“Hey there bud! I know you aren’t tryna walk home without paying a visit to your best friends, right?”
The feeble boy with olive green eyes began to shake in place as a group of four brutes approached. It was just another day at some middle class public high school and a rather common occurrence was taking place outside.
“Come on Jack, just let me go home, I don’t have any more money for you,” the boy begged to Jack and his posse of other faceless bullies.
It seemed the kid’s plea had fallen upon deaf ears as the biggest goon in front finally reached the boy and began leering over him. “Well that’s no good buddy! Why do you have to make this so difficult every day? Well, what can you do? I suppose you are going to have to pay another way, hmm?”
What could have been a funny joke did not emerge from the gathering crowd of onlookers.
“Please man! You do this everyday!”
The boy’s voice had begun to quiver and tears began to gather in his eyes. Jack smirked in response to the boy’s outburst and cocked a fist back.
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Ten, no, fifteen minutes pass.
Whap!
The sounds of sobbing have basically turned into background noise at this point.
Whap!
“Come on! Stop turtling up like a fucking loser!”
Whap!
At this point, Jack was the only goon left with energy.
Whap!
The crowd was all but gone as well.
Whap!
Seth sat on the nearby bench, half-watching while he fought a losing battle of his own.
“Auuegh…” a yawn escaped his lips.
He half-heartedly bit his lip in an attempt to focus; a bad habit he picked up sometime a decade ago. Finally, his eyes re-focused on the one sided fight between two classmates he still couldn’t remember the names of. It looked like the bully was starting to get tired.
“Seems… like enough… for today.” The bully, “Jack,” huffed like an out of breath pug.
“Heh, count yourself lucky loser. Since we are graduating tomorrow, this means that today was your last beatdown! But don’t get too cocky, if I ever hear you got a big head while I'm gone, I’ll have to come find you and beat you back down to size! Hahaha!” Jack chortled to his friends who were getting ready to leave with an obvious look of relief on their faces.
A minute later they were gone, and the boy with the olive green eyes lay bloody and bruised in the dirt, continuing to cry, alone.
It's like they are trying to be the most basic background characters in a game or something.
Seth cast one more sleepy glance at the pitiful kid before beginning his stroll home.
--------
“You are dead as fuck you little rat,” he whispered at the back of the oblivious Tempest.
“I have become death, the destroyer of scrubs.” Seth always loved that line, especially as he taunted on top of the remains of the game winning kill.
“23-8, not bad, not bad at all.”
He probably could have done better had he used a gun, but the fun of the BO3 melee weapons could not be denied. Also, he just liked pissing people off.
As the regular cascade of insults and slurs were passed about, Seth sat back in his old, ridged office chair. It always gave him back pains, but he just couldn’t give it away because it used to be his father’s.
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As he listened to the bickering, Seth couldn’t help but think about tomorrow.
Dread starting creeping back up his spine as he remembered yet again what he would have to grit his teeth and bear for hours the next day. It had been four years of sitting in a class and constantly thinking about every way he wanted to kill himself at that moment.
Finally, it was all coming to a close and Seth could leave behind the brainless lectures and pointless drama that high school had brought into his life. Seth turned off his computer and lied down in his bed to stare at the ceiling, lost in thought about his upcoming liberation.
As he pondered over his wasted years, his phone lit up next to him. It was a message from his uncle.
“Go out and get me some Dr. Pepper.”
Seth sighed in annoyance as another text bloomed into existence right under the first.
“And it better be the fucking cream soda kind this time.”
He sighed yet again as he read the time: 11:42PM. He would send a text back telling him to bugger off, but he knew that Gerald Shrike has never taken no for an answer and wouldn’t give a shit about the time.
So instead of wallowing in his own self-pity, Seth pulled on his favorite black bomber jacket over the Adventure Time shirt he was wearing and set off for the Circle K six blocks from his uncle’s apartment.
Walking to the entrance, he passed a scratched up white door with the sounds of Mission Impossible at full blast where his uncle has no doubt already passed out in his Lazy-boy.
“Every damn night...” Seth muttered.
He could acknowledge that Tom Cruise was a “tasty treat” as the girls at his school would claim, but he didn’t see a need to watch every film he starred in on repeat.
Shaking his head, Seth continued out the door and down the stairs past the elevator that hadn’t been operational for the last five years. His apartment was on the fifth floor so even though he hadn’t participated in sports for several years, he was still in good shape, if not a little on the leaner side.
It’s not that he wasn’t interested in sports, he was six foot and muscular enough, but the time drain of practice would have gotten in the way of his favorite pastime: Sitting in his room and scrolling through Reddit.
Or at least that’s what he liked to tell himself.
Living on the fifth floor is another reason Seth was constantly going out for errands, as his uncle never wanted to traverse the stairs… or any physical exertion for that matter. His online “job” was really just a gambling ring between him and his other worthless buddies.
He didn’t really have to worry about money ever since he got the life insurance checks from Seth’s parents along with their surprisingly large savings that has lasted Gerald and Seth for the last ten years.
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The streets were wet with the recent storms that have been passing through.
They were happening more and more frequently in the last couple weeks but they had never really caused any damage other than a couple lightning strikes here and there. Oddly enough, there was almost no one around as Seth walked toward the Circle K. It was pretty uncommon for the roads to be bare even at this time of night. Indianapolis was a lot of things, but quiet was not one of them.
Seth strolled down a familiar alleyway that he used as a shortcut constantly on his way to school. He clicked his tongue in annoyance as the stray thought had resurfaced the memory of the event tomorrow held.
He soon arrived at the gas station and navigated his way toward the drinks wall when he spotted a lithe figure standing in front of his destination.
Seth quickly ducked into the candy isle next to him as to not be spotted by a girl he knew all too well from school.
You got to be kidding me. There's an entire city here and it's midnight. What are the odds I run into someone from school?
Sydney Ranks was a fellow senior who fit the description of the basic emo girl who didn’t care much for school and was vocal about it. Seth could agree that school was a joke but he never cared enough to get so involved in the idea as to chastise others about it all the time. She wasn’t insanely popular for obvious reasons, but she also was not an outcast.
Her curvy figure and athletic build made it impossible to be left unnoticed by all the guys, but her strong personality warded many away. And the brave few that did endeavor to try and get her attention were met with a verbal assault and a lecture of why she wouldn’t be interested in them even if they were the last particle of bacteria left on Earth.
This was precisely why Seth did not want to be noticed by her and risk a glare that could lead to an unwelcome social interaction.
Sydney finally moved out of the way after grabbing a watermelon Arizona tea and he noticed she had a trail of mascara going down her cheek.
She's... crying?
As he sat in a daze wondering what could’ve caused her of all people to cry, Seth realized his mistake of spacing out when she turned around and gave him a look of surprise. The reaction was quickly masked up with her trademark glare and she sternly marched past him up to the counter and left as soon as she tossed the total of her purchase into the hands of the bewildered cashier.
“Well, that was dramatic.” Seth exclaimed as he grabbed a six pack of Dr. Pepper and walked up to the counter for himself.
The cashier was a heavyset Hispanic dude that appeared to be in his forties. “Bert” was written on his ID in messy print. “$4.56.” Bert stated.
Seth handed him a five, “Keep the change.”
“Have a good night.” Bert said lazily and turned back to the soap that was on the TV behind him.
“Yeah, you too.” Seth reciprocated as he jingled the bell attached to the exit.
Bert, absorbed in his soaps, didn’t even notice the crack made of white light forming right outside the entrance of the store.