Published September 5, 2013
Warning: This work has been rated 18+ for mature content.
Prologue
It was around midnight, it was a new moon, and the only lights in the cool city night was from neon signs of restaurants of busineses and the signs from gas stations. A 1988 Cadillac Escalade, white with chrome trim and chrome spinner rims and tinted windows pulled into a small gas station with only two pumps. The gas station was a Texaco establishment, and the man in the driver's seat looked around the parking lot noticing it was empty.
This comforted the man, as his usual paranoia had settled within his mentality. He turned to his five year old son in the passenger seat and ruffled the short head of hair with a grin on his face. The little boy grinned back goofily, and the man nodded and stepped out of his flashy vehicle and shut the car door.
He paused before he proceeded to walk to the store's double doors. He trained his ears for his surroundings. Cars off in the distance, car horns, somewhere in the distance he thought he heard the rat-a-tat-tat of rifle fire, which alarmed him. A cold sensation raced up his spine and he reached for the inside of his jacket, but then after silence a few moments later, he calmed his own nerves.
Somebody had most likely been murdered, this was East Lake City, which owned the highest murder rate in America due to gang-related crimes. Gunfire was nothing new to him. The man was an Enforcer for a vicious street gang himself. The Bay Street Kings, a gang the man had ran with since he was eight years old. He was twenty-two years old now, he was unsure how he had survived so long on the streets of East Lake City when so many of his friends and fellow gangsters hadn't.
He shook his head as the memories of murder, gunfire, blood, screams, and bodies began to rush in all one split moment. It made the man dizzy for a few seconds. The man shrugged it off and he headed into the store and he noticed one of the overhead lights above the doors of the gas station was flickering on and off. It would illuminate and then darken the area around the man repeatedly.
Entering the gas station, the tendant, (someone the man considered to be a biker of some sort) nodded to the man with his american flag bandanna and dark sunglasses. Biker was behind the counter with a fresh issue of today's newpaper settled in front of him where he had just previously been leaning over to read. Biker watched the man carefully as he reached into his pocket for his bundle of cash. He handed the man twenty dollars so he could pump gas and the Biker still stared at him oddly. It was not uncommon for stores to be assaulted then the tendant's murdered simply because they were witnesses.
The man exited the store, and was headed to his car when he noticed a silver Honda Civic looking busted, with several dents in the front and a headlight missing and it's rims were sprayed painted black for some odd reason to block out the stock look. The Honda pulled in, and stopped a ten feet away from where the man stood, the driver side window facing him.
The man became heavily nervous, he tossed a look at his son who stared at him from the passenger side window. The man smiled at his son. He wanted to run to him so he could get in the vehicle and flee, but he could put his son in the crossfires of gunfire and he couldn't afford that.
The driver side window rolled down, and someone from inside spoke.
" Yo name Eric Stockton from Bay Street?" asked a male voice.
" Yeah, who is you and where you from?" responded Eric.
Eric wouldn't lie because that was considered cowardice and no matter what, Eric could not be seen as a coward, his pride wouldn't allow that. Eric turned once more to his son in the passenger seat.
"Xavier Avenue is where I'm from bitch, fuck who I am!!!" roared the voice inside the vehicle, and suddenly, a woman in the passenger seat, and a man in the back seat on the passenger side, leaned over the top of the vehicle.
Both were armed with Tec-9 Sub-Machine guns and before Eric could grip his .50 Caliber handgun in his coat, he was hit with a barrage of gunfire.
Eric was dead before his body hit the ground.
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141,462 Literary Works • 674,479 Reviews
Blue cabbit here! The story sounds interesting so far. I love how you enforce the setting into the story, especially the dialogue. The ending really is hooking since it makes the reader want to know what's gonna happen to the poor son and where the story is going to go. "He handed the man twenty dollars so he could pump gas and the Biker still stared at him oddly." This part of the story is quite confusing. In here you've got multiple pronouns and you aren't making it clear who is giving who the money. Anyways, thank you for your story and for letting me advance through the alphabet and keep up the good work!
----Blue Cabbit
Hi there!
Let me just tell you that having this man's son in the car just about did it for me. I was seriously ready to cry when Eric died at the end. I find it amazing how writer's can tug at a reader's greatest emotions when they put a child's life/feelings on the line. As a reader I'm mad that you put that in, but as a reader I completely understand why the son's in here.
You have a very formal writing style. Usually I'm not into that, but I like your story. I'm more into young adult fiction where the narrators are thirteen to sixteen year olds with very weak language skills (well, you know what I mean). But the narrator of your story here couldn't be any different. And I guess the real reason I liked reading it is because I haven't read something so formal in a while. I enjoyed it.
But the formality of the narrator also made it a bit awkward when the car pulls up and the driver talks. He has a very distinct dialect that is completely different from the narrator's. It threw me off, but after reading it again, I realized that that was the best thing t do. It really shows the difference between the two worlds, Eric's world and the world that these people who killed him are from. I loved it.
I really only have two "negative" things to say. They're not really negatives, but just something I want to point out.
This is an awkward sentence. It fits in with your writing style, but overall it doesn't sound right. If you were describing Eric listening as he was going for a walk, this would work well. You could say he tuned his ears to the surroundings as he started his walk. But Eric's already been driving through this area and no doubt has heard the same sounds he was hearing then. He didn't train his ear to the sounds, he just paid more attention to them. You know what I mean?
The second thing is that I wish you had spent more time on the son. It didn't have to be anything extensive, just a paragraph or two about him. I want to know how he responded to his father being killed right before his eyes. Was he nervous about he area or the men driving up in the other car? There's more than just Eric in this scene. There's so much I want to know about how the son reacted to all of this. But who knows, maybe I'll get that in the next chapter. Maybe I just have to be patient...I'm not a patient person.
Let me know when the next chapter is up!
Keep writing!
**Noelle**
Story's like this make me wonder how America became this way, or has it been like this since the beginning? Who knows. All I know is that I'm glad I live in the country of Kansas and not East Lake, that place sounds like hell to me. How can people just pull up to someone and shoot them? It's so inhuman. That just shows you how evil has such a strong grip in us.
This story it's self is vary good, you managed to put a lot detail into this, I could see it all details taking place in my mind as I was reading. I would like to read more about it though, I feel like I'm missing out on all the action and conspiracy. But its vary good though, nicely done!
I hope to see more of your work.