Young Writers Society

**This is a re-write of my first pieces 'A Bad Person'. I've decided to make the piece into a Musical but I haven't decided on a new title yet.**

The morning should’ve warned me what a terrible day it was gonna be. There were these great big depressing boats of clouds almost touching the horizon, and flocks of birds marring the skies. The sort of day when people’s troubles just seem to spill from their despairing eyes down to the bottoms of their trousers, soaking all the way down to the earth.

Unfortunately, this is the day my story begins. Start as you mean to continue, as people always say.

I live in America, if I’m being general. New York suburbs, if I’m feeling fancy. Mostly I live somewhere in between the appearance of reality and insanity. I started the day with a handful of prescription pills. I’m never well. Since I was a baby, I can always remember the chalky smell of them from when my Mom used to crush them up and put them in my bottle. But I’m letting too much away already about her. We’ll get to her soon.

Once I’d pulled on some clothes I left the house. I never stay there longer than I have too. I can understand why some guys sit on their asses all day in their fantastic pads watching Grey’s Anatomy and eating their weight in Nachos, but I can’t. My house is too poor looking. Well, not poor. I mean, we have a computer an all, but sometimes you can’t really get past the stench of unpaid bills and a tax dodging single parent. Things just seem to let you down- the sofa, the shower, even the dog.

Our street isn’t the worst. There’s a lot more trouble down and round the corner in Talent Avenue than where I live, still there’s trouble anywhere if you go looking for it. I did to begin with. Now it just follows me.

I’d only managed a few steps when I saw my friend. He’s a tall guy, with this jacket that’s never off him. Seriously, we joke about it all the time that it could probably dance better than he can. And he’s a bloody good dancer. His name is Luck Disney and he’s known me the longest. He was born with a twin, but he died. I always wonder if his mother ever looks at him and thinks he’s a murderer, on account of him surviving. Ironically me and him are the only one’s out of our group that hasn’t given someone the once over. But with a name like Luck Disney I don’t expect it screams cold blooded monster.

‘Skid!’ he practically jumped out of his father’s hedge and knocked me sideways. It damn well hurt as well.

‘Fuck off!’ I pushed him in the face and bent my head down, keeping a brisk pace down the pavement and stuffing my hands in my pockets. He was the last person I wanted to talk to today.

‘Where’s the spot, boss?’

He always calls me boss. He’s not sycophantic or anything, he’s just a idiot. I have indeed realised how disillusioned my voice sounds, but I’m really quite a funny guy. I find a lot of things hilarious- and they just seem to happen when I’m around, but today wasn’t the day for it.

‘Call Edgar,’ I said out of the corner of my mouth ‘Call him now. I’ve got things I need to do.’

‘What things?’ he said ‘Boss you’ve never got things to do- listen, you’re not still worried about Spence, are you? Because Dilian said he’d see to it-’

I could feel anger trying to get hold of me. So I broke into a sprint and didn’t stop running until I’d crossed three streets of suburban houses and two school buses. When I turned Luck was gone, and so was my breath. I have to be honest with you, if I’m honest with anyone. I have to kill his Dad tonight, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him. Everything about his innocent, sweaty vision made me feel sick right now. The icing on the cake of my guilt was him trying to console me about Spence Haut.

I took my time getting my lungs filled again. I really drew big heaving breaths, just to prove I was still alive. Sometimes it feels like I’m not. It’s funny, because it was my eighteenth birthday. For a few moments it irritated me that Luck hadn’t even noticed. But I was past all that sort of jazz, the state I was in anyway. I could have caught a bus into the city and took a day to say goodbye to the world. Instead I decided I’d grab a coke and call Edgar. I’d tell him I’d do it.

Old man Gamford’s store was a couple of minutes walk and before I knew it I was there. He didn’t even raise his head went I tinkled in under the shop chime and stalked down one of the aisles to the refrigerator. We had always robbed him blind. Today was no different. I bummed myself a drink and a few chocolate bars for luck. Only when I went to leave on account of my cell mysteriously going off, I was punched in the undesirables and whacked in the face with the butt of a gun. A kid from my street with a Halloween mask had decided to rob the convenience store at ten o’clock on a Wednesday.

‘The TILL!’ he yelled, brandishing this fake and kicking over a display of tinned peaches. The guy really was an amateur. Old man Gamford made this awful noise between a man’s scream and a groan as his long, purple-veined fingers bumbled over the till, leafing through the dollars whilst this kid stood there, shaking in his ski jacket and twitching like a drug addict. But before even the money had been handed over, he freaked out and dropped the gun, fleeing from the shop. I knew him by his voice. The kid was fifteen.

I’d just manage to get myself up, the blood spilling from my nose when two more guys from the fruit store adjacent Gamford’s came running in, looking like two damn heroes, still carrying their price guns and pineapples. They both stood, frozen for an idiotic moment with these god damn pineapples still in their hands. I damn near laughed.

‘Terence!’ Tommy Ellis yelled ‘Are you alright?’

Old man Gamford is pushing eighty, and let me tell you he did not look alright. He looked like someone had slapped both his grandmothers. And hell, I bet they’re old ladies.

‘Hold on,’ said Bill, Tommy’s twin brother, the taller, more good looking of the pair. His eyes fixed on me, and then on the gun. ‘hold it right there. Who the hell are you? What the HELL d’you think you’re doing? You’re his friend- the accomplice! Stop!’

Now would be a good time to tell you what I look like. I know it’s not terribly flattering to describe yourself as a criminal, but I’m afraid that’s me. I’ve got this hair, pretty thick, these eyes, pretty darkening and this skin, pretty crummy. In short, hold on to your purses. And your daughters, for that matter. I look, in the words of my elementary school headmaster, like a ‘god damn rapist‘.

‘No,’ I said through the blood ‘no- listen, it’s not- no, listen!’

They didn’t listen. Not Bill, not Tommy, and certainly not the cops.