Strange Games
It was rumoured I had never been born – that I had appeared on earth a fully formed man,
moulded into skin and bone. Some said I materialised in an orb of light like a messenger from
the future and some said I emerged from the animal spirits, a beast in my own right. It was a
weird and superstitious village where I lived – everyone had their own bizarre outlook on life.
Me? My memory is as weak as a soft rain – I know my name is Adam, not much else. I let the
others fill in the gaps.
I did know I felt more comfortable around children, and people said it was because I had no
childhood of my own, that I was struggling to find out what it was like, what it all meant.
The village kids would play games, strange games, and sometimes they would let me play
too. In one game, a few of us would climb a giant pine tree deep in the woods where no one
dared go except teenage lovers or small game hunters. The child who scaled the top branch
first had to shout secrets about the kid who was stuck at the bottom.
I was always going to lose – I could barely make it beyond the first branch. I walked with my
body bent over as if I wanted to crawl among the weeds, and my fingers were mangled into
twisted shapes.
One day, leaning into the wind like a long jump skier, a boy named Tommy held onto two
branches, balancing his feet against the crown of a tree.
He called out into the grey sky and crushed me with his lies.
He said, “All the stories about Adam are wrong, he did have a mum – a slave girl who gave
birth to him in a junkyard. Seagulls picked at her skinny body while she died. Then a mad
witch with crazy clown makeup snatched Adam, washed him in a bucket of blood and raised
him in the forest in a wooden hut, eating snails, without a thing to his name.”
After Tommy’s rant, my friend Alana who couldn’t climb so high either, sat me down in a
clearing beyond the trees and wiped my tears away with dirt-stained fingers.
She said, “Don’t listen to Tommy, he’s strong and has a big mouth but he tried to kill his
mum with a hammer and it was him who burned down the art class last summer. Listen, I
know who you really are, you’re like a broken superman, or a space alien pure and kind, or
something like that – you’re special, okay? What you’re going to do is beat him up, beat him
to a pulp.”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” I said, “I could never hurt someone like that, it’s hateful.”
But when I next saw Tommy on his way back from school, wiping his nose on his uniform
while sucking on a cola ice pop, an uncontrollable rage welled up inside of me. I only meant
to hit him once but I lost control; I broke his nose and cheek bone with my elbow and I
watched his face bubble with blood until I heard the noise of angry adults approach. I made
my escape.
I fled to the forest and hid in an underbrush near a river that masked my tired breaths with its
ferocious roar. The night came and went and as everyone in the village slept – no doubt
dreaming of drowning me in troughs of water or burning me among the trees I couldn’t climb.
I waited for the bus into the city.
Maybe leaving the village could help me remember who I was with a clear mind – remember
if I was born from the heavens or the slop, from gods or beggars.
Or else I’d learn that forgetting wasn’t such a bad thing after all and that life is a short violent
song no matter where you’re from.
Tim Frank’s work has been published in Bending Genres, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Maudlin House, The Forge Literary Magazine, New World Writing and elsewhere. He has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and 3x Best of the Net. His debut chapbook is, An Advert Can Be Beautiful in the Right Shade of Death (C22 Press ’24) His sophomore effort is, Delusions to Live By (Alien Buddha Press ’25)
Twitter: @TimFrankquill
Author website https://linktr.ee/TimFrank
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