He fought, of course, but the three men had anticipated this reaction. That’s why there were three of them. That’s why the three of them that there were had above-average size, strength, and grappling training. But then, when Dev heard his father say, from somewhere out of sight in the hallway, “Don’t fight them, Son, this is for your own good” he stopped fighting. Because that meant this was just another in a long, long line of punishments, and if Dev knew anything, if there was one area in which Dev could possibly be considered an expert, it was how to handle punishments. Specifically, how to handle being punished. And putting up a big fight up front was not the way.

Putting up a big fight up front, at the moment in which the punisher was first meting out the punishment, usually meant further angering the punisher at their angriest point, which almost always resulted in a harshening of the punishment. A harshening which the punisher would soon come to regret, usually, but which most punishers would feel obligated to follow through on for fear of losing respect, most of them failing to realize that, at least in Dev’s case, his respect for all punishers could never go lower than it already was. Dev’s respect for punishers was eternally pegged at absolute zero. What kind of sap, Dev often wondered, would one have to be to respect one’s punisher, of all people?

As the three agents of punishment hustled Dev down the stairs, his mother waited at the bottom with a bulging duffel bag she had already packed for him. Dev took the bag from her in passing, meeting his mother’s eyes as she said, “You have to learn, Dev. You’re thirty-one years old and you have to learn.”

“Where are they taking me?” asked Dev. He didn’t sound scared because he wasn’t scared.

“No more questions,” said one of the men, and he and his coworkers or squad mates or compatriots or comrades or whatever they were guided Dev, who was externally compliant, out the front door, down the front steps, and across the front lawn to a van idling at the front curb. No one had to force Dev inside the van. He just climbed on in.

As Dev, flanked by two of the men, buckled his seatbelt, and a fourth man, who had waited in the van while Dev was collected, pulled the van out into the street, Dev saw two of the men exchange a look that seemed to communicate a sense of relief at how smoothly this was going.

After riding in silence for ten minutes, Dev said, “I didn’t get a chance to use the bathroom before we left.”

“No,” said the man on Dev’s right.

“All right, then,” said Dev. His inflection was perfect. The threat was present without seeming to initiate from him. It sounded like a simple acknowledgement that the man had chosen the worse of two options laid at his feet by fate. He, of course, operating in this moment as a punisher, would not allow himself to reverse course, but someone else would intervene and he would be secretly glad of it.

“Two minutes,” said the driver as he pulled into a gas station parking lot. “And you’re not going alone.”

“OK,” said Dev. “Thank you.” Contrition, contrition, contrition. Oh, how susceptible all punishers were to contrition or the appearance thereof.

Only two men followed Dev into the bathroom, but by the time one of them finally lowered himself to lowering himself to the floor to crawl under the locked stall door to force Dev to come out, all four of them were crowded in there, bellowing their heads off. Dev allowed himself to be led roughly back to the van without resistance, his face serene and neutral. He buckled himself in and said nothing as the men took turns berating him. And then, as the van left the modest lights of Multioak behind and scuttled out into the mud-dark countryside and the men’s fury began to subside, each of them fuming in their own ways, that’s when Dev wet his pants, the seat, the floor.

Dev’s punishment was to stay in a rustic, one-room cabin in the woods with one supervisor and spend one week engaged in strenuous, unfulfilling labor.

“I thought there were going to be other people here,” said Dev. He sat on his bunk positioned against the wall opposite the cabin’s lone door, rubbing his hands together. The cabin was not heated. It did not have running water. The only light came from a single kerosene lantern resting on the single wobbly table. “Other people being punished, I mean. I thought this was going to be like one of those work camps for bad kids.”

“You’re thirty-one years old,” said his supervisor, a man named Hobart who had to be at least five years younger than Dev. “Why would your parents send you to a camp for bad kids?”

“Because they treat me like a kid,” said Dev. “They ground me all the time. They ground me from video games. They withhold desserts.”

