There was a boy living in the woods.

The roughest of all children, the most barbarous little heathen you could possibly imagine. The trouble was, only Luther seemed to notice him.

 “Ma, there’s a savage in the woods.”

His parents turned, so did the twins, backpacks slung over their backs.

“Poor Lu,” snickered Jonathan, the fitter twin, the one with naturally sanguine face and wryer humor.

“I didn’t know you have such an imagination, little brother,” said Joseph, the frailer twin, the one with the peaked face and pallid smile.

His parents exchanged looks, simultaneous looks you get from parents. “Hmn,” said mother, at last, “let’s just hope that little savage leaves you kids alone…” “…and our campsite alone,” father chipped in, and then chuckled, “especially my marshmallows.”

And then they walked on.

But the savage was there. And every now and then he plagued and harried. He ululated whenever the family started chit-chatting, and on occasions when silence settled, he’d utter an unearthly, ear-splitting cry.

Finally Luther had had enough. “Did you hear that?”

“What?” answered a spiteful Jonathan, “The savage?”

He and his twin high-fived and the two cracked up. John threw back his head and howled with a frenzy of hilarity. Joe made weird throat gargles in an attempt to stifle his laughter. And Luther heard, from a distance not far away, the savage boy broke into peals of guttural amusement.

From then on, bitter and aggrieved, Luther played mute. A nine-year-old’s fantasy talk was preferably ignored anyway.

Unaware of the savage’s mischiefs, the family moved on towards their campsite. They unpacked and rigged up their tents, bustling hither and thither. Beneath a tawny sunset, the clearing positively droned with activity. Luther sat back and watched as his family jostled around.

All was well. Until Jonathan poked at him in the ribs. “Don’t just sit there, help us out will you?”

Luther looked up. An aggravated John sounded reasonably nastier. “Ma told me to stay put.”

John screwed up his eyes, squinting. Their parents were out of sight. He grinned, a wicked grin, “Or are you scared, Luthy? Savage in the woods scares you, huh? Huh?”

Far into the thicket, the ferocious little thing laughed, whistling, tooting, snarling.

Luther slammed his eyes shut. His head swam with grogginess. “Guess you’re right John. I know I know you’re always right. Sir, Mr. Jonathan Frederick Ritual, sir you’re right.” Before his malevolent brother could shove him around again, he hacked into the foliage and out of sight.

The woods were a thriving depth of gray-green color. Luther halted in the midst of nowhere, resorting to nothing but his intuition. Something scuttled beneath his eye-lid.

“Who’s there?” Luther demanded.

The answer was self-evident. Limberly something slid onto the ground. And he was staring into the hysteric, shaded eyes of the wilderness. He felt the savage’s coarse, sloughing skin latching onto his shoulders, saw the dash of clayish saffron and painted white that was his face.

A beat.

“Get off,” Luther scolded, softly. 

But the savage did not leave him alone, but instead wrestled him to the ground in a half-nelson. 

Barbarian. Heathen. Obscene, wilderness filth. Luther could’ve hurled all these insults at the savage. But savages could hurt you, and you wouldn’t hurt him the slenderest with your gibbering. “Would you hurt me? Kill me right here?” he whispered, the dread and the loathing undiluted in his voice.

To his surprise, the savage released him and broke into a crow of shrieking laughter. The laugh was fitful, abrasive. Finally the savage withdrew himself and swung himself above the trees, “Ya gonna join me one day! Ya remember, and next time, next time!” He snatched a pine bough and swung himself up the trees.

Feeling rather giddy, Luther trudged his way back to his family.

“Oh look,” whistled Jonathan, abstractedly, “Little Lu’s made his acquaintance with his savage friend. Had a fine scrimmage, huh?” He bumped Luther when he passed by.

“Now now son,” said father, preoccupied with his futile attempt to light a campfire. “Yes honey,” mother admonished, “be nice to your brother’s imaginary friend.”

