Ryan's Suffering

by Lloyd Paulson

  I lost the battle, and start screaming for him to stop. Game over, baby. I failed the lesson, as planned.

  The next blow came, harder, and I struggled just to keep touching my toes, begging him to stop as I sobbed and shrieked. He hit me harder yet, and my hands shook and fluttered, then flew to cover my ass as I stood up.

  He whipped my hands with the belt as hard and fast as he could, and they burned. "Teach you to try and stop me!"

  I shrieked and pulled my hands away, as they shook uncontrollably in burning pain.

  My bladder let go, and I could smell the hot acrid smell of urine. This was why I was in the closet—so I didn’t ruin the rug in the bedroom, because I pissed myself every fucking time.

  He hit me again, and again, and again.

  "Bend back over and touch your goddamned toes!"

  This was hell, and I had just failed today’s lesson. I lost control. Unable to stand the pain, I lost control of my bladder.

  This is what weakness looks like.

  This is what worthlessness looks like.

  This is what failure looks like.

  Because this is how my father had defined weakness, failure, and worthlessness.

  This was the fourth time in the last few months that I had failed. I shrieked. I cried. I hated myself. However, I didn’t hate him. I couldn’t. He was my father. I loved him. I didn’t know any better. I tried my best, but it was never good enough, and it never would be.

  Afterwards, nude, I scrubbed the floor while he watched, a small smile playing on his face.

  After he left, I laid on the bed, sobbing, the heat and pain on my backside intolerable.

  I wondered what the neighbor’s must have thought of a worthless little fucker like me. My best wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t stop myself from screaming, no matter how desperately I tried. I couldn’t stop pissing on the floor. I couldn’t stop lying no matter how hard I tried. I would never amount to anything. God would never make me a good child. There was no hope, in the end.

  I prayed desperately for God to make me good child, and if I wasn’t worth it, to have enough mercy to end my miserable little life. God ignored me, and did neither. That is the true definition of forsaken, I think—when God doesn't even fucking care.

