Doroschuk
12-31-2011, 04:07 PM
Hey, everybody. This is my first thread in a while, and I decided to go for a more realistic modern story. Don't mind the language (they censored it anyway I noticed), and please don't be offended by any of the views presented by any characters, just enjoy the story. This is Part 1.
DAWN:
"So do we all understand the plan?" Tyler asked the rest of the young punks gathered at the round table. They all nodded in confirmation, except Gary, who'd been listening to his iPod; jamming out in that thick skull to a local band; an odd mix of Rush, Johnny Cash, and Miles Davis.
"Gary?" Tyler said, "****, Gary! If I see those things in your ears again, they'll be up your *** so fast you'll be farting show-tunes, got it?"
"Got it, Bossman." Gary nonchalantly replied, puffing a little from his Muratti. He pulled one bud out, but left the other one in.
"We're gonna hit the store quickly, and make off with whatever we can fit into our pockets, ok?" Tyler looked at the group,” I don't want any stupid **** from nobody. We're just getting our names out there; nobody gets hurt, got it?"
"Got it," they all replied.
Tyler looked around the room, quietly patting himself on the back for reforming these sheep. Tyler's plans were finally coming to fruition, this group of misfits and hipster-punks were going to become a real force to reckon with. He smiled at himself.
When Seth had left for college, many thought the punks would just dissipate. It had, of course, been Seth who brought all the high school punks to his "lair" as he called it. The lair was an old apartment building midtown that had been subject to years of neglect and disuse. Basically, Seth had just found it and taken up residence. He then sent out a call to all of the outcasts to join him there. No one questioned Seth’s generosity: if they showed up, he was there with one of his girls, ready and willing to give them whatever they needed.
Seth was like a god to these young trouble-makers, the outcasts of their generation, who hung on his every word. He was their undisputed king, because he was the smartest, best looking, and smoothest-talking. He wore the ****tiest clothing, even though everyone knew he could just steal better ones; but that wasn’t his style. Emo was all the rage, but Seth still hung to the old punk look, though he still invited anyone to his lair. It was cool.
Everyone loved Seth, but he didn't have any aspiration like Tyler. He just invited the city's youth to his doorstep, and there they would talk, smoke, drink, watch toons; he'd even convince some of the girls to whore around with his "guests". The group wasn’t unified, the lair was just a hangout.
Everyone in high school knew about it, and for two years it was the place to find the best people, the best conversation, the best weed, the best drugs, the best drink, the best women. It was a beautiful time, really.
I had experienced the final six months or so of Seth’s reign. Oh my name’s Tommy, by the way. Anyway, it was a real shock to us when Seth left for college. Everybody had assumed he wasn’t going anywhere. No one ever saw him at high school, so no one thought he even went to school. Turned out Seth had worked extremely hard in his first two years of high school, earned all of his credits, and then just got excused from study hall. Essentially, he just wanted a two year break. Plus, the apartment complex was his rich fathers who never got around to fixing the place up. Smooth bastard.
After the Senior graduation, he just up and went out to California on a big deal scholarship, and left us here to fend for ourselves. It was scary, ‘cause no one knew what to do really. There hadn’t really been a chain of command prior to Seth’s abdication, and it essentially created the equivalent of a political power vacuum. A few guys rose from the ashes, Tyler, for one, Redman, Josh, Frederick; those were the main guys I can recall.
Well, Josh broke under the pressure pretty quick, and Redman kicked Frederick’s ***, but then, of course, Tyler kicked Redman’s *** from here to Sunday; so Tyler took charge, and it wasn’t long before everyone just accepted it. He was a natural leader, but he was of a different stock than Seth. Seth was laid back, he was rich, and the punks were just a game to him, though he still loved the Family, as he called them, he wasn’t committed. Tyler was.
Tyler had announced that he planned to transform the Family into a real gang, and they would be both feared and respected by everyone. So here we were, preparing for the gang’s first robbery. We were hitting a small-time store, Korean-owned, little business, weak management: no problem.
At the table sat Gary, Popovich (Pope for short), Kyle, and me. Tyler stood up with a large map of the city on the wall, and next to it his own hand-drawn map of the store and surrounding blocks. He had visited the store and purchased food on many occasions, scoping the place out. Tyler was a smart guy.
Gary was a druggy, stupid, high-as-**** on a daily basis, unpredictable; a liability to be honest. Pope was smart, strong, quiet, calculating. If anything happened to Tyler, it was probably Popovich who would take his place. Kyle was cool as well, but he wasn’t very smart. He was a wrestler, so the guy was strong, but he wasn’t a talker, or a leader. He was a born follower: a sheep, as Tyler liked to call certain people.
