The Mothman Reborn: Part 1
The clock’s hands moved slowly. Daryl Kern’s dark eyes leapt from the pages of his notebook to the white face of the clock in the front of the classroom every few seconds, hoping that by some feet of magical time travel, he would find the day to be over. But instead, it seemed the more often he jerked his head towards the upper wall’s center, the slower the tiny black hands circled the face.
He scratched his head, his fingertips meeting the long curls of his budding afro. He didn’t particularly like his hair and was hoping he would get the time to cut it the following weekend. Of course, he was going to have to wash it first, as he inevitably understood that it would be matted with blood by the time the day was done.
Thinking about it made him shake in his seat a little, he cupped his face in his hands, trying to keep anyone from seeing his eyes welling up. Daryl had a problem. His name was Kevin Holler.
Kevin had bullied Daryl since they were 11. They had a lot of classes together, and if Kevin wasn’t threatening him or shoving him in the hallways, he was throwing spit wads at him in class. They were almost unnoticeable, the spit wads, until Daryl would rake his head with his fingers only to be greeted by the gooey feeling of wet, saliva filled pulp.
Gross to say the least, but far worse were the instances outside of school that made Daryl shudder. Kevin would go out of his way to stalk Daryl and beat the skin off of him.
Daryl didn’t understand why Kevin hated him so much, though he had many a conjecture:
- Daryl was smart; he was in the top 15% of their class.
- Daryl wasn’t athletic; he was small, with skinny arms and skinny legs and the coordination of an eggplant, Daryl was often teased in gym class by his classmates.
- Daryl was black; Kevin used many racial slurs when he assaulted Daryl.
Growing up in the south wasn’t a big help on that matter, but Daryl knew not everyone was racist. Most of his classmates treated him like everyone else and he had several white friends, but for whatever reason Kevin Holler hated his guts and made sure that he knew it at least once a week.
Once a week, usually on a Friday (like this one), Daryl would spend his weekend black and blue and trying to mend his glasses for the umpteenth time. It was getting to the point that glue and tape just wouldn’t stick…
Daryl’s body suddenly became calm. He was done. He was going to run home and enjoy his weekend. Enough of this crap! He was going to get home unscathed and read his new comic book.
He just got it two days ago, the newest Batman comic; he’d saved it to kick off his weekend and he was going to enjoy the whole weekend, damn it! He was going to get over his fears and defeat Kevin once and for all… but probably not in hand to hand combat… running was his best option.
Bring!
The bell rang and a clamor of scraping chair legs, books thumping closed, and students muttering, chiming, and bellowing announced the start of the weekend.
Kevin Holler who had been asleep at his desk for the past 20 minutes, awoke to see his target zip out the door and out of sight.
His mouth curled into a smirk as he slowly stood up and picked up his books. ‘No need to run, nigger,’ he thought, ‘I’ll catch up.’
