Rock, Paper and Scissors

Prologue

The Macabre Kids

..--..

Four-year-old Wren waded his spade through the sand and filled his bucket to the brim. It was a tedious task but a castle was not something easy to build. Every kingdom needed a strong foundation and his no less. He felt a pair of eyes watching him. It took him only a split second to arm himself with his spade and he turned around to face the intruder.

Nothing.

Only leaves rustling with the wind. In the far distance, a swing swayed on its own, its chains squeaking in the queer silence.

He frowned and resumed his masonry work.

It was a deserted children’s park, something he had discovered on his own journeys of exploration. No one knew about it. His single mother would throw a fit when he returned home everyday- muddy upto the knees. His elder sister would smile gleefully through her braces as he received his scoldings. But he never told them where he went. He liked keeping secrets.

An hour later, the sun was setting across the horizon, filling the sky with dark colors of dusk- orange and red painted across the heavens like the portrait of a landscape. He realized that it was getting late and he ought to head back home. The mud castle was almost done. All it needed more was the finishing touch- a small red flag on the highest tower. Wren smiled to himself in triumph. He drew a moat around the castle with a stick, marking it as his territory though he knew no one would ever discover this special place. He collected his pail and tools and trotted back home, promising his unfinished masterpiece to return the next day.

With the little red flag, the four-year-old boy did return the next day.

Only to find his castle smashed.

..--..

It was on a field trip to a botany garden when five-year old Wren realized that he had a charm... a special sort of charm. Maybe it was his warm hazel eyes; maybe because he was the most smartly dressed kid in kindergarten, maybe it was his dashing, dimpled smile. Whatever it was, he seemed to attract all the little girls like a magnet. He was adorable, funny and even nice enough to help Carlie in opening her lunch box. The girl with the double plaits and thick spectacles now wanted them to get married and she promised vehemently to cook chocolate dipped pancakes for him everyday. Wren preferred her as a soccer buddy.

On the next field trip, another little girl came up to him with a flower. He had grown accustomed to receiving gifts from girls. Some were useful, most weren’t. The presents ranged from crayon sticks to their fallen-out icky baby teeth.

“Wren! I picked this for you!” Sammy declared, going a bright shade of red.

It was a yellow chrysanthemum.

“Really? It’s pretty,” he said. “... just like you,” he added as an afterthought and a dimpled smile.

They heard a sudden yell.

A boy appeared out of nowhere, watching them with shifty eyes. Under a small yellow helmet, most of his messy black hair clouded the rest of his face. He pounced on them with a war cry, chomped away the flower head and fled from the crime scene as quickly as he had come.

The girl gaped sadly at the empty stem she was left holding.

“S-s-sorry, Wren. Max ate it!” she announced with a sob.

Wren remained frozen, still watching the culprit’s back.

..--..

Ever since that little incident, Wren started watching Max from afar and it surprised him that he hadn’t noticed the macabre kid before. Max was a strange little child... a natural genius with many odd quirks. While others were still struggling with rhymes, he could multiply 521x781. Max also had a natural knack for language and grammar. He was the only one in the nursery who knew how to spell ‘rendezvous’. Others couldn’t even say the word, let alone spell it. Wren had also noticed that Max came in a BMW in the morning and left in a Ford in the evening. And though this boy had everything anyone could ever dream of, he was always alone. Max was always huddled alone in a corner, petting his frog or scratching his nails on the blackboard. The other kids made fun of his ugly shoes and his greasy hair. But he never seemed to mind them.

The flower-eating goat, as Wren had named him inside his head, was always lost in his own little world.

And then, like in every self-respecting community, there were the rumors. The kindergarten couldn’t be complete without its gossip.

Carlie, the spectacled girl and his to-be-wife swore on her grandmother’s grave that she’d seen Max draw pictures of skeletons and reapers in his sketching book. Another fellow, Horace said that Max came from a family of warlocks and demons... who had absolutely no fashion sense. Some girl said he was an alien and swore on the almighty constitution that she had seen his UFO.

At this point, Wren realized that the truth was far distant from fiction. And he decided to confront the truth.

He cornered Max at the water fountain.

“Hey you,” he said, crossing his arms and letting his frame tower over the other’s. First step: intimidation.

The flower-eating goat didn’t say anything and continued to quench his thirst.

“So, what’re you? A goat, demon, warlock or an alien?”

