Ari heard the key grind in the heavy lock. He was not sure how long he had been awake but they were finally here for him.
His arms locked around those of his orderlies-in-attendant, he joined the long lines of fellow inmates and orderlies at the iron galleries. Above him glared the electric lights. Together with the rest, Ari took the short walk through the concrete honeycomb to the hall, but there was time enough for him to reflect on his first day here.
He had been brought here in a tight-security armoured truck. It was the first day of the week. He had arrived just about the time that an assembly was going on, just like the one that he was on his way to. It was something that had been written into the regime of these hallowed halls since Dr Iqbal took over the office of Chief of Staff thirty years ago. On the first day of every week, the older boys were assembled together for the public whipping of their fellow-inmates.
In this country, adult men and women were publicly caned for their wide-ranging crimes and there was no reason that a caning in public should be withheld as a punitive and correctional tool for juvenile offenders. What was good for the big boys was good enough for the small boys, too, it was believed by popular consensus. However, whereas adult convicts were sentenced to be caned only one time of their lives, unless there was a re-offense, here, in the St Ignatius Mental Care Facility, the boys were almost certain to be subjected to a caning at least once every year. Some boys were caned twice every year as determined by their sentencing judge. Indeed the frequency of the caning depended on how serious their offense was considered by the judge when he handed them his verdict and sentence. This was, of course, before they were brought here.
Ari remembered his initiation into this institution. Immediately on arrival, he had been taken up to the stage and stripped of his clothes, his jeans and sweater, and his sneakers and socks, until he was completely naked. Attention was instantly drawn to the triangular tuft above his penis. Ari heard a man denounce this as a rule infraction.
"Boys are regularly spanked and caned here," the round-bellied man with the funny-looking spectacles, said, "and boys who are regularly spanked and caned must look like boys, not men. Real men are mature of intellect and emotions and do not do the things you boys are in here for. As I speak, preparation is being made to have you shaved right now for your caning."
Before the entire assembly, three men accosted the new boy by his armpits and dragged him to a makeshift bench. They laid him down, spread apart his thighs and held up his feet. When his black overgrowth around his genitals and anus finally disappeared under the steel clippers and razor, he was pulled up from the bench and tied up, naked for being unclothed and naked for being hairless, to a trestle and his bottom was caned ten times.
It had been Ari's first caning, he could not remember having even been spanked with the hand before, and right now he could still taste the pain and the wheals on the tip of his tongue. He recalled having screamed on his second stroke and he had wilted in shame at his weakness. But he was after all just seventeen; how could he have kept up a noiseless mettle?
Only when everything was over was Ari led to the front of the stage and formally introduced to the assembly. It was heard announced that this new addition was to stay at this institution until he was nineteen, or seen to be cured, and thereafter transferred to an adult facility; that he was going to face many years of confinement behind a steel door; that his crime had been so appalling to the moral majority that he was going to be caned in an assembly, just like this one, three times a year, which was going to be a record for the institution.
And that was exactly a week ago. Today Ari would get to see some other unlucky boy get beaten.
The front row seats were already filled up by the time Ari reached the hall, dubbed the 'Hall of Horror' by the senior boys. On the stage stood three youths, each one sandwiched between two orderlies. All three youths were different from one another only in as far as appearance, height and hair color. Otherwise they could almost be clones of each other. They were all naked and shaved on the crotch, thin and pasty-complexioned, and they were so tripped out on tranquilizers that their eye whites were nets of red veins. Ari was not familiar with any of them, and had only the boys' hair to study for clues to their personality. But he gave up guessing after a minute of playing his game.
The first boy to be tied to the trestle was the youngest. This was the regulation: the caning always followed the order of the boys' chronological age. Tariq, for that was the first boy's name, was sixteen and had reddish hair. Although he was the youngest, he was by no means the smallest. He had bulky thighs that were supported by a set of thick calves. His penis was long and slender with a large head at the tip. He was standing at attention to an announcement. The first thing told to the assembly was that he had put a knife in his mother's back three years ago. This had been in his moment of uncontrolled rage when, returning early from school one day, he had found his mother naked and humping with a strange man. The mother lived to betray her son to the police. He had lost his mind at his hearing and slit his wrists in front of his mother.
The second thing told was that this was his first caning this year. But as he turned around to approach the trestle before him, the audience found his bottom ridged with old welts that were almost faded, so even a new prisoner like Ari knew instantly that it was certainly not his first caning here.
The boy Tariq was caned eight times. He cried throughout, and at the end as he was taken to the infirmary, his bottom was quaking angrily. The late morning air reverberated with the sounds of his pitiful sobs long after he had disappeared from sight.
The second boy led to the trestle was black-haired, just like Ari. His eyes were downcast throughout the time it was announced to the assembly that this was his second caning for the year. It was also told that this boy, Mydin, was a part of a gang of other boys who, two years ago, had amputated a woman's arm to steal her gold bracelet. But his reason for being here was that he had taken the arm home and played it like a badminton racket.
