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Disclaimer: I do not own Holes or any of Louis Sachars characters or plot. The featured poem is written by my friend Annabelle. It is called 'Crows'.
Credits: The main character (-you are free to snicker when I write this-) was inspired by Forrest Gump. (yes, Forrest Gump).
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As the child enters the world of the mortals
There came many a-crow
They pecked
They devoured
And tore at his meager clothes
Those awful, awful shadows that set my Hell a-glow
-
He was different.
The bus jerked after passing a bump on the road. He bounced off his seat and slumped back down with a thump.
"Oof!"
He looked around with a happiness in his eyes, highly amused by flying off his seat.He waved his arms above his head in a sort of glee that annoyed both the guard and the driver.. The bus driver looked disgusted. He shifted a gaze at the guard, who also had the same expression on his face.
"It's like a roo-oo-ooler coaster, haha!"
Retard.
After seventy seconds of repetetive arm-waving, the boy suddenly tired of amusing himself in this manner and sat silently, looking out of the window as if there was something worth looking at.
-
He could feel children's curious gazes drilling at his hunched back.
They were making fun of him.
Whispers, giggles, pointing fingers.
Yet he stayed hunched over the wooden picnic table of the playground.
It was recess.
He hated recess.
He wouldn't have gone outside if it wasn't for Annabelle.
Where was she? She was supposed to be there every day in recess.
Behind him;
"Yeah... the retatarded kid... moved here from some 'special' school his mom couldn't afford anymore..."
He closed his eyes shut and pressed at his ears so hard his head felt like it was going to pop.
He spun around to face these children who were yet to know anything of human understanding and pointed at a girl with a red headband atop glossy, black, 'intelligent' hair.
"I not stupid! YOU'RE STUPID!' He stamped his foot.
Many giggled, but some were merciful enough to just stare in disgust.
-
It had only been 30 minutes since the bus had left for Greenlake.
But it felt like hours.
His head began to bob up and down as the bus went through a bumpy road.
"Whoaaaa! It's so bumpy, driver man!"
The driver turned his head away.
"Are we there yet?" he whispered.
The guard sitting at the front seat snapped his head in the boy's direction.
"No." the guard replied.
"Are we there yet?"
"No."
"Are we there yet?"
"..."
"Are we---"
"Nope."
"Are we there now?"
"...Yes."
"Really!"
"No."
There was silnce.
"Are we there yet?"
"Shut up, little man. Or I'll shoot you with this here gun!"
John stared blankly.
"Do you understand what I'm saying to you?"
The boy was silent for a couple of seconds.
Then he smiled from ear to ear and exploded;
"COWBOYS AND INDIANS!"
The driver spat out the open window of the bus.
"Shut up, you fucking retard."
"I want to play…." he looked on the verge of tears. "Cowboys and Indians…"
"Well you CAN'T, okay? This is a real rifle, not a toy."
The boy was silent again for a few seconds.
"Annabelle used to like playing Cowboys and Indians."
The driver spat out the window again.
-
He had covered his ears, but still he could hear the boys talking about him.
That was a price to pay for having very good hearing.
"Some people with John's intelligence level have very acute hearing." He remembered the doctor saying.
"And very good memory. Although he's not considered autistic"
He felt someone sit beside him and he opened his eyes.
"Hey there, Johnny." Annabelle smiled.
He loved her smile.
"Why you came late, Annabelle?"
"I was busy."
"I'm happy you're here! We can play another game, now!"
Annabelle was about to speak, when John heard a jeering voice behind him.
"Oh my God! He's talking to himself again!"
Three boys shook their heads, two girls whispered in each others' ear.
"Jesus, that kid scares me so bad."
-
"Are we there yet?"
"No, dammit."
"Are we---"
"LOOK, I SAID WE'RE NOT THERE, YET! OKAY?" He shook his large head. "We still have a couple hours to go."
John scowled and turned his head to look out the window again.
He sighed loudly.
"OLD MACDONALD HAD A FARM….EI EI OOOOOOOH-----"
"I said shut up, you fucking retard!"
John came to a dead halt.
His breathing deepened and his cheeks became almost pure red. Those eyes. Those dark eyes of his became moist and they took on a black glow.
"I'M NOT A RETARD!"
The guard just looked away, swearing in another language.
-
One boy came up to sit beside him.
He had red hair.
John could still remember how bright red the boy's hair was.
"Hey…um…Johnny, right?" the red-head slung a chubby arm across John's shoulder.
John tensed up.
"Why don't you come hang out with us? We…want to show you something.";
Carrot-top looked over his shoulder and smiled impishly at two other boys standing behind him.
John smiled.
"Leamme alone!"
Carrot-top and the other boys laughed loudly.
John felt his face heat up.
Suddenly Carrot-top grabbed John by the collar and roughly pushed his face to a bowl of jello on the table in front of them.
It was red jello. Blood red jello.
It seemed to be talking to him.
The talking bowl of jello.
Ha ha...
Ha.
"There ain't nobody here named Annabelle, Johnny boy. There ain't nobody here…"
-
John's rear end began to feel numb from sitting on the vinyl seat for three hours.
