|
Writing Machine
Join Date: Apr 2008
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,727
|
My short story
Ok, this is only a small part of my short story. more will come when avaible. i am only fifteen so don't think im a pathetically horrible adult writer.
It was in the spring of 2000 when the murders started. It was July fourth of 2000 when they ended. July fourth burns in my mind even now twenty years later. I still carry the scar on my belly and it serves as a reminder of the horror that I had faced and nearly died. In a way, it was beef jerky that saved my life.
The murders began when I was still in middle school, three weeks before the end of school. I was twelve at the time. The first victim was an eight year old named Emily Soradin. She should have been in school but she faked sick and her mother bought the story, and still blames herself today. Emily had been playing in her backyard when she disappeared. The newspaper didn’t print the full story as it was considered too gruesome. When I came up with the idea for this I had paid a visit to Emily’s mother to get the details. After much crying and long pauses I had gotten the details. Emily had been found by a four year old boy. He had found her body stashed under a bush and he had run home screaming. The police came and finally got the boy to tell them where the body was. I lived in a small town and the police never had more to do than the occasional family disturbance or a drug bust. What they saw had horrified them. Emily had been eviscerated. Her mother was hysterical when she found out and had to be sedated.
When my mother read the story in the paper she looked at me and told me to be careful because there was a crazy man that had killed a girl in our town. It turned out that my mother wasn’t the only one worrying. On Monday the school held an assembly about safety. They had a cop come in and tell us the stuff that we had learned in kindergarten. The Stranger talk; don’t talk to them, don’t take candy from them, and don’t get in their car.
On Saturday I went to the Liberty theatre with my friends and a warning from my mother. The Liberty is incredibly inexpensive, but can only show two movies at a time. One of them was what Dillon called a Chick Flick and the other was an adult movie. So we ended up skipping out on the movie and went to the corner store instead.
The corner store is half pharmacy and half grocery store. But even that is a stretch; it just sells candy, chips, pop and other junk food. We ended up buying a six pack of Mug root beer, three cans of Pringles pizza flavor and five packs of beef jerky.
Taking our spoils we went down to the park, which was no more than an open block behind the library with a couple benches. We sat down on the only available bench, (the two other were taken up by high-schoolers doing pot) and struggled to open a particularly hard-to-open bag of jerky.
Dillon looked at me, “You want some help with that?”
“I got it.” I tugged harder and it burst open, sending a small shower of jerky onto the grass.
“Nice one!” laughed Jack, Dillon’s older brother.
“Shut up.” I scraped the jerky off the grass and a glint caught my eye. I reached over and tugged the shining thing out from a leaf. It was a switchblade with an imitation ivory handle. I triggered the blade and four inches of gleaming steel popped out.
Dillon craned his head over to see what I had in my hand. “Whatch ya got?”
I showed them the switchblade.
Jack whistled softly, “There must be some sorry soul that lost that baby.”
I grinned. “Right on Jack-o.”
“Don’t call me that, you know I hate that name.”
“Or what? I’m the one with the blade. I’ll cut your jean jacket!”
Jack cowered in mock horror. “Oh please! Not my jean jacket! I can be good! I swear it!”
We all broke out laughing. Across the park the teens had started fighting. We watched them with mild interest and hooted when one of them got a good punch. The cops came and one of the teens started to run, but his friend grabbed his arm and yanked him back. The cops found the pot and cuffed them. We left shortly after that, having exhausted our crude jokes about the principal and what he did in his spare time. Jack had some chores to do and left with hardly a good-bye. Dillon had to meet his girlfriend at the Starbucks down the street. I thought about going with him but decided to work on my book instead.
My book was about this family that moves from Chicago to a corn farm in Indiana. The corn farm is haunted by the chieftain of an Indian tribe that was massacred on the farmland. I decided that all but the youngest daughter survive. So far it is a hundred pages and complete crap. But I am determined to make it a complete book that’s a piece of crap. I pounded out five pages, killing off the dog, and having the mom find a boyfriend, (who will later die). My mom read it and said that it sounds morbid, but good. I say it sounds morbid and bad. My dad doesn’t care about what I do, and mostly ignores me. Its like he has almost no interest in me, he doesn’t care what grades I get and he couldn’t care less if I got a detention. I bet that I could announce that I had gotten mugged and he would only grunt. The only thing he taught me how to do was to play baseball, and he didn’t do a good job of it either. My pitches were wide and my swings were wild. When my mom told him I was writing a book he just grunted and went back to his Bears game.
Two weeks passed and two more murders took place. I had gotten some information from the corner store where they sold the local paper. The most recent victims were Molly Hendricks and Frank Laudrich. I knew Molly and I guess I had a crush on her. She was in my grade and we had literature class together. I reread the article and cried. Frank Laudrich had taught me how to fish, clean a fish and cook a fish. He was a nice guy, if a bit overweight, and lived alone two doors down from me. He always held a Christmas party and was an excellent cook. His specialty was what he called Heart Attack Potatoes, he would chop potatoes into thin slices, lay them in a pan. He would then generously layer them with cheese and Corn Flakes. And as a final touch he would pour four sticks of melted butter on the top of it and pop it in the oven for an hour. It always came out delicious. My mom also cried when she read that he was killed.
The last day of school came quickly. Our Spanish teacher threw a party and had ordered Domino's pizza and put on a movie in Spanish. The math teacher had us clean out our lockers and throw away old papers and folders that had been hidden in the bottom under unused textbooks. The eighth graders who were going on to high school threw away their old backpacks without even clearing them out. Dillon and I gleefully raided their old backpacks and found a grand total of just over seventy dollars, a Zippo lighter, a scientific calculator, an old pack of cigarettes and a bicycle lock that wasn’t even out of its package. Our Literature teacher handed back our book reports on The Outsiders and gave us all a crossword puzzle to do. During the last couple of minutes the principal played Alice Cooper’s Schools Out and had managed to synchronize the end of the song with the ending bell. We all charged out of the school roaring as if we were storming the beaches of Normandy.
