It was a bizarre sermon but it did make a type of sense. When Melanie clicked on the link below and played the streaming video of the Yogi passing a sword through his belly and out his back without shedding any blood or showing any apparent signs of discomfort, then removing it without a scar, Melanie was convinced. This was the man to help their son. There was only one problem. How could he issue his sermon and teach his lessons to a boy who cannot even hear his words without experiencing excruciating pain?
***
The Yogi arrived the next day.
In person he was even smaller than he appeared on television. He was just a few inches over five feet. His skin was like sun-bleached maple with smile lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes. He looked like his skin had been leathered. His eyes were enormous in his tiny head with irises and pupils so wide they left little white around the edges. Melanie felt like she could fall down into them. She could see her own image twisted across his retinas. When she looked deeper she swore she could see other reflections as if his eyes had captured their images and refused to release them. She didn’t know why she had thought he was Asian when she saw him on that talk show. He now looked Mediterranean or Indian, perhaps even Egyptian. When he smiled he revealed two even rows of perfectly white teeth. For some reason Melanie shuddered and crossed her arms over her chest. Something about his smile looked menacing, predacious.
When he spoke, it was in perfect English devoid of any accent at all.
“Mrs. Thompson?”
“Yogi Arjunda? I wasn’t expecting you so soon. We haven’t had time to prepare a room.”
“That’s perfectly all right. I will stay in your son’s room. It will take me some time to reach him. I want to be as close to him as possible during this period.”
Melanie wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that. What if he was some sort of pervert or pedophile? She looked him over again and could find nothing threatening about him, at least, not when he wasn’t smiling.
His robe appeared to be wrapped around him several times and there were sandals on his feet that looked like he’d made them by hand. His shaved head had thick veins running through it as if he were deeply troubled or thinking intensely about something. He carried only one small bag draped over his shoulder along with a flute and some type of rolled up mat made of straw.
“Uh, we don’t really play any music in the house. It hurts Jason’s ears.”
“Then you shall know when I play this flute that he has been cured.”
With that the little man walked right past her and into the house. He looked around and smiled appreciatively like a lion about to sit down for a meal of fresh killed antelope.
“You have a lovely home Mrs. Thompson. Which room is Jason’s?”
“The first door on your left.”
She watched the little Hindu stride purposefully towards the door and her blood-pressure spiked. She was afraid that she had made a mistake. She wanted to stop the Yogi from going into that room and hurting her baby.
“Uh…um. Maybe I should introduce you before you just walk in there. You might frighten him.”
“Don’t worry. I will introduce myself.”
“But-but how will you communicate with him?”
“I will talk to him.”
“But he can’t stand the noise. Even a whisper hurts him.”
The tiny monk shrugged.
“Then he will hurt. Everything hurts him anyway. It’s time he learned to deal with that pain rather than run from it. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
Yogi Arjunda opened the door to Jason’s room and stepped inside, shutting the door behind him and cutting off any further discussion. She would just have to trust him. He knew she would be anxious wondering what was happening behind the door, but it wasn’t his job to make her comfortable. This wasn’t about her. It was about Jason.
“Wake up, Jason.” Arjunda didn’t shout nor did he whisper. His voice was firm and even.
Jason wailed as if he’d been stabbed. The black bag that enveloped him undulated. The Yogi walked over and unzipped it in one swift stroke that exposed Jason’s corpse-like naked flesh. Jason stared up at the tiny Asian man in shock and horror before his expression slowly resolved itself into outrage. The Yogi slapped him across the face. His palm collided with the boy’s baby-soft skin with an audible “thwack!” Jason’s eyes rolled back in his head. His body curled up and began to contort as if he were in impossible agony. When he was done the Yogi raised his hand as if he would slap him again. Jason flinched and his eyes widened in fright
“Did you feel that, Jason? That was pain. What you experience when I speak to you is not. You will learn the difference. I am here to teach you.”
***
Melanie heard her son cry out and resisted the urge to run into the room. Her hand hovered over the doorknob and her long venous fingers flexed and clenched with worry. She held her breath and listened to what would have sounded to anyone else like torture, but Melanie had grown so accustomed to her son’s screams that even with her maternal instincts calling for her to intervene she was able to stop herself. She stood frozen in the hallway, her brow knitted in apprehension, fear, and deep concentration, her fingers slowly creeping toward her mouth.
Melanie’s fingernails had already been bitten down to the cuticles and now even those went between her teeth as she listened to her son’s cries. She heard him scream again and again and then finally fall silent. The insulation between the walls muffled so much of the noise within that even with her ear pressed right up against the door it was hard for her to hear much of what was going on inside. After Jason’s wails and cries subsided to a series of low moans she could hear the Yogi’s voice steady and persistent. His voice was low but far from a whisper. Still, Jason did not scream again even though she knew the sound must be deafening to him.
