John used to dig holes when he was little.
He would step inside his house with dirty shoes and clothes, which drove his mother crazy.
"If you come here one more time with those dirty shoes, I am going to make sure you never have a chance to go outside again!"
That's what she said every day. And John kept on digging holes in his back yard.
The thing was that the holes he dug were not round, nor square, nor any other shape that little kids were fascinated by.
They were shaped like a grave.
2 feet wide, and 7 feet long, and 6 feet deep, he would go to neighbors' yards and even public places to dig holes.
"Baby, why don't you be a nice boy and stop digging holes in Mr. Patterson's yard. She was very mad at you…you don't want people to be mad at you, right?"
"Mommy, I have to dig them. Some people don't have one."
"What do you mean, Johnny?"
"Some people don't have a place to sleep. They ask me to make a bed for them so they can sleep."
His mother laughed lightheartedly.
"Baby, who would want to sleep under the ground?"
"The Silent people, Mommy. Some of them never got the chance to sleep because no one ever gave them one."
After that day, John was forced to never dig holes again.
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"Finished!" John concluded triumphantly, looking over his perfectly dug hole.
The boys stopped digging and looked at John in surprise. The fastest digger in the camp was Zero, and he'd only finished three feet of his hole.
"It's only been 2 hours, man. You can't be finished diggin'." Armpit chuckled.
"It had to be 5 feet deep and five feet in diameter." X-Ray said from afar.
John looked at X-Ray blankly.
"Do you know what diameter means?" X-Ray jeered.
"No. But I finished. Look!"
X-Ray walked over to John and his "finished" hole.
"WHAT THE FREAKING HELL?"
"Don't say bad words."
Squid looked up. "Why you buggin' out, X-Ray?"
"The Freak dug the fucking weirdest hole ever!"
The boys went over to check out all the commotion, even Zero.
"That's one weird dude," said Zigzag again.
"Honey, that's not a hole,"Armpit said, peering over everyone's shoulder.
"Yes it is!"
"No. A Hole in this place is a 5 by 5 foot... hole thing." Armpit pointed to the abomination that John had dug, "That's something you put a dead body in."
As readers, you might have guessed what the hole John had dug looked like.
A grave.
It was wide at one end, and got narrower at the other end, so an average size coffin would perfectly fit in it.
"Mom's gonna wig out when he sees this." Squid said.
Speak of the Devil…
A distant rumbling of an engine, and a cloud of dust could be seen coming towards them.
The water truck had come.
John crossed his arms.
"What's wrong with my hole? I finished!" he repeated.
The water truck pulled up beside the perimeter of the boys' digging site and Pendanski stepped out of the front seat.
For once he wasn't smiling.
John rushed to the water truck with childish giddiness and shouted;
"Me first!"
X-Ray grabbed John's arm and pulled him back.
"You see, New Guy, we gots a little system here. I am in the front of the water line. Magnet is second, and everyone else goes behind us in order."
He dragged John to the end of the line behind Zero.
"And you're in the back of the line. Understand?"
John cast his eyes down and nodded sadly.
For a second, the angry expression on Zero's face took a moment of pity, but it returned to the cold frown that he always wore.
"Are we ready, your highness?" Pendanski droned.
"Yes sir." X-Ray smiled and took his bottle back after Pendanski had filled it.
When it was John's turn, Pendanski refused to look at him.
He filled the water bottle and handed it to John with his head turned away.
"Thank you, Mr. Midas."
Pendanski winced as he said this, but uttered not one word.
"Mom, take a look at what John did." Squid said, pointing to the elongated grave hole.
Pendanski reluctantly walked over and gasped like a little girl when he saw the phenomenal hole.
"Sweet Jesus!"
"Thou shalt not say the Lord's name in vain." John said, as if reciting what someone else had told him.
Armpit laughed.
"How did he manage to dig all of this by himself?" Pendanski gawked.
"Why don't you ask him." Magnet said.
Pendanski frowned.
He did not want to even look at John.
Although he was ashamed to say it, John frightened him.
"Your wife, she misses you."
In spite of this,Pendanski turned to face his fear...
His short, mentally challenged, childish, innocent fear.
"John, you know that the holes are not supposed to look like this, right?"
John said nothing.
"Didn't Mr. Sir tell you that the holes are supposed to be 5 by 5 feet?"
Still, John said nothing.
"I want you to start again." Pendanski said coldly.
"Why?"
"Because you are doing it wrong. Start again." he said with no expression.
"But I fin---"
"START AGAIN!"
John jumped back and squealed.
Armpit laughed again, obviously clueless of what was going on.
