"Dumbass," Beat laughs, crushing a careless Noise under his skateboard.
It's the first word that came to him. If he uses it enough, maybe the sheer reality of his dumbness will stop punching him in the gut.
Beat can't think of anything worse than being stupid and worthless. Can't think of anything worse than the knot in his chest when he sees the look in his kid sister's eyes when she has to explain something to him for the ten thousandth time. How terrifying it is to feel like his whole life is a test with questions written in a language he wasn't ever taught and all he can ever do is stare at it and think about how he knows nothing. He cradles his head in his hands and hisses under his breath:
"Dumbass."
He twists his fingers all up in his hair and bites his lip and resists the urge to snap his pencil in half and start crying. He's always broken all the pencils. He can't fight back and he can't write anything.
That's what it's like when he talks to those reapers. He stares up at them, because he's only big for his age, and he hears them shouting at him and he's there. The blank paper and the ticking clock. The feeling that he can only ever be wrong and it hurts so much. So he does what he's always done, he shouts and makes up answers and snaps pencils. He waves his fists and screams at them because they are wrong and why do they always have to laugh at him?
Don't they think he already knows he's a dumbass?
Writer's Woes: So I feel really weird about posting this in the collection but I also feel weird about making it a separate oneshot. I write a lot of stuff like this to just vent, so uhhhh well this doesn't feel right anywhere so I'll just throw it in here.