Nocturnal

The Belt

But I feel sick.”

Roberta Deprovdechuk crossed her arms and stared. “Get up, boy. You go to school.”

The very word school did, in fact, make Rex feel sick. Sick inside, a cold sensation that made him want to crawl into a hole and hide forever.

“Honest, I really don’t feel good.”

She rolled her eyes. “You think I was born yesterday? You’re not sick. Those kids pick on you because you’re obnoxious. You leave them alone and they’ll leave you alone. Get up and get to school. And no skipping! You skip school like some good-for-nothing burnout, sit here and draw all day. I let you put your stupid pictures up on your walls, don’t I? Now get up.”

She grabbed the blankets and yanked them off. He had a horrid, frozen moment of exposure, of his boner pushing his underwear out in a little tent. Rex slammed his body into a fetal position, hands over his underwear-clad privates.

“You filthy boy! Did you touch it?”

Still curled up, he shook his head.

“Rex, did you touch yourself?”

“No!”

He heard the familiar hiss of leather sliding through denim belt loops. He closed his eyes tight in anticipation of the pain to come.

“Roberta, I didn’t touch it! Honest, I—”

The crack of leather on his back cut his words short.

“You little liar.”

A second crack, this time on his legs. Despite the stinging pain, he stayed curled up. Rex knew better than to cry out, or to try and get away.

“I told you never to be like the other dirty boys, didn’t I?”

Crack, his shoulder lit up.

“I’m sorry! I won’t do it ever again!”

Crack, on the thin underwear fabric covering his ass. That one made him lurch, twitch, his body screaming at him to run, but he fought himself back into a tight ball.

If he ran or resisted, it would only get worse.

“There,” Roberta said. “I’m helping you, Rex. You need to learn these things. If you’re not ready for school in five minutes, you get more. You hear me talking to you?”

She walked out, slamming the door behind her.

The pain faded a little, but the cold feeling in his chest would not leave.

He still had to go to school.

Rex sat up on the bed. His boner had gone away. Roberta had always told him boners were bad, and the lingering stings on his back, his legs, his ass told him she was right.

He’d dreamed again, and this time he’d remembered more. He’d been watching Alex Panos, waiting for a chance to kill Alex. And that was what made Rex feel funny. Not girls, not even boys — the stalking gave him the boner. Hunting Alex felt exciting, arousing, but the dream also carried a dark fear that someone was watching Rex, waiting in the darkness to hurt him.

Dream-Rex had turned away from Alex. Instead, Rex and his friends had grabbed some random homeless guy. Grabbed him, taken him, but taken him where? Rex couldn’t remember.

He stood. That fear, it sat in his stomach like a block of ice. It wouldn’t go away. He picked his jeans up off the floor. As he slid them on, he looked over at his desk, at his latest drawing of Alex Panos and the bullies.

The drawing wasn’t finished.

Maybe he could finish it in history class. Rex had read the whole textbook the first week of school and got 100 percent on every test — Mr. Garthus didn’t care if Rex did any work, as long as he kept quiet. No time to finish the full drawing, but Rex felt an urge to sketch that symbol again. He had to sketch it, right now.

When his pencil completed the symbol’s final half-circle, the lingering dream-fear finally eased away. Rex’s more familiar, ever-present anxiety remained, however. Roberta was wrong; it didn’t matter if he minded his own business or not, the bullies would come for him no matter what he did.

Rex shivered. He wanted to skip school, but he didn’t dare. Whatever beating the bullies had for him, it couldn’t match what Roberta would do if she switched from the belt to the paddle.

Rex rubbed his new welts. He finished dressing. He gathered his books, then slid them, his pencils and his art pad into his bag.

Maybe today would be better.