First Sip of Primordial Soup

"I fucking hate humans."

The young teenager spits on the ground as he smoked another puff from a run-out cigarette.

"I hope my smoking addiction contributes to global warming so the annihilation of this scum monkey race arrives nearer even by mere milliseconds."

Digby was late to class. But he didn't care. He cozied up his black jacket and adjusted the long sleeves in the heat of the sun.

Purple bruises on his skinny forearms momentarily revealed themselves but he made sure to cover them so no one would notice.

He kicked a small pebble and it rolled toward the shoes of three senior high school students. He looked up to see their grinning faces looking at him with intense menace. The young hoodlums had their hands in their pockets. Their hair was tinted with cheap dye to signify their rebellion against school rules.

"What's going on, twerp? You're back here again. Don't you know it's against the-"

The Senior kneed Digby in the stomach.

"Uggh!"

"school rules to smoke on the premises."

The other two quickly went to each of Digby's sides and held him down while smiling with malice.

Digby spit saliva mixed with blood and the only piece of biscuit he ate for the day.

His face looked down and invisible. Digby's face looks up to the older students with pure emotional sadness and misery. His face is crunched up like a baby being separated from its mother's tits. He then pleads to them with him bowing to them and trying to pull on the bully's pants for mercy.

"Please! Let me go, Mickey! I'm sorry. Please stop bullying me. I'm just nobody!"

He cries out loud and with a voice with the most immense suffering.

The bully responds, "Look at you now! You little rat. This is why you get picked on. Because you're weak. And the weak deserve to be trampled on."

The bullies laugh as they take turns punching Digby in the chest. Eventually forcing him to the floor. Digby continues to shout their names pleading for mercy and spitting blood.

They kicked him again and again as the skinny and bloody Digby lay like an aborted fetus on the ground.

The school janitor passed by and shouted at them.

"Hey! Stop it! You kid's are in serious trouble!"

He pointed his finger at them and out of fear of getting expelled they ran away covering their faces with their sweaty uniforms.

Digby lay on the floor as though he was sound asleep and breathed slowly but heavily. The janitor ran to him and asked him if he was okay.

"Kid, are you alright? Don't worry. I'm going to go call for help."

The teenager's mushed and bleeding face shocked the janitor as he heard whistling coming from the young boy.

The janitor was familiar with the sound he was whistling. It imitated the whistling of a local species of sparrow that was only located in the janitor's hometown.

Digby slowly opened his eyes and he looked at the janitor's face with a blank stare yet carrying within it a deep darkness.

He continued whistling the atonic music of the sparrows. And he sat on the floor while readjusting his clothes and some of his joints that needed some recalibrating.

"Are you alright, kid?" the old janitor asked. "Want me to help you to the nurse's office?"

Digby looked at his fingers dripping with his own blood that was dripping from his face.

"The music of the sparrows sounds familiar, doesn't it?" he said.

"What do you mean?" the janitor asked.

"It's the birdsong of an albino sparrow. Pure, white, and close to extinction. They were last seen in some remote places in Australia."

"Yes... Your whistling. It's pretty good. You really imitated them," the janitor replied with a smile. "How did you know about them, kid?"

Digby gave a smirk while tilting his head as his eyes were in darkness.

"You see. I had a friend from Australia who told me about them... She could never forget the music from those beautiful birds. You could say, they were her only hope."

The janitor's smile faded away. As Digby jumped over the janitor and scratched the old man with his nails, piercing his flesh and leaving bits of it under them.

Digby's blood spread all over the janitor's body. The janitor struggled to get the insane teenager off of him.

"What are you doing, kid? I was only trying to help you! Get off of me!" he shouted.

Digby's eyes looked straight into the janitor's soul and replied, "This isn't the first time you've been scratched, isn't it? Two years ago, a 14-year-old girl in Melbourne was found half-dead on the roadside. Raped and beaten them. A man had grabbed her and taken her to a shed in a forest with no one to hear her screams. She never saw the man's face. Only his blood left in her nails."

"What does that get to do with me!" the janitor shouted.

Digby put his hands on the janitor trying to get more blood over him.

"While she was getting raped over and over again in the shed, she would sometimes see a pure white sparrow fly in and build its nest in the ceiling. The beautiful bird would often sing a beautiful song to cheer her up. She would listen to it every day. It's songs of comfort and hope."

And the old yet still stronger than a high schooler janitor fought back and punched Digby in self-defense. Pushing the already beaten-up Digby back onto the floor, the janitor goes back to his bag near the mop and takes out a knife.

