Shadow Things

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When Hansel returned to school the next day he found his desk mutilated. Messages were left to him in bold, jet-black letters, fresh enough that he could catch faint whiffs of the lingering smell of sharpie and permanent markers; messages that told him he was a stinking pile of garbage, that he was a waste of oxygen, that he was a disgrace to humanity itself, that he better watch his step.

HIGH-FIVE YOUR FACE WITH AN AXE, someone had written.

EAT CRAP, tagged another.

There was even a little stick figure of him accompanying the horrid messages, depicted as being squashed by someone's gigantic leg, complete with a footnote: DIE, BUG, DIE.

So much hatred, thought Hansel, dropping into his seat without a word. From people whom he had not hurt in anyway, who did not even see what he had done.

But that seemed to be the way of the world, distributing hatred with cosmic generosity and often, with a lack of reason, and spreading the disruptive ideology that evil negated evil, and violence was best answered in kind.

If he had thought his troubles would end with these messages, Hansel would have thought wrong; but he did not think so, he was not that naïve. He knew they were only the beginning, an opening act that would set the stage for a bigger play. The smoke before the fire.

They started bullying him in earnest, their treatment of him growing worse day by day, as though Hansel were a flesh-and-blood mannequin they had found they could take all their frustration out on. All their hatred, all their worries, all their fears of being trapped in a deadly desolation of a city, they thought they could shove it all onto his shoulders. They did not care if he could carry it, or if he would buckle under the weight.

Why should they, anyway?

He deserved it, did he not, after everything he did?

It could be a notebook thrown into the fishpond outside, or a gum stuck to his shirt, or a tennis ball that caught him on the side of his head, or the dead crow that tumbled out of his locker, wings stiff and beak splayed open. One after another they tormented him, with a startling and relentless ferocity he could not evade. But what he could not believe, what he did not want to accept was that this could go on forever, that he would always be the outcast, that there would be no end to this abuse.

However, this was also to be his penance. He did not know if there would ever come a day when he would have paid the debt for all his sins, when he could finally be forgiven, but he hoped it would come, he really, ardently, desperately hoped.

Things were no better with Felix at home, who seemed to have redoubled his efforts to make Hansel's life as miserable as he could after the latter refused to turn his pet cat out to the streets. Hansel could not understand why Felix hated the cat so much, but no matter how much he threatened or how much grief he gave Hansel, Hansel would not do it; he could not leave Dream to his death. He would rather die himself than let his cat die.

One day he picked up his long unused phone and tapped the screen on. He noted the battery was just seven percent away from being completely drained, and went to his mother's chatbox without wasting time.

Mother, save me, he typed, ignoring how absurd the text sounded. He pressed send. What were the odds his mother would read it?

The kids are bullying me at my new school, he typed.

My shadow wants to turn my life to hell.

I have a pet cat now. He's called Dream.

But my shadow wants to kill my cat.