OUTSIDERS [chapter one]

It comes apart
The way it does in bad films
Except in parts
When the moral kicks in

All My Friends – Franz Ferdinand (cover of LCD Soundsystem)

---

Pain.

What was going on? He didn’t know. His little body was suddenly lifted and smacked into a stone wall, and he felt a blinding pain running down his spine when he hit his back on the freezing, hard surface.

Tears started rolling down his eyes. He wanted his mother, he wanted his sister, he wanted his brother, he wanted his father… And the mean, old man was the only one there, hurting him.

The mean guy approached the nine years old boy, unbuckling his belt, with a devilish look on his glare. The little boy trembled at that simple gaze, and he closed his eyes with the back of his hands, trying to control his sobbing and his tears. He felt the man holding his arm up, almost breaking his fragile bones, lifting him up so that he could stand.

Why was he doing that to him? He just wanted to go home and play with his brother and his friends…

“Stop crying, your little prat!”, he said through his teeth, and then spitted on the floor. “Can you please shut the fuck up?”

“I just want to go home… I just want to go home…”, he repeated between his sobs, feeling the muscles from his arm twitching too hard, like they were about to be ripped apart. “Please, let me go home”

He pushed the little boy against the wall again, and he ended up smacking his nose against it. He could feel the hot blood dripping from it, and the salty taste when it rolled into his mouth.

“Now… just bend over, fucking kid”

And the next thing he know, he was being swollen into darkness.

Alex picked up his notebooks that had fallen on the floor and managed to put all of them into his old and ruined backpack. It was almost tearing apart, but he didn’t care about it – there wasn’t any valuable item in there anyway.

He shouldered it and picked an apple at his kitchen table – his father wasn’t home and his mother was probably sleeping. The house was hauntingly quiet and still, and that bothered him a bit. He liked sounds; and the dark lights were some kind of phobia for him.

Sighing, he took a bite at his apple – his breakfast, as he was getting late for the first day at school – and picked his keys on the coffe table and hurried outside from home. The streets were almost motionless; and that was kinda strange for a morning day in Glasgow. Normally, there would have been cars in almost every signal, beeping to each other and some drivers that were still drunk from the previous night.

Alex frowned as soon as he stepped outside from his house – that was definitely unusual. Trying to ignore that fact, he started walking faster when he saw that he had exactly fifteen minutes to get at the University; and he still had to take a bus.

While he was running for the bus stop, he passed through a dark alley that seemed very familiar to him. Even though he had a short time to get to the college, that alley seemed to be screaming for his name, like it was begging for be noticed.

Alex looked back at it, and as soon as he saw that dirty place, memories came back to his head – the freezing stone walls… The small pieces of glasses on the ground, that had once hurt his knee… The trash cans that had fallen over him when he was thrown right at them…

…And the face of that horrible monster came back to his mind – laughing right at him, seeming to be making fun of the fact that the poor kid was in pain.

Alex could see everything happening again right there; he saw himself, nine years ago, with his huge backpack on his back, twice the size as him; his school uniform, the short blue shorts making his thin legs look even thinner; his untidy hair and the happy smile on his face while he was walking back home from school.

And now, he could also see that man following him down the road, with greed on his eyes and he watched the little boy all alone. A sudden urge itched Alex throat; he wanted to scream for the boy to run away, to save himself, but he couldn’t – and the man accelerated his pace, approaching the little boy. He grabbed the boy by behind, putting his hand over his mouth, preventing him of doing any kind of sound.

And the rest that happened, Alex turned his head. He couldn’t see that. It was too much to watch it all again… To relive that all again.

He shook his head and rubbed the back of his hands on his eyes, and looked once again at the alley – it was empty. There was no one there. No bad guys, no crying boys… Only emptiness.

He shook his head once more and left the place as fast as he could – after all, he was running out of time.

Advertisement

~ by Eduarda Morsch on March 25, 2010.