Memory 3
“Meow!”
The first thing that registered to his senses was the high pitched meows that seemed to echo all around the room. They were artificial, small, and annoying, as all the kittens meows at various different intervals. He could feel his anger rising, though if it was at the blasted kittens or something else entirely, he wasn’t quite sure yet. With a deep breath, he restrained his feelings.
“There, we’re getting better at controlling our temper already, aren’t we?” came a voice suddenly, and the kittens had nothing on this sickeningly sweet timbre. He didn’t answer, but the person continued, “Now, you are going to be doing some lines for me.”
He started to move for his bag to get a quill. “No, not with your quill. You’re going to be using a rather special one of mine. Here you are.” The feathered pen was set down in front of him. He picked it up, and found it didn’t feel any different from any other quill he’s ever used. How was this special?
“I want you to write ‘I must not tell lies,’” the older woman instructed.
“How many times,” he asked curtly, yet surprisingly politely.
“Oh,” the woman mused with a mocking tone, “as long as it takes for the message to sink in.”
He picked up the quill and was set to start writing until he realized something was missing. “You haven’t given me any ink,” he said in the same short tone he used before. Really, was this woman daft? However he just heard her sigh lightly as if she was dismissing the ideal all together.
“Oh, you won’t need it,” she said in a surreptitious tone, as if there was some kind of secret that only she knew. Though wary, he started to write the words anyways, ‘I must not tell lies.’
A pain shot up his left arm as he did so, as if someone took a knife to his skin and began to gouge small lines into the back of his hand, and he gasped out in shock. It was burning by time he finished writing his first line, and though eventually the pain receded, the uncomfortable burn remained. He paused as he regained his breath and composure, then looked up at the woman that did this to him.
“Yes?” she asked in that stupidly kind voice.
He remained silent for a moment. “Nothing.”
Then he took to the parchment once more, scratching the words quickly onto the paper. In the same exact places as before the cuts were made into his hand, which probably made it worse considering it was the same wound as before. Then as before, the pain receded. He wrote again, and the pain came back, three times worst than what it was. He didn’t stop, and for hours he just wrote the same five words over and over and over again on this sheet of parchment. Really, how long did this piece of paper go on for? How much longer would he take the knife to his own hand?
He began to pant as he attempted to just keep the pained noises from escaping his throat. He wouldn’t give this disgusting woman the pleasure of knowing that he was hurting or that he wanted to give up. She thought he told lies? That’s a lie in itself! His own pride fueled this sadistic torture, and the pain in his hand just kept getting sharper and sharper and sharper…
Finally after what seemed like a lifetime of self-inflicted pain, the woman finally called him over. He stopped and for a brief moment it was as if a breath of fresh air entered his lungs while the pain dimmed to a blunt burn. Until the woman grabbed his hand with her stubby little fingers, that is. She turned his left hand this way and that, seemingly observing his work for that night. She tutted in disappointment. “I don’t seem to have made much of an impression yet,” she said in a syrupy light voice, “Well, we’ll just have to try again tomorrow evening won’t we?”
The kittens around the room all meowed in faint chorus around them, mocking him once more. Their sounds faded to nothingness, but the physical pain he felt only seemed to grow more and more in their absence.