Pest
And then there was Nothing. Which was at least Something. Andre swept his hand across the place where the mouse had been moments ago. Nothing. No fur, no tail, no ears, no eyes. No treat, no crumbs, nothing remained. At last!
For the past six months, he had worked each free moment after school, and on weekends, to find Something that would work. He researched solvents. He practiced potions. He chanted incantations. He meditated on arcane motions. Nothing seemed to result from all his trials and tests. But if there was a way to rid himself of Carl Sims, he would discover a way.
After soccer practice, Carl paid special personal attention to Andre in the locker room. No one incident had been worse than the rest. But taken together, as a whole, the continual focused abuse from the school's biggest brute was overwhelming. Then everything changed on his walk home Tuesday evening.
Andre passed Swift's Drug Store and bumped into an old man with a cane. The senior citizen wobbled, teetered, and almost fell over. Andre caught him by the elbow and steadied the man.
As the hunched figure walked away Andre thought he heard a small cackle of laughter. He looked down and saw a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. Andre bent at the waist to scoop them up. He wanted to return them to the man before he moved too far down the sidewalk. When Andre looked up to call out to the man, he was gone. Not a sign of him on this sidewalk, or the vacant path on the opposite side of the street.
Andre folded the glasses closed, placed them in his front shirt pocket, and walked home.
THE END