A long time ago, right after the last dinosaur thumped to the ground, I was actually young, immature, and quite vulnerable. A tiny skinny boy, filled with wonder about the world around me. Around this time period, I had a guinea pig. Black and white coloring, and almost chubby. A cute but paranoid little creature that I absolutely adored. He would run around his little cage in a frenzy, afraid of everything and everyone, including me, but I loved the little fella. Shortly after I transferred to a new school my piggy keeled over in his cage.214Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡC1I0JmCAPb
We had no money for vets, and he never showed a single sign of sickness, so we never found out why he died, he just did. I felt a great loss, and I felt it deeply. Sadness didn’t cover it, I was the epitome of young sorrow. There was an empty dirt lot next to my building, and I decided to bury him there, as deep as I could, so he would be close. Even at that age I had the idea of visiting a loved one’s grave, even though my mother never mentioned it, and I had never been to one before. It just felt right.
I cried for almost three days, but we buried him a day after he died. All my mother had was a coffee can, no boxes, so we used that. A poor piggy’s small coffin that smelled like columbian roast. There are worse ways to be buried I’m sure. After the tears stopped, I thought about my piggy less and less, as is natural I suppose. The younger we are, the easier it seems for sorrow to end, out of sight, out of mind, and youthful resilience helps. A week after his burial, I heard some neighborhood kids in the lot next to my building, they were laughing and whooping, and it wasn’t a happy sound. Their voices had a mischievous tone, boys up to no good. Even then, I could usually tell the difference.
Evil mischief seems to have a tone all its own. I went down the three floors to the bottom via the stairs, went out the door and around the corner. It was a hot day, around noon, but something other than the Sun burned my eyesight. Horror itself dominated my vision, and scorched my soul.
There were four boys, all a few years older than me, standing around my piggys exhumed coffin. It was open, and they were handling his rotted corpse, putting something in his halfway bony head. I screamed, and they looked over, still laughing like maniacs.
I then saw the one holding piggy lighting something up, it was a firecracker. That’s what they put between his jaws. The boy dropped it, and they all jumped back, and I stopped screaming when my piggy’s head exploded.
That day, I learned the true meaning of trauma, and never forgot it. I will admit, I saw them laugh again, with a handful of firecrackers, and my first thought was to make them pay, somehow, someway, even now! I took a single step towards their smirking faces, and the lead thug lit a single firecracker, and tossed it at me. It immediately went off, way too close, and my ears hurt. I went with my next instinct, on survival mode only, and turned tail and started running. Another one exploded and I felt it next to my calves. I threw open the door (sadly no lock on the downstairs door) and heard them laughing right behind me.
I tackled the stairs two at a time, as if my young life depended on it, and who’s to say it didn’t? They were inside the building only a few feet behind me, damn they were BOLD!
I ran like lightning, being chased by thunder. They kept throwing, but my fear kept my pace, they never got closer, but before I got to the top, one exploded right next to my head, and how they laughed then, but after that last explosion, I could hear it no longer, and i’m grateful for that. All I heard was ringing, and muffled sounds, little else.
I reached my door, opened it quickly, and slammed it even faster and threw the bolt across. They were in the hall, and I heard a few more pops, then they were gone finally while I leaned against the door in pain and silence.
Eventually I went to the mirror, and noticed blood leaking from one ear, and a large cut in the lobe. In an hour, my hearing had returned to normal, and I cleaned myself up. I never mentioned this to my mother, and she never asked or even noticed my lobe being damaged. I knew we were moving in two weeks, so that helped, and I never saw those boys again. That day, fear and darkness made a home in my soul, and so I was primed for my dark future, which in all reality truly started there, on that evil day.
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