As if two jobs and as much photography as I can possibly squeeze in wasn't enough, I thoroughly enjoy writing short stories. Creative writing. Though my style may not be to the liking of some people, as it's blunt and often from the dark side of humanity. But I don't write for other people. I write for my own pleasure and to maintain good mental health. Here is a samplefor you.
Anton Wimp was a perfectly normal and average kid, the way that boys are most, around that age. He had all the dreams and the fantasies that we all had when we were his age, but he also possessed the most wonderful, life inspiring and invigorating imagination and sense of adventure that you have probably ever seen.
Anton was in no small part inspired by his Dad, to whom he really looked up. He gobbled up his Dads’ encouragement to “forge his own path. Dare to be different and not worry what other people think. Believe in yourself, love yourself and create the kind of life for yourself that you wish to live in”. Right down to the way he dressed, Anton was a product of his Dad’s DNA. Anton liked adventure, but he was also…well, a bit of a Wimp.
Anton’s best friend, his BFF, best friend forever…at least for right now…was a girl named Andrea Spassmacher. Andrea’s parents had come over from Switzerland, long time ago, where they had lived in the Alps. They had spent a lot of time up in those Alps, or so Andrea had been told, playing their alpenhorn. One day, according to Andreas Mom, Andrea had taken her mothers’ dish soap, diluted it with a bit of water and poured the whole thing into the Alpenhorn, so that when her Dad tried to play “Ricola”, the only thing that came out of that horn, was a kazillion soap bubbles rising into the clear blue sky of the Alps, like an army of white balloons and everybody in every village on every mountain top was apparently able to see what Andrea had been up to. This was the story as Andrea herself and told it to Anton, so Anton thought that Andrea was “full of trouble” – full of “Spass”, and he was wildly fascinated by that.
Anton and Andrea grew up on the same street in Smalltown, Anywhere, back when times were tough and money were hard to come by so every family had to do everything they could to stretch every dollar. That meant everything was usually homemade, including Anton’s socks. Knitted by his Mom. According to Andrea, there were yarn enough in those socks that if you unraveled them, they would go all the way across the world and there would still be yarn enough left to tie the legs of three cows together. She’d suggested they tried – to unravel them, that is, but Anton didn’t have the courage. He knew he’d be in trouble if he did. So instead Andrea ordered him to empty his pockets in his knickers. She wanted to see what boy carried in their pockets: One well licked, hard candy sticking to the pocket lint. One rusty nail bent like an “L”. Two small skipping stones and a half-chewed piece of bubble gum, together with one dead un-identifiable beetle found on last trip to the local pond. Probably alive when found, but certainly not any longer. In total, six little “gems” for his Mom, next time she’d be doing his laundry. 25 years later, it would be car keys, condoms (in case he’d get lucky) and a crystal crack pipe. But for now, this was what and where we were at. And that was just in the front pockets.
Andrea, on the other hand, well…all she ever carried with her, was an arm’s length of metal wire. Unbeknownst to Anton, metal wire you can use for a lot of productive purposes. Not only to make your pigtails stand out straight like the two arms on a crucifix, but one could also, if you knew how to do that, and Andrea knew how to do this, use it to unlock what would up until that point have been locked locks. Like, say doors. Doors to almost anything. Padlocks and other items used in an attempt to keep people like Andrea out of what would surely be a treasure trove to Anton. There was probably not a lock in town that Andrea couldn’t “fix”. On the other hand, one could also jam a bit of wire into any lock that required a key, so that nobody could open it again when they showed up with the key. Yes, metal wire is very, very utilitarian. Andrea was well aware of this. She was also well aware of how fascinating she was to Anton. Being a couple of years older than him, she felt the power she had over him, and one day she decided to put her power over him to the test.
They were walking across “Blubber’s”, the fat farmer’s field. Blubber nowhere in sight. Only one of his stupid cows standing there chewing like there was nothing else in this planet to do. Anton, Andrea and the stupid cow just stood there looking at each other for a moment. Then the stupid cow lifted his tail and piped out a nice, steaming warm dung patty that slammed into the grass below its ass and splashed out like a bowl of porridge hitting the floor. A tiny little smile crept up on Andreas face but it quickly spread to a huge grin, as she processed the thought that had come to her mind. “What a gift”, she thought. Then she turned her head and looked over at Anton. If her smile was huge, before, it became humongous, now, because right behind Anton, was the electric fence that kept the stupid cow in. She gave the cow patty a good look, then shifted her gaze to the electric fence, back to the cow patty and then again to the electric fence. “This is almost too good to be true”, she thought to herself. “And Blubber nowhere in sight. What could possibly be better? An opportunity like this, you will probably only get once in your life”.
