BY S.D. FOSTERS
Dick McThin was a model teenage citizen, composed of soft bone and sensitive tissue; so sensitive his ears would ring at the faintest hint of raised voices and his eyes well up at the sight of a three-legged cat. Such sorry sights and sounds were, however, rare in the neighborhood he was born and mostly grown in, a pansy-clad suburb where seldom was heard a menacing word and the slug lay down with the leaf.
***
But following the unforeseen flattening of McThin’s father, the primary wage earner, McThin’s mother was obliged to take up her son and move to a less-than-lovely locale, one inhabited chiefly by persons possessing smoking guns and cool consciences—but one where the rent was reasonable. Young McThin, in turn, was obliged to attend a high school whose pupils—the potty-mouthed progeny of unconscionable killers—deferred scholastic achievement in favor of bullying the thin and vulnerable.
The bullies had never seen a boy as vulnerable and thin as McThin.
Gleefully, they strung McThin out on a string of horrors, including plugging his nostrils with chewed bubblegum, forcing him to breathe through his mouth, then stuffing his mouth with used toilet tissue, forcing him to breathe through his ears; converting his bellybutton to a moderately sized ashtray for their foul-smelling cigarettes; tussling his precise parting, making his hair look silly.
McThin, as expected, didn’t fight back, having neither a liking for fighting nor a fighter’s physique. By the end of the school year, though, he was determined—for the sake of his airways, the scent of his stomach, the precision of his parting—to make his body a deterrent.
***
Over the summer break, McThin ate essential iron and pumped prize-winning pumpkins until his body was toned and tough, built like a piece of ship. Sailing back into school come September, he barely fit through the entrance.
The bullies took note.
But this breed of bully, it transpired, was no respecter of musculature. Indeed, the bullies seemed less deterred by McThin’s new physique than stimulated, his brawny chest presenting them with an enhanced surface area to pummel. And his rippling limbs were seen as potential weapons—for the bullies. Thus, as the bell rang one afternoon, concluding the school day, they stole his right arm, removing it at the shoulder, and scampered off. McThin later found it on his journey home, discarded in an alleyway, beaten and blue as if used as a bludgeon in some gang-related turf war.
How McThin wished he had the temperament to use his limbs like that! But his frontal lobes, source of a well-developed empathy for the would-be victims of his violence, were crippling. He placed the blame for this on his nurturing parents, both the flattened and unflattened, then felt exceedingly ashamed for blaming them, then blamed his shame, then shamed his blame, and on and on it went, until he was left with no choice but to sign his empathy’s death warrant.
***
But how could it be killed? Being a diligent student and studier of things in general, McThin knew that some experts attributed the demise of one’s empathy to prolonged exposure to onscreen scenes of bloody carnage.
Hence, McThin exposed himself. But, alas, after hour upon day upon week upon month of eviscerations and exploding heads, he felt such pain, agonising pain, for the chainsaw massacred and driller killed.
Nonetheless, there was still reason for optimism, as McThin was also aware that wo/men of cruelty often began their careers as children, harassing and assassinating helpless animals.
My childhood’s gone, but I’m still young, he thought, and started right away, treading tentatively on puppy dog tails and chuckling callously at roadkill. I don’t care, he tried—tried—to lie to himself. But he felt so sorry. So guilty.
***
By then, his body battered and bruised by bullies to the point of bruising no more, he was desperate for results. And there was only one option left open.
I’ll find a functional skewer. McThin aimed an accusing finger at his forehead.
You’ll empathize no more.
When found, he propelled the skewer—a nail of liberal length—into the corner of one eye, and fiddled his frontal lobe, hoping against hope to finally affect an outlandish character shift. Once his fiddling had climaxed, he commenced to conduct unspeakable experiments.
***
With malice aforethought, he prodded the extruding eye-stalks of an unsuspecting snail. He missed the toilet bowl. He spat on an undeserving baby. And waited for the guilt… which never came.
At long last, McThin had a mind to match his monstrous muscles. Had progressed from victim to prospective victimizer. Had nothing left to fear. Or feel, period.
***
So if, perchance, you’re ill-fated to see the unfeeling monster McThin coming your way, find another way! Be advised: the world is his personal space. Invade it at your risk, knowing this: he’ll step on your toes, sneeze in your face, and quench his thirst with your blood. Without remorse.
