Taben Rael – Tighty Whitey Wednesday

 

The sons stand in a single line, shoulders squared, eyes fixed forward. Each wears the prescribed uniform of refinement: a plain white tank top stretched tight across the chest, white briefs fitted so closely that every contour is clear, and white socks pulled neat and high. Nothing is loose. Nothing is soft.

The Bishop stands before them, paddle in hand. His voice is low and absolute.

“Today is refinement. The body must learn order the same way the mind does—through exact measure and complete exposure. You will present. You will receive twenty strikes. You will not speak. You will not shift. The white will remain tight. The posture will remain true. Begin.”

The first son steps forward. He places both hands on the polished rail, feet set, back straight. The thin white cotton of the briefs is drawn taut across the buttocks.

The paddle rises.

One.Two.Three.Four.Five.Six.Seven.Eight.Nine.Ten.Eleven.Twelve.Thirteen.Fourteen.Fifteen.Sixteen.Seventeen.Eighteen.Nineteen.Twenty.

Each strike lands full and clean. The fabric snaps with the impact. The skin beneath warms, then burns. By the twentieth, the white briefs are stretched tight over thoroughly refined flesh. The son holds position for three full seconds, then steps back into the line.

The next takes his place. And the next. Every son receives the same count. Twenty. Exact. Complete.

When the last has returned to formation, the Bishop lowers the paddle.

“Refinement is finished. The lesson remains with the body. You will wear the uniform for the rest of the day. Dismissed.”

The sons leave in silence and move directly into the study hall. They sit at their desks still dressed in the tight white tank tops, white briefs, and white socks. The redness and tenderness from the twenty strikes remain warm beneath the thin cotton. Lessons begin under the appointed instructors. 

The Bishop is not present among them. Posture stays correct. Every shift of weight is a quiet reminder of the paddle’s work.

Above, in the upper half of the convent, the second movement of the day’s refinement begins.

The servants enter in gold.

Tight gold tank tops. Extremely tight gold briefs. The color marks their place in the order.

Elias is called first. He lies across the Bishop’s lap, stomach pressed firmly against his thighs, hands flat on the floor, feet on the floor, buttocks raised high. The thin gold fabric stretches taut. The Bishop’s open hand rises and falls in steady, controlled strikes against the presented flesh. The gold compresses under each impact. Redness begins to show through the tight material. When the count is finished, Elias rises and returns to the line.

Kenji is next. He takes the same position without hesitation. Stomach down across the Bishop’s lap. Hands and feet on the floor. Buttocks elevated. The hand works the gold-covered target with the same deliberate force until his measure is complete.

Malik follows. The posture is identical—body stretched over the Bishop’s thighs, gold briefs pulled tight across the raised buttocks. The hand descends again and again, leaving its mark beneath the gleaming fabric.

Wei is last. He assumes the exact position. The Bishop’s hand delivers the final set of strikes across the taut gold cotton. When Wei rises, the gold briefs remain tight against the marked flesh.

Below, the sons continue their studies in white.

Above, the servants complete their correction in gold.

Two levels of the convent.

Two colors of the same discipline.

One unbroken order for the day.

The garments stay on. The marks remain. The lessons and duties continue in silence.

The Bishop leaves the upper halls behind.

Above, the sons still sit at their desks in white, the marks of the paddle warm beneath tight cotton. In the upper chamber the golden servants have already taken their correction. None of that follows him now. He descends.

The stair narrows. The air grows heavy. Firelight replaces the ordered lamps of Discipline Matters. This is the original foundation of 1700: broken gravel, dark stone, iron cells, and the Corridor of Refinement. Fiery pits burn along the floor. The ground is split and ancient.

Men wait in the gloom, dressed only in black tank tops and black briefs, barefoot. Some stand inside individual cells. Others hang from the high walls by chains, wrists bound above their heads.

The Bishop enters carrying the paddle of refinement.

The cells open. The bound men are lowered and unchained. They come forward across the gravel and bow down before him.

Mar-Mar, son of the Bishop and brother of Edward Lamar, walks out from among them and bows to his father.

The Bishop looks upon them and says nothing.

Then he walks among the ruins of the old. From the farther darkness the rest of the thousands appear—barefoot, in black, emerging from cells and broken corridors. They fall to their knees as he passes. The Lower fills with bowed bodies. Still he does not speak.

He reaches the very beginning of the Lowers and sets his hand on a sealed door.

Behind it are the corrupted.

The chamber burns. Four men hang from the walls by their wrists in heavy chains, black fabric tight on their bodies, fire licking the stone around them. When the door opens they look down at the Bishop and smile—devilish, unbroken, defiant.

The smile does not move him.

