Everyone knows about bullying. You go to school, and you either get beat up or scalded with words like poison. The building dread of needing to go daily but never ever wanting to, the panic and anxiety that surrounds you and finally leaves you trembling as a curled-up mound on the floor of the school hallway, the painfully stereotypical trait that gets picked up by the radar causing its possessor to become an easy target... on and on goes the list.

We're way too familiar with the so-called 'inferiors' of society. A story from the point of view of the bully would be considered too tyrannical to consider. Needless to say, bullies are thought to have too emaculate of a past to even consider the illiteracy and intolerancy of their wrongdoings. But that was long ago. To be exact, before Holly Mosley moved in.

Holy Moly, as she was called. She never liked that name, a fact I used to consider incredibly surprising because it brought sniggers and smiles to the mouths of everyone that Day. That Fateful Day. I used to wonder about that girl, before my silences became chokful of overthinking traps laid in my mind's map. I used to wonder: how could someone be so short?! More like a toddler, than a high schooler. Ha! A harmless joke, meant to entertain my squad of jesters. Not only was I a guffawing class clown, but I also had an established entourage consistently in thirst for my sadistic sarcasm. A reputation had to be maintained through small yet strong doses, like shots of whiskey. The escalation of the next months was unforseeable. Short as a chair, Holy, she was, that we even sat on her. Short as a garbage can, or how else would you explain all the trash hurled at her face? Short as an ant, we smushed her under our toes. She was even too short to be seen. "Holy Moly, there you are you naufty wittle baby!", went the classroom.

Despite our limited academic capabilities, we had picked up on the fact that she often wore loose clothing. The driving force finally compelling the teasing to turn physical was her preferred manner of dress, which was not passable with us. Seeking her out in the girls' washroom, five other jesters and I harassed her. We tore at her, pulling her limbs apart as we suffocated the 'wittle baby' with 'real adult' clothing. Who knew she could even dress herself, as a toddler? That was what they tell me happened at least. The way I remember is four dislocated joints, muffled screaming, floods of tears and witch children cackling with the devil. She never asked for this. She just wanted to miss all her classes and generally give up her future, hiding out in the washroom. Although Holy Moly was as rarely spotted at school in the last two months as a Peregrine Falcon in the wild, my jesters and I ceaselessly chased her as we never would a Falcon. The screeching laughter following her out kept our shame and guilt conveniently enfolded under the wraps of our thoughts. After all, we were only laughing. What's so bad about laughing? It was a question unasked, too bothered to answer itself.

Until one Fateful Day. A tweet had summoned us to perform our daily routine of taunts and shouted remarks outside Holy's house. The fact that she had disappeared from school for a record amount of time so far had not fazed us. The fact that her parents had actually come out, confronted us and wailed for the absence of their daughter hadn't stirred our ocean of thirst for laughter at her defeat. An excellent substitute, the parents were the subject of our most intricate jokes. That period of bullying her parents lasted two weeks, when the truth about her disappearance finally surfaced to water, through Twitter. Forever engraved in my memory is the stance she held outside her front door, looks of horror and sadness, pity and relief fighting each other in her parents' eyes. The two policemen accompanying them were our cues to keep silent. She held a plastic packet of white powder in her hands. The brief happiness that their daughter was alive had evaporated from the Molys' eyes as Holy was handcuffed, marched to the police car and drove away from her old life. We were still joking about her until then, "Holy Moly, hope you finally learn to walk, you wittle baby!". She did not look back once.

I was standing in the middle of the road, eyes uncomprehending and mouth gaping open. Apparently, she had run away from home, then come back with a 5-year-guaranteed-sentence piece of evidence against her. The next three days were depressingly similar in my imagination, Holy a juvenile delinquent and the jesters and I deprived of our source of joy. Then it came. Overwhelming, encapacitating grief seizing me at helpless moments, rendering me to a motionless heap on the floor with a salty, wet face and disabled thoughts. Suddenly and similtaneously, I realised how free Holy was in prison, while I was locked in a cage of mental despair over my bullying her. With the absence of laughter, our guilt and shame unravelled and thrashed violently and unexpectantly at our faces. Unlike her, we could not give ourselves a bit of jail time to emancipate ourselves. We could not run away from reality, especially if someone else was going to pay the price. That was why she came back. She hated her own self more than her parents, so she decided to set them free of our bullying.