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The Cruel Kids

I imagine it’s never an easy thing to hear that someone you knew a long time ago killed and raped a little girl. You think back and you wonder if there was anything you could have done to change what had happened. The most frightening thing about Jack Thompson is that I really feel like we could have.

We grew up in the same neighborhood, fifteen years ago. He was younger than the group I would hang out with, but his older brother was part of that group and he was always hanging around.

Back then, he wasn’t wanted at all, we never wanted him around at all. He would ride around the neighborhood, following us and whatever we were doing on a girls bike in bare feet that were constantly as dirty as his face. He was a weird kid and didn’t have many friends and naturally he would gravitate toward the crowd his older brother congregated with.

But we were all brand new teenagers, kids really, and kids can be cruel.

This story appears as part of the collection "The Cruel Kids: Four Short Stories".  You can get it for the Kindle or the Nook.

Comments

Carbonated Love said…
my jack thompson circled me on his bike throughout middle school. (so to speak)

when we got to highschool something changed about him. it seemed as if i was the odd one circling him. then in my senior year we became friends. I watched him graduate a few hours ago today.

good story.
10:42 PM
Culture Served Raw said…
Nice work, interesting approach. To answer your question, I try to comment a lot on other writers, and I now I link to my new blog when I publish. I hope this helps.

Keep them coming
12:50 AM
Anonymous said…
This was a wonderful story. I recall being teased and bullied mysef when I was a kid, but fortunately it's affected me for the better rather than for the worse. I can understand the guilt you may feel over this incident. Kudos to you.

I'm a writer to. Although an amateur compared to you, I would very much appreciate it if you would shed some honest feedback onmy pieces, be it +tive or -tive. Thank you.
4:11 AM
Bunni-chan said…
Awesome story! (^_^)
7:57 AM
Anna Russell said…
Nicely done. It's one of those ones that gets you thinking afterwards about where the rights and wrongs are of something like that.

And don't worry about the length, you said all that needed to be said. As Mark Twain once said "I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one".
11:40 AM
Anonymous said…
This was one of my favorite. You are wonderful. I can't wait to see what is next.
4:24 PM
Anonymous said…
That was a good piece of work. Jack Thompson definitely looked like he was sad and lonely. He needed friends so he rode his bike and followed them all over the neighborhood. When Jack was crying, I thought that would teach him a lesson about cruelty to kids. If Jack introduced those kids properly, all those bad things wouldn't happen or even raping that little girl wouldn't happen either.
2:32 PM
Anonymous said…
Nice post you got here. It would be great to read something more concerning this matter. Thanks for posting that material.
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