He picked himself up from the ground, the water dripped from his face as he propped himself up. Clothes ruined he stalked off from the puddle he slipped on. It was great, he thought, now that he was both late, dirty, and annoyed.
It topped off the morning which started with his shoe catching fire, whilst on his foot, which then led him to the shoemaker's store. He had to hobble to the store on a very cold, dreary morning only to find the frost on the closed sign. Just his luck, to think that he had only bought the shoes yesterday.
The boys name was Jack, and he made a big impression on the people he met. Sometimes called "boy", "rat", "scum", but most of all, his absolute favorite was "kid". It's something about it that enchanted him, the way the adults could put that special accentation on the word kid, so it came out like a sneer. Bad experience taught him many lessons, he reacted to kid almost simply from memory.
"Boy, have you got the wages for the hard working men yet?" asked a fat man, chins rippling with spite.
"No sir, I happened to slip and it dropped, so I went down to find a rat ripped it open, so I spent the rest of the day putting it into a new bag, on the sidewalk" explained a very penitent child.
"Well, it just so happens its coming out of your paycheck, kid"
As if he had a paycheck. In the city everything was grimy, even the money. He saw the tall buildings, the perpetual smoke stacks, other children wandering around like him, carriages, horses, badly paved roads. He could almost smell the pollution in the air, and he believed there was no place like the city. The people were the grimiest of all, dirt stained mothers with bonnets of black crust, children who played around with brown faces around eyes and nose. Fathers were worse, but a rare creature to be seen, often in the factories working, or in the pubs drinking.
Kid had seen it all. It was sad but people tended to accept this way of living, after all wasn't the countryside for the savages of the world. He looked at those beautiful gates of aristocracy with pleasure, as everyone did in the city. The children couldn't complain, the more they did the more the welts appeared, and nobody cared. Kid had a job, at least, most children just played in the street while he wandered around, odd jobs such as delivery.
Kid would like to say he had no personal relations. Of course that was a lie, if someone asked him, he'd tell them his parents died in a tragic accident, and he was the wealthy unfortunate son of a candle maker. Of course this was a complete farce. His father, unemployed sat every night, not letting Kid in if he didn't bring money, his mother wasn't much better, cowering and bickering to distract attention. Everything was Kid's fault, be it his father's unemployment, anything breaking, loud noise, even local petty crimes were. He was seen as a disgusted creature, by his father at least.
His mother played a different game. She often comforted him, giving him food on a spontaneous basis, but when time came to blame she shied from her own wrongs, of course she was wrong but others were worse. She might have not done the laundry, but look at the Halles family down the street, they hadn't either. And never did anyone get mad at her, clever beast that she was, nobody was ever mad at her, thought Kid in a immature manner.
But that was Kid's life. |
Submission Name: A boy named "Kid"
