The Troop

by Nick Cutter

He’d eaten so much at that roadside diner that he’d ruptured his stomach lining—the contents of his guts were right now leaking through the split tissue, into the crevices between his organs.

Excuse me? WHAT? Did I read that right :/

Kent was suffused with the unshakable conviction that things would be better if he intervened—as if, by dint of his presence, the situation would come under control.

Max thought of him as a Saint Bernard: big and slobbery, a bit dumb and oblivious to his own strength, but his heart was usually in the right place.

They were all too happy to invoke that particular license of boyhood, the one that stated: Let the grown-ups handle it.

Adults were Fixers; they were Solvers.

“He was a good eater,” Claire Padgett says. “As a kid, anyway. Then he got older and the shame set in. He didn’t like being big. Kids, right? They find the easiest soft spot and pick at it.”

Eef thought churches treated their parishioners like ATMs);

In such ways are friendships built. In tiny moments, in secrets shared.

It’s all how you present yourself, son. Draw yourself up to your full height. Stick your chest out. If you look like you’ve got all the answers, people will naturally assume that you do.