Tyler himself was one tough bastard. He was tan and tall, blonde-haired kept spiky. He talked a lot, but was just smart enough to keep out of trouble. He smoked a little and drank a little more, but it didn’t cause any problems like with Gary. Tyler was known to be kind of a dick, but we listened to him, the kid knew his ****. In my opinion he was too ambitious for such a petty group like the family, politics would’ve better suited him, but then again, you can’t brawl in politics…American politics at least.
He knew we weren’t going anywhere either, these five men would remain well after high school. College, as we now knew, was bull-****. Rich kid bull-****. Our children would grow up Family members, and we were all prepared for that. We were Tyler’s five, his next-downs. We were the only ones he could trust for this job.
By this time, the face of unpreppy white teenagers was changing. Two years ago it was all about dying your hair various colors, wearing dark makeup and listening to yuppies scream into a mic to a guitar riff. But now it was changing. Our hair was natural, our clothing was changing, back to regular ****. But the no-preppy-brand was the unspoken rule. You bought your **** online or from a coffee shop. European **** became THE ****. European smokes, European liquor, European glasses and scarves. We rediscovered Jazz and light Indie rock. We were becoming the douchebags and faggots of two years ago, but it was cool.
Of course the world was reacting, as it always does. The Blacks took on our punk and emo style, but it was taken to a new extreme. Their clothing emanated dance-clubs and trippy bull-****. The kids who were unpopular, but never before had been punk, began to copy this new style. But we were still a step-ahead. Our hair became shaggy; the mop-top as some call it, and if we wore contacts, we denied them in exchange for new thick rimmed glasses that looked like plastic joke glasses. But that was the point, we didn’t care.
We wore scarves in the summer, and wrote poetry in our moleskin journals. It was a strange shift for me, because I saw through it, and remembered our previous looks. I saw what was going on, and went along, but took it to a mild level. Tyler, of course, was still a punk, and kept his hair short and spiked. And even though the hipster craze, as it became to be called, was defined by ideologies of free-choice, self-dependency, and pacifism, we were still brawlers, and the streets remained violent.
We all prepared quietly, and Tyler walked around checking on everybody. This was his moment, and no one could take it from him. We walked slowly through the street, approaching the store on the corner of Fourth and Bread Street. We walked in, each three minutes after the other, and each headed to a different part of the store, just as Tyler had planned. Then we all started to grab whatever we could, and when the clerk noticed, he began to shout until Tyler pulled a gun on him.
“Don’t try anything old man,” Tyler said, staring the Korean shop-owner down with cold fury in his eyes, but keeping his gun on the clerk, “just hand over the money, and we’ll be gone in no time. Nobody gets hurt.”
As the clerk began to take out bills from the register, we all heard sirens from far-off.
“****!” Tyler shouted, moving his gun from the clerk to the shop-owner, “Did you call the cops?!”
The shop owner shook his head and squinted his eyes furiously as the sweat began to pour like rain over his face.
“Finish up, guys!” Tyler shouted, as he himself grabbed the money from the clerk’s shaking hands. The sirens got closer, and that’s when we heard Gary fall over.
“Gary!” Kyle shouted, “what the hell?!”
“I can’t, I can’t…” Gary began to cry, and some foam formed at the edges of his mouth. Tyler looked back and forth from Gary to the Koreans as the sirens came closer. We all knew why Gary was acting like this. His drug use was causing severe problems in his body, and the extreme pressure from the robbery sent him over the edge. He sat there, balled up with stolen merchandise falling out of his pockets, the tears and sweat soaking his body.
Tyler was beginning to choke. He continued to look back and forth and began breathing heavily. ****, ****, ****, he kept repeating. Then finally, he shook his head as if in horrible regret for something, gasped for air, and pulled the trigger on the clerk. The Korean clerk doubled over and fell to the ground, with the shop-owner quickly grabbing him for support. He quickly ran to the door, and then looked at Gary, who returned the look in immense fear and sadness.
“You did this to yourself, man,” Tyler said, and then turned away, and signaled the others to exit the store. We all passed Gary’s catatonic form as he wailed in terror. Tyler pushed us out as he took one last look at the horrible scene. We rushed home to the lair, which was where we all succumbed to the shock of the moment.
We sat there for what seemed like hours, letting the horror move over us. But only Tyler cried, and I understood why. He had left behind his oldest friend, and may have just ended a man’s life. This was the reward for his ambition, one man in jail or therapy, and the other in a hospital, or even the morgue, all for a few hundred dollars and some junk food.
