He is a freshman attending Louisiana State University on a four year science scholarship and has come home several days early for the Thanksgiving holiday. It is Tuesday afternoon. He tells his mother about a girl he met who is helping him with his English literature. She is pretty, he tells her. But his mother will have none of it. Even though he tells her that they are not serious, that he is only using her to help him with his studies. But she insists that he not see her again. He tells her that he won't see her, that he will get another study buddy from the dorm. But she doesn't believe him.

George Hoover can live with his mother not believing him. He has lived with it for eighteen years. He can live with her beating him, belittling him, even molesting him. But it is when she threatens to take him out of college that he snaps. It is when she threatens to take away his only refuge from her that he fights back for the first time in his subservient life to her.

Donna, sweet lovely Donna, has that much influence upon him. She is the first girl that has ever taken a romantic interest in him, tells him how strong he is, how beautiful his long blonde hair looks. She is the only girl that he has ever kissed, the only girl that he has ever loved. They held hands walking from the library.

It is when his mother threatens to take that away from him that he finally acts in his own defense.

"You're not going back to that school to fuck some whore who'll only give you some kind of disease," she yells at him.

"She's only a friend mother. We haven't had sex. I'm still a virgin, mother."

"Don't you talk back to me, you little bastard." She slaps him hard across the face, leaving the imprint of her hand. "And don't you lie to me. Don't you tell me that you're still a virgin, because I know you're not. I know you've fucked all those high school whores you went out with. I ought to cut it off. You're just like . . ."

"Mother you know I never went out with . . ."

"Don't you interrupt me when I'm talking to you, you little bastard. You're just like your father. He was always interrupting me when I was talking to him, till I threw him out."

"I wasn't interrupting you, mother. I was just trying to remind you that you wouldn't let me date any girls when I was in high school," he says to her. "And I thought dad left because he couldn't stand your hollering at him any more?"

"What!" She screams at him. "Did that whore in college tell you that, tell you to talk that way to me? Now I know you're not going back there. You're not going to talk like that to me and get away with it you little bastard."

She grabs him by the hair, the way she has always done, and drags him down the hall to the punishment room. The room is dirty, having never been swept; there is an old, dirty sheet covering the only window. It is bare of everything except a set of shackles and a cable running through an eyebolt in the ceiling and tying off on the closet door across the room, a large picture of her hanging on the wall, and the Whip, her precious leather Whip with a brass handle.

He thinks of fighting back. But his five foot four 155 pounds are no match for her five foot ten and 240 pounds. Besides, he knows it will only make her angrier. He knows too what his punishment is going to be for his insolence. It is what his punishment has always been when she is angry at him. He resigns himself to her brutality.

"Donna, where are you? I need you. Sanctuary of my life, love of my life, help me, tell me what to do," he asks her through his thoughts.

But Donna might just as well have been on the moon. She cannot help him now. Nor are his thoughts of her going to help him now. He resigns himself. When they get into the punishment room she punches him hard in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him and sending him to his knees.

She stands over him. "You know the rules. Take off your clothes you little bastard or I'll rip them off you."

She has always referred to him as her little bastard. In his entire life, whenever she's angry, he can never remember her referring to him by any other name.

"Mother, please." He can barely whisper.

She kicks him in the side with her combat boots, leaving an ugly bruise. He falls face down on the bare floor. "I said take off your clothes you little bastard." Then she walks across the room and picks up the Whip.

"Mother, please. I'm too old for this."

"Shut up you little bastard," she barks.

Then she hits him on the back with the Whip. He can feel the welt rising across his shoulder and down his back. She strikes him two more times across his back. He tries to get up but she kicks him down again. This time the blow lands on his left temple, knocking him unconscious. Then she grabs his T-shirt at the collar, the LSU T-shirt Donna had bought for him, and rips it from his back, revealing three deep red streaks running diagonally from his left shoulder to his waist.

When he comes to he is lying naked on the floor; two old, healed small scars can be seen on his left buttocks and another one on his right thigh, just below his cheek. There is another old four inch long scar just below his right shoulder blade. His wrists are shackled to the cable hanging from the eyebolt in the ceiling. His left eye is closed and swollen. His head is swimming. It is dark and the room is empty. Through his good eye he can see by the moon light filtering through the sheet on the window that her Whip is lying on floor on the other side of the room where she threw it, where she has always thrown it just beyond his reach.

The college LSU T-shirt Donna had bought him is in shreds lying next to him. He does not know where the rest of his clothes are; they are not in the room. His back hurts. He has no idea what time it is or how long he has laid here. He figures that it has probably been just a few hours. His side aches. He is hungry. But he knows better than to call out. He knows that he must sit in silence and wait for her to bring him food. He learned that lesson when he was only in the first grade. Or, was it earlier. He can't remember; it has been too many years.

The next afternoon she comes in with a large chamber pot. She says nothing to him. She just stands over him . . . waiting . . . waiting. He has been sitting on the floor in the fetal position with his arms wrapped around his legs, trying to keep his naked body warm. There is neither heat nor air conditioning in the room; she closed the vents years ago. But he knows what she was waiting for. He feels ashamed. He silently hopes that she will just drop the pot within his reach and leave. But she does not. She just stands there and waits.

After several minutes, he opens his legs so that she can see him. He is embarrassed. He closes his good eye; he doesn't want to see her face. She throws the pot at him, but her aim is bad. It hits him a glancing blow on the shoulder and bounces into the corner. He is glad when she leaves. For when he is alone he can regain some measure of dignity for his naked body. Now too, he can relieve himself in solitude. He knows better than to soil her floor, the floor that is stained with his blood.

