The Decision
Recently, Years 7 & 8 wrote for the National Short Story Young Writer competition. The winners will be announced in April. The remit was to write a short story entitled ‘The Decision’.
“Drop the weapon, kid,” the burly policeman said in a husky voice. Jack thought about answering ‘not a chance’ but, glancing at the handgun, swiftly moved off the idea as he did not really want seem any more threatening than he already was. His shoes had been stapled to the damaged mat lying outside the shop door for ten minutes now. He shuffled his feet slightly and the large cop’s grip on his gun only got tighter.
Three years ago, in the heart of the winter, Jack’s Mum was walking down the street. She had just been having a ‘girl’s night out’ as she called them. It was quarter past eleven in the night, the cold air penetrating the few layers she had on, sobering her thoughts…New York in the middle of the night, let’s just say it isn’t one of the safest places around. The middle-aged woman was walking down the dark alleyway which led to her and the family’s house. The slightly drunk lady could sense that something was near, and soon realised that there was a heavily drugged man leaning on the wall just ahead of her, a fairly common sight in the darkness.
Her instinct was to just walk down the other side of the path. She had passed him wearily but out came a groggy, booming voice, “why ya you here, huh?” She ignored the man. He repeated himself, only sounding more aggressive, as she turned around only to find him only a few feet behind her…he pulled out a gun, her body froze with fear. “This is my ground, lady.” Surely the gun wasn’t loaded, surely he wouldn’t kill someone on the spot, she reassured herself. But it was, and he did; he fired a shot in the air then fired straight at her chest, just like that…she died that night.
Now, three years on from that fatal night, Jack eyed every one of the cops surrounding him, looking them straight in the face. He saw one of them flinch. ‘I know, I’m scared too,’ he thought to himself. Then he looked at the face of the gun. ‘I’m holding the same weapon that killed my Mum,’ the realisation horrified him. It was the morning after his Mum was murdered that he had seen her dead body.
Just when Jack thought that nothing could get any worse, a year after his Mum was murdered, his Dad caught a chest infection, and in Jack’s house, they were short of any medicines. He had debated in his mind with himself, for a long time, how he could get any medicine, which ones to get and whether it would help his father or not. Being a fifteen year old boy and having a stocky build, he could only think of one option…stealing it. Worse of all, he knew where his father kept his gun in his bedroom, in case he got himself in a mix-up. Jack thinks back on that decision regretfully.
Around an hour ago on a damp Saturday morning Jack was walking to the pharmacy, he had never been more nervous in his life, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up as he approached the grimy sliding doors of the shop, his gun gripped tightly to his body in the waist of his tracksuits. He tried his best to relax his uncontrollably shaking body and walked calmly into the store. He paced straight to the section with medicine for chest infections, grabbing everything that looked even slightly useful that could help his dad, and stuffed them into his scruffy backpack. His plan was to run out, most likely setting off the sensors, and just keep sprinting until he found his apartment, his Dad. Little did he know that the cashier at the till noticed the gun bulging out of his tracksuits, and immediately calling 911. Just as Jack was finishing off loading up his backpack he soon heard the commotion of the sirens and realised he’d been found out.
After all the things Jack had been through in his life, this was the event to top it all off. He always knew he was different to everyone else at school, slightly more depressed but more aggressive and more daring. He had no idea what he was going to be when he was older, when everyone else seemed so sure. He hated going home after school, listening to his parents argue, he loved them each individually, but them together, he couldn’t...
Surrounded by the stern cops with the terrified people behind him in the shop, Jack had no idea how to get out of this, his whole life had flown past in his thoughts in this nerve-racking moment, his legs ached, his whole body ached for that matter and he could also see that the policemen were tired as well, struggling to hold up their heavy weapons.
Jack felt stupid now, he had never gone so far as to take his Dad’s gun and steal medicines from a shop, most of the things he stole probably wouldn’t help his Dad at all…
‘I need to end this, I don’t care what happens, I just want this whole thing to stop right now.’
His heart was beating louder and faster than ever now, he had a few options…. and he did it… he dropped the gun on the ground, the metal object clattered against the pavement then he kicked it towards one of the cops.
Whether it was the right or wrong decision, he did not know…but that was the one he chose.
