. He quickly noted that it was actually later than that and heading to the window; he saw that stern grey clouds hid the sun, a ray of hope struck him and he prayed for rain, in fact, he begged God for rain.

  But it didn't rain as he stood there peering up through the heavy shutters and after a while he decided he needed to check on Amber. She wasn't doing well. Her wrappings had come loose and the wounds had bled throughout the night, staining her covers a red and brown, the sight was horrible and he held back an audible gasp, but just barely.

  "It h-h-hurts so b-b-bad," she said between trembling lips.

  "Which one?" he asked, though he knew the hand with the missing fingers would hurt the worst and indeed, it was just that one that she held up. "Would you like me to wrap it tighter?" To this, she nodded while tears splashed down her face. She looked so much like a little kid then that it hurt and he wanted so bad to fix her, to keep her from any pain, but there was little he could do.

  When Curt turned to get more sheets, he saw Matt standing in the door and jumped back in alarm.

  "You don't have to worry, Curt," Matt said casually. In his belt, the stake was thrust downward like a play sword. Curt knew better. That hunk of wood could kill him readily enough. "I have never slept better in my whole life than I did last night. And for that reason, you won't be punished until this evening, right before bedtime. Just think, you won't have to do any chores."

  "But it might rain," Curt whined, desperate to avoid his fate.

  "So?" Matt whispered quietly.

  "So...it might rain," Curt repeated. He felt a weird need to cry and before he knew it, he had to blink back the tears, but it was no use and they soon spilled out of him. Ashamed, he kept his back to Amber.

  "I tell you what," Matt responded with a smirk on his face, "If a tornado comes along and rips down the front door, you can skip your punishment. How's that for a plan?" Matt started to leave but turned back, "Oh yeah, I've made breakfast."

  After he left, Curt didn't turn about. He kept looking at the empty doorway for a while longer until he felt that he could speak without his voice breaking, "I'll get those sheets."

  He was glad that Amber didn't say anything, but at the same time, he felt her eyes drilling into him and he knew she was going to ask about the plan when he got back. And she did.

  "Tell me of your plan," she whispered.

  In order to forestall her further he chose that moment to pull off her bandage in the quickest manner. "Oh! Uh...uh...uh." She groaned deep in her throat and tears bloomed in her eyes. For a long time he couldn't think past her poor hand. It bled freely as soon as the bandages had been removed and he was forced to pull her along to the bathroom so as not to make a bigger mess.

  "Don't look," he commanded her. He wished he didn't have to look. Her hand had become swollen to twice its previous size and he didn't know what to do other than bandage it up again and this he did with as much force as he could without making her cry...too much. It still bled and he decided to hold on to it with all the pressure as she could bear. It took a long time to stop the bleeding.

  During that time, she asked again about the plan. "I can't tell you...if Matt knew, or even suspected that you knew he would force the details from you and then..." He left off with purposeful vagueness.

  "Please tell me that you'll do it today, ok."

  "I can't tell you that either...the timing has to be perfect or we'll lose this chance forever and I don't think we will get another opportunity." 'Can you eat?' he decided to switch over to their version of sign language. The mood of the house was very hard to judge since the death of Miss Feanor, and he felt it better to be safe than sorry.

  "No. Not with Matt at the table. You are going to kill him, right? That is part of your plan?" She couldn't sign with her hands bandaged as they were.

  He nodded and hoped that his eyes didn't give away the fear that he felt sinking into the pit of his stomach at the very idea.

  3

  'I will bring food up here,' he signed. She shook her head looking sick to her stomach. 'You need food! Remember you tell me that?' he urged her.

  To this she nodded, but with heavy reluctance. After giving her a very light kiss, he went to the kitchen, moving with great caution. He didn't trust Matt. Though Curt figured he knew how the attack would occur; even armed with his stake, Matt was a bit of a chicken and would likely find Amber and use her to get to Curt. It had worked well enough twice already and if Matt tried it again, Curt knew he'd end up calling the creature a third time.

  Only Matt and Paul still sat at the table eating and Curt was outraged to see that they were eating his and Amber's food. After having only a single meal the day before, Curt wasn't in the mood to be picky and his need for food gave him courage. Looking as if he were going to start to whine about the injustice in front of him, Curt startled the two boys by grabbing the bowls with lightning quick moves and ran.

  He ran without worrying about noise and thus was far up the stairs before Matt had made it to the first step. Curt slowed only enough to move quieter, but made it to the bathroom in plenty of time to lock the door in Matt's face. Thankfully Amber hadn't moved.

  She didn't look like she had either the energy or the will to move, or to eat for that matter. And she was so lethargic that it took him the better part of two hours to get all the food into her; in truth, the loss of time wasn't a big deal. He had nowhere to go and actually hoped that Matt waited out there for him. It would only dull his senses. When Amber finally finished, he waited a good long time to make sure it wouldn't come hurling up again and then decided to put her to bed. She looked terrible. How a girl as white as her could look any more pale was a mystery, but somehow she managed to pull it off. There were great dark blue circles beneath her eyes and her lips looked a very light shade of pink.

