Page 538 - A Little Life: A Novel

the dream the house became a skyscraper, filled with hundreds of rooms, of
cells, each containing a different boy, each waiting for Dr. Traylor to let him
out. He woke, then, gasping, and ran to the top of the stairs, but when he

pushed against the flap, it didn’t move. He lifted it up and saw that the hole
had been closed with a piece of gray plastic, and as hard as he pushed
against it, it wouldn’t budge.
He didn’t know what to do. He tried to stay up the rest of the night, but
he fell asleep, and when he woke, there was the tray with his breakfast and
his lunch and two pills: one for the morning, one for evening. He pinched
the pills between his fingers and considered them—if he didn’t take them,

he wouldn’t get better, and Dr. Traylor wouldn’t touch him unless he was
well. But if he didn’t take them, then he wouldn’t get better, and he knew
from prior experience how awful he would feel, how almost unimaginably
filthy he would be, as if his entire self, inside and out, had been sprayed
with excrement. He began to rock himself, then. What do I do, he asked,
what do I do? He thought of the fat truck driver, the one who had been kind

to him. Help me, he begged him, help me.
Brother Luke, he pled, help me, help me.
Once again, he thought: I have made the wrong decision. I have left
somewhere where I at least had the outdoors, and school, and where I knew
what was going to happen to me. And now I have none of those things.
You’re so stupid, the voice inside him said, you’re so stupid.
For six more days it went on like this: his food would appear sometime

when he was sleeping. He took the pills; he couldn’t not.
On the tenth day, the door opened, and Dr. Traylor was standing there. He
was so alarmed, so surprised, that he hadn’t been prepared, but before he
could stand, Dr. Traylor had closed the door and was coming toward him.
Over one shoulder he held an iron fire poker, loosely, as one would a
baseball bat, and as he came toward him, he was terrified by it: What did it

mean? What would be done to him with it?
“Take off your clothes,” Dr. Traylor said, still in his same bland voice,
and he did, and Dr. Traylor swung the poker off his shoulder and he ducked,
reflexively, lifting his arms over his head. He heard the doctor make his
small wet noise. And then Dr. Traylor unbelted his pants and stood before
him. “Take them down,” he said, and he did, but before he was able to
begin, Dr. Traylor nudged him in the neck with the poker. “You try