“Sin Eater”, Chapter 4, “NOT Immune”

.

“Sin Eater”,

Chapter 4,

“NOT Immune”

.

Rats had only walked for about thirty minutes when he came across a playground.

There was a set of swings and a climbing frame.

There were picnic benches and a few slides.

Rats Mused that the fact the peasant children had “playtime” at all showed that the local ruler must have been quite good at their job.

Considering the pre-steam-age technology available!

But then again, an abundance of magic in the world probably helped.

Rats knew what steam technology was.

As he searched his own mind, he realised he knew almost all technologies.

Way beyond the point of mere quantum singularity multi-dimensional computers!

Ok, So, that revealed to him that he was not from around here!

Maybe not even native to this planet?

He searched his mind to see if he knew anything about spells and magic.

He found that lying there in his brain was all the arcane, metaphysical meaning of life stuff that ever existed.

Still, No hint of who the ‘Wipe’ he, personally, was!

But he seemed to know everything else.

Ok, So, those attack spells did nothing…

What did that mean?

What did that mean exactly?

The answer popped up instantly as easily as knowing basic maths.

It meant, that magically speaking, he was a “Null”,

That meant magic could not affect him,

But it also meant that the cost of that fact was that also he, himself, would never be able to cast the simplest of mortal spells!

Hang on…?

Why did his brain just use the term “Mortal”?

Did that mean he wasn’t mortal?

The universe ‘if it has any personality at all’ is considered by most, to be a ‘Totally Dick” or a “Total Arse Hole”.

It is why most of us know never to say

“Things could not possibly get any worse”

Or

“What could possibly go wrong”

Out loud!

This is an element of human experience that seems less of superstition and far more of a real, practical, fact!

You simply do not say those two sentences if you have any common sense!

So, we should not be surprised when the universe replies to the seemingly daydreaming child in a playground that seemed a little odd,

With a roundhouse punch to the head from behind!

But maybe we should not immediately blame the universe for that?

Tug was a classic playground bully!

Tug was a stereotype bully from a billion different stories in a billion different versions of those stories.

Tug could, one day, be a truly “Evil” person.

Tug was a large clumsy boy of about thirteen

At five years old, Tug just wanted to sit and watch butterflies all day and grow pretty flowers to attract more butterflies.

He had three arse hole brothers, an arse hole dad and an arse hole mother with a large extended arse hole family that ALL felt that a six-year-old Tug was too soft and needed to “toughen up” to survive

Later eight-year-old Tug got ‘told off’ (by everyone except his own family) so often for hurting other children when he was only being clumsy and harming playmates by accident.

That eventually, he found it less embarrassing to lie and claim it was on purpose instead.

By ten he was bullying on purpose!

A deep part of himself felt so scarred by his own bullying of others, that he then took that very same frustrated rage out - by doing yet more bullying, which again, deeply upset and scarred him even more.

It was a common downward spiral that has turned so many five-year-old Tugs into violent adult people who tortured the innocent for a living.

Each member of his family of self-hating arse holes had the same very same childhoods and their children would give that same childhood to their future children.

This whole last ten generations of this arse hole family were not inherently bad from birth

They were all innately, extremely gentle people, who at aged six were always told it was wrong to be innately gentle.

By people who had that told to them when they were just six!

The sad ironic fact was that Tugs entire family were violent bullies because they hated themselves for being violent bullies.

Again,

Tug could, one day, be a truly “Evil” person.

Tug used to love butterflies so very much!

Now Tug pulls the wings off them to try and prove to himself that he is tough enough to no longer care!

Tug saw an odd-looking younger boy alone, daydreaming innocently.

His tortured soul instead saw yet another butterfly.

So, Tug did what Tug does,

He ran up at full force and round-punched the younger child in the head!

So, a little bit more of that five-year-old butterfly-loving child could be killed off!

So maybe we should not be so quick to blame the universe?

Except that, all the other kids were doing chores.

Tug should have also been doing chores

But he had skipped off to be alone.

When punished later he will claim that he was hunting squirrels and act all defiant.

But the truth was, that he came here to privately cry and sob.

But he would never admit that!

The chances and the statistical probability of Tug being here, now at this very moment were astronomically small!

So then again,

Maybe the universe IS to blame.

Rats was on the floor bleeding badly.

He was confused and dizzy.

Eventually, he would realise that this meant that, No, he was not invulnerable.

That clubs, knives, fire etc could all hurt and kill him.

It was only all magic that he was immune to!

He had asked the question and the universe had answered him! - As an unsubtle shout!

So, Maybe the universe is “A total dick”!

Rats staggered to his feet,

Another punch floored him again.