I always think that when school is out that everything seems more vibrant. I notice things that I wasn’t aware of when school was still in progress. I heard the birds and squirrels chattering in the trees, I could smell every little thing that the air carried, the grass seemed greener and lusher. The whole world seemed brighter and more alive. Even the food from McDonalds seems gourmet. It’s as if everything was reborn, more wonderful and beautiful than before.
I went to the library and browsed through books for summer. Our library is small and doesn’t have very many good books. Not finding any I went on the computer slightly disgruntled. The internet automatically goes to the website for the local paper. Not surprisingly the headline was about the killings. NO END IN SIGHT FOR MURDERS. It blared in large bold letters. I scanned through it not really reading. The only thing that caught my attention was that the police were offering a fifty thousand dollar reward for any information leading to the arrest and capture of the killer. I instantly imagined myself in front of the Chief and being given a check for fifty thousand dollars. I could hear him saying “Richie, you have done your town and the world at large a great favor in discovering where this man was hiding. I speak for the whole town when I say that I am proud of you” the FBI would then take the killer to some federal prison and put on Death Row. In my imagination the killer slightly resembled Dreyfuss from the Pink Panther.
I went to the information desk and asked if the lady knew any good books.
She looked at me kindly with the sweet old librarian look. “What do you like?”
“Ummm… Horror novels.”
“Have you read any Dean Koontz?”
“No. I’ve read Stephen King though”
“I think you would like Dean Koontz. Fiction, under “K” I would recommend The Good Guy, Fear Nothing and Seize the Night.”
“Thanks!” I went over to the fiction section and found K. Seize the Night was missing but I got the other two. I decided they were going to be pretty good judging by the inside flap that had the summary-thing in it.
I went over to the service desk to check them out. Dillon’s other older brother Hal was working. Hal had graduated from high school earlier this year. “Hey Hal. What’s new?”
He scanned the books and my card. “Not much, Sandy left me yesterday, the dirty tramp. Left me for Gary Cuggins, the little prick. All he ever looks for in a girl is sex.”
“That sucks man”
“Tell me about it.” He demagnetized the books. “Looks like you’re in for some heavy reading.” He handed me my books.
“Meh. Just light. I’ll be done by next week.”
Hal grinned. “Have a nice day.”
“You too!” I called, already halfway out the door.
My house is perfectly located. It is only two short blocks from the library, and from there I have easy access to the Liberty and the corner store. If I go the other way for five blocks I reach the Dairy Dream. The Dairy Dream is smaller than a McDonalds but serves better burgers. Besides burgers they have great Chicago Style hot dogs, the best shakes that you can order in any of the thirty-one different flavors and, their specialty, ice cream.
I flew into my house and thundered up the stairs.
My mother’s voice came up from the kitchen, “I didn’t expect you for another couple of hours yet! Summer vacation just started. Aren’t boys supposed to stay out late all the time now?”
“I’m just dropping off some library books and grabbing some cash!” I shouted back. I tossed my books on my bed and dumped my backpack on the floor. I opened one of the cabinets under my overflowing bookcase and grabbed twenty or so dollars and my incomplete book. I decided that my book wasn’t worth the effort. It was poorly written, even Dillon had said that. I dumped out the contents of my backpack into the trash and tossed my manuscript in the now empty and considerably lighter backpack. I lifted my mattress and took out a Zippo. My mother was terribly afraid of fire and would freak if she found a lighter in my room. When she was eight her house had accidentally burned down from a gas explosion and killed her two sisters and her dog. I tossed the Zippo in also. I lifted the mattress again and took out the switchblade. I put that in my back pocket. I ran down the stairs and burst through the door, by the time it slammed shut I barley heard it I was so far away.
I walked up to the Dairy Dream, my stomach growling angrily at the lack of food.
“Welcome to Dairy Dream, are you ready to order?” The attendant was a teenager with a terrible case of acne.
“Yea, uh, I’ll have two double cheeseburgers with bacon, a large fry and water.”
“Alright, anything else?”
“No, that will be all.”
“That will be ten thirty-two.”
I handed over a ten and a one “Thanks.”
“Sure thing. Your order will be ready in about five minutes.”
“Ok.” I leaned against the building and listened to the music floating out of the open window. It was Van Halen singing “You Really Got Me”.
“Here is your food. I hope you come again.”
I took the white bag. The scent of bacon and cheese wafted up, curling and twisting its way to me. “Thanks” I cut through the woods behind the Dairy Dream to get to the dump.
The dump used to be a gravel quarry until it was shut down due to lack of funding. Now people just throw away their old junk that mostly still works. Occasionally Dillon and I find an old dresser or set of drawers that has money or jewelry in it. The jewelry we sell at the antique shop up by the train tracks. On the occasion when we find a T.V. we would see who could throw a rock through it first and make it explode. Last year someone threw away an old charcoal grill and we occasionally light fires in it.
I went over to the grill and dumped my book in it. I took the can of lighter fluid that we keep under the grill and doused the paper in the fluid. The pages greedily sucked up the fluid and turned transparent. I flipped my Zippo and help it to the pages. They caught instantly, and the flames roared up hungrily devouring my book. As I watched my story burn I felt a sense of relief and release from the book. I wouldn’t stop writing; I just needed a better story. And what better to write about accurately than what was going on now? The flames eventually tapered down and went out.
P.S. This is just something I did in like half an hour, it's a "Water-Tester". my main book is The Island.
Last edited by KangTheMad : 04-09-2008 at 09:58 AM.
Reason: So it is easier to read.
|