“Release them.”

The chains fall. The four drop to the burning gravel and land on their knees.

One of them looks up, tears already on his face.

“Is this the day that you free us from this wretched place? Shall we come and serve you for the rest of our days? Save us from the fire that consumes our heart, soul, and flesh.”

The others lift their faces. Tears run down.

The Bishop looks upon them.

“You who are condemned, hear my voice. You were given a chance to come to the other side of Taben Rael. You refused to admit your crimes. You refused to obey the law—the law of the outer world, and now the law of Taben Rael and the Orthodoxy. You four men are the worst of the thousand that kneel in the inner dwellings of the Lower. Izzelle and Judise were just like you at one time, until I snatched them from the fire and made them my servants.”

The Black man among them answers.

“Bishop, we ask you to do the same for us. We are tormented by your son Mar-Mar. He beats us with the whip of fire. It is not like how your golden servants are treated by your mighty paddle. We deserve all we get—but Father of Nations, we plead for mercy before our last breath, before we meet Satan and the realm of hell.”

The Bishop’s voice rises. The Lower trembles. Men throughout the corridor cry out and moan.

“You four. The murderous four. The gang-member four. The deceiver four. Admit your crimes and look into the souls you have murdered in the outer world. Do you not see? You felt the whip of fire from my son, and still you refuse the commandments, the law, the covenant.”

Then his voice softens.

“Now you ask me to deliver you from the bond of the Lower?”

He holds out his hand. A blue flame rises from the broken ground.

“Rise. Walk through the flame. If you are not burned, then I will know who you are. If you do not burn, then I will consider.”

One by one they walk into the fire.

The flame wraps the first.

The fire speaks: You are Donte from France. Your heart is pure, but you are ugly on the inside. Three hundred lashes for each man you have killed.

The flame spits him out.

The second enters.

The fire speaks: Treason. Drunkard. Murderer. Thief. You are Joshua—from New York.

The fire spits him out.

The third is seized and wrapped.

The fire speaks: Jonetto. Italian. Beat. Beat. Beat. Serve. Serve. Serve.

The fire spits him out.

The fourth is taken last.

The fire speaks: You are Ezzele from Israel. You deserve what you get. You need to be bound from the inside and out. You are bound up under the Bishop’s feet.

The fire throws him out and he falls at the Bishop’s feet.

Then the blue fire grows. It twirls larger and larger and sweeps up all four. The screaming and crying of the entire Lower fills the foundation of 1700.

The fire spews them out.

They are no longer in black.

They kneel in silver tank tops, silver briefs, and silver socks, chains on their ankles and wrists. Delivered unto the Bishop as servants.

Ezzele remains where the flame placed him—bound at the Bishop’s feet, inside and out, the silver stretched tight over his body as he kneels.

From the shadows of the Lower, Mar-Mar steps forward. The whip of fire burns in his hand.

The sons study in white above.

The golden servants stand marked in the upper chamber.

In the pits, the four have been named, judged, and given over in silver.

The Bishop looks upon them in silence, paddle in hand, while his son waits with the whip of fire.

The Ritual of the Four and the Last Judgment of the Lower

The naming was finished. The silver was on them. The chains still bit. Donte of France, Joshua of New York, Jonetto of Italy, and Ezzele of Israel were no longer the smiling damned in black. The blue fire had torn their names out of them and thrown them back as servants. Now the Lower required what the whole of Taben Rael had required since dawn: the ritual that had been intended from the beginning.

One by one they were driven to the stone. The Bishop ordered their hands to the wall, and their palms struck the rock. He ordered their feet, and their legs opened to the width of a man’s shoulders. He ordered the arch, and each spine bent until the silver briefs drew tight and the gravel waited under chained ankles. 

Then the Bishop lifted the Paddle of Refinement. In that chamber the wood looked older than the foundation itself. He set the flat face against the first pair of silver-covered buttocks and did not ask again.

The stroke landed full. The sound cracked down the corridor like a door being barred. Fabric snapped. Flesh jumped. 

Donte’s breath broke against the stone, and he did not take his hands away. Again the paddle fell, and again, until the silver warmed and then burned. By the last count the briefs were stretched over thoroughly refined flesh, and Donte held the wall as if the wall alone kept him in the world.

Joshua took the same wall, the same arch, and the same wood. Jonetto followed, jaw locked, back bent, the paddle finding the exact center of the silver.

 Ezzele came last, as the fire had ordered, bound from the inside and out. The paddle pressed to the tight silver over his heavy flesh and stayed there a heartbeat before it struck. He remained.