As Melanie strained to hear through the solid-core door, a sound came from within her son’s room that chilled her worse than his screams ever had. She heard her son laugh. She didn’t know how she could be so certain that it was Jason and not the Yogi since he’d never made the sound before, but somehow she knew. This time she did grab hold of the doorknob. She started to turn it and felt the latch disengage from the strike-plate and the door creep open. She let out a cry as the doorknob turned in her hand and the door jerked out of her grasp and slammed shut. Melanie stood trembling in the hallway, staring at the closed door as the laughter continued. It had been a long time since Melanie had heard anyone in the house laugh, but she could remember the sound. And she was sure that it wasn’t supposed to sound that way. The cackling that echoed from within the room was even more tortured than the screams had been. It was the sound of a mind breaking apart, ego shattering against id, the voice of insanity.
***
“Stop it, Jason. I don’t want to hurt you further, at the moment, but I can and I will. Get a hold of yourself and trust that I am here to help you.”
The little monk placed a hand on Jason’s face to calm him and Jason instinctively flinched away. Arjunda smacked him again. Jason fell to the floor and lay there convulsing. The Yogi made no effort to help him.
“Listen to my voice, Jason, and you will survive this. I know you think that you want to die and if that’s what you want then that’s what you will have because you will suffer every moment of my teachings, and if you do not learn to deal with that suffering then your body will go into shock and you will die. But you will experience terrific pain before you do. Every agony you have thought you have known in your life will be nothing like what you will experience right now if you resist me. Sure, you will die eventually, but it will be long and torturous. It is up to you.”
Jason stared at the little monk and he started to laugh. He didn’t know why he thought it was funny but somehow his entire life seemed like one great big cosmic joke that had now reached its punch line. Him locked in a room with this insane little man in the orange robe with his mother on the other side of the door no doubt
dying to get inside to give him one of her excruciating hugs. No one had ever purposely hurt him before. Jason realized now that he had built up such hatred toward his mother while she had done nothing but try to help him and love him, inadvertently hurting him. But no one before this mad little man had ever purposely tried to injure him, and he now realized how much worse his punishment could be. His mother had spoken too loudly or touched him too often or flicked that damned light-switch but she had never struck him the way this little man did or if she had he was too young to remember it.
She had never stared at him as coldly and callously as this man did while Jason’s stomach cramped and twisted in knots of pain. Even now he was sure that she would come to him if she could and cradle him in her arms, defend him against this evil man. Even though he had been so cruel to her, wallowing in his own self-pity, hating her for wanting to touch him, wanting to speak to him, wanting to love him. Jason began to cry.
“What do you want to do, Jason?”
The words exploded in Jason’s head and it was like he was being bludgeoned with a baseball bat as each syllable popped against his skull. Jason had spent his entire life wanting it to end, wanting to die, but he didn’t want to die this way. He never imagined that dying could be so much more painful than living. He shook his head slowly.
“I don’t know what that means, Jason. You have to speak to me. Tell me what you want to do.”
Jason opened his mouth and a hoarse whisper croaked out from between his parched lips.
“I-I don’t want to die.”
“Then you must learn how to live. We will start by getting you used to the sound of my voice. I can’t teach you anything if you are constantly trying to tune me out. Here’s what we are going to do. I am going to talk and you are going to listen. I don’t care how painful it gets. You are going to listen. If your ears start to bleed, you listen, if your skull feels like it’s going to crack open like an egg, still, you listen. I want you to feel the pain. I don’t want you to resist it. I want you to dive down into it and experience as much of it as you can. I want you to think about its nature, its texture, its taste, its feel, its sound. I want you to examine why this sensation should be uncomfortable to you. Why anything you feel should cause you discomfort. Pain is your body’s warning signal that something is damaging you, compromising the integrity of your body. My voice cannot injure you, Jason, so why should it be painful to you? I need you to listen and explore.”
Jason listened. The pain was excruciating as Arjunda’s words struck him like ballistic projectiles coming one by one without relent and ricocheting around his skull. It certainly felt like it was injuring him, but he was smart enough to know that this was not the case. Words cannot kill. He heard his mother and father talk to each other all the time and neither of them screamed out in agony the way he did. He liked to believe it was because he was a different creature than they were, but he knew this was not true either. They were the same and only he hurt like this. The Yogi was right. He had to find a way to get rid of the pain. He tried to block it out, to think of other things, but there was no safe happy place for him. Everything, his entire life, had hurt him. Everything, except for the sensory deprivation bag. He dreamt of the bag and that helped a little, but the torture continued as Arjunda spoke.