  The smell of urine, the flat crack of a leather belt on pure white skin that welt up to angry red, the piercing high-pitched shrieks would echo for years. It still echoes, and it will echo into my fucking grave.

  ~~~~~~ *LP* ~~~~~~

  Fast forward several years, same pissy-smelling goddamned closet. Nothing gets that smell out, once it sinks into the subflooring. I can still smell it, just by thinking about it.

  The blows from the belt come steadily, and have been for countless minutes.

  There's not a sound, outside of the steady crack of the belt, and my father's heavy breathing from the exertions.

  There's not one drop of fresh urine in the closet carpeting yet.

  I shake, just the tiniest but, but I do not waver, and I maintain control. I just stand there, touching my toes, maintaining patience. Maintaining control. Once you lose that grip, you're done, and he wins. That's the razor's edge, and I'm in the zone, baby. Can you dig it? Like a Zen master. Walking a wire without a net. This has become a showdown battle between him and me.

  The minutes pass endlessly by, and the blows of his belt keep coming against my bare ass. Yes, it's pain, but I've been there before, and not just once. I've been training for this. Hard core rock and roll. Pain will not kill me. It's all about the endurance. That's the horror; embrace it.

  Tick. Smack. Tock. Smack. Time passes, marked only by the endless lash of his belt, punctuated by his harsh gasping breath with each back swing. My jaw is burning; I'm grinding my teeth so bad. I'm surprised I'm not shattering teeth, but I refuse to give a single squeak or grunt of pain. I'm not going to give that bastard the satisfaction. Fuck him. Tick. Smack. Tock, Smack.

  Finally, there's lingering pauses between the blows, and his breaths are becoming ragged. A few more half-hearted blows, and then he stops, without saying anything.

  I step out of the closet, pull up my pants, and I just look at him.

  He looks back, and there's a look of worry, tinged with something that takes me a long time to identify. It's only later that I realize what the look was that I couldn't identify. It was fear. All I knew at that time was that I had won, and that was enough.

  At least I thought so, at the time. Ah, but time would exact a terrific toll, all her own.

  I just took the worst beating of my life, but he did not break me this time. Infinite Patience and Control. I've just passed the impossible exam, and that's not supposed to happen.

  I was still in my room as he walked into the kitchen. Unknown to me, my mother recognized the fear and the opportunity that it fleetingly presented. She whispers oh so softly to him, something she never would have dared said to him before, "If you ever touch him again, we all will leave."

  The Best-laid Plans of Mice and Men

  "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley, / An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, / For promis'd joy!" –Robert Burns, "To a Mouse", 1785

  It was another Friday night. Mike had stopped by my little shithole apartment again since I had ignored his text messages.

  He was there to drag me out into the world, yet again, on some nameless weekend on some nameless month, on a mission to try to get me laid again. His motto was that we were young, dumb, and over twenty-one. If we ain't working, then it's party time as far as he was concerned.

  Time had no meaning to me, because my life was pretty much the same from week to week. Nothing interesting happened, and I lived in my little world, isolated from everything. I didn’t like my life, but I didn’t actively hate it. Life was there, and so was I.

  After two bars, and a few split tabs, Mike told me the solution to my problems was to 'get laid'. That was fifty percent of Mike’s solution to all of life’s problems, the other fifty percent being alcohol, of course.

  I wandered off in the general direction of the bathroom. I had to take a piss, but might as well insult some girl for my free beer along the way. Kill two birds with one stone. That way my first free drink of the night would be waiting for me by the time I got back to my table, nice, cold, and ready to be consumed. Multi-tasking at its finest.

  I stopped at the first table of three girls, and tapped on the closest girl’s shoulder. She looked up, and I was blatantly ogling her breasts. "Wanna dance?"

  She stared at me curiously, and reached up and lifted my chin. I looked directly at her, confused for a moment. It was an unexpected change in routine. I had this method perfected, damnit.

  1. Stare at tits.

  2. Mumble, "Wanna dance."

  3. Get told to fuck off.

  4. Consume free sympathy alcohol.

  5. Repeat till blitzed.

  Simple, right?

  She smiled. "How ‘bout asking me, instead of my breasts?"

  Well, fuck me Freddy. This was a new development. She was supposed to rudely brush me off. I decided to bring out the big guns, since I was annoyed. I stared at my shoes, and shuffled my feet, feigning complete lack of confidence combined with nervousness. "You wouldn’t want to dance with me, right?"

  Women hate an apparent lack of self-confidence. I just gave her a very easy way out of this mess. Everything about me should have been an instant turn-off. I glanced up at her, wondering why she wasn't sending me packing. She was sitting back, chewing her lip thoughtfully. I stepped back, and thought, fuck it, close enough. I figured that qualified me for my free beer. At least I’d argue the point with Mike if he challenged it. If not, I'd spring for this round and piss off someone else later. I wasn't in the mood to stand here while she made up her mind. I had to take a piss.