The old man then smiled and licks his lips with his tongue.

"Oh! I remember now. That girl? She was the best one of them. She's dead now, right? I heard she killed herself, after never being able to find that man."

He pointed his knife at Digby and said, "I guess, my cover is blown. You probably didn't call the cops, right? You wanted to avenge her for yourself. By the way, how did you find me? It was my posts on 4chan wasn't it? You tracked me and followed me here."

Digby was on the floor and had no strength to stand up.

"You're a sick bastard who couldn't help but comment on the very internet thread that discussed that girl's suicide. You loved it didn't you? The attention and praise you got for getting away with it." He spits more blood on the floor.

The janitor just smiled.

"You're trying to get a confession out of me. Aren't you?" the janitor laughed. "I saw you put that camera there. You hid it so you could catch me and turn it over to the police, didn't you? I thought you were trying to blackmail those bullies that beat you up, every day. But it was me you were after."

The janitor stepped on the weakened Digby's head.

"They were right, tho. The weak deserve to be trampled on. Especially the stupid ones. I'll just kill you right here. And destroy the camera. And disappear all over again. It's easy. Really. And there are definitely a lot more pretty and pure little birds for me to find. It's a world of predator and prey! And I'm on top of the food chain."

He angrily crushed Digby's neck under his boots.

Then the 16-year-old skinny boy smiled and stared into the janitor's eyes. He then spurted words that the old man could not understand.

"Eastern... Brown... Snake..." Blood leaked on Digby's mouth.

"What did you say?" the janitor asked raising his foot to end the young boy's life.

"Sparrow's... natural... predator. It's the natural predator of the sparrow. Eastern Brown Snake is weak. No arms, no legs, and not as smart as humans."

The janitor's eyes began to get fuzzy and his mind started to lose consciousness. The janitor stepped back and leaned on the wall.

"What did you do to me!"

"But the Eastern Brown Snake is the second most toxic snake of all venom snakes in the world. It evolved to survive and developed its weapon to hunt down its prey to the point of extinction."

The janitor began to agonize in pain but his body stiffened and paralysis took over his body.

"Did you- How did you- poison me..." the janitor exhaled as he fell to the floor and looked at Digby's hands. "Your nails- you dipped it in the snake's venom?"

Digby stood up by leaning on the walls. He took plastic containers of the venom out of his black jacket and most of them have been popped into his palms during the fight.

"Venom can't be absorbed through the skin. Its molecules are too big so they have to be introduced to the blood flow," the young boy said as he struggled to speak. "3 milligrams... Is enough to kill a human. Wish I had more for every fucking evolved ape that's living on this fucking planet."

The janitor's last burst of adrenaline gave him enough energy to make a last line of defense. His wiggly foot let him walk towards Digby holding the knife with both hands.

He laughed while skimping to the vulnerable boy.

"You could have killed me with a knife. Or a gun while I was looking away. Why poison?" the janitor said as he was getting nearer and nearer.

Digby answered, "Knives and guns are to blame. A bunch of monkeys used them. Now they think they're the strongest and the apex predators. If it wasn't for knives and guns... we would still be in Africa, as fucking monkeys poking sticks in a log hoping to eat some larvae. I'll never use them. Oh! And ummm... It's not survival of the strongest. Its survival of the fittest."

The janitor's shadow fell over Digby and he held the knife in his hands ready to stab the hateful boy.

The janitor dropped dead on the floor over Digby. But he wasn't able to stab Digby. The teenager pushed the body away from him. He stood up. Picked up his things and walked away.

He picked up his camera but it wasn't even on.

"The bastard thought he was worthy of being recorded. You're not going to be immortalized, you sick monkey. You'll be dead and forgotten. And your existence will disappear off the face of this earth. I'll make sure of it."

Digby gave a laugh and looked up at the sky.

"One down... 8 Billion, more monkeys. to go."

The bloody teenager walked away and climbed out of the school fence. He was still dizzy from the fight but he was determined to go back home to get some stuff to clean up the scene. He opened his eyes again, and his hands felt the roughness of a concrete road.

"Hey... This is concrete," he desperately said while trying not to lose consciousness.

"Concrete... like the highway behind our school-"

Digby turned to his side and a speeding truck that tried to avoid him as fast as it has smashed into him within the second.

Digby smirked and said, "Fuck it! Everybody's gonna die anyway. With or without me."