  Curt worried for her, a thousand worries.

  Matt wasn't lurking outside the bathroom, which was a good thing since Curt still had no clue how he was going to deal with the older boy, especially with Amber on his arm. She moved listlessly, and tottered enough that he had to hold her up, barely making it to her bed before she collapsed with a groan. The next six hours he spent in more worry. Amber slept and he worried.

  He prayed for rain, but the clouds and the gods refused. His hands began to shake and his insides felt filled with a swarm of antsy butterflies. Even in his lungs, they swirled about keeping him from taking deep breaths. After a few hours, his legs began to jiggle. First one, then the other, back and forth uncontrollably. There would be no stopping this coming punishment, he decided. Hiding in the basement wouldn't work since he was sure that Matt could get Amber to scream her head off, what with her hands the way they were. Fighting the older boy seemed insane...

  An idea popped into his head, what if Curt had a stake as well? A bigger one, perhaps the size of a small spear? The concept shot energy into him and Curt ducked beneath Amber's bed. It was dark, darker than he expected and Curt pulled his head from beneath the bed to look to the window. The sun was setting behind the clouds, there wouldn't be much
time.

  He crawled beneath the bed and began fighting the wood, first with his hands and when that didn't work then with his sock covered feet. However, the planks were thick and he couldn't budge them. Next, he slithered out and zipped quietly to his own room and dove beneath his own bed. This was where the original stake had come form and surely, he could break off the rest of it, he thought. And likely he would have been right, if the plank was still there.

  It was gone.

  Just then, he felt something sharp jab him in the foot, spinning under the bed he saw the large white, sock covered feet of Matt, and there gently tapping on the wood with a tiny thunk, thunk, thunk, was a part of the frame of his bed. Curt crawled out from beneath his bed, well away from Matt, as if it would have mattered. In the older boy's hands was a long sharp hunk of wood and on his face was a deadly smile.

  "Dinner time."

  4

  Curt backed to the wall with his hands out. Cold dread smote him and suddenly he felt his throat tighten and amazingly, he was worried that he wouldn't even be able to call the monster. But after swallowing hard, he managed to breathe just enough to squeak out a few words.

  "It's too early...please." The whine in his voice would have appalled him had he been thinking straight. However, he was in near panic mode and it was all he could do keep his bladder in check.

  Matt laughed quietly, in fact so quietly that it was more just a moving smile than a laugh. "No, it's not the monster's dinner time yet, that will be in about one hour. It's your dinner time and don't even think of being late...I'm awful hungry." With a sneer that might have been a smile, he left.

  Amber was up by this time and moving down the hall, sluggishly. Curt came to greet her, she looked terrible, but he was in such a state of fear for himself that he barely noticed. Together they moved toward the kitchen, pathetically slow and solemn, like an old couple on the way to a funeral, perhaps their own. The only consolation that Curt found to her wretched state was that she didn't ask him about his plan. He could no longer lie to her.

  They got to kitchen only to find that half their dinners had been eaten already. Neither Curt nor Amber cared all that much, since neither had an appetite for more than a grain of rice, but they sat down at the table anyways. Curt was thirsty at least, and drank deeply from his water glass.

  Through his twitch, Paul looked shocked to the core at Amber's injuries and with a sheepish cast to his face at having taken the food, he slid over the plate that he had been feeding off of. Curt gave him a tiny smile and Paul smiled back.

  This was his Paul that Curt looked upon. His friend whom he hadn't seen in ...days. He tried to recall how long it had been and came up with a figure of three to four days. He wasn't exactly sure, still all the same, it gave him a tiny glimmer, a feeling of life to see Paul again whole and sane. Sane, at least for the moment, but that moment might last a little while since the pressure; the fear of the creature was squarely on Curt's shoulders. Paul left a minute later and gave Curt another small sad smile on his way out, it wasn't much, but it was something and it gave him another little boost. This feeling allowed him to eat and to feed Amber, who had become more and more listless. Curt only took a few bites and gave the rest to the girl, hoping to invigorate her, but it was not until she had drank off three tall glasses of water that any life came into to her. She used the energy to sneer at Matt. He sneered right back, fingering the edge of his new spear.

  The opposing sneers did nothing to help Curt who was quickly loosing the brief amount of energy he had left in him. A minute later and thirty minutes before his dinner date with the creature, Amber refused the last bite of spam. Still hungry, Curt had just put it in his mouth when he happened to glance over and saw the cookbooks, lined up neat as you please on the counter. His dream came back to him suddenly, as he saw that the first cookbook was still marked in that one place, the recipe for Goulash.

  Just then, the spam in his mouth took on the consistency of human flesh and feeling his gorge rising, he uncaringly spat it out onto the floor at Matt's feet. In his periphery, he saw the older boy coming alive in anger, but Curt had only eyes for the cookbook, while his mind recalled the dream in all of its intricate gory details.

