Little Angel

Ethan Triche

I walked down the narrow hallway, my backpack on my back, not much in it yet, and to my sides rows of hundreds of blue lockers. First day of high school. I was excited. That is, until I slammed into the aforementioned lockers head first. Someone pushed me.
“Look at this doofus,” a boy said. He was tall.
“Yeah. This doofus,” another boy added. He was fat, pasty with freckles, and red hair. He really shouldn’t be talking. He lost the genetic lottery big time.
“Mommy dress you?” The tall boy said.
I put my hand to my head and felt warmth of blood run down my fingers. I knew how to take a punch, or a push in this case. But still. I don’t need this shit. I stood up and pushed the taller boy back. He fell backward and split his head open on the hard floor. He wasn’t standing with balance in mind, flat footed and horizontal foot placement. He flew back much further than I intended him to. He wasn’t moving.
The fat strawberry of a kid looked at me in shock. I lunged at him, a feint. I couldn’t help myself. I was pissed. I don’t need this shit. I get enough shit at home. The strawberry ran off, scared like the little bitch that he is.
Teachers came running down the hall. Then it hit me, I was in so much trouble. And I didn’t care about being suspended from school. Okay. I did a little. School was always my time away from home. A time away from that nightmare. A time I felt safe, until just a few minutes ago. But I cared more about what would happen when my father found out. I should have just taken the push, the gash on the head, and maybe the entire year of bullying. It would have been easier than what was coming when my father found out what I had done.
The adults kneeled down around the tall boy. Blood was pooling out around his head. This is bad. I didn’t move. I didn’t run. More adults ran to the service of the bully. The nurse. Then a little later, paramedics. They rushed him out on a stretcher. He had regained consciousness. I hoped he would be okay. For my sake.
They took me to the principal’s office.
“He pushed me first!” I screamed.
“He’s really hurt,” Mr. Drago said. “I really have no choice here. I have to suspend you.”
Fuck that principal is always your pal shit. This fucker don’t know shit except how to comb over his three threads of hair. He doesn’t know what I go through. He doesn’t know what he’s doing to me!


I walked home. The school couldn’t get a hold of either of my parents. A good thing. I told them I was only ten minutes away, one of them offered to drive me, but that’s when I ditched.
I had all day to do what I wanted. It was like summer all over again, for another few weeks at least. That wasn’t a good thing.
I went to the pond and sat on its edge, bare feet in the warm water. Frogs leaped on the other side of the pond under a pine tree. Muskrats swam underwater into holes they had created along the bank. They dug holes in the mud, and up into the ground, little safe places under the grass. Little safe places. This whole pond was my little safe place, it always was, even though I almost died here last winter. The muskrats were probably sleeping. They were more active at night, I noticed.
I got up and walked to a tree. I picked up the branches that I had scattered there over the summer. Below was a hole in the dirt that I had dug. Inside was a knife, black handle with engravings of deer. It still had crusted blood on the blade. I wiped it along the grass to clean it off. It wouldn’t be clean for long.
I stabbed the knife into the ground, dug holes all over around the pond. I was looking for a muskrat nest. It took over an hour, but I finally found one. As I pushed the dirt aside a giant muskrat jumped out of its little safe place, onto the grass. It scurried off in a hurry, to the pond, and jumped in. I looked down, there were about fifteen baby muskrats looking up at me. Eyes wide. Front teeth nibbling on something, insects maybe.
I pulled one of the rats out of their den. Blew in its face. Its nose crinkled and it continued to nibble. I put the knife under its jaw. Still nibbling. I pulled it down onto the blade until the blade pushed out the top of its skull. Not nibbling. I eviscerated its body in half. Blood flowed down my arms.
I reached my hand into the den and pulled out five babies. I threw them to the ground, hard. They broke something. Everything? They weren’t moving much, tiny spasms. I shoved the knife through their bodies, one by one.
With the remaining babies I tried out different ways to put them out of their misery. That’s all life was anyway – misery. I placed one on the ground, took off my shoe and sock and stepped on it till its guts exploded out of its mouth and ass. Cleaned the blood off of my foot in the pond. Others I cut the heads off. The little toes of others. Skinned one alive, that wasn’t pretty, the little fucker bit me, but it didn’t break the skin.
This wasn’t the first time I did something like this. Not even close. I had usually done it to the frogs under the pine though.
When I was done I put the knife back under the tree. I didn’t clean it. I never did. It always jogged my memory of the last time I was here when I saw the crusted blood after pulling it out of the dirt.