Page 540 - A Little Life: A Novel

And then there was Dr. Traylor and the fire poker, and as he began to
unbelt his pants, he sprang up and smacked the doctor as hard as he could
across his face, and he heard and felt the doctor screaming and the fire

poker falling to the cement floor with a clang, and the doctor’s hand
grabbing at his ankle, but he kicked away and stumbled up the stairs, tugged
open the door, and ran. At the front door he saw a mess of locks, and he
nearly sobbed, his fingers clumsy, throwing the bolts this way and that, and
then he was outside and running, running faster than he ever had. You can
do it, you can do it, screamed the voice in his head, encouraging for once,
and then, more urgently, Faster, faster, faster. As he had gotten better, Dr.

Traylor’s meals for him had gotten smaller and smaller, which meant that
he was always weak, always tired, but now he was vividly alert and he was
running, shouting for help as he did. But even as he ran and shouted, he
could see that no one would hear his calls: there was no other house in
sight, and although he had expected there might be trees, there weren’t, just
flat blank stretches of land, with nothing to hide behind. And then he felt

how cold it was, and how things were embedding themselves into the soles
of his feet, but still he ran.
And then behind him he heard another pair of footsteps slapping against
the pavement, and a familiar jangling noise, and he knew it was Dr. Traylor.
He didn’t even shout at him, he didn’t even threaten, but as he turned his
head to see how close the doctor was—and he was very close, just a few
yards behind him—he tripped and fell, his cheek banging against the road.

After he had fallen, all of his energy deserted him, a flock of birds rising
noisily and swiftly flying away, and he saw that the jangling noise was Dr.
Traylor’s unbuckled belt, which he was sliding out from his pants and then
using to beat him, and he huddled into himself as he was hit and hit and hit.
All that time, the doctor said nothing, and all he could hear were Dr.
Traylor’s breaths, his gasps from exertion as he brought the belt down

harder and harder on his back, his legs, his neck.
Back at the house, the beating continued, and over the next days, the next
weeks, he was beat more. Not regularly—he never knew when it might
happen next—but often enough so that coupled with his lack of food, he
was always dizzy, he was always weak: he felt he would never have the
strength to run again. As he feared, the sex also got worse, and he was made
to do things that he was never able to talk about, not to anyone, not even to

himself, and again, although it wasn’t always terrifying, it was often enough