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By Emmanuel Williams

I don’t get hurt. I don’t get wounded. I bleed, of course, but nobody gets that pleasure. Ever.

In kindergarten I knew this kid who was going out with this boy. My very peers sporting hickies and smacking each other’s asses beneath the slide in the sandbox and ruining playtime for everyone. 

I must have been very young.

But I remember cornering her by the tether pole and slapping her for her bravery. I don’t know what came over me. One minute we were pounding the ball back and forth, when we could reach it, another she was asking who my boyfriend was, and I didn’t have an answer.

Around the ball went, and when it was my turn, I had it right where I wanted it… but it wasn’t the sphere I wanted to send hurtling into outer space, it was hers. So I snapped, letting the ball spin out around the pole. Not before I was across the circle and removing the spit from that little bitch’s cheeks.

The very presumption of some girls.

I was sent to the principal’s office and suspended for a week. I couldn’t return unless I brought my parents with me. By the time we all sat for the re-metriculation meeting, little Jessica Sweeney hadn’t recovered from the strike. In fact, she was in the local children’s hospital trying to get her jaw reset, and there was talk about her parents considering dentures due to the number of teeth Jess had lost.

Eight. Teeth.

All on the left of her face. 3 from the bottom, 5 from the top. I had no idea I was that angry.

Looking back she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I didn’t know my strength, and I didn’t know what I’d become. Not yet anyway.

Grades 1-5 weren’t a cakewalk either. I began to learn that boys were far more stressful than girls. Usually there’s a ringleader and you can just kick him in the nards and run without attracting attention.

But even their parents came hollering down mine about their son’s inability to urinate, or sit properly, or ride their bike anymore. Some never hopped back on.

Thank God we weren’t poor. Both mother and father worked long hours. They didn’t need to, we were fine and never weren’t. They simply could not stay put on the couch or the porch, and being in a motor vehicle drove them absolutely nuts. We were always playing games to pass the time between when we could be on our feet again and just independently make shit happen.

Admittedly, we were anomalies. Strange fuckers, indeed. I was never told why we were different from everyone else. Though it’s not like I had the time to ponder deeply about why I am who I am. What I can do, or…

It’s not that I’m doing anything anyway. But I’m not going to let anyone or anything get the best of me, hurt me, wound me, heaven forbid kill me…

You wanna know how many times I should’ve been dead?

317 by the time I was 15. 1500 by 21. I gotta tell you, high school sucked.

I can remember the time I got jumped by half the school’s cheerleading squad, including two of the queer-leaders. Males who are, you bet, cocksuckers, who somehow convinced the school that they will give the football and basketball teams just as much  courage as girls in skirts constantly lifted to show their underwear. Thank god these morons wear pants. 

Can you imagine if they didn’t?

There I am reading Batman comics in the courtyard, and here comes Tiffany Madison. Cheer Captain. She doesn’t like my black fishnets and platform shoes making my pale legs cuter than ever, I thought. But no.

“You can’t wear black on Wednesday’s, it’s school spirit day.”

No she didn’t. 

“Fuck your dried cunt Madison,” I said. “The day you could face me one on one is the day I listen to your disgustingly perky face about what I can and cannot wear.”

“Go home, Sam,” she said. “You’re out numbered.”

I looked around at 7 downdressed members of the Carlton Shoe High School of Denver, Colorado and counted two males, five females, all of them the biggest on the squad.

“Is that right?”

They had no time to prepare…

I dropped my graphic novel and took Tiffany by her throat. The group parted as I pushed her 30 feet back and into the brick wall near the cafeteria doors. Heads popped up as her eyes turned red, and spit fell from my glowing teeth.

The queers stepped up to defend her, one of them pulling at my waist while the braver one hooked his inner elbow across my neck. But I still had the bitch’s throat. It was at this time that the girls stopped screaming and stared. Wondering how they could even be useful in such a state of affairs.

I kicked backwards and found a leg. So I kept kicking, and the boy around my waist loosened his grip to tend to his crumbling knee joint.

Madison was blacking out, and the creep around my neck was tightening his grasp. I had to respond to him, but not before she passed out. So I let him choke me. I could still breath, and it felt like he couldn’t bring himself to bruise anything he was holding.

Shocker. You can choke me but you can’t commit. So weak.

I saw her eyes close. I heard my male assailant scream. 

“NOOO!”

He thought he was a part of the remedy. But he failed to protect his queen. She fell from my loosened grasp, and my hands were free to focus on the remaining threats.

I turned easily, and saw that there was nothing but staring faces and screaming boys.

Members of The Rainbow Club had been walking in the halls and saw, to their horror, one of their queers on the ground and another trying their hardest to choke a girl up against a wall.

I heard them all clearly the entire time.

“What the fuck, Ronny, let her go!”

“Kill that bitch, who cares!! Hang on Ronny!”

“This is madness!”

I did all I could think of in response. I found his neck in turn. Looks like today’s the day I choke bitches! All these bitches!!

I didn’t break his grasp on my neck, I was small, and sweating enough to spin within his fall cardigan sleeve and face him. And when my hands slipped up past his chest and onto his addams apple, thumb to thumb, he fumed like he was chewing on alka-seltzer trying to get out of a math exam by faking a seizure.

Then his eyes turned the same red as moments ago.

“What is wrong with you?” It’s all he could manage.

At the thought of the question I roared like the Metal artists who were the only souls who could break the icebergs living in my chest on a daily basis.

“AIRRRRARRRRRUGH”

And bone, definitely bone, snapped. So quickly and abruptly.

Ronny was dead. He fell, limp as a sloth monkey falling from a tree. Bananas tumbling after him.

END OF PART ONE.