Bully Life 101
At a first glance, no one would perceive the festering loathsomeness consuming Amy Weatherby's soul. By appearance she was vivacious, charming and her eyes did not offer up any clues. Not even Amy herself could answer this question if asked.
"Why are you a bully?"
But don't ask her that question, or anything else that she doesn't want to digest, because if you do, without question you are going to pay, and pay you will when you least expect in an epic expose of sliced up vulnerability.
You will be eaten alive by the time she is done with you.
How could she know back when she was seven years old a dramatic change was about to strangle her innocence? How could her father know when he fell into a deep depression after losing his job that he was going to pull his first born child down the rabbit hole with him? On that day he was already drunk when he ran out of Budweiser and as luck would have it, they lived a block away from a convenience store where more beer could be conveniently had. When he got up to leave, he staggered and Amy, not quite aware of the perils of inebriation, jumped to steady him.
"I'm going down to 7/11," he said with a numb tongue and even though he was in charge of her care while her mother worked a double shift at the hospital, his only focus was on another silver can. He could already hear the snap of the tab on his next dead soldier.
"Okay Daddy. I'll go with you." And she reached for his hand automatically, as she always had, the same way she pulled up her covers before falling asleep; the same way she always breathed in and out while she slept peacefully knowing her father was her ardent protector. They always went to the store together, for milk, for bread, for a candy bar on special days; hand in hand. Almond joy was her favorite.
"No you stay here," he barked, and he tossed her hand away fervently like the last dead soldier. Something clicked in her brain and she heard him say to her, "You are worthless, you are ugly and I wish you were never born." Words he did not say but words she heard nonetheless.
After that day the landscape turned more brown, more dusty and dead along with Amy's soul. Love was beyond her reach, kindness was seen as weakness, and a distorted view of survival became a preoccupation. Amy was physically growing taller with time, larger in stature and her megalomania as she perpetually fed off the salt of the earth, consuming innocent children around her who walked face down, trampling any number of them with reckless abandonment. Like a wolf she was proficient at hunting down the weak, the sad, the lonely, cryptically tearing into their flesh automatically, for what she subliminally perceived as a means of her own survival. There was a monster within, born on an ordinary day destroying who she once was and who she could have been, all because of one nanosecond in time connecting with one too many inconvenient dead soldiers.
Larger and larger, she continued to grow with each tear down of the marginalized, becoming a giant on her own island, and from her perch she gleefully watched her casualties shrivel and shrink.
Bully life 101.
Dominate.
Beyond that simple rule, for Amy; life had no meaning.
A bully’s story
I walked down the hallways of East Wood High to look for my new plaything, new kid Johnson, who had just moved from Malaysia to our sleepy town of East Wood, due to his parents' work.
"This will be fun," I thought to myself. I then proceeded to trip him up and laugh along with everyone in the hallway. All he did was just ignore me and the other people.
Now, I may be a bully, but I wasn't always like that. It didn't help much that I looked and was built like a bully, and wherever I went, I was labeled as a bully, so why not live up to my label? I had also lost both my parents in an accident (cliche, I know) and got taken in by another family who had a daughter who was also a bully. I guess you can say I learnt much of my bullying from her. However, unlike my half-sister, who cyberbullies and harrasses her victims, which can be anybody she chooses, I just do minor harrasment to people I don't really like, such as Johnson.
I didn't really like Johnson because he was always showing off how wealthy he was. He always showed up with expensive things that I can only dream about almost everyday and he always had a bunch of people near him. Petty and stupid of me, I know.
Each day goes by like clockwork, and I notice that Johnson never fights back. Why? This is the question I wanted answers to and so I asked him. His answer surprised me.
He told me that he was once a bully himself and he got expelled many times. His parents' work? They were taken by a plane crash 19 years ago. His expensive things? They were just knockoffs.
"How are you still accepted to schools at this point?" I asked him. He told me that he was a volunteer worker that stops bullying all around the world. How this thing works is that the organization sends previously troubled kids to schools with high bullying rates and tries to stop them like that. Kind of like the 'Use a crook to catch a crook' principle.
I refleted on my mistakes that night I went back home. I didn't want to get expelled! I thought about all the people I've harrassed and felt sorry for them for the first time. The next day, I waited for Johnson at the school gates. He never came. I cried myself to bed that night, all the while thanking him from my heart, as he let me see the monster I've became.