“Maybe that’s because you act like a kid,” said Hobart.

“Huh,” said Dev. “Maybe so.” He said it as if he really thought Hobart might have stumbled across a valuable insight, but when Hobart looked at Dev with a touch of startled hope, Dev’s smile was made up of twelve percent cruelty, an amount precisely calculated to wound without revealing intent to do so.

Hobart was wounded; he displayed evidence of the wounding too easily. Dev could not fathom how Hobart had been chosen to supervise him. He didn’t see how a guy like Hobart could possibly be up to the task. Dev reckoned he had encountered most varieties of punisher produced by modern culture and a reluctant punisher with a desire to be liked by the punishee was probably the least effective kind. Dev never took it easy on any kind of punisher, but he considered it almost a sacred duty to disabuse reluctant punishers with a desire to be liked by the punishee of the notion that they should continue down whichever path had landed them in such an unsuitable role.

Dev watched Hobart as he laid out his clothes with care for the following morning: thick socks, thermal underwear, etc. Hobart was lean like a cyclist. He had what Dev’s father would call “a good head of hair,” parted in the middle and tucked behind his ears.

Later, as Dev and Hobart lay in the dark in their respective beds and the wind dragged bare branches across the roof overhead, Dev said, “Just so you know, I didn’t show up here ready to just automatically hate you.”

“That’s good,” said Hobart, sounding relieved.

“But I do hate you,” said Dev, and he allowed himself a grin at the bleakness of Hobart’s responding silence.

The next morning, out in the snowed-over woods wielding a thatch rake with a handle too short for him, Dev, with bits of dry granola-bar breakfast still stuck in his teeth, approached his first fifteen minutes of strenuous, unfulfilling labor with what looked like stoic resolve. Dev sensed Hobart beginning to allow himself to believe that maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

Dev’s task, as described to him by Hobart, was to clear the trails in the woods of leaves, sticks, and other debris. Even though hardly anyone used these trails. Maybe even no one. Especially during winter. They could just be deer trails. And who cared if there were leaves on a trail in the woods? But that’s what made the labor unfulfilling, which was a key component of the punishment. Dev had actually expected the labor to be even less fulfilling than it was, although he could never derive so much as a scrap of fulfillment from any labor inflicted as punishment. But he had expected the labor to be more objectively unfulfilling. One could almost imagine someone talking themselves into the usefulness of raking leaves and sticks off of these trails.  Or, if not less potentially fulfilling, Dev had at least expected the punishment to be more creative. The sanctioned sadism that served as the animating force for many punishers often resulted in punishments of impressive inventiveness. This was not one of those.

Of course, Dev had already decided Hobart was not one of those kinds of punishers. But he also got the impression that Hobart hadn’t come up with this idea for a punishment. He was just the hired help, the enforcer. Not that he seemed capable of physically overpowering Dev if it came to that. Dev didn’t doubt that Hobart was in better shape than he was—that was readily apparent—but he was also smaller than Dev and did not project the air of a man in possession of a fighting spirit. But maybe Hobart knew karate or judo or another martial art. Maybe Hobart had a stun gun in his pocket, although if that were the case Dev thought Hobart would have mentioned it to deter Dev from trying anything.

Not that Dev feared a stun gun. He feared no punishment. Dev had endured so many punishments over the years, and none had ever been as bad as he had feared, so he eventually stopped fearing them, even the ones he hadn’t experienced yet, even the ones he was unlikely to ever experience. Like, a death sentence, for example. Electrocution, lethal injection, firing squad, hanging. They all sounded bad, yes, but they were all almost certainly not as bad as they sounded. No punishment ever was, that was Dev’s stance.

               He still preferred to avoid punishment, of course, but going out of his way to avoid it, no, that was letting the punishers win. That was exactly what they wanted. Letting the dread of punishment modify one’s behavior: that Dev would not do. And not dreading punishment—any punishment—was crucial to maintaining that position.