  The pink spam that bled; hiding under Paul's sheets and snuggling next to his corpse; Amber's dead body on the table, but most of all, that damn cookbook. The same one that opened every time to the same disgusting recipe, Goulash.

  Without warning, his body began to heave up his dinner, but Curt, knowing he needed the nutrients fought it, covering his mouth. Now his stomach started to hitch, and Amber moved closer, while Matt backed away and Curt angrily realized it was no use. He would lose his small dinner, possibly the only good part of his day, all because somebody decided to mark the most useless recipe imaginable. It was stew! Who needed a recipe for stew?

  The first of his dinner came to his throat and he fought it back, but only barely. He tried to breathe deeply, hoping that would relax his churning stomach, it did nothing and he slowly felt the need to vomit rising even greater. His anger increased.

  And why would you need to mark the page? He thought bitterly. If you've made stew once, would you ever need to go back to that one page to refresh your memory? Curt envisioned the page, just as it had fallen open that first day he arrived in the home and then he saw it again in his mind as it fell open only two days before when he had used the book to block the mudroom door.

  His dinner rose once more, but he was so enthralled with the image coming to him that he found that he could ignore the need to vomit.

  That page in the cookbook had been marked with a paperclip.

  Chapter 32

  Evening of the Morningstar

  1

  A paperclip. Just one, sat nestled in the book. Almost in disbelief, his eyes held fast to the barely visible rounded top edge of it, and he felt his mind turn slowly and clumsily, like a kangaroo walking, moving from anger and fear to something that seemed more like actual thinking.

  And amazingly, between the great heavings of his stomach, a rudimentary plan came to him like a bolt of lightning. The pieces had been there all along, he just needed them to come together and oddly, he had found them bound by a single paper clip. Yet it was a weak plan with gaping holes, and had he been in a comfortable position, in another foster home, he would have cast it aside in a second.

  Unfortunately, his choices had dwindled to just this:

  1) Incapacitate Matt, use him to distract the creature, 2) during that time, use the one paperclip to unlock the attic door, grab the keys from Miss Feanor's pocket, 3) use the car to smash down the garage door.

  What could be easier? The thought almost made him smile.

  But he forced himself to grimace instead. The setting sun would be his greatest obstacle and he worried that each step in his plan would take far longer than he had time for, and now more than ever he wished there was a working clock in the house. He turned his head and covered his mouth as if his nausea were becoming too much, but in truth he took a long look at the window in the kitchen. The clouds had tricked him. First, they had held out the false hope of rain and now they hid the sunset. Already daylight was fast fading from the grey sky and he knew that it was going to be dark sooner than he had first realized.

  The creature would be coming up those stairs in fifteen minutes whether he called it or not. It was now or never.

  Curt retched loudly, purposely, "Huuuagh!" and then he staggered up, toward Matt. The older boy retreated, holding the length of stick out in front of him, but Curt turned aside going to the counter instead and leaned there, trying his best to look sick, while his mind worked at a feverish pace. Breathing heavily, he placed his head on the counter as if the cool Formica helped to control his heaving stomach, but in truth, he was trying to buy time.

  He needed only a few seconds, perhaps just two.

  The cookbook with the paperclip sat inches from his hand, unfortunately, Matt stood all too close and Curt dared not grab
it with the boy right there. He hoped that Amber would distract the older boy in some way, but she didn't know anything about the plan yet and only stood as spectator at a show, wearing a look of disgust that was the equal to Matt's.

  Seconds ticked by and still Matt just stood there. Curt swore to himself. He could only feign sickness for so long before Matt would suspect the ruse, so after a moment where nobody moved, he made one more attempt in Matt's direction.

  "Huuuagh!"

  This time he actually felt a small chunk of something come up, still it didn't matter. The larger boy stepped aside, but the wrong way, further into the kitchen. With his little act, Curt's momentum was toward the main hall and because it would seem odd to turn around, he continued on in that direction, holding his mouth. At the main stairs, he paused, bent over and gave a bleary eye back and thankfully, there was no sign Matt and whats more, he saw Amber slowly making her way toward him.

  Excitement flooded through him and frantically he gestured to her. 'Hurry to the bathroom,' he motioned. She nodded tiredly.

  Now instead of going up himself, he paused as his mind raced. He needed a weapon desperately, something heavy...a chair? Too heavy. A table leg...good, but it'd make too much noise breaking it off and besides he needed it right then, right that moment. It would have to be a makeshift weapon, like something you would find in prison...this thought led directly to another and suddenly his mind hit on something an ex-con had bragged to him once about and he turned and went into the family room. What he wanted there were the two large brass kitten shaped bookends that sat on one of the shelves. They were heavy and once he placed them in a pillowcase, they would make a weapon of sorts. A terribly pathetic weapon, but he had no other choice.