The Sunday evening short story

Then he simply followed them in...
by the underachiever Herge Smith.

He sat in the bushes and he waited.

There was still time to back out of this; there was still time to walk away.

How many times had he already walked away already?

How many times since he’d met her had he taken rejection, humiliation and now this new emotion, this emotion he’d fought so long and hard to avoid; this feeling of failure.

He was known as a hard worker from his earliest days. Not for him the natural gift of comprehension, no, he had had to work diligently to get to grips with ever or complicated scenarios they would throw at him in school, college and finally University. And those that sat with him in those classes, the elite he’d fought to be with, he secretly despised. It was so effortless for them, plucking answers from the air as easy as taking breath, whereas he was constantly trying to breathe underwater.

He had shown them though, an example to them all. Hard working, a hard worker, just look how hard he worked to get what he has. A paragon of what you can achieve if you just knuckle down. Of course, he knew they laughed at him, his bag permanently full of textbooks, a burden he shouldered so he could achieve more they ever would.

Not full of records and magazines, the paraphernalia of youth. Not for him school yard crushes, young love, painful life lessons learnt between classes.

Just study, hard graft, dedication.

The joke was that he never really liked what he had learnt; it was just a passport to success, to greater things. The knowledge he had acquired was simply the by-product of his ultimate success.

So, he would let them laugh at him. He knew they laughed at him, they made no secret of it because they were jealous of his commitment, scared of their undoubted future failure, in awe of the shadow he would inevitably cast over them.

Yes he was powerless then; but not now, not today.

No, he thought to himself, not today.

Today he would make them pay and they would be no more laughter behind his back.

He sat and he waited. Hour after hour, the merciless Sun so unlike home. This foreign soil he had adopted as his own, another testament to his success.

He checked the contents of the rucksack once more; it was loaded, he was ready.

He thought about the look on their faces when they saw him standing there, gun in hand. They would know he was powerful now, that he was in charge, that he was better than they were.

The last thing they do was laugh in his face.

This day would be the start and the end of everything.

He could turn back from the path he was on but then he had never been a quitter. When he put his mind to it, he could achieve anything. It was a problem to be solved that was all, just like any other; work hard at it and get a result.

Night was beginning to fall when he finally saw the headlights of her car pan around the bushes in which he’d hid since dawn, up across the still hot asphalt of the drive, finally resting on the face of the large black garage doors.

He waited until the engine went silent. Until they emerged from the large red SUV he had paid for. Until they had got the groceries and walked toward the house.

Then he simply followed them in...