               But this? Raking debris off trails in the woods while watched over by one weak man? It didn’t take Dev’s superior familiarity with punishment, and the contempt engendered thereby, to feel no dread for this punishment. This was one step up from a scolding, the kind of punishment only effective on those almost wholly unused to punishment, the kind of people for whom the mere idea of being identified as worthy of punishment of any kind is enough to fill them with shame.

               So, after fifteen minutes had passed without incident, and Hobart had begun to show signs of a cautious comfort beginning to take root, Dev’s raking technique became incrementally less effective. It took a while for Hobart to notice, but once he did, Dev could feel him trying to decide what he should say, if anything. Should he care enough about the quality of Dev’s unfulfilling labor to risk an open conflict?

               Dev scratched at the same stick over and over with his rake, rattling it back and forth without clearing it from the trail.

               “What are you doing?” asked Hobart. A tentative engagement.

               Dev made noises of frustration as if the stick were thwarting his best efforts.

               “What are you doing?” Hobart asked again. “Just rake it.”

               “I am,” said Dev. He broke the stick with the rake, then broke it again. All three pieces still lay on the trail. “There,” he said. He planted the head of the rake in the snow by his feet and leaned on the handle with a satisfied sigh.

               Hobart coughed two same-sized clouds into the air and shuffled his boots. Dev could tell that his casual expression of hatred from the night before was affecting Hobart’s response. “You’ve gotta rake it off the trail,” said Hobart. “Not just break it up.”

               “I will,” said Dev. “After my rest break.”

               “No rest breaks until I say so,” said Hobart. “Those are the rules. I didn’t make the rules, but that’s what they say. That I’m supposed to decide when you get a rest break. And it hasn’t even been thirty minutes since you started.”

               Dev swallowed a grin. Hobart was already shifting blame for his strictness to a higher authority? This punishment was over before it had even really begun. “Just tell me to take a rest break now,” said Dev. “Then it’ll all be proper.”

               “No,” said Hobart. “Get back to raking.”

               “OK,” said Dev. “I will.”

               “Now,” said Hobart. “Immediately.” He was trying out a sterner voice.

               “I am,” said Dev. And still he leaned on the rake.

               “You’re not,” said Hobart. “You’re leaning on the rake.” Not even thirty minutes in and Hobart was already angrily declaring obvious facts. “You say you’re raking, and you’re not. You’re just leaning on a rake.”

Oh no, and he was repeating those angry declarations as if the facts needed to be made more true by his angry declarations thereof. Hobart was speedrunning Dev’s levels of punisher aggravation. Dev was curious where this could end up in a week’s time. Even a day’s time. Uncharted territory, maybe? It was time for a heightening of hostilities. He allowed himself a slimy smile, but without making eye contact with Hobart, as if the smile were only for himself.

“Rake,” said Hobart, his tone soaked with Dev’s smile-slime. A solid hit, then.

“I am,” said Dev, and he hefted the rake, wedged it in a shoulder-high tree-fork, and threw his weight against the handle, snapping it in half, sprawling in the snow. Dev was pleased to perceive a pain in his left hand. He rolled onto his side to look at his palm. Blood seeped from a crooked gash.

“Why did you do that?” asked Hobart.

Dev showed his hand to Hobart. “I’m hurt,” he said. “I need a bandage.”

               Hobart gaped.

               “Where’s the first-aid kit?” asked Dev.

               “Back at the cabin,” said Hobart. He inhaled as if to sigh, then didn’t. Dev wondered where all that air went. It didn’t seem healthy no matter how fresh the air.

               “If we hurry,” said Dev, “maybe I can still get those stick pieces off the trail before my rest break.”

               Dev and Hobart trudged through the woods in silence. Dev made no effort to staunch the flow of blood from his wound, leaving a trail of red droplets in the snow, occasionally wiping his hand on the front of his coat, ruining the coat if one considers a permanently blood-stained coat ruined.