Luther felt like screaming. The whole night at their campsite, he was left to cope with his own anger and the uncalled-for fear of being blatantly assaulted by the savage.

“Luther?” called father. The family had huddled around the fire, now trying to mitigate their niggling languidness by sharing ghost stories. It was obviously Luther’s turn.

“Oh,” he replied, suddenly developing an unwarranted hatred for irksome ghost stories. “The children were torn apart by the werewolves. The end.”

“Luther,” sighed a concerned mother, “your dad’s only asking you to pass him the rest of the marshmallows.” “Besides,” father cut in, his mouth stuffed with candy, “we’re over with werewolves, and vampires, and corpses. Now let’s welcome Jonathan and Joseph to entertain us with their most embarrassing baby stories!”

The groans were fitful.

Three hours later, weary, tired, and out of games to play, they finally hit the sack. Luther fought against his lethargy, and in a daze, plodded into his own tent. But he wasn’t alone. Imposed in the gauzy darkness of the tent, were the bird-bright, penetrating eyes of the savage.

“What are you doing here?” hissed Luther, with obvious hostility.

The savage grinned, a crooked, snag-toothed grin. “Hurtle,” he gestured at himself, in the most formal, elaborate way a savage could afford, “ya call me Hurtle.”

A beat.

“Alright, Hurtle,” Luther breathed, though he grudged addressing a savage with such a proper name, “leave this instance. Now.”

Hurtle gazed at him with stalwart eyes, head askew, “Nah.”

“What?”

“NO.”

“Well, if you don’t leave,” Luther warned offhandedly, “I’ll scream for my parents, they’ll come and take you to the police. How would you like that?”

Hurtle was somewhat amused, “Go ahead, shan’t gonna do you no good.”

Luther did scream. Seconds later his parents crammed in, with the twins trailing behind them in pajamas.

“What’s wrong, son?” yawned father. “You had dreams again hon?” asked mother.

“Someone’s in my tent, right…” he motioned to the place where the savage had been. But Hurtle, apparently, had made off on his own.

Jonathan tittered and teased Luther ceaselessly. But it was fair enough into the night and everyone was very well fatigued, so shortly after all left for their own tents.

All except Joseph, who stood by the tent under the moon, looking at him askance, his wan face attentively radiant, “So… let me get this straight. There’s a savage, out there in the woods, ravaging your sleep… and whenever somebody’s with you, he’s like… vaporized?”

Luther hugged his knees and nodded. He liked Joseph. It seemed a paradox, really, to favor a twin brother over another, since twins were naturally stereotyped as identical. But Jonathan and Joseph weren’t identical; they were fraternal twins, differing in both appearance and demeanor. It was almost impossible to conceive a good-humored Jonathan, just like how it seemed ludicrous to ever consider Joseph a salty-tongued, authoritarian figure.

“Could your savage friend talk?” asked Joe, good old Joe, now leveling a steady grin at him. “Did you hear him talk?”

“I did.”

“Did he touch you?”

“Yeah, grappled my back once, and it felt like… it felt like… hard to describe.”

Still affably but with somewhat diffidence, Joe asked, “So… do you think he’s real, little brother?”

 “Joe!” it was a measure of his neurotic frustration that he snapped out loud. “Really, you and that Jonathan and ma and pa, no one ever believes me…”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“I do, Luther, cross my heart I do believe you,” replied Joseph, unhurriedly. Luther squinted in the dark, trying to determine his brother’s credibility. But it was hard to tell. Joe was never in a tizzy, whether he was fibbing or not.

It wasn’t until a long moment of silence had ebbed away that Joe finally confided, “You know, I see things, too, before I’m asleep.”

Luther, still piqued and reluctant to give ground, kept his silence.

“Things that actually seemed real,” Joseph told his miffed little brother. He tried to bend Luther’s ears like he used to, but when Luther ducked, he laughed, “Gods, you nine-year-olds are so sore.”

