I looked out at the mass of bodies, all smiling at me and fixing me with a rigid expression.
Didn’t know what to think about them, really. All staring towards me. Some of them looked kind, but even with a smile a lot of them caused me anguish. Silly really. It’s not like any one of them is going to get up and hurt me. Why would they? How could they?
Feeling somewhat self-conscious (so preferable to feeling scared), I cleared my throat to address the bullies in the school group. There were only two or three, but that was enough to make life miserable.
“I want you to know what you’ve done. You’ve destroyed another human being. I can’t take it anymore.”
Silence.
Cold smiles made even colder by the lack of human warmth within the shell curling the lips. That’s what they seemed like to me: shells, rather than people. How could they be real people when they had no compassion, or humanity?
“I’m going to end it all now. I can’t live like this anymore.”
Silence.
What can you expect? My friends, such as they were, could never do anything about this. Some of them had suffered worse than I. Strange, really, that so few could bring fear to so many. Even though we had the advantage of numbers we didn’t have the instinct to gang up on another human being. That was our weakness; our downfall.
And after considering long and hard what I could do about this, I had decided the only thing to do was to end it all. Violently. Permanently.
There was no fear left. My decision was made and it was time to end things.
With a steady hand I took the lighter and applied it. The flame sputtered into life and took a few seconds to catch hold. For a brief moment I doubted what I was doing, but now it was too late and the flame was well underway, growing, taking on a life of its own.
“What are you doing, honey?”, my wife asked, as she came into the room.
“I’m burning that blasted school photo. It’s haunted me ever since it was taken. Too many memories of the school bullies.”
“Well, I’m glad you got rid of it at last. It’s been hanging on the wall bugging you for so long. You should have got rid of it ages ago. Look at the mess you’ve made!”
And with that simple act of vandalism I was free of the haunting memory of the schoolyard bullies who had made some of my schooldays so miserable. I had witnessed the funeral pyre of a life that no longer existed. I had risen, from the ashes, like the phoenix, as a new creation with a new job.
Being the new headmaster at my old school wouldn’t seem so bad now.
Note from author:
I wrote this with a fairly flippant ending in mind, but it was inspired by a news story recently of a tragedy in which a young boy who was bullied at school took his own life. He was only 12 years old. A terrible tragedy. But the story and the human tragedy of that were far to heavy to carry over into this short piece.
Bullying at school is a terrible thing and for those of us who didn’t really suffer it, it may be hard to understand just how bad it can be. Well, it’s at least bad enough for one young soul to have taken his life.
An interesting story, and interesting how you managed to make the reader think it was a boy about to end his own life until the wife came in.
I agree with you, though, that the topic is a horrible one. For every person who literally ends it all, I’m sure there are at least a thousand who are destroyed internally, never able to recover from the mental scars of bullying.
The odd thing is, and I would agree with you that those without compassion can seem inhuman, but often the bullies are at least as afraid as their victims. Many of them seem trapped in some awful cycle of hurting others before they can be hurt themselves.
Bullying is something a child never gets over with, the whole life.The trauma and scar it causes can damage personality for ever.
WA and Abhay
Thanks for your comments.
The sad thing really is that bullying does mark a child for life, to one degree or another.
And bullies clearly have their own demons to exorcise. I know of one little boy who was a bully at school whose parents used to treat him very badly.
That reflected in his own behaviour at school.
I’ve seen a number of news articles recently where young children have suffered so much that they have taken their own lives. It’s haunted me and this was one way of dealing with it.
I was particularly upset to read about one young boy who had sought help from an adult. The adult joined in the verbal bullying. The end result was tragic.
Sometimes re-creating an event in fiction can make it less unpleasant. More manageable.
How that poor boy’s parents cope with the stark reality I just don’t know.
I love this, Amin. What a wonderful metaphor you used to tackle such a sensitive issue. Great ending, too.
Thanks for sharing.
Superb job Amin….I know how it feels to be bullied. I had to quit schol fro a while because of bullying…keep up the good work man!
Amin, you’ve struck a nerve here. Excellent writing … but I can not forget Columbine.
Thank you Bhaswati, Jawed and Roberta. Kind words.
I fear that too many of us have known some element of bullying in school. I was fortunate, I suppose, that it only happened to me for a short while when I was very little.
But it continues to this day in our schools and sometimes the tragic outcome is reported in the newspapers.
You’re right about Columbine, Roberta. And all the other tragedies. When I wrote this piece I could not contemplate making it as dark as the reality that exists out there. I quite literally could not bring myself to write something so bleak and hideous.