The other boys squinted and stared at Pendanski in shock.
"Mom, you okay?" X-Ray asked.
Pendanski laughed lightly, but now even Armpit could see the phoniness in pendanski's laughter..
"Get back to work."
Muttering to themselves, the boys went back to digging their holes whilst John made an attempt to start a new hole.
-
"Hey, Freak!"
John looked up and was ambushed by a spray of sand in his face.
It stung his eyes and he covered them with his hands and squealed in pain.
Squid had kicked sand in John's face.
"Let's have a little chat."
John was still wiping his eyes.
"I h-have to --- I have to dig my hole. Bye Bye Squid. Bye-bye."
Squid took out the toothpick in his mouth and replaced it with another one he had kept in his pocket.
"You've been causin' lots of trouble around here."
"Bye Bye Squid. I have to d-dig my hole now."
Squid sighed.
"Can I at least tell you something without having to tell you to shut up?"
John stopped rubbing his eyes and looked angrily at Squid.
"You hurt my eyes!"
"I don't care, little boy."
"Why did you do that?" John said, beginning to cry.
"Look! We don't want to cause you no trouble. And we don't want YOU to be causin' trouble for us, either."
"I can't see."
"You know, we've never seen Mom act that way before---"
"I can't see."
"Will you shut up and listen?"
"Squid, help me, I can't see!"
John was crying, and hot tears pooled around his puffed-up eyes.
Squid chewed on his toothpick and waved a hand in front of John's face. John didn't seem to notice.
"Yo, Freak, are you okay?"
John outstretched his arms as if to find out if something was out there.
"I can't see! I can't see! Please, Squid, find me, I can't see!"
"I'm right here, stupid. In front of you."
"Where is everyone!" John screamed.
ZigZag stopped digging.
"I can't see anything!"
Armpit and Magnet stopped digging.
"Please, someone take it out!"
John began staggering around with his arms outstretched, tripping over his own shoes.
"Take the Black out! Take it out! I can't see!"
Zero stopped digging, but stood there.
They all just stood there, watching John run around in circles crying his face off.
"It's so black! Take the Black out! Take the Black out!"
It was unexpected and quick.
He tripped over the laces of his boots and crashed face-first onto the dusty ground.
He didn't move.
Zigzag walked over and poked John with the blade of his shovel.
"Hey, are you dead?"
John still didn't move.
Zigzag bent over and began poking him with his forefinger.
"Yo, wake up, little Freakazoid. You have to finish digging your hole."
John was as still as a corpse.
Armpit walked over and grabbed John's wrist.
"I saw people do this on T.V."
Pretending he knew what he was doing, Armpit used his thumb to check for a pulse in John's wrist.
"Oh ma Gawd! He's dead man!"
-
"What!" Everyone said at once.
"I can't feel the pulse thing on his hand!"
Zero came over and bent down beside Armpit.
He looked at everyone angrily.
"He's not dead, stupid."
Armpit crossed his arms, trying to hide his surprise of hearing Zero talk.
"Yeah, he is! I know because there ain't no pulse on his hand."
Zero rolled his eyes, which cracked the stone-hard expression on his face.
"That's because you're doing it wrong."
Zero pointed at John's chest.
"He's still breathing, you fucking moron."
There were Oooooos from the boys.
Armpit, who was not the kind to argue very long (because he always lost), gave up and shrugged.
"Whateva. So what do we do, then?"
Zero didn't know.
No one did.
They were in the middle of the desert with no supervision.
"Well…one or more of us will have to walk to the nearest digging site and get another councilor to bring him back to camp." Zero said.
X-Ray glared.
He did not like being the ignored one. He was the leader, and he wished he had thought of that.
John blinked.
"Hey look! The Freak moved."
John turned his head around, and his face was smeared with dust on the left side.
Three of the boys had gone back to digging.
"You okay, amigo?" Magnet asked.
John sat up and dusted himself as if nothing had happened.
"You need any help?"
John looked around, his eyes still red and puffy from the sand.
"I'm going to finish my hole now."
Zero had a strange look in his face before his dug the last foot of his hole.
He knew something wasn't supposed to happen. He felt as though a piece of a puzzle was out of place, but he couldn't figure it out.
Everyone went back to digging.
"Did any of them come yet?" John asked.
"Who?" X-Ray asked.
"You know, them."
"I don't know what you mean, little man. Who are you talkin' about?"
"Themmm!" John answered as if X-Ray had asked the stupidest question. "Did any of them come yet?"
X-Ray just shook his head in poty and continued digging.
John pouted and out his hands on his hips.
