Poker :: 50 Word Short Story
One foot out the door on my way from Florida to Wisconsin, I still needed to make time for @jayna's Fifty Word Story Challenge
The prompt this week: bait
I leapt back to my school days, retrieving a memory of bullying from one very annoying individual.
I hunched low at my desk, as if it would somehow make me as invisible as I wanted to be.
The kid behind me kept poking with a pencil. Kept shoving my chair. Whispering. He was baiting me into reacting.
But I kept my poker face. I’d get him later.
Title image by @negativer using Canva
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Wow, this is so great, @negativer. I want that bully to get poked with a hot poker!! Nicely done. Safe travels!
Thanks @jayna! The bully in this case had free rein for almost the entire school year, then pushed me over the edge. I kind of poked him back in a somewhat ungentle fashion...with a pencil. Could've ended much worse than it did!
Hey Neg!
Glad you took time out from trip prep to play...
This one made me laugh out loud. And I love the misdirection of the title.
😄😇😄
Thanks! A little double-meaning is just a bonus present for those that happen to notice it.
A nice dark and uneasy ending that lingers.
Great use of the prompt @negativer and I like how you touched on bullying in this one.
Thanks @cizzo! I wrote this based on a specific memory, so it's a bit of an uneasy feeling for me as well.
Nice one!
I was both bullied and bullying.. awful memories, especially the ones when I've bullied someone - these people got some special feeling about me - that they can't be their self around me, because I would make fun of them. These kinds of wounds doesn't take just a day to heal...
That's true. This particular memory is from...decades ago, and it still has some power over me.
This happened in my school lots, but no one waited till later, the reactions were always immediate!
I was pretty low-key in school; I always waited (and usually did nothing). Your school sounds like it would've been interesting :)
It rarely got serious though, just a threat or a quick little slap to stop them doing it again... I'm actually still very good friends with about ten guys out of that class of thirty guys that I was in school with from 13 to 16.. Some of my best friends actually..
Hahaha haha... Please what did you do to him at the end o? I Likkie the story. How did you overcome the bully back then in school?
I...er...stabbed him in the leg with a pencil. Kind of by accident, kind of not.
I was once stabbed with pencile..was in the second grade.... the graphite from the nib stayed inside...needed a surgery afterwards..
I know; I was worried when I did it. All I could think was that I gave the guy lead poisoning. I felt so bad about it. I thought I was poking him with the eraser end of the pencil..but I was not.
When we were childs we all were evil...sigh... these are not our dark pasts.. these are just mistakes waiting to be repared...