               Back inside the cabin, Dev took off his gloves, his coat, his stocking cap, his boots, even his socks.

               “Why are you taking everything off?” asked Hobart. “We’re going right back out once we get your hand bandaged.”

               “I know,” said Dev. He pulled a folding chair away from the table in the middle of the room and sat with his injured hand extended to Hobart. Blood dripped on the floor.

Hobart looked at the blood as if wondering whether he would need to clean it up despite the floor’s rough condition. Or try to make Dev clean it up. Hobart crossed to a cabinet and retrieved a first-aid kit, pulling another chair around to sit facing Dev. He seemed to know what he was doing with the disinfectant, the little scissors, the gauze, the bandages. While he worked on Dev’s hand, he asked, “Why are you here?”

“Because your coworkers brought me here,” said Dev.

“Those guys aren’t my coworkers,” said Hobart. “But I mean, why did they bring you here?”

“I’m being punished,” said Dev.

“I know you’re being punished,” said Hobart. “What are you being punished for?”

“Oh, who knows,” said Dev.

“You don’t even know why you’re being punished?” asked Hobart.

“I stopped keeping track a long time ago,” said Dev. “No one told you why I’m being punished?”

“No,” said Hobart. “No one told me. You don’t even have a guess? You must have an idea.”

“No,” said Dev. “It’s not worth trying to figure out.”

Hobart absorbed this, or struggled to. He tried. “You’re lying to me,” he finally said.

“I’m not lying to you,” said Dev. “I have before and I will again, but I’m not right now. I don’t know what I’m being punished for, I don’t care to know what I’m being punished for, I’m not even curious.”

“Then…then…” Hobart couldn’t finish his sentence.

“Then what’s the point of punishing me?” asked Dev. “How can I learn anything from my punishment if I don’t even know what it’s for?”

Hobart did not confirm this as the direction in which his thoughts had been leading him. “There,” he said, indicating Dev’s bandage-wrapped hand. “Your glove will fit over that, won’t it? It looks like it will.”

“Yeah,” said Dev. “I think it will.”

“You’re not going to say you can’t rake anymore because of your in jury?” asked Hobart, rising to his feet.

“Of course not,” said Dev. He stood too. “I’m excited to clear that trail!” He saw, then, how much Hobart had been genuinely hoping Dev was too hurt to keep working. He wondered how much longer than necessary the hand-bandaging had taken. “Where’s the backup rake?”

“There isn’t one,” said Hobart.

“Let’s go get one,” said Dev. He nodded his head toward the front door, by which he meant the truck parked outside, presumably Hobart’s.

“I can’t leave you alone,” said Hobart.

“Fine,” said Dev. “I’ll go with you.”

“I can’t take you away from here either,” said Hobart.

“So, what, I just have to use the broken rake?” asked Dev.

“Yes,” said Hobart, suppressing a preemptive flinch.

“OK,” said Dev. “Broken rake it is.” And he smiled in a way that let Hobart know that this was about to be miserable. Even more miserable.

Back at the point in the trail where Dev had left off raking, Hobart picked up the portion of the rake with the head still attached. The broken handle, now reduced to two feet in length, ended in a jagged point. “Here,” Hobart said, extending it to Dev. “Back to work.”

