The Punisher 1

The Punisher

Copyright 2023-2025 by Fit529 Dotcom

Started May 10, 2023

== Author's Disclaimers ==

All names have been changed. Any correspondence between any culture's God(s), any Real God(s), and the God(s) described here, as far as you know, is coincidence.

I hereby promise that I haven't talked to any real Greek Gods while writing this.

And, no, almost none of this work has anything to do with BDSM.

== Life with Autism In New Brunswick (Canada) ==

Sorry for the travel brochure, but the context of my life will help explain things.

WHERE:

I grew up, not in the USA, or in Eng-Lund. Instead: Saint John, New Brunswick ("SJNB")!

(That's SINGULAR spelled-out-SAINT John, NOT St. Johns, Newfoundland. They abbreviate and pluralize theirs ("More to the east, more Johns!"). They're 1000 miles from us and chock full of wankers and knobs. LOL. Not really. They're nice, too, they're just NOT us, and vice versa. Honestly, I'd be okay renaming our city to be Mispec or some other First Peoples' name, it'd simplify everyone's life).

Sorry, sore point.

Saint John isn't that big (70k), but we do okay. Same stores as I saw in Bangor (Maine, USA).

We're prosperous enough, nice people, LOTS of pretty/rugged nature nearby, good schools/hospitals/colleges/water-park, whatever. All you need. Like the slogan says, "Canada! It's Just Better Here!"

Though, to be fair, whether you want wilderness or not, yes, we have that; every spot in NB is ten minutes from the wilderness. Beautiful stuff, but not everyone's taste.

WHO:

Growing up, my father was the asst. city engineer of SJNB public works. Mom was a CPA and she set her own hours, working out of the house first, and then from a storefront nearby.

Now, I grew up knowing I was gifted, but also knowing that I was different. After a while the doctors and teachers figured out I was autistic.

There's lots of types of autism. My type mostly involved not reading social cues very well, sometimes perseverating (talking about a specific topic that interests me regardless of who's listening), and getting suddenly and irrationally angry when subjected to loud, high-pitched noises.

I also tended to hyper-focus on specific topics in or out of school, and had real problems guessing what other people were thinking about.

Loud groups usually make autistics overstimulated. Like others, I coped with that by fidgeting or running away, or rocking my body in place to self-calm, though it's not a big movement for me, not really noticable in most cases. The feeling is called 'propriception' - knowing where your body parts are just by feeling/sensing them. Moving helps proprioception. The science is out on why it works, but it just does.

Those are the bad parts, the hard parts to live with.

On the good side, I got good coping skills from Health Canada, school counselors, and a few good friends. That is, I had "crutches", but it was still hard. I had to be far more introspective and self-aware than norms ('neurotypicals").

Most of my friends are your average set of geeks, but through school I've met some oddballs (harder situations than mine) and I'm friends with them, too.

SCARS:

There's another Huge Huge Huge factor setting me apart, socially.

Growing up, I had a giant scar on my forehead and cheek, and couldn't see out of my left eye.

When I was 5, I had an accident in our basement where a power tool dropped off a counter and cut me. The doctors said they could do restorative surgery but I'd have to wait until I was mostly full grown so the repair-scar didn't grow and stretch the wrong way.

It was a lot of baggage, sure, but I did okay, and amongst my friend group it mostly didn't come up, or if it did, I'd make a joke like a DND troll being _Almost_ as ugly as me, and they could laugh along. I didn't worry too much, we were all good people if somewhat clueless.

BULLIES:

As you can imagine, being socially awkward with a massive scar didn't make me popular.

Specifically, I had a few bullies who repeatedly taunted and insulted me (and a few others), bullying and making fun of us. This was despite us getting decent anti-bullying and diversity classes, etc.

There are people in the world, we learned, who are just plainly mean-spirited.

The anti-bullying classes didn't affect them. They actively rejected those 'be nice' and 'defend powerless people' lessons, then laughed and pushed and called names - ugly, loser, idiot, monster, shit-face, hideous-head, etc.

Some people just suck.

For them, being not-pretty or socially-awkward was a lack of morals or willpower?

Among those people were two girls: Karabeth Kroger and Emmaline Paulsen (not their real names - I've randomized those to protect people).