He continued in his invariable tone, “The things I see. There were eyes, a dozen eyes, all staring down at me agog. There was a sodden face, eyeless, hairless, features all askew. And then, fingers, hordes of fingers, coming in regiments…”

“Joe…” Luther started.

“Yeah?”

“And I thought dad’s ghost stories are corny enough.”

“You know I don’t make things up.”

In the somber darkness of the tent, Joe’s ailing face went aglow, inscrutable, even, with an air of assurance about it. “I don’t make things up. But…” in a trice, all that intentness was gone and Joe was back to being Joe. “But looky here, little brother. It seems like you need someone beside you, with all that… savage around ravaging your sleep. Would you like that?”

Luther moistened his lips, “No. No, you go.” He’d had enough ghost stories that night to be nauseated for a lifetime.

A pause.

“Alright, goodnight little brother,” Joseph lifted the drapery that hung by the entrance. “But it does help, sometimes, when someone’s beside you.”

Far, far into the mosaic of greens and browns, as if an echo, Hurtle let out a deep, raucous gnarl.

 Distraught, Luther scrambled to his feet. “Joe, Joe!” he exclaimed, feeling a catch in his voice.

Joseph poked his head back into the tent.

“May… maybe you could stay.”

Joseph smiled and crept in with nimble movements.

The rest of the night, Luther neither heard nor saw anything of Hurtle the savage.

Camping was over and the rest of the summer fell into its habitual groove. His parents went back to work and the twins interned themselves in their room, studying.

Idly Luther sat on the window sill, his feet dangling to and fro. There was a grisly amount of schoolwork, but schoolwork was something you could wait.

There was a girl outside on the streets, in a crisply starched white dress and sandals. He’d seen her once before and called her Zophie, as the name sounded presentably elegant. Luther hadn’t enquired about her name. He was just fond of the way her clean white presence muted out the sunlight and slackened the summer’s torrid heat.

Behind him he felt the thudding of footsteps. Zophie was gone in the same manner she had manifested. Almost grudgingly, he swerved around

It was Jonathan, out for a breath of fresh air. “Not bad, you’re going to our school this fall,” he smoothed out the acceptance letter from Westward, which Luther had tacked up on the wall. “How’s your score?”

Luther feigned an interest in fiddling his t-shirt, “I was placed seventy-eighth.”

John roared with laughter, and when he’d finally curbed himself he simpered, patronizingly, “You do realize they only take a hundred and twenty freshmen?”

Luther bit his inner cheek but said nothing.

“There’s gonna be exams,” continued John, absent-mindedly, “loads of them, and they’ll thrush out a test for you newbies, first thing this September.”

Flummoxed, Luther looked up. “A test?”

Jonathan was obviously taking pleasure of our nine-year-old’s adversity, “Break a leg, little brother.” He burrowed his nails into Luther’s thigh. “Oh and one more thing,” he scrutinized Luther’s schoolwork, and with commiseration he said, “you wrote all your inequality signs the wrong way.” He smiled again, crookedly, and was gone

“Bastard,” Luther cussed under his breath. It felt good to say it, so through gritted teeth, he stepped up the volume, “Bastard!”

But then again, what’s the point of stating the obvious? He heaved a sigh and thought he’d better cope with what was left of his schoolwork. His new schoolmates were probably halfway through theirs. The most formidable thing about elite students, Luther decided, was that they had not just the aptitude to learn but an almost demented desire to learn well.

Gods, just… gods. What would it be like, to be at the very bottom of his class? Back in his old school, they isolated the low achievers, took a blind eye to the floundering stragglers. It had seemed… natural. The subjects were easy, less sophisticated, and anyone who flunked any tests were automatically regarded as handicaps. And then he merged this memory with the suspense of his own, meshing them together. Suddenly Luther wished he had treated his erstwhile classmates more nicely.

