The Day The Tables Turned - 1. Chapter 1

The Day the Tables Turned

By BWCTwriter

Part One

* * * * *

“Don’t judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his moccasins.”

-An old Cherokee saying

I wish I knew what I’d ever done to piss off Kyle Hart. We’d been classmates since the fifth grade, when I moved to the small Iowa town of Mason City from a suburb of southern New Jersey. We got along okay, although we were never the best of friends. He’d say “Hi” to me every once in a while as we passed in the halls. Occasionally, we’d be paired up for labs in science class. There was never any animosity between us.

That is, until the ninth grade.

“Get out of my way, faggot!” Kyle spat at me while forcibly shoving me into my locker one day. I cowered away, as I’d learned to do from previous altercations with the jerk in weeks past, fearing he’d come back to take another shot at me. I was lucky that day. It was the only run-in I’d had with him in an otherwise normal day.

My mind was a mess during the remainder of the school day. It was the first time anyone had ever called me a “Faggot” before. Sure, Kyle insulted me numerous times in the past, but never had he used the dreaded “F” word that no teenage boy wanted to be labeled. I had no idea what I said or did that warranted such a harsh insult.

I’d seen other “effeminate” guys around school. They talked with a lisp, were limp-wristed, and had lots of “girl friends” hanging around them all day. They weren’t the type of girls they dated, or had sex with. No, these particular guys, and their “girl friends” acted just like two girls would with each other: doing “girl stuff,” gossiping about boys they liked, shopping at the mall, those kinds of things. What did I do that equated me with them?

It’s not that I disliked gay people. I didn’t dislike anyone. I just wondered what I had done that made anyone think I was gay. In fact, I was pretty sure I wasn’t gay.

Sure, I messed around with a couple boys when I was ten or eleven years old. I was curious. A lot of boys did that as adolescents. When my hormones took hold of me, I yearned to discover the pleasures I could invoke in myself and others, and my male friends were the most convenient and willing participants.

By the time I was thirteen, I’d put boys out of my mind and never thought twice about it. They were handsome and all, but I just didn’t feel the same physical attraction toward them as I did toward the girls in my grade. I loved their soft, sweet voices, the way they walked, the way they smelled, their smooth, curvy bodies, and who could forget their enticing midsection? Everything about girls excited me. I even dated a couple girls for a while. I wasn’t ready for a steady girlfriend, though. I wanted to be able to “play the field.” I didn’t want any girls to think I wasn’t “available.”

I don’t think Kyle’s comment shook me quite as hard as he’d hoped, but that didn’t stop him from trying. Every day, he’d find something “different” about me to make fun of, no matter how miniscule it was in importance: my hair, my glasses, my acne, the way I dressed, the way I walked, the way I talked, any small imperfection was fair game.

Sometimes, he’d just make up imperfections that it seemed only he noticed. My name was a perfect target as well. “Fenton the Faggot,” is who I was. Most of the time, he just called me “Faggot” for short.

Kyle Hart, I used to think. Add an “E” and his name would be really fucking ironic.

My abuser’s level of persistence increased tenfold in the weeks that followed. He even recruited his friends to watch and participate as he methodically cut me down, stripping me of my self-esteem little by little each day. Kyle would rarely miss an opportunity to intrude into my life and take shots at me. No matter what kind of abuse it was, be it physical or emotional, he’d dish it out like it was going out of style.

Sometimes I’d be sitting in class, trying my best to listen to my teacher’s instructions, when Kyle and his pot-smoking cronies would start throwing things at me. Sometimes it was just spitballs, sometimes pencils. Sometimes Kyle would get out of his seat to “sharpen his pencil,” only to punch me in the back as he returned to his desk. The teachers either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Sometimes I was sure it was the latter.

I could never tell my parents just how bad things got. I talked to them about it earlier in the school year. My mother’s best advice was “just ignore them and they’ll get bored and stop,” only they never stopped. My father…. Well, I didn’t have those conversations with him. When he came home, I’d ask him how his day was, he’d say it was long and tiring, and that would be the end of it. I’m not sure what I would have said had he ever showed the slightest interest in my physical well-being at school, because he never asked.

At one point, I just started lying to my mother and told her that they stopped picking on me, if only to ease her mind. Nothing could ease the pain and torment that scarred my soul.

I could never tell the teachers or school administrators about being bullied, either. I saw and experienced what happened when someone fingered their abusers. Their bullies only grew angrier, and tried even harder to make their victims’ lives a living hell. No, this was a problem I just had to live with. Swallow the pain, choke back the tears, and pretend your soul isn’t crying out in agony. That was my only choice. I’d go home, seek the shelter of sleep, and wake up to the same nightmare all over again the following morning.