They jeered me, teased, insulted, belittled, tripped, bumped, and otherwise made my life a kind of hell. This started when we were very young, and continued most of my school career.

Of course, I had some coping strategies, up to a point.

The trouble was, these girls would keep at it until I broke - either I'd start crying openly, or have to go fidget, or go somewhere and run for a while to work the tension out of my system.

There wasn't ever a danger I'd be self-destructive, or hurt anyone else, but there were times when I got so upset I'd go running and do strength-moves on the playground equipment, but inevitably I got huge muscle aches the next day.

Granted, I did this enough that I got pretty good at pull-ups or one-handed negatives or inverted push ups, sit-ups, yoga, etc. It really let me focus on my body and I had a good time with it.

Now, before you get the idea I was musclebound, I wasn't. After I read about true strength being the 30th pull-up not the tenth, my exercises were all sets of 25. It let me relax into the counting, another autistic pattern that helped me self-calm.

I also took piano lessons, which let me single-mindedly focus on musical tones.

Music is a great help to some autistics. Others? Drives 'em batty. Me, I loved it, I could use it to shut out a disturbing, too-loud, too-busy, frenetic reality. I could even remember music ('get this song out of my head' syndrome) and play along with fingers on my thighs, if you know what I mean.

My workouts led to success in track and cross country, and my music led to solace and joy in our school's chorus. Plus, halfway through sophomore year our chorus' accompanist moved away, so I got to take over that job (and LOVED it!!).

As much fun as music was, my focus/fun was science fiction and non-fiction, though I had troubles with ADHD-based procrastination. About half of autistics have some ADHD - which is called 'executive functioning disorder', but it's a fancy name for either being a perfectionist or just easily distractible towards whatever Moar-Cool!! thing is nearby.

That's the backdrop, that's who I was... Almost. Or, Mostly.

Before, that is... Really, it's better to say, 'in the Before.'

== THE Night ==

I turned 18 years old on Tuesday, February 2nd (my high school senior year).

Being mid-week, I couldn't have a b-day party until Friday, but on the plus side, my Dungeons and Dragons (DND) group met on Fridays.

Thus, the NIGHT I'm talking about is Friday, February 5th. My friends grabbed a b-day cake and we had a great time running our normal DND campaign, and it was a perennial sleepover party anyway.

We usually crashed about 2 am, going to our sides of the basement, unrolling soft pads and sleeping bags, and turning out the lights.

We were an integrated group - four girls and three guys.

The 'sides of the room' idea was a long habit, demanded by Mindy. She was super-smart, really creative in-game, and frankly pretty sexy too but I wouldn't have said that out loud. The 'sexy' was a topic we avoided about ourselves (awkward!), but we loved innuendo in-game.

Mindy had a super-arch-over-the-top Evangelical conservative Christian family. She could only have sleepover permission if we set it up as separate sleeping areas.

Living with that was fine - it wasn't a burden and frankly we weren't going to get funky with our group. We just wanted to crash and keep the game going longer.

Even after she graduated and left for Moncton we stuck with sleeping on opposite sides of the basement of whatever house we were in. I was the last to turn 18, but I didn't figure we'd change our patterns.

On a practical level, we had absolutely no reason to be so prudish. Granted, wearing sweats or at least long PJ pants and shirts was a Good Plan for NB winters, some of our houses were drafty.

Oh - and I should mention, we weren't all seniors - Mary had graduated and was a college freshman at UNB in town (too expensive; I was headed to NBCC, also in town).

It wasn't like we were all prudes in other contexts.

Heck, I ran track and cross-country and as a guy, I changed in the locker room around other guys, it didn't matter. Plus, Jo and Mary had both been in madrigal chorus with me since Junior year.

If you're not clued-in, madrigals is something like theater. People change costumes all the time in front of each other. It's accepted. So of course I'd seen them in bras and panties. Really, though, we had a swimming unit in gym class sophomore year and spent an hour a day wearing swimsuits near each other, and that's about the same as a bra and panties, or underwear.

Anyway, so that was the situation.

I went to sleep like normal, bedded down in the guys' half of the basement on a foam mat, collapsing after a long day of school, a track workout, and then over to the lively D&D gaming night and some b-day cake and a few cheap-ass but funny gifts from friends.

