Chapter 5 #2
The gymnasium smelled of old varnish and the sour odor of adolescent sweat; the air thick beneath the relentless glare of fluorescent lights that flickered with an uneven hum.
The windows were set high up on the walls, narrow and grimy, letting in only thin, dusty slivers of morning light that cut across the floor in pale stripes.
The boys were lined up along a faded blue boundary line, their backs straight, their heels together, their arms stiff at their sides.
“Posture is obedience,” the counselor barked, his voice echoing as he paced slowly in front of them. His heavy work boots made sharp, percussive taps against the polished wood.
Samuel kept his eyes fixed on a single, specific spot on the opposite wall, where the cheap blue paint had chipped away to reveal the grey plaster beneath. His shoulders screamed with a deep, burning ache, his muscles trembling in tiny spasms.
They had been standing there for nearly an hour. It felt like ten.
A boy two places down shifted his weight minutely, his knee buckling for a single second. The counselor stopped pacing immediately, snapping his thick fingers.
“You. Straighten up. Now.”
The boy swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing, and lifted himself back to his full height, though his legs shook visibly.
“Weak posture is weak faith,” the counselor announced, his voice dropping to a low register that filled the gym. “Weak posture leads to a weak mind. And a weak mind leads to sin.”
He turned his head slowly, his gaze sweeping back over the group. “And sin,” he said, “spreads like a disease.”
Samuel flinched internally, a cold knot forming in his gut. His fingers tingled. Sweat gathered at the base of his neck, a single, cold bead sliding down his spine beneath the stiff, scratchy cotton.
He told himself, with every shred of his will, not to move. Not an inch.
The second hour passed more slowly than the first, each minute stretching into an eternity.
His knees burned. His ankles throbbed. A fine, insistent tremor began to run through his right hand, small, barely visible, but enough to catch his own panicked attention.
Not now. Please, not now.
The counselor’s long, distorted shadow slid across him a full second before Samuel registered the man had changed direction and was moving toward him.
“What’s this?” the counselor asked, his voice deceptively soft.
Samuel stiffened, his panic rising like a cold tide in his chest. “N... nothing, sir,” he whispered, the words sticking in his dry throat. His hand, however, refused the command; the tremor only grew worse, more pronounced.
The counselor’s hand shot out.
The slap landed across Samuel’s knuckles; a sharp, stinging crack that reverberated up his arm.
White-hot heat flared across the skin, and he sucked in a sharp breath.
“Control yourself,” the counselor snapped, his face inches from Samuel’s. “A trembling hand is a guilty hand. It speaks of a soul in turmoil.”
Samuel blinked rapidly, forcing back the hot tears stinging at the corners of his eyes. Crying would only make it worse. Showing pain always made it worse.
He straightened his spine with a monumental effort, his jaw clenched so tightly he felt the bone ache.
The counselor stepped back, a grim satisfaction in his eyes, and resumed his slow pacing.
By the third hour, several boys were visibly on the verge of collapse, their bodies swaying with exhaustion.
The counselor clapped his hands together once, a sound too loud in the silence, and pointed to the row of peculiar chairs against the far wall.
These were not normal chairs. They were taller, unnaturally narrow, and built without any back support.
“Shame chairs,” the counselor announced. “For those who cannot hold themselves with the dignity God requires.”
Two boys were pulled from the line immediately. One swayed so violently he nearly fell before being guided onto one of the narrow seats. The other breathed in fast, shallow, panicked bursts, his chest heaving.
Samuel kept his gaze locked forward, his throat tight. He felt his own legs wobble, just once. A tiny, involuntary tremor.
Just enough for him to notice. Just enough to flood him with cold fear.
Don’t move. Don’t you dare give them a reason.
The counselor walked past him again, his eyes scanning, missing nothing. Samuel held himself rigid, forcing false strength into limbs that had gone numb.
The fluorescent lights buzzed their relentless drone overhead.
Someone to his left sniffed softly, a wet, stifled sound.
A shame chair creaked ominously as a boy shifted, trying to alleviate the pain.
Samuel stared at the chipped blue patch on the wall until his eyes lost focus and the world blurred into a smear of color.
And he didn’t move.
∞∞∞
Present
One moment Samuel was staring at the chipped, faded blue line painted on that gymnasium floor, his young knees shaking uncontrollably, the counselor’s heavy, calloused hand slamming across his knuckles with a crack that echoed in the hollow space…
And the next, he was back in the stark, modern kitchen of Voss his breath trapped somewhere between a desperate inhale and a complete collapse.
The fingers were long, the palm broad and flat, the pressure soft, steadying rather than restraining.
The world narrowed to that single, focused point of contact.
A voice followed, low and calm, spoken close enough that Samuel felt the faint, warm vibration of it ghost across the shell of his ear.
“Steady. Deep breaths, boy.”
The word boy hit him like a physical blow.
A punch to the lungs, knocking the remaining air from him.
A huge, shuddering breath tore out of him; a ragged, uncontrolled exhale that burned as it escaped. His knees nearly buckled with the sheer, overwhelming force of the release.
Hot air brushed his ear again, making goosebumps rise in violent, successive waves across his skin, crawling from his nape down the length of his arms.
The thumb at the back of his neck moved.
Slow.
Steady.
Rubbing small, firm circles directly over the frantic hammering of his pulse point.
The effect was instantaneous.
The kitchen dissolved around him; the hum of the refrigerator, the sterile white walls, the glare of the fluorescent lights, all of it peeled away in a single, disorienting sweep.
The busy office outside the door vanished with it.
His body felt weightless, untethered from reality, as if gravity had briefly forgotten its claim on him.
His muscles unlocked one by one in a wave of release; his shoulders dropping away from his ears, his jaw unclenching, his spine softening from its rigid line.
An enormous, invisible weight slipped from his shoulders and chest, so abruptly he almost gasped aloud.
He hadn’t even consciously known he was carrying such a crushing burden until it fell away.
He floated.
Empty.
Light.
Quiet for the first time in hours, days… years.
He heard the voice again, closer this time, the warm breath a tangible prickling against the sensitive skin of his neck. “Good boy.”
The words slid through him like a drug, unraveling something deep and tightly wound, something old and frayed, something he had spent years, a lifetime, trying to chain down and suppress.
A soft, broken sound escaped him in response; quiet, completely involuntary, something between a sigh and a moan.
The sound of his own vulnerability shocked him back into his body with the force of a slap.
His eyes snapped open, vision blurry.
He jerked away from the contact as if burned, stumbling back two clumsy steps, his own hand flying to his neck where the touch still lingered like a brand. His heart slammed against his ribs, a wild, frantic rhythm, and his breath returned in fast, uneven, gulping bursts.
Gael stood exactly where Samuel had been half a second before.
Back straight.
Face impassive.
But his eyes…
His eyes were not cold at all. They held a dark, focused intensity, a deep, unsettling gleam of possession and understanding.
Samuel didn’t wait to decipher it.
Didn’t dare take another breath.
Didn’t trust himself to speak.
He turned on his heel and fled the kitchen, the echo of, Good boy, still vibrating like a live wire just beneath his skin.