From across the classroom, I can see him staring at me from my peripheral vision and my stomach turns. Why is he staring at me? Why not somebody else? Someone more deserving of his intent gaze? What reason could he possibly have for wanting to look at me in that way?

Had I done something wrong? Something so terrible that this person – who I can only describe to be an odious monster – would feel the need to make my insides squirm uncomfortably.

I could remember quite vividly back to the days when he didn’t even go to our school and that pungent smell that radiated from him didn’t hang ominously over my school building. I could remember when I didn’t have to be scared of where I placed my eyes because nobody in my school had quite the same effect on me as he did. I could remember when I didn’t have selective hearing – a skill which I had developed upon meeting that fiend. Oh, how I long for the days when no-one’s voice could make me taste bile in my mouth.

Before meeting this person, “tolerant” would have been the last thing that I would have ever have described myself as and although he makes me want to throw up, at least I know that should I ever meet another person like him, I will be able to block out my senses screaming at me to run. A silver lining to this grotesque cloud?