Skip to main content

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.
Sexy Lady
UK escort
3:35 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Salt Lake Comic Con 2017 Schedule

It's time for another year of Salt Lake Comic Con and another hectic schedule for me. But! that doesn't mean it's not a helluva lot of fun. I hope you're able to join me at any of these panels. Especially if you like Star Wars. And please, please, please come to my signing and visit. Get some books signed. I'd love that enormously. Here is my Thursday schedule: Everything here is a highlight. That first panel about behind the scenes of the prequels is with Pablo Hidalgo and I'll be asking him questions about what it was like to be there on set for most of the prequels. Then I'll be asking questions of Michael Biehn, who I've been a fan of since I was a little kid. Aliens and Terminator were favorites. If you want to ask him a question, please hit me up on Twitter with it. I will ask it at the panel. And you don't want to miss Fauxthentic History's Infinity Gauntlet live episode. It's going to be soooo good. Here is Friday:
Post a Comment
Read more

The Missed Opportunities of Days Gone By

“Hello?” I said into the phone, accepting the call from a number I didn’t recognize. “Hey,” the feminine voice on the other replied, as though I should know the sound of her voice. At a loss, I said, “Can I help you?” “It’s Brooke.” Her name stopped me. It couldn’t possibly be her. We hadn’t spoken in years, a decade perhaps. “Brooke?” “Yeah, Brooke Baker. This is Mark, right?” Jesus Christ. It was her. “Yeah, it is Mark. Brooke. Wow. How are you? It’s been a long time since… well… since anything.” “I know.” “So, how are you doing?” “Okay, I suppose…” Her voice belied her words, though. Something was up. “I… It’s just been so long and I guess I wanted to hear your voice.” “I don’t think I had a number for you. Ever. I offered a couple of times, but…” “I was a brat back then.” And that’s how a random phone call turned into a two-and-a-half hour catch-up session. We spoke of everything under the sun: people we still knew, how different we were, h
14 comments
Read more

The End of an Era and a New Beginning

It's been a long time coming, but I think an upgrade to my web presence was long overdue. I began this blog in 2005 and it's served me well over the last 13 years. My goal in those early days was to write a short story every month. Back then, that was the only writing I was doing. This website, then called "Bryan's Short Story Corner," got me into a regular writing habit. One that I still maintain today. I hoped it would help me get eyeballs on my words and, looking back at some of those early short stories, I shouldn't have wanted any of those eyeballs looking. Today, my Patreon fills that void. There is a dedicated group of supporters there that help subsidize my ability to write short stories on the regular. After I started publishing books, this blog morphed into a place to talk about my projects and writing and it worked well enough for that for a long time. But now I have Twitter and Medium for those functions and they have much cleaner and easi
Post a Comment
Read more