I contemplated suicide almost every day of my freshman and sophomore years. The emotional abuse had gotten to me so much that I even felt too weak to take my own life. So, I just sat there and took their harassment and assault, hoping one day that the nightmare would be over. If only I could wake up, go to school, do my work, and go home without having to worry about looking over my shoulder, holding my arms up in defense of Kyle’s physical assaults, and being publicly degraded and shown to be weak and pathetic. It was a nice dream, but I knew it would never happen; not as long as I was me.

One day, I was changing for swimming at the beginning of gym class. The swimming component of Physical Education was something I always dreaded. Though I didn’t think of myself as “below average” in endowment, I worried that my nakedness would leave me far more open to Kyle’s ridicule than I was normally.

I always picked a locker that was in a corner of the locker room, which would provide for some privacy while I stripped out of my underwear. I might have glanced at others dressing, and I’m sure I’d gotten an eyeful of my classmates during the swimming section, but I never stared. I did what all fourteen and fifteen year olds did: compare myself to the other guys. I had nothing to worry about either. I was as well-equipped as the next guy.

That particular day, I happened to glance up at Kyle while he was proudly standing near his friends, unashamed of his nudity. He laughed and joked with his gang without a care in the world while his goods flapped in the breeze. The moment he caught my eyes, I knew I was in trouble.

Kyle’s eyes narrowed and his face contorted into the most hateful expression I’d ever seen. It amazed me that a face could be filled with so much evil. He stood tall and stomped toward me; arms raised and ready to fight. He pushed me hard into my locker. The dial on the locker door jabbed me in the hip, sending a sharp pain into my leg, and I yelped in pain.

“What the fuck are you looking at, faggot?” he barked.

I trembled as I looked down in shame. “N..Nothing,” I stuttered. If I could have crawled into the locker and locked it up tightly to make it all just go away, I would have.

“Keep your fuckin’ eyes off me, you pervert!” he commanded.

His other friends gathered around behind him, pointing and laughing while he “gave me what I deserved.”

He pushed me into my locker repeatedly, all the while shouting obscenities at me. “Fag, pussy, wuss, pansy,” any degrading insult he could come up with. His friends cheered him on, and even got in a few shots themselves. I wasn’t sure how much lower I could feel at that moment. I sank to my knees to protect myself, but that didn’t stop him. He wasn’t through abusing me, not by a long shot.

“Pick him up!” Kyle barked at his henchmen, who roughly pulled me to my feet.

My eyes glazed over as I attempted to find a happy place in my mind to focus on that would keep me from feeling the unbearable pain and utter desperation that threatened to consume me. My mind refused to shift focus. My entire reality was that moment. There was no escaping the pain, the humiliation, the shame.

At that point, every boy in the locker room had gathered around me and my attackers, some egging Kyle on, some shaking their heads in disgust of the weak, pitiful soul that I was, some with cold indifference, and some thanking God that it was me on the floor, taking the beating, instead of them.

“This’ll show you for checkin’ me out, faggot,” he yelled, illustrating his point by kneeing me in the balls. Razor sharp pain shot from my groin into my back. I had trouble breathing; my stomach was on the verge of expelling my lunch all over the floor. Kyle’s “partners in crime” let go of me, and I slid down the lockers, landing in a crumpled heap on the floor. Tears freely streamed down my face, which felt as red with shame as a ripe tomato. My body was wracked with sobs as the pain became increasingly strong with every breath. The sickening, sinister laugh of my abuser and his buddies echoed through the locker room, just as it echoed throughout the deepest recesses of my soul.

As I sat on the floor, my body curled up into as small a form as I could contort it, Kyle yanked my head up by the chin and spat on my face. It was the most degrading and humiliating experience of my life.

I felt lower than dirt. I wasn’t even human. After all, what kind of person would let another do such horrible things to him with no protest? How could I just stand there and take it, when my survival instinct should have been telling me to stand up, look him straight in the eyes, and fight back with all the strength of my being?

I wondered which lucky soul got that strength, which I rightfully deserved, while Kyle and his pack laughed and walked away.

“Knock it off out there!” Coach ordered as he stuck his head out of the office. He didn’t even bother to see what was going on. No one ever came to my defense; not even the preppy kids, who were generally nice guys. Kyle could have stabbed me, letting my lifeblood seep out of me, and casually walked away as I slowly bled to death, and not a soul would have cared.

As Kyle and his followers lost interest in abusing me, they gave each other “high fives” and returned to their lockers to dress for the next class.

