Mark’s Way
Mark Murphy’s a baker... a very strange baker; he makes the most delicious pies, but he has a dark side. Oh, he knows how to conceal his true character and lead the little old lady customers into thinking he’s such a nice young man. They’d shudder, if they really knew.
He hates kids, and has since he was one himself in Floyd’s Bluff, Iowa, when Johnny Rayburn made a fool of him the last day of school. Johnny was very popular right off the bat, it seemed, with all of the other kids that were in the first grade class, and even Mark liked him. At first, that is.
Midway into Mark’s first year as a student, things went awry. Although Johnny had never been mean to him, Johnny’s popularity ate at Mark’s insides; so much so, the school nurse became alarmed at the number of times she’d seen him.
Finally, the school nurse decided she’d fill out a form and send it home with Mark. That action resulted in Mark being examined and tested by doctors who ultimately determined he had ADD, then prescribed a drug.
The drug they prescribed for Mark was Ritalin, which is a stimulant, (think speed), and just one of many drugs that kids somehow got along just fine without, literally for eons. While there may be, and always have been kids with issues, it seems that now we are creating more.
To make a long story a bit shorter, Mark grew up abnormally. In fact, a substantially large portion of today’s youth are growing up similarly. And while we’ve accepted the pharmaceutical companies are honest, trustworthy and beyond reproach, they are endangering humanity.
Ritalin wasn’t enough though; they had to make lots of other stimulants (speed) for kids, so they could mess them up in a myriad of ways. Ways they hadn’t tried to mess kids up before their latest kid drug was created.
In Mark’s case, by the time the end of the school year came around, he’d already been damaged; literally sentenced to a life no one would wish upon anyone. When Johnny appeared with his skateboard, Mark immediately went bananas. The other kids all laughed at him.
Johnny told him he could go for a ride on his skateboard if he wanted, but Mark just screamed and acted crazy. He then decided he was going to hurt Johnny because Johnny thought he was better than him, and he deserved to be taught a lesson.
Lesson learned?
Not quite; Mark’s parents went along with every drug the doctors prescribed, while inside, Mark was being rewired. Over and over. Changing like he never would have changed normally. A nature of destructive vengeance consumed his every thought.
Along with skateboards, Mark began to hate everything kids would normally ride, like bicycles and roller skates; he also labeled the kids “loiterers.” Really.
He sells the kids pies. Pies he sells to kids, however, have special ingredients, to “help” them... Mark’s way.
Mark’s Way © free-reign 2020
20, 24, 6, 27, 28, 4, 11, 30, 16, 21, 31, 19, 12, 13, 17, 26, 15, 29, 10, 7, 22, 25, 2, 18, 3, 8, 9, 23, 1, 5, 14
This is my entry to The 31 Sentence Contest Round 19 by @tristancarax. It is a contest based on creating a story with 31 sentences exactly in order, and each sentence has a set number of words to be written. For more information on joining the challenge see this post:
Thanks for reading!
Sources for images used in this post:
(Public Domain photos are from Wikimedia Commons)
Baker: Image by Jens P. Raak from Pixabay
Kid on Skateboard: Image by Kresina / CC0
Ritalin: Image by Alcibiades / Public domain
Prompt Photo: Image by @tristancarax
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posh:
I think this is the darkest piece you have written for this contest.
My mom was on all sorts of things when I was growing up. I do remember that my brother and I took some of her pills when we were around the ages of five and six. Man, did we get fucked up. She took us to the hospital. All that I can really remember is throwing-up.
I'm surprised I was never put on anything like this in my childhood. I would have taken to it like a cavity growing on a tooth, causing much pain for the host. With my addictive personality (some of it stemming from trauma), I don't know if I'd be alive today.
In my adult years, my mom suggested that I go on it. I said, "Fuck NO! I've grown up around you and that was a horrible experience in itself." She was mad at me for bring this up (still mad at me when I bring it up).
When I was staying with her about seven years ago, a kid who had a troubling past (meaning his mom and dad were divorced and neither one around very much, which left the grand-parents to care for the kid), the grand-parents put the kid on drugs, legal speed. This sort of shit pisses me off. The kid is most likely going to be really fucked up not only from the trauma of childhood but from the drugs too. Arrg!
I actually pondered more than once, over whether or not I should post a story like this, as I'm sure many who might read this may have been victims of this type of situation themselves as they were growing up.
It sounds like you and your brother were lucky that mom got home in time to get you two to the hospital!
I'm glad you did post it.
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THIS IS THE WAY
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Oh hell, I haven't even looked at the result post yet from last week, lol.