Excerpt from Fry the LittleFishes by

Patchy had not been wrong in thinking that Lucifer had “spite” against him. Scarcely a day had passed without Patchy being cuffed or strapped or made to stand in this corner or that for some misdemeanour or other. On one well-marked occasion, Lucifer had broken a school pointer over his back, and on every encounter, without exception, Patchy had been heard to scream. It was this screaming more than anything else that pained Brother Gabriel in his relations with Patchy, and in an effort to silence him, he would inflict more pain, only to be rewarded by more of the infuriating screams, and so on, creating a viscous circle, where Gabriel considered he had always come out the loser.

But today it was precisely that screaming he wanted the boys out there to hear, coming from Patchy’s stupid grinning mouth.

Pushing him down upon the bed, he let go with the hardest stroke he could muster and waited for the expected noise; but none came. Patchy, clenching his fists, his whole body tense, took the lash without any audible sign.

He too was aware that outside in the Dormitory, boys would be listening. Listening as he himself had done on so many occasions.

But his newly acquired pride kept the pain within him; it continued to serve him, and as each successive lash was answered with a victorious silence, his resolve grew, and he lost interest in counting strokes; his whole body now concentrated on not crying out; and he rejoiced in his silence, as this became easier and easier.

With each failure to induce a response, Gabriel became more and more infuriated, his strokes becoming wilder and wilder, until, blind with rage and anger, he drew the sharp leather across Patchy’s limbs, immediately raising a bright ugly welt that stretched right across both legs, below the boy’s knees.

A warning bell now rang in the normally methodical, if stoic brain of Gabriel. He had gone too far – what had possessed him?

Tired now and no longer able to cope, he briskly dismissed the aching but triumphant boy.

As the door closed behind patchy, the precise and orderly Gabriel, Marist Brother and Prefect in Charge of Saint Martin’s, threw himself across the bed, a tangle of infuriated and frustrated manhood.