trespass

I hear my name, I know the voice, I know that not hearing does sometimes work.

Again, "Oi, Robinson!"

Right.

Busy? No, there are two assignments due in the morning, which you doubtless care a great deal about, and I'd planned to milk the school's army of pygmy marmosets before pushing on with the essays, but I have all the fucking time in the world for you. What's that? Nothing. Bloody faggot, c'mere.

The boys in the house - we number about 70 - have always been able to choose their rooms, and so the tendency is for complementary personalities, the different cliques, to gather along certain corridors. There are some, usually more sensitive individuals, who avoid particular passageways for this reason.

The chap in question isn't bright, but he's obedient, and happy to be a certain way in order to keep in good nic with his clique, the important people; someone I can neither admire, nor despise, there are those who I can't even feel sorry for.

He ushers me into a room, where four others are waiting. I'm aware of the blindfold. The plastic poster tube held in one person's hand. The pellet gun on the table. The victim. I understand.

In front of my feet, in the emptiness of the floor, I sense a place, shameful but somehow easier to face than what is coming, where I can go, to will myself elsewhere; it seems very much the safeguard of my own wellbeing, to turn inward. But I won't, and eventually, I come through.

There are some, usually more sensitive individuals, who avoid particular passageways for this reason. I don't because I'm proud, and I can't afford to spend the precious moments of my life living in fear and paranoia at the expense of everything else. Sometimes I remember, and I feel that I should be angry, but I'm not. I just don't care about the details; the crushing moments of terror that followed taught me more about my own vitality than any other, single event in my life, and I wasn't disappointed with what I saw within myself. I would hate to go through similar again, but fate dealt me a lenient hand, on the grander scale; part of me will always be grateful for the injury.

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