I stayed huddled in a ball, tucked away in my corner of the locker room, until everyone had left. Not one single person came to my aid, during or after the altercation. What I felt at the time must have been true. I was less than human. From what I learned in science class, many mammals would stand fast and even die to protect their own kind from harm. Where were my protectors? Why didn’t anyone care about my well-being?

Once I felt the last pair of eyes leave me and was alone in the locker room, I slowly and painfully got to my feet, staggering toward the sink. I looked in the mirror and saw my battered, bruised form. My lip was bleeding, my hair mussed; I had a bruise near my right eye that would surely be black the following morning. I could taste the blood in my mouth from the split lip Kyle gave me. I was one sorry excuse for a fourteen year old.

“What are you still doing in here?” Coach questioned as he walked out to the gym to prepare for next class. I just looked at him and thought, ‘If you don’t know, you don’t care, so why bother telling you?’ I stayed silent and he put me out of his mind, like the uncaring bastard that he was, and went out to start class.

Thanks Coach.

I felt oddly detached from the present while I washed away as much evidence from the assault as I could. The blood and dirt came off easily enough, but I had a fat lip and an increasingly darkening purple ring around my eye. My body continued to quake in pain and sadness.

My parents would undoubtedly smother me with concern when I arrived home later in the afternoon. I wasn’t sure what I’d do at that moment, but I’d worry about it later.

In an action quite unusual for me and my studious nature, I skipped the last two classes of the day. I painfully hobbled the two-mile distance from the school to my house. I held back my tears, but I felt every little twinge of pain, both physical and emotional, from the attack.

I’m sure anyone who had seen me walking along the sidewalk that afternoon would have noticed the blank stare that was my facial expression. I knew that’s what I looked like, because that’s how my soul felt: blank, empty, non-existent. I was a boy without a soul, living each day as though I were a robot. Nothing held any pleasure for me anymore. There were no good moments to my otherwise horrible day. My horrible day was all I had.

When I got home, I dropped my books off by the dining room, caring not where they landed, what damage I caused them, or what my parents would think of my sloppy behavior.

I walked up the stairs towards my room, and impulsively turned toward my parents’ bedroom.

I knew where the lock box was, knew the combination. I knew just how to load the bullets of my father’s police issue forty caliber Smith & Wesson pistol.

With shaky hands, I took the gun from its box, feeling the weight of it in my hands, the texture of its grip, and the long, smooth barrel. I delicately loaded the clip, after first loading it with a single bullet. I would only need one.

I walked over to the mirror sitting atop my mother’s vanity and stared at myself. There was so much pain, so much unbearable pain. All I had to do was pull the trigger and my pain would go away. One last breath, one last thought, one last excruciating moment was all I’d have to endure, and then my pain would end forever. I could be free of it all. Free of the abuse, the name-calling, and the hatred. Free of worry, doubt, and depression. I’d be free at last from the hell that was my existence.

I took the safety off, chambered the round, and positioned it under my chin. I could feel the cold metal as it made contact with my skin. The cylindrical barrel dug into my throat. Beads of sweat dripped from my forehead, down along my nose, and mixed with my tears as they glided down my face and collected near the barrel of the pistol that was pointed into my skull.

I could smell the oil my father used to protect his gun from tarnishing. I squeezed the cold metal grip so tightly that my fingers turned white from lack of blood flow. My head pounded in time with my heart, which seemed as though it was going to burst forth from my chest at any moment. My hands trembled; my breathing was fast and shallow. My ears were overwhelmed with the deafening silence.

I placed my left index finger over the trigger, trying to muster enough strength to pull it and end my suffering. I stared intently at the mirror. I begged my reflection to spare me a moments more agony and pull the trigger for me and end my hellish existence once and for all.

The harder I stared at my reflection, the more difficult it became to do the deed. I just kept thinking about how weak and pathetic I was. There I stood, faced with the one tool in all the world that had the power to end my physical pain and put my soul to rest, but I was too afraid to act. I was so weak a human being that I couldn’t even end my own suffering. I was everything Kyle said I was and more.

I dropped the gun to my side, lamenting over my utter weakness as a person. I was nothing. I was worth nothing. I could do nothing. I would become nothing in life. I’d find no happiness, no joy, no satisfaction. I would never be the person I was meant to be, assuming I ever had a purpose in the first place.

Maybe God just forgot to give me one, I thought. Maybe He made me without a purpose, just to watch me fail. Well, if that was the case, I was giving Him one hell of a show.

After I’d calmed myself down somewhat, I quietly packed my father’s weapon back into its case, careful to leave it in exactly the position I’d found it, removed all trace of my presence from the room, and left. I walked slowly down the hall and into the bathroom.