Max paused for a long moment before his small hand turned the faucet off, stopping the flow of water. He turned towards Wren and a smile broke out on his lips. It was a very creepy smile that reached only one side of his face. For the first time, Max’s dark eyes were visible, glowing with naivety and a strange form of brilliance.

“None. I’m a castle destroyer,” he declared and ran away promptly.

Wren stood there gaping, watching the other’s back disappear around a corner.

Apparently, truth was indeed stranger than fiction.

..--..

Wren was walking home at a lazy pace, kicking a small stone with the hem of his buckle shoe. Wren liked soccer but the stone held its reservations. No one liked being used as a makeshift football. No one liked being tossed from one street lane to another. But since it couldn’t voice its highly righteous opinion in the matter, the stone bobbed left and right, bouncing in a zigzag path until it came to rest at the bottom of a lamp post.

Wren bent down to pick it up when he noticed a pair of ugly shoes hiding behind the lamp post.

His head tilted upwards until he found the face connected to those feet. Max was standing with a grin playing at his lips.

“What do ya want?” Wren asked with a scowl.

“Be my friend,” came the naive request. On second thought, it wasn’t even a request... more of a desperate pleading or even an order.

“And why should I?” he spat out grumpily. He picked up the stone and turned to walk away defiantly. “I don’t like you. Go home,” he yelled back when he’d put some safe distance between them. Max looked on like a puppy who’d been kicked on to the sidewalk.

He was only a few blocks from home, walking down a particularly narrow road with high walls. Maybe it was because the road had been steeping downwards. Maybe because his mind had been preoccupied, feeling guilty about the way he’d treated Max. Maybe it was the stone’s way of extracting revenge. He didn’t really know. All he knew was that a few seconds later, he tripped over the rock. His brand new tennis ball escaped from his backpack and went rolling down to the sidewalks. It would have been nicer if his downfall had ended there but somehow, the rebellious ball found a gutter in its path and fell into the sewer waters with a loud plop.

With a bleeding cut on his knee, Wren scooted over to the opening of the gutter and peeped in. It was two feet wide and five feet deep. The ball was wedged between the sludge along with other guttural trash. There was also a family of frogs croaking in the dirty moss.

“Mom’s gonna kill me,” he said aloud, breaking into sweat.

Suddenly, a small figure sprung out of nowhere and jumped into the gutter with a war cry. He knew that war cry.

Wren looked on in shock and crawled away backwards, wondering what had happened to the idiot. Almost in answer, he heard some painful groans of ‘ouch’, some thoughtful mutters of ‘hmm’ and a final shout of ‘aha’ from below. Max emerged with a frog sitting on his dirty black hair. With his clothes all greased and soiled, he looked like that main hero in the comic Tarman. The macabre kid was still smiling. It was creepy but stupidly brilliant at the same time. He put forward his hand and opened his small fingers to reveal the ball inside.

“This is yours, right?”

“Y-yeah,” Wren stuttered.

..--..

She was fresh out of community college and had thought that the job would be a ‘piece of cake’. She had even bought herself a new handbag as a treat. To do her justice, it hadn’t really been her idea. The recommendation had come from a trusted source, that is, her mother’s dentist’s hairdresser’s loud, flapping mouth. While the free-spirited hairdresser preached that this particular job required no qualifications, the woman failed to mention the occupational hazards involved. Because teaching four year olds ‘ABC’ wasn’t as easy as 1,2,3 especially since her class was filled with eccentric children (or maybe, all humans were eccentric at this age, she didn’t really know). While one little kid tried to poke his comrade’s eye out with a crayon stick, a girl hid under the plastic table chanting the mantra ‘the boogieman’s gonna come, the boogieman’s gonna come’ and another petite, little fellow had accidentally swallowed glue thinking it was toothpaste.

Like the saying goes, big trouble comes in small packages.

Snack-time was even worse. Joanne Wells had realized that little kids did not understand the concept of Tiffin boxes. And then much to her grief, some snarky kid announced ‘Food Fight!’ and everything went downhill from there. When a piece of chocolate dessert came flying to hit her in the face, Joanne knew she should have just enrolled as an intern in some advertising agency or better yet, joined the army. They’d have treated her better over there.

Kindergarten Teaching?

Piece of Cake?

No, thank you. She’d had enough of desserts for the moment.

If it did her any respite, there were only two boys who weren’t taking part in the food fight. Max and Wren were sitting quietly in a corner, making origami or atleast that’s what she thought. What else would they be doing with scissors, glue and a fork?

Little did Joanne realize that the two were cutting her handbag to get to her car keys.