“Put your hands up,” the cops yelled out.
Looking up at both cops running my way on foot, I pulled my chrome piece from under my shirt then pushed my foot down on the gas pedal. They weren’t about to take us down, and I wasn’t about to let my fiancée die. I didn’t know if she was still breathing, but I wasn’t about to admit she was dead. I went into sheer murder zone. Gunshots didn’t stop ringing until all of my clips were unloaded. Although I’d caught three bullets that felt like they were burning through my flesh, I didn’t take my foot off the pedal. In the rearview mirror, I could see both cops laid out in the middle of the street.
“Moni, baby, answer me, girl. Moni!” For the first time in my life, I was shaken up and kind of scared. I didn’t want to look over and see the love of my life dead. I needed her to respond. “Moni!” I kept screaming her name as I drove faster away from the scene of the crime.
For us to have the hottest love in Detroit, we couldn’t have the coldest ending. In the blink of an eye, the team was no more.
The End
So Far Gone
by
Katt
Chapter One
It was Friday. I woke up to go to school. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, took a shower, and got dressed. This all took place after I woke up at 5:30 a.m. That sounds early right? I was always done by 6:00 a.m. because school started at 6:30 a.m., but it was only a couple blocks from my house. I walked there every day and after school walked back home.
I started looking in the mirror to see my reflection. I saw dark brown hair, light skin, and dark brown eyes. I was normal height for a fifteen-year-old girl in the tenth grade. I would always look in the mirror for a while before I was done. Not for any conceited reasons at all but just because that was my time when I would wonder, why? Why me? Why do I have to be dealt this hand in life? I don’t deserve this. No one does. I was done getting ready early today, so I ate breakfast at home.
“Renee, honey, your pancakes are done!” I heard my mom yelling from the kitchen.
“Okay, I’m coming, Mom.”
“Good morning, honey.” My mom smiled as she hugged me before kissing me on the forehead.
My mom was a little thick as they say. Standing around five feet five inches, she had dark brown eyes just like me. Her name was Theresa, but she had golden blond hair unlike me. Her hair wasn’t dark brown like mine because she dyed her hair all the time. Yet surprisingly she had stayed with blond for a while now. She used to have the biggest, brightest smile, but sadly nowadays she hardly ever smiles anymore. Giving birth to me when she was a teen, her life was stressful. But Tyrone made it a lot worse when he came around.
I loved my mother more than anything, but I couldn’t lie. The life she had us living was terrible. I guessed she was trying her best, but sometimes it didn’t really seem like it. My mom was almost hitting thirty-one. That was a little too old for her not to have her shit together. In a few more years I’d be an adult, and my worst nightmare was ending up like her. I didn’t want to end up as a stripper with a kid I couldn’t take care of and a deadbeat husband who hit me and took all of my money. Naw, I wasn’t interested in that way of life at all.
“Good morning,” I said, sitting down at the small yellow table in the kitchen. We had a small kitchen, too, but actually just a tiny house, period. Sometimes I would catch my mom with a lot of money, but not for long because she would pay the rent, then my stepdad, Tyrone, would take the rest from her. Sometimes we would even be late on the rent because Tyrone would take my mother’s money before she could pay the rent.
I never knew my mom was a stripper until one night. I was like thirteen years old. This was a little after Tyrone first started drinking and acting crazy. I woke up out of my sleep and looked at the time. It was 12:30 a.m.
“Listen here, bitch.” I heard Tyrone yelling out, so I got out of bed. Slowly I cracked my door open. I could see my mom with her makeup and hair all done and this long coat on.
“Tyrone, leave me alone. I just got off work,” she told him calmly as she took off her coat. All I could see was my mom wearing a black studded bra and matching bottoms. I didn’t understand why she was wearing that.
“You were out whoring around all night, stripping for money, and you mean to tell me this is all you made? All you made was fifty dollars?”
“Stripping?” I mumbled in a very low voice.
Tyrone backhanded my mom twice. And just like that, she fell on the floor sobbing.
Without hesitation, I bolted out of my room. Like a crazed lunatic, I jumped on Tyrone’s back. Using every bit of strength I had, I balled up my fist tight. Wildly, I started punching the back of his head, demanding he stop his actions. “Leave my damn mother alone! Don’t touch her! Don’t put your hands back on her!”
Tyrone reached over his shoulder. In what seemed like one swift movement, he grabbed at my wrist. With brutal force, he snatched me off of his back by my arms. Before I knew what was taking place next, he threw me on the floor. I tried to get up to attack him again. Yet this time he was having no part of it. Raising his leg, he kicked dead me in the face. I couldn’t believe it. I was dizzy. I was out of breath, and I felt so defeated. In agony, I crawled to the far side of the room to recover from the disrespectful blow. Balled up under the table, I cried for myself and my mother as Tyrone’s rage continued. By daybreak, it was finally over. It was back to quiet in the house.
I went to school the whole next week with a bunch of makeup on. I attempted to cover up the black eye that evil bastard gave me by kicking me in the face. After that fateful night, my mom told me if I ever saw Tyrone hit her again, then just close my door. She advised me to stay in my room. Why she didn’t just leave him, I’d never understand. However, I listened to her after that. I did as I was told. Well, at least for a long time.
