The boy in the orange toque slips to his knees. Pain throbs in his skull. Blood drips from the wound in his forehead and slides round his eye, carves a hard red river down his cheek. A fine mist seems to swallow him in his stupor, as four faceless creatures rise before him. They shift quickly, like wanting ghosts; like demons. Like big hungry pikes that can smell his blood.
They move so fast it is frightening. Their voices dart all around him, drawing closer with every breath. They make odd swishing sounds as if running in snow, and at that notion, at the mere thought that demons wear boots and play in the snow, he laughs hysterically. One of them growls at his hysterics, calls him faggot, calls him freak.
The mind-fog thickens and panic grips him; it is always better when he sees, always better when he knows. Still, as they draw ever closer, he clamps his eyes shut. He prays and he prays, oh how he prays, yet still they come, still they kick. They kick and they kick ’til he crumbles to the ground.
He feels his body rise. It is as if the air itself is carrying his beaten shell, as if the demons have summoned the elements to serve their bidding. And yet, as the haze in his mind begins to ebb, he senses the touch of eight hands upon his arms and his legs, eight points of contact, like the creeping strokes of a giant spider. Fearing the worst, he opens his eyes—not one first, then the other—but both. His mind screams.
He is being carried … by demons.
Backward he moves, faster and faster. Trees whip past in a blur. His body rolls with the sharp slope, a dip here, a rise there, and when they release him, he strikes the cold ground like a bag of cement.
The sharp sound of rushing water rises behind him. A tall oak looms before him, a monster of a thing, a nightmarish creature with a big white sign. A black voice cuts like a saw, barking “Now guys” and “Move your faggot ash,” and when he tries to put a face to that voice, tries to look up to where that voice is coming from, all he sees is that stupid sign, painted by some dummy who just can’t spell.
Pain rips into him—a throbbing so brutal he can scarcely believe it. He fears his balls will burst, and in the moment feels a special kinship with the school principal. He rolls to his side, and before he can stop it, a cold hard boot delivers its load. His jaw screams and he howls, and he spills to his back like a bug.
The demons hover like executioners. High above, the sign dangles like a meat-hooked corpse, how he fears it will fall and crash down on his skull. He reels at its muddle of letters and noise, for it’s no more than nonsense, no more than scrawl, and he wonders oh why, did they bother at all.