Freak: short story... kind of

Ok, so I wrote this thing... It's not really a story, it's a sort of... Well I don't know what to call it... But it's about this kid who was never "one of the crowd" and always got bullied and crap.. Then it goes on to tell what he chose to do about it and why.

It actually makes very little sense in some parts, even to me, but especially to somebody who's never been in this position. I was aiming for it to be a lot longer, but I sort of wrote myself into a corner and got frusterated with it... So I just slapped it together and called it done. It might seem a little unfinished.

Also, though it's in third-person, it is, to some extent, written from the main character's point of view. So at the beginning, when he's in grade school, I tried to make it really simplistic, and as he gets older, his life gets more complicated and the story gets more "poetic" so to speak.

Normally I wouldn't post that long of an explanation, but this is somewhat of an experiment and I want people to understand why the style is so weird in parts... I'm not sure if anybody except for me will take a liking to it... So here it is.

Freak: Through the Eyes of a Reject

Prologue:

Eric woke up bright and early on that first day of school, ready and eager to learn. Well, he did learn. He learned reading, and math, and science, and geography, and then he learned some other things that he wished he hadn’t. At first, he tried to undo the damage of those first years of school. He couldn’t, it was impossible. But once grade school was over, he had grown wise beyond his years--whether or not that was a good thing is up for you to decide. He was by high school well versed in the art of rejection, and it was then that he made his first real mistake--well, that’s what it was to the rest of the world. But to him, on that day, he found enlightenment, as disgusting as that would make his mind seem. Was it his fault? That much is also up for you to decide.
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Which brings us back to that first day of school. It was 7:00 in the morning, and young Eric Nix had been awake for an hour. He choked down a bowl of cereal, brushed his teeth, tied his shoes in typical six-year-old fashion, and flew out the door. The bus was a welcome sight. Long, yellow, with wide black stripes running lengthwise down the sides. Just like he had seen the older kids on his block use every day. It was also a lot bigger than he had expected, almost a little scary.
Eric boarded the bus, holding his brown paper lunch bag tightly in his hand. Walking down the aisle, he sat down in an empty seat. He was thankful for that. Making friends wasn’t his thing--and a lot of the other kids seemed to know each other already.
The ride to school was uneventful. It passed in a matter of minutes. When he got to school, the principal was waiting for the class outside. She was a tall, black woman with cornrows and a pleasent expression on her face. She lead the young class to their room, and introduced them to their teacher. Her name was Mrs. Ireland. She had curly hair and a chipped tooth.
For the first half hour, Eric vigilantly practiced his alphabet with a boy sitting next to him. At first, he had liked the other kid. Now he wasn’t so sure. After a while, he had taken to looking at Eric oddly with a sneer. Finally, the bell rang, and it was recess time. He skipped outside cheerfully, and watched as some of the other kids played football. He had seen older kids playing it sometimes, and knew that it was a popular sport, but nobody in his family was into sports. It seemed simple enough--one person, whom the others called the quarter back would hold the ball, and the others on his team would run down the field yelling “I’m open” or “pass it to me”. Then, as he avoided the other oncoming team, he would throw it down the field to another player.
After recess, Eric went back inside and did some math. It was easy. He had always been good with numbers.
The rest of the day was uneventful. Four days passed like that. Then, one day, he decided to try playing football.
Eric took a place in the line of other first-graders, while two team captains took turns choosing players. He noticed after he had seen this a few times that they always chose the same kids first. And that they always chose him last. It had seemed fun when he was just watching. Now it didn’t seem so fun. They never passed the ball to him, not after the time when it flew straight towards him and it slipped right through his hands. When he was playing defense, and he tagged somebody, they just kept running as if nothing had happened. He didn’t understand. He messed up once and nobody gave him a second chance? It didn’t seem fair to him.
But after all that, he kept at it. What’s more, he kept admiring the athletic kids. He tried to be like them. When he was clothes shopping with his mother, he brought home a Ducks jersey, like he had seen other boys wearing. It was too big for him. That didn’t bother him at first, but when he took it to school, he was embarrassed. At lunch, everyone he wanted to sit next to would pack themselves all into one table so that he couldn’t fit there. Everyone, even some girls, stared at him, just looking at that jersey.
That was pretty much how grade school happened for Eric--he would go to school, watch everyone doing something that made them seem cool. So he would try to be cool, but he never got it right, no matter how hard he tried. By middle school, he had stopped trying. He had no friends. He didn’t care. He didn't like people because of the way they had treated him in the past.

