10 Minute Story: Rorschach
Hermann has a difficult childhood. He doesn’t play well with the other kids. While the other kids in Schaffhausen play in the snowdrifts of the Swiss hills, chasing each other around and taking chocolate for granted, Hermann was looking at dribbles and drabbles of oil on the surface of the stream that meandered near his home.
His father is an Art teacher, mindful of how special Hermann is. Hermann knows he is different. All the children know maths – their fathers are bankers. In his mind Hermann knows bankers like he knows cave trolls – he knows they have treasures, he knows they hoard their gold and trinkets and silver scaled shirts, he knows their children are knobbed-faced, snooty, good at maths, and will punch you in the crotch all the way to Donnerstag.
But Hermann is his father’s son. He comes home upset one day. His head hanging so low, his neck is perpendicular to his chest. His father looks up from mixing his paints and asks –
What’s wrong, sohn?
Herman shakes his head and drags his feet on the floor. Not his whole foot, just the heels, just enough to make the *scuff scuff* sound and not the *klang staphen* sound.
I can’t. words.
His father understands and bends down until he sees his child eye to eye.
Then show me, eh?
Hermann shakes his head so vigorously, that the blood from the split lip that the mobberin pounded on during school that morning splashes onto the papers on his fathers drawing desk.
Hermann pauses. Lifts the paper gingerly and folds it in half and holds it between his palms, his little hands, bruised and scuffed, folded, as if in prayer.
He is still for a heartbeat, then five. He looks at his father square in the eye and slowly opens the paper to reveal the face of the devil.