Punished

TW: abuse, violence

Today’s the day I change. I wake up and I just know, I know I have to. I’ll change and I swear, I’ll be better. The new me is born now, to the sound of my annoying aggressive ringtone that I really don’t like.

You might be asking yourself why I keep a ringtone that is annoying and aggressive. I mean, that would be a fair question. To be honest, I kinda think it’s to punish myself. I can’t, like, properly punish myself like dad used to. I mean, I know I could. I could lock myself in a closet for 3 hours, I could, but I don’t really want to. So I punish myself with little things that don’t hurt, like, that much. Like annoying aggressive ringtones. Uncooked frozen diners when I haven’t really been good all day. Sleeping on the floor next to my bed if I didn’t respect my schedule all day. Skipping a few meals when I burn stuff on the stove. Getting up really early for a run if I’m not in bed by 10. Walking barefoot on the really cold floor of my apartment, that I always, like always, keep at 62 degrees, cause you know, heating’s expensive, when I take more than 3 minutes to shower. Not eating breakfast if I have a nightmare, cause waking people up, or like, waking your parents up, when you have a nightmare and you scream or you cry, that’s really annoying and kinda mean and it’s not okay. I mean, I know I don’t wake anyone up when I have a nightmare now, because you know, I live alone. But I still dare have nightmares sometimes, and if I weren’t living alone, I’d be waking people up, and that’s not okay. That’s mean, and I shouldn’t be mean. I should be good. So I punish myself just a little bit. Dad said it might be too late and God won’t forgive me, because I’m bad. But I should still like, you know, try. In case God sees that I’m trying, like, really hard to be good. Maybe he’ll let me into Heaven. I’ve been told Hell is a place where you’re always being punished. I don’t really want to go there. But I know if I do, it’ll be because I deserve it. 

I know I should punish myself more and better, because I’m not good. Mom told me many times. She was right, she told me that’s why dad was angry a lot, that it was because of me. I think she told me that I was, like, born bad. Lost cause, I think she called it. But dad didn’t give up on me. No, he was good to me. He kept punishing me, because he knew I could be good if, you know, he taught me how. So he taught me a lot of things, and he punished me when I wasn’t a good learner. He was a very creative man, you know. He used different things to punish me. Sometimes it was wood, sometimes it was belts, or boiling water, or cigarettes, or utensils, or an empty glass bottle, or sometimes it was even just his fists or the back of his hand. He told me he was creative, because I needed to not get bored of punishments, you know. If I got bored or too used to the punishments hurting, then it would not work well. I would not become good. Punishments have to hurt and not always be the same, you know, if you want them to, like, work. 

Today’s the day I change, because I think last night, I might have ruined my chance of, like, not going to Hell. And I don’t really want to go to Hell. I know punishments are good for me, but like, eternity seems pretty long, doesn’t it? So I have to be good, because last night, I was really, really, really bad.

Honestly, I didn’t want to hurt the woman. I think it was just a really bad night for me. I was just walking home, and I passed this bar. Well, I mean, was it a bar? Or it might have been a pub, or a club? I don’t really know these things. I had never walked in a place like that. I mean, going inside would’ve earned me such a huge punishment. Dad would’ve hurt me a lot, if he were still the one punishing me. But I am the one punishing myself these days, and so I probably would’ve, I don’t know, like, not eaten for a couple of days if I had gone in. Something like that.

And so I stood in front of it. There was a lot of noise, a lot of smells, a lot of people. I heard music and shouting and glasses knocking, and I could smell something, I think it was alcohol, mixing with the smell of cigarettes coming from the group of women near the entrance. There was so much smoke around them and they weren’t wearing a lot of clothes and I could see that one of them had a lot of makeup and mom always said makeup is a bad thing that bad women wear.

I was trying not to look at them. And to not look at the bar. Dad was always clear about things like that. I was not going to drink, smoke, dance, and I would not look at women, unless maybe one woman, if I got married someday. But to marry a woman, don’t you have to look at some women? To, you know, find one you like? I had asked him that once. But I was wrong to ask it, and I was rightfully punished. 

I was trying so hard not to look at them. But then one looked at me. Not the one with a lot of makeup. But she was wearing some too, she was wearing, like, really red lipstick with a short skirt and a see-through blouse, and that meant she was a bad woman. She walked towards me and she smelled like vanilla and cigarettes and her curls bounced on her… on her… breasts, and why was her hand on my arm? She leaned towards me and spoke, and I couldn’t quite hear her because there was a weird buzzing in my ears, but it was something about having some company and about money, and then she just, like, grabbed my arm and started walking towards the alley near the bar or pub or club… and she was walking in front of me and I could see how tight her skirt was and she was a bad woman…

And then when I felt something, you know, something weird, like down there, the thing I knew I was not supposed to feel, and I kinda panicked, I guess. I knew I wasn’t allowed to have that kind of feeling, you know? So I was starting to panic, and she turned around and pressed me against the wall and pressed herself against me and pressed her hand down there…

I wanted her to stop and I didn’t want her to stop and… and… and dad used to say that there were bad people everywhere, and so it was good to always carry a weapon, you know, just in case, and now dad’s knife was in my hands and no longer in my back pocket and… and… and she wasn’t going to stop because she was a bad woman… and I knew what dad would say. I had to make it stop. Heaven was no place for people who accepted or gave this kind of pleasure without being properly married. I had to make it stop.

It took a few seconds before I realized that I had done, like, a bad thing. But I had done it to stop another bad thing. God forgave such things, right? 

When I looked down, she was on the ground, and I could still see her… breasts, only now they were red, like really red. There was red on the curls, on the tight skirt, on the see-through blouse. It matched the lipstick. It suited her. She was a bad woman. 

So I went home. I cleaned up, of course I cleaned up, because not cleaning up blood off my clothes means I have to punish myself. Dad used to make me eat detergent when I forgot to clean up the blood after my punishments. Clothes had to remain clean. 

I went to bed, after that. But it was 10:43. That meant I had to get up early to go for a run, because in bed past 10 meant I was bad. 

And I woke up this morning to go for a run, and now I know I need to change. I need to properly punish myself for the bad thing I did last night. Like, for real, this time. Like dad used to, you know. I mean, like, it has to hurt. I don’t really want to. But I have to change. It’s a matter of Heaven or Hell.

Maybe boiling water will do the trick. Mom used to say that boiling water was good to clear people of their sins. Maybe it’ll clear me of mine.