Getting to know pain

The dictionary defines pain as an unpleasant sensation in varying degrees of cruelty as a consequence of injury, disease or emotional disorder. This begs the question does anyone really know pain? I know I do, especially since my distressing experience with the darkest angel of them all. Have you ever tried pretending to be hurt or injured just to get out of school? It was an encounter that I barely survived. I don’t suggest you try it unless you want to be visited by the demonic angel named Pain. I remember my experience with Pain like it was yesterday.
It was six o ‘clock in the morning. I was still lying in bed dreading my day at school today full of tests, quizzes, presentations, and for me, failing grades. As I hopped in the shower, I started thinking of ways to get out of school. Maybe I could do the old stomach bug.
No that was too obvious. I started thinking about what kinds of injuries would allow for me to stay home. Then it hit me. It was too easy. All I had to do was pretend to trip over my shoelaces and roll down the stairs. The problem is, I’m clumsy so, I accidentally fell down the stairs rather than doing so on purpose. I tumbled and rolled down the stairs, slamming my arms, legs, and head along the walls of our narrow, spiral, staircase.
I finally hit the ground with a thud and lay there cut up and bruised as I listen to my family members call out my name asking if I’m okay. Rather than responding to their concern I lay there motionless, but still breathing. I just couldn’t bring myself to even move after such a horrifying happening. After a few more seconds, I feel my mother’s warm, soft fingers feeling my neck and wrists for a pulse. Even as I laid there in excessive pain, I’d begun to feel bad about what I’d done. The horrified look on my mother’s face didn’t exactly help me feel better.
As I stood up, I started to tell everyone I was okay and just limp out of the house and towards the school. I then I felt a terrible pain in my shoulder, it felt like a fresh stab wound, I didn’t bother to look at it though, I already knew what it was. Meanwhile I kept trying to tell myself that what just happened didn’t just happen, but the pain in my shoulder and the cut on my cheek was a constant reminder that, it, that did just happen.

I was still considering going to school, but then I remembered the way I probably looked, thought about the many questions that would be asked and decided that I’d continue with my original plan to stay out of school for the day, so I told everyone that both of my wrists were broken. I knew that there would be no time to get me to a doctor yet and I knew that they wouldn’t make me go to school because of the pain that I looked like I was in. The only other choice was to let me stay home and relax until someone got home and could take me to a doctor, so that’s exactly what they did. I wish they hadn’t.

By eight o ‘clock everyone had left for either school or work and I was left all alone. The coast was clear so I decided to turn on the television and started thinking about how lucky I was to not have broken my wrists in my trip down the stairs. Then I began to think of ways to handle my expected oncoming visit to the doctor. I was trying to figure out how to fake having broken wrists when all of a sudden the power shut off.
I was furious, how dare the power decide to shut off on the one day I get to stay home from school and watch T.V.?! My anger continued, at least it did, until Pain made an entrance.
The lights started flickering on and off, I thought to myself that we just needed some new light bulbs. Then they exploded, shooting glass all over the floor. I thought to myself that I should go to school instead of moping around the house. I tip toed towards the door, barefoot trying to avoid the broken glass on the ground. I was just inches from the doorknob when all of a sudden the door’s lock clicked itself into the lock position. I panicked.
I began hopping around the house avoiding the glass and searching for an exit. An open window, a trap door, a portal to another dimension, ANYTHING! I found myself running madly around the house avoiding glass without even looking at the ground. Why look at the ground, I was moving so fast that my feet couldn’t possibly have been touching it. I was near the point of madness when I rounded a corner sharply and ran into a man. He was the weirdest guy I’ve ever seen.

He was dressed in black and white from head to toe. His suit was black and white, he wore black and white sunglasses, his hair was black and white, he was wearing black and white shoes and I’m just sure that his socks and underwear were black and white even though I couldn’t see them. The weird thing about this man wasn’t the colors he was wearing it was the way he was wearing them. I mean, he was pretty much split down the middle. The entire left side of his body was a very glowing white that shone through the darkness. The entire right side of his body was a deep shade of black that somehow stood out in my pitch black house.

I stepped back for a minute to take in what I was seeing and rather than help me calm down, it made me mad all over again. I demanded to know who he was! He just stood there. I demanded to know how he got into my house. A small smirk crossed his face. I demanded to know if he had anything to do with the strange happenings in my home. His smirk grew wider and I was about two seconds away from wiping it off of his face. I told him that if he didn’t answer me I’d give him a black eye which would probably go perfectly with his outfit. He still stood there with his cane and that stupid smirk on his face. It was about time I got him talking.
I clenched my fist and threw a hard fast punch. He didn’t flinch, at least until I hit him. He stumbled back a bit, he felt the blood running from his nose, touched some with his finger, looked at the blood through his sunglasses, and then he smiled and I mean he smiled wide showing his perfectly white teeth. He looked at me and said that I didn’t know
pain, whatever that meant. I told him that if he didn’t tell me his name I was going to show him what real pain was. Little did I know, I was wrong, in fact I had it backwards. I decided to run at him with another punch. What happened next was a shock. He didn’t have to lift a finger. In fact, all he did was stand there smiling while I hit him.
Next thing I felt was a punch I felt like someone was punching me as hard as they could. In fact, it gave me a bloody nose.

