Nightmare Magazine 10: Dec 2013

"Because it would take the patience of a saint or Dalai Lama to smilingly turn the other cheek to those six savage boys day after day, to emerge unembittered from each new round of psychological and physical assaults; whereas I, Jared Shumsky, aged sixteen, have many things, like pimples and the bottom bunk bed in a trailer, and clothes that smell like cherry car air fresheners, but no particular strength or patience. Because God, or the universe, or karma, or Charles Darwin, gave me a different strength, one that terrified me until I learned what it was, and how to control it, and how to use it as the instrument of my brutal and Because I loved Anchal, with the fierceness and devotion that only a gay boy can feel for the girl who has his back, who takes the Cosmo sex quiz with him, who listens to his pointless yammerings about his latest crush, who puts herself between him and his bullies so often that the bullies’ wrath is ultimately re-routed onto her."