When the final blow fell, none of them moved. The Lower listened. Even the pits seemed to draw in air. Then the Bishop spoke one word. “Up.” They were turned from the wall. Escorts closed around them—silver tank tops, silver briefs, silver socks, iron on wrist and ankle—and the four marked servants began the climb out of 1700.

The stair rose through firelight, then stone, then polished wood. They passed the study halls where the sons still sat in white, the redness quiet under cotton, books open and eyes down. They passed the upper chamber where the golden servants stood at their posts, already corrected and already returned to duty. The last floor waited like a closed mouth: the Bishop’s private quarters. The Bishop did not climb with them. He stayed.

Mar-Mar remained in the firelight, the Whip of Fire still alive in his grip. Father and son were left in the gravel with no witnesses now but the Lower itself. The Bishop towered over his eldest. “I see you have been keeping the souls of the damned in their place.”

Mar-Mar did not bow. “Yes, Father. I have done as I was taught by my adopted parents—you know the ones—and by those who taught me the art of witchcraft. You see, Father, I rule down here, and you rule up there.”

For a moment the Bishop only smiled. It was not kindness. It was the recognition of a fool speaking in a holy place. “My son, you sound foolish, and you speak with no Orthodoxy. The men who are here are supposed to be taught, not beaten into submission, and definitely not your submission.” He took one step, and the gravel shifted. “You rule nothing. You are a part of the Lower because you yourself are a part of the Lower. You yourself are a slave to the Lowers.” The smile died. “I cast you down, Mar-Mar. Bound to the fire.”

The blue flame tore up from the broken ground as if the foundation had been waiting for the sentence. It took Mar-Mar at the knees first, then the chest, then the throat, and lifted him off the gravel. His body hung in the column of light, kicking, cursing, burning without being allowed to fall. His screams did not move the Bishop. His curses did not move the Bishop.

“From this day forward,” the Bishop said, “you will become the slave that you are. You will be bound with chains. You will no longer be the holder of the Whip of Fire. You will be the one who receives the Whip of Fire.”

Mar-Mar’s voice ripped through the flame. “I will return. I will return bigger and wiser. I will sit upon the heavens—”

The blue fire entered his mouth. The rest of the boast died there. The flame gagged him, filled him, and silenced him. His black clothes darkened further, then vanished. In their place, the fire dressed him in black spandex, tight as a second skin, clinging like a glove from throat to ankle, leaving the shape of the darkness inside him with nothing to hide behind.

Then the fire spoke, not in the Bishop’s voice and not in Mar-Mar’s. From this day you are a creature that will be bound. You will be beaten with the Paddle of Refinement. You will be subject to the ritual until you have finished what you put the others through.

The column broke. The fire spat him out. Mar-Mar struck the gravel on his knees and then his hands. Iron cuffs shoved up through the stone and locked on his wrists and ankles. The chain pulled taut. He was left on all fours at his father’s feet, sealed in black, stripped of the whip and stripped of the claim.

The Bishop bent and took what had been his son’s: the Whip of Fire in the left hand and the Paddle of Refinement in the right. Then the blue fire turned. It left the pit and came for the Bishop. It covered him. It entered him through his mouth. It became part of him. His eyes went deep blue. The white orthodox robe tore into gold. The paddle darkened and brightened at once, white and gold and black and silver running the length of the wood like four laws bound into one instrument.

The whip rose with no hand upon it and struck the Bishop across the chest, then across the back. When it fell away, the seal of Taben Rael was burned into him, front and rear, as if the house itself had signed his flesh.

The Lower convulsed. An earthquake moved through the foundation of 1700. Walls cracked. Dust and old mortar rained. The fiery pits leapt higher. And the thousands—every man who had knelt in black, every soul Mar-Mar had kept with fire and pride—were dressed in the same tight black spandex, sealed to the skin, leaving no room for imagination. They were marked with him. They would share the sentence because they had shared the rule.

The Bishop looked down at the creature on the gravel and raised the paddle. Five hundred and fifty strokes fell on Mar-Mar’s buttocks. The count did not hurry. The wood did not miss. The Lower filled with a screaming that had no tone left in it. 

When Mar-Mar could no longer hold his head up, the Bishop did not stop the work of the house. He moved through the corridor. The paddle found the thousands. Stone threw the sound back. Cries rose, broke, and rose again, until the foundation itself seemed to be the one receiving the lesson.

At last the Bishop stood in the cracked heart of the Lower, the gold robe darkened with ash, his eyes still blue, both instruments in his hands. He spoke one sentence.

“It is done.”

Above, on the last floor, the four silver servants waited behind a closed door. Below, Mar-Mar was no longer keeper of anything. The fire had judged the son. The fire had entered the father. And Taben Rael, from the white halls to the black pits, had received its day.