“Do you like
me?”, she asked Anton? “Are you fascinated by me? Will you do anything for me?”
she inquired. “Will you prove it to me?”
He didn’t
think about it long, Anton: “Yes, yes, yes and yes”. All four of them. No
hesitation.
“You see
that electric fence, over there?”, she asked. Anton did.
“I want you
to go over and pee on it”. Anton gave the electric fence a good look.
“You don’t
have to touch it. Just pee on it. Just like you pee in the toilet standing up,
without touching the bowl”.
“That’s doable” Anton told himself with a bit of relief on his face. “I don’t have to touch it”.
As the sun shone down from an unblemished sky, Anton crept closer to the fence. Step by step, little by little, like he was afraid it should jump out at him like some jack-in-the-box. Like the fence posts might, at any second, snap free of ground and start chasing him through Blubber’s field, right past his stupid cow.
“Closer”,
commanded Andrea, like some Napoleon on his horse, crossing the Alps.
Anton looked
reluctantly over his shoulder at Andrea. Then he took another step towards the
fence.
“Even
closer”, she said, while pointing to the fence. “Close enough that you can
actually touch it…but don’t worry, you don’t have to touch it. Just pee on it”,
she said with a smile on her face.
Anton closed
one eye and squinted up to the sun. He was sweating, now. It must have gotten a
lot warmer in the last minute or two.
“Ok, that’s
good enough”, it came from Andrea. “Close enough. Now show me you love me. Pee
on the fence for me”.
Anton was a
little confused by what she said. He didn’t even know what love was. “Did I
ever tell her I loved her?”. Anton tried to remember. To think back. He
couldn’t remember them ever talking about love. And at home, his parents, sure
as licorice is black, didn’t either. So how could he even know what love it?
And when did he ever tell her?
With two little trembling fingers, he pulled out his little wee-wee, gave the sun another look with one squinting eyes while a pearl of sweat rolled down his neck. Then he shifted his gaze to the fence where the stupid cow had now walked all the way up to stand right on the other side, curiously looking at Anton, while slowly chewing on the green grass. He wanted to watch this, too, the stupid cow. Then Anto closed his eyes and relaxed every muscle in his body.
Surely it
must be like that, Anton was convinced, as he lay there in the grass looking at
the cloud drifting by in front of the sun, blocking it out, the sun, like some
ominous sign of things to come. The sun, this giver of life, now extinguished,
even if just temporarily. Surely that must be what it’s like to be struck by
lightning. Was he even alive? Was this just all a dream from the afterlife?
Then he felt
the pain that had catapulted him to the ground. Felt it in his wee-wee and
tears started rolling down his cheeks. Andrea looked at him with a satisfied
smile on his face.
“I’m impressed, Anton. You really did it”.
Coming back to being himself again, Anton roamed his pockets and found the old, well licked hard candy and ripped it free of the pocket it was stuck to, then popped it in his mouth. If he’d ever needed a candy, a taste of something sweet, it was now. It was right at this moment. The lint was still on it, Anton noticed, but he wasn’t picky at this point in time. It was a sweet sensation in his mouth to carry him over the last experience, just 30 seconds ago. An experience that surely took him into manhood, as Anton saw it. Andrea didn’t quite see it the same way.
Anton got to
his feet. Slowly, but he got there, and they started walking across Blubber’s
field. The stupid, fat farmer with his stupid fat cow and his stupid electric
fence. All Anton wanted to do now, was to go home to his mommy. He wasn’t quite
sure it would be a good idea to tell her what had happened, but he really
wanted to go home, anyways.
“Hey,
Anton”, Andrea said, 20 metres into their walk across the field, towards home.
“Ya?”
“You might want to zip up your pants”, she continued. “Otherwise your mom will
ask weird questions”.
Anton looked
down as the zipper that hung there in the bottom, like a tongue out of the
mouth of a dog. He zipped up, the pain gone by now.
ANTON WIMP
A short story by Brian de Amorim
He never
told his mom or dad about what happened that day. The day he became a man.
Andrea had
long moved. She lived in Saskatchewan, now. But Anton was still in his old
digs. On sunny days, he liked to lay on his back in Blubber’s field, watching
the white, fluffy clouds roll across the blue sky. With a smile on his face, he
stuck his hand in his pocket, dug out another candy and popped it in his mouth.
Anton Wimp entered manhood, that day, he thought to himself. I wonder what
Andrea is doing now?
No comments:
Post a Comment