"Hmm…but one of them came and 'axed me to make a bed for them…"
X-Ray shook his head, disgusted by the nonsense coming out of the boy's mouth.
"No…NO, Little man. No one came and asked for a damn bed."
John looked confused.
"But he AXED me politely. He even said please... He said, 'Please, John make a bed for me. I'm really tired'."
X-Ray ignored him and continued digging.
John glanced doubtfully at his grave-shaped hole.
"Do you think the bed is not good enough?"
X-Ray pretended not to hear, but John went on.
"'Cause you know, if I don't dig the bed deep enough, they sometimes get mad. Silent people are very grouchy."
He looked over to his recently-finished hole that everyone seemed to dislike so much.
He walked over to the 7-foot long grave and smoothed out the sides of it with his shovel.
He looked to his right, as if someone was there, and began talking to the invisible force beside him.
"Is this good enough for you, Peter Pan?" John said.
There was a silence, and then John nodded slowly at the "thing" beside him.
"What's he doing?" Magnet asked Zigzag.
"He's talking to some guy named Peter Pan…" Zigzag stated, as if he knew everything.
"I know that, but what the hell is he DOING?"
John took his shovel and began filling his Grave hole with dirt.
"What are you doing?" asked Magnet.
John smiled and looked up.
Oh…I'm just helping Peter Pan get to sleep. I'm covering up his bed so no one can bother him."
"Whoa. He's stupid and crazy."
But… there was something terribly wrong with this whole thing.
Zero was the only one who noticed it.
"Hey, you guys…"
Everyone looked in Zero's direction.
"Don't you remember Peter Pan?"
Everyone was silent.
Zigzag raised his hand stupidly.
"Ooh! I know! Pick me!"
"Yes you, with the bad wig." Zero said.
"He was some weird dude who was in D-tent."
Looks of realization came upon the boys' faces.
"Do you remember what happened to him?" Zero asked slowly, as if talking to small children.
"Don't you remember the guy who broke his neck?"
Everyone was silent.
They remembered Peter Pan…
--------------------------------
Five months ago, a boy named Peter Hoffman was charged for destruction of public property and thievery after he had set all of the birds free in the Bird House of Newton Public Zoo.
Thinking Camp Greenlake was better than jail (which is your opinion), he decided to spend 20 months digging holes.
He was a nice boy, who shared his water with someone who ran out, or who helped people when they needed help…
Peter had an obsession.
Every day after digging holes, he would use his energy to run back and forth though the pathway with his arms spread out beside him, like wings.
He was practicing.
Practicing for the special day he would show everyone that humans could fly.
At night he would be making wings out of stolen sheets he had sneaked out of the laundry room.
Though Peter was popular amongst the other boys, they thought he was a psychotic looser who needed a life…
The councilors, being councilors and all, tried to persuade him to stop his acts and learn that people cannot fly.
Hence the name Peter Pan.
One night, he had woken everyone in his tent and told them he was going to fly that day.
"It's a full moon. It's the perfect time for miracles." He said in a spooky voice.
The other boys had laughed, thinking he was joking.
Peter took out his artificial "wings" from under his bed and told them he was going to be rich.
The boys sleepily followed Peter, as he lead them to the Warden's cabin.
"what the hell are you doing, Pan? You gonna get in trouble!" said Spikes, the bossy one.
Amazingly, Peter managed to climb up to the top of the warden's roof, which was only a few meters high. He positioned himself at the right place and spread his "wings".
"Pan, DON'T!"
He jumped.
And Peter was right. A miracle had happened.
He flew!
The gigantic cotton wings which were twice Peter's size had carried him up into the air about 3 meters higher than the roof!
"Look! I told you! I told you I could----"
SNAP!
The wooden skeleton of his left 'wing' had broken.
Peter felt him self falling.
He felt his heart drop to his stomach.
He felt a windy rush as he descended onto the hard ground.
He felt his hair being swept upwards as he fell head first onto the ground.
Then he felt nothing.
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"There wasn't even no funeral. His parents told the Warden they didn't want anything to do with him. So the camp got permission to cremate the guy." Zero said silently.
"What's 'cremate' mean?" Magnet asked.
"It means they burn your dead body so you don't have to get an expensive funeral to bury the body." Zero said.
"So where did they put the ashes, then?"
Zero's eyes looked distant.
"They swept them out into the wind in the desert. His ashes are like, everywhere now."
All of the boys glanced at John, who was still filling up Peter Pan's new 'bed'.
X-Ray just stared wide-eyed.
"I think we got ourselves a Bruce Willis horror film."