I sat on the ground not knowing what had hit me in the face but I was mad as hell. He then decided it was time to talk. He told me that he was an angel sent by God and that his name was Pain.
I was mad, I couldn’t believe that this psycho had enough nerve to mock me! I asked him why he was here as I got to my feet. He started to tell me why he was here but I didn’t give him enough time to talk, I charged him in a surprise attack. He however was ready and with a snap of his fingers caused the vase containing a bunch of flowers right behind me to explode, sending one of the shards of glass flying directly at my face!
I ducked down just in time and dodged it. I watched it fly towards him hoping to see something supernatural happen, maybe the glass would go through him, maybe he’d teleport out of the way, and maybe he’d stop it with his mind or block it with a force field, something that would confirm that he was the so-called angel that he claimed to be. Instead of seeing something supernatural, I saw something out of the ordinary. He just stood there. He stood there while the glass flew towards him. He stood there without even blinking when the glass cut his cheek. He smirked again as the glass hit the ground and landed amongst the other pieces of glass and the now dead flowers.
That really made me mad, I decided to continue my charge and this time with on going punches. I was almost there and all of a sudden I felt a sharp pain on my cheek. I stopped, fell back, smashed the palm of my hand in some glass, and grabbed my cheek with my other hand. I stared in shock and horror as I realized the supernatural unfolding right in front of my face.

I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t hurt this guy without hurting myself. When I punched him and gave him a bloody nose the same thing happened to me. When his cheek got cut by glass, my cheek was cut by some force. This man, Pain, he was the real deal. I was finally ready to listen to what he had to say and he knew it. He could tell by the look on my face that I was done trying to fight him.
He took off his shades revealing his blood red eyes. Why red? I was expecting either black or white. I slowly yet surely rose to my feet, careful not to make any movements that could come off as threatening. I then asked him why his eyes were red. He stared back at me for a while letting his blood red eyes run over me slowly drowning me in them. The silence was painful. He finally decided to tell me that his eyes are red because of all of the blood shed and sorrow that he’s seen. Even as he said that, the tone of his voice sent chills down my spine.
He told me that he was here because I was willing to fake pain so I could get out of school and in doing so I caused more pain than I could imagine so he was here to teach me the meaning of pain. All in all God wanted me to know pain so I won’t be able to cause it so casually. I told him that if he wanted to know real pain he should go to my school. He didn’t seem even slightly amused by my joke. In fact it had the opposite effect. He ignored my sad little joke and told me that he knew what real pain was and that he knew how to cause it.
He then pulled out a pencil and said that it is the ultimate pain causing tool. I laughed thinking that he was joking. It wasn’t a joke. He glared at me, grabbed my arm and next thing I knew were at a funeral. We just arrived at a funeral where a little boy was crying over his father’s dead body, he was in the casket with him pulling on his shirt, begging him to wake up and come back through choked tears. I felt so depressed all of a sudden. This little boy has lost his father. He kind of reminded me of myself. I cried my eyes my out when my dad died. I was almost ready to cry now as I thought about it. Almost, but just as the tears swelled up in my eyes, I reminded myself that he’d just get over it and turn into an angry, bitter teenager soon enough. That made me feel a lot better. Pain saw that this little method of his wasn’t working so it was time to move on.

He then jumped again, this time we were in the past. We’re with a bunch of soldiers. Pain tells me that we are in a war zone I watch as a soldier runs onto the beach, gets caught in an explosion and jumps back leaving the lower half of his body behind. He lays there moaning in pain as friends run over to help him. They are all shot down by machine gun fire. A medic walks over carefully and gives him some anesthetics to dull his pain. I walk over and kneel down by the body. The entire time I’m running this theory through my head about anesthetics dulling pain...After a few seconds of pretended sorrow spent kneeling by the side of a dying soldier with a pitiful look on my face, Pain tells me that it’s about time for me to go back home. I grab his hand and he jumps sending us both back home.
Back at home, Pain tells me that I’m about to suffer the greatest pain ever by the greatest pain causing tool ever. He then pulls out that pencil again and a slip of paper and mumbles something about this being his favorite part. He then hands me the piece of paper and tells me to read it. I read it and to my surprise it has some of the most hurtful, angry things written on it. I was ready to cry. I looked up to ask him why he would write something like this when all of a sudden he raises the pencil over his head and stabs me in the shoulder as hard as he can. He walks away saying that I now know pain. I rip the pencil from my shoulder and tell him where he can shove his letter, his pain, his pencils, and God. He really doesn’t like that last part.

