Surviving the Mammoth

Kagoatweed’s Rant: R&R but please don’t steal ideas!

A young boy sits at the table. His father stands across the table, his face turning purple. Fangs bared, he glares as he growls at the little boy. Smile ear to ear, the boy waggles his skinny little legs. They don't touch the ground. His father howls at him for his dwarfism, for his impish grin, for his friends that only he can see. He doesn’t hear his father. He sees the older man squirm as his large body transforms from human to other, but the boy hears euphoric laughter. His friends are laughing at his father.

“You hear him? He’s annnngry!” they tease. “He’s gonna explode!” they scream, laughing all the while at the red-faced man whose collar is too tight for his fat little neck.

The little boy is sitting in the kitchen, being berated for every breath he takes. Trying to hold back laughter, his thin fingers plug his nose and hold his mouth shut.

“Can you seeee him?” they giggle. “He’s gonna break the floor!” They drop to the floor in unison and start slamming their fists against the linoleum. They make a beat for behind their laughter.

The man in plaid, floor sagging beneath him, screaming for the world to hear, moves closer to the little boy. He grapples the lithe boy’s wrists and wrenches them from him face. His arm pulls back around his lumpy side like the rubber band on a slingshot, then whips around, hand in tow. The little boy doesn’t even hear the skin meeting skin over the quickening beat of his friends.

“Oooooh, he hit you!” they gasp. “We all saw it!” Their beat becomes more rampant, hurried, yet, still perfectly in time.

Now sitting on the floor in the corner, the little boy is comforted by vines and flowers that grow from the cabinets and peel themselves from the pattern in the wallpaper. His elephant parent lumbers over to him. The elephant raises his mammoth foot to crush the mouse of a boy. The beat quickens to a hum.

“Come on mouse!” his friends cheer.

Seeing his father for once, he screams as loud as he can, then scurries from the mammoth’s reach, throwing his father off balance. The mammoth has a long way to fall.

Lying on the floor, his skinny legs swimming through the air, he and his friends examined the mammoth.

“Look at his face! He’s so ugly! And mean!” they snarl.

“I know,” said the little boy, “but he’s never going to get me. Not really.” He smirkes, cradling in his hand the new bruise on his cheek .