While all the adults gasped, Ari and the rest of the boys watched emotionless. And like his comrades, he was only interested in the boy's thick penis that hung low between his hairless crotch. Finding himself reverting back to his game, he guessed from the size of the penis that the youth must be at least eighteen.
The cane was soon swinging in rhythm and striking against the boy's naked buttocks. Like the first boy, he was instantly reduced to a screaming and pleading poltroon. Every lash that landed on his buttocks became an inch-thick white ridge that turned red and bloody in seconds. At the end of his fourteenth lash, he was released from the trestle and stood up before the assembly again. This was somewhat irregular. Ari knew something else was up.
The boy Mydin could not stand up straight, no doubt for the pain, and some of the other boys, the core of their numbness apparently penetrated and their indifference shaken, were now seen fidgeting on their benches. Dr Iqbal, the round-bellied Chief of Staff, who had been gracing the assembly as Chairman, nodded his approval.
The two orderlies that stood at each of Mydin's sides kept trying to pull him up. Dr Iqbal was beside them now and taking the microphone, he announced to the hushed assembly that the just-beaten boy had recently been caught flouting a time-honored rule of the institution. He had been masturbating in his cell when he thought nobody was watching. Dr Iqbal said that the rules were clear that this was an offense punishable by mandatory penile whipping, which must be carried out this day itself. The boy screamed, saying amidst his sobs that he could take no more caning. But it was futile. Mydin must be held up as an example for the rest.
Returned once more to the trestle, the youth was bound again, this time on his back, his hands and ankles strapped behind him. His penis and testicles were put through a hole on a wooden brace, a dubious vestige of the ancient stocks used by the colonial masters, and this the orderlies balanced across his groin. With his genitals sticking outward, and visible and clear for the whipping, Dr Iqbal stood a little away from the boy. Ari counted the ten strokes that took fifteen minutes to be delivered to the genitals of the half-choking terrified youth.
The hour had passed before the last of the naked boys was led to the center of the stage. He was a tall youth with the broadest shoulders of the three that were caned today. He looked the least emaciated although in comparison to the size of his flanks, he had a short penis, about two inches in its flaccid state, and average-sized testicles. He seemed tearful; his eyes were wet because he was probably already frightened by what had happened to his predecessors. But nobody could be sure because most boys here had wet eyes anyhow. His brown hair was also wet and stuck to his forehead and temples as if it had been glued on. He bit down on his lower lips the entire time that someone was describing his crime and fate. His crime, it was heard, was attacking his teacher for a fail grade that the teacher had given him. This was three years ago when he was sixteen. Then after bringing the teacher to her knees, he battered her head twenty-five times with a wooden plank. An hour later, the faculty found him beside her lifeless body, and he had been doodling on the floor using his fingers, which he had dipped into her blood that had formed a huge puddle beneath her head. He was catatonic when he was committed to this institution. Now this was to be Eram's last year here, and hopefully his last caning, Dr Iqbal said.
At the end of the brief announcement this last and oldest youth was turned over to an orderly who led him to the trestle and bound him spread-eagled. Just as he had seen on the previous two boys' bottoms, Ari found this third lad's similarly ridged with old welts and fading scars. He also had the largest anus stretched from a daily diet of butt-slamming. The show was ending, Ari knew, and so he decided he would also count out the strokes that would be inflicted on this last youth's buttocks. He counted twelve, and then watched the boy being released from the trestle and carried down the stage. Like the other two before him, he was crying shamelessly but, as was usual of caned prisoners, his screams and cries gradually ebbed to a wince.
The program for the rest of the day afterwards was conducted with the regularity of clockwork. Lunch was eaten at midday. Ari always had his in his cell, and always he was fed by his orderlies, for his mobility was severely limited by the tight confines of the straitjacket. His pants were taken off once more today to emphasize his vulnerability and helplessness. If he tried anything such as escaping, his orderlies had the means ready to torture his exposed private parts. Ari was left with no other choice but finish his lunch without causing an incidence.
At exactly two o'clock, one half of the boys went for their body shave and physical examination with the nurse and the other half, including Ari, was sent to the lab. In the latter, the boys were given compulsory shock treatment. This was a recent breakthrough treatment for mental illness and Dr Iqbal had not jettisoned it with the rest. In fact the erudite lauded its efficacy. He had spoken on occasion about the usefulness of treating mental patients with compulsory shock treatment, at public seminars, held sometimes at this institution. He once demonstrated his point with a real life situation and he had been so convincing that he had received laurels in a reputable medical journal. But at the post-demonstration celebration, he was told that his nude live patient had been more than just a passing note of interest for the large turnout of primarily first-year gay male medical students.
