Creative Writing: The Bully: A Short Story

It had fired and what's more connected! Just as his father had explained and promised it would. No expression of pain had been observed, merely drowsiness, as he'd also been told it would. James himself could have sworn blindly that the device hadn't gone off, but it simply must have.
His father's brilliant contraption, so it would seem, had proven itself as being operational. But what about when the bully, who for all he knew could be beginning to stir right now, awakens to the fact that he'd been shot at, what's more by somebody who was worse than dirt. What of the repercussions that now await him? Again the asthma pump was put to use.
Silently, or as silent as the container allowed, he carefully placed the device back inside and moved

for the door. Gradually and as discreetly as possible he pulled the latch across and cautiously left the stall. Philip had not bothered with closing the door to his own and his present condition was plain to see. Miraculously, as lady-luck not often perched on his shoulder, he remained out cold. Wedged between the wall and the toilet, he laid awkwardly on the recently scrubbed floor, like a half closed deck chair. James passed through the threshold and neared the very individual that he'd been in the habit of fleeing from in terror, whereby he could see that Philip's chest was slowly heaving.
More than anywhere his sights settled on the spot ridden features. Drawn to the tiny trickle of blood beneath his left eye. The dart, he then realised, must have entered there.
A sharp squeak could be heard. The toilet door, he realised! Somebody was coming in. The frightening figure appeared by his side in an instant. James hastily pulled the door to the stall shut, concealing the bully's dozing physique.
"Good morning, Sir," he blurted out, upon sight of the headmaster.
"Oh, good morning, Mr Bell," he tutted disapprovingly. "I do hope you're not leaving the loo without flushing, James?"
On the verge of hyperventilating again, with the strong possibility of a heart attack in the immediate near future, he turned to the ajar door. The brute's foot lied twisted within the water at the bottom of the bowl. A scene that was more befitting to a Carry On film, James knew that this would surely wake him, but what else could he do? He'd been stood far too rigidly and for way too long to state that nature's call back-tracked at the last moment, which it had. Besides which, although a revolting thing to do, the head' may wish to peek inside to confirm-
"James?" he spoke, drawing him back to earth.
He darted in, pulled the chain in one swift, easy motion and retreated, closing the door behind him, displaying an innocent and weak smile. Nobody would suspect such a pathetic and fearful child as being capable of such a thing, he thought. Everybody made the point known that he was a piece of scum that nobody wanted to be around. Why the hell couldn't the head see it that way too and just leave him be?
His heart throbbed with a fury that went well with the sound of rushing water from beyond the door. Vividly, he could imagine, while staring into the judging face of his headmaster, the water submerging Philip's shin by now.
Ever so the victim of paranoia as he was, James awaited the inevitable sounds of groaning and all of the verbal indications that come with distress. However there were none and the young headmaster, Mr Venerbals, appeared satisfied, turning into the next stall along – the one that he himself had been hiding in.
His wheezing started up again as the rush of water decreased, padding down his blazer for the asthma pump, yet again, while sprinting from the toilets. Thank God, he thought, that he wasn't asked to wash his hands before leaving.
Once strolling back along the decorated corridors, surrounded by work that was presumably immortalised behind sheets of plastic, the pump was applied not once, not twice, but under the strict necessity felt three times. He had no clue as to how long he'd been in there; how long he'd spent watching his tormentor's head lower and lower above the wall, until falling away. The view of his sleeping head with the blood seeping out of it, bearing the entry wound left by the metallic dart like a singular hole in a block of mouldy, termite-ridden cheese.
All eyes turned to him, having re-entered Mrs Atkinson's classroom, much like their stomachs once they'd acknowledged who was walking through the door. As fast as his wobbly legs would permit, and through the force of habit of refraining from visual contact, he retook his seat by the door. The door that Philip, the out for the count fifteen-year-old, shall use when he storms back in and attacks him! A point in time that he could never determine or prepare himself for.
Mrs Atkinson was making her way over to him, navigating her way through the desks, while the pupils focused on their written assignments. He tried to keep his voice as steady as possible and although knew it to be a sign of suspicion, steered clear of eye contact with her too.