Dev accepted the broken rake. And then it was just a farce of forced labor until lunch time. It was Hobart telling Dev to do things and Dev not doing them, not doing them well, doing them for very short periods of time, doing them in the wrong places, doing them in an obnoxiously exaggerated way, doing them in an annoying way, doing them and then immediately undoing them. Every trick in his book. Constantly asking for needless clarification. Constantly pausing to ask if he was doing it right. Constantly pausing to attempt small talk with Hobart. Constantly pausing to ask what time it was. Constantly pausing to ask Hobart if he was mad. Constantly pausing to ask if he was going to be punished further for breaking the rake. Constantly asking how much longer until lunch. Constantly asking Hobart if he was cold. Constantly pausing to drink water chemically treated to prevent freezing. Constantly asking to urinate behind a tree, then taking a very long time to urinate behind a tree. And there were his more subtle tricks, too. Disquieting looks. Body language that suggested he might be about to bolt. A tightening of the hands on the rake handle as if contemplating using it as a weapon. Cryptic remarks. Smirks. Glances over his shoulder. Momentary pauses to gaze into the depths of the forest. Muttering under his breath. Violent shakes of the head as if to dispel unwelcome thoughts. And there were the questions about Hobart’s personal life. Questions about Hobart’s family. Questions about Hobart’s career. Questions about Hobart’s tastes. Questions about Hobart’s political opinions. Questions about Hobart’s love life. Questions about Hobart’s belongings. Questions about Hobart’s finances, his health, his religious beliefs.

As time passed, Dev watched as Hobart bowed under the weight of punishing him, as reckoning with what it meant to administer punishment to Dev pressed upon him, exhausting him, grinding him down. All the signs were there, right on the surface for anyone to read. Dev had gotten to Hobart. Which energized Dev. Nothing in the world made him feel better than making a punisher wish he had never tried to punish him. Dev felt good enough to rake this whole trail clean, but he would never, of course, do that.

Dev propped his rake over his shoulder and asked, “How much longer until we eat?” for perhaps the tenth time.

“Let’s just eat now,” said Hobart.

“Great,” said Dev. He hurled the broken rake into the brown and tangled underbrush.

Hobart didn’t have the will to ask Dev why he had done that. He just looked at the spot where the tool had disappeared with an expression of unsurprise on his face.

“I’ll be able to find it,” said Dev. “Don’t worry. I remember exactly where it is.”

“You won’t find it,” said Hobart. “You’ll take forever looking for it in the wrong spots. You’ll insist it was somewhere else. I’ll end up having to be the one to find it and then you’ll insist someone must have moved it. Or you’ll say an animal moved it. Or you’ll say it’s a different broken rake that someone else left here in the same general area by coincidence.”

Dev couldn’t stifle a genuine chuckle. “Well, I guess we’ll see. Shall we eat?”

Again back at the cabin, Hobart pulled a large cooler out of a lower cabinet in the most kitchen-like corner of the room, although there were no appliances, no sink. Just the cabinets and a counter, really. Hobart stepped back from the cooler and hesitated, apparently grappling with what he was about to say. Then he said it. “You’re supposed to make the sandwiches.”

“Me?” asked Dev.

“Please just make them,” said Hobart. “Just make them right so we can eat them.”

“Of course,” said Dev. “Why wouldn’t I?” He walked over to the cooler and opened the lid. Inside, he saw a few loaves of bread, a bulging bag of sliced turkey, unopened packages of sliced cheese, a jar of mayonnaise, a bottle of mustard, and a large, sharp knife.

It would have been funny to mis-make the sandwiches somehow, to turn it into a whole ordeal, but Hobart expected it. Better to just make two normal sandwiches and let Hobart fill up with anxiety over what this might mean, let him second-guess every bite, straining to taste an ingredient that wasn’t there.

The two men ate their sandwiches standing up. When they were finished, Dev took another long drink of water and said, “Well, back to it, then?”

Back at the trail, Dev found his broken rake after a short, genuine search. He worked, if not hard, then at least steadily for the rest of the afternoon. His progress was only impressive in comparison to the morning’s lack of progress, but he allowed Hobart to decide when it was time for breaks, did not speak, and showed no outward sign of this being the first stage of a sinister plan. But, of course, it was, and it was clear to Dev that Hobart knew it was, and that, because of this knowledge, he was in agony.

