Ralph

“Guys please stop kicking my ball around!” Ralph whimpered to all of his very cool friends. “Shut the fuck up you little chomsky-honk!” they jokingly jeered back. Then Tom (one of Ralph’s best friends) teasingly smacked Ralph’s football across the school yard. “Haha, alright you guys, you fricken guys!” Ralph choked, through tears, as he trudged across the yard to get his ball back. Joking shouts of “Get lost you freak!” and “Scram loser!” echoed behind him as he plodded towards the ball; even though he knew they were detached ironic sentiments mimicking bullying culture, he couldn’t help but feel a little bit hurt at the sound of them. But they grew more and more distant as he sulked away and he started to pick his head up from its usual fixation on the cold hard floor. Plod plod. He was now within ten metres of the ball and the sun had just broken through the clouds to gleam off the black-grey cement of the school yard. Ralph thought he had better hurry up seeing as all of his friends depended on him to bring his football to school every day, and they would be disappointed if he failed them in this simple task.
Suddenly a tall boy two years his junior ran for the ball – Ralph had to think fast. He matched the boys pace and limply pushed him away from his ball. Ralph went to pick the ball up but the younger boy had recovered from the meek blow and shoved him in to a bush neighbouring the ball. He heard a crowd laugh as the young boy grabbed the ball and darted away. Ralph looked up, in a daze, and between the sharp brambles and leaves which clouded his vision he saw a boy he knew from his woodwork class called Dan. Dan spotted him through the thicket and said, loudly enough for his entire group of friends to hear “Did you just get beaten up by a year 11 Ralph?”. They all laughed and Ralph sat there sitting in the damp bush. He tried to defend himself, pleading that he had lost his footing on purpose in order to not crush the younger boys self-esteem by besting him in physical combat, but it was no use. The whole group laughed at him and walked away. Ralph was still in the bush. He sat there for a couple of minutes. He felt safe inside the bush, less people could see him there and for the first time in a very long time he started to feel he belonged.

Later that day Ralph was in art class. Having hid in the bush for the rest of break his clothes were ragged and covered with dirt and brambles – they hung off his gaunt, coat hanger frame to make him look like a sickly child’s drawing of a person. He was hunched on his stool and had his head in one hand; an onlooker might have thought Ralph deep in thought or battling with some emotional trauma but he was actually just looking at his hairy elbow and wondering if other people noticed how hairy his elbow was and also how to shave an elbow. The teacher called his name and told him it was time to show the class his self-portrait. Ralph looked at the drawing. He wasn’t good at drawing. Although, this image seemed to capture him rather well. His nose was long and thin and stretched down to his nearly indistinguishable lips. He had a very large mouth which was forcing a smile (he couldn’t even make it look convincing in a drawing). He had drawn himself wearing sunglasses, because he wanted to look cool, but they were out of fashion and cracked on one shade. You could just make out the fixed shocked expression in his eyes beneath the shading of the sunglasses, as well as the large bags under his eyes. His hair was in curtains and it was combed to such an extent that it looked like he had glued black string on to his head. Beneath his hair was a furrowed brow emitting the simultaneous appearance of confidence and insecurity.
After apologising for his shading, he showed the class. He looked down as he displayed his drawing. Down at his elbow. He could feel their piercing eyes. Surely looking at every misplaced line and judging his clearly unpractised shading. He heard snickers and laughter and people calling him a pathetic hairy-elbowed loser. “Shut up!” Ralph thought. He resented them. Just because they were cooler and sexier and balder on their arms than him they thought they were better than him. That they could constantly torture him with their judgement. He glanced up and saw everyone with their heads down, seemingly not paying attention to him or his drawing. He knew they were faking it. The minute he looked in another direction he could feel their eyes and their elbows on him. Well they were in for a surprise, them and their elbows. Mrs’ Brannigan sighed in her usual sardonic I wish I was better at drawing so I didn’t have to be a teacher sort of way and said “Well done Ralph, C-Minus.” Ralph snapped. “Shut the fuck up Mrs. Brannigan I don’t have hairy elbows!”. The millennial teacher’s usual glazed over expression turned in to one of shock as she shrunk back in to her oriental dress, “Wh-What?” she stuttered, in a broken quiver. “You know what I mean! You all know!” Shouted Ralph in retaliation, at this point he had stood up and was pointing menacingly at all of his surprised classmates. Before Mrs. Brannigan could say anything else Ralph ran out of the room and knocked over the pot Mrs’ Brannigan had gotten from Nigeria. He had always hated that pot!

