Member-only story
Flashbacks — tiny true tales
Sucker Punch
A micro-memoir from before nerds were cool
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It had escalated so quickly from taunts to puffed up faces, then clenched fists, and everything in me compressed fit to burst, fit to go nuclear, fit to finally, and for the first time to let my reality explode so someone else would have to feel it.
We’re all shouting LIAR and stomping our feet, thudding the dull green of the grassy bank below our junior school. But there’s two of them and one of me, so they shout louder and we’ve exhausted the proclamations of whose father is bigger, stronger, has the best weapon (axe vs chainsaw — does my father own an axe — seems the sort of thing he should have — I’m at risk of losing limbs — should’ve said longbow or air rifle because I know where he keeps them but the bow has no string); I’m waving my spindle arms wildly, frustration fists punching out the words: “LIAR LIAR” and “leave — me — alone!” as my heart is beating, pumping silenced howls of “why don’t I belong?”
They shout louder, but I thwack them good, and after that they let me be. At least that’s how it happens in my other world, as my solitary figure stalks off across the tired old sports field, where the grass is always greener, diminishing into the distance.