I started the shower, turning the water as cold as it would go, and stripped my dirty, sweaty clothes from my body, climbed in and soaked myself in the freezing cold water, hoping it would dull my senses and wash away all my shame, agony, and pain. I knelt down in the back of the shower, hugged my knees to my chest, and wept, the very depths of my soul crying out in utter despair.

I’m not sure how long I spent in the shower, as time seemed to slow to a crawl since I had arrived home. A slamming of the front door jolted me to awareness and alerted me to my mother’s presence in the house. I suddenly became aware of how cold I was. My teeth chattered, my skin was as white as a ghost. My hands were shriveled from the water.

I got up slowly, stretching my stiff arms and legs, turned off the water, dried off as quickly as I could, threw my soiled clothes back on, and walked down the stairs to meet my mother in the kitchen.

“Hi honey,” she greeted happily, “how are...” She stopped speaking in mid-sentence and her expression changed from jubilation to concern and worry. “Oh my God, what happened to you, baby?”

She rushed over and examined me. She cared so much for me. I really wish I saw in myself what she saw in me. Maybe then, I’d finally have a reason to get up in the morning.

I just shrugged and replied impassively, “I got into a fight.” It was a lie. I hadn’t gotten into a fight. A fight had gotten into me.

“Oh, my poor baby!” my mother exclaimed in sympathy, grabbing me in a hug. “My Lord, you’re as cold as ice! Come with me, let’s get you cleaned and warmed up.”

My mother led me to the bathroom, where she immediately threw some towels over me in an attempt to get my temperature up. She tenderly cleaned and dressed my wounds, and I just sat there and let her do what she felt was necessary. She trembled in sadness and anger as she tended to me, muttering about what she was going to do to better my situation.

I just ignored her, instead finding a place in my mind that distanced me the painful moment. I enjoyed the temporary relief from the pain it allowed me, though I wished I could have found it while being pummeled by Kyle and his cohorts.

“That’s it,” my mother proclaimed as she threw a bloody gauze pad into the trash can. “We’re going down to that school tomorrow and telling your principal about this. I’ll have those boys expelled for this. They can’t do this to my baby!”

I shook myself out of my trance and looked up at her incredulously. I immediately grew hostile at my being referred to as ‘her baby.’ My face contorted into an angry expression and I glared at my mother.

“I’m not a baby, Mom,” I insisted angrily. “You can’t go to the principal. They’ll pound me even worse than they did this time!”

“Well,” she concluded, “I just don’t see any other way. The school will deal with them. You’ll be safe there from now on. I’ll make sure of that.”

I scoffed at my mother’s assertion that getting the school involved would make one bit of difference in the amount of abuse I received.

Even if I fingered each of my abusers, there were still others who would take the place of Kyle and his crew. It was the natural order of things. When the throne is vacated, the next strongest man, or boy in this case, would take his place. Then, my abuse would begin anew.

“Well,” my mother continued, “I’m going to talk with your father about this tonight. He’ll know what to do.”

“Doubt it,” I replied dryly as I walked away from her, stomping across the hall and entering my sanctuary once again.

‘Why did I even bother showering anyway?’ I asked myself as I plopped down onto my bed. ‘There’s no washing me off.’ There was nothing I could do to keep my mind from revolving around my depression, so I buried my head under a pillow, in hopes that sleep would save me from my agony, if only for a few hours.

Even in my dreams, I could not escape the memories of that day, the most humiliating day of my young life. I felt every blow to my body, winced at every insult, and cowered at every threat of that horrible ten minutes in the locker room just a few hours earlier, just as if it were happening all over again.

My mother brought a plate of food up to me at seven o’clock that night, knocked on the door and asked if I wanted to eat. I groaned in response and added, “Go away,” hoping she’d get the hint and leave me alone.

In a very concerned voice, she acquiesced. “Okay, honey. I’ll leave your plate in the fridge if you want to eat it later.” She paused for a moment and, with as much love as she could convey through the closed door, added, “I love you, sweetheart.”

Save your love for someone who’s worth it, I thought. I stayed silent, however, and buried my head under the pillows again. I needed to stop infecting her and others with my misery. Why should they have to suffer along with me through something that will never get better? I reasoned.

My mother slowly descended the stairs and returned to the kitchen. At last, I was alone.

As I made a vain attempt to escape my pain in sleep again, I thought to myself.

Man, Kyle is so lucky. He just walks around all day, does what he wants, and he doesn’t get shit from anyone. I wish I was strong like him. I wish I was cool like him. I wish I had a lot of friends like him. If I could have a chance to be him, it would be his day of reckoning. It would be The Day the Tables Turned.