Ain'T Too Proud To Beg (409 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 1 review (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Sully (View user info) at 2004-09-18 14:53:12 EDT
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
Marcia Sanders was washing dishes in the kitchen, as her son burst through the front door in tears. She knew instantly what the commotion was about.
"Oh, honey! Did that Jimmy boy make fun of you again?" she asked, running to him and wiping his tears.
"Y-y-yes. He m-made fun of m-my of my..."
"Joey, don't let anyone make fun of your stutter, no one is perfect. I'm sure that Jimmy Spadia has some problems too that he doesn't tell anyone. C'mon, I made chocolate chip cookies. They're in the living room. After you do your homework you can go out and play."
He took off his backpack and went into the livingroom as his mother went back to washing dishes. Marcia loved her son more than anything. He was all she had. Being a single mother with twelve-hour workdays, she had great difficulty raising a child. Marcia tucked a stray strand of her soft blonde hair behind her ear and stacked the last dish. It was 4:13pm and she had to be to work in less than twenty minutes. Was getting pregnant at fifteen part of her plan? No. Nothing good had come out of that two minutes of pleasure. Except Joey.
"Alright, kiddo. I gotta go to work. The number's on the fridge. Have whatever for dinner. And don't go to bed too late. Love ya," she kissed him on the cheek, and was out the door.
Joey diligently finished his homework and went outside. Some of the boys in the neighborhood were already out riding their bikes so Joey joined them.
"Hey Joey, guess what I got in the mail," said Tim Foster in a braggy tone.
"I don't know. W-what?"
"Check this out," he handed Joey a folded letter. Joey flattened it out and read it to himself:
29th Annual Ritnerville Youngster Marathon
To the parent(s)/guardian(s) of Timothy Foster,
Congratulations! Your child has been chosen to be among the two hundred children picked at random on January 24, 2189, to take part in Ritnerville's 29th Annual Youngster Marathon. You shall consider it an honor to have your child in our marathon. The event takes place on March 1st at 3 o'clock pm at the town track in front of Ritner Tower. Any questions, feel free to visit the Ritner Estate on 24 Providence Street.
Memorial Service will be held the next day, Sunday the 2nd at 1 o'clock pm.
Your child's number for the marathon is sixty-seven(67) which is enclosed. Good luck!
Signed,
Jasper Williams
Vice President, Ritnerville
Joey refolded the letter.
"W-whoa that's so c-cool," he said.
"I know," said Tim, "look at this, it's my number," he held up a large sticker with the number sixty-seven in black digits. They boys gathered around Tim congratulating him.
"Man, you're so lucky, Tim. I wish I was in that marathon," said a neighborhood kid, Toby Simmons. The rest nodded in agreement.
"Well, my dad said that the letters are still being sent and tomorrow's the last day until all two-hundred kids get their stickers. Maybe one of you guys will get a letter and we can run together!" said Tim, exciting his friends' hopes.
After another two hours of hanging around with his friends, Joey went back home. He made himself macaroni and cheese to go along with a glass of milk, his favorite meal. He finished his meal, watched some television, and went to sleep, with hopes of getting that coveted letter tomorrow.
At midnight Marcia got home from work, peeked in on her beautiful little boy dreaming, and went to sleep also, after a long day.
*****
Recess. It was usually every little boy's favorite time of the day, but for eight-year-old Joey Sanders, it was forty-five minutes of avoiding Jimmy Spadia. He hated Jimmy and Jimmy hated him. Joey had never done anything to offend him and he had never even really talked to him before, but Jimmy still persisted on incessantly teasing Joey because of his stutter.
"Hey, Sanders! How many times did you fuck your mom last night?"
"Sh-shut up. G-go aw-away, Jimmy."
"Sh-sh-sh-shut-shut-shut u-up!! G-g-g-g-go aw-aw-aw-away, J-J-J-Jim-Jimmy!!" mocked the 150 pound sixth grader. His cronies laughed with him.
Joey turned around and started walking away.
"Where you going, faggot? I wanna talk to you."
Joey looked back and saw that Jimmy and his buddies were running towards him. He ran as fast as he could towards the jungle gym. He ran and ran, through every square yard of the playground, but his enemies refused to tire. Without any other choice, he ran off of school property and into the woods. Jimmy was the only one left chasing him now. Joey sprinted his heart out through the woods for as long as he could.
Curiosity overcame him so he took a glance back. No one was there and probably hadn't been there for a while. This short loss of attention caused Joey to not look where he was going, and his right foot was caught under a raised tree root. His body rotated, as he tried to break his fall, and twisted his foot in the wrong direction. He screamed.
Marcia opened the mailbox on 49 River Street to see just one letter. She tore it open:
"Dear parent(s)/guardian(s) of Joseph Sanders,..."
*****
"Hello, Mr. President. My name is Marcia Sanders."
"Nice to meet you Miss Sanders. What is it that I can help you with?"
"It's about the Marathon. I want to take my son out of your competition, please."
"I'm sorry, but that's not possible. The two-hundred children picked are the two-hundred children who are going to be in the event. I cannot change it. I'm sorry Miss Sanders."
"Please, you don't understand. He sprained his ankle badly and he's on crutches. He can't run. There's no way he's going to finish the race."
