Obstacles
It’s another one of those drop-dead hot days, when you take a step out of your lovely air-conditioned house, and you feel that wall of heat rush over your entire body, and it’s like looking death in the eye. From my window-box in the house that I’m in now, this cookie cutter like all the others in Ridgeville, Pennsylvania, I can see the fierce sun baking the dry front gardens like bread. This house is different from the many I saw when I was with the father. Mostly because the only houses I saw with him were abandoned shacks, sleazy motels, or the backseat of his ’71 Dodge Charger.
But now, I’m with Nina, in this oversized development house, surrounded by rows of square white boxes, painted brown or red or, like hers, yellow, each fitted with a miniscule front patch of grass and a chic patio in the back. I feel trapped, even in the central air and the fluffy white comforters. And now Nina is shooting me with a laser beam glare, telling me to get up and help put away the laundry. But I’m not moving from my window-box, the one I found when the social worker dropped me here and talked with Nina for an hour about my “situation”. I’ve been sitting here for three days straight, just sitting and thinking about the father.
He’s gone now. Gone. I can’t even think about that. Instead, I think of the many things he told me before they took him. Once, he said to me,
“Clyde, never, ever hesitate. Because the average man hesitates and the average man always loses.”
And I know I’m breaking his rule. I’m hesitating to run from this mass produced house and never come back, never listen to Nina, my mother, again. I know the father would cuff me upside the head and say, “Clyde, don’t think. Just do. You Navy, Clyde?”
And I would say, “Yessir,” and not think. Not hesitate. Just do.
But what I do know is this. The father is gone. They have taken me here to Nina, a “proper parental guardian.” Forever, perhaps. This is not where I’m from. Not in this cookie cutter house or in this window-box where I’ve been sitting and thinking and refusing to do what Nina says to me. It’s just one more obstacle that life now has thrown at me. The father used to have an answer to this.
“Clyde,” he’d say, clapping me roughly on the back while one hand stayed on the steering wheel of his Charger, “Life ain’t easy. There’s always gonna be obstacles. You just gotta kick ‘em aside.”
And I remember this, and suddenly the outside, sun-soaked world is blurry. But I guess I’ll just kick this aside. So I get up and follow Nina, offhandedly wiping the tears the father told me never to cry.
The Murderer
The man sits behind a dumpster in a deserted alley, the only light a streetlamp in the distance, giving his face a deadly orange glow. Fire rages in his eyes, and with every breath his lungs rattle with the strength it takes just to breathe. His legs are weak and he stretches them out in front of him, steering clear of the blood-drenched knife at his side. He slips off his black leather gloves and throws them into the dumpster. For a moment, he stares menacingly at the knife, then tosses it into the dumpster as well. Sirens are faint in the distance and he shrinks back against the cold brick wall.
The Arrest
Langley was shoved into the cop car by a forceful hand on his bare back and ducked his head to narrowly miss the roof. It had an acrid scent of sweat mixed with fear. The leather pressing against Langley’s skin stuck like a magnet and made a horrible ripping sound when he pulled away. Outside the tinted window, his six-year-old daughter was sobbing hysterically and trying to run toward the car. A tall, gruff man in uniform held her arms tight against him while she kicked empty air.
A long time ago, Langley would have reached out to her, broken the steel cuffs restraining him and picked her up and run far, far away from this dysfunctional community and this senseless violence. But now, he felt nothing. He just looked on at the scene before him and let his mind drift in an endless sea of meth-induced dreams. He could barely recall the events prior to his arrest. He sold a line to another faceless client for wads of bills, in his hands, where they belonged. They went back into his apartment and smoked the stuff outside. He looked down from the fire escape and glimpsed a man lying motionless on the sidewalk. The same man he had just given the drugs to. He stared at the body, making sense of what he could. Langley finally wandered down to the street below his apartment and flipped the guy over with his bare foot. Dead, sure enough.
And then Langley panicked. How pure had his dose been? Who saw the sale? An OD’d customer meant rapid-fire gossip. Soon they’d all leave him, and he’d have nothing to sell, nothing to buy, nobody to get hooked on the monster, and he’d surely die. Even if his future was empty now, no customers would make it nonexistent.
Langley, still flying high, carried the man inside, placed him on his daughter’s bed and suddenly passed out on the floor. Soon, the cops were breaking down his door and pulling him out into the humid summer night. And now, here was Langley, in a cop car, driving away from the life that cost him everything—his sanity, his hope, his emotions, and his daughter. Langley hung his head and tried to cry. Realizing no tears were going to come out, he knew that surely this was the end.
The Witness
Jeff Lancer cautiously turned the key in the lock of his small appliance store and felt a satisfying click. As he did often, he checked the knob twice more, just to be sure. He ambled along the sidewalk, looking down, and was not surprised when he heard a piercing scream from behind him. He glanced at two figures just 20 yards away, locked in a struggle. A knife flashed and Jeff, not knowing what else to do, scurried to his car, hyper consciously pulling the handle and hopping in. Like every other time this happened, he wouldn’t report it to the police. They might come for him next.
Freedom
I live my life as if this palace is the only world there is, trapped forever within these marble walls. Every day I stare longingly out of the intricately twisted iron bars and imagine myself out there, in the real world. But I am confined to this temple as a mere housemaid, just cleaning all day, crying all night, saying nothing in between. My father sold me as a relief from his growing debts a long, long time ago, when I was very small. I’m polishing the huge array of elephant statues in the main hall and thinking about my horrible life and burning down the door with my eyes in front of me now, just making the same movement over and over. My chance to escape the mindless torture of floors to clean, statues to dust, and clothes to wash is now. I could end the awful cycle of a housemaid’s life, the endless chores and empty future. I drop the cloth and make tiny steps toward the door. I’m free.
The Old Woman’s Loss
The old woman sits on the porch where she has sat for 30 years, but today only one of the white wicker rocking chairs moves. At one time, they would both be in sync, the persistent creaking of the paint coat wood sounding like one loud creak, together. The houses around her are like other worlds: people coming and going, children laughing, adults reminiscing and scolding, cars whipping past—and she is just an observer, frozen in her own memories. She sees nothing but the emptiness of the chair, feels nothing but the loneliness of her barren life, hears nothing but the new, endless drone of silence all around her, tastes nothing but her tears. Her heart is like a caged bird—it flutters every so often when she thinks back to the time when there was happiness—but it knows there is no hope of ever being free again. The one part of her life that made her complete is now gone, and she is falling apart. The lone chair sits, sedentary, and a final chair slides down her wrinkled cheek.
Elementary Young Writers 