A Crab Eyeing a Tourist

http://deviantkupo.deviantart.com/art/A-Crab-Eyeing-A-Tourist-35289902

Voy a dejar un texto increíble que cada vez que leo no puedo dejar de reír.

***

A chair scraped across a vinyl floor and made an embarrassing sound.

"My name is Alex and I have a problem."

Someone waved their hands. "Does this problem involve an actual child actually being raped?"

Alex thought about this. "No," he decided.

"Then continue," the group leader said, bowing her head.

"But this child who was definitely not raped, and not by me, his name was Thomas."

All around the circle, a gentle ripple of applause broke out.

"Thank you, Alex," smiled the group leader, "that was very brave. You can sit down."

Alex sat, being careful not to make the chair scrape this time. Next to the group leader, a man nervously raised his hand and said, "Erm, if I may, can I ask, uh, a question. A question to Alex."

"N-" said the leader.

"Sure," said Alex, smiling, "I think we should be totally open. After all, anything I have to hide must be illegal, right?"

The group leader smiled falsely and said, “Right. Ask away, please.”

"T-thanks," said Peter, "What I wanted to ask about was, well, you said his name WAS Thomas. Is he no longer called Thomas or is he... y'know, dead and in bags in your freezer?"

Alex gave a nervous little laugh, "Ah, no, uh, his name still is Thomas it's just, well, I moved away. I kind of think of him in the past tense now, since I never see him any more. Not in person, anyway."

The group leader nodded her head and opened her mouth to continue.

Alex interrupted, "I can show you some pictures if you want."

"No, that's fine, Alex."

"I mean you can't see much, I just took them outta my window. I left the others at home but-"

"That's fine, Alex," the leader said firmly, like a trouser press.

"Right you are," mumbled Alex.

"Terry, would you like to stand and talk to the group?"

"No, I just like to listen," Terry replied.

The group leader gave him a look reminiscent of a crab eyeing a tourist and said, "Terry, get your hands out of your pockets and talk to the group."

"Right you are," mumbled Terry, standing. "My name is Terry and I have a problem."

"Go on."

"I sometimes go to the swimming pool but I don't swim. Infact, I can't. I'm quite lucky never to have accidentally tripped and fallen in and then had to get someone to save me because-"

"Terry."

"-But instead what I do is just sit and watch the little girls coming in and swim.” Terry's eyes misted over. “There's this one girl, Carla, she always wears this green bathing suit and her mum is always yelling at her. I think they're poor because it's too small for her but it makes her-”

"Holllly shit," someone else in the group said. "You go to the Flush Fields Swimming Centre?"

"Yeah!"

"Oh man, I know that girl!"

Terry spread his hands in front of him and gestured to the other man to rise. "What can I say but, high five!"

"Aw yeah!"

They smacked hands loudly.

"Oh man, those cute little ass cheeks, the way-"

"Sit down, please," the group leader coughed. Both men sat down quietly. "Not you, Terry. You have a problem."

Terry rose and said, "Yeah, I'm not at the swimming pool!"

Terry's friend raised his hand to once again administer the high five, but was cut short.

"Gentlemen," the group leader said tersely, "you have problems. You are here to admit them, not gloat and revel in them like honeycomb centres in vast seas of chocolate."

Someone started clapping.

"Not now," the group leader snapped. "You are human beings, start acting like them and admit you have problems."

Terry said, "I think the mere fact we're here is an admission of a problem."

"Or you could just be here to swap sordid stories about Cyndi."

"Carla."

"Shut up. In the eyes of society, you are sub-human. You should be taking that kind of thing seriously."

Terry shrugged with all the effortless apathy of a seal being confronted with all the evidence for global warming and being asked what the hell he thought he was going to do about it.

"I think a lot of people get treated like that," he said. "Did you ever even go to school?"

"But this is different," the group leader insisted, "people out there, they want to kill you! If you ask what a punishment for a paedophile is, most people will say death! Or having your balls cut off! Doesn't that bother you?"

"People say that about a lot of kinds of people," said Alex.

"Yes, but this is you! Don't you care? Shouldn't you stand up for yourselves?"

"Paedophiles united?"

"Still not funny," the leader said.

Terry pouted.

"There are a lot of people in this country who are advocating brutal acts of torture and dismemberment-"

This raised a few laughs.

"-and they don't even realise how horrible it is to wish such a thing, even on a paedophile."

Terry yawned. "It'll pass. It's just the way it goes. Taboos come in and out of fashion. People won't always be so bothered."

The group leader's face adopted a pained expression. "But doesn't it bother you?!"

Terry said, "Nah, not really. We're just made out to be villains, that's all. We're no different from drug users. We're just doing things not many people agree with."

The group leader shifted in her seat. "It's a bit different, Terry. Drug users only hurt themselves. Alex over there raped and diced some poor kid."

"I didn't dice him!" Alex protested feebly.

"It's not different," Terry said, "for starters, drug users hurt plenty of other people in the pursuit of money. Alex is a sexual offender AND a paedophile. The rape was the sex offence. The fact he did a kid was paedophilia. They're not one and the same thing, you know."

The group leader frowned.