He was slightly taller than my mom and overweight. Tyrone was in his mid-forties now, which was about fifteen years older than my mom. I honestly thought my mom only went with him because she thought he was going to take care of us, which he didn’t. He and my mom had been married for about four years now. You could see his age was kicking in because he was starting to go bald. His skin was starting to look dry with light wrinkles. But maybe it was the alcohol that was kicking in, not his age.
Mom and Tyrone met at his old job. I was about eleven years old at the time. Tyrone was a firefighter. My mom used to tell me that one day she was walking past the fire station where he would mostly work if they did not move his location around so much. This day Tyrone happened to be on break. He was outside of the fire station, smoking a cigarette. My mom told me she gave him her number and they went on a really nice date. Then it was history from there. It would have been nice if their relationship stayed like when they first met, but it surely didn’t.
I ate my pancakes and drank my orange juice. I looked around. Straight from the table where I sat were the silver oven and the stovetop right next to each other, connected together. A little ways down was the sink, lined up against the wall. There was also a window above the sink. The kitchen was a tan color with pink marble tiles on the floor. Across from the sink was our white refrigerator. Our kitchen was connected to the living room.
I drank the rest of my orange juice then said good-bye to my mom. I then left for school. As I started walking, I could feel the cold Cleveland morning air from this fall season hit my face. Across the street was a group of kids who lived on my block. They always walked to school together. My block wasn’t that bad compared to most neighborhoods in Cleveland, Ohio. The only bad thing, in my opinion, was the small one-floor houses everyone around here lived in.
I never walked with the group of kids. I never really made a lot of friends because of the way my stepdad acted. I never wanted to take them to my house to experience what I did almost every day. If I did take that chance and he clowned, this would bring more attention to my horrible life outside of school.
* * *
Hours passed, and it
was 3:30 p.m. Time to get out of school. The weather warmed up a little compared to that cold breeze this morning. I started walking back home. I saw the same group of kids who were walking earlier to school now walking home. I saw these kids walking almost every day since school has started.
“Renee,” I heard someone call out from behind me. It was one of the girls walking with the group of kids. Her name was Maria. I had my fourth and fifth hours with her.
“Yeah? What?” I spun around and stopped as Maria and the group of kids walked closer to me.
There were three people walking with Maria: one boy and two girls. I knew the boy because he was Maria’s twin brother, but I didn’t know the girls they were with. Maria and her twin brother were both tall, with light brown hair, and African American.
Finally, they caught up to me. “Renee, can you come to my sleepover tomorrow for my birthday?”
“I want to but I can’t. I have to go see my grandma in the hospital tomorrow,” I told her, knowing I was lying about this.
“Okay, well, maybe I could come over to your house on Sunday and we can hang out?” Maria wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“Maybe, but I don’t think so, because I have to go to church in the morning. The rest of the day I have to spend time with my grandma,” I lied once more.
“Okay then.” Maria sadly gave up, then I walked away.
I even stopped talking to Cedric, my old boyfriend. At this time, I was staying away from everyone, and I knew if I did not talk to him, I really did not want to talk to Maria.
I wasn’t that far ahead of them, and I could hear them whisper. “Maria, why would you want to invite her anyway? I heard she is weird and she never really talks to anyone anymore,” the Mexican girl said.
“She just lied to you. You know that right?” the other girl told Maria. She was a mixed girl. She looked Indian and black. I kept walking but continued to listen to them talk.
“She is not weird, and I know. I could kind of tell she was lying. But she’s really cool. We were super close in the summer, and I would always go over to her house. But once her mom married that guy she stopped talking to me,” Maria explained to them.
This was the truth. Maybe I shouldn’t have stopped talking to Maria, but I knew she would want to start coming over to my house more often. I could not let her. If I told her no, then she would start asking why, and then what would I tell her? Maybe I was a little paranoid, but ever since my mom had been getting hit by Tyrone, it has just been driving me crazy. I just was not talking to anyone now that Tyrone was starting to hit my mom more and more.
I sped up as I walked home because I didn’t really care about listening to their conversation anymore. If I stayed to listen to more, I probably would have punched one of the girls Maria was walking with. How could they have all bad things to say about me when they didn’t even know?
I finally made it home. I walked in the house and closed the door behind me. I was still standing at the door in the living room. Tyrone was yelling at my mom. I could tell he was drunk, and this was actually early for him. Tyrone at least waited until 6:00 p.m. or later to drink.
Overweight, black, and bald was always the best way for me to explain how Tyrone looked. Every damn time I looked at Tyrone, those three words went in my head. Tyrone was a big guy with big muscles. But even though he had muscles, he was out of shape with a big belly. I didn’t know what my mom saw in him. He wasn’t even cute.
Their conversation didn’t seem that bad, so I walked down the small hallway from the living room into my room. I set my book bag on my floor and lay in my bed. I put my headphones on because I did not want to hear my mom and Tyrone arguing about him drinking too much or them arguing about my mom not giving him all her money. That was all they ever really argued about. I was pretty sure they did not even notice I entered the house.
