punished lucas

Chapter 5 Punishment

In the kitchen, Dad didn't want to face his firstborn son either ... but he also knew that as a father he had no choice. There was no question that Lucas had screwed up big enough to get punished, so punishment had to come, and it had to come down hard from him. Hard like Royal Scott would have come down on Keith. Hard like Dan himself had come down on Nathan months ago when he had strapped his son's bare bottom with a belt. A grounding for Lucas wasn't going to cut it for something as serious as this and neither was a simple lecture or a loss of privileges. Lucas had to feel major pain so he understood three things without question: (1) that rolling the dice on his life was never acceptable, (2) that it would never be tolerated, and (3) that it would always, always lead to negative consequences.

Refusing to think of Karen and how furious she was likely to be once she learned he had hit their son, Dan finished eating, then dumped his dishes in the sink alongside Nathan's and stared at them, his mind jumping ahead ten minutes from now.

How was he going to do this?

Lucas deserved a whipping just as Nathan had received in July, but Dan felt hesitant at going so far. It was one thing to strap the son he had raised since birth, but it was another thing entirely to do the same to Lucas, whom he'd only really begun to raise this last year. Nathan was no stranger to physical pain. Dan had pushed him hard his entire life in order to ensure he excelled at basketball, and he'd spanked him more than once as a young boy to instill a sense of discipline. If truth be told, Dan had done more than just spank Nathan sometimes, but had Karen or Keith ever spanked Lucas? Dan didn't know but he didn't think so. He certainly never had, so it was out of the question for him to strike Lucas with leather the very first time he was punished physically. And it wasn't just leather that was a problem. Wood and plastic implements were also off the table, which meant no paddles or hairbrushes or spatulas could be used on him either, nothing at all that was harder than a human hand. Lucas would have to be spanked by the palm of Dan's hand - and only by the palm of his hand - even though his crime cried out for an implement more befitting his age.

Decision made, Dan took a single step away from the sink then paused, thinking now about how Lucas was likely to react and what this might do to their father-son relationship. For countless minutes, Dan stood in place and looked out the window, seeing nothing except his own worries, until an image of Royal came to mind, reminding him to take action. Thinking of the hard man who'd raised him got his own butt twitching, of course, so Dan ordered himself to quit wasting time and just do what needed to be done. He wasn't a friend; he was a father. More than that, he was a father and a disciplinarian to two sons now, not just one, and it was high time he acted like it. He left and went upstairs. Outside Luke's bedroom door, he hesitated for only a few seconds more before he barged in, then shut the door firmly behind his back.

Still brooding on the bed and rubbing the punched area on his cheek, Lucas stood up immediately and turned to face him. Self-reproach and nervousness were written all over his teenaged face, sure signs if any were needed that he knew he'd done wrong and deserved to be in trouble, and this was exactly the expression Dan needed to see. He met his son's anxious gaze with one of anger and determination, then removed from his jacket pocket the prescription he'd picked up some ninety minutes before.

"Look familiar?" he demanded. "Because I don't know why it should since you haven't taken a single pill in two whole months."

"Dad-"

"I can't believe you, Lucas. Whatever happened to, 'I don't wanna die any time soon, so I need you to keep funding the bill?' Because I did fund the bill and what did that get me? An idiot son who'd rather croak dribbling a stupid basketball, and drive me into an early grave, instead of taking his damn medication like he knows he's supposed to!"