Sticks and Stones
By Bryn Sinstead-Reid
“You okay?” The voice drifts down from somewhere above me. I stare straight into the yellow orb of the sun it burns into my retinas blurring the fluffy sheep like clouds chasing one another across the brilliant blue sky. The scratchy, gravel bed digs into my spine a welcome distraction from the whirlpool of my mind and the swooping feeling inhabiting my core. I blink in an attempt to focus on the figure now standing in front of me. ‘No,’ I say. I’m not okay, definitely not okay.
The low voice gently encourages me to stand and a kind arm steers me forward. My head droops to avoid the curious stares and whispered murmurs from the morning crowd gathered just inside the school gates. A smirk, a snicker or two doesn’t go unnoticed by my guide who growls at the pack to get to class. The wall of hoodies groans and disperses in different directions opening a clearing to the office.
I sit on the bed in the sick room, the disinfectant smell curls up my nostrils making me catch my breath and heave a little. Why always the pale green walls in these places? The rock hard bed and crunchy sheet? My heart is racing like an out of control train heading for derailment.
“Did something happen on the bus this morning, we had a complaint from one of the school bus drivers.”
My mind is cast back to just an hour ago. The school bus is no different to the other school buses I had travelled on during my, so far, three high school careers. Stinking hot with the competing cheap deodorant fumes so strong it stings your eyes and burns your throat. There was the usual restless undercurrent, the feeling that something is about to happen, the bus, a tin can of testosterone fueled energy hurtling into the unknown. The thrill of it, the fear of it.
I fold over holding my stomach, peering under my fringe, wiping my nose on my sleeve. I take a breath and begin.
“ I ... don’t want to get anyone in trouble, I don’t know anybody’s names anyway” I say.
“Just start from the beginning” said the checked shirt.
“They started hassling me at the bus stop calling me names, laughing at my clothes, kicking shi... stuff at me. I walked up the road but they followed me and kept on at me. One of them started to throw bits of rock and stones so the other one joined in. I told them to pi… go away but then they started mimicking me, someone pushed another kid into me and they grabbed my bag and threw it down the road. Everything fell out of my bag, it is all covered in crap. Then the bus came”
“Go on”, the checkered shirt encouraged.
“There were no seats left on the bus so all of us from Fairmont had to stand. They wouldn’t leave me alone on the bus, poking me pushing me until I fell down in the doorway, at the back of the bus. I’m not sure what happened next ‘cos I was covering my head ‘cos they started kicking again, in my face and then my guts I am not sure The bus driver shouted and everyone ran off the bus when we got to school. I just didn’t want to go to class after that, I… yeah I just went and lay down on the oval and then you came sir.” I feel a tear roll down my cheek and hastily wipe it away. It hasn’t gone unnoticed.
“Okay mate, you need to take a breather and have a think about who did this, I will go and get you some water.”
I close my eyes and shiver as I am transported back to the bus.
The crowd gathered around baying for blood as we are catapulted towards our nine to three prison. The jeers, the giggling girls flicking hair and glaring pityingly as feet kick and the violent words fly. Shoe hits bone with a sickening thud, fists hit soft yielding flesh. The action gets faster and louder, the blows heavier. The boom boom of my heart surely audible by the cackling bystanders? Everything is spinning faster and faster, and then the bus jolts to a stop. The door opens. It’s over.
The door of the sick bay opens up on to the busy thoroughfare of the office corridor. I eyeball a dishevelled Year 9 walking past, backpack covered in mud and leaves, head bowed. Our eyes meet, mine all contempt and mirth versus his, fear, and something else, loathing? I make a swift cut throat motion to the retreating pale face as I fall back on to the bed and let rip the laughter that has been bubbling so close to the surface.
Rationale
The short story Sticks and Stones is an example of unreliable narration, a narrative technique that consists of the narrator lying or omitting the truth in their story. This may be due to trauma or mental illness or the story could be a deliberate lie. A well known early example of unreliable narration is Charlotte Gilman Perkin's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" written in 1892, where the narrator's psychosis influences her ability to reliably narrate the story. The narrator in Sticks and Stones also appears to have behavioural/psychological issues that render them unreliable, the difference being that the Sticks and Stones narrator deliberately sets out to decieve.
