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- Story Listed as: True Life For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Death / Heartbreak / Loss
- Published: 10/29/2014
How to tell a story that no one has ever asked to hear?
This is the way it happened all those years ago, as I remember it. Events, which so many years later, still disturb me. Injustice can do that, I suppose. And, yet, it is interesting how no one ever asked me about what happened.
I had finished eating my lunch and I was looking forward to going to the library; a place that I saw as being a haven in the often barbaric and unpredictable world of the school yard. So, there I was, striding across C block, when I noticed a group of girls in my year throwing another girl down the stairs, then dragging her up and pushing her down again. This girl, I shall call “Flower”. Flower was not resisting the violence being done to her: she was passive and kind of curled up like a foetus. This was strange to my eyes. Without thinking, in my usual manner, I yelled at them to leave her alone. The hyenas stopped. They smelt blood and began to walk toward me.
Amazingly, as the gang began to pursue me, I watched Flower scuttle off, without even a backward glance. Leaving me to the gang of bullies. I, however, was attempting to fight off my abusers, when some teacher came along and put us all on detention. No explanation was sought. I was so angry at such injustice. But, things were to get worse though.
You see, only a week before this, I had encountered the lead bully, let me call her “Sheep”, at the roller skating rink. I can't say that I had ever talked to her much before this day, but I was aware of her tall tales about having a boyfriend in goal. On this particular day, however, she was a simpering sycophant and so friendly. But that was then.
Soon after our meeting on the stairs, for daring to fight back, she began to spread rumours about me. And, I, outraged by her two faces and the awful injustice, retaliated with words. I did not think that she would win though. But, strangely, people so easily fell for Sheep’s lies and they became her flock. Past tall tales seemed to wash away so easily.
I left that place, but these stories spread like a cancer and hung about like a haunting. Still, no one asked: blood slowly turned bitter.
A few years after this, I was driving down the main street one Saturday afternoon, when suddenly a car swerved into me attempting to push me to oncoming traffic. Feeling a surge of fear, my head swung to my left, in what felt like slow motion and I saw Sheep, with what can only be described as an evil leer breaking her freckled face. She was sitting half turned toward me, in the passenger seat of the car that was trying to wipe me out. The driver was a stringy looking type, who looked like he came from the bad end of town. Like he had never got quite enough food as he was growing up. I pushed the accelerator as the car swerved into me a few more times. But, it was that day that I decided to leave town. And I did. But, imagine, all these years later, these incidents still sit inside my stomach: undigested and bitter.
About a year after this, I saw Flower who had also left town to attend university. And when I mentioned the day on the stairs to her and the subsequent happenings, she brushed it off. She did not remember she said. To me, it is one of life’s great ironies and perhaps jokes, that Flower became a psychologist; a person who helps people. And, yet, when I think of her, as I may do rarely, I recall how she scuttled off that day and left me alone, after I had tried to help her, to the pack of bullies. Without even a backward glance.
Interestingly, the Sheep has become aware of me lately and has appeared to panic: “friendships” were discarded. Was it to hide her lair, her Shakespearean hollow? Or, an attack of belated conscience so many years later?
A Wolf in Sheeps Clothing(Voltaire)
How to tell a story that no one has ever asked to hear?
This is the way it happened all those years ago, as I remember it. Events, which so many years later, still disturb me. Injustice can do that, I suppose. And, yet, it is interesting how no one ever asked me about what happened.
I had finished eating my lunch and I was looking forward to going to the library; a place that I saw as being a haven in the often barbaric and unpredictable world of the school yard. So, there I was, striding across C block, when I noticed a group of girls in my year throwing another girl down the stairs, then dragging her up and pushing her down again. This girl, I shall call “Flower”. Flower was not resisting the violence being done to her: she was passive and kind of curled up like a foetus. This was strange to my eyes. Without thinking, in my usual manner, I yelled at them to leave her alone. The hyenas stopped. They smelt blood and began to walk toward me.
Amazingly, as the gang began to pursue me, I watched Flower scuttle off, without even a backward glance. Leaving me to the gang of bullies. I, however, was attempting to fight off my abusers, when some teacher came along and put us all on detention. No explanation was sought. I was so angry at such injustice. But, things were to get worse though.
You see, only a week before this, I had encountered the lead bully, let me call her “Sheep”, at the roller skating rink. I can't say that I had ever talked to her much before this day, but I was aware of her tall tales about having a boyfriend in goal. On this particular day, however, she was a simpering sycophant and so friendly. But that was then.
Soon after our meeting on the stairs, for daring to fight back, she began to spread rumours about me. And, I, outraged by her two faces and the awful injustice, retaliated with words. I did not think that she would win though. But, strangely, people so easily fell for Sheep’s lies and they became her flock. Past tall tales seemed to wash away so easily.
I left that place, but these stories spread like a cancer and hung about like a haunting. Still, no one asked: blood slowly turned bitter.
A few years after this, I was driving down the main street one Saturday afternoon, when suddenly a car swerved into me attempting to push me to oncoming traffic. Feeling a surge of fear, my head swung to my left, in what felt like slow motion and I saw Sheep, with what can only be described as an evil leer breaking her freckled face. She was sitting half turned toward me, in the passenger seat of the car that was trying to wipe me out. The driver was a stringy looking type, who looked like he came from the bad end of town. Like he had never got quite enough food as he was growing up. I pushed the accelerator as the car swerved into me a few more times. But, it was that day that I decided to leave town. And I did. But, imagine, all these years later, these incidents still sit inside my stomach: undigested and bitter.
About a year after this, I saw Flower who had also left town to attend university. And when I mentioned the day on the stairs to her and the subsequent happenings, she brushed it off. She did not remember she said. To me, it is one of life’s great ironies and perhaps jokes, that Flower became a psychologist; a person who helps people. And, yet, when I think of her, as I may do rarely, I recall how she scuttled off that day and left me alone, after I had tried to help her, to the pack of bullies. Without even a backward glance.
Interestingly, the Sheep has become aware of me lately and has appeared to panic: “friendships” were discarded. Was it to hide her lair, her Shakespearean hollow? Or, an attack of belated conscience so many years later?
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