This is a part of @theinkwell's fiction challenge. This is the third week. Join here!
The prompts were:
Option 1: beauty
Option 2: a sorry tale
The picture did the rest of the work for me. This is a sad story.
A Sorry Tale
Deante entered his Father’s room. He knew he wasn’t supposed to be there. His daddy told him not to go through his things, to respect his rules and his home. But Deante was curious and he was bored and wanted to get away from the noise.
His daddy was fighting with his girlfriend again. She was noisy and doing the bad stuff and his daddy told her that she needed to stop because it was bad. But she didn’t listen and daddy didn’t make her go. So they just yelled at each other and she hit him and he hit her back. But all this noise was next to his bed and it was hard to sleep. He had school tomorrow. First grade with Mrs. Kennedy’s class. Mrs. Kennedy was a nice enough lady, for a white lady, but she was real mad when Deante couldn’t stay away cause the arguments going on. So he just wanted to lie his head somewhere nice and farther away from the noise.
But he got curious. Daddy had a special box beneath his bed. He’d seen him going through it sometimes. Daddy said never to go in his room or look in that box. But Deante was curious. Why did he say “No”? What did he keep in there? Was it money? Daddy had some. A lot more than Ma did. Ma didn’t have money. Ma always asked other people for money.
Deante liked his Father a lot more than Ma. In fact, he loved daddy. Daddy and him would go play some ball at the park on the weekends, and he always picked him up from school, and that was nice cause back in the day, Ma would forget to do that. Or she’d come to the school on the bad stuff, and start talking fast and walking fast and it was hard for Deante to keep up, and she’d pull his arm and yell at him if he wasn’t walking fast enough or if he forgot his homework like that one time when he got home from kindergarten and forgot the Important Paper for her to sign and she hit him bad.
But daddy never hit him. Ever. And he didn’t like Ma. She smelled bad. But daddy’s room smelled nice. He always had that spray that he used and it was fresh and strong like daddy’s strong arms. Daddy was the strongest guy in the world to Deante. And anyway, he was tired but he wanted to see that box. So he pulled it out and opened it and saw the silver of the pistol inside.
He knew it was a pistol cause that’s what the cowboys used on television to kill the Badguys and they fired really loud and heavy. But the Goodguys always beat the Badguys, they always did. And they used this thing.
Deante held it in his hands and it was so heavy and he turned it around and felt scared of looking at the barrel. It was black and dark even with the hallway light coming through the door and he couldn’t see inside but felt scared anyway so he put it back in the box.
Then he thought how cool it would be. How fun. They could play some games at school tomorrow.
His daddy didn’t see him when he came inside and put him back in his bedroom. Deante had put that pistol in his backpack. It would be so fun tomorrow. He couldn’t wait to show everyone what he found. Then they could play cowboys and Indians.