The Writing Geek

 “The first draft of anything, is shit.” - Ernest Hemingway

It’s 12:01 am, November 1, 2007. National Novel Writing Month. Here is my attempt at 50,000+ words throughout the month. I still don’t know if it will be one book length project, or a multiple story type of deal. In any event, here we go…

Warning: this is NOT kid friendly.

“The Evolution of Jake” (working title)

by David Ware

November 1st, 2007

“You son of a bitch!” Jake Matthews jerked out of his world of G.I. Joe battles in the backyard at the sound of his mother screaming at his father. This was nothing new. They fought all the time. There had even been several week long trips to his gramma’s house. This time, however, there was something different in her voice.

“I am going to make sure it doesn’t…” Her voice was still different. It was shrill. Usually it was Jake’s dad that did most of the yelling. In any event, Jake sat still in the yard, clutching one of the figures in his hand.

“Judith, please. Jake is outside. He’s going to hear you.” His father’s voice was different too. It was almost calm, which was not normal during one of their arguments.

“I don’t give a fuck anymore, Henry!” The sound in his mother’s voice broke. She was crying. But she wasn’t giving in. “What kind of life have you given him anyhow?”

“Please, calm down. We have to think of him.” Jake couldn’t take it anymore. With the action figure clutched between his fingers, he got up and started for the door.

“Fuck you, Henry! Fuck you and your slut!” She was crying full force, but still unprepared to give in, as she usually did. Jake tuned into the tears as he approached the front door. There was a frightening sound in her voice. Something he had never heard from his mother before.

The screen door obsured the vision of his mother and father. Judging from the sounds of his mother yelling, however, he could tell they were in the living. Jake reached for the handle on the screen door, and that was when he heard a sound he was very familiar with.

Jake had lived around guns for as long as he could remember. At age five, his father had bought him his first gun, a .22 caliber single shot rifle. In the three years since, Jake had been engrained with all of the safety rules. Always point the gun downrange. Don’t put your finger on the trigger until you were ready to shoot. Guns were to stay in the gun cabinet until he and his father were going to the range or out hunting. Most importantly, always treat a gun as if it were loaded.

The sound he heard next was one that he had become familiar with over the years. It was his father’s shotgun, and the sound was that of a round being jacked into the chamber. It was odd, he thought for a moment. His dad wouldn’t be putting a round in the chamber now. He was in the house, and considering the current argument with Jake’s mother, he certainly wasn’t going to the range anytime soon.

“Judith, don’t…put it down.” This time his father’s voice returned to the firm authoritative one he had known only when Jake was in trouble. “PUT THE FUCKING GUN DOW…”

His father and mother were fully involved with their argument, and both missed his entrance completely. Jake peered around the corner into the living room as his father reached for the shotgun in his wife’s hands.

“I’ll see you in hell, you rotten piece of shit!” Jake’s mother pulled the trigger. The force of the shot hit his father square in the stomach, knocking him back against a recliner and tipping it over. Jake watched as his mother jacked another round into the chamber and fired again, this time at point blank range. He couldn’t see his father’s head anymore. It had fallen behind the coffee table and, from Jake’s point of view, he could only see his father’s hand reaching up above the table in a futile effort to block what was coming next.

What he did see was the spray of red and grey matter that spattered the floor, the recliner, the wall and his mother. His father immediately fell silent. His hand fell to the floor and no longer reached towards the shotgun. For a moment, Jake couldn’t figure out why his mother wasn’t following any of the rules of proper gun safety. That thought disappeared as he watched her pull the revolver she had tucked into her waistband. Jake had missed this, because her back was turned to him.

“Mom…” Jake tried to make the words come louder, but he couldn’t. The shock of seeing what had just happened began to take over. He knew it wasn’t loud enough, because his mother didn’t stop. Instead, he watched her pull the hammer back on the revolver. In a second, the gun disappeared in front of his mother’s face. Because her back was still turned to him, it took Jake a moment to process the fact that she was breaking the number one rule: never point a gun at yourself. He was too young for it to register that rules probably didn’t matter at that very moment.

Jake tried to call out once again, this time standing in the doorway that led to the livingroom. As was the case a moment before, the words caught in his throat. In this case, however, they were cut short by the sound of the blast from the revolver.

Jake’s body went numb as his mother’s blood, brain and skull fragments sprayed from the back of her head and covered the rest of the carpet around her. He didn’t realize it immediately, but the spatter reached him as well. It landed with bits of her brain and skull in his hair and down the front of his dirt stained shirt.

He dropped the G.I. Joe figure that had, up until now, remained in his hand. He screamed and, this time, the sound travelled throughout the house. It didn’t do him any good, however. Both his mother and father were dead, and noone would be able to stop the carnage now.

Jake dropped to his knees next to his mother. Her body twitched a couple of times, but she didn’t respond to his sobs. He held onto what little was left of her head, soaking his shirt in her blood even more. Forty-five minutes later, a neighbor would find him in the same position, quietly sobbing over his mother’s lifeless body.

“Jake? Are you alright, boy?” The voice was distant, but Jake recognized it as Steve Anderson. He had bought the house just down the road from the Matthews about the time that Jake was born, and had become a friend of the family almost immediately. In the last year or so, Jake had even taken to calling him Uncle Steve. Likewise, Steve’s wife had become known to him as Auntie Abby.

Steve called to him a few more times, but stopped when he realized that Jake was not going to answer. He simply looked up from his mother’s corpse, his hair matted with blood and brain matter.

“It’s ok, Jake. I’m going to call the police. It’s going to be ok.” Steve attempted to hide the shock in his own face, but it was hard to do. He started towards the phone, but couldn’t keep his eyes off the tear streaked blood stains that ran down Jake’s cheeks. It was a look that would haunt Steve for the rest of his life.

“My name is Steve Anderson. I am calling from the Matthews residence on Berkley Drive…There’s been a shooting.” Tragedy was actually what he was thinking. His stomach was feeling uneasy now, as if it was ready to reject the contents of the lunch he had eaten not even an hour ago. “The boy is alive. His mother and father are both dead…yes, they were shot…Berkley Drive. 142 Berkley Drive…yes, just off route 7. Send an ambulance as well.”

Jake continued to sob. Steve didn’t take his eyes off the boy. Neither said anything to each other. After hanging up with the dispatcher, Steve called his wife. A few minutes later she walked in the door, followed closely by three Sheriff’s deputies and a small crowd of EMT personnel. When they came into the house, they found Steve and his wife in the kitchen with Jake. Auntie Abby was cradling the boy in her arms, where he would sob himself to sleep.

***