Ex Chapter 13 - Befriending the un befriendable

Monday morning and still not murdered, Daniel entered the school playground to find a line of twenty or more children of various ages snaking across his path. Some weeks before, Dorsal Grellman had informed the head teacher that he was finding his job both time consuming and unrewarding. It seemed that not only were many of the recipient’s of his peculiar brand of violence ungrateful but also, in some cases, surprisingly evasive.

By initiating a queuing system the Head Teacher believed that bullying could be conducted in an orderly manner each morning, giving Dorsal the opportunity to pursue his hobby of torturing members of the teaching staff at his leisure throughout the rest of the day.

A ginger haired child whose features were covered by a dense thicket of freckles stepped forwards impassively, handed Dorsal the contents of his pockets and was punched in the head, knocking him off his feet into a puddle. He stood up, brushed himself down and walked into school sniveling.

A hushed silence fell when the next child stepped forwards. He was wearing two pairs of glasses and appeared from almost every angle to be completely square. He handed Dorsal a tattered ‘Dungeon’s and Dragon’s’ playing card and tried to initiate a polite conversation.

“This is an ancient wizarding token which gives you the right to enter the Kingdom of Kalamar. There you will find your elf guide who will take you to the Inn of the Screaming Elms where you must ask for Gwendrach the Goblin king - it is he and only he who can.....”

It was difficult for Ferris to continue speaking because by this point he was lying in a puddle with Dorsal’s shoe in his mouth. Dorsal used his fingertips to reach down into Ferris’s jacket pocket and remove a packet of chocolate buttons which he poured into his palm and ate all at once. He stood on Ferris to grab the little girl who was next in the queue by the pony tails when it occurred to Dorsal that breathing, which he had excelled at up to that point in time, was no longer as straightforward as it had seemed. It had in fact become completely impossible. The chocolate buttons had formed a cork which had lodged in his trachea - he was about to suffer an ironic death.

Dorsal fell to his knees in the puddle clutching his throat. Unfortunately for Ferris, the current incumbent of the puddle, this meant that Dorsal’s full weight was now on his perfectly square buttocks and head leaving him with no option other than to drown. Daniel, who had been following these events from a safe distance, mustered his tiny legs into a sprint and with the assistance of the little girl with pony tails and nine other children, he was able to shift Dorsal (whose face had assumed a hue of fire engine red which is particularly popular with interior decorators) and pull Ferris free. Ferris leapt to his feet, retrieved both pairs of muddied spectacles and grabbing Dorsal by the waist he delivered five perfect upward thrusts into his abdomen dislodging the chocolate and allowing Dorsal to breathe again.

It did not surprise Daniel that Ferris, an eight year old child, knew how to perform the Heimlich maneuver. He also knew how to defuse a thermo nuclear warhead and how to take off his pants without removing his trousers. What surprised him was that Ferris had chosen to save the life of Dorsal Grellman.

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There are 493 different Pokémon and Ferris had every single one, in its original box. Each one was pristine, never played with and in that way, never understood. This was not a collection; it was something far far worse. Daniel had never seen anything like Ferris’s bedroom but he had never seen anything like Ferris before so the bedroom was no real surprise.

The removal of the father section from the structure once described as Ferris’s parents had left the remaining mother section cruelly exposed to the elements. Love, demonstrative affection, empathy, had all been his father’s department. His mother had supplied business integrity and financial acumen - not particularly important parental attributes and when his father died even these deserted her. She gave and she gave and yet Ferris received nothing and needed everything, she had became his almost mother.

The sense of gratitude that she had felt towards Daniel - at last a child who would befriend the un befriendable Ferris - was unbounded. Daniel was the torch bearer in a home that had lost all sense of light, he was the 494th Pokémon and she didn’t plan to let him leave anytime soon. If Daniel found the look of unabashed murderous hatred he saw every day in the eyes of his father, of his headmaster, of pretty much everyone he met, disconcerting, it was at least something he understood, the look of unfettered propriety in Ferris’s mother’s eyes was far more frightening.

Daniel sat in a chair which Ferris and his mother had decorated for his first after school visit. The legs and arms had been wrapped in silver foil and a red velvet curtain had been taken down from their lounge window and laid across the seat and chair back. To many it might have appeared to be a throne.

Ferris was experiencing a level of karmic fulfillment hitherto attainable only by Dalai Lama’s and winners of the Euro Lottery. He had a friend in his bedroom, perhaps not playing with but certainly experiencing his toys and it had not, as yet, been necessary to tie him up to prevent him from leaving. He stared out of the window, his street had been painted in vivid colours he had never seen before. The front door of the house opposite his, the white cat which lay sleeping on the car in his neighbour’s drive, the poplar tree, Dorsal Grellman, the daffodils growing in the window box of the...

It occurred to Ferris that the view from his window now contained one Dorsal Grellman more than it had done hitherto and it was walking towards his front door.

Ferris mother entered his bedroom ululating with emotion. Dorsal stood directly behind her. Daniel could not immediately see a weapon but that did not mean that there wasn’t one.

“This is Dorsal” she rasped, “he says he’s your...”

“Friend” said Dorsal, throwing her against the wall affectionately and entering the bedroom.

“I’m their friend.”