Funeral for a Furry Friend
Eons ago, likely right after the last dinosaur thumped to the ground, I was quite young, laughably immature, and highly vulnerable. Being a small shy skinny boy, I was filled with infectious wonder about the big world still unfolding around me.
Around this time period, I had a beloved guinea pig. "Had" is perhaps the wrong word, for my little piggy had me. He was covered in black and white coloring and also slightly chubby. A cute precious precocious and paranoid little creature that I absolutely adored. He would run around his little cage in a circular frenzy, afraid of everything and everyone-including me, but I loved the little fella. One sad day right after I had transferred to a new public school my little piggy keeled over in his cage. No warning, he was just suddenly gone. One moment a beloved pet, the next a sad and very still piggy corpse.
We had no money for vets living in abject poverty as we were, and my piggy never showed a single sign of sickness, so we never found out why he died, he just plopped-over lifeless and that was that.
The devastation was overwhelming for such a young lad. I discovered in myself my first Great loss, and I fully suffered it. My chubby little piggy was my very first pet, and his death was heartbreaking for a young six year-old boy with no friends. Mere sadness didn’t cover it, I was the epitome of young sorrow, utterly inconsolable.
There was an empty dirt lot next to our apt building, and I decided to bury him there so he would be close. Even at that age, I had the concept of visiting a loved one’s grave, even though my mother never mentioned it, and I had never been to one before. It just felt right.
We buried piggy the day he died. There were no small boxes around, and all my mother had available was a used coffee can. So we employed that. A poor piggy’s tin-coffin with the alluring aroma of dark columbian roast. There are worse ways to be buried I’m quite sure. We did the best we could...
After the tears finally stopped, I'd think about my piggy less and less, as is only natural I suppose. The younger we are, the easier it seems for our sorrow to fade, out of sight, out of mind. Youthful resilience certainly helps.
A mere week after my piggy's burial, I overheard some neighborhood kids in the lot next to my building, they were laughing and whooping, and it wasn’t a happy sound. Sounding like young ruffians, their voices had a highly mischievous tone. These were bad boys doing bad things, no good for anyone. Even then, I could usually tell the difference.
Evil mischief seems to have a gleeful tone all its own. Hurrying as a young madman would I bounded down three floors of stairs, and I shot myself out the front door. I immediately turned the corner into the burial lot. It was a bright day, around noon, but something other than the sun scorched my eyesight. An abomination dominated my vision and branded a horrid sight upon my young fragile innocent soul.
There were older bigger four boys standing there surrounding my piggy’s exhumed coffin can. It was open and empty because they were manhandling his rotted skeletal corpse, putting something in his halfway bony head. I screamed, and they looked over, still laughing like young maniacs. Their mischievous glee was my utter dread. These were no longer just bad boys, they were ghouls, spreading utmost horror as if it were mere childrens entertainment.
I then noticed the boy holding my piggy’s corpse lighting what was in piggys jaws, it was a firecracker. That’s what they had placed there. The boy dropped it, and they all jumped back. I stopped my screaming when my piggy’s head exploded in a chaotic burst of decayed flesh, fur and bone.
That day, I learned the true meaning of trauma and hatred, and never forgot it. I saw them all laugh again, armed with a handful of firecrackers, and my first instinct was to make them pay, somehow, someway.
Fists balled, I grimly took a single step toward their hateful smirking smiles, with darkest intention written plainly on my young face. I was long past my own horror, and had now entered psychotic territory solely intent on bloody vengeance!
The lead thug lit a single firecracker and tossed it straight at me. It immediately exploded on the way to my head! Loud, dangerous, and way too close. The main course of this evil meal was an immediate muffling of sound, served with a side dish of pain in my ears.
I went with my next instinct on pure survival mode, and turned tail and fled for my young life. Cowards live to run another day, and so did I as well. Pop! Another explosion occured right behind me. I felt it against the back of my shirt. I threw open the door to my building (sadly there was no lock on the downstairs door) and heard them laughing right behind me.
I tackled the stairs two at a time as if my young life depended on it, and who’s to say it didn’t? They were inside the building in a flash and were right behind me, and damn they were BOLD!
I ran like the youngest world-class olympian hurdler up the hallway stairs, round and round, while being chased by the muffled sound of thunder itself. They kept throwing, but fear kept my pace up. They never got closer, but right before I got to the top, one popped right next to my head, pain exploding in one ear, and how they laughed then! After that last explosion and injury, I could barely hear it, and I’m grateful for that. All I heard was ringing and the muted sounds of evil glee, little else.
Reaching my door, I opened it quickly and slammed it even quicker, throwing the bolt across. They were in the hall giggling, and I heard a few more muffled pops, then they finally left while I leaned against the door in pain and silence, gasping for breath.
Eventually, I went to the bathroom mirror and noticed blood leaking from one ear and a small cut in the lobe. Luckily within an hour, my hearing would return to normal, and I cleaned myself up the best I could.
I never mentioned this to my mother, and she never asked or even noticed my lobe being damaged. I knew we were moving in a few weeks, so that helped. Thankfully I never saw those boys again. That day, fear and darkness made a permanent home in my young heart. I was now primed for my very dark future, which in all reality started there, on that cursed and evil day.
The End?
