Fiction: Harassed and bullied, Arvind finally finds an opportunity to avenge his humiliation

All the stories he imagines are about death and revenge, and they run on fast-forward in his head, all motives lost and options discarded till it is the climax, the good guy beaten but not broken and the bad guys about to be dead.

He plays these scenarios out with his toys and on paper – entire pages of his sketchbook are now smeared with red crayon scratches, spouting from brown figures torn apart by so many lasers, limbs flying everywhere. Scenes never shown in the cartoons on cable TV are played out here in all their gory detail. It seems logical to him – the lasers that pierce metal and take down aircraft, surely, they should burn through mere flesh.

The sounds of cricket are still audible – the shouts louder, the language worse. It is dark now and the younger kids have gone home but the older ones continue playing in the streetlights.

He is done with his toys and sketchbook, with his imaginary worlds of reciprocal violence, and now he sits. He is not ready to go back yet, not ready to face his family, or anyone at all really. He is contemplating the pressure inside his chest which sometimes...

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