Next Time

"We will win next time, boys!" Rajan's voice rose above the din the opponent team made. "We will show them where they belong," he spat, pointing to his feet. "We will pump in goals from left and right, front and back!" His voice rose further. "We will hit back when they try to scare us. We will tear their shirts off their backs, we will..." Clearly, the loss had not gone down well with the 12 year-old captain of the neighbourhood football team. "... and we will make sure they can't walk back home on their own legs..." The rag-tag team listened to their captain only because they were too tired to get up and make a move. The big boys in the enemy team had outrun them, shoved them around, mocked at them and broken their spirit. "We will break their bones and chase them out of this ground!" Rajan ended, shaking with anger. To emphasize his point, he threw the stone in his hand hard into the distance, where it landed on a dog busy marking his territory. With a howl of indignance, the dog charged at the football team. Panic broke out as the team ran for its life. Rajan climbed up a tree, the goalie rolled into a gutter, the defender lost most of his pants to the dog... "Next time boys," Rajan whispered from above. AbNQ