Chapter 1
Osbourne was a gangly sullen boy. He was rude to his elders and loved to bully small kids. Freshmen at his boarding school used to cower in terror whenever he approached. He enjoyed knocking their heads with his knuckles as he walked past them in the school corridors. Other times he just kicked and slapped them. His favourite past-time after supper and before lights out was thumping them with water soaked towels.
It was the beginning of a new academic year and Osbourne was in high spirits. There were lots of freshers to deal with. Ozzy was never the sharpest tool in the shade. He was in his seventh school year in a four year high school curriculum. Teachers had grown tired of trying to mentor him. At home his parents were too busy to be concerned, so Ozzy was pretty much left to his own devices.
On this evening as Ozzy was lumbering towards the dorm from the field, he chanced upon a fresher. He could tell from the brand new uniform the boy wore complete with a beanie. The boy was at quite a fair distance from Ozzy, staring out west where the sun was setting. Ozzy stalked his unknowing prey. “It wouldn’t do to scare the turd away,” Ozzy thought to himself. Ozzy had halved the distance when the boy for swiveled his head and glanced towards him. Their eyes met and for a moment, Ozzy faltered. The kid’s eyeballs were yellow and his pupils were drawn dark slits. “It’s got to be reflection of the sun playing tricks on my eyes,” Ozzy told himself. The kid, who could be no more than thirteen flashed a smile at him, a mocking smile Ozzy thought it to be. He then got up and started running away, looking back and still smiling as if they were just playing a harmless game of tag, as if he was egging on Ozzy to catch him if he could. The smile was confident, as if the severe walloping he was going to get was the furthest thing in his mind. This stoked the ire of Osbourne, who thundered after him, his face grim as thoughts of how he was going to teach the foolish boy a lesson of a lifetime flooded his pre frontal cortex. The boy could run well, but Ozzy was a former middle distance champion for the whole school district. (He had been ineligible for the past three years because of his age.) The boy disappeared behind the laboratory complex. The school laboratory complex was tucked away in one corner of the High school’s sprawling perimeter. A 6 foot high chain-link fence ran three feet adjacent to the length of the laboratories, creating a narrow corridor in which the boy ran. Up north towards where the boy ran the chain-link intersected with a brick wall. “He’s trapped himself,” Ozzy thought with glee.
As Ozzy reached the corridor he saw that it was not so. The boy was wriggling halfway out of the chain link fence right next to the wall. “So there is a hole in the fence,” Ozzy thought. He ran faster and made a despairing lunge as the boy threatened to make a clean exit. He caught the boy’s foot, the boy kicked backwards in desperation and Ozzy was left holding a boot. The chain-link fence doubled up with some woody vines and beyond them the land sloped steeply towards the sea in an arch, once you were out of the coral rocks there was a small strip of sand which was completely covered during high tide. Ozzy struggled out of the hole in the fence, the vines scratching his body but he didn’t care. He descended down the slope as fast as he could find footing, his prey just out of his reach. “I’ll kill the little punk,” Osbourne thought savagely.
Early on the next day the fishermen observed something floating in the water. On closer inspection, they found it was a body of a student from the local high school. He had jagged dents in his close cropped skull, with blood congealed around each depression like a bizarre case of ring worms. Both his wrists were broken as were his feet. His torso had broad red welts – evidence of a proper flogging and his facial expression was permanently frozen in a grimace of horror.
The fishermen also retrieved a grey beanie not far away from where they found Osbourne. Misshapen grey scales stuck on the inside.