Ritner smiled, "Miss Sanders, it'll be all the more interesting if your boy is disabled. I wouldn't care if you came in here and told me he was a fucking oblong with no arms or legs, he'd still roll as far as he could to that finish line. Have a nice day. Guards," Ritner's wrinkly face was contorted into a somewhat sadistic smile.
"No! Please President Ritner, don't make my little boy run that race! He's all I have!" she fought away from the guards and ran up to Ritner's desk, "What do you want? My house?"
He burst out laughing, "Miss Sanders I own this town. If I wanted your house I'd just take it if I wanted it. Be gone."
The guards again had Marcia by the arms, but she was kicking and screaming and again she got away from their grasp, "Do you want sex? I'll give you sex. All the sex you want if you take my Joey out of your race."
Albert Ritner stood to his feet, walked around his desk and looked Marcia over from head to toe.
"No thanks. I don't find poor blonde whores attractive. Guards take care of this worthless woman," he said and walked back behind his desk and sat down. Two guards took their clubs from their belts.
"No! Please I'll give you anything! I beg of you, take my son out of the Marathon!," she screamed, as one of the guards struck her in the face with his club.
Again Ritner laughed, "You have nothing to give that I want. The Marathon is tomorrow and your boy will run it, crippled or not. You should consider it an honor. The greatest honor."
"Please," another club struck her in the side of the head, "have mercy..."
*****
Joey spent that night at the Ritner Estate, and the next day he was escorted to the big race.
"W-w-where's my Mom?" he asked occasionally, always getting a vague response from a guard.
He talked to some of the kids he knew that had been chosen also to compete. Tim Foster was there, and so was Jeremy Hansel and Mike Gardener. Joey observed the starting line. The race itself wasn't even a 'marathon' really. It was a five-hundred yard dash on a straight track, and the citizens of Ritnerville lined both sides of the lines cheering and screaming. All the racers were boys and girls between the ages of seven and fourteen, just like it had been for the twenty-eight years before that this annual custom had gone on.
"How you gonna run with them crutches?" asked Tim.
"I d-don't know. I'll just h-have to t-try my h-hardest," stammered Joey, racer number 191. He scanned the crowd for a few seconds but didn't see his mother.
The bell rang. It was time to line up.
The three boys said good luck to each other, and went to line up in their pre-ordained spots. There were ten rows of twenty, and the ground had a painted number where each racer was supposed to start. Joey hobbled to the third row, seventh child over, and stood on number 191. Again, he tried to find his mother in the crowd but to no avail. He looked to the clock of Ritner Tower. It read 2:58:39 in digits. Less than two minutes before the bell would go off for the second time.
Joey readied himself. He tied his only shoe, and made sure his crutches had no loose bolts.
The other children also prepared by stretching their legs and other warm-up techniques such as jumping jacks and toe touching.
President Ritner sat in his decorated throne at the finish line, and ripped open a bag of popcorn.
The crowd stared at the Tower in anticipation. They started to count down from 10...9...8....
The sniper readied himself, laying on the top of the Tower, and lit a cigarette.
3...2...1.... RING
The children sprinted, and Joey hobbled. There were cracks in the air as some ended the race early. Kids ran past Joey, as he kept the rhythm of both crutches in front, then alternating with his good left foot. He said it to himself as he went, "Crutches, f-foot, c-crutches, foot, p-p-pull, step, pull, s-step," and kept his focus ahead towards Ritner Tower. The boy in front of him met his doom early on, and Joey had to maneuver over his body.
The crowd reacted to every casualty.
"Why do you do this?" asked Jasper Williams, the Vice President.
President Ritner seemed to ignore him at first, but then looked him straight in the eye, "My father began this Marathon twenty-nine years ago. I once asked him that very same question when I was a young man, and old enough to see that what was going on was corrupt," he looked back to the track, "and he said something to me that made perfect sense. You could allow Satan himself to rampage through the neighborhoods for one minute a week, killing as many people as he wanted. Of course there would be an uproar at first and everyone would wonder the reasoning, but soon, if it continued long enough, people would look past it and it wouldn't be questioned. It would be accepted as any other ritual."
"That may be true, but eventually Satan would kill every single person if the 'ritual' goes on for an extended amount of time. Don't you see that?"
Ritner ate some popcorn, laughed once more, and said, "True, very true. But it won't happen immediately, Williams. There is going to be a day when the citizens of my town become intelligent and see that some of my policies and laws are a little bit..."
"Tainted?"
"From your point of view, yes. Ritnerville won't last forever, that's a fact, but I'm trying to make sure that those people do not get smart as long as I'm alive," finished Ritner. Jasper walked away, not wanting to see the carnage on the track.
Joey was now the farthest behind the rest.
"C-crutch, f-foot, pull, s-step," he said, hobbling as fast as possible on his crutches. The crowd around him became irrelevant. All he saw was the Tower ahead of him.
A heat surged through his body, and he knew that it was his time. He felt the scope on him. He knew that the sniper determined that it was Joey's time to finish the race next.
Two bullets flew through his chest and out his back.
When it was over, and the track was cleared, the officials counted that 124 out of the starting 200 children finished it.
The Memorial Service was held the next day. People cried over their lost children, but no one questioned why the Marathon had to happen, just like every year.
Marcia Sanders wasn't there to be at her son's grave.
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