Sleep....

== The Trial ==

Then... normal sleep ended?

My dream suddenly didn't seem like a dream, it was Very Very Real.

I was in an odd place... my consciousness came to me quickly, and I started to get my bearings, but they didn't make sense.

Coming awake, I realized I was standing (but I'd just been lying down?) in an open space, very non-specific, a hard cold stone-like floor under my feet.

In front of me, what I was seeing made ZERO sense. Standing maybe 10 steps away and not facing me, was Karabeth Kroger and Emmaline Paulsen - my bullies!?!

Both were wearing iron collars with sharp, nasty-looking barbed spikes and standing neck-high in canvas tubes, enclosing their whole bodies including their arms, like mini-shower-curtains. The spiked collars held up the canvas, but were also attached to a super-thick, heavy black iron chain that hung in an arc between them.

The tubes were thick canvas sail-cloth hanging mostly slightly away from their bodies, not tight fitting but just draped. The tubes went down to just above their ankles where shackles attached more super-heavy chains. These went upwards, obviously to bumps where arm manacles attached, and looked so heavy I was surprised they were standing.

It looked rough and nasty and very uncomfortable.

They stood side by side facing a bright light I couldn't see off to my left; I was off to the side, but mostly facing them.

I tried looking towards the light, but it was far too bright and I had to turn back away. I caught an afterimage of some kind of face, like the whole light was shaped like a person's head, but that's a guess, it totally hurt just squinting in that direction.

The light from the head/face was enough to see the girls clearly in the otherwise empty darkness. I looked down at myself and saw I was dressed in what I'd gone to bed in, a white t-shirt, old sweatpants, and my 'Dr. Who' Tardis-print socks.

Something about the situation told me, 'don't move!' in a strong way, so I didn't.

The girls' expressions were deadly serious but also confused, and squinting as well.

Suddenly - the scene changed! It was blink-fast!

I was... in a park? They were still standing in front of me, just as before...

The thing was, I even recognized the park! When you're dad's a city engineer, you've been to all the parks in the city before, and sometimes they come up in conversation.

It totally felt real, standing there. We were about two blocks away from Brian's house.

They were standing in the frosty grass. I felt the February cold but somehow it wasn't too uncomfortable (highly unlikely, it was way below freezing out). The girls obviously started quickly suffering from the cold based on how they shifted, but they couldn't move much with all those chains on.

The light, the face, had a voice, and it started speaking.

This was incredibly real, absolutely NOT a dream, but it was so surrealistic it couldn't be real.

The voice spoke, loud, like it was right into my head. It didn't echo, like it would have in the park, and I didn't hear any other wind noise, so something was off from reality but frankly I wasn't exactly asking questions. I had zero control in this situation, I just listened.

Calm but totally authoritative, the voice resonated with gravitas. Somehow, though, I wasn't afraid. I was an observer. I wasn't the one in trouble, and it was obvious these two girls were based just on the tone, and on their faces... and everything else.

The voice was male, probably, if I can attach gender at all. I'm not sure it applies.

"Karabeth Isabel Kroger. Emmaline Dauphenne Paulsen. You have been convicted of callously and cruelly inflicting pain resulting in the death of a sentient, fully functional human. Your guilt has been clearly established. You have been informed of your punishment. That is, you will be reincarnated 10 times, spending each long lifetime in severe pain as an abused animal. During those lifetimes, you will have your current complete mental capacity and awareness, but no control over your bodies. You have requested a Rehearing towards possible Divine Mercy. To proceed, you must admit your guilt. If so, say, 'I admit guilt'."

They did, their voices oddly calm despite their facial expressions.

"You have been informed that this Rehearing could result in far worse punishment, depending on my whim. Confirm this by saying, 'I request Divine Mercy'."

They did, again, with calm voices but panicked eyes.

"I have examined your history, and your souls. I shall now tell you my judgment upon you. You both have potential for repairing your karma but only by a well-examined lifetime of good acts. Normal lives will be insufficient. You must be exemplary individuals to have sufficient 'good acts'. Failure will double your initial sentence, to 20 animal-lifetimes of misery. To repair your karma, you must live the rest of your natural lives in a state of loving servitude, accepting pain without outward complaint, outwardly disfigured, and weekly reminded by vivid painful nightmares of what you are avoiding with this alternate path."

