Jarrk
10-16-2009, 11:41 AM
Hi there, all. This is the short story i recently wrote for an English creative piece, and before i submit it, i'd love to hear all thoughts about it.
Thanks!
- Jack
Predator
My name is Herbert Stanford Theodore.
Or at least, it was.
I was the sort of academic type who never quite relinquishes being addressed by anything other than their full name. A seemingly innocent commonality amongst adults, but an almost unspeakable crime amongst teenagers.
Herbert Standford Theodore.
In all honesty, I’m surprised I can even remember my name from back then.
These days, it’s just Herb, and for good reason.
But I wasn’t always the type of kid to coin a nickname derived from street talk for marijuana, taking drags between swigs of ash-stained Jack Daniels in the pouring rain. Hell, if you’d asked me what ecstasy was before, I probably would have given you some straight arsed, dictionary definition of a synonym for euphoria.
Now, euphoria passed between my fingertips every day, twenty dollars a pop – happiness in every bag.
Sometimes I wish I could go back and change the things I did.
But then I realise that would never have happened. High school would never be finished - I would never become a Harvard Law graduate.
All because of her.
I was never the sort to get caught up by girls. They were a waste of time, a hindrance to my studies, a roadblock in the way of my soaring ambitions.
Girls to me were a combination of plastic and peroxide named Chastity or Candy, living in a place where botox and breast augmentations were cheap and ready, trapped smiling falsely forever behind my computer screen.
In reality, they never noticed me, so I never expected acknowledgement. After all – high school girls wanted ripped boneheads who spent their days bragging about how many times they’d been to the gym that week, and their nights injecting themselves with anabolic steroids.
And I could never have done that – the drugs, I mean. I was always a firm believer in the ‘au naturel’ approach to life.
It seems ironic, now, coming from someone who’s veins have all but collapsed from years of abuse from unsterile needles. But somehow at the time, it all seemed so plausible. So real.
Until I met Jenna Suffren.
In fact, when I first met her, nothing seemed real. The way I was suddenly being noticed, for the first time in my life, and not by some overweight dropout who spent hours in the bathroom, wishing that last hamburger she’d eaten would somehow fall into her breasts for once and not her hips.
No, Jenna Suffren was very different. Strawberry blonde hair, icy blue eyes and translucent, velvet-like skin. The minute she walked through the front doors with that naïve, doe-like expression upon her face, she had already mapped out her plan of attack.
Over the coming months, she would predate upon unsuspecting boys, slipping them joints in between rounds of meaningless sex, selling herself so that in the process she might too sell her product.
Suffren was a dealer, and the very best kind. She knew how to work it, alright.
Within three months of her sophomore year, she had rooted three quarters of the boys in our grade, and at the same time, made three quarters of the boys in our grade addicted to all sorts of drugs.
Marijuana, usually, but a snort of coke or an e-tab never went astray.
She would walk the walk, talk the talk – she’d hold your hand, and laugh like your jokes were funny. She’d proudly tell people you were dating, and count down the days to your anniversary like they mattered.
She was playing a game against everyone she knew, and she was winning.
By my final year in high school, you think I would have realised this. But I was too blinded by the sudden, unexpected bouts of sex and attention I was being treated to.
As my grades plummeted, so too did my grip on reality. I started cutting back my ambitions for more real goals. I stopped dreaming so much and thought about the present.
I planned more and more of my life around Jenna Suffren.
And then one day, like a rug pulled from beneath my feet, she was gone. A quick tear and a whisper in my ear, and the redheaded drug goddess disappeared. I asked myself what had happened.
For days, I locked myself in my bedroom, not being able to sleep, tormented by my questioning soul. Why me? Why now? What had I done wrong?
In actuality, it was all part of her sick game. This is how she did it. She got the guys, did what needed to be done, and then moved on.
As I stand here now, although I’ve moved on, I have to ask myself if all my problems are because of her. Was it Jenna Suffren? Or was it something more?
While all these questions are running through my head, I take one last drag from my cigarette, swig from my ash-stained Jack Daniels bottle and watch from a distance as Jenna Suffren takes the arm of another unsuspecting victim.
