Little Willie's Revenge

Little Willie's Revenge

  by

  Dan Absalonson

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  PUBLISHED BY:

  Little Willie's Revenge

  Copyright © 2010 by Dan Absalonson

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

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  Dedicated to Thomas Reed, aka @trreed on Twitter. He creates web comics at bitstrips.com, and made one showcasing a Little Willie poem, in which he challenged me to write a short story inspired by the poem. You can find the comic here.

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  Little Willie's Revenge

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  Little Willie's sister had given him no reason to hate her, but he did. He wouldn't even let someone call her that in front of him; she was his step sister. It wasn't her fault their parents had married. Once the marriage was announced he began planning and plotting in his dank little mind how to take it out on his new sister. Of course it wasn't his father's fault for bringing her into the family. Father was perfect; he never did anything wrong. If he couldn't stand to be alone after mom died, well, who could blame him? Not Willie. But he could blame his sister, and he did.

  Every chance he got he was on her about something. Bless her heart, she was much older and always tried to be kind to him; you know how girls mature faster than boys. For him, the worst of it was the way she handled everything like it was a game they were playing as brother and sister. He would be so mean to her, and she would just act like he was telling jokes. He would call her the worst names and she would laugh and say, "oh little brother, you don't mean it." Then he would scream "don't call me little brother, I'm not even your brother!" and storm out of the room after pushing her to the ground for good measure. As her silly laughs faded his anger would grow and he would run faster to get away from the sound of her voice. How could anyone be so happy all of the time? Especially with someone constantly trying to ruin their day? It didn't make any sense. Something was wrong with his step sister.

  One time, his father had made him play with her.

  "Now Willie, you will play whatever she wants to," he had said.

  She wanted to have a tea party. Well, he thought he would show them. After no less than five minutes he had busted up every tea kettle, and every miniature plate and tea cup. When the parents came in to see what all the noise was, he was taken away and grounded to his room for half a month. It had been worth it to him to see the look on her face.

  When those two weeks were up, the first thing he did was to go and see if she was still crying over her tea set. To his surprise she had a smile the size of a watermelon plastered across her face.

  "What are you so happy about?" he said.

  "I have a brand new tea set thanks to you little brother," she said.

  She moved towards him, expectantly swinging her arms out for a warm embrace. Hadn't she learned her lesson? He froze, not knowing what to do. He felt like a rat corned in the kitchens, cowering before the baker's broom. She swept him up in her arms and squeezed. Then he came to, wriggled out, and pushed her down.

  "Ah, you got your germs all over me! Now I'm going to have to go wash up!" he said.

  To his satisfaction she began to whimper, and then cry as he ran down the hall to his bedroom. The sound of her crying stayed level for a time, getting louder as the distance grew. He closed the door to his room and heard nothing. It was then that he began to scheme once more. If breaking her whole tea set wouldn't work, he would have to do one better. He tried to think. What was the next favorite thing in her pathetic little life? And then it came to him.

  "That's right," he said aloud, "her little dolly!"

  There was a small rag doll that she kept by her side at all times. He realized it wouldn't be easy to get from her.

  "Except at night when she's asleep!" he said.

  That was it. He would sneak into her room and get the doll, then figure out what to do with it later. For now, happy with himself and his little plan, he decided to run out into the woods. It was an attempt to escape the punishment he knew was coming from his father once it was found out he had pushed her down. He walked out into the forest to a pond where he tormented frogs and skipped rocks until it was time to go in for supper. He returned to find that he would be getting no dinner other than a bit of bread and some water. He was sent straight to his room. He didn't care, he couldn't stand that grateful look on her face after he had broken her tea set. Pushing her down and seeing that smile flip over and get rained on by tears was more than worth going to bed early with bread and water. He wanted to go to his bedroom anyway, and have a nice little nap. He was in for a late night.