We remained quiet, the Family I mean, for the next month or two. Tyler wasn’t going to let that happen again.
DAWN:
"So do we all understand the plan?" Tyler asked the rest of the young punks gathered at the round table. They all nodded in confirmation, except Gary, who'd been listening to his iPod; jamming out in that thick skull to a local band; an odd mix of Rush, Johnny Cash, and Miles Davis.
"Gary?" Tyler said, "****, Gary! If I see those things in your ears again, they'll be up your *** so fast you'll be farting show-tunes, got it?"
"Got it, Bossman." Gary nonchalantly replied, puffing a little from his Muratti. He pulled one bud out, but left the other one in.
"We're gonna hit the store quickly, and make off with whatever we can fit into our pockets, ok?" Tyler looked at the group,” I don't want any stupid **** from nobody. We're just getting our names out there; nobody gets hurt, got it?"
"Got it," they all replied.
Tyler looked around the room, quietly patting himself on the back for reforming these sheep. Tyler's plans were finally coming to fruition, this group of misfits and hipster-punks were going to become a real force to reckon with. He smiled at himself.
When Seth had left for college, many thought the punks would just dissipate. It had, of course, been Seth who brought all the high school punks to his "lair" as he called it. The lair was an old apartment building midtown that had been subject to years of neglect and disuse. Basically, Seth had just found it and taken up residence. He then sent out a call to all of the outcasts to join him there. No one questioned Seth’s generosity: if they showed up, he was there with one of his girls, ready and willing to give them whatever they needed.
Seth was like a god to these young trouble-makers, the outcasts of their generation, who hung on his every word. He was their undisputed king, because he was the smartest, best looking, and smoothest-talking. He wore the ****tiest clothing, even though everyone knew he could just steal better ones; but that wasn’t his style. Emo was all the rage, but Seth still hung to the old punk look, though he still invited anyone to his lair. It was cool.
Everyone loved Seth, but he didn't have any aspiration like Tyler. He just invited the city's youth to his doorstep, and there they would talk, smoke, drink, watch toons; he'd even convince some of the girls to whore around with his "guests". The group wasn’t unified, the lair was just a hangout.
Everyone in high school knew about it, and for two years it was the place to find the best people, the best conversation, the best weed, the best drugs, the best drink, the best women. It was a beautiful time, really.
I had experienced the final six months or so of Seth’s reign. Oh my name’s Tommy, by the way. Anyway, it was a real shock to us when Seth left for college. Everybody had assumed he wasn’t going anywhere. No one ever saw him at high school, so no one thought he even went to school. Turned out Seth had worked extremely hard in his first two years of high school, earned all of his credits, and then just got excused from study hall. Essentially, he just wanted a two year break. Plus, the apartment complex was his rich fathers who never got around to fixing the place up. Smooth bastard.
After the Senior graduation, he just up and went out to California on a big deal scholarship, and left us here to fend for ourselves. It was scary, ‘cause no one knew what to do really. There hadn’t really been a chain of command prior to Seth’s abdication, and it essentially created the equivalent of a political power vacuum. A few guys rose from the ashes, Tyler, for one, Redman, Josh, Frederick; those were the main guys I can recall.
Well, Josh broke under the pressure pretty quick, and Redman kicked Frederick’s ***, but then, of course, Tyler kicked Redman’s *** from here to Sunday; so Tyler took charge, and it wasn’t long before everyone just accepted it. He was a natural leader, but he was of a different stock than Seth. Seth was laid back, he was rich, and the punks were just a game to him, though he still loved the Family, as he called them, he wasn’t committed. Tyler was.
Tyler had announced that he planned to transform the Family into a real gang, and they would be both feared and respected by everyone. So here we were, preparing for the gang’s first robbery. We were hitting a small-time store, Korean-owned, little business, weak management: no problem.
At the table sat Gary, Popovich (Pope for short), Kyle, and me. Tyler stood up with a large map of the city on the wall, and next to it his own hand-drawn map of the store and surrounding blocks. He had visited the store and purchased food on many occasions, scoping the place out. Tyler was a smart guy.
Gary was a druggy, stupid, high-as-**** on a daily basis, unpredictable; a liability to be honest. Pope was smart, strong, quiet, calculating. If anything happened to Tyler, it was probably Popovich who would take his place. Kyle was cool as well, but he wasn’t very smart. He was a wrestler, so the guy was strong, but he wasn’t a talker, or a leader. He was a born follower: a sheep, as Tyler liked to call certain people.