Sticks and Stones is told in the first person by a single narrator. First person narration lets your main character take the reader into their confidence because the reader has access to the character’s internal thoughts. First person narration was a deliberate choice for this story as it promotes empathy with the narrator and this is especially so when a reader is reading about familiar events (Hansen, 2007). I took a subject that everybody has an understanding of or is familiar with. The vast majority of people have attended school and have either been bullied, witnessed bullying or been a bully themselves. The term implied audience or implied reader refers to readers imagined by a writer before and during the writing process (Booth, 1983). I wrote Sticks and Stones with a particular reader in mind; the reader who understands and empathises with the bullied outsider. My intention was to provoke a shocked or perhaps ‘betrayed’ response in the reader once they have been on the emotional journey of empathising with the “victim” who it turns out is the perpetrator of the bullying offence.
Some of the literary devices used in the text include symbols and images to subvert expectations and to “trick” the reader. The story begins with images and dialogue that suggest that the narrator is someone who is used to or expects pain as evidenced by, ‘the scratchy, gravel bed digs into my spine a welcome distraction from the whirlpool of my mind,’ and, ‘‘No,’ I say. I’m not okay, definitely not okay.’ When writing this story I was picturing the reader interpreting the character descriptions such as ‘my head droops’ and the background context that includes ‘smirks and snickers’ to build a picture of a ‘type.’ The picture is of a narrator who is a sad, lonely, bullied outsider. The language and images utilised means the reader is primed to interpret other imagery as threatening rather than aggressive or exciting such as 'a tin can of testosterone fueled energy ’or ‘the crowd gathered around baying for blood’ and perhaps most chillingly in hindsight for the reader, ‘I close my eyes and shiver,” when the shiver isn't fear as the reader would first interpret, but excitement.
Like the short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce about the fictional American Civil War execution of Peyton Farquhar, my short story is structured around events befalling a main character. Bierce’s story uses a second-person narrative (which is revealed by its twist ending to have been unreliable), whereas my short story uses recollection of events from a first-person perspective to hide the unreliability of my narrative (which, like in Bierce’s story, is subsequently revealed by my twist ending). The sense of dislocation created by my twist ending is highlighted by changing the location of the action in the narrative: from the bus, where events are presented ‘in motion’ as fragments to the seemingly settled aftermath back at school. These devices were used to disguise my use of the ‘unreliable narrator’ and to increase the impact of my short story’s twist ending. By using these devices, and the influence of the essay ‘Using Bakhtin's Competing Voices To Interpret ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’ by Lucy Bednar, I create the ‘competing voices’ or perspectives of my first-person narrator as both the bullied, and the bully.
The initial feedback that I received was that the story did not flow smoothly, was too long and not focused or ‘tight’ enough. In response to this feedback, I reduced the amount of dialogue I originally had, added more description of the setting and events, and added more into the flashback scenes. The next drafts were more positively received with the only comment being that I would be wise to not push descriptions and metaphors too far. I did decide to keep the descriptive elements as they were important to building the ‘victim’ narrative, however, I was conscious to not push the imagery too far in some of my rewritten sections.
References
Bednar, l. (1992). Using Bakhtin's Competing Voices to Interpret "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". In Conference on College Composition and Communication. Cincinnati.
Bierce, A., Evans, R., & Atkins, E. (2003). Ambrose Bierce's "An occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". West Cornwall, Conn.: Locust Hill Press.
Booth, W. (1983). The rhetoric of fiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gilman, C. P., & Lane, A. J. (1980). The Charlotte Perkins Gilman reader: The yellow wallpaper, and other fiction. New York: Pantheon Books.
Hansen, P. (2007). Reconsidering the unreliable narrator. Semiotica, 2007(165). doi: 10.1515/sem.2007.041