Once there was a little boy. He was different from most other boys his age; while they were outside running about and screaming, he would be reading a book, or drawing something. He had always been this way. He had always been different. At home, this uniqueness was allowed to thrive, to develop and flourish. His parents were beyond pleased that their son could read at a much higher level than his peers, and they greatly enjoyed how keenly he picked up on things.
Of course, his only problem did not stem from anything encountered at home; no, little Stan only threw tantrums when his mother tried to drop him off at school each morning. Stan hated school, and with good reason. He was put through so much pain there, for schools are full of the most cruel people in all the world; children. These other children saw this odd boy who was not very good at playing soccer, or running races. At first, it began with some jokes, little barbs and jibes that kids will throw carelessly at one another. As time passed, however, Stan was progressively treated worse. Jokes turned to insults. Insults turned into bullying. Bullying turned to isolation and exclusion. The isolation in turn led to violence.
Stan endured it for a whole year before he finally gave in, tired of the bruises and the scrapes that he received every day from a particularly vicious boy, bigger and stronger than he. He told his parents, and thought the problem would go away, and for a time, it did! But eventually, Stan's tormentor returned, wicked as ever. Stan started to spend a lot of time alone on the schoolyard, sitting under the shade of the trees at the farthest end of the field. Things seemed simpler there; there was nobody to bother him, no bullies or classmates. Just the occasional sparrow or lone squirrel, searching for food. Stan thought it would be so much easier if he were an animal too. People who hurt animals got locked up, or sent away; nobody paid much mind when children hurt other children, dismissing it as "something we all went through", or "part of being a kid".
One day, the bully kept following Stan, kicking him down and hitting him every time he tried to get away. He followed Stan all the way to the trees, mocking him all the while. This was wrong, the trees were Stan's place, and nobody else's. Something inside Stan finally snapped. He launched himself at the bully, catching him off-guard with his sudden ferocity. Stan was sent to the office once the teachers broke up the fight, sure, but he was let off with a warning, considering the problems the other student often created in class and in the yard. But word got around, about all the bruises and the bites and the black eye that Stan heaped upon that bully. As the years went by, other tormentors tried to take Stan down a peg, but all of them met similar fates; this time, without the involvement of the staff.
"Psycho." Stan came to be known as such throughout his elementary years, following him all the way to high school. He even flexed it a few times when he encountered more opportunistic sadists along the way. But while it provided him some measure of armour against assailants and troublemakers, Stan's reputation was also a wall between him and the other students; nobody wanted to be friends with somebody so violent, after all. Stan tried desperately to break down the barriers, to reach out to other people. He met little success. Stan still enjoyed walking in the woods of the nearby creek; there was a sort of peace he found there, a sort of natural rhythm that eluded him when he was amongst all the complex trappings of society.
Stan became particularly vexed when Rodney starting crossing paths with him. Stan always thought of Rodney as some defect; the boy talked big, and had his little group of friends, but he was dependant on a cane at 17 (and also very proficient at hitting others with that damned metal stick). Stan knew just how easy it would really be to reach out and rip that cane away, but then everybody loved Rodney. Stan couldn't touch him without being completely ostracized. So, he sought solace in the creek, trying to lose his worries in the beat of the natural world around him.
Stan stayed out long enough to meet the new girl. She didn't know much about Stan's reputation (she had not been at Stan's high school for very long), so she was untainted by any preconceived notions. Stan tried to be more social, making a conscious effort to be friendly and amicable. Of course, Rodney noticed this. And of course, Rodney set a particularly brutish friend of his to harass Stan while she was present. To his credit, Stan endured the harassment for a whole week; then, the thug pushed him, and everything went red. By the time Stan realized what he was doing, the brute was on the ground, bleeding. Stan's "friend" was shocked, horrified by what he'd done.
Stan stormed back to the woods, cut deeper than he had ever been cut by any knife. He tried to find the beat again, but his mind was so wracked with stormy thoughts that he could not calm down. Nobody cared about his side of the story! Nobody cared that it was those others who'd driven him to this point! Nobody saw that the stupid bastard deserved what he got, that he'd provoked him! They only saw a madman, a wild animal, when all the while he was only the beast they'd made him!
And that's when Stan heard the beat again. It came from all around him, every leaf and tree and bird and bug and animal around. The wild quickened and awakened, stirred by the rhythm around it. No, not a rhythm anymore; it was clear now, tangible. Audible. A faint melody resonating at once from all around Stan, from the deepest heart of the woods, and from within Stan himself. He followed those haunting pipes into the trees, winding further and further away from the path, until he finally found the voice in the wilderness at a thicket's centre, ambling gnarled, clawed fingers that remembered the soil of ancient lands moving dextrously about a set of pipes. It lifted its head, made up of hundreds of living things, joined and woven together to spill over the thick hide that covered its' body. It spoke in a voice that had first allowed civilized man to define fear, telling Stan of the secrets of the woods--no, not any woods; his woods, Stan's woods.
Soon, the music grew very loud, setting all the woods into a pulsing turmoil. Soon, Stan's mind had been emptied of all the words, filled instead by the music of inner primal instinct, now unbound, now free.
No comments:
Post a Comment