The Curse

A short story of a boy in a city where nothing lives

The Curse

What has become of the city?

The boy stumbled across the deserted street, the pavement crying beneath his feet. He hasn’t eaten for the passed few days, and his mind was filled with primitive thoughts of finding food… or anything edible. Rotten bodies rowed in the darkest corners of the sidewalks, and the city that had been so enchanting now was silent. Dead. The air was heavy with dust and blood, and the blinding sun shone no warmth.

As he passed by every store, he remembered how it was, how alive it was, with people’s laughing traveling out by the opened doors. As he passed by the Three brother’s he longed even more, weeping for the olders days where he and his family sat upon the Old Dumpley’s chair, laughing at how the Old Dumpley dug his boogers and enjoying a classic Old Dumpley’s bacon and beans. Wimping for the days where his biggest worries were not having enough money to buy a chocolate sundae at the Lina and Dairy Ice Cream Shop.

What has become of the city?

He knew it, he knew the chief should have let that Gypsy’s son go when that Gypsy warned him of a curse. Moreover, he knew that the Gypsy would put the curse anyway, whether he had his son or not.

They hated us, and we hated them. But we lost, hard, as his mother said repeatedly on her dying bed.

The iconic penguin from Johnson Toys mocked silently at him with his big, idiotically joyful smile as he stopped by it. Its eyes were watching him, and it was happy. It was happy to see the kid that had bullied him and that had taken him as a punching bag suffer. It was happy to see this whole town ruined.

See, this is what the End is like.This is what you get for being mean to the good old Gypsies, for being so arrogant towards everyone.

“Shut up, you pig” the boy cursed loudly as he took a crooked branch from a nearby tree. With a broken grin, he stuffed its tip through the slight opening between its upper lips and its tongue. “There you go. Stuff your mouth with this. This is what you get for messing with my mind. This is what you get, you goddamn lier.”

So what? What can you change? What HAS changed? Your family’s still dead, and you are dying too. You know I am not lying, you just don’t-

A hammer smashed into the penguin, breaking the twisted smile into crumbles of metals.

“I said shut up,” giving it a satisfied look, the boy returned the hammer into his backpack and continued in a chilly voice,“I don’t care.They died for a reason, and I’m alive for another one. So keep you penguin mouth shut or the next time it won’t be this easy.”

Kicking the penguin one last time, he left. It was almost noon and he still had a lot to do. He had to find food before dark, when the safety brought by the sun left its place to the hollow of the night. His baby must not be hungry.

Strangely, as the boy’s moppy silhouette disappeared, the crushed head of the penguin began to move. The fallen pieces replaced themselves as the final clues of a puzzle and slowly, the penguin regained its past glory.

And this has been going on, for years, and years, and years.