  "Fine," I muttered, and wandered off to the bathroom to take care of business, which was the primary plan anyway, I was just trying to save time and score a free drink off Mike in the proces
s.

  Hell, I still hadn't figure out why Mike hadn't caught on to the fact that I was running approximately zero for roughly one hundred or so girls that I'd asked to dance or so at this point. I wasn't ever going to explain Ms. Perky to him, and he still hadn’t let up about that yet. Some things were just better left unsaid, and that was one of them. As far as he was concerned, I was either the world's worst pickup artist or the world's most unlucky pickup artist, but either way, he just kept buying me drinks, and I was going to ride that gravy train into the ground until the goddamned biscuit wheels fell the fuck off. Fuck it. No way that I was going to point out that I was just flat-out fucking him out of free booze at this point. I couldn’t help it if he was an idiot. It just happened to be that he was a well-employed union wage idiot and I wasn’t.

  As I walked past her, back towards the table Mike and I were sitting at, she grabbed my arm. I stopped, blinked, and stared at her blankly for a few moments. Dafuq?

  She was staring up at me from her seat, tugging on my arm. "Sit down."

  I sat down, staring at her curiously. "Thought you didn’t want to dance."

  She looked at me sideways, a curious smile on her lips. "I don’t think you do, either."

  Her two friends looked uncomfortable, and said nothing, pretending to ignore us. A new song started, and they rapidly stood, gushing about how they just absolutely loved this song and dashed towards the dance floor hand in hand. I was semi-amused. "Well, isn’t that convenient for them?"

  Ms. Fucking-Up-My-Free-Drink and I watched the two girls wander out into the dance floor. I looked back to study this girl across from me closer. This was definitely out of the ordinary. "What makes you think I don’t want to dance?"

  She smiled. "So go dance with my two friends then." She waved her hand absently towards the dance floor.

  I shifted uncomfortably for a moment. I looked over at Mike, and he was giving me thumbs up. I wanted to flip him the bird, but she was still staring at me and wouldn't understand. Then I wondered why I cared what she thought, and I felt a slight flush come to my face.

  I looked back at her. I glanced back at Mike again. He was already up and on the prowl, stalking a short blond in a short miniskirt. I stared down at the table, self-consciously for a moment. Finally, I looked back up at her, openly curious. "Okay, so what gives?"

  She leaned back in her chair, and fussed with her necklace while studying me for a moment. "I think you wanted me to say ‘No’, didn’t you?"

  No shit, I thought. Great, I had to pick one that actually had brains upstairs. I glanced around for a waitress. I hadn’t gotten my free beer out of this, and I was still annoyed about that, but that was a matter of principle than a lack of funds, since I had managed to work full time for once and could actually afford drinks. That didn’t mean I wanted to pay for them though. Why pay for beer, when Mikey would buy them? Except this happened.

  I caught the waitress’s attention, and she headed over towards me, which was a minor miracle in this dive.

  I looked back at Ms. Fucking-Up-My-Free-Drink, and smiled. "What makes you think I wanted you to say 'No'?"

  She just looked at me, a small smile playing on her lips.

  The waitress stopped at the table. I looked up. "Two shots of Jack, another beer for me, and another…" I reached over, and grabbed the empty bottle in front of the girl seated across from me. Some kind of clear cranberry Alco-pop or something. "Whatever foo-foo stuff this was."

  The waitress walked away.

  I smiled. "Let me start over."

  She nodded at me.

  I stood up. "Hi. Can I buy you a drink?"

  She smiled broadly, eyes twinkling. "Sure. I’m Trish. Now sit the fuck down again, dipshit."

  "Whatever you say, mademoiselle." I took a deep, theatric bow and then sat down again.

  Trish scooted her chair forward, and leaned her elbows on the table, folding her hands under her chin. "Finally, we are getting somewhere. You don’t remember me, do you?"

  I vaguely remembered seeing her somewhere before, but that could just be my memory trying to fill in the blanks. The free booze I had managed to score prior to this interlude wasn't exactly greasing the wheels of memory lane, either. When I went out with Mike, I was usually inebriated within the first hour, so the memory of my nightlife always remained vague and fuzzy, as I intended. I shrugged.

  She looked at me knowingly for a few seconds. "This is the third time that you have asked my breasts to dance." She even thrust her chest forward and pointed with both hands at her breasts.

  Helpless to stop myself, I actually looked down. God-fucking-damnit! Trish giggled at my awkwardness. Breasts are a fucking weakness with me, obviously. I felt an immediate blush rushing to my cheeks. I couldn’t stop it. Worse yet, the fabric pulled tight across her chest, and either she was chilly, or there was a certain attraction, and that piqued the interest of the old trouser mouse, and I blushed harder and hurriedly looked away, wanting to disappear under the table.

