The Old Blog in the Desert

Allen leaned back on the couch, the one the shrink said was “therapeutic gray.” It looked like something out of a waiting room where hope went to die.

The doctor, Dr. Kessler, sat across from him, legal pad perched on his knee, eyes shining as if he were waiting for a confession that would make his week.

“Let’s start simple,” Kessler said. “Tell me your favorite childhood memory.”

Allen smiled. The kind of smile that didn’t reach the eyes.

He didn’t say anything. Just sat there and tasted the silence, like stale smoke after a party’s gone bad. Favorite memory. That was a good one.

In his mind, he was back in the hallway of that two-bedroom apartment that always smelled like bourbon and cigarettes. He could hear it, zipppp-chk, zipppp-chk—the slick, quick whisper of his father’s belt sliding through those loops. The sound filled the air like a promise.

He was maybe nine. Maybe ten. Didn’t matter. The details got fuzzy after a while, but the sound stayed clear. It was a kind of music, a private orchestra of fear.

Allen remembered how his body used to stiffen, how his heartbeat jumped into his throat. He remembered the smell of the ol’ man’s aftershave, cheap and sharp, and the way the belt would crack like thunder across the back of his thighs.

He smiled wider now, just thinking about it.

Dr. Kessler noticed. “You’re smiling,” he said, pen frozen halfway through a note.

“Yeah,” Allen said.

“Must be a good memory, then.”

Allen let out a laugh that came out rough, like gravel rolling in his chest. “You could say that.”

The doctor’s brow creased. “Would you like to share it?”

“No.”

Kessler waited, trained for silence. They treat it like bait, but Allen wasn’t biting.

“Sometimes,” Kessler said finally, “a smile during a painful recollection can indicate repression or ironic detachment.”

Allen tilted his head. “You charge extra for that diagnosis?”

Kessler didn’t flinch. He scribbled something down, probably something like deflects with sarcasm.

They all wrote that.

Allen looked at the clock on the wall. Another fifteen minutes of this.

His mind wandered back to the sound of the belt again, that soft, metallic ring of the buckle as it struck the floor when the ol’ man dropped it. There was something pure about it.

No lies, no explanations. Just cause and effect. You did wrong, and you got hurt, simple as that.

His mother never stepped in. She’d stand in the kitchen, pretending to wash the same dish over and over.

The water would run forever. Allen’s mother thought that made her innocent.

Allen shifted on the couch. He felt something stir in his chest, not pain, not exactly.

More like nostalgia, warped and warm. It was the only thing that ever made sense back then.

“Allen,” Kessler said, leaning forward, “when you think of your father now, what do you feel?”

Allen thought for a moment. He could still hear that sound.

The belt yanked free, a warning, and a rhythm. Allen realized it had been guiding him his whole life.

The pulse of control, of power. Allen even mimicked the sound with his own belt when no one was around, so he could hear it and remember.

“What do I feel?” Allen asked finally. “Peace, I guess.”

Kessler frowned. “Peace?”

“Yeah. Some people light candles. I just think of sound.”

Kessler wrote more notes. His pen scratched like a rat in the wall, not understanding what peace had to do with his father.

When the session ended, Allen walked out into the rain. He tightened his coat belt, tugged it through the loops slowly, savoring the sound.

Zipppp-chk.

He smiled again. The memory wasn’t the beating, but the anticipation of it.

The order. The inevitability.

Everything since had been chaos, but that moment, when the belt slid free, that had always been pure. And purity, Allen thought, is hard to come by.