Terry sighed. "What I'm saying is, you can be a perfectly good, law abiding, tax paying, God fearing paedophile, not crossing a line until the day you die. If you're a rapist, on the other hand, you're a rapist. Sometimes the two paths cross. More often, they don't."

The group leader was having none of this. It was her job on the line. She said, "Are you trying to tell me that paedophiles are... okay? Cool guys? Not all that bad?"

"Sure."

"That's ridiculous, you're mentally damaged people."

"Who isn't? This is a pretty fucked up world, if you hadn't noticed. Nice neighbourly paedophiles who don't touch a kid in their lives are the least of this planet's worries, really."

"Oh God, I can't believe this."

Alex said, "It sorta makes sense to me."

"Quiet, rapist," the group leader said, folding her arms and sinking into her seat. At length, she spoke again. "So I should... like paedophiles?"

"No, they're fucked up. But people should make up their own minds up about things. It's very easy to be swept up in all the hate. We're still humans beings, after all."

"A little respect," the group leader murmured, finding the conversation hard to take in. "Isn't that what I'm giving you?"

"You have opinions about us I doubt you formed on your own," Terry said.

Presently, the door swung open and a man burst in. Everyone jumped, thinking their past had finally caught up with them and they were being taken down. They relaxed when they saw a single man leaning against the door frame, breathing heavily.

"S-sorry," he panted, "I'm a bit late. Have I got the right place?"

Everyone stared at him. Someone said, "What place would that be?"

Suddenly, the newcomer was struck with a dilemma. He could not very well come right out and say 'I'm a paedophile, I'm looking for Paedophiles Anonymous', could he?

"Erm," he said.

"Uhh," he added.

The group leader was not ignorant to the kind of trouble they could get into, so she handled the situation delicately.

She said, "We're the, uh... are you a police officer?"

The man in the door jumped. "Are you?!"

"No! Are you?!"

The panic in the room was rising.

"You are!" someone in the group shouted.

"Oh God," someone else screamed.

"I swear, I only raped him!"

The man in the door relaxed. "Oh thank God, you're paedophiles. I'm so glad it's you."

"Oh, you're here for the group?" the leader said, putting down her chair.

The man stepped in and shut the door, smiling. "Yeah, that's right."

"You know, sometimes, I think us paedos should have some kind of special code," the man laughed. "My name is Percy, by the way."

"Hi Percy," said the group leader.

"You know," Terry said darkly, "we do have a code."

Percy's eyes grew wide. "You do?"

Terry nodded grimly. The group leader rolled her eyes.

Percy stammered, "Well, I am a paedophile, you have to believe me, I'm not lying! Look, I've got some pictures, you can-"

"We believe you, Percy," the group leader said. "Please, sit down."

Terry watched Percy sit, eyeing him with suspicion. "The eagle moves swiftly when hungry," he muttered to himself.

Alex said, "There isn't a secret code, Percy, he's just having you on."

"Oh yeah, like you'd know, rapist. We don't let rapists in the secret paedo club," Terry said.

"Not a rapist," Alex said quietly.

"Now, now," the group leader said, "This isn't the place to discuss it. We're all here to be open about the relevant problems that we all have."

"We?"

"I mean you. All of you."

"Yeah, sure you do," spat Terry. "You're a paedophile if you're here, let's face it, nobody else would be friends with us."

"That's not true," said the leader calmly.

"Yeah it is, you just don't know the code. You're not one of the elite paedophiles."

Alex stood up quickly. "You're being pretty mean, Terry," he said, bunching his fists by his sides. Terry had never seen anyone so threatening yet so pathetic.

"Sit down, rapist."

Alex narrowed his eyes. "I'm going to rape your mouth."

Around the room, fourteen pairs of eyebrows were raised.

"With my fist."

Everyone nodded. Alex strode across the room, drawing back his fist.

"No no no, I'll tell you the code, I'll tell you the co-" shouted Terry, leaning back on his chair before Alex punched him quite squarely in the forehead.

Terry raised his hands to his forehead and moaned in pain, while Alex did much the same.

"The forehead?!" he said. "Why!?" Terry then recovered sufficiently to bury a fist in Alex's stomach.

"Don't crumple my photos," he rasped, sinking to his knees.

"Break it up, you guys," the group leader said sternly, half amused by the kind of fight she'd not seen since chess club.

Across the room, someone who had previously not spoken stood up and declared, "I hate rapists." They then proceeded to run at Alex and kick him in the side of the leg.

The rest of the group erupted into a brawl, with some defending Alex and some defending themselves against the defenders. The group leader realised it was well out of her hands now, nothing she had learned at the psychologist course had prepared her for dealing with thirteen paedophiles flailing insignificantly at each other.

"Police!" she shouted, thinking quickly.

The group quickly dispersed, grabbing their coats and leaving. The group leader sat heavily on her chair and put her head in her hands.

"Honestly," she said, "I treat paedophiles like a bunch of human beings and they act like animals."

Alex, lying on the ground, smoothing out the photos he kept in his pocket, said, "I think if you treat any human beings like human beings, they're gonna act like animals."

Then he spat out a tooth, possibly his own.

"What do rapists know?" the group leader said dismissively, standing and stepping into a warm, dark night.