shortstory1.htm

<font face = "TIMES NEW ROMAN" color = "BROWN"><fieldset>This is a Short Story written by a close friend. When he heard about THESEGAMES he wanted to support the cause in any way he could. He had wrote me this short story and 
insisted I showcase it, so here it is.</fieldset><p>
<font face = "TIMES NEW ROMAN" color = "BLACK"><h1>THE DARK & DIRE SELF-CONSCIOUS OF FRANK</h1></p>by Harold 
<p>   <font face = "TIIMES NEW ROMAN" color= "BLACK">                                                                     <h2>                  Prelude</h2>
<p>	<p>Jimmy walked to the rivers edge, spring color changes underway. The leaves start to come back. Changing seasons bringing along with them new colors and feelings.
 His 12-gauge shotgun under his arm, one last breath fore he rest the barrel under his chin and pulled the trigger. Surely, the bang from the blast stirred a freight in the neighborhood.
 When his next-door's got to the scene, it was all too gruesome. They didn't bother pulling his body fully out of the water, just his legs lay there while torso submerged.
 The cops arrived and everyone could go home. Not a pretty sight to see.</p>
	When Jimmy's brother heard he was startled. Frank couldn't hide the fact that he had been feeling the same way. How scary alike he and his brother thought. both should've seen a doctor a long time ago. Sometimes Frank would cut his wrists. He'd wear long sleeve shirts the next two and half weeks to hide the scars.
 There's no way Frank could do anything like that anymore, his brother now gone. The sombering mood that's stuck around now like the smell of smoke to his jacket. He dare not dwell in it, but best be turning the other cheek the next time he get's to thinking like that.
</p><h2>                        Chapter 1
              
               				 Small Town Treehouse Dreams</h2><p>	
<p>Couldn't have this gone differently? His brother's death came as an immediate halt to everything. It's like Jimmy could've given it two more days, then he wouldn't have wanted to anymore or something. I'll shoot myself then, if that's what real men do in this world!
<p> Knowing he was just letting his emotions get the best of himself. I should've shot myself  days ago, then Jimmy would have had to be the one to hear it from mother, "Frank is dead, he's gone and done' shot himself next to the river." Then Jimmy would know what it's like to be me right now. I'll see you on the other side companero.</p> It's these belligerent actions that could so easily be avoided if we all thought with our noggins a little more.
	I'll head out back and maybe find sarah at the treehouse. I never go to the river anymore. We use to skip rocks and smoke cigarettes, Sarah and I. We still smoke cigarettes. We sneak into her parent's liquor cabinet and take shots of vodka straight from the bottle.
	I finally reached the treehouse our dad built last year. He got a heart attack mid-construction. While he was in the Emergency Room, me and a couple of neighborhood kids took it upon ourselves to finish it up. Joe, who lives in the cul-de-sac down the road, is a huge douche. I took it upon myself to push him off before we put up railings.</p><p>
"Frank what are you thinking?"</p><p> Joe didn't seem to be breathing.</p>
	<p>We don't hang out with Joe anymore. Brandon helped us put up the tire swing. We picked him up at the bus stop one day. The bus stop we stopped seeing joe at, after our little incident. That's how the Dreamhouse Treehouse came to be.
	I wonder where we got the idea to make a treehouse in the first place? IF we knew we'd be old enough to drive our own cars a year later we never would've even started. My brother already had a car but he still helped us finish it. He's older than me by three years and explains that he's an ass guy but that I'm too young to understand the difference. Then he'd drive off in his pontiac like some sort of HotShot. </p>
</p><h2>
                         Chapter 2