“Don’t run from it, Jason. Don’t try to escape my voice. That will only make it worse. You have to let yourself experience the pain. You have to listen, Jason.”
It was as bad as being outside with all the sights, sounds, and smells buffeting down upon him, this man with his non-stop talking. It was not as bad as the slap had been though. Not even close. The Yogi had been right about that. That had been real punishment. This was nothing compared to that and the Yogi claimed that he could do worse.
But if that was pain then what is this? Jason wondered. Tentatively, fearfully, Jason began to take the Yogi’s advice and drop his defenses. The sensations were staggering, but Jason was curious now. He wanted to know what it was that he was experiencing. What it was that had kept him miserable his entire life.
If not pain then what?
He allowed himself to experience the torturous sensations. He explored it, trying to find out what it was and why it hurt him. He was lost, drowning in agony for what seemed like hours before he suddenly realized that the Yogi had stopped talking.
“Have you found it? Have you found the pain now Jason? Do you understand it?”
“Not yet. But I am close.”
The Yogi smiled at him and Jason smiled back. Then he collapsed onto his bed and lay still. The Yogi turned and walked out of the bedroom, shutting the door behind him.
***
“What did you do to him? Why was he screaming like that?”
“He was screaming because he was hurting. As you said, everything hurts him, my voice and his own included.”
“But I heard him talking. I heard him laugh!”
“Yes. You did.”
Melanie didn’t know what to think. She didn’t know what to do. She wanted to grab the little man and shake the information out of him. His calm aloof demeanor was maddening.
“What did you do to him?”
She looked at Jason’s closed door and even though that room was always silent, after so much commotion, the silence now seemed ominous. Her eyes drifted back over to Yogi Arjunda, who stood there patiently, anticipating her questions and merely waiting for her to ask them so that he could be done with the chore of answering. For some reason it seemed to her that now she was at his mercy.
“Can-can I see him?”
It was the question he’d obviously been waiting for.
“No. It’s too soon.”
Melanie’s mind reeled.
“What do you mean I can’t see my own son? You can’t be serious!”
“If you do not calm down I will leave right now, and after what your son has just gone through he needs me. If I were to leave at this point, he would be much worse off than when I arrived. If you want to help your son, then you will stay away from him until I say otherwise. If you do not want my help then just say so and I will leave and you can go back to your life as it was only now with a son who knows how close he was to finding the answers he’s sought all his life and who knows that you took those answers away.”
Melanie stared at him with tears of frustration running down her pudgy cheeks. Her eyes darted back and forth looking for someone to help her, someone to tell her what to do. For once she wished that Edward with his annoyingly rational pessimistic voice was here, but he would not be home from work for at least another three hours.
“Don’t go,” she whispered.
Arjunda smiled.
***
Jason awoke in darkness. He was exhausted and pain surrounded him like a dense cloud muddying his thoughts. He recalled his agonizing introduction to the man who’d called himself his teacher. It was the first time in his life that there had been some sense to his pain. The first time it felt like it was achieving some purpose.
Pain is how your body warns you against danger. This is not pain. Then what is it?
Until the little man had hurt him, Jason had never questioned his pain. He had never sought to understand it. He had been surrounded by it his entire life, but it had remained a mystery to him. He had considered the entire world his enemy and thought that everything in it was attacking him and intentionally causing him harm, including his own mother. Then the little man had slapped him and Jason had understood what it really felt like to be injured. Now he needed to find a way to free himself from his prison of misery.
The little man had told him to study the sensations and once he understood them, the pain would go away. So he tried. He analyzed and studied it as it washed over him in waves and as he dissected it he could feel it losing its power. The little man had been right. He hadn’t completely conquered it, but he had learned that such a thing was possible. He could live without fear of pain. He had also learned what a terrible son he was and how m
uch he was hurting his mother. Now, he needed to conquer his affliction not just for himself but for his mother, so that one day he could hug her and reciprocate the affection she so desperately wanted to give to him.
“This is not pain,” he told himself again, but this time he spoke aloud and felt an ache pierce his eardrum. He grit his teeth against it and said it again. The pain redoubled. He said it again, louder this time, then again and again and again. Each time a sharp spear of agony lanced through his skull. Sweat and tears ran down his face as he trembled, his body tensed against the onslaught. Still, he repeated it, even louder this time. Soon he was yelling at the top of his lungs.
***
Edward had come home just before the yelling began. He walked through the front door and his eyes rolled backwards in exasperation when he spotted the little man in the orange robe.
“You must be the Yogi.”
“Arjunda. Pleased to meet you, sir. I assume you are Edward Thompson?”
“Either that or I’m a very brazen burglar,” Edward quipped sarcastically.
His Pain Page 3