Tyler himself was one tough bastard. He was tan and tall, blonde-haired kept spiky. He talked a lot, but was just smart enough to keep out of trouble. He smoked a little and drank a little more, but it didn’t cause any problems like with Gary. Tyler was known to be kind of a dick, but we listened to him, the kid knew his ****. In my opinion he was too ambitious for such a petty group like the family, politics would’ve better suited him, but then again, you can’t brawl in politics…American politics at least.
He knew we weren’t going anywhere either, these five men would remain well after high school. College, as we now knew, was bull-****. Rich kid bull-****. Our children would grow up Family members, and we were all prepared for that. We were Tyler’s five, his next-downs. We were the only ones he could trust for this job.
By this time, the face of unpreppy white teenagers was changing. Two years ago it was all about dying your hair various colors, wearing dark makeup and listening to yuppies scream into a mic to a guitar riff. But now it was changing. Our hair was natural, our clothing was changing, back to regular ****. But the no-preppy-brand was the unspoken rule. You bought your **** online or from a coffee shop. European **** became THE ****. European smokes, European liquor, European glasses and scarves. We rediscovered Jazz and light Indie rock. We were becoming the douchebags and faggots of two years ago, but it was cool.
Of course the world was reacting, as it always does. The Blacks took on our punk and emo style, but it was taken to a new extreme. Their clothing emanated dance-clubs and trippy bull-****. The kids who were unpopular, but never before had been punk, began to copy this new style. But we were still a step-ahead. Our hair became shaggy; the mop-top as some call it, and if we wore contacts, we denied them in exchange for new thick rimmed glasses that looked like plastic joke glasses. But that was the point, we didn’t care.
We wore scarves in the summer, and wrote poetry in our moleskin journals. It was a strange shift for me, because I saw through it, and remembered our previous looks. I saw what was going on, and went along, but took it to a mild level. Tyler, of course, was still a punk, and kept his hair short and spiked. And even though the hipster craze, as it became to be called, was defined by ideologies of free-choice, self-dependency, and pacifism, we were still brawlers, and the streets remained violent.
We all prepared quietly, and Tyler walked around checking on everybody. This was his moment, and no one could take it from him. We walked slowly through the street, approaching the store on the corner of Fourth and Bread Street. We walked in, each three minutes after the other, and each headed to a different part of the store, just as Tyler had planned. Then we all started to grab whatever we could, and when the clerk noticed, he began to shout until Tyler pulled a gun on him.
“Don’t try anything old man,” Tyler said, staring the Korean shop-owner down with cold fury in his eyes, but keeping his gun on the clerk, “just hand over the money, and we’ll be gone in no time. Nobody gets hurt.”
As the clerk began to take out bills from the register, we all heard sirens from far-off.
“****!” Tyler shouted, moving his gun from the clerk to the shop-owner, “Did you call the cops?!”
The shop owner shook his head and squinted his eyes furiously as the sweat began to pour like rain over his face.
“Finish up, guys!” Tyler shouted, as he himself grabbed the money from the clerk’s shaking hands. The sirens got closer, and that’s when we heard Gary fall over.
“Gary!” Kyle shouted, “what the hell?!”
“I can’t, I can’t…” Gary began to cry, and some foam formed at the edges of his mouth. Tyler looked back and forth from Gary to the Koreans as the sirens came closer. We all knew why Gary was acting like this. His drug use was causing severe problems in his body, and the extreme pressure from the robbery sent him over the edge. He sat there, balled up with stolen merchandise falling out of his pockets, the tears and sweat soaking his body.
Tyler was beginning to choke. He continued to look back and forth and began breathing heavily. ****, ****, ****, he kept repeating. Then finally, he shook his head as if in horrible regret for something, gasped for air, and pulled the trigger on the clerk. The Korean clerk doubled over and fell to the ground, with the shop-owner quickly grabbing him for support. He quickly ran to the door, and then looked at Gary, who returned the look in immense fear and sadness.
“You did this to yourself, man,” Tyler said, and then turned away, and signaled the others to exit the store. We all passed Gary’s catatonic form as he wailed in terror. Tyler pushed us out as he took one last look at the horrible scene. We rushed home to the lair, which was where we all succumbed to the shock of the moment.
We sat there for what seemed like hours, letting the horror move over us. But only Tyler cried, and I understood why. He had left behind his oldest friend, and may have just ended a man’s life. This was the reward for his ambition, one man in jail or therapy, and the other in a hospital, or even the morgue, all for a few hundred dollars and some junk food.
We remained quiet, the Family I mean, for the next month or two. Tyler wasn’t going to let that happen again.