Fat Man, Little Boy

When I first got across the street, I didn't quite understand what I was looking at. There was a grand group of people all surrounding a small little pocket of shadowed area on a sidewalk. Two bikes had been discarded nearby. An older man ran across to a cul-de-sac right around the corner. In all honesty I don't like moments like these getting to me – whenever there's a moment that draws peoples attention I always look away. Keeps me more focused than those around me. Yet this time I couldn't help but be curious. I figured I might as well check it out; I had to go down that path eventually.

As I got closer the figures which I had only been vaguely able to discern became more and more clear. All these people, for which there must have been seven, were all surrounding one boy. The boy was only slightly younger than I was, with much more fat. One of the men handed him water. He took it silently. They asked him questions, but he said nothing.

But perhaps the most interesting feature about the boy was the blood peppered across his body. It wasn't streaming, or dripping, or falling. It was merely there. In the time I looked at the kid, although brief, I couldn't find any source to where the blood came from. In fact, it some ways it even looked fake. The blood had mixed with the sweet and became much lighter, giving off the impression of a used marker rather than blood. Hell, the only reason I did know it was blood was because the group had mentioned it so.

I didn't get that long of a chance to look at the boy. The second I took a peek his eyes instantly found me, even with all the others around. They looked, expectantly. What they were expecting, I never found out. I continued on my way.

A few days passed before I saw him again. The crowd of people were no longer there. He was still laying down under the shade of the same tree. The blood was now gone. I took another brief glance at him. Part of me was tempted to ask him what had happened but I never did, reason being is that he gave me the same eyes he did during our previous meeting. Expectant eyes. He wanted something from me, something I wasn't giving him.

After that second meeting I became fully engrossed in the boy. What did he want? Was it something only I could give him? I tried thinking of someone he might have reminded me of, but came up with nothing. I searched around campus for him but the trip turned fruitless. I asked a close friend if she had heard of any accident that happened on that street recently. She shook her head.

Those next few days I went across that street fully wishing to see the kid again, to ask him what I had not gained the courage to ask before, but it was to no avail. It was only after, when I had begun to become frustrated, when I began to doubt myself, when I had forgotten about the fat boy entirely, that I saw him again.

My initial reaction was anger. Was he taunting me? Did he in some way know that I was looking for him and plan accordingly? I got right up to his face. He gave me expectant eyes. I didn't bother wasting any time.

“Do I know you?”

No answer, though for the first time he did look away, trailing off towards something in the distance before looking back up to me. I knew he wasn't deaf. He could hear me.

“Why do you keep showing up here?”

Once again there was no response, but the focused look on his face began to fade. Whatever I was saying, it was weakening him. I decided to go deeper.

“What happened to you last week? When you were bleeding?”

Then, he stopped looking. Just stared off into the distance. Into nothing. I asked a few more questions. Repeated some others. Now, nothing changed. He just stared. I started getting angry again.

“What the fuck do you want?”

The answer was nothing. It was the answer I expected, but not the one I wanted. I got closer to his face. He didn't react. I could feel myself rising in fury but I didn't want to do anything. So I left. I didn't want to leave, but I had no other choice. I took a long look behind me and he was still there. Hadn't changed position at all. I stopped turning around by the time I had reached the next block and just kept going.

I never saw him again.

It was only a few years later that I finally found out what was the deal with the little boy. It turns out, unlike what I thought, he didn't suffer from an accident. Rather, he came home to his father – a father who had a history of being particularly violent. The two had an argument, and the father hit him until he was unconscious. They say the father spoke These will make sure you don't talk again when he used the scissors to snip out the boy's tongue. They say the father only realized what he did when the tongue continued to move and slip within his hand, as if controlled by an act of God. They say it was the tongue, not the boy, not the argument, and not his life, that made him kill himself not long after. They say that ever since his father's death the boy, at some hour of the day, will go sit down by the shade of the shadow of that tree and just wait. Occasionally someone will come back and he would just stare at them. Stare at them expectantly. No one could ever really find out what the boy was after. Perhaps he was looking for someone to love him. Or perhaps someone to blame. Perhaps he wasn't looking for anything at all, he just sacrificed his own life to become an observer in our world, looking up at us expectantly to make some sort of move. Or perhaps, perhaps he was looking for someone to finish the job.