Ralph was at his dad’s flat that day. He could hear his dad’s TV from outside as he walked up the old cracked steps to the unlocked front door. He opened the door with care. The little flat stunk of alcohol and it was hot and musty – making Ralph sweatier than usual. Ralph looked at the old torn wallpaper. His dad’s dart board was at the end of the entrance hallway and it always intimidated Ralph. Ralph braced himself and walked in to the living room. His dad was sprawled out on the sofa covered in crisps. There was a spilt glass of red wine on the floor and there was a gay softcore porn channel blasting on the TV. Ralph sighed as he remembered his dad’s latest endeavour to turn himself gay, a familiar blend of misogyny and self-hatred. “I’m here dad.” said Ralph. His dad twitched himself awake and scrambled for the TV remote; he couldn’t find it and after a short while he gave up trying and told Ralph he was “going to see this sort of thing one way or another”. “Yes dad.” Ralph replied, not really sure what his dad meant by that. Ralph saw the remote and muted the TV. His dad didn’t seem to notice. “None of those boys are as cute as your mum Ralph, you know that?” Muttered his dad “That fucking bitch!”. Ralph remained silent. He sat down on a chair in the corner to the left of the sofa. They both stayed there for a while. His dad talked at him about his new girlfriends and his new racially insensitive nicknames for them. He showed Ralph pictures of them, which his dad had presumably solicited. Ralph half-smiled and nodded in approval. Occasionally Ralph glanced at the images of big muscles and shaven elbows on the TV.
Then the phone started ringing. It was a loud high-pitched ring and it sent shivers down Ralph’s spine. “The school!” Ralph thought to himself. He knew that he’d be totally screwed if his dad found out about what had happened in art class! Ring Ring. Ralph had to find the phone before his dad could get it. He saw it lying on the table next to the sofa and he lunged for it. “What do you think your doing?” asked his dad as he nabbed it before Ralph could reach, “that’ll be big Dave calling about my dodgy guttering” chuckled his dad. Ralph’s dad answered the phone with an unintelligible slur of sounds. “Yes I am the father of Ralph Milton.” he snapped, probably annoyed that he wasn’t talking to ‘big Dave’. Ralph watched his dad’s meaty face listen to the voice in the phone, his eyebrows furrowed and his eyes widened in a crazed look as he turned to face Ralph directly. His mouth opened slightly and his nose took in a long draw of air. Ralph saw the veins on his dad’s head inflate under his messy half-grey half-black poorly dyed hair. “He did what? He did what!” exclaimed father. Ralph tried to hide in the chair. Father staggered up and walked towards Ralph. He threw the phone at the wall and got uncomfortably close to Ralph’s face – spewing saliva and crisp dust all over Ralph. “You’re in for it now little boy” his dad said, before spewing in to Ralph’s lap and falling in to the sick. Ralph sat there for a long time not really knowing what to do. Watching the gay porn. After a couple of hours he pushed his dad’s face out of his vomit covered crotch and went home.

Ralph’s mum was called Katherina. Katherina led her little eighteen year old boy through the school gates. “Now sweetie”, smiled Katherina, “we won’t get angry with Mrs.Brannigan again during the meeting will we?”. Ralph felt wave after wave of rage build up inside of him. He looked at the smug happy look on his bitch of a mother’s delicate face. Katherina had sharp little pointy features and frizzy blonde hair – Ralph had always admired her hair. But now, Ralph thought, now her hair was frizzy blonde snakes and worms and gooey stuff that was shit. Her laugh lines spun around and pointed at him and her ugly sleazy pursed lips screamed “You are just a pathetic little child”. Ralph clenched his fists. His long nails dug in to his hands. He started grumbling and gargling and salivating at the thought of what he could do to his mum, that condescending cunt! “Your hair looks like worms” mumbled Ralph. His mum’s plucked brows furrowed in confusion but she knew to ignore the comment, “Um, okay honey well we’re running late so let’s get a move on.” Katherina walked a few paces ahead of Ralph towards the art department.
“Ah! Mrs. Katherina Milton! And Randy! Please, have a seat!” welcomed Mrs. Brannigan, as she beckoned the Milton’s in to her dingy incense-filled office. Ralph and his mum sat down across Mrs. Brannigan’s long wooden desk, neither of them bothered to correct her when she called Ralph ‘Randy’. “Now Mrs. Milton, um, can I call you Katherina? cooed Mrs. Brannigan. “Uh, I guess s-” “It was you that brought in those pumpkin pies last charity day, wasn’t it Katherina”, interrupted Mrs. Brannigan. “Um, yeah that was me.” said Ralph’s mum. “I love your pumpkin pies Katherina” continued Mrs. Brannigan, as she leered over her desk and looked in to Katherina’s emerald green eyes. Ralph shifted around in his seat to hide his growing erection. His eyes darted between his mum and Mrs. Brannigan’s jingling gollywog necklace. Ralph sensed sexual tension; a bead of sweat rolled down his face and he could feel his armpits dampen. “Thank you...look shouldn’t we be talking about Ralph’s recent incident?” asked Katherina. Katherina swilled round in the chair she’d obviously stolen from the computer department, her eyes widened and her face became pale as she remembered Ralph was in the room.