I continued listening to my music. I loved being in my room. It was my escape place from all the arguing and fighting that happened every night at my house. My room was small, but I didn’t care. I loved it. We lived here for a little while now. My room was painted pink. My mom and I did it when we first moved in this house, and even Tyrone helped.
He was not always a drunk. He and my mom had been together for five years now. The first year he was a nice guy and never drank. But shortly after that year passed, they got married, and he started to drink. It went downhill from there, because after the drinking then followed the arguing. After that started, he started to hit her. I never really knew what to do because I was not strong enough to help her. I would beg her to leave him, but time and time again she would never listen to me. She stayed.
Sometimes I would catch my mom watching talk shows about abusive relationships in the living room when Tyrone would leave the house. At that point, the bum did not have a job. However, most days around noon he would leave, then come back around 2:00 p.m. Then he’d strangely leave again at around 6:00 p.m. and come back around 7:00 p.m. I never knew where he went, but I knew once he left at 6:00 p.m. he would always come back drunk. The weekends were different, though, because those days Tyrone didn’t have a set schedule at all.
Chapter Two
Some people would have said I had the killer instinct of a wolf when it came to my mother, but I always knew, in reality, I was as fragile as a sheet of paper. I had hatred in my heart and in my soul, and Tyrone made me like this. All this time I had to deal with Tyrone hitting my mom. Sometimes I would even get mad at my mom for not leaving him, but at the end of the day, I could not stay mad at my mom because I loved her so much. Sometimes I would hear people calling me crazy or weird, but they could not say I didn’t love hard. All my life I had felt this way. Maybe that was what made me the “psycho” the judge, jury, and everyone else in America labeled me as today.
Living with Tyrone had gotten even worse. Not all the time, but a couple times when my mom was not home, he would even try to do things to me. But he never actually did it because I would wake up while he was trying, which scared me even more. For some reason, I was attractive in my sick stepfather’s eyes. All I could feel was a hand moving down my arm really slow and softly. I thought I was dreaming, but I woke up to the strong scent of beer. There Tyrone was with bloodshot eyes, sitting on the side of my bed and touching my arm.
“Get away—”
“Shhh,” he sinisterly responded as I tried to finish my sentence.
My heart was racing. I didn’t know what was about to happen. But all Tyrone did was tell me to be quiet. Then he just got up and walked out of my room. I never told my mom because I knew the look in his conniving eyes. It was an evil look. He didn’t want me to tell her. And truth be told, with a look like that there was no way in hell I was going to tell her. As long as he didn’t touch me, I felt okay with the thought of not telling her. It wouldn’t help anyway if I did tell her.
My childhood was a nail and a hammer. Although I was the nail, life itself hammered me down. Those days coming home from school were worse than stepping foot in school. Even though I stopped talking to my friends and was becoming an outcast, I still did not enjoy going back home. Every day I would come home from school and Tyrone would be sitting there in the brown wooden chair in the living room almost straight across from the front door, waiting to bother me. Tyrone would almost all the time have a whisky bottle next to him that he chucked down before my mom and I had gotten home.
He would say to me when I walked in, “Take your ass in the room. I’m not babysitting no kids!”
I would always listen to his commands. One reason was because I was very scared of him, but I hated being around him anyway, so I didn’t mind listening to him. I thought since he hit my mom that I might be next, especially since he hit me once before. I stayed in my room until my mother got home every day to avoid being in the same room as him. I always asked my mother, “I don’t understand, Mom. You are a very attractive woman. Why did you settle for a scum like him?”
She always came back with the same
response. “Never say that around him. He would kill us and not think anything of it.”
I believed her, and when my mom told me this, it was my first time when I knew Tyrone was more dangerous than I ever thought before. I could always hear him slapping her late at night when they argued about something. Sometimes it also sounded like he was choking her, and I would just put my headphones on. Sometimes he would do it right in front of me. He knew I was too young to do anything about it, and Tyrone knew I was scared that he might hit me again. I would cry all the time with her when he left the house, and I knew she was hurting. I was too. She would sometimes have big black scars around her cheekbones, and she tried hiding them with pounds of makeup.
I sat in my room every day, staring at the four pink walls, just thinking about running away and never coming back here. But I knew I couldn’t do that. I would never leave my mom behind with this man. But sometimes I would even daydream about being a princess, waiting for my knight in shining armor to come and rescue me from this dungeon. Sounds cheesy, huh? But it was better than thinking about this terrible life.
Everything I thought of in my room, from the time I came home to the time my mother got home, was escaping this house. I had no games. I had no television to keep my attention. All my mother’s earnings from her job were wasted on Tyrone for more beers and cigarettes. My room was the only place in the house that did not reek of beer and cigarettes. So I stayed in my room until my mom came back from work. I would be asleep or just listen to my music while lying in my bed. I’d peek out of the room. From there I could see the whole living room, and I could see Tyrone in the chair.
One night, I saw him dozing off in the chair, which gave me a chance to grab a bite to eat out of the kitchen. I realized two seconds after I walked to the kitchen that Tyrone staring right at me.
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