Middle School

By the sixth grade, Eric was well versed in the social politics of eleven and twelve year olds. He knew who to stay away from, and what not to do. He knew by now that the popular kids were a$holes who were to be avoided at all costs. He knew how it worked, alright... But he never quite understood why it worked the way it did.
And he had changed a lot, on the surface. He had become somewhat of a goth, and took to wearing black and listening to metal and punk. It was part of his rejection of the “normal” lifestyle. But deep down, he was still Eric Nix, a smart, unpopular kid trying to work out his place in the world.
He thought about that a lot--what was life for? What was his purpose? Was he really just a pawn to be pushed around by bigger, stronger kids like they acted?
Nobody much liked him at school. Not that they had any reason, they only avoided him because di*ckheads like Jason Moore did. He had known Jason since first grade, when he had sat next to him on the first day of school. Since then, Jason had become the star of all the sixth-grade sports teams, found himself a girlfriend, and was getting good grades. In other words, he was well off. Everyone liked him, even teachers. But he treated Eric like dirt. He would trip him in the halls, steal his food during lunch, jeer at him and insult him... Eric could hardly take it, sometimes.
While Jason did do things that were obviously mean to anybody watching, he did a lot of subtle, psychological tormenting as well. Things like carefully pushing the boundaries of Eric’s tolerence level until he snapped. When he did, Jason would proceed to accuse him of not controlling his temper.
To anybody watching, it didn’t seem like a big deal. But to him, it was. That was the way he had been treated since that first day of school that felt so long ago. All the little things that kept happening just piled up in his mind until what had once been an annoyance came to be a terror, lurking there in the shadows of his mind.
Sometimes he got teased. Sometimes he got beaten up. Other times people just ignored him. That was what he liked best.

High School

Sometimes, Eric would sit in the same spot for hours, just thinking about nothing in particular. Sometimes he thought about his parents, other times he thought about life... Most of the time he thought about school. It came to drive him mad, the bullying, to the point where he felt like screaming in rage. One time, he did, and his mother came running to find him laying on his bed tearing his hair out.
Just thinking about it drove him to the brink of insanity. He wanted so badly to just tell people who teased him to f**k off, but somehow he couldn’t. It was like he was the object of a cruel joke, and the whole world was the perpetrator. Like he was a pit viper, ever waiting for a chance to strike, and that chance never came.
* * *
Finally, he had waited too long. All his life, he had been bullied, teased, and humilitated, and he would not put up with it any longer. He could feel some great happening pressing in on him, he could sense it... What form it would come in, he knew not, but he could sense that his salvation was coming.
One morning, he was rummaging through his father’s desk, looking for a pen he had lost, when there it was--his father’s handgun. He had known about it for a long time, though this was the first time he had ever considered using it. Eric stood there for a long while, thinking of his torments, till he became blind with raging hatred. Without thinking twice, he took the gun, put it in his backpack, and hurried out the door with a hasty goodbye to his mother.
At school, he took the long route to his locker, watching all the “normal” people going through their “normal” routines, living their “normal” lives. It made him angry--they would never know what it was like to be Eric Nix, they never could truly understand what his torments were. They would live their lives in blissful ignorance, oblivious to the pain of people like him. That was the difference between Eric and the rest of the world. They were accepted, he was somehow not. He was always the kid sitting in the corner at lunch, the back of the room in class. Still, to this day, he didn’t understand why, and he honestly didn’t care. All those people who had caused him so much pain, they would pay today, he was sure of it.
When Eric reached his locker, he threw it open, put his backpack in just like he did every day. Then, he reached in and grabbed the handgun tightly in his hand... The cold metal stung his skin for a moment, and he chortled with a sort of morbid glee. Turning to his right, he saw Jason, standing there at his locker, unaware. Eric laughed maniacally, he was sure everyone in the hall heard. Before anyone had a chance to think, he pulled his gun hand out of the locker, eye still trained on Jason. Now that bastard would pay. The entire hall ducked when they saw the weapon. Time seemed to move in slow motion, and despite the chaos, it seemed silent. One, two shots rang out into the air, Eric’s final gift to the cruel world. Jason lay dead within an instant. Eric turned, saw some people he remembered had teased him once. In the same time it had taken him before, the first two lay dead on the floor. The third clutched his stomach and coughed up blood. More shots, more death... Then silence.
Everyone slowly rose, looking around themselves in terror. Six people were dead that day, and among them was Eric Nix. In those last thirty seconds, he had lashed out in revenge at the world, he had tasted victory just once... And then he had ended his own life.

All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
And their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tommorow, no tommorow
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
'Cos I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very
Mad World
Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday
Made to feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher tell me what's my lesson
Look right through me, look right through me

🙁 That made me cry.... Why did you post that? I hope you've never experienced something like that, Sir Darth Revan? ❌

That's actually what I was going for... I've never shot anybody thank god, but everything in the story up till the ending has happened to either me or somebody I know. I wrote it because nobody really "gets" bullying until it happens to them. I hope that by writing something like this I can make other people understand, even if just a little, that the consequences of making fun of people and stuff are very real, and kids like Eric who get driven to the edge and end up killing themselves are justified in doing so. Now I'm just rambling... But I hope I made my point clear...

Did I really scare you off that badly? 🙁

No, you didn't... 😊
Ah undahstahnd naow. Ah'll go bayack to fahming mah feeyalds uv innuhcence!

oh good 😊

Yah... punk Good story. I'll read it again, just for the fun of it!