(Years Later: Hillwood High. Junior Year)

The men's bathroom window had been shattered, the mirror above the sinks had been expertly removed and spray-painted in its place was a full color mural of two nude pin-up style woman engaged in coitus. Upon further examination; not only had three additional murals of a similar nature been graffitied onto the rear space of the bathroom stalls, but all the toilet paper dispensers had also been disconnected as well. A similar scene was found in the girl's bathroom as well as the locker/showers.

Even without the tape recorder left on the desk of Principal Ian Fetner, it was painfully obvious who was behind such a bawdy and cunning act of insurrection. Nonetheless, he presses the play button secretly wishing deep down that who he thinks is behind this act isn't. But as the sound of hissing and malignant chortles audially oozes from the speaker, whatever faint glimmer of hope Principal Fetner had in that moment extinguishes itself like a candle with no further wick to burn.

With a bitter and weary sigh, the anguished administrator plants his face into his desk; incapable of bringing himself to hit the stop button as the overwrought cackling ends, and the all-too-obvious brains behind this act reveals himself.

["Good evening Mr. Fetner, or should I say good morning. I hope you had a restful night because mine was…heh, heh, heh…a bit hectic…]

(Earlier that night)

The sound of shattering glass unnerved Curly, but he couldn't afford to freeze like a deer in the headlights. After all, revenge rests on action and he'd be damned if he were to get caught before doling out his parting shots on the poor stupid souls who deserved it.

Climbing through the window and cleaving to the shadows, the boy scurries into the bathroom like a paranoid rodent. Tapping the wall for five minutes, it slowly dawns on him that nobody was gunning for him. He was alone…just as planned.

Curly's face breaks into the steeliest of smiles as he holds the screwdriver up in the moonlight. Perhaps it was his imagination, but the anemic radiance courtesy of that luminous orb in the indigo sky caused the tool to twinkle ever so slightly. In minutes, the mirror is stripped away from the place it had hung in honor above the row of ceramic sink; holes that once housed the screws which held it up were all that remained in regards of testifying to said mirror's existence.

Grabbing the first can of spray paint, Curly can feel his conscience making some final appeal of telling him to turn back. After all, taking out of the equation that he'd destroyed school property and trespassed, his drawings had leaned more toward the 'cheeky' end of the erotic spectrum; mermaids, pin-ups, maybe some tasteful nudity. What danced in his imagination while beholding that blank expanse was a boundary he had up to now avoided crossing; a Rubicon of randiness one might say. In the end though, this last discretion goes unheeded as the lid of the paint hits the floor and his finger squeezes down on the nozzle.

[…I've been a busy boy last night. Can you tell? I mean, spray paint is a whole other beast, especially in a dark and poorly vented room. If only I'd just been left alone with my paper and pen…]

(One week ago)

Curly sits in the office of Mr. Fetner. Prone as the overlapping cacophony of screams coming from the Principal but also Monica and Lawrence go in and out his ears. The reason for this outrage was the contents of an overflowing binder and at least half a dozen journals which sat on the irate administrator's desk; page after page after page of drawings featuring either hellish and/or erotic imagery. But the one illustration that tipped the whole can of beans over was a voluptuous mermaid luxuriously basking on a rock. Her ample, supple, and seemingly heaving breasts covered only by teensy scallop shells.

It isn't until the boy is handed an AlphaSmart (basically an electronic typewriter) that the gravity of it all begins to sink in for him, and the vaguely human honking noises coming from his parents and teachers become all too articulate.

"…so then were all in agreement that Young Mr. Gammelthorpe's work will all be typed until he graduates. Which I hope, given that his idle and deviant hands will have more productive ways to occupy themselves than producing this…filth."

The murmur of concurrence seals the lad's fate. But Curly still objects.

"You can't do that! This is injustice!"

"Yeah, yeah, tell it to the Marines kid."

As the door clicked shut, the boy stood back and continued to ruefully bore through the wood. Gritting his teeth as the adults continued to commiserate among themselves, he uttered the three words let out by every edgy individual who feels wronged by 'the system'™.

"You'll…be…sorry."

[…But that's just been the story of Thaddeus "Curly" Gammelthorpe, hasn't it? A square peg, the round hole of Hillwood, and a long parade of dead-eyed adults with crushed souls and broken dreams who tried to shave off the edges. Lawrence, Monica, Wartz, Fetner, and while we're at it, I guess you can blame the Warhol Program for allowing me to hone my talents, as well as Dr. Bliss for passing the buck all those years ago when it came to trying to fix me…]

(Two years prior)

"I can assure you Mr. Gammelthorpe that Curly's place in the Warhol Program has been rescinded given this recent turn of events. I just wish more had been done sooner-"

"YOU'VE DONE MORE THAN ENOUGH!" Lawrence bellowed back to Dr. Bliss over the phone. His face redder than a brick as he squeezes the poor device like the neck of a man who owed him money. "THE ONLY UPSIDE OF THIS FIASCO IS THAT NOW, NOW I FINALLY HAVE THE PROOF THAT THADDEUS HAS BEEN FORGING MY SIGNATURE FOR ME TO 'APPROVE' FIELD TRIPS! ALL THESE YEARS MONICA'S BEEN SAYING I'M BARKING! THAT IT'S ALL IN MY HEAD! AND THAT I SHOULD LIE DOWN BEFORE I HURT MYSELF!…(he laughs manically)…REST ASSURED HE'S IN A WHOLE WORLD OF TROUBLE ONCE I HANG UP!"