                    			 Sarah in the Woods</h2><p>	<p>Sarah and I used to pull half-smoked cigarettes out of the ash tray in front of target, then run to the back and finsih them off. If you walk straight through my back yard, through the woods, past the tree house, eventually you run into the back end of Target where the cargo-trucks drop off merchandise.
	<p>It was saturday morning. Right after school we got into her parents' liquor cabinet. I got off at her bus stop and we hurried to her house so that we could steal her parents' liquor. They would be at work for a few more hours. We planned to get good and drunk.
</p>"I think there gonna notice." I said.</p><p>
"We've done it before" she said. "We planned on getting drunk, so quit trying to wuss out."</p><p>
"Fine, but this is the last one." I took my final shot.</p><p>
Suddenly, the door slammed upstairs. We scrambled to cap the vodka. The liquor cabinet was upstairs, where sarah's mom had already begun to roam. "Shit." Sarah grabbed the vodka from me. "Follow me." We dashed out her bedroom window and into the woods. "To the treehouse!" She tilted the bottle back, taking twice the pull I had. Always one-upping me aren't you sarah.
	I checked my pockets. Thank god I have a lighter. We'll find our fingers in targets' ash trays sooner or later. Next stop, the Dreamhouse Treehouse.</p>
<p>"Wanna play a game?" She beckoned.</p><p>
"What?"</p>
<p>We climbed into the treehouse and she started pulling needles out of her jacket pockets.</p>
<p>"What are those for?" She was no doctor. still holding the vodka in her free hand. I looked not at her but off into the distance. There was shimmer from the lake if you looked in the rights places.
</p>"There's rules."
	I looked back to her. "We can't tell anyone becuase this is super illegal." 
<p>"What are we about to do?"
<p>She had scored some rock.
"Is that crack?!"</p></p><p>
"You have to do it with me before it gets dark. It's a school night, I keep forgetting."
 One thing I do like about her is that she's always down for almost anything, but this was over the top. "Tell my parents and your a dead man." She warned. "And no its H."</p>
<p>"What's H? oh Heroine." I suddenly realized what we had just gotten into. Where did she get heroine? She brought joints onto the bus one time and tryed to smoke them out the window when we were sitting way in the back. I stopped her then, I have to now.</p>
<p>"Sarah, NO!" I realized she had already wrapped her arm to bulge the veins. I grabbed the needles and stomped all of them. She had three. who was the third for? 
She was upset at first but could only understand why I did it. </p>
Still in the treehouse, I think i'll treat myself to another pull then. Who would Sarah have gotten H from? Those kinds of drugs are no game. We didn't get completely loaded that night but still had that bottle of vodka left and treated ourselves generously to it.
	<p>Her and I passed out right there in the tree house. Despite the fact that it was a school night.</p>
</p><h2>
                          Chapter 3

                           			HardBall</h2><p>	Not a single day goes by where I don't think about Jimmy. He's never shown much enthusiasm for hunting, but I knew he had a gun. He bought it for hunting originally. killing himself was the final outcome. That's why I'll never buy one of those things. Not only for obvious reasons but also, bullets are way too expensive. 20$ for 8 shots at a deer, no guarantees you'll hit your target either.
	Jimmy had a trigger finger. He was playing hardball in a world full of softies. Jimmys friends talked about going to football games and playing cribbage. Jimmy on the other hand, well he had bigger plans.
He told me once,<p>"I wanna rule the world someday. I want to be president. Then I want to overrun the government and be the first dictator of the United States."</p>
"That's not even possible."<p>
"Yeah it is..."</p>
"... and after every speech I give, they'll play my theme song: Don't Stop Me Now by Queen, As I walk off the stage. That's my theme song because I'll become such a powerful leader that I won't be able to be stopped. You know how they do that sometimes, they drop the mic to add to the effect? I'll do that too. I'll be so good at dictating that they'll keep me in power until I die, then my children will take my place. Like how they do it in North Korea."<p>
"You're playing hardball," I said to Jimmy. "You're playing hardball in a world full of softies." I said it and I meant it. I kept saying it. I would say it to him in the morning to wake him up. I would say it to him at the dinner table. I would see him in the hallway at school and say it to him, and I would say it to him before bed. I couldn't say it enough.
</p><h2>
	Chapter 4

                      			Hot Showers</h2><p>	Jimmy still comes to mind ever now and again. a reminder of that this cruel, cruel world I've been left in. The thought of him is often put to side by the tasks that come with every day, and I become extremely distracted. Whether it be Heroine with sarah on a schoolnight, or explaining to my parents why I had slept in the woods. I cannot forget that there are still things to do. The day is for doing, not for dwelling. I try to turn my alarm off and get out of bed but there is no alarm and I roll off the side of the tree house.
I run home quick becuase it is a school day.</p>
 The shower burns my face, but I take the heat and count my blessings. The water is so hot that I squeal when I jump in.<p> "Frank what's going on in there?" I hear my mother.
</p>"I'm in hell." That's just the hangover talking. "With Jimmy."<p> "Don't talk like that."</p> 
	No one should ever need to feel the way he did. If he would have chosen to seek help maybe things would be different now. When I got to school brandon asked me why my face was all red.<p> 
	I haven't seen sarah since I woke up. She could have very well gotten home last night and I slept in the woods alone.
</p>
<center><h2>THE END</h2></center>
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