"Hopefully you'll feel a bit better after lunch," she whispered. "We're up to here," she said, tapping the page on the book and handing it to him, "where Ferrara is in the Pyramid..."
The words she uttered were senseless and her tone was perceived, for whatever reason, as threatening. Why? he couldn't say. Eventually she went away, which was a small mercy in itself, leaving him with the daunting task of textbook work. It didn't serve as a distraction. He couldn't imagine anything short of a catastrophic event purging the panicky thoughts from his brain. A plane could crash into one of the nearby fields and it still wouldn't destroy the looming repercussions that were inexcusably heading his way. The inhuman hog of a teenager wouldn't sleep forever, he knew. A specific length of time had not been told to him, something he now resented. It could happen at any moment. Philip, with a soggy and twisted foot, could march – or rather limp – back to class and go for him. That wasn't paranoia at play either, it was bone hard fact and no amount of running would ever change a fact.
It was lunch time and, although nobody had entered through the doorway, he dared not leave the confines of the classroom. Around every corner he'd anticipate trouble, he'd expect a vengeful face to be lurking around every single one of them. For this reason he stayed in the classroom, alone. Mrs Atkinson had no problem leaving him in there by himself, after all, he was no trouble maker. However, before her own departure, five minutes following the hysterical exit of the pupils, she'd left him one of her apples and insisted that he got some form of nutrition inside him. Surprisingly he managed not only to consume the ripe, red fruit but also kept it down, unlike last night's dinner. With a dizzy brain he pictured his stomach as an unstable maze in a high wind that could collapse and cause troublesome blockages at any moment. His whole body was falling apart - sparing Philip the toil of having to crack it open later. An ache in his neck from all of the time spent peering beside him at the door was also becoming unbearable, but it couldn't be helped.
Forty five minutes later his classmates returned, a sight he couldn't help gawking at out of fear of who may be shuffling amongst them, as had Mrs Atkinson five minutes before them. The bully did not. If Philip had been discovered in the boy's toilets, by either male classmate or teacher, then he'd surely have heard about it by now. An afternoon register was called and the class became aware of his absence but nobody thought a lot of it. The teacher shook her head as, from his recollection, the boy was a well established skiver. Three more hours, he knew, if he could just make the next three hours pass he could run home and never return. He promised himself this, but plans were like cheap glue and his whole life could come crashing down around him at any given moment in a series of vicious punches and kicks.
For one, perhaps Philip is wide awake and not wishing to show up with an embarrassing, soggy foot and really is in fact truanting. He could vividly see him loitering around the corner from the main school entrance, waiting for him to come out so that he could pounce! The thought – no, he corrected himself – the likelihood, struck hard. It would make more sense for him to exact his revenge away from the prying eyes of the adults. The chances of him being on the ball with that theory made him shiver, in a manner that kept dread at the surface for a very long time.
Later, an intense hour or so into the afternoon, he heard sounds of running feet in the corridors.

His heart became that of a rundown tractor engine and his quivering skeleton jolted the pen from his hand, not for the first time either.
Eventually the door to their class was opened in a hurry and the familiar face, although in a considerable amount of distress, of Mr Venerbals appeared. Quickly, without a word to the kids before him, he made his way to the front of the class and spoke into the ear of Mrs Atkinson. Within seconds, as though the heat of his breath on her lobe triggered some kind of impulse, the book fell from her hands and landed on the floor. Her wrinkled hands covering the widening gap between her painted lips.
The pupils were evidently lusting to know what all the fuss was about, especially after their teacher uttered, "Oh Lord, no."
Mr Venerbals, the forty-something head master, turned to the class and began to explain the situation.
"Okay, everybody." It was obvious that the words leaving him had not been rehearsed and to James he appeared almost sickened by his own shaky voice. "You are all being sent home early. I'm afraid one of your classmates has met with a terrible accident... of some sort. Philip, has been taken to a nearby medical facility, where he has regrettably been pronounced dead, following an accident in the

toilets."
There were a few gasps but no real looks of sadness. The facts of what had happened, not excluding the cold, hard incidental matter that he might have had something to do with the death, slowly sunk in, long after the news had hit everybody else.