She doesn't return for several hours, by then it is dark. She puts a bowl of oat meal on the floor just out of his reach. Then she gets her Whip and stands over the bowl, the toe of her boot just an inch away from it. After several minutes, she nudges it forward with her toe and waits. George waits too. He doesn't know whether to reach out for the bowl, or to wait for her to leave before retrieving it.

Sometimes in the past she would allow him to get it without incident. At other times she would hit him with the Whip when he reached out for the bowl of food. What she would do now he does not know. So, he waits. She stands there for thirty minutes with her arms folded and the Whip in her hand, looking down on the naked young man. When the oat meal gets cold she throws the snake in the corner and leaves. George retrieves the food and scoops it out of the bowl with his fingers. Then he licks the bowl clean so as to get every morsel of food. He knows from experience that it might be a long time before she brings him anything else to eat.

He is there for several days. Once every evening she has brought him a bowl of oatmeal, and each day she has waited until it is cold before leaving. She has picked up the chamber pot only twice and returned it without incident. Now it is nearly full and it stinks, but he is thankful that she has not whipped him any more. His back and side no longer hurt, but his eye is still a little bloodshot. The swelling has gone down and he can see through it. His wrists are raw from the shackles. He does not know what day it is and dares not ask but he is sure that the Thanksgiving holiday is over. He guesses that it is either the Friday or the Saturday after. He has to get back to college. He has to get back to his studies. He has to get back to Donna, his precious Donna.

She comes in early in the evening and puts the bowl of oatmeal on the floor. As usual it is just out of his reach. She stands over it, over him. Then she nudges it forward a few inches with the toe of her combat boot and waits. George only wants to get back to college, back to his precious Donna. He is crazy with fear that he will never see her again. He is afraid that his mother will never let him go back to school. He has to see the love of his life again. He cannot let his mother take her away from him.

He is sitting on the floor and looks up at her. He looks at the keys. They are dangling from her waist. The whip is in her hand. He lowers his head, looks at the floor, and shakes his head in resignation. He knows what he must do. He knows too what her reaction will be. He slowly stands up. He stands up to face her, arms at his side, palms facing her. He raises his head and looks her in the eyes. She is puzzled by his actions. He has never done this before. He has never before shown himself like this to her. But his actions catch her off guard, and before she has time to contemplate what he is doing he acts.

"Fuck you," he says to her in disgust.

"What!" she screams at him in shocked disbelief. "Why you little bastard."

She kicks the oatmeal at him and lashes out with the whip. But that is exactly what he expects her to do and he is ready for her. Instead of bowing in submission to her blows, he grabs the whip with both hands, ignoring the pain it inflicts across his shoulder and down his back. That is the sacrifice he must endure. He pulls hard on the whip, pulling her off balance. Caught off guard, she lets go of the whip and falls forward onto the floor. She is on her hands and knees. He swings at her with the whip with all his strength; its brass handle hits her in the back of the head. She falls flat on the floor. He hits her again and again until she lies lifeless on the floor. Her skull is cracked open, her brains are oozing out, and her blood is spreading out in a large circle across the cold hard floor.

He sits down near her fractured head; only his heels, his naked buttocks, and his testicles and penis are touching the floor. He folds his arms across his knees. He still has the whip in his hand. He watches the blood spread out toward him. He watches it creep around his right heel and head for his testicles. When it gets too close he tries to stop it with his finger. But it will not stop inching forward. He moves away from it and away from her. He drops the whip on the floor and folds his hands across his knees and closes his eyes.

When he wakes up it is dark. The snake is lying lifeless on the floor. It can no longer hurt him; she can no longer hurt him. He gets up and rolls her over being careful to avoid the blood. She stares blankly at the ceiling. He removes the keys and unlocks the shackles from his wrists without looking at her. He walks naked across the floor, leaving a bloody imprint of his heel as he does so. He goes to the bathroom and takes a shower, and then to his bedroom to put on an old pair of jeans and a T-shirt that he had left there when he went to LSU. Then he goes into the kitchen to fix himself something to eat.

The next morning he turns on the television in order to determine what day it is. He has spent the night sleeping on the sofa in the living room. It is the Saturday after Thanksgiving. He is glad for now he can still get back to college and back to Donna in time. But he does not know what he will do with his mother. He goes to the punishment room to see her. Standing over her he makes a decision. He will bury her in her garden along the side of the house.

He spends the rest of the day digging in her garden. It is on the side of the house in an area about eight foot wide and fifteen feet long. There is a six-foot high wooden fence on one side that shields him from the neighbors next door. Situated on a corner, the house itself shields his digging from the other side. To the front of the area is a six-foot high wooden gate and to the rear of the house is a large empty lot.

He digs all day in solitude; no one notices what he is doing. He digs the grave deep so that the smell of the decomposing body will not penetrate up through the soil. That night he wraps his mother's body in a bed sheet and buries her. He empties the chamber pot and wipes up the blood with some bath towels. He puts the towels in a plastic bag and puts the bag in the trunk of his car. He tells himself that he will dispose of it in a dumpster once he gets back to LSU and back to his salvation.

It is nearing nine o'clock. George only has one thing on his mind now: get back to LSU and Donna. He takes a quick shower. He packs his bag and puts it in the trunk along side the plastic bag of bloody towels. Then he goes to his mother's bedroom and gets her checkbook, thankful that she put his name on the account when he started college.

He checks the balance she has written; there is over 8,200 dollars in it. He wonders where she got all that money. He knows that she only gets a few of hundred a month from her investments, just enough for someone whose house and car is paid for to live off of without having to go to work. But then he doesn't care where she got it. It's his now and with frugal living, a part time job, and his scholarship he figures he ought to be able to make it at college. Before going to bed he sets his alarm for 5:45. He wants to get up early and back to Donna.