John Smith

I wrote this shit because I was bored, and pissed. It gets my creative juices flowing. Very rough draft so pardon my terrible style, I might update it for you kids after some work is done. Felt like sharing, anyway.

On Interstate 75, just south of Tampa, Florida, very close to an off ramp leading to nowhere particularly important, lies a dilapidated green painted building, with a dusty path coming from it leading to a small parking lot. To the right of the path, a wooden sign read "Waite School for the Mentally Disabled." Though the school was fairly important to the surrounding community, a variety of failings kept the place constantly looking like it was little better than a shack. For starters, Brian Waite was no skilled businessman, evidenced by the fact he had elected to put the school out of town in the first place. Secondly, hard economic times had caused the school to use pupils, so there was not a lot of budget to go around.

There were still about a dozen students attenting the school however, and so after a recent incident which had left him with a limp, Brian Waite had hired a young girl fresh out of college to help him manage the various needs of all the children to whom his care was entrusted. On this particular day, he was at the county courthose finalizing his divorce, and so the girl, a blonde by the name of Sally, was entrusted to watch over all of the children by herself. Though he didn't know why at the time, Waite was certain that Sally was going to manage to fuck something up in a spectacular fashion. He never could have guessed exactly how horrible it would be when he turned out to be right.

At around noon on that day Sally had taken the children outside for some recess, they all seemed to have a lot of pent-up energy. It had been a good day so far, thought Sally, the morning was uneventful, aside from Bobby Adams who had smeared his morning pudding cup in the new boy's hair, and when Kyle Horton had hid in one corner screaming for fifteen minutes.

Still, in her opinion, she had managed quite well without Mr. Waite there and she was very proud of herself, and the kids. So she had taken them out back and into a fenced-in area and let them play. It was a nice area, all grass and with various toys littered about, and there was a small lake very close by that could be seen through the chain link fence at the back of the yard. There was no playground set, because Mr. Waite was certain that if he bought one a child would get seriously injured somehow and he would be sued faster than he could blink. Sally thought it was silly, but she wasn't the boss, and after all maybe the old man was right. Still, it was certainly one of the nicer areas the children could be in, and she was glad to be outside.

A few of the less social children were spending time on solitary pursuits like staring at the grass or running aimlessly in circles, but most of the children were playing with a big red ball in the middle of the play area. It was a game of sorts, the children would kick the ball, and then another would pick it up and throw it, sometimes one of the children would simply hold it over his head and dash around with it. The game had no rules, no points, no teams, or any structure at all, but all of the kids were happy to play, and trouble was rarely caused. Seeing that everything in the yard was going fine, Sally went inside for a moment to use the adult bathroom and sneak in a call to her best friend to talk about Sally's nefound post-graduation heterosexuality.

The children barely noticed her leave at all. Those that were playing with the ball were especially involved in their game and continued with their activity as if nothing had happened. Kyle Horton was bouncing the ball up and down, and it bounced off his shoe towards the new boy. He tried to grab at the ball, but it was an uncoordinated lunge and he completely missed it, and it went rolling across the yard, through a small hole in the fence, and didn't stop until it had reached the edge of the lake. The boy went after the ball, and even managed to crawl through the small hole in the fence.

The other ball-playing children had stopped what they were doing to look at this chase and when the boy reached the water there was a collective wave of unease and mild panic that swept through the group. One of the kids covered his eyes. They all knew, in their own way, what danger was in the lake. They had all seen the alligators swimming around and had a lot of them had even seen one eat a bird that had stopped to get a drink once. There had been a lot of tears that day.

The new boy did not know any of these things however, and so, unafraid of what might lurk beneath the waters surface, he reached out over the water to grab the floating red ball, arms flailing wildly. A nearby alligator saw the movement, and seconds later swiftly lashed out, and clamped down on the boys arm. Momentarily, the arm was completely bitten off just above the elbow. With the rest of the arm already sliding down the alligators throat, it retreated back into the gloom of the lake, startled by the cries of child it had just attacked. The boy was screaming in pain and confusion, blood pouring out of his recently amputated appendage in great spurts.

The other children saw all of this from the safety of the other side of the fence, but they were all frozen in fear. One of the girls cried out something unintelligible to the boy, but he was too occupied with his missing arm to notice it, nor did Sally, who was still busy with her phone call inside. He did notice, however that the ball had rolled back onto the ground, and with his remaining arm he scooped it up and began to shamble towards the fence. Due to the blood loss, he fell to his knees before he reached the fence and rolled over onto his back as he hit the ground.

As the kid lay there, bleeding out, his consciousness fading fast, he looked up at the sky and gaped at it's beauty. In his dying moments he was at peace, marvelling at the clouds and the sun, and pleased to have gotten the ball back. It was his now, he knew that.

Suddenly he saw someone standing over him, his momma he thought, come to tell him how proud she was that he had gotten that ball. Or Miss Sally maybe. The figure bent down over him, and in his final moments, the new boy saw the shape was Bobby Adams bending over and taking the ball away from him, and before the darkness overtook him, the boy simply felt anger and sadness.

And I'm doing fuck all. Wish I could at least get drunk, but alas. Anyways, what are you fags doing?