Thanks!
- Jack
Predator
My name is Herbert Stanford Theodore.
Or at least, it was.
I was the sort of academic type who never quite relinquishes being addressed by anything other than their full name. A seemingly innocent commonality amongst adults, but an almost unspeakable crime amongst teenagers.
Herbert Standford Theodore.
In all honesty, I’m surprised I can even remember my name from back then.
These days, it’s just Herb, and for good reason.
But I wasn’t always the type of kid to coin a nickname derived from street talk for marijuana, taking drags between swigs of ash-stained Jack Daniels in the pouring rain. Hell, if you’d asked me what ecstasy was before, I probably would have given you some straight arsed, dictionary definition of a synonym for euphoria.
Now, euphoria passed between my fingertips every day, twenty dollars a pop – happiness in every bag.
Sometimes I wish I could go back and change the things I did.
But then I realise that would never have happened. High school would never be finished - I would never become a Harvard Law graduate.
All because of her.
I was never the sort to get caught up by girls. They were a waste of time, a hindrance to my studies, a roadblock in the way of my soaring ambitions.
Girls to me were a combination of plastic and peroxide named Chastity or Candy, living in a place where botox and breast augmentations were cheap and ready, trapped smiling falsely forever behind my computer screen.
In reality, they never noticed me, so I never expected acknowledgement. After all – high school girls wanted ripped boneheads who spent their days bragging about how many times they’d been to the gym that week, and their nights injecting themselves with anabolic steroids.
And I could never have done that – the drugs, I mean. I was always a firm believer in the ‘au naturel’ approach to life.
It seems ironic, now, coming from someone who’s veins have all but collapsed from years of abuse from unsterile needles. But somehow at the time, it all seemed so plausible. So real.
Until I met Jenna Suffren.
In fact, when I first met her, nothing seemed real. The way I was suddenly being noticed, for the first time in my life, and not by some overweight dropout who spent hours in the bathroom, wishing that last hamburger she’d eaten would somehow fall into her breasts for once and not her hips.
No, Jenna Suffren was very different. Strawberry blonde hair, icy blue eyes and translucent, velvet-like skin. The minute she walked through the front doors with that naïve, doe-like expression upon her face, she had already mapped out her plan of attack.
Over the coming months, she would predate upon unsuspecting boys, slipping them joints in between rounds of meaningless sex, selling herself so that in the process she might too sell her product.
Suffren was a dealer, and the very best kind. She knew how to work it, alright.
Within three months of her sophomore year, she had rooted three quarters of the boys in our grade, and at the same time, made three quarters of the boys in our grade addicted to all sorts of drugs.
Marijuana, usually, but a snort of coke or an e-tab never went astray.
She would walk the walk, talk the talk – she’d hold your hand, and laugh like your jokes were funny. She’d proudly tell people you were dating, and count down the days to your anniversary like they mattered.
She was playing a game against everyone she knew, and she was winning.
By my final year in high school, you think I would have realised this. But I was too blinded by the sudden, unexpected bouts of sex and attention I was being treated to.
As my grades plummeted, so too did my grip on reality. I started cutting back my ambitions for more real goals. I stopped dreaming so much and thought about the present.
I planned more and more of my life around Jenna Suffren.
And then one day, like a rug pulled from beneath my feet, she was gone. A quick tear and a whisper in my ear, and the redheaded drug goddess disappeared. I asked myself what had happened.
For days, I locked myself in my bedroom, not being able to sleep, tormented by my questioning soul. Why me? Why now? What had I done wrong?
In actuality, it was all part of her sick game. This is how she did it. She got the guys, did what needed to be done, and then moved on.
As I stand here now, although I’ve moved on, I have to ask myself if all my problems are because of her. Was it Jenna Suffren? Or was it something more?
While all these questions are running through my head, I take one last drag from my cigarette, swig from my ash-stained Jack Daniels bottle and watch from a distance as Jenna Suffren takes the arm of another unsuspecting victim.