The Follower

there was this boy. you remember, peter? he used to come to school with these bruises on his arms. these cuts. we used to call him cut-boy, remember? i believe he used to sit beside shirley marshall in the chemistry lab. she sure was pretty. i always wanted to sit next to her. but the boy. what was his name? can't remember. this boy. cut-boy. he used to be extremely shy and never spoke to people. they sure made a lot of fun of him. well, WE made a lot of fun of him. but the real badass guys in the class, george, ernest and... the blond one... yes, victor, they would really get on this guy's nerves. i remember one day they pushed him so hard, poor cut-boy fell on his face and his glasses broke so badly that a little piece of glass went right into his left eye. don't ask me why i remember it was his left eye, i just remember. well, cut-boy had to be taken to the infirmary and there was this little trail of blood on the corridor, all the girls started screaming. don't you remember any of this? well, exactly one day after the glass-in-the-eye event, cut-boy started talking in class. but not your typical regular bullshit classroom talk. no. he would say these weird things, very nasty things, pervert things, marquis de sade shit, right in the middle of the classroom, right there in front of the teacher, during a class. he would just start talking, saying this stuff about him fucking his mother, or cutting shirley's head and keeping it in his bedroom until the stench of decay would fill his entire room, and then inhaling all the air until his lungs were filled with her essence. i remember like it was yesterday, this crazy stuff would come out of his mouth and everybody was like... “what the fuck is he saying?”, “what's happening?” he would start pointing at every person in class, girls AND boys, and describe what he would do with their corpses, how he would fuck them. peter, crazy things, pornographic stuff that i only tell you now because diane and the children aren't here. she would kill me if she heard me describe this cut-boy guy. and well, of course, he got expelled for a few days, and then he came back, and again, it was like there was so much anger in him, it seemed like the glass in the eye just popped, just activated this force, this strength, this magnificent presence inside of him, and we ended up with this aberration of a person speaking nonsense in the classroom. and let me tell you, he wouldn't take shit from anybody, not anymore. no way. no one dared touch him, or even say anything to offend him. just cut-boy and his mouth, speaking these horrible things, these weird, obscene words. and well, the expellings happened like three or four times more, until naturally he was kicked out of school for good. nobody ever heard anything about him.

now, pete, my fucking question is: which cut-boy was better, the one who would take shit from everybody and not defend himself, OR the one who went crazy, berserk, who turned into an aberration and lost it all, BUT stood up for himself and didn't let anyone put a finger on him?

i don't know. i wish i could talk like that to diane. i just can't stand it anymore.