He tried to dislodge it all. But the chagrin came, involuntarily.

Maybe he should’ve treated Hurtle more nicely, too.

At this whim, Luther’s teeth technically ripped into his tongue. He’d better train all his attention back to his schoolwork. There was no way he was going to lag behind anyone, he wouldn’t allow it. But even as he made this wholehearted resolve, at the back of his mind’s eye, he saw the savage, swinging freely from treetop to treetop.

School at Westward started and they all took an exam. In truth Luther didn’t flunk it. His grades bobbed around the middle without any undulating lapses, but nor was there a significant breakthrough.

Already this had frenzied him. To annihilate the little privacy that remained, the school had all tacked up their grades in the hall where it was most conspicuous.

“We’re all a team,” said their principal, emphatically, “so it should be that we expose our recent progress with our fellow teammates.”

Everyone had applauded, and all applauded in awe and with stately reverence. But it was a lie, and everyone knew it to be a lie. A shoddy, insidious lie. Publicity meant no brotherhood, no partnership, but manifested competition in broad daylight.

And what fierce competition. Their homeroom seats were purposely arranged to match their rankings. They sat in the cafeteria in cliques, according to grades. They even befriended each other according to grades. That was why Luther hadn’t had much to crave for the first time he stepped into his dorm.

“Hey.” He grinned too widely that his cheeks ached with all that strenuous effort.

His roommates greeted him with stolid watch and a few mumbled their lackadaisical greetings. Luther edged toward an available bunk. A tepid conversation had just started to heat up, when…

“You sure that’s your bunk?” a boy asked loudly. He was slightly cross-eyed, which gave him a rather peevish look and an ornery temperament.

“I’m not sure, really,” Luther replied and turned to look around with diffidence, “am I ought to be?”

His roommates exchanged haphazard leers. One of them, an intellectual-looking boy with spectacles, pulled him aside. “Watch for the numbers,” he whispered. He’d leaned so close that he almost bit Luther’s ears.

Luther scrutinized all around him. Indeed there were serial numbers on the flank of every bunk. The cross-eyed boy’s was fifty-three, the intellect boy’s was five, and there were several others, all scattered digits and figures.

“Have we… all been assigned IDs?” asked Luther, unintelligently.

There was raucous giggling all around him. The intellect boy shot him a cynical scowl but looked away.

This gave him a wakeup call. Ultimately the truth, bleak and unpalatable as it was, dawned on him. The numbers. The numbers were their grade rankings. So they even slept according to grades. Beheld by pairs of obnoxious eyes, Luther walked toward the bunk labeled seventy-seven and started unpacking himself with tremulous slowness.

After the slapstick, Luther was more desperate than ever to get a decent friendship going. But his roommates seemed to have taken a dislike to him.

 “How you didn’t find your bunk,” He studied Luther through his gleaming spectacles. “Because if you’re acting stupid, I’m telling you it’s not going to work. You know how kids are, especially those kids,” warily he glanced outside their empty dorm, “they worship cleverness, however petty it all is.”

Luther blinked, incredulous, “You think I was… acting?”

The boy became deliberate. “So you don’t know. Didn’t anyone tell you that we’re allotted bunks that matched with our grades?” he asked, judiciously.

“No, but how…”

“Did anyone tell you that almost everything we do here is relevant to our grades?”

“I didn’t know anything! How come…”

“Look, my parents checked out everything before I came. They were, like, really over a big fuss about me coming over to this school.”

“Oh,” Luther sucked his teeth, vindictiveness diffusing his entrails. His parents had trusted Jonathan to explain everything about school to him, like that was ever going to happen.

“But hey, stop moping around. It’s no big really, just some kind of fanatic, hierarchical crap. You’ll ignore it when it’s all through,” solaced the boy, with a laugh of alacrity. “I’m Simon by the way.” He extended his hand.

“Luther.”

