Shadow Things

VII

They had turned it into a game-Finley and Hansel-a warped competition to see which of them could make Haley Schaeffer cry first. They played it every day and they played without rules. They took turns to try out their cruel schemes, exhausting their tricks one by one. Finley would trip her when she walked out of classroom one day and Hansel would steal her pencils the next; if Finley stuffed her locker with rotting vegetables, Hansel prepared to hide cockroaches in her drawer. They wrote mean things on her desk and drenched her in water. They splashed paint on her notebooks and stuck 'kick me' post-its on the back of her hoodie. They were like raptors, both of them. Unsympathetic and sadistic-entertaining themselves on another's pain.

It was as if someone had switched off their consciences, forced them away from the path of good, because they were too young to have fallen on their own.

But it wasn't true with Hansel, not entirely. In the beginning he would feel a pinch in his heart every time he did something to bully the hapless girl. He knew it was wrong, deep inside.

But it was a competition, and Hansel never threw his game.

He'd think: it's only stealing some pencils. It's not that bad. I wouldn't be bothered if someone did that to me.

He'd think: cockroaches aren't really disgusting. They're fine.

He'd think: what's wrong about getting drenched in water? You do that anyways when you take a bath.

He'd think: I'll stop. I'll stop when she cries. This will only continue until she cries.

But she did not cry. Never once.

And Hansel did not stop.

And slowly, bit by bit, his conscience stopped whispering to him. He had shut off its voice all on his own. And thus, he had doomed himself.

Julian stopped hanging out with him after a while-he wouldn't even talk to Hansel. Hansel could not understand this change. He missed Julian, his steady, sensible presence by his side, his insightful observations and his wicked sense of humour, so one day he asked. Julian had seemed too furious to explain anything; he had just looked at Hansel spitefully and told him to go hang himself.

Try as he might he couldn't attach a reason to Julian's outburst. Julian was an easily irritable boy who was prone to episodes of ghosting people and sulking by himself. Hansel believed he would come around eventually.

But he never did. And Hansel never found out why.

And when he finally did, it was already too late.

But back then there was still time, time before the worst had happened. Time when Hansel could have stopped it from happening. Unfortunately for him, he had already blinded himself from seeing the things that mattered, and he missed it when the chance came by. He had put the shackles on himself and thrown himself into the darkness, but it would be a while before he realised any of it, when he would find out that he wasn't just staring into the mouth of the void, that the void had already swallowed him.

It was all very tragic, but back then there was still time...

One day Hansel was sitting on a metal bench by the side of a narrow road, beneath a cherry tree that was being teased by a high breeze into shedding pink blossoms. The road connected the middle school he went to, and, almost half a mile away, the Ashlar-fenced high-school ringed by a cluster of giant oaks. The bench he was sitting on was newly painted, a shade of green that was so dark it could be black, and the mud beneath his shoes was the richest brown, soft and loose and pock-marked with tiny shoots of grass.

He had his eyes closed, letting the breeze caress his face and play with his starlight hair. Peaceful moments like these were rare, hard to come by, moments in which he could simply enjoy being alone, without being hounded by his butler or bothered by packs of unruly boys and opportunistic girls. He didn't want this moment to end.