Friendless

(A Very Short, Abridged Story)

He has a few friends, but is pretty much a loner. His pals feel the same. They work in the same place with lots of others who seem to get along fine, but every now and again there is an argument which can get heated. Most of the onlookers don’t really understand what they disagree about, but they take sides anyway. It usually goes against the loners.

The thing is that these people who don’t have a lot of friends, usually carry a stick around with them. Sometimes it is hidden, and you would never know it was there, and then again sometimes it is visible, quite visible, and occasionally it gets used. Why on earth would these people carry a weapon? Well it goes back a couple of generations when some of their family lost their lives in a horrific way. It actually goes back much further than that! Man’s inhumanity to man lead to a terrible set of tragic events and some of their ancestors said it would not happen again. Most people accept that as true, although there are some in the group of workmates, who say it was just a made up story, and they shouldn’t even be allowed to play. In fact they would want them out of the workplace altogether. That doesn’t help anyone.

Occasionally,some recreation is organised, like a game of football in the courtyard, and for a while everything goes well, but then it turns sour. The other side, start to kick at the loner team heels, and make unnecessary dives in the penalty box, and ignore the offside rule, but usually the referee allows the goals anyway. There are spectators watching on the sidelines, and they pick sides, as all spectators do. In this case it is confirmed that the loners do not have a lot of support, yet again. This seems to be the norm for them, and they get used to it. These unliked or hated people, are well educated, and not from a poor family unit because they have worked at their identity. The others, who are playing against them, are not so well dressed, or sometimes poorly educated, but feel that they are owed something from the loners, and that is their own part of the games field.

Trouble is that a part of the games field was offered to the poor people many years ago, but they refused it in the hope they would get something better. At the same time, the loners accepted the part of the games field they were offered, and worked on it to make a good place for their families to live. They even turned the dry and desert part into a garden area. From that time the gap between these two groups has grown bigger, until there is a deep hatred. Oh, and the stick? Well both sides actually carry sticks, and they have been known to use them. The loners, who have become the outsiders, have a bigger stick, and when they get goaded and niggled and provoked enough, they use it and people get hurt or killed. Nobody likes being pushed around, and certainly not to a breaking point.

The media is good at reporting when the loners use their stick, but they don’t record or report the many more times that they are kicked, and abused, and the other side do not play by the rules. So it looks to everyone that the loners have just pulled out their stick and used it, without any reason. But we know better, don’t we? Don’t we? The spectators are not all right in their judgement. The media is one sided, and not balanced. In the meantime the fight on the games field gets ugly, and there are fouls galore. You know what it is like, the foulers always say they were unfairly treated, and will go as far as taking a dive in the penalty box, in the hope that they will score the winning goal. I should say that the game is not over yet, but we are into extra time. If that doesn’t work, we go to the penalty shootout. No one likes a penalty shootout, because it doesn’t necessarily reflect the true result. Still that’s the nature of the ‘game’ being ‘played’ right now with human lives.