He turns and runs at me full force. He then grabs me by my throat and slams me against the wall he forces me to look into his eyes. I stare into his blood red eyes transfixed when all of a sudden his eyes turn pitch black. Then the whole world turns black. In fact I’m just floating in a black zone of nothingness. Could this be a daydream? I don’t have too much time to think because a woman comes running out of the darkness screaming for help. Even from a distance she looks strangely familiar I just write her off as someone I’ve seen while walking or something. She looks over at me and starts sprinting in my direction begging for me to help. She finally reaches me and I’m at a loss for words. Now, I’m sure I know her from somewhere. Then it hit me, she looks like this girl I liked at school named Sam. I call her name and she says my name back with a sigh of relief. She begs for me to save her from the man. Man? I don’t see anyone around us, as a matter of fact, I don’t see anything that could hurt her.
Then it happens. Out of the darkness, an axe flies right at us, no, right at her and plants itself in the side of her head killing her instantly. My eyes start to throb as I watch another person run towards me begging for help, but this one doesn’t even get close to me before they get hit by a random truck that comes from out of nowhere. Then another person comes and gets killed and another and another and another. The slaughter continues and the more I let it go on the more pain my eyes are in.
The worst part isn’t the pain in my eyes, it’s the murders surrounding me. All of the people that are dying around me are family members, good friends and people I know. He’s making me watch them all die. It’s so horrible to the point that my eyes finally stop resisting the strain and start gushing blood from the tear ducts. I can’t take it anymore. I then decide that it’s about time for Pain to get a taste of his own medicine and so I take the anesthetics that I stole from the war zone scene and I pour it into Pain’s eyes.
Instantly, I snap out of the daydream and hit the ground because Pain has let me go and is now screaming and cursing the day I was born. I wait for my eyes to start stinging just like his, but nothing happens. It’s just like I thought, the anesthetics literally dull the power that Pain has over you. I then run past Pain, who is on his knees still moaning about his eyes, up the stairs and into the bathroom to grab my mother’s pain pills. While in there, I rinse the blood out of my eyes and off of my face so I don’t give Pain the satisfaction of knowing that he hurt me. I crush the pain pills into powder and run back to the top of the stairs, but something doesn’t seem right. Something sounds different. Pain isn’t down the stairs moaning about his eyes anymore. I take it as a good thing, thinking that he left. I turn around and get ready to go pour the crushed pain pills out. The second I turn around I am face to face with an angry, bitter Pain who then tells me that I will pay for my foolishness. He pushes me down the stairs just as I throw the powdered pain killers in his face. He cries out in horror one last time and then he vanishes with a flurry of wind.

I tumbled and rolled down the stairs, slamming my arms, legs, and head along the walls of our narrow staircase. I finally hit the ground with a thud and lay there cut up and bruised as I listen to my family members call out my name asking if I’m okay. Rather than responding to their concern I lay there motionless, but still breathing. I just couldn’t bring myself to even move after such a horrifying happening. After a few more seconds, I feel my mother’s warm, soft fingers feel my neck and wrists for a pulse. Even as I laid there in extreme pain, I’d begun to feel bad about what I’d done, even though I’d already paid the price. The panicky, horrified look on my mother’s face didn’t exactly help me feel better.
As I stood up, I started to just tell everyone I was okay and just limp out of the house and towards the school. I started to but then I felt a horrible pain in my shoulder, it felt like a fresh stab wound, I didn’t bother to look at it though, I already knew what it was. Meanwhile I kept trying to tell myself that what just happened didn’t just happen, but the pain in my shoulder and the cut on my cheek was a constant reminder that, yes, it did just happen. I was still considering going to school but then I considered the way I probably looked, thought about the numerous questions that would be asked and decided that I’d rather just stay home, especially since this time I really did break my wrists.
This time Pain did not come. Why come again? He’d already taught me what he wanted to teach me. That evil, old, Pain, he was just a huge pain in the butt. Because of him, I still have trouble writing. Because of him I ended up getting lead poisoning. Because of him I have no choice but to carry around pain pills for the rest of my life. Because of him I still have emotional scars that will never heal due to that heartless note. Because of him I KNOW PAIN, real pain. Although I do have to admit, he was right about something. It was about those pencils. Pencils truly are the ultimate pain causing tool. Unlike other objects, they hurt people physically and emotionally.