The Damnation of Johnny Boy

11

The cosmos or whatever it was, just wasn't going to let him go easily. He woke up in the middle of the night to a loud crash. He jolted up from his bed and jumped off it almost instinctively. It was as if his whole body was in self-defense if something might crash into him again. He stood up groggy and looked at his bed to search for anything that might have fallen. There was nothing, he searched the room and found that there was a huge hole in the glass window and then he started hearing the sounds -

SCREECH SCREECH

He couldn't figure out what it was. He peered over his bed as it was coming from under it. He got on his bed, crawled and looked down under it to find a bat, flailing helplessly, screeching all the while in its rat-like voice. Its wings were most likely damaged as it could not fly. John couldn't figure out what to do with it. He looked around the room to find that even his cupboard door have been opened. He remembered it was locked, and can't remember anyone else entering his room.

He decided he'd have to kill the bat, with his bat. He walked over to his cupboard to grab the bat, he searched for it but couldn't find it anywhere. Fuck.

But he remembered, earlier that night he had grabbed that bat to attack whoever knocked at his door, and it was Mom, and he had thrown it down on the floor. He walked and picked up the bat. Now the part was, hitting the bat without looking. He didn't want to kill that creature, but he treasured his sleep more. He couldn't wake up the whole family. He moved near it. The bat wouldn't stop flailing. Before he aimed the baseball bat at the bat, it was almost as if the bat had realized something, its face pointed towards John, it stopped flailing around, John felt pity for it right after he already struck the bat. It came down and hit the bat right in the middle. He didn't intend to squish it, but enough to knock it out. It seemed to do the work, the bat didn't move around anymore and closed its eyes. He grabbed his backpack from his table, opened it up to grab the ruler. He used the ruler to carry the bat and throw it right out of the place from where it had entered. He slowly carried the bat out of the hole in the window, all the while careful to not step in any of the broken glass. Just as he gave the ruler a push to throw the bat away, the bat started fluttering its wings and it flew away! It circled around his house for a while, and then it flew away.

It was almost the break of dawn, light was slowly creeping in, amidst the darkness of the night. He checked for any blood on the floor from hitting the bat, there wasn't any. He hardly felt sleepy anymore, so he gathered the broken glass pieces from the window and cleaned it. He had nothing else to do, so he jumped into his bed. What was he going to do the whole day? Like fuck, he hadn't even called Brett back, and now his window had a big gaping hole which made the entire room much colder. He still had five days left before he could go back to school. He couldn't think about stuff too long before falling asleep again. He opened his eyes finally to the afternoon sun. He really felt like a bum, sleeping to noon and doing nothing whole days.

He washed up, went downstairs, remembered he had stored some food up in the fridge last night to eat today. He went ahead and ate that. He went back to his room, decided he could read a book. He picked up Mr Mercedes and started reading it. However he was very distracted, he could feel his eyes losing focus from the pages, his mind going back and forth between what had happened over the past few days. The glowing eyes of Jesus, that grinning man - what or who was that grinning man? Its body horrifyingly dark and with that grinning face. He wondered if he was suffering from schizophrenia but he didn't hear voices. He decided he'd have to get back in line, planned on calling Matt this evening, he didn't have the guts to call Brett directly. He'd however try to make things right once he started school again and met him. A phone call just wasn't going to be enough. After a while, he heard the house telephone ring from downstairs. He wondered if it could be Mom, so he walked downstairs and picked up the phone. It was indeed Mom. She had called to inform that she would be home late today, she had to correct some papers. Actually, the thing was that, they were allowed to bring the papers home till that incident when one of the teachers lost a few of the papers for who knows how. So now, John was asked to go and get Mary from school. It wasn't that far away. Just a 30 minutes walk from home.

He started early. It was around 2:20 pm. He decided he could reach there early and have some air for a chance. The sky was grey, dark clouds could be seen forming near towards the east, with the cold wind constantly blowing, bringing those clouds nearby. A storm was approaching. He decided to walk a bit faster, the storm didn't seem to come that soon but he didn't want to take a chance because his chances have been going only downhill for the past few days. By the time he reached, school wasn't over yet. He waited for almost 10 minutes. The wind had started blowing much stronger. He would have much liked to stay inside his room, and read some books, listening to music at the time and then fall asleep. He realized that the wind was making him sleepy. He decided he'd go back and get a quick nap. There wasn't anything much to do either. Mom wasn't going to be back any sooner, then he again remembered and stressed over the fact that he'd have to call and ask Matt for the notes. He hated that school wasn't over forever!

The school bell rang. Slowly and slowly the kids started pouring out, parents were gathered nearby, many still in their cars. Mary came out searching for their car which was almost always parked in the usual place, John had to go near and call her before she saw him.

"Hey, I'm here to pick you today..Mom said she's gonna be late. Let's go.", said John, taking Mary's bag from her.

Mary and John were close. On their way home, right from the very beginning Mary started telling all about what had happened at school today. How Will had accidentally brought his Mom's phone to class and it started ringing right in the middle of Mrs Jonas' class, the homework they were given that day, the thing about magnets she got to learn....the wind was blowing hard by now. Leaves started blowing right in their faces from the nearby trees. They were still about 15 minutes away from home. Just when a black shadow popped up in his peripheral vision, he turned his head to see that it was a bat..

It started flapping furiously at him. He was fucking scared. He knew it must have been the same bat he'd attempted to kill that morning and now it had come back for revenge. At least, that's what he thought. Can bats remember faces?

It started flapping at him furiously, his sister started screaming now. John used both of his hands to push away and hit the bat after letting his sister's bag fall on the street. Finally he felt he had punched the bat hard, and then it flew away for a second, he picked up the bag and shouted to his sister to "RUN!!!"....

The bat followed them with all the speed it was capable of. John turned his head back while running to see if it came near him but it wasn't behind him now. He looked and saw that it had now taken Mary as a target. NO. Mary had stopped and started crying by now, she used both of her hands to no use. The bat landed on her head a few times too. It was scary because it was not a small, rat looking bat. It was big, almost the size of a hamster with huge wings.

John now grabbed Mary's bag he was holding with both of his hands, aimed at the bat flying over her head and swung. It hit the bat, right very hard. It flew and fell on the street. John searched for anything nearby. Luckily under the tree nearby, he found a brick lying. He ran to it and picked it up, and before the bat could rise....PLUMP. Dropped the brick right in its head.

"C'mon...don't cry now..I got rid of it finally.", John said wiping away Mary's tears. Few raindrops had started falling by now.