It had started innocently enough. They wanted to be friends. He rejected them. They got rowdy.

First small things started happening. His things started to go missing. People poked him when the teacher wasn't looking. They got rough. They got physical...

He didn't want to think about it. He didn't like thinking about it. He only ever allowed himself to think relive the terrible images, for short intervals at a time, like a small child peeking at his parents quarrelling from within the confines of his room.

He knew they thought he was weird. They laughed and jeered at his actions, his awkward attempts to do the things they found so easy. He had never thought of himself that way. Perhaps that was why he found it so hard to accept their taunts.

It had taken over his life. The outside world had seemed distant, out of focus, unimportant, as if he were merely an observer, locked inside a fishbowl smeared with Vaseline. Its colours seemed at intervals overbright, as if it had been coloured by a child who only knew the primary colours, and other times washed out and grey, as if someone had scrubbed it with bleach. People seemed to speak to him from behind a wall, their voices far away.

There was no point telling anyone about it. The teachers seemed indifferent, and often looked the other way. He doubted his parents would stop and listen. They were both wrapped up in their own busy lives.

On the train home he would look at the happy little children playing hide and seek with the seats at the convenient ignorance of their happy parents, happily gossiping away, and the happy schoolgirls standing in the doorwell happily chatting and giggling. Their happiness seemed so close to him, yet so distant. He had wished he could just grab their joy and cram it into his heart- but he knew, deep inside, and with bitter disappointment and anger, that it was not possible. It was not possible. It was not possible...