Acid Rain by R.D Rhodes (ebook reader txt) 📕

I did. I told them I wanted to die, and I was trying to kill myself. And they got all worried. Like lost little lambs, asking why? Why? Why? Why? That’s all kids say. And I just told them the truth, the worlds a bad place and I wanted to get away from it.”  He got up from his seat again and paced the thin carpet, full of nervous, wired energy. He couldn’t look me in the eye, he was looking everywhere but at me.

“You’ve got to be diplomatic sometimes though.” I said. “Some lies are okay, to protect their innocence. Fuck, they were kids. Eight years old.” I tried to hide some of the anger in my voice.

He shook his head. “I was going to. I could’ve said I was feeling better and everything was okay. It would’ve made them feel better. It might have made me feel better. But what truth is bad to tell and what truth is good? Is the truth not the fucking truth? That’s what I felt in that moment, that’s what I was thinking. And sooner or later you have to tell them like it is anyway. They will find that stuff out for themselves when they’re teenagers or adults, so what difference does it make? You can’t lie to them their whole life.” He glanced at my eyes and looked away again. “We all live in a lie. The world is a fucked-up place. And if you don’t find that out sooner or later you end up joining in with the lie. Either you find out for yourself and try to do something about it, the sooner the better, which hardly anyone does, or you ignore it, you don’t get told the truth about it and you end up becoming one of the people fucking it over. And that’s the easiest thing to do, just ignore it all. Ignorance is fucking bliss.”

I composed myself. “Well, that is what Jesus preached.” I said. “The truth, the truth, the truth.”

He let out a sarcastic laugh, and pulled at his hair again then let it go. “Nobody fucking listens to what Jesus said.  That’s one of the problems now, people have lost God, have lost religion. Like Solzhenitsyn said, lost God. And because of that, they’ve lost their morals. There is no moral code anymore, people have nothing to measure themselves by. There’s no punishment for sins, no reward for good deeds, and it scares me, but I think that’s what the masses need. They seem to fucking need rules and laws, to be ruled over. Just look at how they worship the queen!”

I couldn’t get a word in edgeways. He was ranting, wild, pacing the room vigorously, throwing his hands in the air. “People have no conscience.” He raced on. “The world’s full of greedy, selfish pricks and-,” he stopped in his path as if coming to a sudden realization, “And if I’ve managed to teach those kids anything about injustice or truth, about how people really are, then maybe I’ve did something good.”

“You still have to protect children though,” I butted in, “Childhood is the most precious, important stage in your whole life, that’s when you grow, that’s when your brains growing, when you develop, it’s the foundation for everything that comes after. You have to hide them from some of the truth; the truth’d fuck them up!”

“Well, you can’t hide it from them forever! Fuck, that’s why teenage years are so bad.”

“I had a fucked-up childhood,” I said, “and I’m fucked up now because of it. You need to be protected from bad at that age, and loved and-,”

“Yeah but that’s different! Love has nothing to do with it! Parents should always shower their kids in love. A kid should be the fucking center of their parents’ universe, their whole reason for living, or else why would they have them in the first place? And if you show kids love and explain the truth, which is the way the world is, properly to them, then that’s fine.” He stopped pacing. His eyes were solemn as he sat back down. “I don’t know, maybe it’s cause I never got a good childhood either. People always seem to cherish their childhoods. But if it ends and you just get fucked up later on instead then what difference does it make? If you get fucked up at eight or eighteen when you get your reality check does it really make a difference which it is? People should be living their childhood every day. That’s what Jesus said, just live like a child.”

What does a child represent? I thought. Naivety. Truth. Kindness. Simplicity. He had a point. And I didn’t want to argue anymore. I stayed quiet. Harry chewed his lower lip with his yellow teeth, lips so thin they were basically just a line at the bottom of his pale face. “Do you think I fucked them up?  I know that stuff can live with you a long time.”

“I don’t know, Harry.” I said. “I don’t know.”

He scratched his head and looked out into the darkness.

“Are you going to do anything, about the bullying? We can both do something?”

He sighed. “No. It’s not so bad. I just don’t react to it anymore. There were talks of shutting this place down. I hope soon but, I don’t know. Where will everyone go?” He rubbed his face and forehead with his hand.  “God help us all.”

Chapter 23

I  stared up at the faintly lit ceiling from my bed. What good did it do anyone to be locked up like this? Why, in two thousand and ten were they still putting people in eight by eight boxes to teach them a lesson, or make them better, depending on their need or crime? Was it to keep society safe, keep the people who weren’t like everyone else off the street? What about the bankers