The Ugly Duckling

She gave birth to three girls, one after the other. This displeased her husband, because he felt ashamed to be surrounded by females all the time. Finally, she produced a son, and this made him so proud of himself that she quickly churned out another one. By this time, she was exhausted and declared that she would rather die than have any more.

Six years passed. And then one day she felt strange and before she knew it a naked neonate came wriggling out of her. She would have liked to flush it down the toilet but, because it was another boy, her husband forbade her to do this.

He soon regretted interfering, though, as this one was a runt. It was very small and feeble, and was horrible to look at, its eyes were so close set and its nose was so short and flat like a pig’s. The three sisters regarded their new brother with revulsion and prayed that nothing like this would ever be dragged out of them, greedily screaming for milk from their tits.

The two brothers, who were already more than five feet tall and well on the way to becoming the brutes their father envisaged, wanted nothing to do with this pathetic specimen and ignored him for several years.

He was provided with a proper name to put on his birth certificate and other official documents but he soon became known exclusively as Stompie, on account of his short stature. Until he left school he was only ever referred to as Stompie and he grew up being ridiculed, bullied and humiliated at every turn.

When he was about ten or eleven years old his brothers, who by then both played First Team rugby and had started shaving their chins decided that it was time the little pipsqueak should make himself of use to them. From then on, until they left home and went out to work, they required Stompy to provide them with both manual and oral services on a regular basis. He knew that he would be beaten mercilessly if he failed to comply. It was out of the question for him to confide in his mother, she being a woman steeped in Biblical teachings, and he certainly would not risk giving his father any ideas.

To resist victimization, he tried to make himself physically strong by eating gluttonously, but this only made him fat and resulted in him taking on the appearance of a walking meatball. In his misery he turned to God and prayed for help. When he received no response to his pleas, he concluded that God, too, was another enemy and that he was wasting his time looking for an ally in that quarter.  He would have to rely on himself to vanquish his adversaries.

Overcoming his fear of them, he asked his father and brothers a list of questions and concluded from their answers that the computing power of his own brain was superior to all three of theirs combined. He resolved to use his mental prowess to succeed in the world and wreak vengeance on the bullies and those who mocked him.

From school he made his way straight to a university and studied diligently to become a legal practitioner. Once fully qualified he returned to his home town, established himself as an attorney, and went about punishing those who had wronged him. He did this primarily by sowing division and encouraging people to take legal action against one another. Having inside knowledge of underhand dealings, illicit trading and marital infidelities he was able to alert the police and the Revenue Service, and provide evidence to be used in divorce proceedings.  Although he cut a comical figure in his black legal gown that was too long for him and trailed on the ground like a train, the sight of him soon instilled fear in the townsfolk and derision and mockery were replaced by obsequious grovelling and extravagant flattery.

He made sure that both of his brothers went to jail on trumped up charges and were regularly sodomised by tattooed gangsters. When his parents grew old and infirm, he placed them in an under-funded state institution and never visited them, not even on their death beds. He became a wealthy man with great influence but his sisters knew they would receive no assistance, no matter how dire their circumstances might be.

On his 50th birthday he gorged himself on rich food, became too drunk to stand on his feet, suffered a massive heart attack and died.

At his funeral service the church was overflowing with those who had come to rejoice that he was dead. There was a party atmosphere and not the slightest trace of solemnity. The mayor delivered a eulogy in which he described how the departed had terrorised the town and inflicted great suffering and misery on so many of its inhabitants. He said that the reason for Stompie’s vicious vindictiveness could be attributed to the cruel treatment he has received as a child at the hands of his family, society and fate. He had been born small and ugly through no fault of his own and had been punished for not being big strong and handsome. He had taken revenge and shown no pity, just as he himself had been tormented without mercy.

The mayor concluded his speech on a philosophical note by comparing Stompie’s behaviour to that of a dog and the average human being. If a dog is chained up, half-starved and whipped it will turn permanently vicious and attack anything that comes near it. Likewise, if people are mistreated, they will become dangerous and will round on their own kind. This explained Stompie’s remorseless malevolence, and it also shed light on why humans were in constant conflict with everything in the world around them. He said that once individuals are confronted by their own mortality, the shock and disappointment is so subconsciously traumatic they react by taking revenge on the weak and vulnerable. In spite of telling themselves stories about Paradise and life after death they know deep down, they are deluding themselves and inevitably life will be overcome by suffering and death. That is why they behave so abominably.

(Taken from Fairy Tales and Nursery Rhymes.)

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