A (Lunch) time for Heroes
by David Woodfine
Humour Short Story Competition
Ideally this story would have taken place somewhere exotic, perhaps with a stiff breeze to tousle the hair and a generous cloud of dry ice through which to emerge, but we both know life isn’t like that. And anyway, the breeze would disperse the dry ice.
So instead, you’ll have to make do with a damp grey day at a damp grey comprehensive school in a damp grey town. It was twenty-odd years ago: a time when there were only four television channels, pop-reggae was bafflingly popular and a packet of Space Raiders was still ten pence. A time for heroes? You decide.
That drizzle-spattered lunchtime, Chris, Tim and I were sitting on a bench, minding our own collective business. The transition to ‘big school’ had been recent and daunting but the three of us had gravitated together early on. We didn’t bother anyone else and they didn’t bother with us. With one major exception…
The first sign that something was wrong that day was a particularly heavy gulp from Tim. Tim was a nice lad but not the bravest. In fact, he was frequently the least brave in any given field. This included, on one memorable occasion, a literal field around which he was chased by several younger girls threatening to open a jar of angry wasps.
Nevertheless, as small fish in a big pond, Tim’s overdeveloped sense of peril came in quite handy because he operated like a miner’s canary. Often he raised the alarm unnecessarily. Not this time.
Chad Burkitt had all the malevolence and casual violence to be expected of someone who had had to endure being called Chad for thirteen years. He had made our lives a misery in those first few months, a state of affairs we couldn’t imagine changing any time soon. Chad was a year older and a foot taller than us and meaty, his shaven, cylindrical head sitting directly atop his shoulders like a bucket with a grumpy face drawn on it. His shirt was untucked, his tie was seditiously short and he was heading straight for us.