Attack And Receive

“So hit him back” my Dad said.

I didn’t fancy that idea.

But I was fed up with picked on by Grimes, the tall boy with the pimples and the grey skin like he’d escaped from the graveyard. I suspected the mud on his shoes was from his very own grave.

So, the next day, I faced up to him.

“He’ll respect you for it” Dad said. “You hit him back, he’ll not do it again. Neither will anyone else, they won’t fancy being hit, either.”

Dad’s words seemed far away as I looked Grimes in the eye. He was tall, I was small. I felt even smaller than usual.

His eyes had a strange expression in them, amusement, slight interest.

“So what you looking at?” he said to me, half sideways to his cronies who smirked and stared me in the eye, in a small circle.
Between their sweaty heads I could see the rest of the playground, life carrying on as usual, ignorant of my little world crowded in here amongst these humid beings.

What would Dad say now? So, “You, I guess”, I replied to Grimes.

“You guess? You couldn’t guess your way out of a paper bag.”

Grimes continued mumbling, inconsequential meanderings, the cronies sniggering at his non-clever comments.

Tedious.

Then, the inevitable “So do you know what I’m going to do to you now?”

Whether I answered yes or no was of little consequence.

I decided I would let him hit me first. After all it was wrong to be the one to hit first.

But, I also decided, on the spur of the moment, that I was fed up with being hit.

So I hit him.

I hit him as hard as I could, the way they do in the action films, arm flung back, then follow through on the forward swing with my full weight, crack into the jaw. My fist exploded with pain and for a moment his eyes registered surprise. Then, he laughed. He had not been thrown back through the window of the classroom to fall to the ground two storeys below, outside beyond the shattered glass. He had not even fallen backwards. He had not even given me the satisfaction of just slightly rocking on his feet.

He just looked at me.

Not moving.

He was going to hit me.

So I hit him.

Again.

And still he stood there, no reaction. There was no satisfying blood, no terrifying crack of bone.

He was really going to hit me now.

So I hit him again, and again.

I rained blows against his head. He chuckled. His bony chin, his pointed nose, were sharp on my soft fist. My little, soft fist burned and my knuckles shrieked in pain.

I stopped, breathing hard.

He was going to kill me.

No.

He turned to his cronies. He said, “Did you see that, boys?”

They grinned and nodded their heads, silently.

“He attacked me. He shouldn’t have done that, should he boys?”

They grinned and nodded their heads, silently.

No, he was not going to kill me.

No, not him.

He was walking away, hands jauntily in pockets.

I was left alone, facing the cronies.

He didn’t need to hit me, with his cronies there. He didn’t need to dirty his hands, with his friends to do the dirty work for him. His own delicate hands would remain undamaged.

They, his friends, his sweaty friends, advanced towards me.

That’s the last time I take my Dad’s advice.