That night, after two more normal sandwiches, Dev and Hobart crawled into bed, still wearing most of their clothing from the day. Dev lay awake in the dark, listening for his moment. He got the sense that Hobart was also listening for Dev’s moment, but Dev would outlast Hobart, he had no doubt. Hobart wanted to sleep, but was afraid to because of what might happen if he did. But as time passed, he would talk himself into it. He would tell himself that if Dev got out of bed and moved around, he would wake up, so there was no need to lie awake all night waiting for something to happen that might not even happen. He would tell himself that maybe Dev’s whole plan was just to deny him sleep in this exact way, and that by lying awake he was playing right into Dev’s hands, that Dev was himself sleeping peacefully and would not wake until the morning when, upon seeing Hobart’s gaunt and exhausted face, he would exult, even if only inwardly, over yet another success in his ongoing campaign to torment his punisher. And, betrayed by his own rationalization, Hobart would fall into a deep sleep.

It ended up not even taking very long. Not more than an hour, but Dev gave it another hour or so to make sure Hobart was all the way out, that the parts of his subconscious he had tried to leave attuned to the sounds of shuffling or light bumping in the cabin were also asleep. Then Dev got out of bed, sneaked the turkey, bread, cheese, and knife out of the cooler, sneaked outside in his socks, walked a ways into the woods to take all the food out of its packaging and strew it around for the animals to eat, and walked back to Hobart’s truck with the knife to slash all four tires. When he went back inside, he found Hobart still sleeping, so Dev set the knife on the counter, took all the large insulated jugs of drinking water, and poured it over the front steps. No longer making much effort to be quiet, Dev crawled back into bed. Hobart slept on.

And neither his soaked and freezing feet nor the sound of Hobart’s snoring in any way kept Dev from drifting off as soon as his head came to rest on the flat, musty-smelling pillow.

The next morning, Hobart was too distraught to confront Dev, say one word to him, even look at him. Dev watched through the window as Hobart stood next to his immobile truck and had a fearful conversation with someone on his cell phone while rubbing his sore tailbone, still smarting, apparently, from his tumble on the icy steps. After he hung up, Hobart approached the steps more cautiously than Dev thought necessary and came back inside.

“It’s over,” said Hobart.

“Why?” asked Dev. “It’s only the second day. I’m supposed to be here with you for a week.”

“We don’t have anything to eat or drink,” said Hobart. “And I can’t go get more. And I can’t stand any of this any longer. I’m giving up.”

“How am I going to get home?” asked Dev.

“Someone will come get you,” said Hobart.

“What about you?” asked Dev.

“Someone’s coming to get me first,” said Hobart.

“So I’ll be here by myself for a while?” asked Dev.

“Yes,” said Hobart.

“What if I burn the cabin down?” asked Dev.

“How would me being here stop you if that’s what you want to do?” asked Hobart. He said it with no bitterness. His decision to bail on this situation had freed him from Dev. He was no longer subject to Dev’s power.

“Well, good luck to you,” said Dev. “I guess we’ll never see each other again.”

“Yeah, we won’t,” said Hobart. “I’m not from anywhere around here. But I should tell you one more thing. Before I go, my boss is coming here to talk to me. And you shouldn’t see that. You should stay inside, stay away from the window.” He wasn’t commanding. It seemed to Dev like a sincere recommendation. Dev felt compelled to accept it.

“When will your boss be here?” asked Dev.

“Any moment,” said Hobart. It was an odd choice of words. Hobart didn’t seem like an “any moment” kind of guy. Something drew him to the window. “Actually,” said Hobart, “my boss is coming right now. Get down.”

He said it calmly but Dev reacted to an undercurrent in Hobart’s voice, dropping to the floor and covering his face with his arms, simultaneously wondering at the fluttering of his heart and feeling also that it was a natural and reasonable response to the situation. He heard Hobart go outside, closing the cabin door behind him. He heard Hobart slip on the steps again, but he didn’t fall this time, and Dev was somehow relieved about that. Then, after a short interval of silence, Dev heard the approach of footsteps, but rather than the typical crunch of boots in snow, these steps thudded, they boomed, Dev felt each one vibrate up through the rough wooden floor and into his chest. It was an effect that did not seem possible to achieve in the forest outside.