  Luckily, the waitress, in an unusual display of prompt service in this shithole, returned with the drinks, giving me an excuse not to respond immediately and recover from this awkward little exchange. I paid the waitress, and rapidly downed the shot while the waitress made change. I gestured to the other shot, and was surprised when Trish downed it without grimacing. I was even more surprised when she didn’t immediately chase it, as I had.

  "Last week, after I told you ‘No’, you asked a few other girls to dance. Every one of them shot you down. You smiled every time you were denied as you walked back to the table. Then your asshole friend," She jerked her thumb over towards Mike, who was trying to dance with her two friends, "Bought you a drink afterwards. Every single time. You never seemed upset about it, either, so I think that's exactly what you wanted."

  Yep. I picked one with brains. Go figure.

  I stared at her for a few moments. I shrugged, and stared at my hands. Finally, I looked straight at her. "You caught me, and you have it completely figured out. Every time a girl shoots me down, he buys me a drink. He doesn’t seem to have caught on to my scam yet, although I've been getting away with it for weeks now. He’s too busy trying to get laid himself; he thinks it should be my mission in life too. However, you have caught on rather quickly. Too quickly, I think." I tipped my beer towards her in a salute, and took a swig.

  She smiled. "I thought so. First time you asked me to dance; I thought you were a self-conscious loser."

  I shrugged, and smiled. "Yeah, that’s what I was aiming for. Girls don't dig that, it generally guarantees the shoot down. That’s important, when you want a fresh drink."

  "However, when I saw you here tonight, I thought great, he’s gonna ask my tits to dance again. Then I started thinking about what I saw last week. So when you stopped by again, I decided we should talk."

  "Why’s that?"

  "Well, every other asshole, like your friend over there, always asks my two friends to dance. However, this is the third time you’ve completely ignored them, and asked me. Well, asked my tits anyway." She stared at the table, and then looked up at me, very seriously. "Why is that?"

  I knew what she was driving at, so I purposely misunderstood the question. "What…the breast thing?" I shrugged. "Usually guarantees either a ‘No’ or a ‘Fuck off. In my experience, it’s the fastest way to turn off a woman. Stare at and talk to their breasts. Never fails to annoy girls. Well, except for you, this time." I shrugged, feeling my cheeks redden again. I felt like I was going to start giggling in a minute, I was so nervous.

  She looked at me strangely for a minute. "You know, I don’t know what’s worse. Guys asking me to dance on the off chance they might get laid, or the fact that you were using me to get a free beer."

  I swigged my beer again, and looked back up at her again. "Trust me, trying to use you for casual and impersonal sex is probably much more sinister than using you to score free beer."

  She nodded, laughing and relaxing at the same time. "Y
eah, point taken. I still don’t want to be used, even if it is for a noble cause like free alcohol."

  Trish looked up at me sharply. "You were ogling my tits, though." A small smile played on her lips.

  I felt my cheeks growing hot again, but I looked directly at her anyway, refusing to look away. "Guilty as charged."

  She sighed, looked away, and took a drink. "Anyway, the boob thing isn’t what I meant and I think you knew it. As I was saying, every asshole asks my two blonde friends to dance. Not you. You completely ignored those two every time, and asked me. Why is that?"

  I looked at her for a moment, and then looked at her two friends dancing out on the floor. Mike was busy chatting away with them. I shrugged, and looked back at her. "I don’t know."

  She looked at me sideways, and then glanced out at her friends. "Yes, you do."

  My mouth dropped open slightly, and I rapidly clamped it shut with a click. I looked at her. Really looked at her. This was definitely a huge variance from my boring routine. I was intrigued. "You really want the truth, don’t you?"

  She returned my gaze solemnly, nodding. Her eyes were full of frank curiosity.

  I glanced back at her friends, and then looked at her sideways. Fuck it. I had told the truth to her so far. In for a penny, in for a pound. "I hadn’t really thought much about it before now, but yes, I have noticed you. Your two friends, no offense, are probably airhead bimbos that are dumber than a box full of rocks, and are used to getting their own way. What I would call high maintenance bitches, or Princesses with a capital ‘P’. I have no use for them."

  She had started to take a drink, and almost choked. She coughed lightly for a minute as she set her bottle down, and looked at me in shock for a moment. Then she giggled. "Jesus." She coughed again. "Nailed that one on the head. Fuck. Don’t tell them that. They resemble that remark."

  Trish took another drink, and then twirled her bottle absently. It was almost gone. She looked up at me shyly. "That doesn’t answer the question though. You're still evading the question. They could have shot you down just as easily as I could have."