The voice paused.

"Now, imagine what your new lives will be like."

It paused.

"No, that's wrong."

The light, the face, turned more to me, at least it got brighter. I still couldn't look that direction, so I stayed calm and just accepted that I wasn't going to be able to see it.

The girls turned in place to face me. I didn't question how.

The voice spoke to them. "This is Kevin Cooper. You know him well. He will be your guardian. Your lifelong task is to give him the comfort and love that your victim will never have the chance to feel. Further, you will each bear him 16 children. Neither painkillers nor anesthesia will have an effect on you, neither alcohol nor stimulants nor any other drugs."

"Neither he nor your children will see your disfigurement, but all those around you will. Your bodies will not age until you have completed this task, but those around you will see you as getting older and more decrepit as time passes."

"Kevin. You have a choice. You can accept these women as your responsibility and help them grow. Or, you can refuse. If you do, your memory of this event will disappear, they will suffer the reincarnations, all will be as it was. You hold the fate of lifetimes over them. No harm can come to you by declining, you are not being judged."

Wow. I tried to imagine the size of this decision. Frankly, I didn't want to be anywhere near them. They were horrible people.

After a pause, the voice continued, "You _also_ hold the fate, the existence, of the children you would have together. As more compensation, you will find you no longer are disfigured. You will have Demeter's power of fertility in your loins, Adonis' power of vanquishing jealousy, Hera's power of happy marriage, and Dionysus' power of bringing joy to those around you. You will spend this duration with them without aging."

"Lastly, your life, your reality - and the minds of those around you - will fold and bend and match this situation."

"Your marriages will be perceived as inevitable, normal, and accepted by society. Everything odd about you and them will be immediately forgotten or dismissed."

"Lastly, in undertaking this task, those aspects of your autism you find troublesome will abate, and your visage will be returned."

Visage. That meant... appearance. I knew that. The entity speaking knew that I knew that. Still, it was an odd word to hear spoken.

"Now, Kevin. Make your choice. Will you accept this responsibility, keeping one or both of these women as ugly-to-the-world but eager wives? Or, you may decline this offer and return to your sleep and your games with friends. You can negotiate terms, or accept each by saying their name and 'I accept' you'. What is your choice?"

This feeling of calm came over me. I saw the choices in front of me.

Both of these girls, these now-women, had assaulted me countless times with hate-filled vile actions and words. They'd also assaulted me - both verbally and physically by pushing and poking and bumping-hard. They'd done this to not just me, but to several other people I knew well and cared about.

These girls weren't random people to me. They had inflicted great harm, intentionally, with great hurtful malice and delight in the pain they caused. My emotions were immensely conflicted - what to do was not obvious..

I knew I could greatly harm them by just saying, 'no'. It would be an easy choice.

Or, by agreeing, I could either do them more harm, or no harm. It would be up to me. They would have to do what I said... so I could be mean, back.

Did I want that? Wow! This idea had serious power associated with it!

The chance for retribution, by either saying yes or no, was hard to think about. My inner mind remembered their faces as they shouted painful insults in front of groups of other kids, making it okay for all of them to nickname me, beat on me, shun me, and all the other physical and emotional pain-inducing things they did, over our decade of schooling together and life near each other in a not-big town.

Still, my own disfigurement might be reduced? My autism patterns might be less severe?

Having a normal life, even if it was at the cost of living with my tormentors, had some advantage. The trade off - I'd have to live with these two horrible people, half a lifetime?

Thinking about it in terms of game theory (a frequent way in DND to approach problems), I looked for the downsides, and the way they could game the system. This led to a question, and having listened to the conditions, The Voice hadn't addressed it.

I asked, "If they do nothing, ignore me forever, or run off? They get to live forever, but I am also compelled to live forever. I have read stories where eternal life is a hell, a vast tragedy, an immeasurable and eternal punishment."

I waited.

The voice returned, "Understood. This would not have occurred, but I will be clear."

Turning to them, he said, "First, you will feel physical pain, increasing by time and distance, being apart from Kevin. You must stay near him. You must do his bidding, and you shall not feel sleep until you have done enough daily good works. Do you have questions?"