He shifted around.
"Mr. Cowboy…" he said weakly to the annoyed bus driver.
"I have to go pee."
"We're in the middle of a freeway. You can't just stop and 'go pee.'"
He shifted in his seat again.
-
"Please don't touch me." John meekly whispered.
Carrot-top released his grasp from John's collar.
"You're coming with us retard..."
Carrot-top laughed to himself as John screamed the word, "Annabelle." Some kids can be so stupid...making up friends named... Annabelle.
John shook his head violently: "No!" He cried. "NO! NO! NO! ANNABELLE RAN AWAY! YOU SCARED HER!"
But the boys had each taken one of John's arms and dragged him from his sanctuary of a picnic table.
No one cared. They went on talking and flirting with the opposite sex, and eating their luch, and laughing together to care what was happening to him.
"Mrs. Klaus! Mrs. Klaus!" he cried to a teacher a few meters away.
"Mrs. Klaus!"
She didn't hear or see him.
The three boys dragged him behind the school building where no one ever went.
And they used him as a punching bag.
-
It had been 3 more hours and the immobile activity in the buscaused his legs to get numb.
The view out the window was extraordinary.
Large holes were scattered densely around the landscape.
It was surreal.
Holes.
Thousands and thousands of them!
"Mr. Cowboy, why are there so many----"
"Didn't I tell you to shut up?"
-
"Man, what is it about you that makes us so mad, Johnny Boy? Huh?"
Carrot-top threw another punch at John's stomach.
John's eyes felt swollen from excessive sweat.
Someone kicked his back.
Another person swore happily and pushed at him.
"Mrs. Klaus! Mrs. Klaus!" he shouted helplessly.
"Man, why the hell does he keep saying that?"
One of the boys grabbed his hair. And pulled it.
"Shut the hell up, Retard!"
"Mrs. Klaus! Mrs. Klaus! MRS. KLAUUUS!"
The boy kicked his face.
"I said shut up!"
-
"I said shut up!" The driver looked a-wreck. His hair was literally standing on end, and his balded head was shining with sweat.
"But I feel like singing! My momma always said; 'When your spirits are down, singing erases the frown."
And began singing again.
"Amaaaazing Graaaace. How sweeeeet, the sound. That-----"
The driver positioned his gun and smiling demonically, he aimed it at the now trembling 14-year old.
-
It was unbearable pain.
Why were they doing this to him?
What had he done?
What had he----
"OOF!"
Someone had taken their backpack and swung it into his face.
That made Carrot-top release his grasp from John's arm and the force of the backpack threw him down.
John could now run.
But he was in pain.
Blinding pain.
His lip was busted and blood was trickling from countless wounds.
One eye felt swollen. It was sure to become black the next day.
Suddenly he spotted something!
A baseball bat, abandoned by some merciful angel, perhaps.
With the last strength he had, he heaved himself towards the only weapon he could spot.
-
With one bruised hand, he snatched the baseball bat and swung it towards nothing in particular, blindly swinging it into the air.
Then it hit something.
There was a sickening crack and a moan, then someone crumpling onto the ground.
John's vision cleared and he gasped, rather squeaked at what he saw.
He had killed him.
He was sure of it.
He had killed Carrot-top.
-
"Are you gonna kill me, Mister?"
The guard smirked and lowered his gun.
"I ain't gowna kill you, Little Man." The guard chuckled to himself.
John smiled gratefully.
The driver pretended not to care. But he liked John's innocent smile.
Everyone liked John's smile.
-
Two boys stood, shocked at the immobile body of their friend crumpled on the ground in front of them.
"Oh my God. You killed him."
One boy's face twisted in pure anger.
"YOU KILLED HIM, YOU RETARD!"
John shook his headslowly, as if hypnotized.
He dropped the bat and it landed with a series of bounces that echoed through the smoky air.
Frightened, the two boys bolted for the playground.
"Mrs. Kaus! Mrs. Klaus!" This time they were the ones shouting for that careless teacher.
Johnny knelt down beside the unmoving redhead. The side of his skull was busted and blood was tricklingprofuselyfrom the temple.
Suddenly Carrot-top groaned, and his head moved to one side.
Johnny gasped.
"Hey! You didn't die!"
"Over here, Mrs. Klaus! He just came out of nowhere and started swinging at us with a baseball bat!"
Mrs. Klaus, a tiny woman with gray hair, stood shocked. She covered her moth slowly with one wrinkled hand.
"Oh my heavens."
But Johnny was shouting gratefully ; "Look Mrs. Klaus! He's not dead! He's not----"
"Wesley, Max, call the police for me please. Or go get the principal. Now."
Both boys ran out of the scene.
Mrs. Klaus was still standing there, like a lonely bowling pin.
"Oh Johnny."
"Johnny, what have you done?"
-
They killed him, those crows
Because he was different
He was the runt, the outcast
A fish against currents
The outsider, the pariah, the albino. ungrown
They pecked
They devoured
They demolished he who was not
A crow
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