Now lying on the bunk in the lab, Ari placidly submitted to being strapped in. He had lost count of the number of times he had been stripped and strapped today. Was it three or four, he wondered, while something cool, which stung, was spread onto his temples and penis. Before long he saw the wires being extended out of a machine that stood humming where his feet stuck out of the edge of the bunk. The ends of these wires were taped onto his temples and penis.
Standing at the machine, a technician was studying Ari's file. He needed to. He had sixty boys in his care.
"So you're the one that likes copulating with dead bodies, eh?" the technician suddenly said, without directing his rhetoric to his patient. He was concentrating on manipulating this button and regulating that knob. So many gizmos, Ari thought, how can anyone remember which is for what?
"Now look up ahead and relax," the technician spoke again. "Don't try to resist or fight against your impulse."
Ari looked up into a black and white canopy that at first appeared as faint dots. As the image sharpened, he discerned a male corpse, naked and partly decomposed, his flesh ravaged by worms and pestilence. Ari felt an urge to cry, but he felt a familiar elation too. Shortly his penis stirred to hardness and became erect. But then to his terror, he felt a powerful surge of electricity hit his entire body; it began at his middle and spread outward to his limbs and toes. Stunned, he shook and trembled and felt his body gyrate and convulse violently, and he could not stop it from slapping itself against the mattress. He looked like a fish out of water. But just as suddenly as it had started, everything stopped, and Ari felt his body enervate and crumple onto the bed. About the same time, his penis went limp.
"No ....No ...." Ari sobbed bitterly, revolting against the unnatural sophistries designed to invalidate his being. "Oh, mother _f_u_c_k_er, mother _f_u_c_k_er, mother _f_u_c_k_er," he swore.
The process was repeated with three different images. Ari failed every test.
But now with the hour up, Ari was allowed to stand, dress and return to his cell. The technician gave him his next appointment, assuring him that he would fare better next time.
Ari felt no inclination to take the technician's point of view, regardless of the reward.
In the late afternoon Ari was taken to the library. This was his favorite time of the day since he got to read books, and he had taken to reading furiously since arriving here. However he had been in an altercation with another boy. Not much older than himself, the latter had taken from the shelf what Ari thought was his book. Bereft of all rights, the boys here naturally assumed a territorial possessiveness of what little was issued them.
"I was reading this yesterday," Ari spat, tearing at the hair of the other boy. "I want to finish the book today. Give it back to me now, I said."
The fight was short but Ari had given the other boy a broken nose, and in answer he had received a black eye.
So now they were both in solitary confinement, but it made little difference to Ari. He was always in solitude anyway. He was also omitted at suppertime, and in place of that he was put to washing the toilets. Naked, with only the steel cuffs to accessorize his ankles, he knelt on the tiles on all fours and scrubbed the floor, all the time aware that whenever his attendant orderlies felt like it, his raised and defenseless bottom would be the receiving end of their blackjacks. The premise had been illustrated to him at the start of his punishment in a single sensational slap to his loosely-hanging scrotum.
Ari served out his punishment in about two hours. He had not done too bad a job at cleaning the toilets, or so he was told by Juan and Wing, so he could enjoy sleeping in his own bunk tonight instead of the floor in the abysmal solitary cell.
"Don't be too pleased with yourself, though," they added, while strapping him into his bunk, "for first thing tomorrow, you will meet Dr Iqbal for an evaluation. You might still get a good spank from him, even if you escaped one from us."
When he was alone in his cell, he tried to shut his eyes so that he could sleep. But he was afraid. He had been having bad dreams about his mother. So now he told himself that he must not be afraid, for he knew he was being watched still through the spy-hole in his cell door. And if they saw that he had not slept, they would come back in, maybe to beat him or _f_u_c_k_ his anus, which was just as bad. He played with the illusion that if he believed enough that there would be no more dreams, then they would disappear. So he tried shutting his eyes again to sleep. He failed.
The key ground once more in the lock.
"What's the matter?" Wing asked above him.
"Bad dreams," he answered.
"Turn him around," Wing said to Juan.
"Please don't _f_u_c_k_ me again," Ari cried while his feet were being released. He was turned on his side; he felt his pants pulled down, but only slightly.
He tried to turn his head to see what they were going to do, but he felt a prick on his buttock. It was sharp and precise.
Now he felt himself momentarily lifted up from the bunk and floating in the room. He had no more sense of where he was and who was with him or what they were doing to him. He felt lighter than air. There was a hush and suddenly a feeling like a kind of paralysis descended on him. He heard and felt nothing more.
"Is he asleep?"
"Yes. And see his toes. They always twitch when he's dreaming."
"What do you think loonies like him dream about?"
"Who knows? But now see how his crotch is tenting up."
"C'mon, there's nothing to see. Let's go."
And so the banter stopped.
But now the droning began ....
And it was the evening of the eighth day, and finally the lights went out in Room 108.