"AS FOR YOUR CANDY-ASS COMMUNE OF BASKET WEAVERS, I HOPE THIS EPISODE IS SEARED IN YOUR HEAD NEXT TIME YOU AND YOUR EQUALLY PIE-EYED COHORTS WANT TO BELLYACHE ABOUT HOW ART AND THERAPY PROGRAMS ARE UNDERFUNDED AND WHY ALL THE MONEY IN SCHOOLS GO TO SPORTS!"

[…Doesn't matter now…(chuckle)…Consider this action a brief farewell as I bolt from the shackles of normality. Yes Hillwood, from this moment on, you and the circus of goobers who call you home are now occupants of the rearview mirror on the journey of my life. Especially a certain morally upright sock puppet who has been the bane of my every waking hour…]

Arnold opened his locker to a rather interesting surprise.

Taped on the inside was a crumpled scrap of paper that had some attempts at being smoothed out with a date of four or five summers prior. The crudely drawn figure with the oblong shaped head and wildly spiky hair was clearly supposed to be him, but the donkey ears, anemic physique and demonic serpent constricting him and crushing his manhood with its jaws did momentarily shock him…a sentiment shared all too readily by the gaggle of onlookers who also got an eyeful of the scribbling.

"Willikers."

"That's just wicked out of pocket."

Weirdly enough, the Shortman boy couldn't find it in him to be offended.

As he looked at Curly's first foray into art and compared it with the mural on the wall, he nonchalantly shrugged before folding it up and placing it back in the metallic cubby.

"Hm. Curly's gotten better since then."

"Mm. Mm. Mm. Classic Arnold." Gerald said. "Givin' props to those who talk smack to him."

[…How brief, I know not. But I am sure of this; all shall tremble with awe upon my return! My creations will be the toast of your pathetic little lives. History will be rewritten as all who knew the poor twisted freak will trip over themselves to say how they knew the brooding and troubled genius…]

Sitting in a bus terminal, Curly intently reads a weathered copy of The Prince as he listens to everyone around him go about their daily races. A battered baseball cap tops his head in some hope of keeping him disguised among the teeming masses that morning. Nonetheless, agita nibbles at his resolve. Surely by now, some law enforcement agency would be hot on his trail, all too happy to drag him back to the normality to which he fled and make him face the music.

Glancing at the schedule, the squirrely lad looks at the Dalmatian Bus line departures, then at a gaggle of police officers intently leering and snooping around the station.

"No." He whispers to himself. "It can't…no, shouldn't end like this."

Curly could feel his blood freezing rapidly as the security members continued to linger about the station commiserating with one another. About what, he didn't know, nor did he want to risk finding out if he was a blip on their radar. Nonetheless, the to say the situation at hand was tense would be an understatement; a tungsten blade knife would be ill equipped at cutting through the pressure at this given moment…but the station manager's voice as it announced over the intercom the next withdrawal was a completely different matter altogether.

"Bus to New Orleans, Louisiana. Now departing."

Scampering as quickly as he could (without drawing suspicion), Curly bounded to his bus; but not before leaving a final parting gift of sorts in the form of the beat up baseball cap he had employed to keep himself anonymous.

[…Sure there will be a few contrarian souls all too happy to remember me as the villain of their schoolyard stores. And I can't really begrudge them, rather I applaud them. After all…]

Situated in his seat, Curly lets out a deep exhale of relief as the bus pulls out of the terminal proper moments before it was set to embark on its journey proper. Gazing out the window, he stares at one of the cops as the dog in her tow sniffs at the garbage bin he had discarded his hat into mere moments ago.

Even with two glass panes and distance separating them, Curly watches the dog howling and insodoing summon the other officers. But as they put 1 and 1 together, the bus gives a sudden lurch; starting the southbound journey.

Maybe deep down, there was a part of Curly that was frightened, riddled with second guesses over taking such a drastic step. After all, vandalizing school property and running away to one of the most notoriously hedonistic cities in the United States isn't a decision anyone makes lightly. Nonetheless, as the bus rounds the shoulder and merges onto Riverside Highway, he takes one final titanium-withering glance at Hillwood from the overpass, and later from the rear-view mirror as it got smaller and smaller before vanishing altogether.

All he had now to his name was a handful of money, the clothes off his back and the fire of righteous fury in his stomach to make his mark on the world. The chapters of his biography as the square peg in the roundest of holes were over, now he had the narrative and by extension the yet to be determined answer to that hauntingly eternal question:

[…What is a villain, but a victim who never had their story told?]

THE END