The Re-education of Haskell Haveter, #1
A Count The Days story. Content Warning for mentions of childhood abuse, blood & bleeding, beating with a switch. Does contain some comfort towards the end although it is an abusive dynamic [guard/prisoner].
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Haskell
My childhood was not a particularly nice one. It left raw wounds that I hide underneath my clothes, and occasionally something brushes up against those wounds and I bleed through my clothes.
I’m cowering from the man standing over me, terrified he’s about to hit me again.
Although my father never actually hit me, I was plenty scared he would after his temper tantrums devolved into throwing things at me and stamping his feet over the slightest friction between us. He did, afterwards, grab me and squeeze me so hard I thought my ribs would crack, insisting he was giving me a hug and that we were friends again.
But he never apologised. It was always my fault, seemingly.
This is also my fault. Actually my fault.
The difference, here, is that I am actually going to get hit, and there is no question about it. I am expecting the pain. Not looking forwards to it, not dreading it, just expecting it and fearing it.
“You are a disgusting, awful little man,” he says to me, and those words echo through my ears.
I am bleeding through my shirt, the blue uniform shirt, but it’s not the memories. It’s not metaphorical, I am actually and literally bleeding through the canvas denim-blue material.
He grabs me by the hair, lifts my face to his. A few strands of my hair flutter out and catch the light, and then he lets me drop. I sprawl on the floor, staring into the concrete. “I’m sorry,” I say weakly.
“That’s not good enough,” Kade says. “That’s never going to be good enough.” He grabs my collar and pulls up my shirt to expose my bruised and bloodied lower back again. “Say that again, Haveter,” he says.
“I’m sorry,” I sob into the concrete, and he smacks the switch with a heavy hand into the fresh bruises. “I’m sorry,” I sob again, and another strike knocks me flat.
“Say that one more time,” he says to me.
“I- I’m sorry,” I sob, barely audible, and again, the third strike makes me hiss through my teeth, tasting blood.
I start to cry, properly, tears running down my cheeks as I lie on my stomach, staring at his shoes. I sniff as he tugs down my shirt, tapping me on the cheek with the bloody switch. “Tell me what you’ve learnt.”
“I… that saying sorry isn’t enough.”
“Wrong.“ Another smack of the switch, this time across my face. I taste blood. And then it dribbles out of my mouth, between my teeth. I retch, still crawling around on the floor.
I shake my head, blood dripping from my mouth. “I don’t know, I don’t understand,” I sob. He doesn’t even bother to pull up my shirt this time, and strikes me between my shoulders, hitting old and twisted scars. I writhe, twisting from side to side, but carry on shaking my head, tears still running down my face. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” I plead. “Please, I don’t know.”
He raises the switch again, but he is stopped by a hand on his shoulder. Kade twists around, the switch still raised, as if he is going to hit Fennec. “I’ve told you about interrupting me,” he hisses.
“That is enough,” Fennec tells Kade firmly. “Enough.”
Kade glares at the German, jaw clenched, and throws down the switch. It bounces on the floor, the flexible wood quivering as it does so from the force of Kade’s indignance. “Fine. You clean this bastard up then,” he snaps, and storms out. He slams the door behind him.
Fennec sighs. He limps over to the trolley and takes the metal bowl of water from the top of it, squeezing out the flannel. “Take off your shirt and sit up,” he says to me, letting the flannel drip into the bowl.
With fingers past-broken and aching in the cold, I undo the buttons and shrug it off. My back is a mess of old scars from lashes and fresh bruises and oozing wounds from whatever Kade was trying to do just then. Fennec drags the stool over to beside me and sits down, inspecting the wounds with a gloved hand at their edges. “Nothing too deep,” he says, matter-of-fact. “I don’t think they need dressing.” He squeezes out the flannel again and starts to wipe them down. I grunt a little, but the coolness of the flannel is an utterly blissful relief from the heat that always seems to radiate from my injuries.
He finishes on my back and washes the flannel out in the bowl again, handing it to me. “Wipe your face,” he says, and I do, scrubbing the salt-stains and the dirt from the floor from my cheeks. He puts the flannel back in the bowl and puts it back on the trolley.
“Do you understand anything he was trying to teach you?” he asks, a hand on his knee.
“No,” I say, looking up at Fennec.
“Mmm,” he says. I don’t know what he means by that. “I will talk to him.” He puts a hand on the wall to stand up, still holding his knee. Pain flickers across his usually sanguine face as he does, and then he lurches over to the trolley, picking up the discarded switch with a sigh, a hand again on his knee, and dropping it back on the bottom tray. He fumbles with his keys and unlocks the door. “Can you stand?”
I pull myself to aching, bare feet- I have boots, but I’ve not been allowed to put them on for a long while- and straighten myself out, doing my shirt back up. My joints all ache.
“Come on,” he says, and holds the door open so I can leave the room. The alarm goes off as he does so, but he doesn’t bat an eyelid. He passes me over to the guard who is waiting outside. I wince as the soldier puts a hand on my shoulder.
“Sorry,” says the soldier, realising what the technicians have done to me, and instead of putting my hands behind me, cuffs them in front of me. It’s not comfortable but it’s not painful. His associate throws the hood over my head. I don’t resist, which is the first thing that the re-education technicians tore out of me.
I just let them walk me back with a hand on each of my arms, head down, counting the steps on the cold tiled floor of the corridor.
