Being Brutal (05 min convoluted read)

Via: Daily Prompt – Automatic

A few weeks ago I posted a status update on my personal Facebook page and received unprecedented numbers of ‘Likes’. I mean, really. I’m not the type of person who excites fandom. My posts are voraciously long while my views opinionated. Not a comfortable combination for many, especially those seeking cheap thrills. Yet, there I was – a person who makes inconsistent appearances on social media and receives generally single-digit engagements when I do condescend to leave a statement but suddenly, I am flooded with triple-digit numbers. While most people today would feel accomplished by such results, I took my usual route towards digesting any aberration within the realm of my cognizance – I questioned it. 

Superhuman

Via: Daily Prompt – Ten

 

Image: PublicDomainPictures.net

 

When Alvin was born, the doctor counted, “Ten toes, eleven fingers.” A unilateral preaxial polydactyly affecting the right thumb, the nurse was instructed to fill in on his birth certificate form.

Alvin’s father wanted to have the extra thumb removed. The doctor confirmed it could be done without damage to the nerves. His mother opposed. She felt blessed that Alvin was born healthy. For any surface imperfections, they would battle negative discrimination together.

At home, Alvin felt none of the sting that came with being a human anomaly. His parents and elder sister showered him with all the love that was due a child. As he grew older, however, he started noticing disparities in the attention he received from people outside his family. Once, at the grocer’s, a boy had pointed his finger at Alvin and shouted, “Freak!” over and over again until the boy’s mother intervened. Alvin was too young to understand what freak meant but his mom explained it meant superhuman.

Superhuman. That was the word Alvin’s mom always used to explain away any prejudice measured at him. Though it did not keep him from noticing when the school sent his sister home for fighting with her classmates. His sister had whispered to their parents that she only fought because the other kids made fun of his thumb, but Alvin heard her anyway. By then he had come to ascertain there was something gravely wrong with his right hand. Yet when he approached his parents where they stood huddled with his sister to ask why the kids insisted on making fun of his thumb, his mother had confidently claimed it was because his thumb gave him superpowers and people always feared what they did not understand.

For awhile, Alvin believed he truly had superhuman abilities. He assumed it was still dormant and would be activated when the time was right. He waited and waited for that time to come. He did not mind waiting even though it meant he was not yet ready to go out and play with the neighborhood children without being bullied but he hoped he received his power before school started. Of course, it did not. 

Daily Prompt: After “Devastation” (1 min read)

Via: Daily Prompt – Devastation

She allowed the foamy tides of the ocean to invade her patch of the sand, gradually stealing the ground from beneath her with their assaults. The rush of water rolling through the loose dirt tickled her soles in further attempts to make her lose her foothold. She dug in her heels, her toes. Years of being knocked to the linoleum had earned her, at least, that much grit.

After devastation, there was only freedom.