Title: Lord's Island
Series: Yoda's Got Nothing On This
Genre: Angst, Drama, Spiritual, Suspense
Prompt: ASL Prompt via puckurt fic meme
Word Count: 850
Warnings: abuse, child abuse, drugs, derogatory language, immoral use of religion, conversion camp [I hated myself a bit while writing this. Seriously.]
Spoilers: none, pre-series (2000)
Summary: Dave was 7 years old when he figured out how the dynamics of his home worked. He was 7 years old when camp stopped being fun and the world wasn't so bright anymore. [based on personal speculations]
Disclaimer: If I owned it, Puckurt would have been on the whole time.
Beta(s): the lovely animegirl23 (who was gracious enough to be my impromptu beta for this part) and hellobored (my younger sister you should all thank b/c she begged for a follow up to this).
Dave was 7 years old when he figured out how the dynamics of his home worked. He had finally learned what the word "bitch" meant and that it was a bad word, not just a word. Maybe that was why his older sister and mom flinched whenever his dad said it to them. He had also learned that "beat" did not just refer to video games, but belts too.
When he was 7 years old, Dave learned what abuse was, that playing with dolls wasn't a "boy thing," and that if a boy didn't act like a boy then he was a "fag;" Jesus didn't love him and God would punish him and send him to hell. Fags, fairies, queers, dykes, lesbos, and homos were bad people and not to be envied. They were below negros and aliens and were children of the devil. They needed to be put in their place and if society (whatever that was) wouldn't do it, then God and His children would. His dad told him he would be going to a different camp that summer and he would learn instead of having fun. He would tell his dad everything he learned when he came back.
They sang church songs instead of sports songs on the bus. One of the counselors told him he was on one of the Lord's buses and not on the sinners' bus. He would be learning how to help sinners love God again and earn forgiveness.
Dave learned the prayers by heart and the six verses that "uphold our good and gracious camp." He learned men and women could kiss and marry each other and have kids, but men kissing men and women kissing women was wrong and not to be tolerated. He made friends, prayed during daily mass, and ignored Sinners' Island in the middle of the lake and its late night drumming. All of the campers did, no one wanted to go, the counselors made sure the younger campers understood it was a bad place and not where they should be. Overall, he had fun at camp.
Dave was at camp for 3 weeks when the thunderstorm rolled in. It was a summer storm where it was more thunder, lightning and oppressive humidity than it was rain. On his way to the bathroom after the midnight bells rang, he slipped and cut his hand on a rock, meaning he found one of the counselors to walk him to the nurses' tent. His counselor left him in the main room for the nurse to look at him and walk him back to his campground. He had specific instructions not to leave the aid tent without an adult, so he sat in the air-conditioned cabin-tent on the foot of one of the beds, swinging his legs back and forth. He picked at the paper towels pressed to his cut, flicking pieces of them he had torn off his pajama pants.
After 10 minutes of boring waiting with only the humming A/C and a couple flickering fluorescents, Dave stood up to poke around the room. He was debating between the Band-Aids with crosses on them or the ones with Cookie Monster when he heard the noises from the side door he was near. He walked to it slowly and quiet, like when he played spies at recess.
Curiosity killed the cat, but Dave didn't know that.
He could see, faintly since they were so far from the tiny porch light, Nurse Joel and one of the older counselors who always led the meal prayers and afternoon masses. They were kissing and grabbing each other's shirts and hair. Dave frowned, confused, because wasn't that what they were learning not to do? And that God didn't love people who did? Frowning and trying to make what he had seen make sense in his brain, he walked away from the door back to the bed he'd been sitting on earlier. He didn't see the light flare to full life behind him, signaling it had detected movement close by. Didn't see the two men break apart, fright and hints of anger, self-loathing, and twisted lusts rolling off them.
He didn't see any of it, only the overly sweet Nurse Joel who stitched up his hand and gave him pain pills with sticky fruit punch that left him feeling tired and hyper at the same time.
He woke up in his cabin that morning, confused how he got there and with a horrible headache that made him cry when he came out the tent for breakfast. The sun hurt and everything was too loud. He threw up before he could start his pancakes and his hand felt like it was on fire. He was taken back to the aid tent where another nurse counselor cleaned his hand and changed the bandages, giving him more pain pills, only this time with cool water that soothed his throat.
All the while, unseen to him, Nurse Joel told a tale of a little boy who cut his hand and lied to God.
David Karofsky stopped having fun after that.
fin.