And heartily they shook hands. That day they sat together at dinner. They talked, sotto voce but avidly, against the hum and buzz of the cafeteria. Nevertheless Luther was overwhelmed with gratitude, for he could never quite unlearn that his newly-acquainted friend had a number five on his bunk.

There was a power cut that night. The air-conditioning unit in his room had long ceased to work. The air came to be so tight and muggy that you could positively wring sweat out of it.

It was all too hot and sultry for a nine-year-old. Luther rolled out of bed and crept out of the house, as he always did.

Down in the garage he found his bike. Groping in the dark, he figured that, perhaps he should go somewhere.

After twenty minutes of almost psychopath pedaling, he was again in the woods. But there was no sign of Hurtle. Gingerly he made his way through the trees, the soles of his shoes squelching in the mud. But when Luther looked up, no feral silhouette was dangling above the trees.

Had Hurtle been a mirage, a hallucination, casted by his troubled mind? Luther sucked at his teeth, dispelling the thought as he walked on.

At the other end of the woods was a river of placid water. Bobbing along with its wrinkled surfs was a raft, and the one phantom that sprawled on it was none other than our grubby little fiend.

“Whatcha doin’ here, ya dandy?” said Hurtle, “Shan’t ya be pissing off somewhere in ya sack?”

He laughed his bawling laugh, then like a pilchard, flipped around and plunged into the lukewarm water. There was a long interval of silence before he shot out again, squirting water from his mouth, and was again overtaken by a chorus of his own gusty laughter.

There it was again, thought Luther. It was as if the savage was showing off, flaunting his own freedom.

The raft wallowed toward the shoals. “Hop on, will ya?” whistled the savage.

Startled, Luther looked up to meet Hurtle’s face. There wasn’t clay or paint on it anymore, all scoured and cleansed away by the sloshing current. It was a rough, sunburned face of a child, the hair plastered to the scalp, the eyes vivid, bird-bright eyes. Moonlight seemed to have softened his atrocious demeanor, mellowed the wilderness that was his eyes.

“Would you hop on?” invited Hurtle, beseechingly, this time in standard grammar, without lisps or slurs or his habitual vulgarity. “Please?”

Perhaps it was the courtesy that did the magic. Rather shyly and in a prudish manner, Luther nodded and crawled on. Immediately Hurtle betrayed his allegiance and baptized the raft. There was a loud splash as Luther plopped, waist-deep, into the coursing water. Hurtle’s scream of mirth could be heard from miles off.

Arms flailing, Luther caught the rim of the raft and propped himself up, choking on water and gargling like mad. Then and there he lay, spread-eagled by the savage, playing possum. And, when Hurtle was fixing his attention elsewhere, our vengeful nine-year-old knocked over the raft and sent them both tumbling into the river.

“Take your change out of that, you scum!” yelled Luther. He would’ve laughed if he hadn’t had so much water in his mouth.

They sparred and pelted with splashing water. The night air hummed with a hysteric joy. Their skirmishing quickly evolved into an under-water wrestling bout, in which Hurtle effortlessly bested and wound Luther’s hands behind his back in a hammerlock.

“Alright… alright, you win,” Luther hawked water out of his mouth, guzzling for air.

“Yeah, I win ya dandy,” said an insolent Hurtle, still twisting Luther’s wrists.

“Now let me go.”

“Nah.”

“What?”

“NO.”

“Then what are you going to do to me?”

“Stay. Make ya stay.”

“What if I don’t?”

“Answer I one question and I let ya go, or ya stay, one way or ’tother,” Hurtle’s eyes stirred with neurotic unrest. “Whatcha coming to see I here in the first place?”

Luther thought pronto. There was no way he was going to accede to that stupid question. “I’d rather stay.”

So it was. Luther stayed, under a crisp, starry night on a wallowing raft in a distant river until his feet was soft and swollen from soaking water. It was the first time he felt free of anything.