Stevens School Runaways -- Part 6

“Punishment Weekend Begins”

Black Friday March 30 dawned as a somber day – drizzly and gloomy, then just cloudy. By late afternoon, the sun came out, and a brilliant rainbow appeared. Tom and Rich felt the skies were mocking them, realizing all too well what the evening would bring. All day, their stomachs churned, stricken by a tense and horrible anticipation. In the gym, Tom approached Anton Reilly who’d cancelled the barefoot workouts promptly on Wednesday. “Maybe if you can take us under your wing, and start those workouts again? Please sir!” Tom pleaded, hoping against hope that a return to chapped feet might at least postpone the inevitable.

“I’m sorry Tom, wish I could help you out, but there’s just no reason to do those sessions anymore. You guys blew it. It’s out of my hands.”

Rich had been hoping Tom might get Reilly to intercede, but as the day slowly ticked away, he realized that wasn’t going to happen. By 7:00 p.m., back in 14c lying on his back staring at the ceiling with the lights out and the curtains drawn – the sorrowful 8th grader knew the worst. He’d been informed. At about 7:10 Tom came up from supper – he’d hardly touched his plate, and plopped down on his own bed equally despondent. Both boys lay silently in the dark until Rich spoke. “We have to take a shower, change back into our school uniforms, and be ready for the knock any time after 7:30. That’s 20 minutes. I already took mine. They want us to be ‘squeaky-clean’ when they come for us.”

“Why? I took a shower this morning.”

“I don’t know. I’m just repeating what they said.” Even his friend’s voice was scary. Rich sounded like a robot, or maybe a zombie. Tom shrugged, and took a bar of soap with him into the hall, closing the door to their room ever so gently. Fifteen minutes later, he was back, clean as a whistle. “Even washed my crack,” he said, upon re-entering. Rich didn’t laugh. “That’s nice,” he said, still sounding like a zombie.

What seemed like a moment later, the dreaded knock came. “C’mon you two!” It was one of the security guards, a big six-footer built like a serious weightlifter, “They’re waiting for you.” Neither boy knew their escort’s name.

*

The basement’s massive wooden door leading into the antechamber and dungeon-like quarters soon stood before the boys like a portal into hell. Their burly guard knocked on that door. “I’ve got them,” he said. “C’mon in,” someone said – Mason. He was smiling. “Glad you could make it, boys!” Both boys distinctly heard a murmur – adult voices -- coming from inside.

Once inside, someone closed the huge door, hard. Squeaky hinges, a slam. No escape now, as if there’d ever been a way out. Immediately, the miscreants took stock of their surroundings. The room was too bright, the fluorescents a harsh glare. Both boys couldn’t help squinting. “Welcome to the antechamber,” a strange stocky man said. He wore a vest and a bowtie among his fine attire; an antique monocle decorated his left eye. Rich vaguely recognized this peculiar man; he’d seen him from a distance around the school once or twice. “Mr. Mueller, I presume,” he thought but didn’t say. Tom had never laid eyes on Mueller and so just briefly glanced in his direction. The slightly younger boy perceived the room itself. Spacious and modern, it contained several nice leather comfortable chairs, a big screen color television with a videocassette recorder, a black suede leather sofa, and canvas soft-backed director’s chairs. The chairs, all mauve, the color of blood, were arranged like a theatre’s seats in rows – butt-perches for three, six, nine adults – most of whom he unfortunately knew – Mason, Taylor, Mueller, Reilly, Cousins, ‘Doc’ Thompson, Graves, and also, Mrs. O’Neill – it had to be her -- sickly sweet -- perfume – an odor combined with a person that Rich had so vividly described.

There was an unfamiliar face. “Mr. Elliott is here to observe, everyone. He’ll be with us all weekend – until the conclusion of these proceedings,” Mr. Taylor said. Both boys wondered what he was doing here – and why.

Rich noticed security people ringing the room’s perimeter – at least three or four men and a woman. All wore blue-gray police-like uniforms with clubs and stun guns attached to their belts and looked deadly serious. The boys wore school uniforms – white dress shirts, brown corduroy pants, brown socks, tight-fitting brown dress shoes and underwear – cotton T-shirts and briefs, as instructed. Everyone seemed to be looking at them – stealing covert glances. Embarrassed, both boys looked up at the ceiling, maybe twenty feet up, as if on cue. Painted murals covered every inch of it. Strange scenes, European probably, the Marquis de Sade, ghastly horrors, men and women wearing hoods, dungeons, naked boys being tortured – it was hard to tell what the boys were seeing in the glare but their imaginations ran wild.

Tom happened to glance towards an open doorway just back from the antechamber, a little ways down a hallway -- at what looked to be an examination room. Inside was a very wide medical table with round leather straps – probably for a kid’s wrists and ankles. But why was the table so wide?

Rich saw all the way to the end of the corridor from where he was standing. At the terminus point stood a second massive wooden door. What was inside that room? Was it a dungeon for bad boys?

Suddenly headmaster Taylor interrupted the boys’ reverie. “Okay. It’s time. Shall we begin their orientation?”

End of Part 6

Part 7 – “Orientation”