When the footsteps stopped, the voice began. It did not sound as if the speaker’s voice was raised, it was certainly no shout, but it penetrated the walls of the cabin such that the speaker, Hobart’s boss, may as well have been right there in the room, though Dev was relieved that this was not the case. The voice of Hobart’s boss was not low, but it was smooth, it flowed directly into Dev’s ears despite his arms clamped over them.

“So, Hobart,” said Hobart’s boss. “Have you grasped what has happened to you?”

Dev couldn’t hear Hobart’s response.

“No,” said Hobart’s boss. “You were never in charge. Have you learned your lesson?”

Another period of quiet during which, presumably, Hobart answered.

“Good,” said Hobart’s boss. “I take no joy in this, but how else could you be made to understand? How else to get through to you? Don’t resent this experience, Hobart. Let it motivate you to do better. Let it motivate you to be better.”

After another pause, the heavy footsteps receded into the distance. A few moments after silence had returned to the woods, Hobart came back into the cabin. Dev sat up, feeling shaky. Hobart wiped his eyes, which looked more watery than teary.

“No,” said Dev.

“No what?” asked Hobart.

“No, I’m not the punisher,” said Dev. “I’m not the punisher, I never have been, and I never will be. I’m not the punisher, I’m the punishee. I’m always the punishee.”

Hobart collapsed into one of the rickety chairs. “You’re neither,” he said.

“Then what am I?” asked Dev.

Hobart looked Dev over for a few seconds—a few moments—and then said, “You’re the punishment.”

Lying on the bed in a daze, Dev barely noticed when Hobart left. The men did not speak to each other. Dev was aware of the sound of a vehicle outside, voices—normal ones—discussing tires and towing options, and then the vehicle left and Dev was all alone, no one around for miles, probably. He waited, unsleeping with his eyes closed, until the sound of another vehicle approached and rumbled to a stop outside. The same three tan-clad men who had originally brought him to the cabin entered looking wary, but when they saw Dev, they seemed to recognize that no threat remained, not even a concealed one.

Dev rode back to his house in a state of morose contemplation. He didn’t even allow himself a bit of satisfaction that the men in tan made him sit on a towel.

Back at his parents’ house, the driver parked the truck at the curb and Dev got out under his own power, standing for a moment to collect himself in the front yard as his abductors-turned-unabductors drove away in a wash of pungent exhaust. Dev could not collect himself. He couldn’t tell if he even needed collecting.

Inside, Dev found his parents seated in their respective living room chairs perusing their respective tablets while wearing their respective reading glasses. His mother looked up first, and something in the way she didn’t speak caused Dev’s father to look up, too.

“What’s wrong, Dev?” asked his mother.

His father looked confused, perhaps mistaking Dev’s expression for a chastened one.

“I wasn’t being punished,” said Dev. His voice cracked. Tears gathered along the rims of his lower eyelids. This display of emotion brought both of his parents to their feet.

“You weren’t being punished?” asked Dev’s father.

“No,” said Dev. “Someone else was being punished.” He choked.

“I don’t understand,” said Dev’s mother. “You were punishing someone else?”

“I wasn’t punishing him and he wasn’t punishing me,” said Dev, struggling to keep his voice steady.

“What?” asked Dev’s father. He sounded angry, but not at Dev for once.

“I wasn’t the punishee,” said Dev. “And I wasn’t the punisher.”

“Then what were you?” asked Dev’s father. But now there was a note of dawning recognition in his voice.

“I was the punishment,” said Dev. “I was his punishment.” And he crumbled.

But his parents crossed the room. They took him in their arms. “No,” they said. “No, no, Dev. You weren’t his punishment. You aren’t anyone else’s punishment. You’re our punishment.”