In a panic, he looked around and tried to stagger towards stoner ground with fewer plants!

Tug tripped his victim up and raised a fist.

“Stop!” shouted Rat

“Wait!”

Tug paused to hear his victim beg!

He had convinced himself that he liked to hear his victims beg.

“What you little Wipe” Tug Yelled

“Please,” begged Rats

“Let me just move over there next to the stones and rough ground first!”

“Why!”

“So, we don’t crush any of these insects and flowers over here”

“What?!” Said Tug stunned and confused.

“Over there, we won't hurt anything… Get me over there… Please?”

Stunned, Tug looked around and then looked again properly.

Among the delicate flowers, insects were buzzing lazily, there were bees and…

… butterflies.

A dam broke inside.

Tug, who had secretly come here because he already needed to cry.

Fell to his knees and sobbed.

Rats staggered over, put his arm around him and squeezed his shoulder in sympathy.

“What's wrong!” Rats asked, his head still bleeding and throbbing in pain.

With that, Tug sobbed ever deeper into Rat's shoulder.

Despite having three older brothers, the thirteen-year-old child had not had a brotherly hug from any of them since he was seven.

From out of nowhere came a sobbed tearful question that Tug did not even know he had needed to be answered.

“Why don’t my brothers love me?”

“They do love you!” said Rats

“No! they hate me!”

Then the first power of the Sin Eater became known.

Rats knew far more than just lists of facts.

He knew “other” things.

He also knew truths about people when they needed to hear it.

So, he spoke this truth.

The cost of this was however was also a newly discovered weakness, The Sin Eater could not knowingly ever lie!

“Your brothers do love you!”

“They love you so much that Mich, Don, and Frank each have constant nightmares about you being harmed or picked on.”

“They never tell each other this,”

“But each is terrified that the other two will victimise you!”

“So, each of them is extra tough on you so you can protect yourself from the others if you need to!”

“Each of their hearts constantly worries and breaks for you!”

“Frank, the youngest of them, is still able to cry with worry about it”

“Mich and Don just act extra mean to other people instead, - to burn that worry off!”

And then,

A butterfly attracted to the tearful moisture on this Tugs hand,

Landed lightly and rested on one of Tugs fingers.

Tug looked at it, so light and delicate that he could barely feel it on his skin.

He gently lowered it onto the flower for it to half crawl, half flutter, onto.

“I am sorry” Tug Said, for the first time since being nine.

But only half this ‘Sorry’ was to Rats, for Tug was looking at the butterfly as he said it!

When Tug went home, his fifteen-year-old brother Frank pulled him up.

“Where have you been Wipe!” He demanded,

“Just out,” said Tug thoughtfully, his head lowered.

“Out! You Toilet?”

“Jimmy is pissing about with his crappy clay models again!”

“Go and sort it out!”

Tug nodded and went to see his youngest brother Jimmy.

But instead of smashing all his clay models and telling him that he was wasting his time and then slapping him if he cried.

Which is what would have happened if Tug had not met Rats an hour earlier.

Instead, he sat next to his little six-year-old brother.

The poor lad flinched in mute fear as Tug raised an arm behind him,

But relaxed when the arm. Instead went gently around his shoulder.

“There, our Jimmy, what you got.” Whispered Tug gently.

Jimmy started to show off each of his little crude clay animal models with beaming pride.

Tug listened and said how ‘good’ they were.

Then Tug showed little Jimmy how to make clay butterflies together.

They played for nearly an hour before dinner was called.

Because Frank was worried about his youngest brother Jimmy.

He had followed Tug, to slap Tug around if he went too far and was too rough with little Jimmy.

He watched in heartbroken, moved, fascination as the the two played together.

He watched someone being a proper older brother in an extended family full of brothers for the very first time in ten generations.

After dinner, he, Frank, had managed to find a private space to sob and cry again.

But this time, for a quite different reason.

This time, for the first time, there were some ambivalent tears of happiness mixed with the tears of sadness.

That night before bed, Frank asked Tug, without any mean name-calling, if he wanted to go fishing with him next weekend.

The answer was yes.

Don, the second oldest brother, saw the verbal exchange and did not know what to make of it.

But for reasons he was not quite sure about, he felt oddly comforted.

That night, for the first time, in a long time, Don did not have any nightmares about any of his younger brothers being hurt by any of the older brothers.

That night, for the first time in a long time, Don got a good night’s sleep.

Because of that, he felt like being less mean to all the people he met the next day!

Each of those people had a slightly better day,

And goodness rippled outwards over the pond of all shared human experience.

Within a few hours of the playground event,

Rats Stars became stronger, healthier and physical age of eleven. – His Sin Eater powers increased.