--Birthday party going on around you, your birthday party, you're thirteen today. Here in your backyard, the small lot packed with people and streamers and bright screaming decorations. Loud party going on without you, it's your party and everyone's here. A surprise party. You had no idea; really, this is all something very unexpected, very unbelievable. And here you had hoped your parents had forgotten the occasion. You didn't realize what they had planned for you. They don't realize what's about to happen to you.
You were inside, jerking off silently in your bedroom, dog-eared porno mag in your hand, up close into your face, as quietly as you could as to not alert your folks, ear close to the door to listen for potential intruders, coming into your clenched fist, wiping your hands on a towel. Relaxed, you walked outside, looking for something to do, and you saw all of them. Standing around, looking bored, decked out in party hats, a few of them.
None of these people are your friends, not one of them. You don't have any friends. People tend to despise you for no apparent reason. They treat you like shit with every opportunity, in school, walking down the street, when you're in church on Sunday and you have to go to the bathroom. They're always there, always waiting for you. Your parents weren't sure whom to invite since you never have any of your classmates over the house. Your parents don't know why no kids ever come around. They don't think about you that often, to be honest. This party was arranged as a way to compensate for the slivers of conscience that hovered in the backs of their minds, a faint glimmer of caring that was easily snuffable. They contacted your teacher and got the names and phone numbers of most of the kids in your grade and invited what looks like everyone in your school, a good chunk of the youth population that dwells in your shitty little town.
Every one of them, festooned in shining trinkets strapped to heads and painted faces, those gorging themselves on cake, those destroying your mother's prized primrose bush, those peering over the fence to leer at the neighbors' sunbathing daughter. They all hate you.
Every single one of them, each and every blackened heart wishes in its own way you were dead.
And they all know you know it, too, because they tell you everyday. The shoves, the whispered threats, the awful notes shoved into your locker at school, the agony they inflict upon you incessantly. The things they whisper when you walk by them in the hall.
Piece of shit.
Fat Fuck.
Each child standing before you have a pet name for you, a personal mantra they spit out whenever you happen to be in their individual presences. Reminding you of how fucking worthless you really are.
Cocksucker.
Faggot.
Some of the older, bigger boys are standing over by the clown who's twisting balloons into latex imitations of animals. There's Bobby Rice, who drops his pants whenever the two of you are alone and makes you bury your face in his ass crack. He's tried to fuck you in the ass three times already, and while you always somehow manage to get away, there's that dread, that sickening pit burning in your stomach that one of these days you aren't going to be so lucky. He's standing right next to Arden Harris, who one time in the third grade hit you in the back of the head with a baseball bat, giving you a nasty concussion and terrible nightmares for a year after. He stepped on your fingers when he walked away from you, broke three of them. They're with others, ones whose names you're not quite sure of, but who're familiar through the cruel punishments they inflict upon you.
One time somebody stole your book bag and put a dead, rotten cat inside it. When you opened the bag, it's worm-eaten eyes stared up at you as they stood in a tight circle and laughed, until someone shoved you from behind, making you fall on it as you felt it crush with a wet sound all over your school books and personal shit in the bag. Most of those kids are here too, carving their names into the side of your house with pocketknives and smoking cigarettes.
And then there's Leonard Little, the older kid who dropped out a couple of years back but still hung out around the school. He's all by himself at the picnic table, looking at the dirt he kicks up between his feet. You fear him most of all. Last summer, he befriended you, and foolishly you went with him out into the woods to an old abandoned shack that the guys sometimes partied at. While he promised you some beer and some skin magazines, instead you found a roll of duct tape, with which he hog-tied you in the middle of the dirt floor, and stuffed a dirty sock found in the cabin into you mouth and taped that shut as well. He burnt you with cigarettes for a while, then got bored and left you there, in the middle of a long stretch of wilderness that not even the cops, if they knew where the place was, wouldn't be able to get to with their cruisers. You were left for dead, screaming and crying and hysterical, until two days later a guy and his girlfriend happened upon you. Thankfully the girl took pity on your shivering form, and undid the tape. The boy just wanted to beat you more. You didn't come out of your house for the rest of the summer, and your parents didn't even really notice. They just went on living their lives, like you had to. Leonard looks at you, standing on the edge of your patio. It takes a second for his stoned eyes to recognize you, but then the memories ease into his mind. He smiles, showing crooked stained teeth that look like they'd love to sink into your flesh.
By now everyone seems to have realized you're here. A collective murmur throbs through the crowd, as they know the guest of honor has finally arrived. They're all staring at you, recognizing you as a frail human target, a welcome mat for pubescent sadism. Everyone stops celebrating, stops eating, stops bullshitting, and watches you.
Your parents aren't around. They must be inside, gathering up your presents or something banal, oblivious to the fact you're about to be abused on a truly grand scale.
The smaller ones begin to collect sticks and various other weapons to use upon you. You see Arden remove a switchblade from his boot. He smiles in your direction as he flips out the blade.
Bobby Rice's eyes flicker with thoughts of raping you and mangling your body. He knows you can read the flicker of the image in his acne-scarred face, and he flicks his tongue out at you suggestively. You think about how good it would feel to let go and piss your pants, you're so afraid.
You can hear a low rumbling growl passing over the celebrants. They're chanting the insults they hurl at you. A bottle is thrown in your direction, shattering above your head as it rains its contents down on you. Smells and feels like urine as a few in the group chuckle loudly. Churning sea of hurt, slowly splashing its way up the yard, in your direction. You've been backed up against the side of the house. No place to hide, they surround you.
Happy birthday.
