UMBRELLA KID

A little kid walks the streets alone, under a tattered umbrella. The kid is so little and the umbrella is so big that it seems that it floats above the ground all by itself.

When it rains so heavily you can barely see ten metres ahead and the sky is dark and grumbling with thunder, people see the umbrella kid standing somewhere in the middle of the busy street, alone.

At least one kind heart, touched by compassion, always approaches him. The person squats beside the lonely child to get down to his eye level before asking who he is and where his parents are, then lifts the umbrella’s tattered side… and faces a demonic creature with milky white eyes without irises. The creature flashes an ear-to-ear smile to the unfortunate human, a smile of hundreds of needle-sharp teeth. The nightmarish face seems copy-pasted into a body of a chubby little boy with fair hair and rosy cheeks. Urban demons have their own ways to blend in...

The unfortunate person screams bloody murder, slips on the mud while trying try to get away, sprawls on the street, their umbrella snatched by the winds, their terrified eyes open wide to the merciless rain.

His hunger satisfied, the umbrella kid quietly walks away. He is so little and his umbrella is so big that it seems that it floats above the ground all by itself.

(June 22, 2003)