Accidental Ducks

                   There were kids playing in the park. There hadn’t been any kids in the park since the accident. That’s what everyone was calling it. The “accident”. It was just more of their lies. More whitewashing, more cover-up, more pretentious self-righteousness.
         Sol had been playing in that park since he was a little boy. He usually played alone. The other kids didn’t care much for him. He was a homely little boy, which didn’t help with first impressions, and his strange disposition made the other kids feel ill at ease. Kids really aren’t cruel. They’re just honest. It really is preferable to the whispering, snickering underhandedness that the adults practice. The smiling facade. The quick hidden knife.
         He still didn’t like kids though. This is not to say that he wished them any harm. He just preferred to be left alone. For the most part kids just reminded him of the failure that was his life. He was 26 now and, just as all of his peers had guessed he might, he found life to be a grand disappointment. 
         In the wild, animals that travel in packs will excommunicate a member that exhibits any kind of sickness or deformity. Nature is no friend to the weak. He suspected that people weren’t really much different. He was no longer charmed by the smiling chagrin. Social conscience is just another way of saying holier than thou.
         Take some personal life experience, a handful of morality tales learned at childhood, the latest trend in social pressures, mix those together with the day to day ebb and flow of the ego and the trite whims and yearnings of your average person and you’ll see just how precisely everybody has it all worked out. Sol was just tired to put it simply.
         Now when he went to the park he mostly liked to watch the ducks. It was good to be out of the house and ducks are pretty unassuming. He had always sat up in the rough behind the pond. It was a good place to watch the antics of the local water foul and it was far from the incessant chattering of the other people that chose to spend a little of their time out of doors.
         It was a fine day, a fine morning, not too hot, but, too late in the summer for that chilly dew you get in the spring and fall. The ducks were still sleeping for the most part. Every now and again a small frolic would arise and there would be a lot of splashing and quacking but mostly they were just quiet. There were quite a few of them standing on one leg with their bills nestled under their wings. It’s quite the site to see a bunch of ducks calmly sleeping. They would be awake soon though.
         A large variety of people used the park as a thoroughfare. This made sense as it was a shortcut from a large residential neighborhood to the local elementary school and quite a few businesses. Nobody ever bothered Sol, but, he could hear them talking about him every once in a while. He still just kept to himself as usual. On this morning, however, he would be inclined to involve himself in the goings on of the other inhabitants of the park.
         As I said before, it was a peaceful morning and all was quiet. That was before the kids got there. Kids get some bad ideas sometimes. The boys had entered the park from the far end, just out of Sol’s line of sight. They were excited and sort of walking in a huddle. Some of them were even walking backward just to keep their place in the huddle. The boy at the center of all this clamor had just celebrated a birthday and the boys were all trying to get a chance to get their hands on one of the gifts he had received. It was a slingshot. You know, those fancy Marksman slingshots with the wrist brace and super elastic synthetic bands. He had that and a pocketful of silver ball bearings that they sell as ammunition for the slingshot. Everyone wanted a turn to shoot it. They all had ideas of what should be shot at. It was unfortunate that this birthday boy was pushed so easily to succumb to the suggestions of his peers. That is, indeed, how the slingshot came to be aimed at the sleeping ducks though.
         Sol didn’t know what had happened at first. He saw one of the ducks fall from the shore into the waters edge. Half seconds later he noticed the small swirl of blood red growing in the pond. He darted from his position in the rough out to where he could see what was happening. The boys were all standing in a sort of still amazement and he could see the slingshot hanging in one of their hands.
         “Which one of you little bastards did that!”, he found himself screaming as he ran after them. This of course set the boys to screaming as well. One of them was screaming help. It was only moments before Sol had reached them and snatched the slingshot from the boys hand . He still had one hand on the boy gripping his shirt. He was angry. He wanted to shake the boy until his neck snapped. He wanted to choke the life from him, make him eat shit, make him see the error of his ways.
         A group of  construction workers were just starting to set up their tools at a job site nearby and they had heard the screaming. A group of them went running in the direction of the voices. They ran into the clearing just in time to see Sol apprehending the birthday boy. They had seen Sol in the park dozens of times. Most people were suspicious of him. His backward lonely ways. Naturally hearing the screams for help and then seeing Sol holding onto one of the boys they assumed that he was attacking them.
         The leader of this little group was a big burly man that everyone called Mancini. I think it was his last name. Mancini was a no nonsense kind of guy. Brash sometimes and almost always quick to fight. He had a small family of his own at home. He was on Sol before he knew what hit him. Even if Sol wasn’t sure what had hit him he was sure that whatever it was had hit him very hard. Everything went black for a second and he could hear muffled sounds and feel his body make impact with the ground. He felt the men's work boots kicking him and saw the feet landing blows on his body when his sight started to come back. He tried to speak through the pain and blood in his mouth but he couldn’t get his air with the boots landing blow after blow on his ribs and guts. He grabbed the turf and slowly pulled himself toward the water with the men yelling at him, following him, kicking him.
         He was near the dead duck when he lost consciousness face down in the wet embankment. When he gave up fighting the men stopped kicking him. He could hear them wondering what had happened to the duck as they were walking away. He could hear them speculating about what he had done to it. The boys were long gone. He passed out and the dirty blood tainted water filled up his lungs and cut off  his air supply. And Sol and the duck just lay there dead with nobody around to think that it was sad.